Had I owned a car back in my late teen age years, I'd be a father today. I am not trying to brag or put on the air of a Don Juan; it's just a fact. Many friends and, by extension, most of the greater Philadelphia metropolitan region probably had their first child in like manner. Although I was willing, the means of production just wasn't there. And my life is very different today because of it. (Sometimes I forget that there were a lot of normal kids who lived in our neighborhood and who didn't engage so readily in all the behaviors that my friends and I did. They came over the park, shot some hoops, went home, did their homework and later went to Penn State. I sincerely salute these guys & girls: They just weren't the crowd that I hung around with.)
When I grew up there were still drive-in theaters. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time with a carload of guys and a few cases of beer (I do not recommend this to anyone who actually wanted to watch the movie - me). Our crowd had an unwritten code that if everyone didn't want to watch the movie, then no one got to watch it. Pop open another beer and fuggetaboudit. I saw the movie Psycho for the first time at the drive-in, too. It was definitely not a first date movie, unless what you were trying to conceive was a life-long case of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for your date. The drive-in was a place for "dating", necking, underage drinking or whatever. In Baltimore Catechism terms it was an occasion of sin; however it wasn't a particularly special occasion unless you had access to a vehicle and an unsuspecting girlfriend, which I mentioned earlier, I had neither. Jonathan Winters did a hilarious routine that summed up the hormone-enthralled guy's point of view called, Necking In a '38 Ford. If you want to laugh hard and see one guy's torrid seduction fantasy come to ashes, then check it out. So sometimes, even with the worst of intentions, you could be saved from your most lurid preoccupations.
I don't know what teenagers did before prosperity hit the U.S. and kids could afford to buy cars. Did they borrow their father's Connestoga wagon, tractor or Brougham deVille (not the Cadillac model) and go somewhere where they would be out of sight, sound and mind? What about the horses? Could you trust them? These are things that a guy must consider while hatching (no pun intended) his elaborate plan.
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| Approx. 19. Propelled by Rubber Heels |
No Brougham - No Baby: I am single and have remained so for my entire adult life. (This is not entirely true but would require another post to explain.) It made my life different: I wasn't raising a family, nor feeling extremely guilty about not supporting one. I was a kid I realize now: immature, self-centered and just wanting to have fun - read irresponsible. (Although Rosanne's husband, Dan, quipped on the episode, where they thought there might be another little one on the way: "Rosie, we're not Yuppies. We had our kids when you are supposed to: When you're young and stupid."). In that aspect, I think I was like a lot of my friends; but even when I could afford my first car at 21, I chose a Volkswagen Beetle. So I think the urgency to spawn had already cooled by the time I was able to make my first car payment. I was more interested in a political statement, I guess, then any other use for the car. The VW was "the" vehicle of the 60's generation and its hipness promised fun and adventure along the way.
Years later, because I did not have these responsibilities, I was free to explore other interests that I had missed for various reasons while younger. I traveled, went back to college and then to University. I wrote a little poetry and literature and read or studied a lot of it. I went back to church, got drafted into the choir, learned I had a voice, and learned to sing all kinds of music - from Bach to Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Many wondrous things happened along the way, and I've always had the urge and still do, to pass along my "experience, strength and hope" to anyone who might benefit or be inspired by it. My family were big supporters of my travels and pursuit of education, even at a time when my mother was ailing from Alzheimer's disease, and we were all sharing the burden of her care.
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Ireland 1983: On the Road to
Find Out (Still on Rubber Heels) |
In my travels, I started to feel like I was the eyes and ears of those friends who could not make it, or those I had known growing up who had passed, prematurely, and who would never see these places. At one point I was traveling so much that I was embarrassed to tell a friend that I had an opportunity to travel to India over the Christmas holidays. He sensed my reticence and said, "No Joe, don't think of it that way: Whenever you travel, you always bring so much back with you." He was right. So in that sense, I believe, I am still in a generative mode; however the creation that I am involved with originates in the heart or imagination and not in the loins.
I remember a friend from my youth, known more for the trouble he got into than his insights into character, who once asked if I had ever thought about becoming a minister. I was probably around 16 at the time, and I had considered it and would for years to follow, but I didn't take that road. I was partly influenced by the words of a Brother I got to know, who once said, "We don't need another Brother, we need empowered Lay people who live out their faith". I always thought that was an option that had not been fully realized. It seemed that if you were "religious", then you should join the Religious team and not clutter up the neat categories of lay and religious that have been laid out for 2000 years. So in a sense you were pigeon-holed by your genuine interest in service into a safe, well defined category that everyone could live with. When asked over the years if I was clergy, I would simply reply: No, I'm a civilian.
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| Holy Heels! Batman |
I discovered that there is a third way and that is to be "yeast in the dough", i.e. to be a somewhat anonymous presence that is "hidden" in the lump of ordinary life. I have heard it put:
to be a friend among friends, a worker among workers, to be a low-profile Christian who simply tries to be an apostle to the every day. You know in Matthew 25, where Jesus tells the parable of the Final Judgement, the King says:
‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ The Righteous then ask with some incredulity, "(Er,) When did we do that for you?" And the King responds that whenever you did it for the least of these (the poor), you did it for me.
My point is that the Righteous were probably so busy doing the right thing that they weren't thinking about whether they even were the "Righteous" and being nominated for an eternal reward of some kind. They were probably too busy doing the right thing to be concerned with keeping score as many religious (and others) do. Is it possible to be so caught up with the work, that even you become unawares, i.e. anonymous, even to yourself? I think so.
Some Christians of various traditions think this a cop out: If you believe in Jesus then you should be shouting from the street corners, from atop the hills of Chestnut, Walnut or Spruce (Chestnut Hill, Walnut Hill and Spruce Hill, get it? Sorry!), wearing this new found certitude on your sleeve - like a shiny Rolex - for all to see (and admire?) It's not me. If that approach worked I'm sure that there would be crowds of converts on many street corners throughout the city. We'd have to hold Sunday services in the local sports stadiums, and even then have to turn hundreds, possibly thousands, away each week. Instead what I see is the legacy of an older time where there was a proliferation of traditional churches, all getting a competitive foothold in the neighborhood and the imaginations of those who lived nearby (although this has cooled dramatically).
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Barefootin' It through Ireland (1983 )
I been barefootin'
ever since I was three. We're barefootin' |
In my neck of the 'hood there are also many store-front start ups, burning with zeal and igniting like a brush fire even more and different store front churches (not a franchise), who are burning with zeal and producing even more and varied store front churches. Little unity, lotta zeal. (I'm not questioning the sincerity of the faith. I'm just saying how it looks to an outsider.) And we want to invite others to this profligate fragmentation and mindless reproduction of the one and only truth? Thanks but no thanks.
As an old advertising maxim puts it: the less something is worth, the more you have to push it. Conversely the more something is worth, the less you have to push or sell it: It sells itself. This idea is expressed in one of my groups as having a "policy of Attraction rather than Promotion". What faith! To believe that "the proof of the pudding is actually in the eating", and not in the selling or yelling about how good it tastes or whether "4 out of 5 doctors" recommend feeding it to your kids. Our own human experience of what tastes good versus what is ca-ca has been so diminished for so long that we have forfeited our sacred responsibility in favor of the constant dictates of our mass consumer culture - even our religions!
