lessons learned, lessons not learned

24 September 2009 Lessons learned, lessons not learned




Some lessons come easily; others arrive with at sizeable portion of pain. Some we learn rapidly, the first time we meet the challenge. Others are so divorced from logic and reality that we refuse to ever accept them and are forced to learn them over and over.

“And now as I lie here, my body all holes

I think of those traitors who bargained in souls

And I wish that my rifle had given the same

To those Quislings who sold out the patriot game” - Patriot Game Dominic Behan

Quisling: according to Wikipedia:

Quisling, after Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany to conquer his own country and ruled the collaborationist Norwegian government, is a term used to describe traitors and collaborators

One of those terms preserved in a song lyric that lives past its time in history. Outside Norwegian and Irish history texts, I doubt anyone will recall the man or his contribution to invective after the WWII generation is gone. I learned the term first by reading about Quisling in a book on WWII that I read some time before junior high school. When I ran across it in Behan’s lyric, it was instantly recalled. The gray matter drive was somewhat faster in those days. I’ve learned a lot of history and a lot of trivia by chasing down terms or phrases encountered in song lyrics. For me, a painless and fun means of learning. It is far better to understand what you are singing, or trying to sing, about. It helps in interpreting the song, knowing how to emphasize or down play a word or a line, what tone of voice to use.

I learned that a line drive hitting your forehead can pick you up and flatten you out, nearly instantly, in Rolla, MO, in a pickup neighborhood baseball practice session. A neighborhood father was hitting practice balls to several of us, neighborhood children I failed to get a glove on the ball he hit to me. I’ve tried to avoid relearning that lesson.

Also learned in Rolla, MO – don’t kick over a kerosene bomb on the approach to an old, creosote-soaked wooden bridge. Watching the black orb roll down hill, spilling a trail of fire suitable for movie special effects was a lesson in anticipation of pain and grief. Flames did reach the bridge but the structure did not burst into an instant inferno. I’ve not needed to relearn that lesson.

In 1968 I learned that the “snap” heard just overhead is indicative of the need to flatten out, instantly, and then move laterally. It may hurt to fall onto rocks, logs, broken glass or anything else beneath you. It will hurt far more if you wait to hear the second “snap,” which you may never hear it but either way, you will have no need to learn the lesson again.

I should have learned by now that it does no good to discuss religion with someone intent upon converting or saving the world. It seems only logical that eventually reason and science will triumph over blind faith. It “seems” logical. It seems “logical.”

However, There remain, despite the steady expansion of scientific knowledge and the ever greater access to that knowledge via print , broadcast media, and the internet, millions of “faithful”, believing the words of those who tell them they, and they alone, are saved; often believing in a corporeal afterlife. In many cases they impose the same harsh limitations to physical and emotional joy that they eschew while alive onto what overlay they have been given of “the afterlife.” Some views of that sound intolerably dull and boring, even before expanding that afterlife into a never changing eternity. I’ll pass.

There is absolutely no agreement between religions and between sects as to what one must do to be faithful. The major Abrahamic faiths have been continually at war with each other for at least 2000 years. And they have been at war within their sects for nearly as long.



Islamic fundamentalists are intent on replacing all other religion with Islam and with eliminating those infidels who prefer science over faith. Young Mormons spend months of their lives after high school going around in pairs, knocking on doors, offering to bring whomever opens the door into their particular view of an afterlife. Other Christian sects send “missionaries” out into the third world. Some of them staff hospitals, providing care first and prayer as an adjunct; others open parochial schools as their inroad. In the centuries of Westward expansion, European Christians were notable for claiming new lands for King and Church, bringing the loot back to King – with their percentage determined by more or less generous monarchs – and bringing the natives to Jesus or to death. Even today, their linear descendants serving the poor of the U.S. will sometimes demand participation in prayer before doling out food and shelter. Spain, France, and Portugal were more driven to Christianize the New World than were England and Holland, which were content to import riches and export religious malcontents without desire to save the natives.

