Counseling Kevin

Blockhead Blogging

Samuel Johnson's famous assertion that "[n]o man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money," flashed through my mind recently in the midst of a conversation I was having with a lawyer who admired my professional blog, but wondered what kind of cost/benefit analysis I had done regarding client development payoff versus time spent blogging (multiplied by an assumed hourly rate), and blah, blah, blah.I told him that I wrote because I liked (no, loved) to write, and client development was not the primary motivator. He couldn't wrap his head around writing for "free."

When I first started blogging, a more experienced blogger pointed me to Right Wing Nation's advice concerning what it takes to be a "successful" blogger. It was a useful article, but there's something about it that amused me. The author assumed that those of us who blog either want to do it for a few friends, or want to build an audience. If we want to build an audience, then we are either "linkers," "thinkers" or "theme" bloggers. Each category has its rules about number and length of posts.

If you are, or are trying to become, a successful writer of an online, magazine-like blog containing articles or links of interest to a limited targeted audience that consists of those folks who all follow the same simple rules for blogging, then the advice appears to be sound. As with any group of human beings, however, it appears that what we have here are some early members of the group, in this case of the world-wide group of "bloggers," attempting to set rules for what other members and "wanna-be's" should and shouldn't do if they want to build an audience. My initial response was (and still is) to ask "who died and left this guy or gal in charge of the rules?" That's a gut reaction, and, as such, likely to be unreliable. Nevertheless, prior to the advent of the world wide web, we had not had such a vehicle for such open communication between such a diverse group of human beings, ever, in history, so how do you know with any certainty what will or will not appeal to whatever "audience" might exist for your writing? If your targeted audience has ADD and/or limited imagination, perhaps it's correct to state that if they can't quickly figure out which of the three types of blogger you're trying to be, you won't build an audience. Eight years later, I think the jury's still out.

Another problem I have with these suggestions is that they don't allow for individual creativity. Artists, including writers, often break the rules. They generally don't follow a mold. If, in fact, RWN is correct and you have to be one of the three types and you have to follow the subset of "rules" to be successful within each type, then blogging won't be much of a vehicle for those with "creative force," will it, or at least for those whose goal is to build an audience?  I've read some pretty talented "stuff" in the time I've been blogging, and in many cases, I have no idea whether the writers I like have a huge or a small audience. Frankly, I don't abandon talent or become frustrated with it because the number and/or types of postings may not fit into a box.

A final note (at the risk of a "lengthy post," which apparently is also a "no-no" according to some rule givers): there are some of us who, being blockheads, write because we enjoy it. If there's an audience for it, or some of it, great! If not, we'll keep on writing, because we love to do it, or feel compelled to do it, or both, and you just never know who out there might also enjoy reading something one of us may write. Some of us actually have well-paying jobs (and even careers) and don't have to or want to post something every single day or, worse, a set number of times per day. We just like to blog. Vast audience or small. Rules or no rules. As hard as that may be to believe.

At the End of the Run

As we contemplate the Passion of Christ today, I'm struck by how well C. S. Lewis sees the parallel of the desperate end game of Jesus' life and the human condition. His prayers of anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane are unanswered. He turns to the Church he created, and it condemns Him. Then, the State (Rome) considers his fate, and abandons Him out of political expediency. The final appeal to "the People" He has come to save from themselves results in a demand by them for his death. On the cross, he dies after uttering as His last words an anguished cry at His divine Self's apparent abandonment of His human Self: "Why hast thou forsaken me?"

You see how characteristic, how representative, it all is. The human situation writ large. These are among the things it means to be a man. Every rope breaks when you seize it. Every door is slammed shut as you reach it. To be like the fox at the end of the run; the earthes all staked.

Whether our run ends as a young man or an old one, sooner or later, for every single one of us, "the earthes are all staked." Suffering is our lot because we live on this Earth, and all of us must die. To deny this fearful fact, or to avoid facing it, is the reason many of us live our busy little lives of "quiet desperation," filling up our days with nonessential possessions and activities in the unconscious hope that if we don't think about it, we won't have to deal with it.

As someone much smarter than me in these matters stated in a homily delivered seven years ago, the problem is that we are not made for this world. Certainly, the things of it will never buy us happiness nor make our lives ultimately content. The sooner you realize and accept this, the sooner you'll stop wasting your precious time and really begin to live.

The Greatest of These

1st Corinthians 13

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor , and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

I was first introduced to this passage, before I returned to the Church, by what I describe as an "evangelical agnostic": she firmly believed that no one could ever seriously believe in God, and that uncertainty was the most courageous stand. Yet, she simply chose to live her life fervently dedicated to "love" (agape). While she was, and is, as flawed as the rest of us mortal souls, she seems to have lived, and to be living, closer to the core of what I now believe is the way God wants us to live than I ever have lived, before or following my becoming a "believer." That may be because Paul was right: the greatest of these is love.

