Reflection on Family

 I am wanting to begin to talk about a proverbial elephant in the room which has been there for some time, and there are many complexities and levels to it that make it somewhat challenging to talk about.  The issue of course is family, specifically my family.  The idea here is not to be accusative toward anyone or to even disparage any members of my own family, but I want to just address a few things that need to be clarified.  

To begin with, a few points need to be established.  First, criticism of family attitudes and family members by no means indicates hatred or rejection, but at times they may become serious enough to merit discussion.  Second, no one is perfect, and as we live in a fallen world, mistakes happen and you try to deal with them and move on.  Third, the present-day society we live in is so atomized that often close family ties we had in the past no longer exist, and with many older members dying off, it means that some younger family members don't know each other as well as they should.  That is tragic also.  Finally, the passing of older family members may be a mixed blessing.  On one hand, their demise means a connection to the legacy is gone now, and it also may indicate that some valuable family stories may be lost for eternity if they are not recorded in some fashion.  On the other hand though, some older generations tended to harbor some bad things that maybe their descendants don't reflect or share, and perhaps a lot of the tension and division in many families may be due to the actions of those older members.  Given that is the case, the smart thing is to to do the old "digest the meat and spit out the gristle" approach to their legacies.  I am going to try to navigate this with the delicacy of a surgeon's scalpel, but for some of my relatives who read this, it may not be pleasant, yet it needs to be said. 

I feel that the last point - the legacies of deceased older family members - needs to be addressed first.  Over the years in our own family (especially on my mother's side), there has been a drifting apart in our relationships.  At the present time for instance, where I live in Baltimore I perhaps may have a dozen to 20 blood relatives within 15 miles of where I am sitting at home right now, but I neither hear nor see anything of any of them.  Some of these are cousins I haven't even seen since I was a kid myself - almost 50 years! - yet they are within a few miles of me.  Then, with a few of them, when I do actually talk to them on social media or something, they make some nasty jokes and inappropriate chatter that I cannot really understand - some of these people haven't seen me in 50 years, yet they make comments like that?  I have come to the conclusion that limited communication with some of those people may be in my best interest, because they have made it clear that they don't really value me as a family member, and do not have a desire to do so.  Therefore, in those cases it is better to just get on with my own life and let them get on with theirs.  If they want to visit or talk, I conclude, they know where I am.  

One other thing my mother's family has been particularly problematic with is for some reason they like to lay blame for whatever beef they had with my mother on my shoulders.  In all honesty, I have little to do with it, and whatever issues they had with Mom or anyone else they should have addressed with her instead of projecting it on me.  One thing they always love to do as a matter of fact is quite egregious to me, and it's taking a lot to even talk about it here.  In her younger years, Mom liked to drink, and she used to do so quite frequently.  Unfortunately, that gave her a reputation with some in the family.  However, that was 40 years ago, and they failed to understand what Mom was like in her later years.  Mom was by no means perfect, but I knew her better than a lot of her critics among family.  Beginning about 40 years ago, Mom began to get focus in her life as she took on a role as a live-in caregiver for elderly folks, and not only did she find it rewarding but she also gained a great degree of personal growth from it.  And, in all honesty, the families of the people she cared for ended up being more like family to me personally than my blood relatives did - I am still on good terms with many of them today, and I have a lot of fond memories of them.  In the years that followed, Mom ended up working very successfully as a CNA once she moved to Florida, and even after she retired in her early 60s, she continued to keep a more disciplined life than she used to.  Even as her health declined, I was there 3 years ago before she passed and witnessed her coming to terms with things in her life and making peace for herself, and in all honesty I was quite proud of her for doing so.  The last 10 years or so of her life, as a matter of fact, were spent staying with me, and I took care of her when no one else would.  During that ten years, Mom and I talked a lot about many things, and I have fond memories of sitting over coffee and just talking with her - there are days now I miss those moments.  When Mom finally succumbed to heart disease in March 2022, she was I believe in a good place, and the closure I got from that was that I was there when no one else was for her.  I got a lot of flak from other judgmental relatives for that over the years, but you know something, I don't regret a thing.  Everyone needs someone with them, and Mom had me and I was happy to be there for her.  She was able to leave this life with a good home, and I made sure she was put to rest in the way she would have wanted.  And, any imperfections she had, in my opinion, died with her.  I had some rather mean-spirited relatives of hers saying stupid things when she passed, including those stupid family rumors that she drank herself to death, etc.  Many of these people did not know her, and they had no right to really say anything.  But, their reckoning is coming too one day, and God help them when it does. 

