Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 19, 2013

B4

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, October 19, 2013 

OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder


STUART Tolchin........On LIFE

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CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Stuart Tolchin

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Hail Hamilton 

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Lori Koop

Rev. James Snyder

Tina Paul

Mary Carney

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Welborn

Renee Quenell

Ben Show

Sean Kayden

Jasmine Kelsey Williams

IS IT A FRAGRANCE OR A STENCH?

WHAT IS MAKE BELIEVE

This past week I had to 
go to the mall. I know, I 
should know better but 
I thought I could sneak 
in, get what I needed 
and sneak out again. So 
much for my thoughts.

I wanted to purchase several tie chains for 
my neckties and searched every jewelry store 
and nobody had them. Finally, I ordered three 
online, which would be shipped free, (which 
always gets my attention) to the nearest store, 
which happened to be in the mall.

I do not like the mall and choose not to go 
there if I can help it. When in the mall I am 
usually very nervous and get confused and do 
not know which way I am going. Once I get 
in, I am not quite sure how to get out again. 
Everything seems to be contrived to confuse a 
person like myself.

Looking down at the ground while walking I 
became rather confused and I happen to turn 
into an open door.

My mall savvy is not sophisticated in the 
lease. The door I turned into happened to be 
for the store Victoria's Secret. I do not know 
who Victoria is, I did not know what the store 
was all about but when I got in the store I discovered 
Victoria's Secret much to my great 
embarrassment.

That is exactly the reason I do not like going 
into the malls. They have places like this that a 
gentleman, such as Yours Truly, should never 
enter.

I am not sure how I got out of that store, all 
I can remember was a great deal of hilarious 
laughter thrown in my direction from inside. 
I just hope they did not recognize me. They 
probably did not, because I had all my clothes 
on.

It has been a long time since that incident and 
now I had to go and pick up my order. I put together 
a plan to sneak in very quietly, pick up 
my order and tiptoe out as quietly as I came in.

You know what they say about well-laid plans! 
Whether mine was well laid or not, it blew up 
in my face.

I did slip into the mall and found the store 
where my order was. I picked them up and 
quietly turned around and started for the 
door. How I got turned around is any man's 
guess. Actually, I think it turned around too 
many times. For the next 15 minutes, I tried to 
find the way I came in so I could go out.

The trouble started when I hesitated. I stopped 
to try to get my bearings and in stopping a 
young woman approached me.

"How do you do today, sir," she said most 
cheerfully.

I nodded and tried to get away as graciously 
as possible.

She would have none of it. "And how do you 
smell today, sir?"

Had I been in my right sense of mind I would 
have told her I smelled with my nose. Being in 
a confused state of affairs, I had no quick come 
back for her. It was then that she introduced 
me to her product.

I must confess I am not up-to-date with all of 
the body lotions and perfumes that are available 
today. I shave in the morning, splash 
some aftershave on my face, rub some deodorant 
under my armpits and that is as far as I go.

This young woman took me for a potential 
customer of her body lotions and ointments 
and perfumes. I suppose many people are concerned 
with how they smell. I am not one of 
them.

My basic philosophy along this line is simply, 
if I cannot stand my own smell, I take a shower. 
I know when it is time to take a shower 
when I can smell myself.

She wanted to introduce me to some body lotions 
and ointments and perfumes that would 
make me smell alluring to anybody I met during 
the day.

Personally, I do not have a "Bucket List" but if 
I did this would not be one of the items on it.

Trying to be polite, I informed the young 
woman I was late for an appointment and 
needed to get on right away.

"Oh," she said very cheerfully, "this will not 
take long at all."

With that said, and before I could process what 
she said, she began rubbing my face with body 
ointment or lotion of some sort. I froze and for 
a few moments, I could not even move. Even 
the little grey cells upstairs were shocked into 
a rare state of stillness.

"Now, you smell wonderful."

It was at that time I retired with honor my 
gentlemanly manners and started running as 
fast as I could run without drawing too much 
attention to myself.

I smelled that "fragrance" for three days in 
spite of the fact that I took 17 showers in the 
meantime.

Sometimes our focus is always on the outside. 
I like what Jesus said, "Woe unto you, scribes 
and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean 
the outside of the cup and of the platter, but 
within they are full of extortion and excess" 
(Matthew 23:25).

