Some Mountains Don't Need To Be Climbed

Along the 22 On A Snowy Day Ride Home From Thanksgiving

My brother and his family extended an invitation to my dad and I to come out to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving and the weekend thereafter. It has been a fairly consistent tradition going back over 25 and some years with some years missed for various reasons. I really look forward to it. I even like the distance required to traverse. It helps make the trip feel like a trek of sorts requiring fortitude. Like ancient mariners or pioneers going out West in search of land and fortune. "Over the bridge and through the woods to grandmother's house we go" type of stuff.

The last couple of times we have gone out, my dad and I have paired up and driven out and back together. My dad has a flexible schedule and I have that following Monday off because is is the first day of deer hunting season in Pennsylvania. And since I work at a rural/suburban school, having that day is pretty much a must. Otherwise, we have a lot of students and staff mysteriously be sick on that day anyway. Deeritis. So, the Monday drive back is often a lot less traffic and we can take our time. I  cherish that time with my dad, knowing the road does not go on forever. It will end in this world and so will we. 

I like having my dad drive because I think it gives me a sense of being a kid again. I don't always want to drive my own life. I like feeling that I have someone looking out for me, that I am not alone in a harsh world. In other words, I need parents. We did a lot of interesting trips as a family until the divorce happened and then it became every man and woman for himself/herself. I recall post-divorce, that the family station wagon just wouldn't go anymore; it was analogous to the family. Despite my mom's boyfriend, the most mechanically-attuned person I have ever known, dutifully working on the car with us every Saturday for almost a year, on the various and sundry repairs, it just wouldn't run anymore. It had, like the family, lost the will to run. We had practically replaced and repaired everything.

I still remember the car passing Inspection down at the Sears in St. Davids, and then promptly dying blocks away with the fresh inspection sticker attached on the windshield. Well, my mom and he broke up, he wasn't my dad, and like most break-ups, things were bad and we went our separate ways. I got used to being fairly cursory to my mom's boyfriends. I figured that they wouldn't last over the long haul, although  some hung around longer than others. Like dudes holding onto a rock below the precipice who eventually lose their grip and fall. It just was a matter of time on the mountain of my mother and her own peculiar madness. In the interim, I did pick-up some great experiences despite the dysfunction. For too long, I had cast them as a cast of losers. Which was profoundly unfair.

One man used to take me to Sixers games and Pan Pizza at Pizza Hut. Another guy hooked me up with a landlord down in West Philadelphia who needed his rentals painted as part of the leases (thus helping me pay for my college tuition), another short-lived dude taught me how to play the guitar or at least to strum some chords.

One particularly brief boyfriend, I saw the terminus on the wall before he did, happened to be dating my mom over Christmas. I decided to buy him Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis because he seemed to be grasping for more meaning in life. I debated buying him the book because I knew that the relationship was doomed. But, the gift had a good effect, the man became a Christian as a result and it was one of those times where I can look back and feel good that I did the right thing regardless of my own prognostications about the duration of the relationship viability. It was a short season yet I was faithful.  

Just a parenthetical note, these blog missives are hardly ever planned. I have an idea and then just start writing. I am often somewhat amused and surprised where they head also. I can sometimes have more of a map where I am going to write. Most of the time, I just start typing. I didn't think that this blog would head this way at all. I am not sure what I was thinking.

Back to my dad and Pittsburgh Thanksgiving vacation. Both on the drive out and back, we avoided the Pennsylvania Turnpike which is like 30 bucks each way. On the way out, we drove mostly on Route 30 until no longer tenable and then hopped on the Turnpike for the last leg of the journey. We both are frugal. He more than me. I have never had to have a budget because being mindful of money is in my bones and comes from not having money for most of my younger years. I had some lean eons. 

On the way back it was through Pittsburgh proper and then 220/22 all the way to Harrisburg. Then, additional roads leading home. The primary reason to avoid the Turnpike was the toll but there are other ancillary benefits. The drive is much more scenic rather than the dull repetition of the mile markers whipping by on the Turnpike. On 220/22, on the way back in particular, the road mainly winds along the mountains rather than over them, often paralleling low points and rivers and creeks. More on that idea in a bit...

These ancient roads go through little towns and hamlets that the interstate bypasses. Even 220/22 has elements of a new roadway. Outside of the bookend cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, most of Pennsylvania is quite rural, although Harrisburg is gnarly mess of the most screwed up road system outside of Philly. I hate driving through it. My dad and I stopped by a diner about an hour West of Harrisburg where the sign outside states something along the lines of being in business since 1958. It was a time-warp with mostly locals on a first-name basis with the waitresses. I enjoy times like this with my dad. He, like most old people tells, the same stories over and over again. However, every so often, a new tidbit on an old story comes out or a new story entirely, dredged out by something that triggered its rediscovery. My dad chewed on his salad for over an hour due to the loss of his molars.

The drive back had its challenging moments of my dad being a hard-headed Kraut, my 21st century reliance on Google Maps and his insistence of reading an old school map, and a particularly vexing incident where his tires were low on air and he wanted to use the falling apart bike pump in the back of his car rather than pay $1.50 for air at the convenience store along the road. By the way, Sheetz had free air as my sister-in-law later informed me. Might come in handy to know that factoid as it did recently for me.  We also narrowly avoided a couple of fender-benders where my dad was inattentive as I was attempting to tell him to avoid encroaching cars. He was listening and not looking. I got a little hot and stressed.  But, all in all, as long as we continue to drive back and out together, it probably makes the most sense for him to drive and for me to navigate, as having a smart phone with Google Maps is often quite a bit more reliable than my dad's memory/maps or my sense of direction.