I spent much of my life wandering in the desert. It's nice, at long last, to reach an oasis. The water is cool and the shade is welcome. I hope I find what I need here, whether or not it happens to coincide with what I think I want. More than that, though, I hope I learn to love rightly and, having learned, simply love.

Wouldn't that be a miracle?

A Candle Burned Brightly

First posted seven years ago tonight, on a version of this blog that no longer exists. Another Joyful Niagara of light, for the education of those who've seen a pale grey and mistake it for blackness..

Our little hour,—how swift it flies
When poppies flare and lilies smile;
How soon the fleeting minute dies,
Leaving us but a little while
To dream our dream, to sing our song,
To pick the fruit, to pluck the flower,
The Gods—They do not give us long,—
One little hour.

Our little hour,—how short it is
When Love with dew-eyed loveliness
Raises her lips for ours to kiss
And dies within our first caress.
Youth flickers out like wind-blown flame,
Sweets of to-day to-morrow sour,
For Time and Death, relentless, claim
Our little hour.

Our little hour,—how short a time
To wage our wars, to fan our hates,
To take our fill of armoured crime,
To troop our banners, storm the gates.
Blood on the sword, our eyes blood-red,
Blind in our puny reign of power,
Do we forget how soon is sped
Our little hour?

Our little hour,—how soon it dies:
How short a time to tell our beads,
To chant our feeble Litanies,
To think sweet thoughts, to do good deeds.
The altar lights grow pale and dim,
The bells hang silent in the tower—
So passes with the dying hymn
Our little hour.
---Leslie Coulson

My brother Jeff was born on March 16. A day later and my parents would have switched his first and middle names and he might have been Pat. God forbid, because he never seemed a Pat to me.

He was one of the few people I have ever known who knew from the time he was little what he would be when he was big: a musician. No doubt ever entered his mind about that. Or, come to think of it, about much else. He might have been the most self-possessed human being I've ever known, albeit with a wicked, self-deprecating sense of humor.

He was a cool dude. A ladies man, yet he met the love of his life in college and married her as soon as they graduated. They both looked like they'd just jumped off the top of the wedding cake.

They had a hell of a life together. They bought a beautiful home on a wooded lot in upstate New York. Deer wandered through the back yard. We spent many happy nights there drinking beer, listening to music and laughing.

He was a freelance musician, gave private percussion lessons, scored for Warner Brothers, arranged music for high school bands, taught drum lines for drum and bugle corps, played drums in a rock band, and composed. He made a good living at it, too, which was a tough thing to do in that business. He and his wife were doing great right up until the time he was diagnosed with MS at age 31.

Most MS sufferers have remissions. He was one of the rare 4% who go straight downhill. I helped his wife put him in a nursing home 3 years later. A year after that, he died. My wife and I had spent his last day with him, the day they put in a feeding tube because he no longer possessed the strength to even swallow. I'll never forget the look of utter defeat in his eyes as we left him that evening. We flew 2500 miles home, only to pick up a voice mail message when we walked in the door that told us that he had died several hours after we had left him.

Many times, you're tempted to say that life is cruel. But, life is what it is. It has a beginning and an end. You have a finite number of hours, only you never know how many, in aggregate, you get to spend. Spend them foolishly, and the joke's on you.

One of the reasons that I ultimately came to believe in God is that I simply refuse to accept that people who are so alive when they're alive cease to be alive when their earthly existence ends. If I believed that people like my brother Jeff, a candle that burned brightly but flickered out too soon, did not have an existence that superseded those of some of the gutter trash whom I've encountered in my much longer life -- well, then, I'd be have to grab a shotgun and meet out some justice here and now. Overall, I think it's more productive to believe that justice is delivered ultimately for all eternity, and that what we do while alive echoes forever.

Maybe I got to live longer than he did because I'm a slow learner. He certainly seemed to understand his purpose from the get-go, and he lived it fully and completely, or at least as completely as time permitted.

"Our little hour." Take a lesson. Spend it wisely.

So Vivid As To Burn

When you are in love, you dream about the person you love. After ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years, the dreams are so clear and real they shake you to the core. And if love be denied or suppressed, they are so vivid as to burn.
---Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and In Shadow

I am beginning to wonder if this guy lives inside my head.

Is It Ever Wise To Simply Damn The Torpedoes?

“Reputation is what others think of us; character is what God knows of us. When you have spent what feels like eternity trying to repair a few moments of time that destroyed the view others once had of you then you must ask yourself if you have the problem or is it really them? God doesn’t make us try so hard…..only enemies do.”
---Shannon L. Alder

Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven."
---Matthew 18:21-22

As I'm brooding about the "wrongs" done by me to another and by another to me, my wife asks me, very seriously, if, when we recite The Lord's Prayer at Mass every Sunday, I actually pay attention to the passage in which we ask God to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and, if I do, does it ever make a difference in my behavior? I hate it when she does that.

