Context is Everything

One of the great comedic opportunities of everyday life is overhearing someone, or being overheard, completely out of context. The possibilities are endless. 

As my wife and I sat in a restaurant one morning, she announced to me, at the precise moment our waitress happened by, “He didn’t sleep with me last night—I really hope he sleeps with me tonight.”

            The “I don’t think I was supposed to hear that,” amused-but-quizzical look that appeared on our waitress’s face made me laugh so hard I almost choked on my omelet. She didn’t realize my wife was talking about our cat, Otis.

            Context is everything.

            Another time, I passed by just as an irritated woman snapped into her cellphone, “What do you mean, ‘Is Kyle still in a coma?’ Kyle’s never been in a coma!’”

            I would love to know the context for that one.

            I thought about this recently as I tried to understand and appreciate some of the things Jesus said, because without context I often don’t do a very good job of either one.

            One of his best-known parables is the one about the good Samaritan. For years, I thought of it as a nice story about an unlikely hero. Then I learned a little about how the Jews Jesus was telling to story to really felt about Samaritans. There’s a long territorial and historical backdrop, but suffice it to say that most Jews thought Samaritans worshipped God wrong, were unskilled and uneducated, weren’t true Israelites, and were likely half-breeds, too. One of the worst insults a first-century Jew could hurl at someone was to call them a Samaritan (which the crowds later did to Jesus himself). Maybe the best analogy I can come up with is how many Americans today feel about members of Isis.

            So, Jesus hits the crowd with a story about some very upright priests and ministers who are too busy doing “important” things and so won’t stop to help a man in distress—but a Samaritan who goes above and beyond to show God’s love to a fellow human. The parable had to shock and offend his listeners. 

            It also underscores the completely radical way Jesus presents faith for his followers, something I often and easily lose in much of what he says and does.

            And if accepting and praising a filthy Samaritan wasn’t enough, Jesus goes here, too: No one actually enjoys paying taxes, but in Jesus’ day it was especially hated because of the people who served as tax collectors. The much-hated occupying Roman forces hired your friends and neighbors to collect your cash, and they made their living by gouging you. The Romans didn’t offer a salary and benefits package; tax collectors overcharged you and kept as much of your money as they could. As a result, most of them were wealthy, which further separated them from the general population. They weren’t just disliked because they were IRS agents, they were unanimously reviled as traitors, backstabbers and cheats. 

            So, Jesus makes a point of having meals with and befriending them and even invites one to join his most intimate band of disciples. Again, this had to be shocking and offensive to most everyone. Many of us have grown up thinking of Jesus as the ultimate nice guy, but “shocking and offensive” was often his M.O, as he made room for society’s worst outcasts and forced folks to rethink their lives. It’s a hard lesson, both for first-century types and for us.

            Just a few days ago, I heard a woman I know telling someone something about “exposing myself.” Turns out they were talking about COVID. Context is, indeed, everything.

 

            

This is How my Wife Rolls

So, a few weeks ago my wife agreed to join the board of the Wythe Trace Homeowners Association in the capacity of Secretary in charge of communications and other stuff. At the time, I felt a great disturbance in the force. I knew full well what this meant. My wife was given a task and the authority to complete that task which could only mean one thing—Pam Dunnevant’s skills were about to be released at Death-Com 5, meaning that each night after dinner she would pull out her laptop and get to work recreating the world of homeowner association communications for decades to come.

First, she took a look at the WTHA Facebook page and mumbled, “Oh no…this won’t do.” She went to work redesigning the thing, making it “more fun” Now, the new and improved version has 55 members and ten times more engagement. Then she turned her almost creepy laser focus to the business of creating a newsletter. The inaugural edition of which was sent out last night…The Wythe Trace Times.

