Simon Cowell, Prophet?

The word prophet always brings to my mind the image of Moses on the mountain covered by dark clouds, the light from idol fires burning below as he emerges from the mist with his tablets in hand. The scene is dramatic one, no question about it. The biblical prophets always came to show the Israelites God’s will and plan, their messages divinely inspired words to lead the Hebrews back to God and prepare the way for the coming of Christ.

But I have always loved Moses for his question to God before all that drama. Before they even get out of Egypt he asks: “And by the way, Who do I tell them You Are?” God’s answer in so many ways was an essential piece of knowledge that humanity needed before Moses’ big moment on Mt. Sinai. God’s answer tells us not His will or plan for humanity, but something about who He is. “I am Who am.” His answer to Moses is not just a name never heard before, it is the key to the authority for the Law that will follow in the Exodus.

That God is the source of all rights, all being, all every dog gone good thing out there seems to have been all but forgotten. Our Government is the source of Rights, Science the Source of Being, and Individual Pursuit of Happiness the source of every dog gone good thing there is out there. It seems we need a modern prophet, not to show us God’s will, but to remind us Who God is.

Could that modern prophet be Simon Cowell, the angry American Idol Judge? I will not go so far as to say ol’ Simon is divinely inspired, but I do think he has served humanity by helping us to relearn something about God.

The road to Idol has single handedly made an enormous joke out of the relative principal "I think therefore I am." Whether you find the scenes uproariously funny or have a sinking feeling out of pity for the delusional idiot, you do know he is an idiot. We have all learned on Idol that our Kindergarten Teacher was a liar: You can not be anything you want to be. Thinking or hoping you are a good singer does NOT make it so. And Thank God we don’t have to make an ass of ourselves in public to learn this lesson. We can sit back and watch others learn it for us.

And what are we learning:

In a world where there are few standards, American Idol has taught an entire generation of viewers that objective standards still exist. How incredibly ironic it is through music, and pop rock music at that. Simon in his no nonsense, honest criticism helps us to see that there are all sorts out there: The incredibly nice and gracious, but just plain awful singer; the nasty egomaniac, really awful singer who refuses to accept the fact that he stinks gracefully; the hard worker giving it 100% who is better than average but just doesn’t quite have the natural talent needed to compete; and the group that eventually makes it to the finals: Those with natural talent, passion and the desire to work hard.

We know that the winner will be a somewhat relative choice. When it has been narrowed down to the finalist, personal preference becomes the standard. But all the shows from the road teach us there is an objective standard for a “good singer.” Moral relativism has a reputation for being a slippery slope, but be careful. Objectives can be just as slippery. If we can accept that a hope and belief simply can not make something true, what else might we begin to ponder? And where exactly does that natural talent come from. It is clear that it is not a mere result of hard work. It is not a huge leap from Natural Talent to the term God Given.

Moral relativism seeks to destroy standards and God. I am not sure which is the primary goal, but it is the chicken/egg scenario: If God exists, then there must be objective standards AND if there are objective standards, they must come from somewhere, or Someone. In short: Objective Standards will eventually lead us back to God as the source. Relativists know this, but so do I.

So thank you Simon Cowell. Thank you for reminding us that there are objective standards. Thank you for teaching us that our beliefs do not make things true. Thank you for being the voice from the Desert or the Mountain leading us back to God.

And just think, every time we grab our ears and close our eyes at the feeble attempts of the poor idiots trying to achieve that objective standard, we are awfully close to the purpose and posture of prayer.

The Beauty of Truth

I am Catholic, with a capital C. I taught Catholic Theology at the high school and middle school levels when I was being paid to work. I remember explaining my job to my first group of students: “Faith consists of two main components: Your personal relationship with God and the truths of the Catholic Church passed down through the ages. I can not teach you the first component, nor will I try. I can not give you a grade on your personal relationship with God. What I will do is allow part of our time together to be dedicated to opportunities for you to build that relationship: confession, prayer, talks on aspects of spirituality especially from those with religious vocations. The second component I can teach. The majority of this class will be spent learning Catholic Doctrine. You are welcome to agree or disagree with the church, but you will learn what she has to teach. It will be your understanding not your opinion of the church’s teaching on matters of faith and morals on which you will be graded. I do not even wish to hear your opinion until the end of this semester when you will know enough to give an opinion.”

