As the evening sun cast its warm glow on an ancient land, a man of great means and power paced the roof of his palatial home. 50 years of age, this king of the land had asked to be alone, to think by himself, get a grip on some kind of weary depression that caused him to remain in his bed most of the day. Scanning the horizon, his eye caught a movement on a rooftop just across the courtyard adjacent to his property. Preparations were being made for a bath, perhaps ceremonial. Water was brought to the rooftop, linens were laid out, bottles of lotions, perfumes and oils were set on a table. The personal attendants appeared efficient and swift. Their duties completed, they exited quickly pulling the drape behind them that circled the tub. The efficient activity broke the man’s dull concentration. Relaxing in the evening heat, sitting on an extravagant array of pillows and carpets, he laid his head back for a moment’s reflection and faintly heard footsteps up a stairway. Looking up he saw a woman wrapped snugly in a robe. Parting the curtains where her bath had been prepared she stepped inside, gently pulling the curtains together behind her. The sun enchantingly cast its rays through the curtains outlining the figure of the woman as she released her robe to the floor of the rooftop. The man watched with great interest as her shadow danced on the curtain, then seemed to descend beneath the edge of the vessel into the warm waters. Minutes later two women appeared with water jugs to freshen the bath. Poking through the curtains they tipped their earthen jars toward the bath. A glimpse of the woman bather could be seen by the man with her head only slightly above the rim line of the tub. The quiet of the evening was only interrupted by the man’s racing heartbeat as he imagined the beauty behind the curtain. Two more aids appeared with towels to dry her body. As they parted the curtain to enter, the man saw the bather rise to take the towels. He made out the curve of her body, then, abruptly, the curtain closed. He had seen enough to encourage his passion. It was soon over as she hurriedly descended the stairs wrapped in a warm robe. Now gone, the memory of that momentary glimpse of flesh persisted, all day the thought turned over in his mind. She was stuck to his fantasy.

Few men have the resolve to turn away from a sight like this. It seems to be built into a man’s nature to watch, to wrench every bit of delight out of such a scene. It didn’t end there for this observer.

The man asked of one of his servants to seek out the woman his mind couldn’t seem to let go. He desired to meet her. He had plans for her. A clandestine meeting was arranged. It didn’t take long for this man of near unconquerable power to charm her to his bed. Her response was just as he imagined. The very nature of their lovemaking was no more than physical. But it was enough for her to report to him later that he was to be the father of the child she was bearing. The great man troubled, their reputation clearly at stake. He called for her husband to return by royal command. Obediently the husband, at battle for the very king who had ravished his wife, did as commanded. But he would not leave the man’s palace and return home to be with his wife. Thwarted by his attempt to cover up his deeds, the man invited the husband to dinner feeding him the best of foods and plenty of wine. Even in his drunken state he laid at the stair of the royal palace through the night reasoning he could not enjoy the pleasures of his home and wife while his men were engaged in battle. Angrily, the rich man, ruler, king, and wife stealer, put in the husband’s hand an envelope sealed with the king’s ring authorizing his commander to place the bearer of the message at the front lines and retreat from him in the heat of battle. He was to be struck down and to die. 

This was abuse of power. Willful disregard for the people entrusted to him.

The next chapter of this sordid tale has the man taking this woman into his home to become his wife. Already pregnant by the rich and influential man, a son was born of this union. 

Another man enters the scene, a holy man. He is of keen spiritual sensitivity. His mission is to meet with the murderer and philanderer. Something inside him has urged him to address the powerful man. He does it by parable. “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.” (NIV)  

The adulterous and powerful king raged against the man and said , “This man deserves to die!”

To which the spiritual man replied directly to the enraged man. “You are the man who should die! You have been entrusted with the lives of this kingdom. And what do you do? You exploit, steal and manipulate them for your own selfish desires. You are the man who should die!”

I had been hoping for a call from my Doctor’s office with good news as I had taken a PSA blood test a few days before. Instead, I got this text message from a distraught young lady declaring she was pregnant and why was I avoiding her? This didn’t seem very professional but she was quoting results and why would someone call me with test results if they weren’t mine? The text of that somewhat alarming call are below:

Hello?

It came back positive

You have been ignoring

me all day

????

Did you hear me?!?

I said IT CAME BACK

POSITIVE

                                                            PSA?

