CowPi Journal

Last night, we received some badly needed precipitation in the form of snow. In my area, it was just a ground covering. The streets were just wet. Up north and west of the city, they received up to 6-8 inches.
The boys were just amazed at the white fluffy stuff as we were getting in the truck to drop the youngest one off at the babysitter and on to school. They were a slightly disappointed that they did not get an opportunity to play in it like they did in the dusting back just before Christmas.
As we were backing out of the driveway, I gave them the old advice that every dad should give his sons: don’t eat yellow snow.
The five year old looked at me in puzzlement and half-guarded belief. He asked, “Why?” Smart boy. Don’t take any advice from anybody without an explanation.
I replied, “Well, in case the dog peed in the snow.”
Still a look of puzzlement. I could see the gears turning in his head. Dog-snow-pee? I don’t quite see the connection yet.
“What color is pee?” I asked.
The three year old got it before his older brother, “Ewww! Grossssss!”
You can imagine what the conversation was like after that.

TSO links to an opinion piece by George Will on sport team nicknames. Will comments that it is a misguided sense of political correctness that is pushing this issue of sport teams like the Illini, Seminoles, Braves, etc. are insults to Native-American culture.
I’m not so sure. I think maybe something much more insidious is occurring. It just might be a new-and-improved postmodern form of prejudice. Playing on people’s over-sensitized sense of political correctness, a few people are trying again to marginalize, minimize, or even drive-out and eliminate any reference to Native Americans from the general landscape of American culture and conscience. Just like the old Indian schools here in Oklahoma were guilty of preventing children from speaking their native languages, some of these “politically correct” people just might be trying to erase any reference to Native-American culture outside of history books and the reservations.
I don’t know. Something to think about.
I suspect that political correctness like this will eventually transform the Great American Stew Pot into the metaphor from our history books, the Great American Melting Pot. America was never a melting pot. A melting pot destroys the distinctiveness of the ingredients and everything becomes the same—the whole becomes equal to or less than the sum of its parts. A stew is made from distinct and diverse ingredients that enrich the overall flavor—the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. I’d rather have stew than melted goo.

Writing about empty mind is not easy.
When I have got it, there are no words.
When the words come, it goes away.

Sitting in anger and fear,
Mind is full of the past and future.
Images of catastrophes big and small
Jostle for a seat at the brain.
Resentment, incredulity and disappointment
Slide their way into heart spaces
Pushing out loving-kindness.
Equanimity lies in pieces.

Some of us scrape up that slimy
Emotional stuff and put it in jars
To carry along with us,
And then we complain that
Our load is too heavy.
We need to put down that
Lumpy sack of ooze
And take a breath.

The sage said,
“I pack no provisions for my long journey—
Entering emptiness under the midnight moon.”
He did not pack his ego,
Or his remembrance of self.
He carried no big plans
Or regrets of the past.
Like a wise fool he may have
Even forgotten to leave.
While he sits still in darkness,
The moon travels the sky.

— Tom Barrett

“The Three Magi” by József Koszta

Definition:

epiphany — 1. a revelatory manifestation of a divine being. 2. a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something, a comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization

The Magi had to cross the desert to reach Bethlehem, to reach Jesus. Joseph and Mary will have to suddenly leave in the middle of the night and go into the desert of Egypt. Even Jesus himself did not avoid going into the desert after his baptism.

It seems we have to venture into the desert to reach a deeper connection with God, to learn the reality or essence of that connection.

“Much-Afraid,” he said, “all of my servants on their way to the High Places have had to make this detour through the desert. It is called ‘The furnace of Egypt, and an horror of great darkness’ (Gen 15:12, 17). Here they learned many things which otherwise they would have known nothing about.

“Abraham was the first of my servants to come this way, and this pyramid was hoary with age when he first looked upon it. Then came Joseph, with tears and anguish of heart, and looked upon it too and learned the lesson of the furnace of fire. Since that time an endless succession of my people have come this way. They came to learn the secret of royalty, and now you are here, Much-Afraid. You, too, are in the line of succession. It is a great privilege, and if you will, you also may learn the lesson of the furnace and of the great darkness just as surely as did those before you. Those who come down to the furnace go on their way afterwards as royal men and women, princes and princesses of the Royal Line.”

— Hannah Hurnard, Hind’s Feet on High Places

Don’t fear the desert. God is there too, with you, as you cross it. Just remember what the Magi met on the other side. The path through the desert leads to epiphany.