It was a good first day. Being not that much older than my students and looking about their age, I knew I was going to have trouble establishing my authority. It was a good start. I spent the first few months of class teaching them basic philosophy: Arguments for the existence of God, arguments for the existence of Objective Truth. I taught them basic doctrine they should have learned years before: The Ten Commandments, The matter, form and institution of the Sacraments, The Theological and Cardinal virtues, the Seven deadly sins.

Then I began the subject matter at the heart of the class, Morality. I started to explain the Church’s teaching on abortion. It was a disaster. I spent the entire period defending the church, they attacking her. Like a mad man who expects different results from doing the same thing over and over, I relived first period for the rest of the day. This was not going to work.

I got a copy of A Man for All Seasons from Blockbuster; while they watched it over the course of the next week, I spent every minute of every day and night coming up with a plan.

At the start of the new week, I handed them all the instructions for a project. Each person in the class had been assigned a moral issue. They were to do a ten part research project around their issue: 1) Find 100 published statements about your issue and write them out on index cards with the source. 2) Divide your cards into fact vs. opinion. 3) Find the Ten Commandment that is at the heart of your issue and explain why. 4) Find the virtue or virtues that pertain to your issue and explain why. 5) Find the Seven Deadly Sin which pertains to this issue and explain why. 6) Create a scenario involving this issue and carry out the consequences to the absolute farthest conclusion. 7) Explain the Church’s teaching on this issue. 8) Write an essay on whether or not you agree with the Church basing your opinion on facts, not opinions. 9) Meet with the other students in the class researching the same issue and design a way to teach the Church Doctrine on this issue. 10) As a group, teach the class Church Doctrine on this issue.

The only advice I gave them was this: If Br. James gave you an algebra test with all the answers and asked you simply to show your work, you would work from the assumption that he had given you the correct answers. I suggest you do the same with this project. After all your research, you may prove that the church is wrong just as you may find that Br. James had given you a wrong answer. But it would be wise to start with the assumption that both Brother and the Church know more than you do and go from there.

And they were off. When the time came for the presentations, I was utterly amazed at what they had come up with: A capital punishment trial based on actual transcripts from a real case, a game set up to prove how racism stacks the deck, lessons on abortion and euthanasia where the class sat listening instead of attacking. I got to play the Devil's advocate: "What if I don't believe it is a baby?" To which they responded: "And I suppose if you didn't think it was raining outside you wouldn't get wet?" Or, "And if you didn't believe in the Law of Gravity? Go ahead and jump out the window, Miss Barvick, and see if those laws are affected by your opinion." I have to admit, it was GLORIOUS to watch.

In the written projects, only one student from all the sections tried to make an argument against the church’s teaching. I couldn't help but laugh at his conclusion which stated that his opinion was utterly baseless, but he still couldn't accept Church teaching. At least he was honest.

The beauty of the Catholic Church is that she defends herself. If we approach her teachings with reason and with an open mind, we will not find her in ere. And so I had lied to my students that first day. I had said that I would teach them doctrine but not relationship. I kept my promise to provide them opportunities to build their individual relationships with God, which is for another story. But I had not taught them the Doctrine of the Church passed down through the ages. The doctrine taught itself. And that is the beauty of Truth. It does not really need defenders, just presenters.

Never Again? A true account of my own journey from ignorance to the New York Times

I cried when someone told a Polish Joke in third grade. It was not because they were making fun of me. Whoever it was wasn’t making fun of anyone in our class, just telling a joke. I cried because my dad loved books and he loved being Polish.

