Imagine

At first glance, it may seem odd that I have connected John Lennon and Kim Jong Un in a single thought.


So, just after a call from an old friend having more terrible troubles in every arena of her/his life, I went onto AOL to see what is what and hope for, silly me, happier news. And there, peering through binoculars at a table, surrounded by his retinue, was Kim Jong Un, friend of Dennis Rodman engaging in what did the article say in the Huffington Post, "bellicose rhetoric."  He is threatening air strikes against the U.S in response to the U.S. presence this week of B-52s with nuclear capability in his, and I do mean, his alone (in his own mind) air space. Now, I know, maybe about half the country blames the U.S. for any concern about this dictator developing nuclear force. Or pooh pooh's it. Surely, Kim wouldn't USE it to start a war? No one is that crazy?

Remember Hitler? He only wanted Poland. And the smart politicians of the day thought that would be enough. This is merely a preamble, for I know the objections and counter objections that the liberal and conservative (my inclination) would lob at one another and that is not precisely how John Lennon got into all this, although he'd be on the liberal side of this debate, probably more distinctly left f it.

No, the quick thought I had as I looked at the AOL snap was of the song "Imagine", by Mr. Lennon, whose musical abilities I admired enormously. I even like the song. I have found myself singing along in the car until I realize that I don't buy a word of it.

According to the song, which has become a kind of anthem to many, without religion, the world would be a much better place. We'd would not covet and war.

Correct me, if I am wrong, but Kim Jung Un presides over an atheistic country and society. He is absolute ruler and tyrant of that place and if he had nuclear weapons, he'd lob 'em freely. He would not have the kind of conscience that afflicted Truman and company when they used ours to ST\OP  a war, and being the only ones with that horrible weapon, DID NOT use it to take over the world (as we are so often pictured trying to do), but rather sought to help to rebuild the war destroyed places of the former enemy.

So, imagine, if you would if Hitler had the bomb before we did. Or imagine Kim if he did.

Yes, lots of things were done horribly in the name of religion, by humans who took the name of religion in vain, abominating its ideals. But take away the ideals and there is nothing, no structure of mind, or philosophy, to stop a single man or woman with power from TAKING it all, and damn the destruction.

Quick thoughts on a Good Friday. More to come perhaps, I hope, of a more hopeful nature.

No Exit, Also Known as Jury Duty

It is a white, windowless room, (you know maybe there were windows but I don't remember any natural light) with unframed posters, and prohibitive notices. With all the people slumping in chairs, it is hot and a bit ripe. If you don't show up, you will be found, and punished. When you do show up, you cannot leave without permission. It is not clear when permission might be given.

Welcome to jury duty.  

Then they show a video. About the glories of service in this government of the people, by the people and for the people. I have been a believer. But something about the reality does not accord with the beautiful principles flashed before us psychically and virtually physically imprisoned Winston Smiths.

We have been exhorted to arrive at 8:30 a.m.  We are greeted by whited out closed windows, nary a bureaucrat to be found.  Somewhat after nine a rumpled man appears. He is a judge of the court and he is "welcoming" us and thanking us for our "commitment". And then he is gone, replaced by lovely twenty somethings trying to make the best of their role as our keepers for the day, or the week, or the month, whatever is to be our lot.

And then we wait. And wait. The magazines are relatively new, from 2008. Well used by the looks of the ripped covers. Those who know me can imagine my physical tics as I am constrained to wait, not minutes, as we do at the movies, but hours. We are allowed to stray to the hallway, old washed out marble, several courtrooms locked and unused, the only remnant old masking tape left behind when the signs were taken away; old phone booths bereft of their seats and small counters; locked windows (there was one accidentally open or broken through which the air from the parking lots sifted in, with etched in graffiti.

I have been on two juries in the past. After thirty years being a lawyer myself and seeing truth battered mercilessly and cynically, I have come to the conclusion that the system is broken. I know it took me longer than most. I am annoyed at my colleagues who are on other floors engaged in endless settlement maneuvers that are holding us caged creatures in stasis. There needs to be a limit on the cyclical discussions. When a judge says "trial is at 9:30 tomorrow" that needs to be it, no more hemming and hawing, and "But, your Honor.  The game of looking for the sympathetic juror has to stop. If its about truth, let us see it all, nt only what the chess game provides. But it isn't about truth, yeah, that's right, that's what I said.

