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It revolves around who?

6/27/2011

Rivers Cuomo, the front man for a rock band named Weezer, has recorded a song titledVariations On A Shaker Hymn. I don’t often think of rock musicians performing hymns, so I found this to be a bit surprising. I also found it more than a little dismaying. The original old Shaker hymn had a message of love and humility. It included lyrics such as “’Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free.” Cuomo’s updated words were “I’m the meanest in the place, step up, I’ll mess with your face.” His lyrics included the repeated refrain, “I’m the greatest man that ever lived.” Uh, yeah, that’s most certainly a variation from the original all right. To me it is also downright disturbing. Sadly it is a manifestation of a significant trend. In 2008 Little Jackie had a popular song that was titled The World Should Revolve Around Me. Yikes.

There was an article in the newspaper this morning on the topic of the increase in narcissism in our culture. Psychologist Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky has recently done a study along with other researchers, among them Jean Twenge at San Diego State, of lyrics of popular songs. That may seem an unusual method of research, but they were considering the possibility that popular music might reflect a change in the common thinking of our society. They found a statistically significant increase in the use of the words “I” and “me” in songs along with a corresponding decline in the use of “we” and “us.” In itself that might not seem like anything one could hang his hat on. However, it correlates with some other findings. For some time students have filled out a questionnaire called the Narcissism Personality Inventory. According to the article in the newspaper “narcissism has increased significantly in the past three decades” as measured by these questionnaires. Psychologist DeWall said, “late adolescents and college students love themselves more today than ever before.”

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My heart says what...?

6/19/2011

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“Just do what your heart tells you.” How often have you heard that? I think the most common guidance given in our culture consists of two principles: Believe in yourself and do whatever your heart tells you. The late Princess Diana was known for saying “only do what your heart tells you.”

There’s a certain common sense wisdom to that I suppose. If one ignores what his or her heart is saying that would seem to be a surefire set up for dissonance in life. The person who doesn’t listen to his or her heart would have this nagging sense that one was doing something wrong and it would come from inside so the individual could never get away from it. The kind of internal tension that results from that is something we’ve all likely experienced at one point or another and have discovered that it is distinctly unpleasant. I can remember several specific instances in leadership in the church where I did not listen to my heart. In every circumstance it created a nagging uneasiness in me that was unsettling at best. Unfortunately, in almost every situation I ended up chiding myself for not following my heart because the results ranged from bad to disastrous. That would seem to suggest this idea of following one’s heart is eminently wise.

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You mean everything?

6/13/2011

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I came across an interesting comment by author Donald Miller recently. He was thinking about the many activities of his day and the fact that a great deal of his time was occupied with the mundane but necessary. Then he made the comment that captured my attention. He wrote that as he thought about this he came to the conclusion that, “what God wants us to do here on earth is something we can do while doing something else.”

As soon as I read that it struck a sympathetic chord for me. One of the things that I have alluded to before is that in modern western culture we have an unfortunate tendency to compartmentalize life. We do that in a number of ways, but one of the most obvious is in our approach to religion and life. Some things, we often think, are secular and some are “sacred.” This can lead us to see some things we do as more “holy” than others. In some forms that kind of thinking can cause a dislocation of one’s spirituality. One’s faith in God does not touch how one thinks about and carries out those tasks deemed to be secular. Or at another extreme those secular tasks are considered to be unimportant. Only the “spiritual” things matter.

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wired for hope

6/6/2011

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I hope what I write makes sense. I hope it encourages someone. I hope. How important is hope? The dictionary defines hope as “the feeling that what is desired is also possible, or that events may turn out for the best.” Every one of us survives on hope. Without hope we would attempt nothing. I get out of bed in the morning because I hope that I can accomplish something I want to do today. We wake up hoping in the morning and continue hoping through every step of our day. The cover of the June 6, 2011 issue ofTime magazine featured the words The Science of Optimism. The subtitle was “hope isn’t rational—so why are humans wired for it?” Inside the magazine the cover article is titled The Optimism Bias. It addresses the question “why our brains tilt toward the positive.” The article reminds me that hope is nearly as crucial to the human soul as is oxygen to the body.

It does seem that we are wired for hope because we do it so persistently. Every couple that gets married hopes their marriage will be terrific, despite the fact that a high percentage of marriages end in divorce and of those that survive an even higher percentage would have to be characterized as less than terrific. When we have children we hope that they will be exceptional, despite the obvious fact that everyone hopes their kids will be exceptional and if they were all exceptional they wouldn’t be…well…exceptional. They’d merely be average. We go on a new diet in hopes that this time it will be different. This time, surely, we will succeed and hit that goal of losing the identified number of offending pounds. Not only will we lose that unwanted weight but we will miraculously succeed in keeping it off. Yeah, this time it will be different. We hope.

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A time to remember

6/1/2011

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I was reflecting today on the fact that it is Memorial Day. Today is an unusually beautiful day. Normally it seems that this time of year we are mired in the transition from May gray to June gloom and the weather is less than inspiring. But today we have a cloudless blue sky and warm temperatures affording the opportunity to all who want it to get outside and maximize the holiday. The holiday weekend, which marks the traditional beginning of the summer season in the minds of most in our country, seems to primarily be a time to get away for a long weekend, go to the beach, have a barbecue or do any of the myriad of relaxing things people like to do for fun. There’s certainly nothing wrong with all of that, but when I think about it I find it a somewhat odd juxtaposition with images of soldiers and sailors fighting and dying in combat, or with scenes of cemeteries where graves are decorated with American flags marking the final resting places of veterans who gave their all for our country.

I recently read a book entitled Neptune’s Inferno. It is a history of the series of surface battles between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U. S. Navy in 1942 that were fought near the island of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. So many ships were sunk in those battles that Savo Sound, the area where much of the fighting occurred, was nicknamed Ironbottom Sound by the American sailors. The battle for Guadalcanal was a desperate one, fought by the Americans on a shoestring. For a time the possibility of losing the battle for the island loomed perilously large. A defeat for the American forces there would have been disastrous. The naval battles, fought primarily by cruisers and destroyers, proved pivotal. The Japanese were supplying and reinforcing their troops on the island nightly by using destroyers to deliver supplies and fresh troops. After some initial terrible losses the U. S. Navy was eventually able to defeat the Japanese forces in the area and gain control of the seas. This had the effect of stranding the Japanese troops on the island and leading to eventual victory in the battle for Guadalcanal. The island proved to be the high water mark for the Japanese in their advance across the Pacific. After that defeat they were in effect retreating until the end of the war three years later.

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It revolves around who?

My heart says what...?

You mean everything?

wired for hope

A time to remember

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