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for other relatives.  I had another relative pass away earlier last year, and a distant cousin who I never met in person acted very judgmental about it.  This particular relative is into family history, and they contacted me years ago based on that.  However, over the years they have also become sort of critical and condescending when I interact with them on social media, and despite never even meeting me in person, this individual all of a sudden has an opinion about me.  Having practiced as a paralegal as well as having a Ph.D. now, both of those have taught me a couple of things about how information is communicated.  For one, research and due diligence needs to be exercised before coming to any conclusion.  A good paralegal for instance who knows how to research the facts of a case can make or break an attorney's presentation of the case.  Also, from my doctoral education I learned that primary sources are key to establishing sound theses, and without the primary source material one cannot exercise good scholarship. Some family members would do well to exercise similar techniques when they open their mouths to repeat gossip and hearsay. I love how some relatives - these being 4th and 5th cousins - like making snap judgments about me and others without knowing a damn thing about anything.  The relative in question was noted in life for being a pathological liar, and they had this distant cousin fooled for many years with their interpretation of things, and the distant cousin was frankly too lazy to do due diligence and get the whole story.  To this day, that same cousin seems to be in judgment of me, and as far as I am concerned, let them - the truth will always prevail anyway, and in time the cousin will see how stupid they really were when it hits them full-on like an oncoming freight train.  It may not even happen in my lifetime or theirs, but at some point provided the Second Coming doesn't happen soon someone will uncover the truth about things.  That is a consolation that helps me to navigate these complex cloverleafs of family gossip and hearsay. 

That pretty much summarizes the issue as far as that is concerned, and again, much of this rests more with my mother's side of the family than my dad's side.  Although over the years Dad and I didn't have the greatest relationship, his family has nonetheless been quite loving and good to me, and they do not have as much of the crazy family drama and atomization that my mom's folks do. This doesn't mean they are perfect or anything, but overall my experiences with them have been good.  In recent years I have gotten very close to a number of family on Dad's side, and it has been really a blessing to finally get to know them.  Ironically, due to the fact that Mom had custody of me when I was a kid, I never got to know then many of my relatives on Dad's side like I wanted to as I never was around them as much.  Yet, throughout much of my childhood I was around many of my cousins, aunts, and uncles on my mother's side, and now they are the ones who are atomized more.  As I grow older myself though, I am starting to realize something, and that is what I wanted to talk about now.

My family dynamic has changed in recent years in some unusual ways.  For instance, despite Barbara and I being divorced, she is more like family to me still than many of my own blood relatives.  Also, in due time I may have the chance to sort of refine my own legacy and write a new chapter, as there is something that I will share at some point that may make that possible.  There have been instances in life where a family legacy is preserved not by continuing old chapters, but by starting new ones.  It may mean the family dynamic changes, and that is OK.  Not everything can be as it was, and in some cases it is better to let some things die and be buried.  A new chapter, I feel, is now being written in my own life personally, and it is just in the opening paragraphs at this point.  Letting God direct it as it unfolds is integral, and in time I will share a few things which are part of that new chapter as right now is not the time to do so.

Thank you for allowing me to share today, and I will be talking more soon. 

The Land Speaks

 In recent weeks, I have been watching these videos on YouTube about these nasty creatures called HOA Karens.  The word "Karen" is used to describe a nasty, opinionated, entitled upper-class White woman who insults and belittles others.  She is that person who yells for the manager over a penny's difference in a pack of gum, the woman who also sends things back at a restaurant, and when you put a person like this in leadership, they tend to become totalitarian tyrants.  The HOA culture is like a fetid sewer which richly cultivates this type of person, much like the garbage on a Baltimore street encourages large rats.  These stories on YouTube, which may or may not be based on real events, personify the entitled, evil "Karens" who threaten old ladies for the wrong color irises, veterans for flying American flags, and violate the personhood of disabled people as "inferior."  Some of these stories, in all honestly, make me want to string these evil demons in female skin up and flog them until all the blood drains from their pathetic bodies, and they are honestly addictive to watch.  However, one of these stories got my attention and I wanted to reflect on it because something about that particular story resonated.  Let me first give a summary of the story, and then I will share my thoughts on it.

In the story, a man has a farm with a fertile corn field, and a nearby HOA "Karen" was trying to assert authority she legally didn't have over the man's farm, which had been part of his family for several generations. The farmer was resolute in standing his ground, and then one of Karen's goons used a stolen hoe and killed the man's dog, which got a reaction - the farmer broke the man's nose.  After burying the dog in the cornfield, the "Karen" came back trying to impose her will she didn't technically have, and the guy got his justice.  She entered the cornfield, and he set fire to it and it did its damage.  Then, when she came out and tried to still assert herself, she fell on some strategically-placed stakes soaked in honey, and in addition to maiming her legs, she found herself in the middle of a volatile fire ant nest, and the ants were all over her.  When she tried to pitifully beg for mercy, he stepped on her hand, and that did it.  He left her there wallowing, and somehow she made it to a hospital.  By that time she had also lost her marbles, as the impact of the experience caused her to have a mental collapse she never recovered from.  Her goon, the one who killed the dog, came back another night and was going to settle the score, but he ended up disappearing into the field as well.  In time, Karen was seen wandering around without shoes and in a hospital gown, and she would come to the cornfield and have conversations with invisible entities who were not even there - the farmer let her do that and never interfered until eventually she faded away completely.  At the time of the corn harvest, the man's field ended up producing abundantly, and despite the fact certain people attempted to destroy the field, it ended up being a bountiful harvest, and the message the farmer had was simple - the land doesn't forget. There is a lot packed into this, so let's talk about it.

