Another Monday morning rears it’s ugly, hoary head.  For whatever reason I’m quite the grouch at the moment.  A night of disturbing dreams no doubt contributes to this; constantly waking from twisted visions as far removed from Gord the polar bear’s yesterday whispers as can be imagined.

Fortunately, there is little time for grousing about such things.  The work week commences.  Website updates and ad customization leave no time for brooding over a waking edge dulled by quasi-nightmares.  Sufficient are the duties of today for that.  Who needs foul dreams for a foul mood when you have department meetings? 

Anyway, a song that’s been rumbling through whatever portion of my brain isn’t in a state of trying to recover sans coffee from ill-tempered nocturnal theater is “Square Go,” Fish’s dark tale of a solo mercenary seeking, as he puts it, to fight back on his terms.  A sentiment most of us have embraced at some point.  At least on the inside.

For those of us possessing a conservative bent, these days it’s sorely tempting to want to go square go, a Scottish slang term for a fair fight with no outside interference.  The problem is the other side has no intention of responding in like kind.  Our President is making no effort to disguise his liberal theology, a wholehearted embrace of government trumping the private sector in knowing and directly determining what is best.  His economic policy treats money like Jay Leno to Doritos (crunch all you want; we’ll make more) as it conjures hundreds of billions of dollars to pour into the feeding trough of assorted pet pig projects having nothing to do with genuine economic relief by stimulating business and everything to do with furthering government’s direct control over individuals via strengthening the welfare state.  His definition of acceptable social mores has been demonstrated by his loosening the federal pursestrings when it comes to funding abortions overseas.  All this is accompanied by the whoops of the left wing’s victory dance while they celebrate what they perceive as their triumph over the right.

It’s difficult to respond by taking the hit, yet in many respects this is what we must do for we are the main reason for our decrease even as the left luxuriates in increase.  We are the ones contantly fighting each other; we are the ones who failed to move with sufficient speed or strength to weed out those who in the name of conservatism embraced corrution and greed.  We are the ones seeking the grace of God’s good blessing while heralding words uttered by godless people such as Christopher Hitchens as validing our views.  Can there be any cause of wondering why we are where we are?

Now is the time to re-evaluate, refresh, renew and reinvigorate.  Now is the time to resist all tempation to respond in like kind to what we are hearing about ourselves from the outside, instead speaking the truth in love.  We must be precise in articulating our views, but never hateful toward others who see things differently.  Instead, we must always extend the open hand no matter how many times it is spat upon and slapped away.  Now is the time to clean our own house before opening the door to others.

Going square go is not an option.  Even on an ugly Monday morning.  We must instead fight back with love.

I have a splitting headache this morning. Part of this is due to sinuses responding none too kindly to the rain currently dotting the Bay Area, micromanaging the micro-climates to where my current earthly home is doing its best impersonation of my other earthly home in Indiana.  There, if you don’t like the weather wait five minutes and it’ll change.  Here you travel five miles.

The main reason for my throbbing cranium is a lack of sleep last night courtesy of dreams that were anything but dreamy.  They were haunted by the nocturnal twistings of what was already tangled: dealing with my aunt the previous evening when her dementia was running wild, paranoid utterances coming at a rapid clip even as she was forgetting what had been told her thirty seconds earlier.  It’s strange how in the 3 AM playhouse items that are connected in some fashion to reality transform into bizarre worlds of the impossible while feeling perfectly normal.  At least until you wake up and try to make sense of the performance’s last few flickers of light still screaming inside your head.

It’s hard watching a loved one fade away.  I suspect most all reading this can nod their head in sad common knowledge, having been there and done that.  It drains you, a different kind of drain than what takes place when the burdens of you living your life become oppressive.  I’ve heard it said how it’s hard to raise your hands in praise when once you lower them they go into empty pockets.  More directly put, when you’re unsettled financially as far as whether there’ll be a job for you tomorrow if in fact you have one today you get scared.  Yes, consider the lilies of the field and all that.  It’s still human to be nervous in troubled times.  Sometimes you want to receive direct reassurance that it’ll be all right.  When it comes to loved ones making a slow departure said reassurances, even should the person be a believer, can be scarce.

Worse yet, some believe themselves to be failures for feeling this way.

