Whither Decency

George Will and I disagree and many things. We share a deep love of baseball, but he tends to be a good bit more conservative than I am. But from time to time I really resonate with his writing. Such was the case with his columnat the end of the latest Newsweek, entitled "Now, Defining Decency Down".

He writes about the "absurd" explanantion Larry Craig gave for the collapse of his carrer as a Senator. My daughter's take on this kind of apology is, "do they think we're stupid?" (Wills also notes the "almost unfathomable" sadness in Craig's unraveling.) He comments as well on Mitt Romney's responce, which Wills dscribes as "devoid of human sympathy".

Wills has caustic comments to make about Alberto Gonzales' leave taking of the office of Attorney General. I have been amazed for some time that this man was retained in this critical position in our government. Wills says that Gonzales leaving demonstrated his unfitness for the office, especially his statement that his worst days as Attorney General would have been better than his father's best days. Wills: "This implicit disparagement of his father's life of responsibility andd self-sufficiency turns conservatism inside out. It is going to take conservatism a while to recuperate from becoming associated with such people".

In his last paragraph Wills talks of the issues around the 18 year old contestant in the Miss Teen South Carolina pagent. After describing what happened with her question, Wills says:

Although there was not a shred of news value in it, Fox News and CNN played the
tape of her mortification, and by last Friday YouTube''s presentation of it had generated
more than 10 million hits. The casual cruelty of publicizing her discomfort, and the
widespread entertainment pleasure derived from it, is evidence that standards of
decency are evolving in the wrong direction.

Reading this, I was convicted of our showing of this video in our office last week.

Wills is on to something in this column that is important for all of us. I am impressed that one would wrestle in such a forum with issues of decency and morality.

Jimmy

Labor Day

Julie and I spent a good bit of the Labor Day weekend at our cabin in Dahlonega. Julie was actually there all weekend, trying to get over some combination of cold and sinus problems. I went up late friday, left Saturday evening to go to a wonderful gathring that included low country boil and some great bluegrass music, and came back for church. After church I went back up and we stayed over until today. It's always a good place to be, and this weekend there was nobody at the camp, so it was really quiet. No rain, which was nice in some ways, but the falls are pitiful. They say the rivers in the state are at historic lows for water levels. It sure seems that way in Lumpkin County.

When I am at the cabin I almost always go hiking late morning. On this trip I went twice, and you could really see the changing of the seasons taking place. I know. It's still summer. And there was enough heat to cause me to sweat pretty good on my hikes. But nothing like a month ago. And the leaves on the tulip poplars are turning yellow and falling. Other leaves are beginning to drop. Summer camp has been over for several weeks, and the pool is drained for the season. It is clear that autumn is just around the corner.

It is common for me to get a touch of melancholy about this time every year,and I was aware of that this weekend. I began to be tuned in to this pattern some years ago. Some of it has to do with the fact that summer is ending. Newspaper cartoons this weekend were filled with jokes about kids realizing theat summer was over and school was about to start. There is some of that in me. More specifically, I realized some years ago that I wa grieving the end of summer camp. My grief was focused mostly on the times that I had been a summer camp counselor. Those were extraordinarily meaningful times for me, and late August meant it was over for that year.

These days I think there is another layer for me, and it has to do with my mortality. I am 59, the age of my father when he died. I can still hike the boundary trail at camp in pretty good time, but I am a long way from the young man who worked as a counselor in the late 60s. My expectation and desire is to live a number of years more, but I am moving into autumn. And winter follows.

This weekend i began to read The Celtic Way of Evangelism, by George Hunter, a fascinating overview of celtic Christianity. Hunteer quotes Thomas Cahill:

Fixity escaped these people, as in the end it escapes us all. They understood, as few have
understoood before or since, how fleeting life is and how pointless to try to hold on to things
or people. ..... The face of the Dying Gaul speaks for them all: each one of us will die, naked
and alone on some battlefield not of our own choosing. After the assassination of John F.
Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was heard to say that to be Irish is to know that in the
end the world will break your heart.

I am part Irish. Perhaps that is the part coming out in these beautiful, bittersweet days.

Jimmy