One of the first things to understand is that this should not be read as a form of pantheism or anything - no one is worshipping the earth or anything.  Pantheism is a demonic belief that all is God and God is all, and God is viewed as the same as creation.  That idea is a part of both animistic paganism as well as Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.  It was also one basis for the occultic worldview of the Nazis, and that view was traced with them to the volkisch occultism of people like Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels.  In that context, it also became a basis of racism.  The aforementioned story has nothing to do with any of that, but it does acknowledge however that there is a connection between someone and their roots, and we Appalachians call that "sense of place."  So, is there a Christian foundation to any of this?  Let's discuss that for a moment.

One important thing about the Thomistic theological/philosophical tradition is that it emphasizes two things.  First, the role of supernatural grace and what it does.  Secondly, there is a theology of God's creation of the earth and mankind which is a foundational basis for my own Biblical Creationist theological position as well as my scientific acceptance of Intelligent Design.  Essentially, this would be called the "Two Books" idea of God's creation - God authored two "books," one being a written Revelation contained in Scripture (or rhema) and the second being Nature itself.  The way these two things relate to each other is integral to a Christocentric understanding of faith - Revelation perfects Nature, and Nature confirms and authenticates the truth of Revelation.  It is also part of the whole idea of the Laws of Sufficient Causality and of Noncontradiction - to summarize those, the first states that everything has an ultimate source, while the second says that something cannot be and not be at the same time.  Based on that, we conclude rightly that everything is created by God, so it is a gift and blessing to us and even he called it good.  This is why oftentimes among Fundamentalist and Charismatic Protestants it is disturbing because they adopt a quasi-gnostic understanding of creation whether they intend to or not.  Phrases such as "in the natural" are spit almost with contempt by their preachers regarding even human emotions, and in all honesty when I was a Pentecostal that never made sense.  Again, the Law of Noncontradiction - nothing cannot both be and not be at the same time.  Therefore, calling God's creation "evil" or anything else derogatory is then basically calling God evil, and perhaps people who get off on those quasi-gnostic tangents need to really think about the implications of what they say.  God and his creation are distinct from each other, but God also did create the heavens and the earth, and everything in them, so we should consider them a blessing to us and treat them accordingly.  In this story of the farmer and the evil "Karen," I got the sense of that, as his assertion that "the land speaks" also goes along with Biblical passages such as Isaiah 55:12 ("The trees of the field shall clap their hands") and Luke 19:40 ("And I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the rocks will cry out"), and in a more somber tone, there is the account of Cain's murder of Abel in Genesis, where God flatly told Cain that the ground was crying out in judgment because Abel's blood was spilled on it.  In that case, the Genesis account goes along with this story of the farmer on YouTube - the blood cries out for justice for a soul whose life was stolen by an evil one.  All creation therefore, as Aquinas and Bonaventure both correctly noted in their "two books" example, bears witness to God both in celebration but also in judgment.  That is why this story grabbed my attention.

It is not occultic, or pantheistic therefore to respect nature and its sanctity - it was created by God, and the earth itself bears witness of many things.  So, the story of this farmer illustrates that although we often brush things aside or ignore them, nature sees it, and in time what is concealed in the darkness will be brought to light if we do evil to someone by violating their God-given liberty or disrespecting them.  Think of nature as a silent witness to the work of humankind - people can easily deceive each other, but nature is not capable of deceit because it is what it is - it is there, and in many cases it holds a legacy for us.  A family home for instance is more than just a house cobbled together with brick, wood, and glass - it is home and there is a fundamental connection a person has to where they come from.  In Appalachian culture, we call that "sense of place," and it is what binds generations together as well as providing roots, identity, and other things to the person who was born there.  While this can easily be taken out of context, it is fundamental to the human experience and is how God made us.   There are two ways though that it can be misused, and I will get into those now.