I fully admit to my biases where my wife is concerned. I consider her one of the most creative and talented people in the universe. Any person or organization that has benefitted from her gifts would offer no argument. She sent me a copy of the final product late last night and I just now opened it this morning. Even I, someone who should not at all have been surprised, was blown away…

Pam decided that what the newsletter needed was a special section to devoted to pets. Taking the liberties that go along with responsibility, she volunteered to demonstrate for everyone what she had in mind…(notice the friendly poop reminder!)

Of course, we do have an association and as such, there are rules. Leave it to Pam to make even that seem benign…(Covenant Corner, indeed!)

So, yeah. This is my wife, a woman who has not had one second of computer graphics training, or computer background of any kind, yet this is how she rolls.

February…God’s Only Mistake?

I am firmly in the grip of February. I have written many times of the phenomenon that is the second month of the Gregorian calendar. It is the month best known for an Al Capone inspired massacre in Chicago, which tells you everything you need to know. It is the shortest month of the year that feels like the longest. It has the worst weather. It is the month when football ends and baseball hasn’t started yet. Spring is not just around the corner. Enduring February is like standing in a line at the DMV for a month…you’re waiting for something, you just can’t remember what. There’s Valentine’s Day, which feels like a cruel joke. By the time President’s Day comes around you can hardly contain the euphoria. Of course this year we have the Winter Olympics to distract us. Yes, that international sporting event run this year by Communist China which features empty stands, crying athletes and isolation hotels. Perfect.

This year it just so happens that February has me reading Biblical history, the sort found in 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles. This seems right and proper. There’s lots of names, lists of stuff I could have sworn I just read last week, repetition of stories already told. Like Groundhog Day, another February staple, whereby we are asked to believe that how much more winter we must endure hangs on whether or not Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow. Its as if the entire universe has lost its collective mind. This morning my weatherman warned of something called freezing fog and I thought, why not?

I realize that this all sounds quite defeatist. You are probably thinking that I need to adjust my attitude, try to accentuate the positive, start viewing the glass as half full. I tried that, but the thing slipped out of my hand, water went everywhere, and I sliced my foot open on the broken glass. 

Then, there’s Leap Year, a perfectly Februrarian kind of thing. Could something that happens once every four years— which confuses everyone and serves no discernible purpose beyond screwing people born on that day out of a proper birthday—happen in any other month? No.

But, no matter how pointless February is, every year it shows up right on time. Each year I end up writing a snarky blog about it, and each year I make it through. I’ve always thought that if I ever end up coming down with COVID it would be in February because…well, just because. Come to think of it, my last colonoscopy was in February. I’m due another one, Pam keeps reminding me. The irony involved in getting colonoscopies in February are truly cosmic.

Valentine’s Day Planning

Valentine’s Day is one week from tomorrow. This means that I am in the idea creation phase of the planning process. Since this will be the 37th Valentine’s Day we have celebrated as a married couple, that means that I have had lots of ideas over the years. Some were great, others were disastrous. Here, I am thinking of the time I put a table and chairs next to the fireplace in the living room to make it look like a restaurant, and made a fancy dinner from scratch which included homemade cappuccino brownies. I don’t even remember what the dinner was like but those brownies were disgusting!

Then, there was the time when we both made separate trips to Hallmark looking for the perfect card and ended up buying the same one.

Last week, I sent Pam one of the Holderness Family videos which I thought was funny. It was called “Chores Are Sexy”. In the video they made fun of cheesy things like chocolates and flowers as V-Day presents, preferring doing chores as the ideal gift. Pam’s response was swift and decisive, “There is nothing romantic OR sexy about doing chores! I love chocolates and flowers!” Duly noted.

So, I will put my imagination to work trying to come up with something fun and unique. To serve as motivation I will keep the following photograph front and center…

This isn’t a picture of us when we were kids and didn’t know anything. No, this was taken on the day of our daughter’s wedding, 30 years in. We had endured all the pressure and expense associated with the weeks and months leading up to an event as big as a wedding when the photographer snapped this one. Just look at her, heck…look at us. I’m not sure either of us has taken a better picture since. I look at this and I think, those two people belong together. We have taken on the best and worst that life has offered us and made it through together. There may be a few wrinkles here and there. We made our share of mistakes along the way, but we still belong to each other. For better or for worse. Luckily for me its mostly been a whole lot of better.

