Like. Unlike.
Sitting here with coffee this early morning, scattered things move through the mind. One is my jobs those college year summers, 1954, 1955, 1956 -- summers of 1954 and 1956 thoroughly enjoyable, 1955 a nightmare of working for my father in his printing plant where I worked long, hard hours and learned a lot in so many ways, more than I ever learned working for anyone else. Maybe that’ll be a +Time topic one of these mornings. My son Joe stirred it all up, brought those three summers back yesterday by sending me pictures of a car
he saw in the parking lot of a church near his house: a 1956 Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria, which tapped a memory link.
he saw in the parking lot of a church near his house: a 1956 Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria, which tapped a memory link.
Another thing floating through is some of my favorite sayings. Won’t dignify them with “proverb” but maybe they are proverbs for me. Topmost favorite is probably “Just because I believe it, that don’t make it so.” It started at a Navy duty station in Washington, DC in 1966-68, after we came home from three years in Japan. A newly promoted lieutenant commander, I was working on a project in the Pentagon with a Marine Corps major who was just making lieutenant colonel. Name of Earl. Earl Bailey. Earl has been introduced here before, the Marine Corps is at the top of my admiration list anyway, but Earl was one of my heroes. Kidding him one time because he didn't play golf, I said, "Earl, you'll never make general if you don't play golf." To which he retorted, "If that's what it takes to git it, it ain't worth havin'." Driving down on a week-long TDY trip to Charleston, Earl told me about a place we should eat because they had the world's best chocolate parfait. "Got cake in it," Earl said, "like it's supposed to." Earl was a Southerner, like me. Once, we were arguing about something and I cemented my argument with the ultimate closure -- “The Admiral said ...” Which was as far as I got when Earl interrupted, “Let me tell you something, Tom Weller: just because the Admiral said it, that don’t make it so.” He won the argument and I gained one of the most valuable and valued and useful bits of wisdom of my entire life. It applies not only to admirals, but to all bosses, all authority, to presidents and kings and judges and juries, and especially for me to bishops ancient and modern. Just because they said it, that don't make it so.
Another is the proverb in the lintel over the library door at the Episcopal Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia. “Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will.” And it cites either “anonymous” or “source unknown.” It has helped me, and continues to help me in my ongoing struggle with faith and doubt in matters of longstanding Christian doctrine. There are bits of the Nicene Creed, for example, that came out of the minds of crotchety, certitudinous, even murderous old bishops under pressure from Roman emperors back in the earliest centuries of Anno Domini, the Common Era; things that are beyond human knowing, but that I’m stuck having to stand and say every Sunday morning anyway. OK, I’m in. But I still have my own mind, which is as good as any of theirs, and I love what Steve Jobs said in a speech to some college graduating class about thinking for yourself instead of being stuck with the dogma of old men.
Sometimes people ask me, a better term may be demand of me, that I explain something. A challenge. Maybe about something I’ve said. Or written. An opinion, an acronym. Some wild-axx statement I made in a sermon. Sometimes people ask me a question and I have to respond, “Are you asking because you really want to know my opinion or because you want to argue? If you want to know how I feel, I’ll tell you, but I won't explain it or try to justify myself. And if you mean to argue, forget it, because I’m not interested in an argument where neither of us can change the mind of the other and both of us end up angry and our relationship destroyed.” So I have a motto, actually a couple of them.
One motto is from Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass. Or it may be Alice In Wonderland. Alice is with the ultimate fool, Humpty Dumpty. The conversation is beyond delicious, as is everything Carroll wrote. Humpty Dumpty says something stupid, actually everything he says in the conversation is perfect idiotic nonsense, which is the hilarious ecstasy of the entire scenario. Alice asked him what he meant by a word he has used. “'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'” At 78 years of age I can and will pull that curtain over any conversation and scoot out the back door before ever you know I’m gone.
My other favorite motto is from Mary Poppins. Jane and Michael’s father Mr. Banks has arrived home just as some wild antics are going on involving Mary’s magic. As I recall, it’s the chimney sweeps dancing and singing around and round through the house singing “Step In Time.” Astonished, Mr. Banks says, “Mary Poppins, I demand an explanation.” To which Mary says, “First of all, let me make one thing perfectly clear: I never explain anything.”
That’s where I am.
My other motto might be “Like or lump it.”
And anyone who can't tell the difference between a 1955 Ford and a 1956 Ford is not ready to face Saint Peter's exam at the Pearly Gates.
Preacher's rejoicement: TGIM.
TW+