It does not matter how good I smell on the 
outside if there is stench on the inside. I want 
to focus on my inside and make it as fresh as 
possible. That is the fragrance God smells.

 A couple of weeks ago I underwent this medical procedure 
that frightened my whole family and me. I’m more or less 
okay but the day after the procedure my son had to be taken 
to the hospital by ambulance because of a stress reaction to 
my condition. My son is forty years old and is a disabled 
person who suffers from mental and emotional deficits. He is also my best 
friend.

 It is hard to say whether his anxiety resulted from concerns connected 
to my condition or fears as to what would happen to him if I wasn’t able to be 
around to give him support. No matter the reason he had reactions much like 
seizures and had to be taken to the hospital on two more occasions. At the 
hospital he was given shots of a drug called atavin which produced amazing 
results. Within fifteen or twenty minutes after taking the drug his symptoms 
disappeared and he seemed tranquilized. An hour later he dropped off to sleep 
and awoke after another hour or so and seemed much like himself. The doctor 
prescribed the drug in tablet form and we were instructed to have my son take 
the pill whenever he sensed his anxiety returning; but we were warned that 
pills should not be taken more frequently than every twelve hours.

 Over the past six years that I have been writing these articles I 
have frequently scoffed at the need for people to utilize these tranquilizing 
medication or “happy pills” as a part of their daily lives. I have received 
criticism from friends who have read my articles and who have told me that I 
didn’t know what I was talking about. People have told me that their anxiety 
was so extreme that they could not function without their medication. I 
remained unsympathetic and, of course, I now realize that my position was 
ridiculous. Experiencing my son’s anguish it has become clear even to a fool 
like me that mental pain is as real and as devastating as the pain connected 
to any physical illness. The temporary relief granted to a suffering person is 
a miraculous gift similar to the effects of antibiotics administered to combat 
infection. The difference between the two is that a course of antibiotics 
will defeat the infection while the psychotropic medication will grant only 
temporary relief and may be needed the next day.

 . During the passed two weeks my son has spent almost every 
moment with my wife and I and we have all become pretty sensitized to the 
signs of disorientation and irritability which precede the full-blown anxiety 
attack. I understand that the early signs of an approaching attack involve 
some bewilderment as to what is really taking place. Perhaps some of these 
concerns led to our conversation relating to a TV commercial that involved 
the question of whether a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear 
it made a sound. I did my best to explain that this commercial dealt with 
the question posed by Lord Berkeley that posited that all reality involved 
interaction and that possibly if there was no one around to hear the sound 
there was no sound. This question interested my son, much more than the 
whole question fascinated me 50 years ago in Philosophy 6A.

 Somehow the conversation moved to discussions about the soul. I am 
a life-long atheist and this has always bothered my son who, in the days when 
he lived with his mother, was exposed to all kinds of religious stuff. He told 
me he wanted to have a soul and that he wanted that soul to exist whether I 
believed in souls or not. He also told me that he wanted our deceased dog 
along with our present dog to have souls even though he had been told by 
religious people that animals did not have souls. He said that he wanted these 
souls to exist and to exist forever whether or not anyone else believed in them 
or experienced their existence. Somehow, for him at least, the existences of 
these unrecognized souls were connected with the sound in the forest of the 
fallen tree that made a sound even though no one was around to hear it.

 Hmm. What do I know? As a result of my adventures of the last 
couple of weeks

I am not absolutely sure of anything. Maybe my son’s talk of soul, unhampered 
by his 60 I.Q., is a true reflection of what we both want. Educable or not he 
believes in his truths and holds on to them notwithstanding the other events 
in his bewildering world. Yes, to me the old atheist, talking with my disabled 
son is often the most inspiring and meaningful part of this difficult time of life.

 

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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN


HOWARD Hays As I See It

GREG Welborn


Mika: “Senator Ted Cruz 
(R-TX) says he’s still 
unsure whether or not he’d 
block a vote on the bill . . .”;

Joe: “Go ahead. Go ahead, 
big shot. You put the full 
faith and credit of the 
United States of America 
on your shoulders. Have 
fun with that. Good luck, 
do it. Do it – I dare you. I’m daring you 
right now – go ahead and do it, hot shot. 
Or you can just sit in the back, and when 
people who are responsible and actually 
give a damn about this country, and give a 
damn about the full faith and credit of the 
United States, and actually care about the 
people who are working day in and day out 
hoping to keep their job – you’re going to 
keep posing, and hurt those people?

