Tag Archives: cultural

Boulder

Boulder: (n) a large rock, typically one that has been worn smooth by erosion.

The stories I could tell ya’.Dictionary B

Unfortunately, boredom would probably set in before my arsenal was depleted. But may I say, one of the common themes of my tales would be that the ridiculous notion that human beings are terribly dissimilar from each other is a total farce.

As we square off in our “camps of conservative” and our “landscapes of liberal,” I will tell you that once you get past the initial talking points of each group, what you end up with are human beings with great hopes and promises, completing their interactions with equally elaborate excuses.

I was invited by a very large church in Boulder, Colorado, to come and put on a program. It was a gorgeous facility, right in the middle of downtown Boulder–a community touting itself as a liberal stronghold of cultural expansion. Upon arriving, I met my sponsor, who immediately began explaining why the event that he had scheduled, and was supposed to advertise, fell into the cracks or crevices of his busy schedule.

I had traveled many miles to pull up to a situation where I was neither appreciated nor particularly welcomed.

As a liberal, he remained very upbeat and comforting during his put-down. Matter of fact, when he finished talking to me, he said that he, himself, was not going to be at the concert, but wanted to buy one of our packages of materials so he could be supportive.

We faithfully set up our equipment and waited for concert time to arrive–revealing that we had an audience of three. We did an abbreviated version of our show, thanked the folks for showing up, and packed up our equipment–all alone.

By the way, I can also tell you stories of how conservatives can put the squeeze on you.

But my memory of Boulder is that it truly was … a rock between a hard place.

 

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Bonnet

Bonnet: (n) a woman’s hat tied under the chin

I wear hats. They disguise my bald head. They give me a better chance of being cute.Dictionary B

This is why I do it.

Women have worn hats for years. There are many reasons that women wear hats.

Some are cultural or religious–a head covering worn to communicate they are weaker vessels and under subjection to men.

Some are beautiful adornments designed to bring out the attractiveness of the lady’s countenance.

Seasonally, a bonnet is even used at Easter to accentuate the joy of the resurrection–“with all the fringe upon it.”

Since I should not control what people wear on their heads, it would be wrong of me to insist that a female be submissive by covering her noggin, or object to the hiding of her skull beneath an adornment because I feel it is chauvinistic.

There is just a great power in leaving people alone.

  • If they are unhappy, show them happiness.
  • If they are happy, be happy with them.

Otherwise, you could quickly be accused of being a bee in their bonnet.

 

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Bleeding Heart

Bleeding heart: (n) a person considered to be dangerously softhearted

Dictionary B

Human understanding might be possible if we would just come to the conclusion that it’s not our right to decide for others.

As a conservative might be willing to explain how certain types of people have cultural differences which cause them to react in unacceptable ways, a liberal will turn around and decide that the same people are victims of a greedy culture which does not care for them at all.

Here’s the truth: human beings are not nearly as organized, sinister or motivated as we would like to believe.

If I were comparing the average person to a substance, I contend that Play-Doh would be most appropriate. It sits on its can and does nothing until somebody frees it.

Free, it then becomes part of the playtime experience and is able to be molded into something that at least resembles a possibility.

I find myself at a disadvantage when I am in a roomful of conservatives because they are too damn sure of themselves to be smart.

And I am equally as uncomfortable when the bleeding-heart liberals target the rich as the offenders of the unfortunate poor.

Here’s what I know:

If I found myself extremely wealth, I would have to learn how to use my wealth productively, intelligently and generously–or else I would end up feeling like a big pile of rhinoceros poop.

Likewise, if I were suddenly homeless, I would have to tap the same initiative to find the best soup kitchens, odd jobs and warm, inexpensive places to sleep–to ensure that I didn’t turn into a belligerent mental case.

We will make progress when we realize that people do better when they are neither judged nor pitied.

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Biopsy

Biopsy: (n) an examination of tissue removed from a living body

Dictionary B

I got sick.

I mean, really sick.

There are so many times that we are convinced that we are ill or have contracted some mysterious disease, or contend that we are presently “under the weather” that we fail to recognize what it means to be in trouble.

The body is a great megaphone of its own condition.

