The Nature of Distraction

I shouldn't have been thinking about anything else.  But I was.  I was sitting in the middle of one of the most boring sermons I have ever heard, praying for death.  Well, perhaps I exaggerate.  I was not praying for death, it's just that the mind cannot absorb more than the seat can tolerate.  I was tired of sitting.  I was tired of listening.  I had heard the same thing, oh, at least 50 times in my life.  (I am not counting the first eight years where I was just reading little church books and eating Cheerios in Mass, like every other Catholic kid.)  The sermon had no new insight - which really is the point of giving a sermon at all:  to share insight into spiritual living.

Do you wonder what I was thinking about?  Guinea pigs.  Yep.  I'm in my late 50's.  I've got two degrees in Theology.  I've visited three foreign countries... and I'm sitting in church thinking about guinea pigs.  Because that, is the the nature of distraction.  Distraction, as an enemy of spiritual-centeredness, doesn't have to be about anything important.  It just has to distract you.  That's It's job:  to take you off focus, and consequently side-line you from any spiritual progress or a focused prayer life.  Even if you are not a person of prayer, mindfulness, introspection, or contemplation, focus is tremendously important.  

When you are standing on the pitcher's mound trying to strike out the batter, you must focus.  If you are standing at home plate preparing to swing and connect with the baseball, you must focus.  "Wax on, wax off, Danielson."  It's about focus.  But it was not just about guinea pigs in general.

                                      

About 12 years ago I decided that in addition to two dogs, two cats, and a whole flock of cockatiels and lovebirds, I needed a guinea pig.  Letting me go into the pond shop in Fairmount unsupervised was a bad idea .... akin to letting an alcoholic go into the bar to "just get a ginger ale."  They had a small pen on the floor bedded with light, flaky cedar chips and sprinting around inside were a few guinea pigs.  And, clearly, I needed one.  So I bought one the color of a cottontail bunny, took her home and named her "Charity."

I had her for a few weeks when the house I had hoped to buy two years prior came back on the housing market for sale.  Things moved pretty quickly and my parents planned to come out for a weekend to do some house shopping.  I knew that I had to stash that guinea pig somewhere safe because even at my age, I would be given a lecture entitled:  "Should you really be buying a house if you are wasting money on things like guinea pigs?"  Actually long prior, I had been giving the lecture, "Should I really be not buying a house when I am wasting money for decades on RENT?!"  But, I digress.

So I reached out to my friend, let's call her Penelope, and asked her to "pig-sit" for me for the weekend.  She said she didn't know anything about guinea pigs, and that she had a cat who may not like it.  I assured her that Charity the guinea pig was very gentle, and her pet carrier could be safely housed in  her unused spare bathroom for the weekend.  I would drop the pig off on Friday night and pick her up Monday afternoon.  

The weekend came and went, and so did my parents.  They were none the wiser for my foolish guinea pig obsession and all seemed right with my world.  Temporarily.

I got in my vehicle and drove to Penelope's house and asked her how Charity had done.  I walked into the spare bathroom to see that she had moved the pet carrier onto the floor.  I lifted it up, and wondered why my little pig didn't sprint into the air like they tend to do when they get startled, which is often.  As I set the carrier onto the sink and opened the door, my friend said to me, "I went to feed her this morning and she didn't do much..." and I responded:  "... because she's dead."  

I didn't burst into tears.  I wasn't mad at my friend.  She didn't realize that something as simple as the forced air heat from the vent on the floor could chill the pig and kill it.  They are so delicate.  Or maybe my pig just missed me, after all, I was her biggest fan ever.

So there I was in the middle of a dead-end homily thinking about my guinea pig...  probably because the Bible story referenced a guy who left home to work with pigs, which was not a dream career move for sure.  

I was thinking about how stupid it is that the prices of guinea pigs have gone from $7 to about $40... and the prices of puppies have tripled ... and how it seems nobody is selling cockatiels locally or for less than $200 when I used to sell them for $35.  We can't blame this on the situation overseas.  We could possibly blame it on COVID because for the last two and a half years, people have had time to spend at home and pets make that more pleasant, at least for the children and the children-at-heart.