According to my mom, he did not love being Polish until after his grandma died. She had come off the boats and never even spoke English. After she died, my dad became very interested in his heritage. The summer after the Joke, we went to Chicago to the Polish Heritage museum. We also had one bumper sticker on our car EVER. My dad hated bumper stickers because they always started peeling and made the car look trashy. But he broke his own rule, and the cars in line behind him at stop lights could read: Happiness is Having a Polish Pope.

My dad also loved history, especially of WWII. He watched every documentary he could find from our choice of four television stations. I loved Hogan’s Heroes, but the documentaries gave me a sickish feeling in my stomach. The sound of those old planes flying still bothers me. The low continuous drone bothered me more than the explosions that came after bombs dropped out of the bottom of the planes in the black and white clips.

The weekend before the Joke I had been flipping through one of my dad’s many books. I found a picture of something and asked what it was. Turns out I had found a picture of a gas chamber. It wasn’t the graphic picture of skeletal bodies piled high. I think it was a picture of two German children playing on a pipe or something. I don’t remember exactly, I just remember the conversation that followed.

My dad explained what the gas chambers were and what the Nazis had done to the Jews, Gypsies, and Poles. I had heard of the Nazis and the Holocaust, but I had never put much thought into it. I knew of Anne Frank hiding in her basement and of Hitler’s mustache, but I had never wrapped my mind around it.

My dad was more the silent intellectual type, but I don’t remember him ever being too busy to answer a question; he never talked down to you, not even if you were seven. He told me that the first line of attack in the arsenal of evil was manipulation of the language. He said that in the German Children’s fairy tales, where we have a wicked witch, they had a wicked old Jew. He explained that the Germans grew up thinking Jews were not really human. After they accepted the idea that it was okay to get rid of them, it wasn’t a huge effort to accept that the Gypsies and Poles weren’t worthy of protection either. And so when I heard the Joke, I cried.

Hitler and I had a long history starting in third grade. He showed up again when I was a senior in high school. I had read The Stranger by Camus and thought the idea of Existentialism made a lot of sense. I admit, I was incredibly thick, but it was not for lack of effort. My dad had been using the term Objective for as long as I could remember, but I just didn’t get it. In a kitchen table talk about The Stranger, I confessed that I didn’t really see how someone could be wrong if they THOUGHT they were right. I chose Hitler as my example: How could Hitler go to Hell when he thought he was doing something good? My thickness was not for lack of effort by Dad either. “What is right or wrong is not dependent on what you think. Hitler’s feelings on the matter can not change the reality that what he did was evil.” I still didn’t get it. I know now I was struggling with culpability vs. objectively wrong, but then it bothered some bone made up of a warped understanding of justice. I decided I still thought Existentialism was for me.

I worked at a nursing home answering phones on Saturday mornings. The following Saturday, my dad showed up at work with a bag of donuts. This was impressive for two reasons, he showed up and he spent money. Ours was a family who brought our own popcorn to the movies (the three movies we ever went to before we could pay for our own tickets), who never got to pick something out in the grocery line, and who ate non-sugar generic cereal for breakfast.

He gave me the donuts and sat down in a chair facing my desk. He had come to talk about Existentialism. He explained who Sartre was and how his ideas had played out in real life. He talked about the horrible atrocities which flow from philosophical ideas not rooted in objective truth.

I guess I should mention that at this point in my life, my dad and I were not close. If he were not my dad, I am pretty sure he would have hated me. I was horrible most of the time. He had told me once that I sure knew a lot for someone who didn’t know anything. I would say that just about summed it up. But that morning in the nursing home something happened. I still did not understand Objective Truth. I could give you the definition but it hadn’t made it through my thick skull yet. But on that day, for the first time in years, I thought that maybe I was wrong and he was right. Even though I didn’t get it, I didn’t feel it, I had not made the emotional commitment to Objective Truth, I trusted his ability to think it through over my own.

This willingness to search for truth from the starting point that certain authorities knew more than I did followed me through my Catholic Liberal Arts College education. I began with the assumption that the Church was right and it was my job to make my brain get it. I assumed that certain things were objectively true whether I believed them to be or not.