Now, if I can just come up with an idea that doesn’t involve cappuccino brownies.

In The Bleak Mid-Winter

Highlights and lowlights of my week:

Made it through 1st and 2nd Kings in my 90 day read through the Bible, the upshot of which seemed to be that morally corrupt and incompetent leadership is the rule of civilization, not the exception, offering further evidence against seeking earthly power over spiritual faithfulness—as if we needed any further proof. Even a casual reading of the history of the kings of Israel and Judah makes you wonder why they didn’t at some point say…Wait a second, why don’t we try a woman?

Business is booming which means that paperwork is booming and along with it, opportunities for mistakes. As a consequence, stress level is on the rise.

My daughter and her husband both came down with COVID. Although their symptoms have not at all been pleasant, neither have they been hospitalized, neither is on a respirator. Thanks, vaccines. Kaitlin had it first and just about the time she was getting better, Jon got it. Then something heartwarming happened. My GrandPup, Jackson demonstrated why it is that human beings don’t deserve dogs. When Kaitlin was the sickest of the two, he wouldn’t leave her side, insisting on snuggling up close to her wherever she happened to be. But as soon as she improved, it was Jon’s turn to be on the receiving end of the incessant snuggles…

It’s at times like these when we miss living in the same city as our kids. We can’t cook them a meal, we can’t run errands for them. All Pam could think to do was send them a Door Dash gift card. It stinks.

In other miserable February news, I made my first Winter canvassing of the back yard, spending nearly an hour gathering fallen tree branches, pine cones and a full grocery bag full of Lucy’s bowel movements—always a rollicking good time.

BREAKING NEWS***

THIS JUST IN…My other GrandPup Frisco, just made his first trip to Old Navy where he behaved like a champ and made a new friend. Then he got rewarded with a quick trip to the dog park where he posed for pics and was available for autographs…

Meanwhile, here at home, when asked what she thought about the job I did tidying up her back yard, Lucy replied, “About time…and where is my after dinner treat?”

Racism in the NFL???

Generally, I have always hated any type of quotas in the area of hiring. Any criteria for hiring someone which is other than the most qualified candidate for the job is in my opinion a fool’s errand. A perfect example is President Biden coming out and saying that his nominee for the next Supreme Court Justice will be a black woman. Why would he say such a thing? Why not just nominate a black woman? By announcing to the world that his only candidates for the position would be limited to black women, he has unnecessarily called into question the qualifications of whoever he picks, who will forever be labeled the quota pick. So, yeah…not a fan of box checking. However…and life is all about the however’s, there are times when you look around and have to ask, what the heck is going on here? Take the National Football League for example.

Former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, Brian Flores has filed suit against the New York Giants and the NFL for racial bias in their hiring practices. The story he tells sounds horrifying and even includes allegations that the team owner offered to pay him $100,000 for every game his team LOST, in order to improve the team’s position in the draft. Soon afterward, former Cleveland Browns head coach Hue Jackson came out with his own accusations of bribes offered to tank games. Although the owners of these two teams are innocent until proven guilty, a quick Google search of their business careers will leave no doubt about the fact that both of them made billions doing business right up to a fine line over which lay criminal activity. At this point my presumption of innocence favors these two coaches.