My intention Sunday morning when I got up and going was to "pay attention" in Church and try to focus myself spiritually.  I have, by all accounts, failed at that yet again for the umpteenth time.  But I will tell you this, if I ever get the chance to give a homily, I PROMISE it will be relevant and as insightful as I can possibly render it.  I will not take the Time or Life of people for granted.  We are here for a moment, and then we are gone.  If we all had a better grasp on that, I think we'd adjust our sails in earnest.  We would live with more purpose and intention.  We would make the words we speak matter.  

I am spending Lent studying up a bit on St. Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuit order).  And when he wrote the spiritual exercises he urged his readers to begin at the End ... to ponder their death in order to put their life into perspective.  

Today I had an opportunity to clear a slate with someone that I had exchanged a volley of unpleasantries with over a decade ago.  I haven't seen her in all that time and she looked frail to me.  I thought about how I could offer an olive branch while not rolling over on the importance of what I was arguing for back then.  (I do, trust me, have a memory like an elephant.  Forgiving may be an option, but forgetting is not possible.)  Actually even thinking of addressing the issue with her would involve timing and decorum.  I could not afford for it to re-ignite the old fire.  All of a sudden, the other person in the room with us got up and left.  There's the timing.  

I turned to her, in a softer voice and said to her, "years ago, the last time we spoke, I regret that it ended unpleasantly.  I suspect we both were under a lot of various stresses then, and I regret it." She acknowledged that a lot of time had gone by and that the past was behind us, but she said she did appreciate my words.  To be honest, I appreciated being able to get that off my chest after over a decade.  Sometimes, I'd rather be at peace than win the argument.  Maybe I am growing up.  Maybe the good sermons are inside me and I am unfair to expect anyone other than God in my heart to deliver them to me.  Maybe.

But I think I'm done with pondering guinea pigs for now... I'm pretty sure.  

I wonder if the prices on alpacas have gone down.... 

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Listening to God

 

I do not propose to be an expert at this for all peoples.  But after five decades of me being me, I have got a sense for how I am led by God.  At least in the area of "what my next job is," I have learned to hear His voice ... somehow. I would like to share that with you in case it will help.

First, I am writing with the presumption that God cares about us and how we spend our lives, and therefore, the place we spend most of our daylight hours must matter to Him as well.  Think about how many graduation speeches are about "making a difference," "having courage to move into the unknown," and "helping people."  Those three items are very much related to God and His business.

Second, I believe that because I am not Moses with a nearby mountain, that God is going to communicate with me in some place and some way that is intelligible to me.  Even though my life has a certain degree of solitude to it, I do have to pull-back and get a sense of what is happening in my own heart.  That is where He speaks to me:  in the core of myself, the Inner Sanctum, as it were.

Then, I look at my circumstances and assess their value to me.  I consider possibilities.  I throw proverbial lines in the water, and then I do what makes sense when things unfold.  And so it was with the last big change in my life.

Not that making important decisions is easy; it is not.  Nor is the process without pain; it can test the strongest of hearts.  But as someone once said, anything worth achieving may involve some struggle.  Well, if someone didn't say it, then I just did.  

So, here's what happened:  (now I sound like Adrian Monk, the tv detective) I had every intention of spending only a couple of years working at the hospital when they hired me back in July of 1999.  It wasn't my field, but it is where the door opened up, and I settled in as best I could.  Then over 20 years seemed to pass by and I started to finally feel I had a handle on what I was doing.  New tasks no longer made me anxious.  I learned to take on responsibility with a sense of confidence that  you only earn through maturity ... which typically only comes with age and proving yourself. I weathered the typical work related issues and learned a few people skills in the long run.  And yet, for some reason, as I neared the last decade where one thinks more about retirement, I didn't feel like I was getting the consideration I needed to retire with any level of monetary comfort.  I was thinking I was going to be financially struggling in retirement.