What’s that

Ryan ur not making

Sense

                                                            What came back

                                                            Positive?

Pregnancy test

Remember??

I told you I was gonna

take it

                                                            I am not Ryan

Um well why does this 

say as a contact name:

Ryan. Oh is this Parker

again?? Parker get off of 

Ryan’s phone and go

get Ryan!!!!!

                                                            You must have the

                                                            wrong number

Oh

Sorry

Since graduate and seminary days (60’s+) I have written a ton of songs. It came easily. Especially songs about my faith as if it were an appendage. However, since leaving the faith I have discovered that I am virtually “songless”. Delightful tunes that drove lyrics into a manageable song seem to disappear before I can set up chords and melody. This is a rationalization for the sudden lack of creative juices that used to flow unimpeded through my brain and body, often like a freight train. I miss those days, days full of working a tune into a listenable song using software to enhance its “sellability”. 

Frankly, I never had much luck with marketing anything I produced, perhaps it wasn’t marketable in the first place, I don’t know. Always sounded good to me at the time of production. And, that’s the thing, it does sound good for a few days, perhaps weeks. But then when months have passed and one listens again you say to yourself, “What was I thinking?” Indeed! Did you think you were some kind of musical guru? It seems to follow like dust on a dresser. And, there will always be chunks of expectorated cat hairs tangled to resemble a regurgitated enchilada turned into some kind of failed musical notation. Spare me! 

I guess it goes with the territory, growing into maturity, or “seniorhood” as some would put it, has its bennies and it’s not-so bennies. None of the following is done on purpose to put me, or any other senior in our place as an aging member within an at-worship youth society whose adulation unconsciously proposes the idea that years lacking advanced numbers are worth veneration. For sure, good buddy, you haven’t done anything wrong, you just didn’t realize that what you thought was a gracious move was interpreted otherwise by an old codger like me.  No one wants to be old. Nope! Watching youthful workers accomplish in a fraction what us senior types used to accomplish in good time are now forced to observe the current difference that painfully exists. And, sometimes we have to acknowledge that it is time to put up the chainsaw for another who can wield it with confidence, something that slowly dawns on an aging mind that does not see his vulnerabilities as inevitabilities.

There are countless written and unwritten mutations on the theme of aging along with incessant chants about how to grow old and love it. No one escapes it. It happens to everyone. That is, if they are privileged to grow old. Let me let you in on a secret: those of us who have grown old do not feel inside that we are old, the stark realization only comes when we look in the mirror or are stiffly reminded every morning of our age. Otherwise, what’s inside doesn’t seem to age. Given that, why complain? ‘Cuz It’s in our nature to do so when aches and pains have sought out our bodies as if to let us know how out of control we really are. There’s no going back. We can wish for it, try for renewal but it all evades us like a rocket headed for destruction. The steering mechanisms in such a ship are created as limited. And so are we. It’s the uselessness syndrome that causes us to think about our limitations and observe our stance as on the non-inclusive margins of family, friends and foe. We are reminded that we have shrunk from the center of the party to being the man in the corner wearing a hat proudly bought at the Salvation Army second hand store for a bargained price he negotiated to fifty cents from a single dollar. A large victory given the manager was there to observe it all while serving his self-appointed time at the register. 

Time gets away from us. We can look back at any life and see the effects of a constant second hand on its circular run. It only slowly dawns on one that aging has taken place, we are no longer maturing, that’s for youngsters who do now what we did then, we’ve passed that milestone long ago. No, we are aging. It slips up on you, takes your wrinkled hand and bends your knees into the next chapter of a long and, sometime heartless journey walking to… nowhere? That’s it, a walk to nowhere. That’s how it feels when the body ultimately calls for a sit down as exhaustion takes root. You watch as the fractured? parade of young characters goes on without you. It is a hard watch.  Nothing worse than feeling you are not up to your former challenges. Life has prearranged to force you to make do with what you have. 

At the late part of life, it isn’t much that we who are demonstrably past youth have, unless you desire to gather from us a history or even an account of what bothers us to walk. On that matter, I am now the proud owner of a walking device used to assist me, especially in the a.m. when stiffness takes over like spaghetti must be before boiling. I prefer the after boiling stuff and wish it would apply to an aged body. I would take the hot bath to limber it up if it weren’t so difficult to leap over the side of the tub while being reminded my inflexibility is akin to spaghetti before water and heat are applied, only I fear that I will break into a thousand pieces if pushed to leap. So, I grab onto a cane (nearly worthless for me) or my newly purchased collapsible and wheeled walker and trust its capability to glide over the rough spots. Others receive me as if the impairment I now display is non-existent. 