But with the recent firing of Brian Flores, this means that the National Football League currently has exactly one black head football coach. There are 32 teams. The Pittsburgh Steelers coach, Mike Tomlin is the only black head coach. This, for a league where a full 70% of its active players and probably 80% of its best players are black. How is it then that in a league which is notorious for coaching turnover, that teams are willing to hire untested coordinators, unknown college coaches, or even mediocre former coaches before they are willing to hire a black coach? Has the current black coach in Pittsburgh proven himself a colossal failure? Mike Tomlin has been coaching the Steelers for 13 years, has taken his team to the playoffs nine times, won one Super Bowl and never had a losing season. So, no it can’t be that. What about past black coaches? Well, there’s Tony Dungy. All he did in his 13 years of coaching was win a Super Bowl, take his teams to the playoffs and win 65% of his games. Can’t be that. So, what is it? It’s difficult to come to any conclusion other than race. Many of the best white coaches were former players. Does anyone expect a rational person to believe that out of the literally thousands of black players who have played in the NFL, none of them are qualified to coach a team? None of them would do a better job than Mike McCarthy? Come on now…

Many years ago, the NFL adopted the Rooney Rule that mandated that at least one black candidate be interviewed for every coaching position. The 32 teams and their billionaire owners have made a mockery of the rule by bringing in a black candidate for a sham interview after they have already picked their guy. It is both humiliating and shameful for everyone involved in such a thing. What is behind all of this is the blackness of the heart which refuses to even consider a black candidate out of some perceived deficiency of intellect or leadership. That’s the issue that now hangs over the NFL as well as Major League Baseball, and many other sport leagues in America. On the field of play we demand the best players and if that means that 70% of them are black, fans never bat an eye. Why don’t those same fans demand the best candidates for the position of head coach instead of always hiring the same old retreads?

Searching For New

For the past several years I’ve been confronted with a rather existential question concerning the nature of motivation, ie…what is it that motivates a person to get up every morning? What drives a person to continue the routines of life? For most of my adult life it has been a combination of financial necessity and a sense of responsibility. Like practically everyone else in the world, I wake up each day and go to work because work is necessary. Without work, there is no money and without money life becomes very difficult very quickly. But its more than that, I also go to work each day out of an overwhelming sense of the responsibility I feel for my clients and my reputation. It would not be a good thing for either if I suddenly stopped showing up at my job, instead choosing to lay about the house all day doing nothing. A lifetime spent building a reputation for reliability and competence would be destroyed by such laziness.

But, what happens when you get to the point where you no longer are driven by necessity? What happens when what you have been building all of your life gets built, when you discover that you no longer need to pursue money? Building anything, the construction of anything is far more exciting and inspirational than standing around admiring the finished product. 

When I was a young man, newly married and a brand new parent, a fire of urgency burned bright within me. I couldn’t wait to get to work because I was terrified that I might fail. I had a wife and kids counting on me to provide for them. Failure would have meant total humiliation as a man. So I needed no manufactured motivation to get me out the door every morning, I had plenty of the real thing—fear of failure. Although there were gigantic obstacles in my path and many setbacks along the way, I was able to overcome all of them one way or another. I had lots of help along the way, mentors who inspired me, friends who cheered me through downturns in my fortunes, and an amazing family. My faith in God sustained me through the darkest moments of the journey. Now, having built a business, I have entered the maintenance phase of the thing, a far less urgent endeavor and one that doesn’t exactly inspire great excitement.

So, what becomes the driving force to replace the fear of failure and ruin? This is the search I find myself in the middle of, trying to figure out next steps. Each year, my business takes less and less a share of my time, the end result of a meticulous plan set in place years ago to give myself more opportunities for other pursuits at this stage of life. I love writing and have done quite a bit over the last five years or so. Eventually, I intend on trying to get something published. That will be a construction project of sorts, the kind that takes renewed energy and purpose.

But, I also would like to spend the next 15 years or so helping young men and women, just starting out in business, find their way. I could encourage them through their setbacks, help them find courage when they endure the downturns in their fortunes. I think I would be good at it, actually. So, that’s a possibility. There’s another thing that I want to do. I want to get really good at generosity. Finding struggling people to help financially has always been extraordinarily satisfying to me, and at this stage of my life I’ve arrived at the point where I should be getting better and better at it. I want to make it a priority instead of an afterthought.

I firmly believe that every man needs a battle to fight, an obstacle to overcome, a problem to solve. Otherwise, life loses its challenge, and each day becomes a paler version of the day before. I’m determined to never let that happen.