Lingering the Summer Months

Hello everyone - it has been a while, hasn't it?   So far, it has been a busy summer, and with work and other activities I haven't had the time to write, although that has changed.  I want to first catch everyone up with the summer, and then I have a few random thoughts to share.

Our summer - which, based on 27 years in Florida prior to moving back home! - started in May with a graduation and a trip to the emergency room for me.  On May 6th, I ended up with a nasty series of profuse nosebleeds that necessitated a couple of visits, first to an outpatient clinic and then to the hospital emergency room the same day.  Besides having a "RhinoRocket" (a small thing that resembles a tampon) shot up my nose to control the bleeding (which did not work), I also had to have a cauterization in my nasal cavity to stop the bloodflow.  If you have never had one of those done, here is essentially what it is - a doctor essentially takes a soldering iron consisting of heated silver nitrate and applies it to the lesion to cauterize the blood vessel; in essence, my nose was welded.  It is not an experience I would recommend, as it was extremely unpleasant, but it did what it was supposed to do and I stopped bleeding, thanks be to God.  And, thankfully, no nosebleeds since, although that particular episode of nosebleeds cost me about $2,000 in medical expenses.  All of this, naturally, happening just days before my Master's graduation in Steubenville - fun way to start a week.  But, the graduation went well, and I am very happy to have accomplished finishing my graduate degree.

This summer has proven one thing - our family has become acquainted with the local hospital for sure!  A month or so after my visit, my mother was hospitalized for both an afib attack and double pneumonia.  That episode happened one morning last month, when we were getting ready for work and had to call an ambulance for Mom to go to the hospital.  Luckily, she recovered too, and even now is getting on my nerves as I write this - due to the fact she smokes a lot and also eats crap, she needs to learn to maybe make some lifestyle changes if she wants to live to see 75. 

But, it was not over there - Barb ended up in the hospital this past weekend.  On Saturday, she was doing some things around the house, and over-exerted herself.  This led to her blacking-out while sitting on a kitchen chair, and then pitching face-forward to the floor.  Other than some damage to her ulnar nerves in both arms that will heal within time, she is doing better.  Meritus Hospital has definitely made a thorough acquaintance of the Thrower household to be sure. 

Aside from medical emergencies, I am also now a Knight of Columbus officially - I received my 2nd Degree a couple of weeks ago, and it is nice to be part of such a wonderful organization that is faithful to Catholic teaching as well as committed to traditional morality.  I hope to be part of the Knights for many years to come.   Oh yes - we also have two adorable bunnies now too - Trixie and Bella.  Trixie is a black Mini-Rex bunny, and Bella a fluffy white Lionhead.  They are both adorable, although Trixie is a bit mischievious and tends to escape, but that adds to her cute personality.  Here are some pictures of them:

Bella

Trixie

Other than a trip to Smoke Hole Caverns (which will be inspiring a nice article for my Sacramental Present Truths blog in a couple of weeks), that has essentially been our summer.  Now that I have updated all of our summertime activities to this point, I want to spend some time reflecting on some thoughts I have been pondering, as there has been a lot on my mind that I need to talk about.

As I am doing some reorganization of my personal memorabilia, I am also printing out and cataloging obituaries of many people we knew from years ago.   As I do this, I am getting a realization of the fact I am not young myself anymore - being a year and a half shy of a half-century, it makes one think about certain things.  I am in shock at realizing just how many people I knew from years ago are now gone onto their eternal rewards, and to give you an idea of that scale, let's look at the town where I spent a lot of my childhood - Kirby, WV.   About 60% or better of the neighbors we had there years ago are now passed on, and that is sobering when you think about it.  I just got word Sunday of another one who had passed.   That, compounded with the medical issues Barbara and I both experienced over the past couple of months, really makes one ask some important questions.  In my research, I often look to a former professor of mine by the name of Dr. Kenneth J. Archer and a discussion he had in one of his books about what are called "Central Narrative Convictions."  Archer is not one of my favorite people - he is actually very theologically liberal, somewhat arrogant as a person, and ambivalent to certain long-held convictions even in his own religious tradition.  But, on this, I have to appreciate what he says, as his analysis of CNC's is actually quite insightful.  Basing his premise on the suggestions of J. Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh, Archer notes that CNC's address the following questions and attempt to answer them in the worldview of the person holding them, and those questions are as follows:

