What's Not Trending?

People being mean to each other . . .
Crabby-patty-pants – ever . . .
Listening in to anyone’s conversation uninvited being cool – ever – are you listening NSA?  Not Cool!  E-v-e-r
Socks and sandals – Jesus was and is the king of cool and you don’t see him with socks, do you?  No.  You do not.
My hair today.  You just have to be here.
Sending weapons to people we do not know to kill people they do not know.
Cake.  Everyone loves pie way more than cake.  At least everyone I listen to.  That’s everyone, right?  Right?
Sunshine.  You heard me.  The sunshine is not trending just now – it’s
rain and floods and gardens and crops crying for just a little sun
. . . please?
Peace – she’s just not that into you.  Get over it, humans.  After all, where were you when she called
crying in the night?  Where were you when she needed you to stand up for her?  Yeah – busy
doing other things, like hanging out with that bad boy you call fighting – well, your gal
Peace has moved on.  Like I said, she’s just not that into you – she was.
But that was then.  And where were you?

My Top Ten Top Ten Lists I Never Want to Know

1. 10 Best Eminem Songs - still think that last year’s Superbowl ad Imported from Detroit was the best ever and loved Eminem in it, but beyond that, I’ve got no brain cells to give to his cause
2. 10 Worst FB conversations - I can only imagine - sigh.
3. 10 Top Paid NFL Coaches of 2012 - I just don’t care to know and I suspect the true top 10 best coaches are largely unknown to the internet, working away with local T-ball, soccer and other small-fry endeavors
4. Top 10 The-World-Will-End-On Lists - they haven’t been right yet, so why should I listen?  Besides, that's the kind of event that (a) I should be ready for all the time, as my world may end at any time, well ahead of your schedule; and (b) I'd just as soon news like that be a surprise
5. Top Ten Golf Players to Watch - I can’t stay awake that long - sorry
6. Top Ten Albums of 2012 - just reminds me how old I am, as I undoubtedly will not have heard of any of them
7. Top Ten Games of 2012 - referring, no doubt, to computer games - in addition to the rationale in #6, just makes me sad to think on how much time we waste that could be dedicated to so much more important work and I'm still reeling from my grandson teaching me to play 'Shark', where the object is to have the shark eat as many swimmers, a la Jaws, as possible, with the attendant blood and gore graphics.  He is 5.
8. Top Ten American Idols - I’m just not into any idols, American or otherwise
9. Top Ten News Stories of 2012 - they will undoubtedly be bad news stories - I lived through them at the time and have no need to revisit all the world’s bad news.  Not a Pollyanna, but really, isn’t it a bit like slowing down to look at a car wreck?  I can be glad I’m alive for many more reasons than that you’re not.
10. Top Ten Rich Celebrities of the World - not begrudging, but really, is that an aspirational goal of which to be proud?  And why would I care?  It’s not likely I’m going to marry one of them.

NOTE:  All of the above with the exception (to my knowledge) of #4, may be found handily on line should you care to know them.

The Hunger Games: Allow A Minister Who Can’t Help Herself to Kvetch

Some months ago, as a fan of the television series Grey’s Anatomy, I actually spent about half of a day trying (without success) to locate a way to communicate a programming idea to the producers.

The idea?  Simply to include a hospital chaplain as a (even if seldom) recurring character.

Most, if not all, hospitals of comparable size in the United States, actually have paid chaplains on staff.  The absence of such a character is, at least to me, a jarring absence, particularly when the drama engages matters of a spiritual nature.

Not even having dialogue that references the chaplain who just left is to literally erase such a figure and such a dimension from the real-time plane of existence for the characters.

It is an absence not unique to Grey’s Anatomy.

Having finished The Hunger Games trilogy of books (there are definite advantages to having an extended time off work – catching up on light reading is one of them), I find the same absence, the same lack.