“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
---G.K. Chesterton

"It is not talking but walking that will bring us to heaven."
---Matthew Henry

Some times it's perfectly appropriate to stop and "overthink." Other times, it's better to stop trying to talk yourself into what you want, rather than what you and others actually need, and just move forward with your eye on the prize and with the principle of "agape" the animating force.

The Hope For Joyful Niagras of Light

Standing in Grand Central Station, Harry Copeland ponders the thousands of souls rushing by him "who might someday overlap mortality."

For perhaps with the ignition of eternity every single vanishing moment and the blessedness of each man, woman, and child lost to memory would awake to be engraved on the black walls of time by joyful Niagras of light.
---Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and in Shadow

Every night I try to pray for the dead and only the dead. I pray for the souls of my late father, sister, brother, and grandparents, and for my wife's deceased father, siblings, and immediate relatives. I then add a prayer for all of our ancestors back to the first ancestor, especially those who are most in need of mercy, the most forgotten, the most miserable during their lasst days on earth. I wonder in what village, what mud hut, what barren plain they spent the last moments of their lives. I hope and pray that, because God stands outside of time, they see or feel this prayer, that it touches them in their present state, and that through its pitiful supplication, they inch that much closer to the divine.

In three generations after death, each of us is lost from the memory of any living man or woman. Those who claim that they have no need for the hope of joyful Niagras of light are lost to me and me to them. Forever.

One Simple Thing That Is True

"But, Catherine, everything that's true despite us - the things they're talking about, natural laws - will always remain true despite us. What matters is what's true because of us. That's what's up for grabs. That's where the battle is. One remembers and values one's life not for its objective truths, but for the emotional truths...The only thing that's really true, that lasts, and makes life worthwhile is the truth that's fixed in the heart. That's what we live and die for. It comes in epiphanies, and it comes in love, and don't ever let frightened people turn you away from it."
---Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and In Shadow

"I wish I had someone who would talk to me that way, as if no one else were in the room, " Andrea said, not caring how vulnerable she might appear in the eyes of her friends and acquaintances, for she had no one who would, and at that moment she would have traded everything in the world that was clever for one simple thing that was true."
---Mark Helprin, In Sunlight and In Shadow

With Its Immensity and Fear

Evening

 --Rainer Maria Rilke

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

 

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;\

 

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,

it is alternatively stone in you and star.

Rough Edges

A recent series of back-and-forth emails with someone I know and who I offended by challenging them quite "strenuously" about their assertions, brought home to me once again how different is the workaday world I inhabit. Two examples of what it is like to swim in a shark tank and grow accustomed to the sound of gnashing incisors:

1. I'm holding forth in a partners meeting on my position on a business matter about which I feel strongly, when the firm's managing partner interjects helpfully, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." I respond without missing a beat, "You're a man in love with the sound of his own voice and you expect us to believe that that was the dumbest thing you ever heard? Impossible." One of the other partners lets out a loud "ohhhhhhhhhh" in the manner of someone who had just witnessed a hole in one at The Masters, everyone laughs, and, no feelings being hurt, we proceed to dissect our differences.

2. In another partners' meeting, this one of a national law firm two decades earlier, I am listening while "Bill," the managing partner of the Denver office, in which I am also a partner, explains our reasoning for opening a satellite office in Dallas. A pompous partner in the international law section of the firm's D.C. Office sniffs, "Tell me, Bill: can one actually walk in off the street in Dallas and speak with an actual lawyer?" He knows the office is only staffed by attorneys visiting from Denver, and he is trying to squash the satellite office concept as being beneath the grandeur of such a prestigious firm. I respond, "We don't get much walk in business in the financial institutions practice area." There is much laughter, the gas bag attempts to recover by not looking at me and drawling in his best East Coast private prep school accent "Thank you, Bill", as if I had spoken out of turn. A partner sitting next to me, a litigator who had recently joined the firm from the US Justice Department, turned to me grinning and said "A three-pointer. Nothing but net."

I've also been on the receiving end of other people's bon mots, but why would I tell anyone those? It's my blog, and I'm going to slant every post my way. Deal with it!

I'm not saying this is the way human beings ought to interact with one another, but I am saying this is my world. After 38 years in it, I tend to be less attuned than I should be toward those with more delicate sensitivities, who take a straight forward challenge to their positions not as an occasion to fire back in their defense or to give as good as they get, but to collapse in a heap of quivering hurt feelings and aggrieved sensibilities.

I'm not intentionally being a jerk. I've just lost my way. If you can't bear up under the snark, you are right to avoid me.