They have this deal where they take the last few years of your salary and average it and blah-blah-blah, to get a figure to base  your retirement money on, you get the idea.  But it was more than money.  I had been stuck at Salary Grade Level 1 for a long time.  It mattered to me, and I said so.  But no one seemed to hear what I was saying.  My responsibilities grew and grew and grew, and nothing else grew with it:  Well, something important like my Sense of Satisfaction.  So there was this lingering thing in me that was marinating, something like discontent.

I had come to the hospital in 1999 under interesting circumstances.  I had taught high school for a few years, and then left full-time teaching, and was doing some temp work at a neighboring University.  I was dying of boredom in that job.  There was so little to do that my boss at the time literally said, "Go play on the Internet."  And the Internet was brand new then so all I was doing was shopping for birds, which was an interest of mine at the time.  (I raised cockatiels and sold their babies.)  At work, I used to look out the window of the office, across Route 81 to the mountain where the hospital sits and think:  "I'd like to work there some day."

Before that time period, at some point I had sold a cockatiel to a man that lived in the Valley near the hospital.  Then, in 1999, the guy gave me a call and wanted to return the bird and a second one to me because he and his wife were down-sizing.  So I drove to their house to pick up the birds, only he didn't show up.  He was out golfing somewhere.  His wife pulled in the driveway from work and I introduced myself to her and asked her where she worked.  She said, "the hospital up the hill."  I remarked, "I'd like to work there someday."  She said, "Bring me your resume."  And I did.  A few weeks later I interviewed and was hired.  My new friend Trudy had opened that door.  She also introduced me to one of my closest keep-forever-friends, for which I am so grateful.

Fast-forward over 20 years to last year.  We were in year 2 of the pandemic.  Work was busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.  But I had time on my hands after work hours, finally, for some reason.  I felt a yearning to take a class and was aware that we had a union benefit that would cover tuition for ONE class a semester.  FINALLY I was not working a part-time evening job, or tending a litter of puppies, or dealing with something draining:  I could have the time and focus to take a class.  Hooray!  I poured-over the classes offered in the area and was choosing between Native American studies and Criminal Justice.  I felt a strong pull to learn more about justice, so I signed up for a class online at a community college and was all set to start when they sent me the bill.  I reached back out to the union and they said, "Oh no, we don't cover classes at the community colleges, only at the 4-year schools because those faculty members are also part of the union."  So I had to pull out of that online class :( ... and I missed the deadline to sign up for a course at a 4-year school.  I was bummed.  The semester moved by without me taking a class, and my attention turned to other things.

Meanwhile, the radio broadcasts relentlessly pelted everyone with messages about getting vaccinations.  I am not anti-vaccination.  I just was not sold on whether or not they were effective.  It seemed like vaccinated people were still getting sick, and still getting hospitalized.  The people with underlying co-morbidities ended up in the Intensive Care Unit.  People were saying this, that and the other thing about the efficacy of the vaccines, the science, as in: "are we following the science," and a very uncomfortable culture of pressure was forming.  Everyone was talking about It, but not everyone was talking NICE about It.  People were speaking to each other in tones that were unkind and belittling.  I felt like every time I turned around I was justifying to someone or other why I had decided against taking the booster.  I never knew who wanted people like Me around and who didn't.  Not everyone understood that if their vaccines were working and they were wearing masks, me wearing a mask and being only 66% vaccinated was no threat to them... IF their vaccines and masks worked like they thought they did.  It was just all-around uncomfortable, illogical, and quite maddening.

Then at work a mandatum came out from on High:  Get the booster by February 21 or you will be suspended without pay ... which would lead to either using your vacation accruals, resigning, or being fired.  We were given less than three weeks to, excuse me for saying it, crap or get off the pot.

I realized that accepting This Booster, was not a final act.  It would be the beginning of many small acts of the State taking away the freedom of its people.  There will be more boosters - whether or not they are proven to be effective - there will be more mandates... and  there will be more pressure.