Somewhere along the line, we need to hear how the pursuit of holiness does not translate into beating ourselves up for being something other than the epitome of Supersaint Inc.  We do hurt.  We do bleed.  We do get scared, and angry, and all the other emotions those who believe being a Christian translates into being a Spirit-filled Mr. Spock say we shouldn’t be experiencing.

We need to huddle close together and help each other as best we can, for we are all we have on this earth.  We need to spend less time wearing “and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose” as an umbrella and more time remembering Solomon’s words “no one can comprehend what goes on under the sun.”  Perhaps then we can be the witness we are called to be, not as the all-conquering and all-knowing but as the one who’s unafraid to admit they don’t know everything but this one thing is known: Jesus is real and alive, and even though you still get smacked around love wins in the end.  There is healing from the hurt.  There is life beyond what we know.

Which is a good thing.

In the meanwhile, let’s admit we’re human.  When we do so, we allow ourselves the privilege of interacting with other humans based on the common experiences of life.  And when despite your humanity you stubbornly cling to the nail-pierced hand, reflecting both Christ’s love and pain, you immediately become far more beautiful to Him than you’ve ever believed possible.

The Obama administration offers tremendous inspiration other than the obvious, namely sarcasm in response to the adulation he is receiving.   When it’s guaranteed that going forward each and every ‘news report’ from the White House will start with “isn’t he dreamy?” followed by several seconds of giggle-filled sighs, a dearth of material is the least of my concerns.  But that’s for another time.

The specific inspiration of which I speak stems from the plethora of celebrities who overnight have transformed from America bashers to patriots making Lee Greenwood seem like Glenn Greenwald.  To a one they are swearing allegiance to Obama’s call for community service.  Never mind how had such a suggestion emanated from the previous administration it would have been taken off of the ignore setting solely for the purpose of being mocked.  He has spoken!  Let the world sing praises, Iran notwithstanding.

I’m in no way knocking Obama’s call, although as I’ll outline in a bit a different approach is suggested.  Rather, the reaction of the asinine A-listers and B-list brigade is being called to account.  It’s easy to mock celebrities and their ofttimes tenuous connection to charity for the reason of it seldom being anything more than a dog and pony show minus Lassie and Mr. Ed, both of whom were far more generous with their time and effort on behalf of others than what we see today.  Now, it’s a parade of grotesquely overpaid flavors of the week flittering through the temporary illumination of flashbulbs a-poppin’ at the latest glitzfest, soundbytes armed and at the ready about their passionate concern for… um, remind me again for what this social gathering is supposed to be raising money?  Okay, yeah whatever.  Get me a drink plus some sycophants to schmooze, and let me know when the photogs are gone so I can hightail it out of here.  Swallow the sincerity.

Just as he shames the music world by being the best lyricist today bar none, Bono shames the entire celebrity world with his passionate hands-on work on behalf of combating disease and poverty.  He also trumps the chumps who couldn’t have been bothered to lift a finger the past eight years due to their hatred of President Bush by how he works with everyone, liberal and conservative alike, on behalf of humanity.  Suffering doesn’t care whether the hand offering relief is attached to a liberal or conservative.

Anyway, back to Obama’s call.  I’m not big on “community” activism; it lends itself far too easily to pushing political agendas under the guise of bettering the lives of others.  That said, it should serve as a good swift kick in the pants for all of us to start doing what we should have been doing all along: offering care and compassion, one on one.  It’s easy to get overwhelmed when contemplating the world’s needs.  So don’t try to meet them all.  You can’t.  Instead, pick someone and work on their behalf.  A family member, a friend, a neighbor; their needs are as legitimate as those of anyone else on this planet.  So do what you can.  Make a meal.  Give a few bucks to tide someone over.  Have a chat.  Share a laugh.  Brother helping brother, sister helping sister, brother helping sister and vice versa.

We have a tremendous opportunity to throw the disrespect of those who sneer at conservatives and/or believers back in their face by actively demonstrating Christ’s love and concern for us with our love and concern for others.  As noted, don’t beat yourself up for not being able to save the world.  Do what you can do and trust in our Lord to move in the heart of the next person over to pick up the thread where you need to let it go.  If we do this, not only will we be bettering ourselves and each other.  We’ll also be sticking in the throat of those who expect us to swallow their “sincerity.”

Which I freely admit is great fun.