In other words, when you’re ailing, every single part of your anatomy sends a memo, an email, and even tweets, “Danger.”

There’s little doubt.

I found myself in the hospital under the care of a lovely female doctor from China. She was beautiful in all ways. We immediately struck a chord of friendship, even though by cultural standards we had little in common. For some reason, she liked me, and I certainly appreciated and loved her for her soul and gifts.

She scheduled a series of tests. I could tell by her demeanor that she was worried that I had cancer and that we had caught it too late.

I will never forget lying on my hospital bed the night before my colonoscopy, alone in the dim lights with a few machines whirring and tweaking in the background.

It was just me…and me.

I thought about my own death.

I thought about dying soon.

I realized that to a barbarian fighting in Gaul in 32 B. C. that my death was insignificant, whether it happened next week or forty years from now. After all, what’s forty years to a Gaelic barbarian who’s been dead for over 2,000?

Of a certainty I was going to die. The question was, which ailment, disease, condition or speeding bus was going to perform the task?

Gradually, peace settled into my soul. It was a peace accompanied by an unexpected comedic, jovial sense of well-being.

For certainly, unless an angel of God was going to enter my bowels and produce a miracle overnight, what was in me was soon going to be made evident–and all I had left was the class and style that I could muster, to deal with the biopsy.

As it turned out, there was no problem and my young doctor came bouncing into the room with tears in her eyes, speaking half English and half Chinese, which I translated as “all is well.”

Yes, my friend, all is well until all isn’t well.

Between those two stations lies the possibility for some beautiful living.

 

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Benchmark

Benchmark: (n) a standard against which things may be compared or assessed

Dictionary B

At the risk of barking out some dogmatic standards, I shall attempt to offer some concerns.

As I view the climate of politics, religion and entertainment, which are meant to be foundations in our American society, I realize that the benchmark for each one of these offerings has shifted over the years, unconsciously accepted by the masses.

Religion should have only one function: to teach us to love each other.

Anything else ranges from superfluous to dangerous. Nowadays we ask religion to afford us a heritage, a style, a uniqueness, or even a guarantee of eternal life.

The benchmark we have set for religion is careless.

On the other hand, the only benchmark for politics is honesty.

Without it, we fail to recognize what the true problems are, and therefore we end up working on the insignificant and overlooking the necessary.

Nowadays, politics is the symbol of deception, dissension, gridlock and even a certain amount of ridicule.

We’ve lost our benchmark on politics.

And finally, entertainment should have the benchmark of entertaining us, but also enlightening us.

Without these stipulations, entertainment starts to be sensationalistic, desiring a plumper and plumper bottom line.

When we lose our benchmarks, we start to stray, which makes us appear lost ... even as we insist we are following the cultural GPS.

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Arbiter

dictionary with letter A

Arbiter: (n) a person who settles a dispute.　

Compromise is popular.

It has become so accepted that when someone utters the phrase, “We all need to compromise,” there is practically a collective “Amen” spoken in the room.

To achieve compromise, we often require an arbiter.

These are people who feel they are valuable by taking a bit of one side and mingling a little of another side to come up with a whole new rendition, which is only partially accepted by each individual party.

Honestly, this doesn’t work anywhere else in life.

Aside from Tex-Mex food, mixing cuisines is normally a disaster.

An ecumenical philosophy which includes all religions leaves you with precepts that should be written on fortune cookies and have about as much significance.

Congress gathering to mesh their opinions into a bill usually leaves us with a law which attempts to cover the subject like a blanket with our feet sticking out the end.

The times I found myself being an arbiter, I discovered a truth. Since the individuals were already disagreeing, trying to get them to sign off on a diluted format would be unsatisfying to both of them, and probably ignored in the long run.

I don’t believe in compromise. I hold to a philosophy of submission.

If two people are arguing, it’s likely that neither one has the total perspective.

If you can help people land on what has historical value, personal satisfaction and global respect, then asking them to submit to that conclusion creates the climate for a healing situation.

We can do this with anything.

Any issues possesses a core of emotional, spiritual and mental health which can be tapped if we’re not so intent on promoting our own cause.

But to do so, we must submit to ideals and truths which may be different from our own popular cultural outlook.

