Michael Krahn : The Ascent to Truth

 

The Beanery is a classy little restaurant, especially for this town, but it has terrible music.  I am subjected to Celine Dion or some such thing – some epic-ballad singer who sounds and probably looks more or less like all the others.  I’m sure she’s the best combination of looks and voice that those who put her on the radio and will ride her coat tails to the top could find… and she was probably found in some God-forsaken American Idol-type "talent” search.
 
Cue the beat track…something funky now.  This is the new muzak and that to which I, as a sometime musician, am to aspire to if I want to live in a mansion on a hill overlooking my over-amused and entertainment abused constituency.  I will be their king; my music will be the air they breathe.  I will rule their conscious and sub-conscious minds, until all monies either given or received make their way to my coffers.  The poor peasants won’t even know they’re paying me, so ubiquitous will I be.  I will be a corporation unto myself.  I will be both head and body, but I will never find my soul. 
 
Robby
 
Many cars go by the window I am looking out of.  Lots of Mustangs, lots of Saturns.  People pass too.  People in green tracksuits; people with winter coats and hats; people who look homeless and some who look merely poor and one wanderer who looks lost on purpose.  Robbie walks by, delivering his newspapers.  Its no wonder he’s so fit, he walks endlessly from one end of this town to the other nearly every day of the year.  Somewhere along the way Robbie lost a good chunk of his intellectual capacity – or maybe he was born that way, I don’t know him well enough to know which.  I wonder how I could ask him – "Hey Robbie, have you always been this way or were you….?" yeah, which word to use next…  And he’d look at me with his sincere and perpetually beaming and happy face and ask what I’m talking about.
 
Robbie must be pushing 60 by now, and for as long as I’ve been in this town he’s been on a sidewalk somewhere faithfully delivering the local paper – always happy, always greeting the people he passes on his way.  I wonder what he was like as a younger man and as a child.  I’m certain an entire Forrest Gump-like novel could come of asking him, if only there was time to write it. 
 
Towels or Curtains?

 
Across the street, in the apartments above the bus station, the tenant uses beach towels for curtains.  One is flat burgundy and the other displays the heroic looking front forks of a Harley Davidson motorcycle and the head of a wolf bathed in the blue glow of a full moon.  What am I to make of the juxtaposition of these images?  A wolf bathed in blue moonlight, whose head is bigger than an entire motorcycle; a motorcycle crudely drawn behind the wolf and moon that appears to be near photo quality.  Maybe there is no message in this art.  Art?  I’m pondering a Harley Davidson beach towel for goodness sake… There isn’t nearly as much to say about the flat burgundy towel/curtain except that the owner of that apartment must have considerably less interest in wolves, blue moons, and motorbikes. 
 
There are small chimes above the bike-moon-wolf curtain/towel and I immediately wonder if the tenants ever point a fan at those chimes to make them sing.
 
The facade of the bus stop below the apartments hasn’t been updated since sometime in the 1970’s. 

 

Although I’ve lived here for a good part of my life, I’ve never been inside that bus station.  You know, I’ve never even taken a bus that wasn’t specifically chartered.  It’s amazing how many places you never set foot in even though they are familiar to you from the outside.  Bus stops, small businesses, bars, and hardware stores – how do they all survive?  Although I’ve tried to get a grasp of how many people are on this earth, my mind has trouble conceiving it.  Try it: imagine 6 people you know and then imagine about a billion more people standing behind each one of them.  Its difficult isn’t it, but it gives us an idea of the power of demographics and the ways in which we arrange ourselves into visible and invisible tribes. 
 
Promise Keepers ™

 

The largest crowd I’ve ever been a part of was a gathering of men at a Promise Keepers event in Pontiac, Michigan at the Silverdome.  There were about 70,000 men there for the expressed purposes of reclaiming their manhood and taking their proper places as the heads of their families…or something like that.  If you’ve never been to a Promise Keepers event, let me describe it to you.  (Keep in mind that I was a much younger man when I attended and my observations might be a little different if I was to attend the same event today.  Nevertheless…)
 
A Promise Keepers event is a multi-day pre-game rally speech, tuned for and delivered to the man who loves football and wrestling (and baseball…and basketball…and…).  Oh how we sang and embraced that weekend, not out of sincere love for our fellow men but because there were those around us who were willing to hug and if we didn’t hug back, what did that say about us?  Were we hypersensitive homophobes unwilling to admit even the shallowest tinge of brotherly love?  So it just seemed easier to reciprocate when embraced so we would not be castigated…as if hugging total strangers was a mark that we were finally becoming that sensitive hero-man that every woman desires…as if random attempts at intimacy would push that first icy domino into the second and so on until we were giant thawed lumps of emotional accessibility. And before we knew it the miles and miles of emotional barrier dominoes would fall, one after another, sweeping away our emotional bondage, sexual deficiencies, and eradicating the wussy-like, limp-fisted "leadership" we had unknowingly been subjecting our families to.  It didn’t work for me.  Can’t they set these things up with "guys on the verge of an emotional breakdown" over there and the rest of us "I’m doing just fine, thanks" guys over here?  Is it really necessary to subject those of us who are secure enough in our manhood to the sobbing embraces of some emotionally manipulated former running back?
 
The endless football and baseball metaphors were really too much.  I mean the first couple "worked" for me but after the third metaphor by the fifth speaker of the day was on its way I had long since tuned out.  "Life… is like a football game…" followed by "You see, life is like a baseball game…", men everywhere salivating at the impending payoff: a spiritual lesson as they’ve never heard it before, all wrapped up in a sports metaphor.  Genius!  How could no one have thought of this before?  Really, the last time I heard such wisdom was in the company of an intellectual giant who started many of his life lesson stories with the metaphor "Life is like a box of chocolates…" 
 
Is this how to get a bunch of men excited about their spiritual lives?  God only asks that we "consult the playbook" before we "throw the ball" and if we do we’re sure to "score a touchdown" and presumably perform some sort of victory jive dance.  Well dumb it down a little more my friend because I do believe you’re getting through to me.
 
Where is the Promise Keepers for non-sports-addicts, where the keynote speaker starts his talks with something like "Christ is the medium AND the message…"?  Some thoughtful songwriter, reflecting on God from the trenches of life, could do the music.  I don’t need a former athlete or Christian celebrity to open my eyes to something I’ve never seen before; books, good music, and deep personal relationships already do that for me.  I want to be challenged in both my intellect and my spirit.  I don’t want to be pumped too quickly full of spiritual helium in an emotional moment, knowing that I cannot sustain the pressure of the air and waiting to pop a few weeks later.  I’ve been on this flight before.  The reality is that my balloon pops and then I try to tape the hole and get myself blown back up again.  My balloon is almost all tape by now.  Maybe yours is still without holes.  Good for you, I hope it stays that way.
 
Maybe Promise Keepers helps those guys I’ve spoken unkindly about above.  Maybe after the rally, they progress towards a deeper understanding and a more firm faith.  And maybe the next time they attend a rally it will seem a little shallow to them.  Maybe…but I’d really like to see the evidence.