I Did Not Serve

I did not serve. I didn’t join any military service or any religious order nor go to the peace corp. I grew up, put myself through college and then went to work. There were flirtations with possible officer’s programs. I was “close” for getting into the Air Force Academy (free education), but the psychological test was hard. It asked me whether I would rather go to a dance, watch airplanes land and take off or stay at home and read. There are five thousand things I would rather do than the three, but I had to choose one of the above. I may also have missed out because I was a little color blind.

Somewhere after my nineteenth birthday, I realized I had no desire to be a pilot. That was also when we found out that a hot war in “Indo China” was brewing. I was in the Army ROTC at the time and was fast realizing that the Army and all its chicken shit regulations, procedures and protocols were beyond my endurance. I’m sure if a gun were being held to my head I could have made it through to some sort of end, but it saw, closely, that it was not a life I wanted to put up with. A little later I was convinced that the Marines PLC would be the right thing for me. The marines were serious. They were about getting things done, like invading a sovereign state that had not attacked us except on what they considered their land (Halls of Montezuma) and rounding up a bunch of Barbary pirates and getting their own tails whupped (Shores of Tripoli). I’ve always been burdened by knowing our country’s history and the often sorry excuses we had for going to war. These things and a few others, notwithstanding, helped me let the summer experience of the Platoon Leader’s Corp pass me by. But Vietnam was looming and right before I graduated from college I dashed down and got myself admitted to the Air Force OTS. The week before I was to join up, my daddy called me and told me the draft board would let me take the job I’d been offered at Texas Instruments – it had engineer somewhere in the name. We were going to make a giant computer that the military envisioned itself using. Later, I got a high lottery number and then passed by on one side or the other of the draft net.

Daddy didn’t serve either, except as a farmer and navy base builder. He was too old for WWII anyway – in his thirties. His father before him did not serve, being born during the end of the Civil War and thus too old for any twentieth century war to end all wars. His father, however, was prime to be conscripted into the “saw bones” brigade – doctors who followed the troops and relieved the survivors of bloody remnants. But he hid out. He spent the early 1860s somewhere in the countryside of South Alabama or Mississippi and occasionally made a baby with his wife, who told no one where he was. Later, in Texas, he gave service to those he chose and contracted typhoid and died, having a post mortem declaration that he had “served” his community.

Perhaps none of my direct ancestors fought in wars, in the last millennium. I have no record of any doing so on my mother’s side either. There was a cousin who went native, like in “The Heart of Darkness”, and some record of a great uncle of my grandmother being some sort of officer in the Confederacy.

I probably would fight a war that put my family in harm’s way. I am convinced that none of the wars fought since I was aware (say 1948) were worth what they cost. I believe that the people who died there died in vain. The wars were not in my best interest or in the interest of the United States of America. They were pitiful attempts to prove some sort of point like – “We have to make a stand”, “If we don’t attack, they will think we have no stomach for war”, “If Saigon falls, so will Manila, Bangkok, etc.”

I know that we, as the richest nation need to defend ourselves. I don’t know the full argument yet – maybe I’ll work it out later. But for now, I am trying to find out how to identify roadside bombs before they blow up “our troops”. I do not believe as some do that those who choose to be warriors should pay the penalty for the leaders who send them to war.

Making Jesus Come Back

Though this topic warrants many books and will, perhaps, not play out in the lifetimes of any reading this, I must address it. I grew up on the edge of the controversy – when will Jesus come again and how will he come? My family always said, not withstanding all the preachers who came and went and how many radio preachers my grandmother sent money to,- “we don’t know; we can’t know; anyone is a fool to say they know.” They had bible verses to back this up. Notwithstanding, there was a print of a painting on Granny Hicks’ wall at all the places she lived in my lifetime that depicted the event, replete with 1950ish trains, planes and automobiles, driverless, crashing. Some in white raiment were rising from graves and mothers were leaving their meal preparation to join a Raphaelite Jesus in the sky. The caption below read “The Rapture”. This is the “event”, from a set of Bible fragments along with the writings of a few preachers who arose from Protestantism in the same era as Shakers, Mormons, Brethren, etc. (the common thread is making the teachings of Jesus secondary to later revelations), that became first a cottage industry, the money machine along with border radio and finally the mega million dollar financial colossus that includes Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Ken Lahey (of “Left Behind” fame). Personally, I don’t know how the “end times” will play out, but this late-arriving, science fiction-like scenario does not sound like what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of His Kingdom.

So why do I worry about such? These people are hijacking “Evangelical Christianity” which I once thought I was part of. A couple of years ago, on NPR, I heard an interview of “leading fundamentalists” discussing their excitement that the number of influential people now in the US government are bible believing Christians – meaning “dispensationalists” they explained to Diane Rehm. Diane had not a clue, it seemed, to what they were talking about. This group claim as their leaders, a kind old soul - Billy Graham and frothy-mouthed John Hagee of San Antonio. The Sunday before the 2006 Texas gubernatorial election, Rick Perry, our good old boy governor, was in splashy evidence at Hagee’s church. I first came to know of Hagee back in the eighties when his daughter by his first wife was trying to make it on $100/month living expenses at Baylor (I knew one of her suite-mates). He was at the time sporting a new wife and a new church and developing his, what I call, “how can I make it ready for Jesus to come back?” theology. This approach includes using part of his millions to buy Russian Jews plane tickets to the West Bank while some of his fellow travelers are searching for a Red Heifer that must be found in order to rebuild the Third Temple in Jerusalem. AND it is this theology that drove Tom Delay’s and, perhaps, Bush’s Middle East policies. W is not your regular old Methodist.

The web is full of information about dispensationalist ideas and I encourage readers to look at a little of what our foreign policy is being based on. What does the God of Abraham think when he sees this scurrying around to force his hand? Hint – I will not be in the battle at Har Megiddo and I think too that Jesus will not be there as some nouveaux Leonidas slashing Arabs and effete San Franciscans, but will continue with his gift that is truth.

My start

From stone-bridge.blogspot.com credits to Jim Mcculloch, Austin TX.

The Texas Persimmon, Mexican Persimmon, Black Persimmon, Chapote, Diospyros texana as shown above in a picture I stole and modified, was the form from which I sought to further my striking power as a boy. Yokes, Ys, forks or bifurcations that fit my hand and provided support for “live” rubber and leather for sending rocks toward some imagined enemy or prey was what I sought in waking hours as well as dreams. This perfect creation, provided uniquely by the gray, slick-barked shrubby tree, became a symbol of goals set, the focus for found art I could sculpt further, the medium through which I could hone a grip and construction skills. I could, through this wild activity of making, grow toward becoming – an engineer, an artist, a biologist, a builder - to be what I do.

Thus, it is from this perspective I write - the perspective of the persimmon of my youth. It is the perspective of the search, but not the search for the answer – it is the search for the tool, the medium and/or the material from which I hew the object of art, of usefulness, and/or of innovation. All this to cleave toward hope and possibilities.

My topics will mostly focus on religion, politics, human industry and money with some diversions to talk about the glories of parenthood and of being an “observer of life” as my wife describes me.