1.  Where are we?
2.  Who are we?
3.  What's wrong?
4.  What's the remedy?

The attempt to find meaningful answers to these types of questions is what produces the "story" of a community or even of an individual (Kenneth J. Archer, The Gospel Revisited {Eugene, OR:  Pickwick Publications, 2011} p. 39).  Taking this into the realm of the philosophical, those aspects of the "story" that are shared with a wider group are known as having communicability or universality, whereas the individual expressions of the same are unique to the person and have incommunicability.  Archer's analysis of the CNC's is a pretty basic and workable outline, but a more detailed one is proposed by eminent Appalachian religious scholar Dr. Loyal Jones in his book Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands (Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1999).  On page 51 of that text, Dr. Jones seems to rephrase the questions as he presents them this way:

1.   How did we and all around us come to be?
2.   Is there a God who created us and everything?
3.   If so, what is His nature?
4.   Why did He make us as we are, and what is His purpose for our lives?
5.   Is there something beyond this life, and if so, what is it like?
6.   How is God related to us and all around us in this day and time?

Archer's four and Jones's six questions deal with the same issue - questions in life essentially.  CNC's are formed when those questions are given answers based on a worldview (philosophy + faith working together).  As Christians, we have a worldview rooted in Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, and it is also summarized in the way we as Catholic Christians especially approach Scripture, noted as the "Four-Fold Hermeneutic:"

1.  Literal reading (what it is)
2.  Allegorical meaning (what we believe about it)
3.  Moral meaning (what it calls us to do)
4.  Anagogical meaning (hope in the future - where are we going?)

In essence then, the Four-Fold Hermeneutic attempts to answer these questions based on God's revelation of Himself, and thus it forms the CNC's that make up the Christian worldview (or should, anyway!).  I notice as we get older though these questions tend to be pondered on a little more frequently - those of you my age or older will affirm that.  A trip to the doctor, a major life change - those events tend to provoke pondering these things.  Or, even when you feel that ache in your back or notice that you have to strain to see a stop sign on the way to the store.  More morbidly, it can evoke thoughts when you find yourself checking obituaries online every week (as I do) to see if anyone you know has died.  Add to that a gander in the mirror - you see the saggy belly, grey hair, and baggy eyes looking back at you in the mirror, and you start asking yourself, "who on earth is that old geezer in the mirror??"  It does tend to provoke these questions, and in some cases one may be compelled to rethink long-held CNC's too.  The truth of the CNC's that define a community or an individual are unchanging - we don't seem to think so because we are too busy focusing on what we see in front of us too often instead of seeing the bigger picture.  CNC's, therefore, are good things - they represent continuity, tradition, and security.  When something challenges them, it tends to make us defensive, and with good reason - it threatens the very identity of who we are.  Let's take that to today's world.

I have noted in many places over the years how iconoclastic the postmodern culture has gotten.  Never have I seen such an effort on the part of some to radically redefine even some very basic concepts - a boy wants to be called a girl, marriage is being redefined as joining oneself to anything that we "love" (the "marriage" of a woman to an amusement park Ferris wheel, for instance, is a case in point), and a White girl thinks she is Black (Rachel Dolezal) while a fat, middle-aged man decides he is going to be a six-year-old Filipino girl.  This iconoclasm is an assault on long-held convictions that have kept human nature and society in check for centuries, and by removing boundaries from fundamental things that should be obvious, we open the door to the erosion and decay of civilization as we know it.  I know this will not endear me well to some out there (oh well - can't please everyone!) and it definitely doesn't sound "politically-correct" (again, ask me if I care!), but fact is fact - take away boundaries, and the stampede will run over everything.  As we get older, many of us notice this deterioration, and therefore we have to find ways to cope with the culture outside our front door while preserving those things we know should be preserved.  For instance, when "Star Trek" all of a sudden goes "gay" and promotes agendas instead of entertaining, I would prefer to watch old re-runs of Hogan's Heroes and The Carol Burnett Show on an alternative channel.  When overpaid, spoiled athletes who make more in one week than many of us see in a lifetime decide to make political statements at football games by "taking a knee" and disrespecting our flag and those who died to defend it, then I feel more at ease playing Yahtzee with Barbara and my mother on a Sunday afternoon.  In other words, it is the CNC's that give us motivation with how to cope with the negative postmodernism out there, and it may be what keeps many people sane in the midst of insanity in the world.  So, instead of seeing the weekly obituaries as a death sentence for yourself, remember those people who died that you knew from years ago, and you will honor them and immortalize them with your memories of them.  Any rate, that is enough soapboxing for now.

My post here sounds more like something for Sacramental Present Truths than it does here, but in this case it is my own convictions as they relate to life experience, and therefore why I share it here.  I hope everyone who reads this - especially those in my age bracket - will maybe take away some encouragement and inspiration.   Any rate, so long until next visit.