We have impressed so much crap around our Founding Fathers' principles that the principles are lost to us. There is an old poster of Judge Ito (remember him, OJ circa 1990 somthing?) telling me how wonderful it is for me to be here, cause once he was. I don't think Thomas Jefferson would agree, but then he has no credibility in this society being a dead European with flaws which of course no one in this modern day with all our special knowledge has.

Can I be fair? Yes. I have, and I would be again. I would listen to the rules that they foist upon me that make no sense at all, that were the stuff of my classroom at law school and 25 years of seeing how the prosecutor is held to a completely different standard than the defense such that the playing field is not only not level, but of Sisyphean proportions for the ones with the burden of proof.

I will always do my duty. It was how I was trained, from my mother, to my parochial education, to my Church whose leadership fails to follow what it preaches in the most grandiose of manners, to my old career, where politics began to govern more than the ethics purportedly purveyed, to follow the rules set before me.

But each tour of duty leading to those dank rooms has become more and more like torture. I had planned on telling the questioning counsel and the judge as much as they would allow of these things, on voir dire, and as to that they would likely not have allowed me a soapbox.

But wonder of wonders, at about three o'clock in the afternoon (I shall refrain from speculation about the fact that this is Holy Week, and Passover), after an earlier group of my brethren were sent to a courtroom, we were freed, at least for a year from our commitment. No doubt lawyers and judges and even defendants were on vacation so they really didn't need us. I am grateful . I really could use the rest of the week for prayer and meditation. For me, this time, there was an exit.

And the Keys of The Kingdom Pass again: To Francis I

I started to write about the election of the new Pope the day it happened. But then, personal life got in the way, tooth pain and root canal, and an infected finger, the result, sigh, of my having bitten my thumb nail to a nub such that it actually hurt to type. So, I get in on the commentary late in time.




I had hoped, also, to give focused, rapt attention to the moment of the white smoke and the presentation on the balcony of the new Vicar of Christ. Like others I did not expect it to happen quite so soon. But I had to be at my own church for Mass and was unable to wait for the bands and cardinals to gather and for the curtains to part. I was serving the 12:15 when a note was given to our pastor. Our pastor's prayer joined legions of those that had already wafted to the heavens on behalf of the man who will fill the "Shoes of the Fisherman", that of the first human custodian of the Divinely Inspired institution, the Catholic Church.

Oh, I know, folks will disagree that there is anything Divine in that mess that is being made by the Church's caretakers. But here is how I see it, Catholic that I am---anything that has survived for 2,000 years given the muck we creatures make of everything, has to be in the Hands of God Himself. Or, as someone famous once said, I believe because it is absurd to do so. When, if you have read here before, I pare it all down, the Center of our Church is Christ in the form of a consecrated piece of bread, fully present as if He stepped out of the tabernacle (there was a famous painting showing precisely that) to stand with us, to hold us up despite our most intense efforts to send ourselves to hell--which is merely separation for eternity from Him. Fire optional. Ok, I'm joking about the last part.

So, this man, and he is a man, Francis, has a heavy beam upon him, which he has accepted. So far, he impresses with his ease and simplicity. His selection of name has sent me back to looking at St. Francis and his secular order after much attention to St. Benedict and his.

St. Francis it was who advised his fraternity to preach, without words. It is the action of the man (or woman) who most models the faith, by acts of good or ill. Pope Francis has so far eschewed the most ostentatious of the regalia of his role which mostly hails from the Middle Ages. Don't get me wrong. I like a lot of that. We are tactile creatures. We need the pomp to get our attention. And to remind us of the need to hold the Lord in our mouths and hands in awe. But we don't need it to show off to one another or to others. We need the example of the newest fisher of men to evangelize about the Gift of Salvation in which we are asked to participate so that we can see God freely and fully.

It is going to take Grace for this new Pope to root out the narcissistic human greed that may permeate the Curia because we are weak vessels who need His constant watchfulness and herding.