I thought perhaps I could ask one little question about possibly retiring and that one email took on a life of its own.  It was sent right up the food chain to the head of H.R.  I kept making it clear that I was not certain what I was going to do, no decision had been made, I just had some benefit-related questions.  Then the culture pretty much became a "Here's your hat; where's your hurry?" thing.  I felt myself in the river being propelled out the door.  

Meanwhile, I was looking at jobs online left and right.  I could not leave where I was without a place to go to, a safety net.  I was applying for this, that and the other thing.  I found a dream job in Western Massachusetts, but they refused me the courtesy of acknowledging my application or returning my subsequent follow-up phone call.  One Thursday night, I sent an email to a company I had been working for on the side.  They interviewed me the following Monday, but their offer came in significantly lower than what I needed to feed me and the three dogs and keep the roof over our heads.  Sadly, I turned them down.  Their counter-offer didn't help.  I was crestfallen, I really felt that job would be a good fit for all of us.

Then, as the deadline was coming closer I looked up to the heavens and said to my hospital friend who had passed away last year, "Trudy, you helped me get into the hospital, now please help me get out."  Next came the phone call with the second offer from the job.  I crunched numbers and realized that a few things changed in my circumstances that would make that possible.  Namely, the difference between that salary and the one that I was going to leave was a gap that almost exactly matched what my final paycheck would be from the hospital.  That's what I call "God's Math."  You don't question it, you just say Thank You and go with it.

So I gave notice and moved into the future.  Apparently my hankering towards criminal justice was not about taking a class, it was about the nature of the next job I would have (which is in that field).  I took a week off to let the dust in my brain settle.  The weight of the pressure of the previous month did not lift immediately.  But I was able to pull myself together with God's help to start training for the new job.  The first week I did a lot of talking to myself to get me into a space where I could start something completely brand-new and move into it with some sort of confidence and poise.  I like it.  I have no regrets at all.  Even when the unthinkable happened, the Friday before the mandate would be imposed, they LIFTED the ban at 4pm.  Why?  Because they must have realized it is unconstitutional to demand someone to take a foreign substance into their body when there were so many questions about side effects, efficacy, etc. and not end up with a boat-load of lawsuits.  In some cases, people who were on the fence, proverbially, just caved-in and got the booster.  I am glad now that I did not.

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Will the Real Joseph Please Stand Up?

 

Ugly Truth:  Here's why I am still single:  I would rather be right and alone, than be perpetually annoyed and married.  And perhaps it is as simple as that.  I do not mean to be a jerk.  But I have no patience for unnecessary errors and it seems to me a common unlikable trait that many people do not want to be enlightened and put aright:  they would rather be stubborn and wrong.  As my good friend Barb once said to me, "You do not tolerate fools gladly."  SIGH.  I must agree, this is my flaw.  

So of things that I think I am expert in and they are not many, I admit, ... I believe I should have the last word.  And I narrow the playing field down to what I know for sure:  I know my dogs for sure.  I know my religion and saints for sure.  I know the Bible for sure.  Those are things I have studied in, worked in, educated myself in so that I have a degree of expertise... and I will play that card if I have to.  

This is a holy card of St. Joseph holding baby Jesus.

For purpose of comedy I offer you the latest travesty from the field of "Hagiography," or "study of the Saints."  The religion I belong to (Catholic) celebrates people who were great people in our faith because of their virtuous lives.  We believe that when we die, we, the truest part of ourselves, do not POOF evaporate, but we return to the Creator from which we came.  AKA "God."  There is a charming campfire song from the early American Protestants that sings:

        "Will the circle be unbroken by-and-by Lord, by-and-by?  There's a better land awaiting in the sky, Lord, in the sky..."

The circle referenced in the song above is formed of people on earth who live, as well as those who have gone before us in faith.  We believe that the spirit of Love connects us.  We can talk to people who have passed, and we believe somehow they can hear us.  (We do not worship them, for they are not God.)  We believe that they care for us in our daily concerns even though they do not physically walk among us.  Even people of no faith at all may have moments where they feel that someone, somewhere, is rooting for them, or helping them out in situations otherwise unresolvable by human efforts alone.  In short, assistance of a holy one, namely, a Saint, or even Divine intervention itself is required.

With Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, we believe that eternal life is a reward gained for us by the virtue of Christ and His gift to us, not what we do ourselves.  However - and this has a 500 year-old misunderstanding behind it - some Protestants think that Catholics think we can "earn heaven by our good deeds."  We Catholics do not teach that.  BUT - and this is a big BUT - While on the one hand you can say, "Your good works cannot get  you to heaven," It is also true that "Faith without works is dead."  (If the Church had sent me to dialogue with Martin Luther instead of the other guys, we'd be in a different place today.  Just sayin'.)  Importantly, and little-known-fact:  Pope Benedict (formerly known as Cardinal Jozef Ratzinger) was involved in a theological truce in our lifetime between the Catholics and the Protestant Lutherans over this very issue.  We have come to an important understanding that you cannot say "I am saved" and not actively serve your neighbor in some way.  We do believe that HOW you live your life of faith on earth matters.  To wit, we should become holy, become saints.  The God of the Old Testament said, "Be ye holy, as I Am holy, so sanctify yourselves..." And that is the work of a lifetime, is it not?

So I have laid the foundation for you of Saints 101.  Why these people are important to us, is because they are shining examples of the power of a faith that is alive.  The Catholic Church has a liturgical calendar that celebrates at least one saint just about every day of the year.  We typically celebrate them on their Feast day, which is the day they passed on to heaven.  It is impressive  how many great human beings have actually walked among us.  Some of their names are more recognizable than others:

*St. Francis of Assisi - statues picture him feeding birds or with a wolf at his side.  

*St. Patrick of Ireland - a bishop who preached to the Irish nation before it was Christian.

*St. Nicholas - a bishop who was known for his kindness to children and the poor.  

Each of these were real, historical people who have both true stories and legends - perhaps at times a bit embellished, and other times just as frequently display daring magnanimity - that accent their biographies.  But I can tell you that from our days as small children, Catholic kids are given little booklets of pictures and stories about these men and women.  When iconographers - those who engage in the artistry of saints - put certain things in the picture, you get clues as to who they were.  For instance, martyrs or saints who were known for their purity or virginity typically carry a lily.  Sometimes those who books wrote will have a book in their hands.  You get the idea.  

True example.  One parish I went to had a statue of St. Agatha holding a palm branch that someone recently tucked into her closed fist.  I asked why, since that is not the traditional rendering of her.  The leadership at the time felt that her holding a pair of plyers might be frightening to children.  And my typical response was:  there is no excuse for not teaching people that the plyers were originally crafted into the hand of the statue because St. Agatha taught that by little acts of love and self-denial we are able to symbolically remove the nails from the hands and feet of Jesus on the cross.  The lesson being: our loving actions can ease His suffering.  

And yet other renditions of St. Agatha have her holding a plate.  Because of what appears to be on the plate, people presumed were two loaves of bread, they declared her the patron saint of cooks and bakers.  However, they are not two loaves of bread.  When she was being martyred for her faith, her cruel torturers performed a barbaric mastectomy on her ... She is pictured holding her body parts on a plate because that is her offering of herself for her faith.  Gruesome but true.  Even if you don't share her faith, you have to respect a person that will stand for their convictions to that degree ... understandably she is the patron saint of people who have breast cancer.

Okay so now that I took you through all that ... here's the funny story I promised.  St. Joseph the foster-father of Jesus is celebrated in March around the time we celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  In the days of ethnic neighborhoods 50 years ago, it used to be that the Irish Catholics would party-it-up for St. Patrick's Day; while the Polish and Italian Catholics would celebrate St. Joseph's Day.  The Irish would do a parade and corned beef and cabbage; the Italians would do a spaghetti supper and all was merry and right with the Catholic world.

