Jarhead
November 30, 2005
I just finished reading Jarhead by Anthony Swofford. The book centers on Swofford’s service in a U.S. Marine Corps Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper Platoon in Operation Desert Storm. Writing a first-person account of a ground war between grossly mismatched opponents that only lasts a few hours hours poses a challenge. What does the author do with the rest of the book? Swofford’s solution was to describe “a number of people reacting to the difficulties of life, war, and service in the U.S. Marines.” To this he adds a lot of autobiographical material, which too often reads like padding.
I picked up the book because of the Marines I know and respect, and because war stories interest me, probably because I was too young for the Great War and my periods of military service missed Korea and Viet Nam. I will always wonder how I would have reacted under fire, and I am very thankful that I didn’t have to find out.
Swofford was raised a Roman Catholic and was an altar-boy while in his early teens. He joined the Marines at age seventeen-and-a-half, and it took the Marines just a matter of weeks to transform the altar-boy into a trained killer, or at least to talk and act like one. His language was transformed into a more or less continuous string of profanity and blasphemy, his professed morality into sex-crazed activities, and his regard for human life was reduced to the vanishing point. One of the important messages in his book is that neither the Marines, nor war, nor any other raw aspects of life can completely squeeze the humanity out of most men. A few it kills, either mentally or physically, but most survive.
Swofford survived to go on to college and become a successful writer. Some of his friends fell victim to their de-humanizing military experiences, and in Jarhead he sympathetically tells their stories.
Here is the troubled ending of the book:
I am entitled to despair over the likelihood of further atrocities. Indolence and cowardice do not drive me - despair drives me. I remade my war one word at a time, a foolish, desperate act. When I despair, I am alone, and I am often alone. In crowded rooms and walking the streets of our cities, I am alone and full of despair - the same despair that impelled me to write this book, a quiet scream from within a buried coffin. Dead, dead, my scream.
What did I hope to gain? More bombs are coming. Dig your holes with the hands God gave you.
Some wars are unavoidable and need to be well fought, but this doesn’t erase warfare’s waste. Sorry, we must say to the mothers whose sons will die horribly. This will never end. Sorry.
Dave, thinking there can be nothing worse than hopelessness.
Wired for Creationism?
November 29, 2005
It’s just not fair! I ran across this teaser in The Atlantic, but to see the entire article they wanted me to pay for a print subscription. I have since discovered that there may be a way around that restriction, but for now I’ll go with what I’ve got.
Bloom takes note when his children, or any other children, wax philosophical about the body and the soul. As a rationalist and a self-declared atheist, he rejects all notions of spirits, deities, and the afterlife. As a researcher, however, he has discovered that children are predisposed to divide the world into two categories: the physical and the immaterial.
The general idea seems to be that we are hard-wired from birth with a yearning for the supernatural and a need to worship something beyond ourselves. Many religions try to satisfy this built-in yearning for the supernatural, but only the biblical narrative of God’s redemptive history from creation to the present consistently and completely satisfies this yearning. We can be at peace with ourselves only by discovering peace with God.
To some, that assertion is very suspect because it is scientifically unprovable. For me and countless others it is supernaturally self-evident. Deal with that as you will.
Dave, telling but not preaching.
Cycles
November 28, 2005
Is history linear (having a start and an end) or cyclical? I have no trouble answering that question, but I also believe that certain cycles impact our lives. I tend to think of such things as working and sleeping, winter and summer, jet-lag, etc., but blogger Michael Kruse goes even further.
Kruse Kronicle: History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but it Rhymes
Meaning in life for the ancients was grounded in conforming to the appropriate rituals and behaviors that marked each time or season. There was a sense in which you lost yourself to the reaffirmation of the eternal cyclical order. This is not to say that some ancients and some cultures were without a sense of linear time (i.e., time progressing from a beginning to and end) but cyclical time defined life in most ancient cultures across the planet
Something unique happened about 4,000 years ago. Thomas Cahill in The Gift of the Jews shows that the Jews were the culture that introduced us to the idea of history as a linear progression toward some end. This view of time was carried forward by Christianity into Western Civilization. However, for the first 1,500 years of Christianity, linear time was only appreciated by a small minority of educated elite. About 500 years ago the world was changed forever when two powerful ideas converged.
These ideas were a growing obsession to quantify everything and the invention of the printing press. This was the beginning of the renaissance, usually thought of as beginning in the 14th and 15th centuries. For me, this obsession is well portrayed in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin sea novels. Dr. Maturin is a naturalist who spends much time measuring and classifying his finds.
In the linked article, blogger Kruse says that in the rush to quantify everything we may lose sight of the cyclical nature of human events.
I have to wonder if our relentless quest to ignore or conquer the cycles of our existence blinds us to forces that may be shaping our lives. The Bible, from which we derived our linear driven view, says:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
time for war, and a time for peace.Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (NRSV)
In a future post, Kruse promises to review the views of some historians on cycles in human affairs. But for now, I would simply point to the cycle of the seasons and suggest that they may have more effect on our lives than we admit.
Dave, getting in over his head on the subject of cycles.
Galatians 4:28-31
November 27, 2005
4:28 But you, brothers and sisters, are children of the promise like Isaac. 4:29 But just as at that time the one born by natural descent persecuted the one born according to the Spirit, so it is now. 4:30 But what does the scripture say? “Throw out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman will not share the inheritance with the son” of the free woman. 4:31 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman but of the free woman.