My relationship with my dad has indeed been a difficult mountain to climb at times in my life. A piece of advice I give to kids about their parents is to realize that they (parents) have strengths and weaknesses, good sides and bad sides, and before being to quick to judge them, wait until you have a few more years and experience the difficulties of adulting before making a final assessment of them. Some things become clearer after the clouds of adolescence burns-off in the afternoon of adulting.

To wit: I recently had some acerbic exchanges on The Onion. They had a fake news story of how Jesus now recants the stuff that he said 2000 years ago and how he is pissed at his Disciples for writing it all down and recording it because he himself no longer believes it. Now, I am not some religious zealot. Although an orthodox Christian, I can usually laugh at myself and even what I believe. But, trifling with the holy is dangerous ground, even if it is a joke. There is a lot of seriousness in satire; I know because I often use humor to make a serious point. So, as is typical, I am one of the few Christians on The Onion feed who will actually say something besides the occasional Fundie Doofus who declares that everyone is going to hell. But, most of the time, Christians steer clear of The Onion as it is typically likely designed to offend sensibilities.   

Well, my comment of being Pro-Orthodox drew a lot of ire and animus. I must enjoy getting scourged and whipped online because I sure seem to get involved in a lot of these scraps. People opine about my intelligence, my education, the state of my soul, all from one post. It is amazing that they know so much on the basis of so little. I have even had to remove my occupation from my Facebook profile because I have had anti-religious fanatics state that I have no business working with kids in a a public school with my belief system. So, I made a dream come true with my occupational listing: I play Power Forward in the NBA. I just don't want to cause my private and public world to collide. It has been a nasty trick of the Liberals to make the tentacles of government encroach upon everything like Kudzu and then use the Separation of Church and State retort. Like telling me to run but then holding my shirt. 

What usually ticks off my respondents, is that I am usually pretty informed about what I am talking about. I have a deep reservoir of knowledge waiting to be tapped and I rarely wade into debates where I know little about. I kind of set people up actually, which is probably unfair. So I read a lot and watch shows like CSPAN 2 BOOK TV. It doesn't necessarily make me intrinsically smarter just quite a bit more informed that the usual evangelical (I use the term to connote orthodoxy which I think is a much better word, as evangelical has a certain set of social and cultural variables that I avoid). The skeptics think I am some religious bozo and then I bring out the big guns. I am usually not insulting though. I avoid name calling and assuming too much. I stay focused on the topic and answer in a coherent and calm manner. I consider it a part of my Christian witness to not extol being a jerk, unlike many of my brethren. I am an online apologist I suppose. 

A couple of younger and angry commentators resorted to the "OK Boomer" rejoinder as if it would paralyze me like a social media scorpion sting. "Boy, never heard that before anywhere from anyone. I am paralyzed." If anything, be original in life. Otherwise, don't bother. Canned responses, like green beans or peas in a can, is just mushy laziness. So, I retooled a critique of their generation and asked them if they wanted a trophy for their astute retort. I admit it was a bit snarky yet the younger generation know-it-alls yapping away need to know old dogs still have some bite. I didn't back down from my original comment and stick my tail between my legs and scamper away. I stood my ground and the dust-up eventually stopped swirling.

So, where did I learn how to relate to skeptics without getting riled? My old man. He makes a lot of statements about religion that I find remarkably shallow for such a smart person, like religion being a tool of the powerful to subjugate the weak. Marxian for sure. But, if he would take the time to even read the Bible for a minute, he would understand that the biblical text often exposes the sins of the mighty and advocates for the powerless. Nietzsche knew that much, and saw the triumph of Christianity as the victory of the the inferior over the superior, by extolling the virtues of weakness versus strength. The slave mentality, he titled it. Or the herd. As Chesterton wisely observed, critics of Christianity accuse Christianity of being too militaristic and then too pacifistic. In other words, they want it both ways--and this another way of saying that perhaps it is true in not just specifics here and there but as an over-arching story and narrative.*

As an aside (to be even-handed): My mom goes the other way into some form of pantheism and loosey-goosey spirituality and I have had far too many arguments with both my parents about our respective belief systems that I could write a book. I fault them for not knowing enough to make the debate even coherent. In other words, they are intellectually lazy about such matters, parroting arguments that they heard somewhere that are specious, shallow, and sometime just stupid. For instance, my mom endorses Hindu-Light and Westernized Karma where the victim needs to be abused by the victimizer to work off some karmic debt of this incarnation. I have called her out on this as a monstrous doctrine. Consider the well-fed cow and starving children in India as an example.

But I have trudged through these mountains of unbelief with my parents. This is not one mountain I can climb any more. It is too exhausting and frustrating. I hike/drive around it. I think this has to be true of many realities in life. Mountain-climbing, while inspirational and cliche and maxim generating, can also be a monumental waste of time and effort. I have come to a place with both of them where I am fully aware of the futility of the debate. They have no desire to change their beliefs, nor do I.

My Reformed belief system doesn't rest on my efforts to coerce people into salvation. That is God's doing. My responsibility is to be faithful and provide a reason for my beliefs. To be an ambassador and not an assador (just made up that word). I can be calm and serene in the face of opposition because I am confident that God can defend himself. And will. Either now or later. In his time and in his way. When Christians act in a harsh, abusive, and asinine manner, there is another word for this: FEAR. They themselves may have internal issues not yet brought to the Cross, and their over-compensation just shows this in spades. Light a candle rather than curse the darkness type of deal.

Heading out to Detroit for Christmas Vacation. I will likely have much to write about upon return. 

* Christianity Today's calling out of Trump's mendacious behavior is a pointer of the prophetic role of the Church to indict the powerful. It was long over-due and should send a message to Trump and his lackeys that some Christian Conservatives, me included, will never kiss his Trumpian assery. Ever. From start to finish of his reign. I knew that is would further divide our country and it has.