The land stores negative experiences as well as positive, and I am thinking back to the movie Forrest Gump now because there is a very poignant example of this.   Forrest's love, Jenny, comes back to stay with him for a short time, and while Forrest is on the proverbial cloud nine, one day when he and Jenny were walking they come upon the old house her family lived in.  As a child, Jenny had been abused by her dad (or stepdad - I don't recall which he was in the film) and it caused her to have serious emotional scars.  When she saw that house - by now it was long abandoned and was in a bad state - it triggered things in her and she responded by releasing pent-up rage at that house by throwing rocks at it.  Not everyone has a positive experience regarding "sense of place," and that is part of the picture as well - sometimes we even have to face that in order to heal and grow.  Those who inflicted the misery corrupted the hearts of their victims in that regard, often doing irreparable damage.  What had the potential of a pleasant memory becomes a nightmare, and Jenny's old house in that movie illustrated that well. In this case it wasn't Jenny who caused the bad memory, but her abusive father.  Abusive and selfish people can corrupt things so easily, and they even misuse a home to create a negative memory for an innocent victim like a child.  The second example though is even worse, and it was once turned into a political system.

A part of the Nazi platform in Germany during the years leading up to the Third Reich was something called Blut und Boden, or "blood and soil." When I was doing work on this for my dissertation, I found out this was part of the whole volkisch mentality fostered by the precursors of National Socialism, and it was brought into National Socialism from Walther Darre (1895-1953), who was Hitler's Minister of Agriculture during the Third Reich.  Darre based this on his reading of the racist author Hans Gunther, who in turn digested it from his readings of Malthus, Galton, and Gobineau, who in turn co-opted it from the occultism with its pantheistic view of the land and German blood being one and the same.  I devoted a lot of space in my dissertation to this idea, because it was pivotal in understanding some of the more evil aspects of Nazism as it related to "purification" of both the land and the genetic identity of the fictional "Aryan" race many of them dreamed up in their delusional minds.  In this context, the land becomes a god in itself, and because the genetics of a certain race are believed by people who hold this view to come from "the soil," then both the blood inside a person and the soil they stand on are seen as one and the same.  This doesn't affirm God's gift of creation, but rather corrupts it by confusing the Creator with the creation, and the end product of that is never good - it results in the genocide of millions. This corrupted view must be rejected, especially by Christians.  Although our home and where we come from are something we hold as a precious thing, it should never be exalted to the point that the land becomes deity, nor should any type of ethnocentrism result from it.  That is why a proper understanding of "sense of place" is integral to having a healthy mind and spirit. 

The ultimate idea of this, however, is actually quite simple.  God created everything we see, and because of that, it should be respected and taken care of.  God gave man a special place of dominion over the earth, but with that comes the awesome responsibility of being a wise steward without exploiting the earth or making it into a deity in itself.  Rather, we take care of what God entrusts us with by maybe cleaning up the litter and pollution we create (the city of Baltimore where I live now would do well learning this) and by protecting and preserving what we have been given against those who would seek to do harm.  The farmer in the story did just that, and he treated the land like an old friend which could show its own expression.  While the land is not a living organism in itself, our care of it determines how we are rewarded.  If we really take care of it, we reap the benefits of it.  If we don't, then it causes more damage that can impact generations.  And, that starts with our own homes.  However, lest you think this is some sort of "global warming" screed, let me clarify that fast now.

The whole "climate change" and "global warming" spiels that have become a pervasive part of public discourse are quite honestly disturbing - they are not disturbing because they are true, but rather the opposite.  These agendas are driven by individuals who want to control, to dominate, and to micromanage everyone based on a utopian delusion that exists only in their own minds.  While many of the proponents of this lie - Gates, Soros, Schwab, and their buddies - are wealthy beyond the imaginations of most normal people, they are also devoid of any sense of decency and do not have the common good in mind.  They see this "global warming" hysteria as a way to make lots of extra money and exert control over things, and in doing so they are dangerous.  None of them believe in "global warming" either because they know it is a false narrative, but they use and manipulate it to exert their own control over others, and that is what is scary.  There is very little difference, for instance, in the ultimate agendas of people like Klaus Schwab and George Soros and the early Nazis, as when one reads what they are proposing it sounds eerily similar.  Both Schwab and Soros were known Nazi collaborators when they were younger, and both of them have nefarious ideas which would make even Lanz von Liebenfels flinch.  Like the abusive parent who scars their child's memory of home, these oligarchs misinterpret and manipulate a true respect for nature with an agenda, and their agenda is NOT God's way or will.  That is why it should be rejected as well. 

If God has blessed you with a home of your own, cherish it and treat it with respect.  If you do, it will reap many benefits that even your descendants will be blessed.  But, never make the extremes of conflating land with God, or never let anyone damage or destroy land either - protect it and be the steward over it God called you to be.  In doing so, we have true "sense of place," and that says more than volumes could communicate. 

Thank you for letting me share again this week, and hope to see you again soon.