 “I don’t really get it. It’s kind of like – it’s 
great for you, I know. I know it’s really 
great for you politically, but it’s just like – 
the Veteran’s Memorial that you used as a 
political backdrop. It’s a great backdrop, 
until the next day the vets who actually 
organized the rally came out and were 
really upset that you would use their rally 
for your own political points. 

 “So go ahead – you guys go ahead and 
just keep using America as your political 
backdrop and hurt all the people you want 
to hurt. Hurt, by the way, small-government 
conservatives, Republicans, working-class 
Americans that actually used to support 
our party but now are wondering what in 
the world . . . Keep doing it, and I hope it 
really helps you out because it’s sure not 
helping the conservative movement, it’s not 
helping the Republican Party and it’s not 
helping this country.”;

 The exchange between Mika Brzezinski 
and former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL) 
took place on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. 
It was followed by Mika’s reporting on 
the warning of Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-
KS) that any House Republican voting 
in support of the deal worked out in 
the Senate “would virtually guarantee a 
primary challenger.” It had nothing to do 
with giving “a damn about this country” or 
the “people who are working day in and day 
out hoping to keep their job”, but only with 
keeping their own - by not displeasing the 
billionaires who bought it for them.

 House Republicans tried a deal of their 
own, but couldn’t get it to the floor because 
they were told not to by Heritage Action 
and FreedomWorks, primary money-
launderers for the Koch Brothers. Senate 
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called 
their bill a “waste of time”, anyway. Tea-
baggers claimed threats of “default” were 
overblown; the Treasury Secretary could 
juggle things and prioritize to avoid serious 
consequences. But their own House 
proposal prohibited the Treasury Secretary 
from doing so. Republicans complained all 
they’ve wanted is to engage in bipartisan 
negotiations on the budget (though 
having repeatedly refused to do so over 
the past year). Their proposal eliminated 
the bipartisan negotiating framework 
contained in the Senate version.

 It will take some time for the Republican 
Party to regain legitimacy lost by allowing 
itself to be hijacked by clueless tea-
baggers – some eighty Congressmen from 
gerrymandered districts representing 18% 
of our nation’s population.

 The lunacy of the past couple weeks will 
take a long time to live down. There was 
Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) getting in-
your-face with a park ranger at the WWII 
Memorial in Washington, blaming her for 
the closure he’d voted for. “The Park Service 
should be ashamed of themselves”, he said. 
“I’m not ashamed”, she replied. According 
to NBC, “a crowd of onlookers” came to 
the ranger’s defense, and jeered when the 
congressman tried to blame Harry Reid.

 Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) voted to put 
hundreds of thousands of workers on 
unpaid “furlough”, but refused to relinquish 
any part of his own $174,000 salary for the 
duration of the shutdown: “I’ve got a nice 
house and a kid in college, and I’ll tell you 
we can’t handle it.” Rep. Ted Yolo (R-FL) 
nixed the idea of back pay for furloughed 
workers, “the people that are home watching 
Netflix and whatever.” Rep. Steve Pearce 
(R-NM) offered helpful advice: “reach out 
to your financial institution as soon as you 
worry you may miss a paycheck. Financial 
institutions often offer short-term loans 
and other resources.” Meanwhile, the 
congressional gym was kept open as an 
“essential service”.

 Last Sunday, Sarah Palin picked up the 
mic to proclaim she and fellow tea-baggers 
would “not be timid in calling out any who 
would use our military, our vets, as pawns 
in a political game.” This came as she 
was featured during the hijacking of the 
Million Vets March at the WWII Memorial. 
Organizers of the March protested this 
violation of their “;core principle” of 
“Americans honoring Veterans in a peaceful 
and apolitical manner”. Confederate flags 
flew, “Impeach Obama” signs waved, Palin 
and Sen. Cruz preened for the cameras as 
a speaker called on the president to “put 
down the Quran”.