In a tale of the upheaval of an entire society wrenched by violence and war, religion is notable for its absence.  Things spiritual simply aren’t there.  The rituals are the ceremonies of the soldier.  Gatherings are the collective of oppression.  Friendship is the cement, if any there be, of human relationships.

I struggle to name what troubles me.  After all, Susan Collins, the author of The Hunger Games books, the writers and producers of Grey’s Anatomy, as well as the myriad of writers of fiction for stage, screen and the printed page, are free to write whatever narrative strikes their fancy.  And I am free to view or read or not, as I choose.

But the vacuum, the dearth, of things spiritual in our fiction, argues for a problem that shakes me down to my soul: it isn’t that such things aren’t true or valuable; rather, the absence seems to suggest that in our common sphere of imagination, such things are simply irrelevant.

And that does more than make me sad; it makes me frightened – not wrath of God frightened – more that-which-has-no-name frightened – the fear that we are losing something so dear without even knowing it – the ability to imagine that even in the midst of our immediate concerns, something larger than ourselves looms ever present, calling out for our attention, calling out for us to be more than we are, better than we are.

It is the feeling that we who have so much are settling for so much less.


_________________
No doubt, a better theologian than I is already hard at work on the next Gospel According To . . . tome, celebrating the deep spiritual meanings to be found in The Hunger Games trilogy.  To that author, I hope my ignorance is forgiven.  And please know that I did not overlook the benedictory language about odds, but allow me to call to mind Mark Twain’s much more eloquent and True (the capital ‘T’ is intentional) The War Prayer for finding spiritual challenge to the collective wisdom of the day when it comes to war and violence and the ‘odds’ of winning and losing in what has always been a fixed game.

MLK: The Quintessential Cultural Icon of our Age

The term cultural icon has been defined as “figures who have changed our cultural landscape throughout the years”. Open Culture  It seems like a good definition to me.

Searching the web to see who might be considered the cultural icons of 2011, I stumbled upon somebody’s list for the last 50 years:

10. Paul Newman
9. Princess Diana
8. The Beatles
7. Oprah Winfrey
6. Muhammad Ali
5. Michael Jackson
4. Marilyn Monroe
3. Frank Sinatra
2. Madonna
1. Elvis

No politicians. . . no religious figures . . . no one save Princess Di from outside the United States . . .  Eight of the 10 are entertainers, one a sports figure and one a paparazzi-drawing public figure.

To be fair, their list was of ‘pop’ cultural icons.  And the Lord knows, with this list, I’d have to bend over backwards to be fair.  The comments were even worse than the list, as many made the case to move Michael Jackson to the top.

Pop (short for 'popular') or not, I want to know . . . where is Che?  And if we’re talkin’ t-shirts here, how about Dylan, Baez, Hendrix & Morrison?  Buddy Holly for that matter?  JFK?  Jackie O?  Bollywood?  Andy Warhol?  Liz Taylor?  Elton John?  Gandhi?  George Carlin?  David Bowie?  Noam Chomski?  Paolo Coelho?  Leonard Cohen?  Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert?  And if we stretch just a bit further than the 50 year limit, how about Salvadore Dali and Ann Frank?

Dr. King featured on postage stamp of Kyrgyzstan

How about a man so famous all that’s needed are his initials to identify him?  How about MLK, for God’ sake?

Even a quick Google search reveals something like 2.7 million hits for t-shirt and other images featuring Dr. King . . . Google I have a dream . . . and you get more than 85 million hits . . .

When we recall the words to the songs of the musicians on the above list, we may remember where we were . . . but when we recall the words to Dr. King’s I have a dream speech, we remember where a nation was.

Dr. King was many things: preacher . . . prophet . . . Nobel laureate . . . unfaithful husband . . . visionary . . . lightening rod . . . agent of reconciliation or polarization or perhaps both . . . father . . . friend . . . saint and sinner . . . child of God . . . and, I submit, the quintessential cultural icon of our age.