For David Letterman it may all be quite the joke; for the 1.3 billion Catholics and maybe for humanity itself, it may well be a last chance to utter, "Yes, Lord, I come to do your Will."

Dallas Devotion

I am a big Dallas fan. TOS (The Original Series). And now, the revamped just as campy version. There is a little connection to personal history, besides. When I was in law school in the late 1970's, I was naturally studying a lot. I went into the living room one day, and flipped on the first episode of this new show. It was about this family, the Ewings, a Texas oil family loyal to one another when it came to the outside world, but conniving and mean to one another, when not mix and matching romantically. Oh, and engaged in this running feud with another family, headed by Cliff Barnes. The hook in large part was the one of the Ewing boys, Bobby was in love with the pretty sister of Cliff. Ok. Close enough to Shakespeare for me. I started to watch, and found the perfect law school reading break. Except that one night Patrick Duffy was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and saying that the show was 62 in the ratings. He was expecting another cancellation, just like his prior show, one I didn't much fancy, "The Man from Atlantis."  So I told my friends to watch it, including Len of Len Speaks, who, at first was skeptical and recalcitrant. In a year or two a bunch of us were at Casa Klatt, Sr.'s kvelling over the "Who Shot J.R." episode. Thirteen years later, in 1991, the series went off the air, except for a couple of ill produced specials better forgotten.

Flash forward some thirty years from that first viewing of mine. It never occurred to me there could be this dynamic reboot. I mean a grab you and keep you at the 42 inch screen (as opposed to the SONY Trinitron I first saw it on) reboot. The career I was beginning when I first saw the show is essentially concluded as I have moved onto other, shall we say, endeavors. Back at the ranch, Jock died in Season Three of the original show, Miss Ellie some years later, Bobby got remarried, J.R. is still divorced from Sue Ellen, who kicked the bottle and runs for governor. And the second generation of Ewings and Barnes cavorting just like the old days, but with more skin showing. Now, the Ewings have added methane as something to fight over. And poor Christopher, Bobby's offspring, just couldn't help doing what daddy did--heck, he married a Barnes, Rebecca, well, really Pamela Rebecca. But he didn't know it. You get the picture, I hope. Intrigue, with tongue firmly in cheek. And it worked.

But the man behind J.R., Larry Hagman, had old health problems come back as the series went into production, and by this second season, he died, with a story arc pretty much up in the air. The three old timers had managed to be the linchpins of the reboot, getting you interested in what happened to the young uns. And maybe willing to watch scenes where only the young folk were feuding and fussing.

Well, somehow, as in Hollywood it often happens, the legend of J.R. and the legendary way that the actor played him, kind of merged. Losing the actor meant having to lose the character, while keeping him firmly implanted in whatever future plans the writers had for the fictional family. And well, those of us who knew Mr. Hagman from his eccentric characterizations on TV and in real life, we felt we sort of knew him and it was a surprising loss for us, the fans (gulp, I have to admit it, I am a fan!).

Len Speaks is a member of the Paley center that has been preserving television programs old and new for future generations, and so, when he said that the cast and the main writer, Cynthia Cidre, would be on a panel for the show, the day before the new "Who Shot J.R." story line was to fully enfold on TNT, I was well, THERE.  And in another example of life imitating art, or art imitating life, I was in tears as the cast on screen, and sitting on the stage, said goodbye to Larry/J.R.

It just doesn't get better than when the now pretty aged Cliff Barnes breaks into the Omni Hotel in Dallas and tells the grieving family that he is delighted J.R. is dead as the proverbial door nail and caint, I mean CAINT, do no more harm to him and now he's going to take down the damn Ewings once and for all.

But there were also moments of the undercurrent of family loyalty, that J.R. really did still love Sue Ellen, and that every so often, J.R. could give uncle like advice to other family members he was bating and battling in business.

When we all stood to give Patrick and Linda standing ovations, we probably were also standing up for ourselves (also of a certain age) for getting through a whole bunch of years, each of us still squarely on our own feet, with lives we built behind us and dreams still for the future. Cue the Dallas theme, please! Da dah da dah da dah dah dah dah.