They say that politics is built on compromise. Actually, politics should be built on common sense. Each amendment to the Constitution should be looked at through the eyes of our generation and interpreted to honor the original freedoms without holding to the letter of the law.

The same thing would be true of corporate by-laws, marital relationships and even our reverence for the Good Book.

Compromise is the belief that there is “right” everywhere, and we just need to blend our “rights” together.

Knowing the nature of human beings, it’s more likely that we’re slightly mistaken in the first place, and we need to find common ground by submitting to more mature wisdom.

 

 

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Anomaly

dictionary with letter A

Anomaly: (n) something that deviates from the normal, standard or expected

I liked music.

At eighteen years of age, I’m not so sure that I was totally devoted to a career in the field or whether there was a bit of laziness tied into the equation, because playing piano sounded easier than punching a time-clock. (After all, we get ourselves in the most trouble when we try to purify our motives instead of accepting them a trifle sullied.)

One afternoon during that eighteenth year, I took my girlfriend, who was soon to become my wife, into a back room of a loan company owned by my parents and sat down at a piano which had been given to our family, but because we had no room in our house, ended up stuck in the back corner of this lending institution.

I had never written a song before.

As a teenager, I sang in choir, a quartet and for nursing homes, pretending like it was a big gig at Madison Square Garden.

Yet on this day, I suddenly got this urge to compose. It was not stimulated by a professor at a college asking for an assignment, nor was it motivated by my ancestors, wishing that I would abandon all normal courses of occupation and pursue a musical path.

It was truly an anomaly.

  • It was contrary to what everybody wanted me to do.
  • It was an open, seething contradiction to my cultural training.
  • I sat down at that piano, and in the course of the next ninety-four minutes, wrote two original songs. I didn’t know if they were good and certainly was not confident they were great.

But something came out of me that wasn’t a conditioned response or a well-studied answer for a final exam.

It was mine.

Whether it was good or bland, it came from me. It excited me. It encouraged me to muster the perseverance to survive the critique of my society and even overcome my own fits of lethargy to pursue it.

It still excites me today.

Hundreds of songs later, I still feel as thrilled when pen goes to paper, words appear and musical notes cuddle up next to them.

No one in my family ever took the course of action which I chased, beginning with that afternoon in the back room behind that piano.

But it is the selection of that odyssey that has made me who I am.

There are two things you have to remember about an anomaly:

  1. It is never immediately accepted.
  2. It always takes more work than you expected.

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Anachronism

dictionary with letter A

Anachronism: (n) a thing that belongs in another period than the present, usually referring to old-fashioned.

One of the more rib-tickling moments in my recent life was when I overheard two seven-year-old kids discussing how Kraft macaroni and cheese dinners used to have better cheese–when they were younger.

It was both endearing and enlightening.

It made me realize that it is possible at any age to reflect back on a previous time, which you have convinced yourself contained more promise, power or purpose.

It got me thinking.

What are anachronisms? What makes something old-fashioned? Just because some individual promoting an agenda wants to claim that a particular attribute is old-fashioned doesn’t make it so, Joe.

Because the things I find to be anachronistic are the causes put forth in our society which have historically proven to be errant or stupid:

1. Drug addiction.

We may want to debate whether drugs should be a crime or a freedom, but it doesn’t change the fact that any time you suck in smoke, swallow a pill or ingest a fluid to change your mood, you’re admitting that you, personally, do not have the ability to be happy without props.

2. Cultural appreciation.

I know some people think it’s important for black children to learn black culture, Chinese children their particular rendition and Hispanic offspring to pay their respects to Cinco de Mayo, but candidly, it’s just another subtle form of racism. It’s a way of distinguishing differences in the human race which only pull us apart instead of joining us together.

3. An aversion to manners.

Yes, there are folks who insist that being a lady or a gentleman–courteous–is too up-tight or phony. What is phony is thinking that you can treat people like crap and not end up being considered a turd yourself.

4. And finally (at least for this list), there is an ongoing belief that there is a battle between God and science.

Matter of fact, we’re choosing up sides again.