I had hoped it would not come to this. Not too long ago, while observing an elderly person walking their walker at the slow pace it seems to require of a person, I remarked that what we had just seen is what I fear most about growing old. Now I am old and I have a walker. My Physical Therapist recommended it and wants me to use it on the street I live on. My neighbors, anyone, everyone, will surely see me. How’s that for a future? 

Thinking out loud…”Leading from behind” has been criticized as a baseless leadership style by many who contend that leadership is only possible when the person leading is in front and knows all, e.g. Benghazi or “Fast and Furious.” Front and center leadership is militaristic in style and so is widely touted as a preferred form of leadership by the many who have been in the armed forces. It assumes the leader knows all or is to be informed of all and is responsible for all under his/her leadership and must be able to recount the details of failure or success as if they were endowed with superhuman qualities. Leading from behind has been criticized by the right wing press as if it were a dysfunctional form of leadership. If so, the Scriptures would need to be rewritten. “…a phrase I’ve borrowed from none other than Nelson Mandela. In his autobiography, Mandela equated a great leader with a shepherd: ‘He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.’” –Linda Hill in the Harvard Business Review, May 5, 2010. In this case the Shepherd is alleged to know all, having superhuman qualities. 

The illustration cited above serves as a metaphor for what or who a leader can be. If we take any qualities of personhood from Scripture this one surely should be included as a model for the person as leader. Leading from behind is what any leader can do while facilitating the possibility for persons to test their abilities and ideas with the leader’s support. Granted, we did not elect a pastor as President. But we did elect a person who prefers to lead from behind. A biblical model tweaked for Presidential leadership seems appropriate.

Written during the Obama administration

What is it about having to dig up the past to justify the present? The Obama past is recounted with cynicism, exaggeration, and distorted recounting along with a parallel of lies that are meant to confound/confuse the masses. If it is stated by the President then it must be true! How infantile is that? We have learned not to trust the President’s word, on anything, especially having to do with politics and a host of concerns/needs the public has a right to be informed about.

There is nothing wrong with the term “Liberal” or that one is “Conservative.” They are merely terms that help us understand one another’s position on various issues impacting our nation. (And they are not just political issues.) Unfortunately, to justify their/our position, each makes a case in the negative about the other which rarely convinces anyone. Showing people how wrong they are encourages deeper entrenchment. That is why we are so divided over our government. We are prone to “face” someone with their wrong headed approaches to problems that plague us all and we tend to be convinced that if the “other side” would only listen to us and our position all would be improved. It will never happen.

The goal of a democracy is to work with and manage a wide variety of opinions while seeking to implement the majority view. All of this is done while trying to respect the views of the minority. A very tough job. If, in the middle of majority implementation one is criticized the party criticized tends to put up barriers to communication so as to deflect the arrows of discontent. There must be a better way than crossing swords each time we disagree on how to run our government. I believe open communication and compromise are tools that can make this happen. Without them it is impossible to move forward. We need to listen to each other. Barbs, expressing frustration and discontent with someone else’s position, accomplish little.

I have recently come to the conclusion that I am a rationalist, a cognitive realist. I have come to see the world less clearly than I once did when I thought I knew what there was needed to know and I trusted that reality. Things have changed for me. And, I might add, for some of my acquaintances. Life and its issues are not so simple. Having discoursed with some of divergent opinions regarding politics and religion one wrote that he was bored with the conversation as it had basically reached its end. I disagree as the conversation around religion and politics seems to have merely scratched the surface. When it comes to cognition I can’t expect much in return as reputations are on the line. FB is an open forum that does not lend itself to disagreements or disagreeable discussions as most are fearful of how they might appear if dabbling in non-accepted kinds of thinking. I’m too old and past my prime to concern myself with that. Take this diatribe, and any of my other short diatribes, as coming from a senior citizen who has chosen to question a few of the “realities” of life. I am a seeker of truth and find that truth can burn into the soul’s imaginations and cause it to question life-long held suppositions.