Now, if you think I was being self deprecating when I called myself thick, you will see that is not the case. As a history major and a senior in college, Hitler finally smashed through the defenses of my ignorance. I am not jesting when I say it was just a few months before graduation. It was a class on historical research. As an example of how you move from documents to written history, the professor used the Nazi documentation of the concentration camps.

I had come a long way in my understanding of evil. But I am being completely honest when I tell you, that until I saw those documents, I had really believed that the holocaust was an evil consequence of war. I knew it had happened, I believed it had happened, but I didn’t know, or chose not to see, that it was a planned operation. Hitler didn’t need to get rid of all those Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and Catholics in order to ensure the success of his military operations, as I had always somehow managed to believe. He chose to. It was an operation not of desperation but a systematic, calculated and documented attempt to eliminate sub-humans. I told you I was thick.

And then a whole new can of worms was opened that is still squirming around in my head to this day. How did an entire population of Germans go along with this insanity? I hear the Conservative talk show hosts talk about the threats to liberty in the legislation being rushed through without being read by our enlightened congress. I have seen the manipulation of language in the abortion and euthanasia struggles. And I wonder if we are all being encouraged to be conspiracy theorists. My thick brain refuses to open up to the fact that America could be a place of atrocities. But then today I read a quote from a Justice of our Supreme Court from the New York Times:

I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

And I see two German Children playing on a pipe. I see the piles of skeletal corpses piled just outside the city limits, I see the Jews marching from their homes with a few possessions in hand to a gated ghetto. And I hope the majority of Americans aren’t as thick headed as I. I hope it doesn’t take years of being faced with the facts to finally get it. I pray we never have to live through the past again, but something, some bone formed by my father’s understanding of justice, tells me I am a fool if I think it isn’t possible.

The Reality: You Still Never Know

I had a dream about the movie incident. I woke with my heart pounding and sweaty palms as if I'd actually been in a confrontation.

I keep hoping the theater was dark enough that Marlene didn't see me sink down in my seat with my eyes just peeking out over my popcorn. I keep imaging it was crowded enough that she didn't suspect I was pretending. I hung around looking for something in the seat after the movie, so I wouldn't have to file out next to her. I stayed far enough back to keep a few people between us until the mob from our theater could mix with a few others in the main lobby.

I mumbled something about my keys, but I could tell by her look she didn't believe me. There isn't a place dark enough or crowded enough to hide the fact that I am a coward and we both know it. It was so stupid really, I've known Marlene for years. She wouldn't have expected me to actually DO anything. But how can she forgive me for something as pathetic as pretending not to know her. How can I forgive myself?

I know that big fat slob has no idea what his juvenile outburst cost. But in his defense, how was he to know the girl with the loud laugh was the only friend of a pusillanimous pig. Well, at least she was my friend. Probably not anymore if she is smart anyway.

I think I will try and go back to sleep. I like the other ending better.

Diary entry: July 4, 2 am. Josie Ambrose

You Never Know

I went to the movies with an old friend. We hadn't been out in quite awhile and talked like school girls, eating our popcorn and candy. The lights dimmed and we settled in to enjoy a few hours of willing suspension of disbelief.

The first preview was for an action film I'd probably never see, the second was obviously designed for the tween crowd, and the third promised to be an hilarious chick flick. At one slap stick point in the trailer my friend laughed in her old familiar way.

It is the kind of laugh that rings of pure joy. It is short and full and leaves sparkles in the air. When we were in high school plays, it was the kind of laughter you prayed would fill the theater. Up on stage, lights so bright all beyond the set floor was darkness. But when the audience had a few laughers like her, you knew you were not alone. You knew you were making a connection and that all the work was worth it.

The feature started and though it was not billed as a comedy, some of the scenes were pretty darn funny. My friend's laugh is infectious and made my smile widen. About twenty minutes into the film we saw a commotion in the front. A big man was moving from his center seat to the isle. He headed toward the exit, then stopped and turned his huge frame toward the back of the theater. He pointed toward my friend and literally shouted, "I WANT YOU TO KNOW YOU NOISY *ITCH, YOU ARE THE REASON I AM LEAVING."