So this year, in late February, two different Catholic missionary outreaches sent me a booklet of prayers in honor of St. Joseph.  Except they both bungled the picture of who they put on the booklet cover.  To the first one, I wrote this:

I received your 7 days of prayer to St. Joseph booklet.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  You put Bishop Patrick of Ireland’s picture on the front cover…. Green vestments and shamrock over his right shoulder.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, 

another religious Order put St. Anthony of Padua holding baby Jesus on the front cover of THEIR novena to St. Joseph!  St. Joseph didn’t have a tonsure, or a brown Franciscan habit.

 I guess catechesis really did fall apart in the last 40 years if we can’t get our saints straight by visual cues.

 Sincerely,

 C.M. Arabik

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I got a very kind reply of how the picture came from a Church in Scarborough, England, where perhaps there were zealous Irish parishioners who added shamrocks and green vestments to St. Joseph's picture... and that the lily and the absence of a bishop's mitre (hat) are proof it is St. Joseph.  (I aint buyin' it.  But I thanked him for his response.)  

Look, if we want to clearly teach people (and children) who is who, then we need to be OKAY with the image remaining the same over the years.  It is important.  It tells a story.  We need some things to not change in order to ground us in the faith.  We can't have an icon or photo that leaves people wondering, "who actually is this in the picture?"  

Obviously, there can be updates or changes in the style of the art that reflects the genre (ie. Byzantine art tends to have more gaunt figures than Roman art) BUT there are things that remain the same.  When you see an image of St. Dominic, he is going to have a dog carrying a torch sitting next to him because his name and the name of the religious order he founded, the Dominicans, translates from the Latin to:  "Dogs of God," as a reference to their persistence in preaching the Gospel of Christ.

I leave you with this, though, in honor of St. Patrick, I show you this image and His beloved prayer.  I prefer it much more to the short quips people attribute to him that may or may not be actually his words... ie.) "May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead."  Indeed.  +

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Class is Now OUT of Session!

 

"Sean Connery."  What's the first thing you think of when I say that name?  (every woman, I think, over 35 goes, "oooohhh...") And why is that?

Next question, related to it:  What do Ronald Reagan, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Captain von Trapp all have in common?  Give up?  They are people that - in my mind - exuded a sense of Class.  

For those of you wondering what I am ranting about this time ... I am grieving the loss of a sense of nobility or "class," in our American society.  If you ask the Brits, they will tell you that there never WAS any class in the States anyways, but I disagree.  I think there were enough people that had a sense of decorum, at one point, but that is all but vanishing.

How do I know it's gone - well, at least almost gone?  Take the White House as an example.  Please.  Take the White House, and someone re-infuse some class there.  On this point, the left and the right have accidentally agreed.  

I have friends who are good, moral people and they could not vote for Donald Trump because he had no class.  I told them not to look at his behavior, but at his stance on the issues - he is, after all, from Downstate New York and those people live in a herd and yell at each other all the time.  It is their way.  In his case, once he got into Office, he couldn't stop the damn Tweeting.  Although, to be fair, Tweeting was his way of getting his opinion out there before the Media took it, re-spun it, and presented something completely Other as the rendition of what was said.  But sometimes he was crass, blunt, and behaved like an 8th grader with no parental controls on him. 

I myself, who am personally familiar with a fair cache of swear words, take issue with the utilization of them in formal diplomatic meetings.  The current occupant of the Oval Office has been an all-around disappointment and disgrace to both the Office and the Religion he claims to be a member of for many reasons.  Last week, I watched a Press conference where he looked down at the podium and said, out loud, "Stupid sons-of-bitches."  WHAT?!  In a Press Conference?!  And maybe the reporter was Stupid - which my mother taught me was "not nice" to call someone that - I don't know.  But why drag the person's mother into the slur - I who own dogs know that there are bitches (a breeding female dog's formal title) and there are bitches - a dog that is snappy and disagreeable and can't be trusted to behave properly.  Or, as a female theologian I knew once said:  "by definition, a bitch is a person who takes up a lot of psychological space."  Mull that over for a bit.