My friend, David Gans, expressed this very well:

“There are many here among us

Who believe this world is theirs

When it's beaten and depleted

They will rise into the air

And the ones who don't believe them

Face a dark, eternal grave

No one knows, but you are certain

Who will save us from the saved?”

David Gans ©2005 Whispering Hellalujah Music (BMI)
/ http://www.dgans.com/


In March, 1993, I learned that a very friendly dog that gets tangled in a bed spread may bite. I have the scars on my left arm to remind me of that. The same dog later developed diabetes and required daily insulin injections. I would call her to me every morning and she would faithfully submit to be injected. But as her vision worsened due to cataracts she sometimes snapped at motion. One morning she snapped at my leg and opened up a 2 cm, avulsion. I cleaned the bite, packed it with antibiotic ointment and allowed it to heal by secondary intention. After two weeks it had almost healed but there was some residual pain and swelling, and other signs of infection. I decided it was time to open the wound and debride it. I got my surgical kit, cleaned the skin with soap & water, and then prepped it with betadine.

I propped the leg up on the bathroom sink and opened the wound with a scalpel. A small amount of purulent material lay just beneath the dermis. I went to work with forceps, gauze, & peroxide, using the forceps to push peroxide-soaked gauze into the infected tissue. It was repetitive work, explore the wound, debride with peroxide-soaked gauze, dry with sterile gauze, flood with peroxide and look for evidence of remaining infection. It was an awkward position to hold, painful due to the position and due to the repeated insult to living flesh. I was shaking as I tried to hold my leg still. I was standing there with tools in hand when Gloria walked in. Sweat was dripping down my face, pouring from my chest and down my arms. I was trying very hard to keep the open wound dry. She looked at me, looked at what I was doing, and in all innocence asked, “Doesn’t that hurt?”

I looked at her and said, “Well, yes!” Those two lines of conversation have become one of our rituals of reminding each other how much we love each other. We joke about it, and always have since that day. There’s a lot of laughter in our marriage.

My leg healed without further incident. I have a scar to remind me of a dog that accepted me eagerly into her pack when Gloria and I first met. I learned with some pain that even the most friendly of dogs will bite in fear or pain. Of course, I already knew that. But I also learned that those scars were worth being part of the pack. Some admission prices are higher than others.

What I haven’t learned is how to convince people that we need to strictly separate religion from the political workings of our nation. We were handed foundation documents that specifically forbade a state religion. Some part of our population has been trying to overturn that gift since the Constitution and Bill of Rights were accepted as law and ratified by the then states.

The GOP has allied itself with the American version of the Taliban. That sub-populace of fundamentalist Christians is vectored toward a theocracy to replace our republic. They are not content with being allowed to follow their perceived guide book for eternity, they are insistent that everyone else be required to follow the same guide book. And, incredibly frightening, the front-runner GOP candidate for that group of voters is a fundamentalist preacher who has publically stated that he wants to change the Constitution to bring it in line with his Bible, his guide book to that boring, joyless eternity I mentioned earlier.

There are many Christians in this nation who practice their faith happily, who help those less fortunate without thought of recompense or of forced participation. They are good people who have no desire to make others dance to their tune. We need more of them to counter our own Taliban, to guide the GOP back toward a moderate platform, one not based upon blind faith but upon reality, common purpose, and a desire to return to the sense of unity that is this nation in the best of times.

That lesson comes painfully, and more and more frequently these days as the nation polarizes behind the fringes on the far left and the Taliban on the far right. I wonder, if we collectively, will ever learn this lesson. If we do, it will be after great pain. If we don’t, the pain will be unimaginable.

David seems to have expressed it as well as anyone, Pennsylvanian colonist, prisoner of the Inquisition, Victims of many expulsions, slaves in the mines of Mexico, natives of Polynesia, women suffragettes, anti-slavery abolitionists, could have expressed the lesson we need to learn:

“Give me freedom from religion

Who will save us from the saved?”