do you hear what I hear?

Dear Blog Reader;

I hope this blog finds you doing well. I am fine. In fact, I am grilling a 22 lbs turkey on a big green egg for my extended family. We don't get together often but when we do, we baste our arteries in comfort food. Yum.

If you are new to the blog and would like to read one of (in my opinion) my better blogs follow this link http://yousaidwhatroger.blogspot.com/2010/11/turkey-in-straw.html  to a blog that I wrote last November about a ritual that I still miss from our days on the farm.

An update from the assassin deer that have been stalking me: it appears to me that they have called on Mother Earth and joined forces. In looking at my riding journal today, I noticed that every day that I have ridden over the past two weeks, the wind has been blowing at over 20 miles an hour, and since I have lost some weight while riding my bike, I no longer have my big belly which I used to slice through the wind. On another wind related note, make sure you tie down your inflatable Christmas yard ornaments because if your reindeer on a Harley blows over into my yard, I'm keeping it. I'm just saying finders keepers; losers weepers.

Last week, I left singing the praises of the little restaurant in Terre Haute. I wasn't done though. I just quit. I couldn't get my words around an idea that occurred while writing last week's blog.

I loved going to that restaurant and seeing the lost cause and I wanted you to love it too.

And I think that is the problem. I was talking with Grace about her Ghanaian experiences. She was relating that she is in a curious place in her life surrounded by curious people. Sure Ghana is strange; trotros, open sewers, little internet, cows in the bike lane and an infrastructure that just makes life hard, but that isn't what we were talking about. She is in a place where people on every side are trying to "save" her. Her world is filled with the churched that make American evangelicals look like Unitarians, and is living with feminists that make Gloria Steinem look like June Cleaver.  Grace says that both sides are trying to save her. In her experience, the definition of salvation is that she learns the secret handshake and becomes just like them. Anything less is anathema to either side.

It is true.  Few people are comfortable enough with their faith to stand resolutely alone in it.  In the absence of proof and things seen, we substitute the number of lemmings that can be assembled and shuffled along to our leaping point as proof for our beliefs. If not readily converted, the unenlightened are kicked to the curb and expected to keep silent so as not to offend or provide counterpoint to the comfort that sheer numbers of like minded people provide.  

Currently, the cliff that the lemmings appear to be marching towards most resolutely is the us versus the 1%. It is a great strategy. This stance allows us the convictions of 99% of our like minded friends. The 1% can only be brought low by such numbers. How much of this 99% - 1% argument is frustration feeling that the system is out to get the 99% and how much is just plain old envy of those smart enough to be rewarded by producing the things important to the 99%?

I loved growing organic produce. I was good at it. In all honesty though, society will reward the CEO of Sara Lee for producing ready made pumpkin pie and factory farm grown and processed turkeys at a very low price. As a result, Marcel Smits earned $5.9 million last year; me not as much. I love watching football. I am very good at it. In all honesty though, society will reward Peyton Manning $26.4 million for only watching football for 12 months; me not as much.

C.S. Lewis wrote of this in an essay called Screwtape Proposes a Toast. See link:  http://screwtapeblogs.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/screwtape-proposes-a-toast/  He is so much smarter and coherent than I am. In it, he argues that our faith is so dependent on being "like folks" that we tear down those who shine in a way that tyrants once did in a way to insure the supremacy of their reign.

Solutions? None really. I think that I will just sit here quietly with my questions.

Take care.

Roger