Even in the darkness of the theater, I knew her cheeks were burning red, I felt her heart sink. I jumped from my seat sending my popcorn to the floor. She reached for my arm, but I was already gone. I ran down the isle and out the exit. I spotted him ahead and sprinted toward him.

"Sir." I yelled, "Excuse me sir?" He stopped and turned around to glare at me. I walked the last few feet to face him. "Excuse me," I began my heart pounding in my chest, "But I was just wondering how you would feel when I told you that you had just embarrassed and insulted a girl dying of cancer. A girl who has been too weak for months to get dressed, let alone go out to the movies. That you called someone's daughter, sister, wife and friend a *itch for doing exactly what the doctor had ordered."

I was pulsing with adrenaline and tears filled my eyes. I do not enjoy confrontations. His hard angry look had fallen, and he began to twist his hands together. "Tell her...I mean..." he stammered.

I looked him square in the eye and said, "I did not say it was true, I just asked you how you'd feel." And I turned and walked away.

Diary entry: July 3. Josie Ambrose.

The Homeschool Why

Contrary to public perceptions, I do not home school my children for lack of another alternative. Within blocks of my house are fine public, private and Catholic schools. I have looked objectively at these schools and can find no fault with their test scores, teachers, safety, structures, curricula or student populations. They have small classroom sizes, a plethora of extracurricular activities, exceptional parental involvement and services for both the gifted and L.D. child. Unlike some areas of our city, state and nation, those in our area are blessed with a large variety of excellent educational choice.

I do not home school my children because I think they are far behind or above their peers. I do not hope to keep my children sheltered from people and ideas different from my own. Nor do I wish to allow them more free time to pursue sports, dance, drama, music or any other dream they may have.

The reason I home school. The first, last and most important reason is because I like being around my kids. They are not perfect and sure, they drive me nuts sometimes. But last time I checked, that could be said about kids in school as well. I do not mean to suggest that people who home school like their kids more than those who choose not to. I actually didn't even say I liked my kids, though I do, what I said is I like being around my kids.

I am a quantity person through and through. Always have been probably always will be. No, I don't collect things. I tried once to collect pigs and ended up with two. That is not what I mean. My appetite is satisfied more by a big dish of mediocre ice-cream than a spoonful of Gelatti. My style is accomplished with six pairs of cheap shoes rather than one expensive pair. I like to spend hours on the phone not say nor hear pithy words of wisdom. I like my drinks in a tall glass.

So, it makes sense that with regard to my children, for me, more is how I like it. Even on those days when the quality suffers, I feel fulfilled.

I also adore childhood. I loved my own and love seeing the world again through the eyes of my children. I have spent most of my life trying to live in the present with little success. When the past and future stretch so much farther, it is hard to keep your eye on the now. I still have a hard time looking at my own present for very long. But with my kids, ah, that is different. I know how quickly childhood passes, how much they change from day to day. Somehow there is still not as much pressure to avoid missing part of my own middle aged life, but I don't want to miss a second of theirs.

Wanting to be around my kids more than being away from them may make me a glutton for punishment to some, selfish, I am sure, to others. What I seem to others is something over which I have no control. What I am... is happy.

Humility

Have you ever decided to do something for another, your intention being simply to make them smile? You find such pleasure in the time, treasure or talent you put forth to bring your idea to fruition: plan a party, write a poem, find the perfect gift.

You picture the reaction with giddy anticipation; childlike belief that it will be received with as much joy as it is being given. You horde it for awhile, but eventually it bursts forth, a shaken soda, to be shared with a third party.

And like a bald tire on a rusty old bicycle, you are deflated: your intentions misunderstood, your efforts mocked. Your gift twisted and warped before your very eyes into a self-centered offering of gaudy costume jewelry.

Try as you might to taste the sweetness from whence it was conceived, your mouth is filled with bitter roots instead.