Another Biden Conference blunder:  "what the hell is going on here?"  And he's looking around the circle of people where he is sitting as if he doesn't KNOW where he is.... maybe he did not.  But, again, can we not trust him to represent the face of the country with a certain sense of class or decorum?  

I will give it to the British Monarchy, Queen Elizabeth in particular, she has walked through decades of all kinds of heartache, critique, opposition, and the attempted re-defining of the role of the aristocracy, etc. and yet she still dresses up nicely, puts on a stylish hat and smiles pleasantly when the situation warrants.  I remember the era of Lady Diana being taught to do the little "royal wave" when she was out and about, her bashful girlish smile endeared us all.  She made Princess-ship look, well, absolutely royal.  What does America have that can touch that with a ten-foot pole?  Nothing.  Really.  

From our rock stars to our Miss America pageants, we have brought forth generations of stoners and tarts.  To a large degree, the music that started out so fun in the 1940's and 1950's has morphed into an audio version of violence, profanity and indecency.  We have allowed our young people to memorize words to songs that could make my grandmother's ears fall off the side of her head, and yet they don't know the Constitution, the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule.  They have been proselytized by music.

How the heck did barbarians take over this country?  One kid at a time.  When parents stop parenting and don't weed out behavior - when they in fact, actively role model bad behavior in front of their kids because their generation bought the "everybody's doing/saying it" lie, everything began to trend morally towards entropy.  When parents stop standing with teachers and police and principals and pastors and start siding with Junior and Missy, divide-and-conquer morality has won the day.  Your kid can grow up to wear the smartest designer clothing and drive the best car and live in opulent luxury but if you haven't taught him/her to be a decent human being, you have given him nothing of real value.

No one with a brain can under-state the role of parenting and education in determining the future of our entire society.

True story:  I was at a Parent/Teacher conference and the parent in front of me came to school in uniform ... with a gun on his hip.  Now if that is not an attempt to intimidate, I am not sure what IS.  His wife had called me on the phone wailing that I was "picking-on" their child ... I wrote a detention for her incessant talking ... and then the rest of the class miraculously became quiet students.  So all I needed to do was write ONE detention, and then I could teach class without the annoying chattering going on.  I told that mother:  "what I do to the other kids is not your concern. Your concern needs to be your kid.  I want it QUIET in my class.  I will write the detention to whomever I see talking.  All I need to do is write ONE.  Your job is to tell your kid not to be THAT ONE.  Don't talk to me about how unfair my practice is.  My JOB is to teach.  Your kid's job is to learn."  Well that was the general gist of the conversation and the mother still had the impression I was "picking on" her kid. 

Here's why I bring that up.  When you look at someone's parenting style, you can also tell how they will deal with other problems in life.  I am now realizing that is why St. Paul spells out the importance of a man having control over his own house before he becomes a deacon in the church.  If you have no control, authority or respect at home, you won't have it anywhere else.  Take THAT idea to the White House.  The Current occupant of the Oval Office clearly is covering for and dismissing the bad behavior of one of his sons.  He also referred to him as the smartest man he knows.  Hmmm.  The smartest man you know let himself be filmed with a woman who "worked the night shift" in a seedy hotel?  How is that a good image for a "smart man"?  I am willing to bet that his parenting of his sons involved a lot of useless pleading and proposing alternatives, rather than a meeting with the Board of Education to the Seat of Understanding.

So put this failure as a parent in a role of leading an entire country.  And when one big entity of evil invades, terrorizes, murders and annihilates a much smaller country, do NOT stand up at  your podium and say, "We will hold you accountable.  You've got it coming." or any such nonsense.  Because your son is living proof that you have no bite behind your meaningless barking.  And that big entity of evil is going to continue slaughtering and marauding a much smaller country, and then another, and then another, etc., because you have no moral spine.  You have no moral authority and you have no class.  There is no reason for anyone to respect you.  If the reporters in your Press Conference won't treat you with respect, and the best you can do is mutter swear words under your breath - and accidentally into the microphone - do you expect any major world power to take you seriously?  Come on, now.  

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