MUSINGS the week of 25 July 2021
26 July 2021 Beware, be aware of our UNCONSCIOUS. How have we been influenced by groups, organizations, institutions, or communities? How do our views of life intersect with how we have been trained, mentored, educated, or directed? How do movies, music, art, or reading mold our minds? How does the time, place, culture, or context of our person subtly transform us? How do our emotions, will, or the threads of our interior person impact our motivations and decisions? We must not kid ourselves. The race car driver’s uniform has nothing on us. We wear the advertisements of one hundred influencers, we bear the marks of their influence in one hundred ways. Do not think that we stand unsullied by the marketing from the latest logo. If we want to be our own person, we must first answer “Who owns our person?” 
28 July 2021 UNTETHERED When I was a boy the game “tether ball” was popular on the playground. A tall metal pole was sunk into the ground rising six feet or more (depending on the age of the children expected at any given park). A rope was attached to the top of the pole, a volleyball size leather ball hung at its end. Two players would stand opposite each other. The point of the game was to hit the ball with one’s hand or fist in one direction, wrapping it tight around the pole. Keeping the ball from being returned (hit in the opposite direction) was the game’s strategy. Depending on the skill of the players, tetherball could be quite the display of physical exertion.
It strikes me now, as I look back on my childhood, the importance of the pole. Everyone who played the game took for granted the immovable object. The game could not be played without it. Were the pole to move, leaning to one side or the other, it would mean that the game would be patently unfair; one person gaining advantage over the other with the easier ability to hit the ball. Were the pole to wobble, stability in the game itself would be lost. All the fun of competition would be removed. A backyard game epitomizes to me the necessity of structure, of permanence.
Unthinkingly, we all depend on the constants of life. Everything from a stop-sign to a driver’s license, to state laws, to police officers stopping speeders is the dependability we have come to expect while driving a car. Permanence creates structure giving boundaries allowing for constants that permit us to live our lives with the unconscious knowledge of some law embedded in our lived lives. Of course, there are some behind the wheel who exercise their autonomy, racing their vehicles in ways that break the law.
But what if there was no law? Perhaps the better question is, “What if there was no permanent thing to which we could confidently assume provided stability in life?” Tetherball is a useless game without an immovable pole. Now, imagine living life untethered from a fixed moral grounding.
29 July 2021 MR. JONES An orange is the only color in the scene. On a train bound for the hinterlands of the Ukraine, Gareth Jones sits among starving peasants. Stirrings of hunger prompt Mr. Jones to reach in his satchel for an orange. Every eye in the train car focuses on that piece of fruit. Mr. Jones, at this point in his journey, is unaware of the starvation being imposed on Ukrainians by Joseph Stalin. One orange images a story Mr. Jones must tell. One courageous man. One cadre of self-serving Western journalists, covering the truth by silencing their pens. One megalomaniac dictator. One nation on the brink of starvation. One movie that will smash vapid idealistic visions of communism. If you want to know why history matters in the present, please watch Mr. Jones. [Streaming on Hulu]
30 July 2021 MARKERS Signposts along the highway point out directions, distance, the next gas station, not to mention the names of towns along the route. We would be lost on the road were we not following points on a map. GPS does the work for us, but it too depends on uploaded details on the web. Ads for groceries tell us what is on sale. News explains the latest events. Weather forecasts tell me to bring an umbrella. And students know if they can take a class from me, my name attached to an online listing. There are other kinds of markers, unseen, yet of absolute necessity.
We depend on RELATIONSHIPS which assume a personableness in the universe. If we are nothing but accidents and the earth an evolutionary ball spinning in space, there is no “personal” without a Personal God. We may not believe in this God but there is a dependence upon intimacy that we have long forgotten or taken for granted. It may not bother us, indeed, nothing will necessarily change in our world. But the words “person,” “personal,” or “personality” are rendered null and void in a purely naturalistic, materialistic universe.
We depend on BELONGING to a community, family, or group, the presumption of a world patterned after the Personal and also Triune God. The three Persons of the Trinity is reflected in the way the world works, its coherence, its synthesis. The farmer grows a crop which the trucker takes to market which is sold by the grocer which product finds its way into our pantry. We assume the organizational structure of a beehive, ocean currents, and the functioning systems of the human body without thought to how everything fits together. A universe devoid of a Triune Sustainer is bound not by order but by chaos.
We depend on COVENANTS, a result of universal commitments, born of this Personal, Triune, Eternal God. Covenants can be time-sensitive, creating conditions: if you do this for me, I will do this for you. But the unconditional covenant of a personal relationship, say, in marriage, comes out of eternity: no matter what, I will do this for you. Sure, covenants are broken all the time. Indeed, the conditional model, say, in written contracts, can be disputed creating a litigious society. But why make a commitment in the first place? What draws us toward a desire for longevity in loyalty? We mirror the eternal, our want of “always” and “forever.” These desires are not born of a God-less, Designer-less universe. Were it so, our calls for kindness, love, or sensitivity would only be the stuff of dreams.
I travel some of the same routes to employment or family on a regular basis. I have become accustomed to highway details along the way that I take for granted. The markers along my path have become second nature to me. I presume them to be true. And then I think of this life and the signposts along the human highway.
Mark writes daily on social media platforms including WarpandWoof.org and MarkEckel.com via Facebook.