Verse 28 can be paraphrased, “You Gentile Christians are children of the same promise as the Jews.” Jews of that time were counting on their Jewish genealogy to claim the promise of God, but Paul says that the true children of God and inheritors of the promise are all those who have faith in Jesus Christ, whether Jew or Gentile. -sdg-
Lookin’ up
November 26, 2005
Since I can’t squirm around on the ground as easily as another blogger I know, I pointed my camera skyward on my walk the other day. Even at midday the sun hangs low in the sky this time of year at less than 30 degrees altitude, casting long shadows. Not much color looking up, but these old, twisted limbs create interesting patterns against a pale sky.
Dave, which he’s got a crick in his neck.
The survivors
November 25, 2005
Variations of the following have kicked around the Internet for years, but for some reason I got the urge clean this one up a bit and post it. (Well, at least I didn’t forward it to my entire e-mail address book. Posting it on the Orlop seems more genteel.)
To all the kids who survived
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because we were always outside playing.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were OK.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….we had friends, and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
(Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?)
Thanksgiving thoughts
November 24, 2005
Remember the hit parade? Of course you don’t, but I dimly remember a hit song from the fifties that was a long lament about coping with life’s little troubles. The roof leaked. The car broke down. Sore throat. Fired from your job. You get the idea. Well, after each recital of a trouble, there was the refrain, “Life gets tedious, don’t it?” We all can admit that life often gets tedious, indeed.
Fortunately, life brings little joys as well as little troubles, and our Thanksgiving celebration focuses on these Good Things, rather than the woes.
Thanksgiving? Who are we thanking? The circumstances of our daily lives must result from one of two verities. For some, including perhaps the singer of the lament just cited, we just have to cope the best we can with a series of random misfortunes. Things happen, and we’d better get used to it.
The original American Thanksgiving was based on a quite different view. It posited a sovereign God who mysteriously orders the circumstances of our lives, both good and bad, but always for our edification. Thanksgiving, then, is an intentional “thank you” to God for our blessings from Him.
Somehow I feel a lot more comfortable with the second view. It seems fitting that I think every now and then on the good things that are happening to me and express my thanks to the source of these blessings.
A good chunk of our family gathers today to enjoy each other and gorge ourselves on much more food than we need. We will pause briefly before we start gorging to reflect on the source of the Good Things in our lives and say, “Thank you.”
Dave, thankful.
Loving ain’t easy!
November 23, 2005
Although I’ve already commented on Romans 12:9-21, a recent Bible study lesson at church caused me to realize again how it capsulizes the requirements for living a good life.
Conduct in Love
12:9 Love must be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good. 12:10 Be devoted to one another with mutual love, showing eagerness in honoring one another. 12:11 Do not lag in zeal, be enthusiastic in spirit, serve the Lord. 12:12 Rejoice in hope, endure in suffering, persist in prayer. 12:13 Contribute to the needs of the saints, pursue hospitality. 12:14 Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 12:16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. Do not be conceited. 12:17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil; consider what is good before all people. 12:18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people. 12:19 Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God’s wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. 12:20 Rather, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing this you will be heaping burning coals on his head. 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
It would be hard for any well meaning person to argue against these precepts, except perhaps for the dilemma that “heaping burning coals on his head” may pose. I’m not going to go there, but I would be interested in hearing what those enigmatic words might suggest to you.
In the approaching season of “making a list and checking it twice,” this list should be kept in mind.
Dave, thinking that he needs to revisit this passage often.
Aging: the dark side
November 22, 2005
As I move into the uncharted territory of old age, I muse from time to time on what is happening to me. I’m not talking about the physical nuisances, for as the hackneyed observation goes, it sure beats the alternative. My thoughts turn more to what it all means in terms of my changing role among family, church, and friends.
One recurring thought is that the years past have given me time to do a lot of dumb things, to make a lot of mistakes. Reflecting on this really dampens my pride, and it is becoming a lot harder to be smug and self-righteous. Oh well.
On the other hand, the years have brought me great blessings, like family, friends, and material prosperity. But perhaps the greatest gift of all has been an active mind that delights in seeking God and learning how he has manifested himself in the world through the passing millennia. I’m also fascinated with the eighteenth century Age of Sail, but I rather doubt that God’s other name is Patrick O’Brian.
So, growing old brings both blessing and curse, which I concede is not a very original thought.
Maybe part pf my new role is that of family theologian and philosopher, to the dismay and perhaps the occasional benefit of children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. This may even come close to the biblical definition of wisdom.
Happy is the man who finds wisdom,
And the man who gains understanding;
For her proceeds are better than the profits of silver,
And her gain than fine gold.
– Proverbs 3:11,12
Well, at least I’m happy.
Dave, who should try to avoid too much musing.
Mike the Mad Biologist
November 21, 2005
Here’s an interesting blog for those of you who are interested in life issues and would appreciate an out-of-step viewpoint from a professional microbiologist. Here’s a sample:
Science: Trust Versus Belief
A couple days ago I was invited to give a lecture at UNH. While I was there, I was talking with a colleague about the whole creationism/ID ‘controversy.’ Like many conversations, it meandered towards global warming (an aside: it is striking that, regardless of personal ideology or if the scientist is in government or academia, evolution and global warming are ‘flash-point’ issues for virtually every scientist I meet, regardless of the scientist’s discipline. I’ll have more to say about that in another post.)
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I am not in agreement with most of what this blogger says, but I think it makes interesting reading, especially about evolution.
Dave, which he has a weakness for microbiologists.