If we really believe there’s a God, then His creation certainly instituted scientific fact and Earth’s physics. If there is no God, then we’d better cuddle up to science, because it’s our only chance.

So since I believe in both, I consider it intelligent to keep them friendly.

  • An anachronism is something from the past that we cling to.
  • Tradition is a practice that we continue because of reputation.

But wisdom is an anachronism that needs to become a tradition because it offers human beings a chance to overcome our jungle … and plant a new garden.

 

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Amerasian

dictionary with letter A

Amerasian: (n) a person having one American and one Asian parent

It’s time for a moratorium. At least, I’m declaring one.

I refuse to indulge anymore in the constant creation of new names to segregate people off into smaller and smaller clumps based upon minute cultural differences, separating us from a greater understanding of one another.

I am especially averse to this word, “Amerasian.”

I have a beautiful grandson named Wyeth, whose mother is from China and whose father is from Louisiana. I suppose that would make him Amerasian if I was so dumbfounded by the culture that I participated in such nonsense.

  • There are no African-Americans because none of them could actually live in Africa.
  • I am not a German-American because seven generations ago my family came over on a ship to get away from that country.
  • There are no gay-Americans.
  • There are no female-Americans.

We’re just human beings, and the more we try to promote our culture, maintaining the traditions passed down from a lineage we don’t even understand anymore, the more we will confound our own personal journey with the clutter of clatter.

I even laugh at my own children, who worry that little Wyeth won’t get enough of China–or Louisiana–to enrich the mix of his life.

Let me give you a clue: Wyeth is a person, so as long as he has purpose, food, clothing and love, he’s not going to give a crap about whether it comes from China or Louisiana.

Can we get over the childishness of “cultural integrity?”

I want to possess a philosophy that would allow me to live anywhere with anyone at any time. If I don’t have that in my possession, I will fine-tune my thinking until I acquire it.

Wyeth is not Amerasian. He is my grandson. And by the grace of God, if he continues to grow and use his talents, someday he’ll be a blessing to the whole earth.

 

Abrahams, Harold

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abrahams, Harold (Maurice):(1899-1978) English athlete. In 1924 he became the first Englishman to win the 100 meter race in the Olympic games. His story was retold in the movie, Chariots of Fire.

I was traveling in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, when I went out with two friends and saw the movie, Chariots of Fire. Although it was a bit maudlin for my taste, I was still captured by the story and moved by the message–so much so that when I arrived back in my motel room, I slipped on a pair of sandals, and even though it was nearly midnight I went down to the beach by myself, determined to duplicate the running along by the sea I had just witnessed in the flick.

It was a beautiful night–one which the Chamber of Commerce would love to have bottled and sold at orange juice stands as evidence of the beauty of the community. There was a fine mist in the air from the waves hitting the shore, and I was tingling all over with the anticipation of duplicating the emotion of the movie.

I looked off in the distance and set a marker in my mind of where I wanted to end up at the conclusion of my sprint. I was Abrahams. I was the great English racer. Even though I had quite a few more pounds than he did, in that moment, they were shed from my mind by the sheer awesome wonder of being transformed into the realm of Olympic training.

I started to run.

I got about four paces when my sandal stuck in the wet sand. I tripped and fell on my face, burying my nose deep within the beach. Determined, I got up and tried it again. I repeated the same process with great proficiency.

I do not know whether the terrain on Jacksonville Beach is so much different from England, or if it was perhaps because I was not quite as light of feet as Abrahams–but I just I sank deeper into the dampness. Or perhaps running on sand is just the stupidest thing that anybody ever came up with on earth.

But try as I might, I was only able to run about twenty feet before my heart was racing much quicker than my legs. I fell down, exhausted, and stared at the ocean.

I stayed there for a long time–because my legs ached, my knees were sore and my nose was full of algae. Gradually I worked my way to my feet and walked back to my motel room. In the process of that brief stroll, I recreated my story. Upon arriving, I told my traveling companions that I had duplicated the scene from the movie–and had run at least one mile down the beach and back.

Their eyes gleamed with admiration.

I went to sleep that night a liar. But I felt very little shame. After all, Hollywood and movies are just fairy tales. And fairy tales can come true.

It can happen to you.