Our culture, at least in the USA but probable all of the West included, has been called a "culture of death," and we are fast accumulating more reasons to think it so. This whole week has been filled to the brim with lethal accidents and rampages. In future I will continue to try to make sense of this, realizing that the twin answers are "sin" and "Jesus Christ not-a-swear-word-thank-you-very-much."
No Country for Old Men...Amen and Amen.
Just a brief view of Hollywood output should, for one unaccustomed to carnage, put any relatively innocent minds into "culture shock." As much so as visiting the original Auca tribe, or a tribe of cannibals, thanks to the Hannibal Lectures. And we are known worldwide for this, just as Chicago was once known only for its gangsters which are still gist for the media mills to this day. Now Chicago has superseded even D.C. as murder capital of the world; anybody for "death rap?" (Death Metal is dead)
Death has certainly penetrated to my heart this week. Death is always an increasing reality for those of us who strive to survive to a "ripe old age." There was a time, so I hear, when grey hair was a badge of honor and a right to some added respect...but I have heard many even of my generation who wonder if getting old is even worth the candle. I often hear, "Getting old is hell, Doc." and I have no way to refute them. This does tend to put a different light on, "only the good die young."
There is a learning and experience option to getting older unless dementia steps in. But younger people do not ask, they would rather work it out themselves. The thing we learn from history is_____. Yet even if wisdom and better judgement accompanies age--which may be the minority of cases now--there is no denying the life of hormones, including both rages and relenting types. There is, even or esp. for the hypothetical pure materialist, the trap door of entropy hidden under the straw of the loft/y, ready to let us down with a bang, and a whimper from a brittle bag of bones at the end of the descent. Well, there's always the nursing home; until they too become way stations for "useless eaters."
Civilizations only progress for a little while, until a more sanguine cultures, such as Islam, replace them. True Christianity, on a personal basis, does not encourage gnawing on the bones of dead cultures; It is intellectuals, as a whole, that bring forth their new/old pantheons of idols, as they did in the Renaissance; necessitating a Reformation. But Reformation eventually also comes to unbelief and what Schaffer called, "The Great Evangelical Disaster." (Good reading for those who also like Jeremiah...")
If there is a point to this--a big maybe--I think it would be that we as individuals "can do nothing" without the Messiah, whose birthday we already missed--Christmas is only a winter solstice celebration borrowed from paganism. How convenient--and compromised from Xmas' inception if not its conception, so to say... and the beat goes on...
I could apologize for the darker tone of this blog; but as some may realize, I am in a pretty bleak corner just now. There have been a few in the hospital staff, mainly Lynn Klein CEO and Stacey Belski, our social worker, who have reached out--it is part of their job, of course but they could have just let it pass, as most are doing--well, most don't even realize I was involved yet and I hope it stays that way. My great thanks to them whatever may happen.
But I also long for the days in Warsaw where the hospital employed a chaplain. I was very good friends with the last one, and he would have been perfect "for such a time as this." I wonder if he is still there...
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