 Viewed from abroad, in Paris a Le Monde 
article reminds, “In a democracy, people 
abolish laws by winning the election, not 
with the threat of a government shutdown 
or even a default. It is impossible to 
govern seriously undergoing this type of 
blackmail.” An editorial in the London 
Telegraph addresses the Affordable Care 
Act: “The reality is that the American Right 
has already largely lost the argument . . . it 
stands accused of irresponsible petulance 
by threatening to press the button marked 
‘economic Armageddon’ if it doesn’t get 
concessions.” The Philippine Daily Inquirer 
is blunt: “Let’s just say it: Insurgent 
Republicans have a problem with their 
country’s first black president.”

 It turns out that Sen. Cruz won’t try to 
block the Senate proposal. Maybe now we 
can turn things back over to those who see 
keeping our government open and running 
and able to its bills not as “concessions”, but 
as their job. It’s time to turn it back over to 
those who “actually give a damn about this 
country”.

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

 Conventional wisdom holds that in the recent 
confrontation between Republicans and President 
Obama, the President came out the winner. Certainly 
with the way the press portrayed the confrontation, it 
would be easy to draw that conclusion, but I suspect 
it’s more nuanced, and that a strong case can be made 
for a Republican victory.

 The standard talking point is that a last-minute 
deal was struck and a catastrophe avoided. But that’s 
a fairy tale. Even if we accept the “catastrophe” claim, 
we have to be honest and acknowledge that the deal simply kicked the can 
down the road. Nothing was avoided; it was just pushed three months out. 
We started with spending and debt as our issues, and we just ended with 
spending and debt as our issues.

 There’s no substantive resolution for either side here, and there’s not much 
reason to believe that middle ground will be found. True, a small group of 
politicians will be selected to negotiate a broader-scope deal, but we’ve already 
had one of those – The Simpson Bowles Commission – but its very reasonable 
recommendations were pronounced DOA by the Whitehouse. Why will it be 
different this time?

 The Republicans certainly took heavy heat. Even in what was portrayed 
as a conciliatory address at the signing of the funding bill last night, the 
President reminded us how “unnecessary” and “destructive” this was to our 
economy. Everyone read between the lines and knew he was jabbing at the 
Republicans, but admittedly it paled in comparison to comments made by the 
Democrats during the negotiations. Republicans were routinely portrayed as 
“anarchists” (Harry Reid), “arsonists” (Nancy Pelosi), and “hostage takers” 
(Jay Carney, et. al.). The reality that we face massive deficits and a $17 trillion 
debt was ignored by the mainstream press, so the people who tried to stop this 
inter-generational theft were labeled as the bad guys.

 Yeah, Republicans took the blame, and the popular perception is therefore 
that they lost this battle. But I’m not so sure. Republicans actually did pretty 
well in this, despite the inability of their nominal leader, Speaker Boehner, to 
communicate affectively. In fact, our results look even better given the lack 
of messaging.

 Republicans have kept one of the main conservative issues in the public’s 
consciousness, and they forced the President to play defense. Remember, 
the President had hoped to push through a number of other issues, but he’s 
been forced to focus on Obamacare’s defects and the deficit and to accept the 
continuation of the sequester.

 The deal he and Harry Reid hammered out last night keeps sequestration 
in effect, doesn’t advance Obamacare one inch beyond the monumental 
implosion it is currently suffering, and many of today’s headlines reminded 
readers of what this will add to the debt.

 Republicans have also been able to strip away much of the fear that 
Democrats have traditionally been able to attach to the idea of spending cuts 
and reductions in the size of government. Remember the claims of imminent 
disaster attached to sequestration and to the government “shut down”. The 
nation entered sequestration (is still in it, as a matter of fact) and experienced 
a “shut down” without the world ending, unemployment skyrocketing, 
the economy collapsing or the market tanking. Not much bad happened, 
and Americans noticed. Republicans also made considerable headway in 
explaining that a default really wasn’t going to occur, nor will it 3 months 
from now. 

 Lastly, I believe a strong case can be made that the Republicans will find 
themselves emboldened and will take a stronger, but smarter, stance at the 
next round of negotiations. And that won’t be a bad thing for the nation. 
Everyone agrees the current course is unsustainable. Today, we actually have 
more hope that real change will come to Washington and the future prospects 
for this country, and that is a good thing – something Republicans can feel 
justified pride in achieving.

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance writer and has spoken 
to several civic and religious organizations on cultural and moral issues. He 
lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and 3 children and is active in the 
community. He can be reached gregwelborn2@gmail.com 

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