2AM--Just a Hick from Pontotoc County

By Bobby Neal Winters

My 35th Wedding Anniversary is the first week of the New Year.

I woke at two o’clock this morning thinking about Rev Tevye. I identify with him.  Both of us have a robust interior dialog. Both of us have a lot of daughters.

There is a duet that Rev Tevye sings with his wife called “Do you love me?” Within it he asks his wife that question, and she replies, “You’re a fool!”  To which he answers, “I know, but do you love me?”

Ultimately, she discovers that she loves him, which takes a little time because it’s not something she’s ever asked herself, but the part I like is the exchange: “You’re a fool”--”I know.”  This is where I identify with Rev Tevye the most. I know that I am a fool.

That was one of the things I was wrestling with at 2AM.  I am a fool; I have been a fool. 

I was thinking particularly about my time in grad school. I started working on my master’s degree when I was twenty years old. I was pure, 100 percent hick from Pontotoc County, Oklahoma.  The only contact with the outside world I’d had was through TV.  I was meeting twenty-somethings from middle class families for the first time. Though I was smart as heck--you could’ve just asked me--I was entirely ignorant of the world I was going into.  And, as I said, I didn’t know it.

Here’s the thing though.  Many of the people I met were teachers, and most of them--at least enough of them--knew where they were.  They knew what I was.  They did their job.

In a movie, I would’ve been given a Cinderella-like transformation.  As it was, they actually did better.  They gave me the means for going to the next step so that I could work on transforming myself.  

Life has been like that for me.  At every stage, I’ve found myself surrounded by my betters.  There has always been someone smarter; someone kinder; someone more graceful; someone more educated.  

Like a blind chicken, I picked up a grain now and then, and at some point I had my revelation that I am a fool.

But I am a fool who knows it.  I will cling to that nugget as the one thing that I do have.  I can carry that around in my rucksack like a piece of booty from Dungeons and Dragons.

The best thing I got from my time at graduate school wasn’t my education (eventually a PhD)--or even the introduction to a larger world: It was finding my wife and the mother of my children.

She has been more patient a teacher with me than anyone I ever met in the classroom.  Though I am a fool, I do know that.

I am also beginning to think--fool that I am--that while I did need, and do need, to learn a few things, being a hick from Pontotoc County, Oklahoma might be the best part of me.  

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

How I wish you were here

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here

--Pink Floyd

By Bobby Neal Winters

I hear them say, I will be glad when this is over.

The year 2020 is about over.  This is something that has been looked forward to for many months now.  We’ve fantasized about the coming of the New Year as if the coming of 2021 would magically sweep all of our troubles away, as if it would sweep COVID away.  

But it hasn’t, and it won’t.

There are still lots of new cases.  There are still people dying.  It is still not over.

They do have a vaccine or two or three.  Those who want to get vaccinated will get vaccinated, me among them, and that is a good thing.

But if somebody could wave a magic wand and it were all over--if it were all wiped from our minds so that we were ignorant that those five letters could be put together in any meaningful way--it would still be something else.

Because that is the nature of life and living. 

There is always something going on somewhere.  There is always something happening.  There is always something we feel put upon because of.

Now it is COVID.

We’ve lost people to COVID this year. She has been capricious, our little COVID.  She has put me in mind of what Jesus said about the Coming of the Son of Man: “Then two shall be in the field: one shall be taken, and one shall be left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left.”

There have been families where one was asymptomatic and the other has died. No rhyme, no reason; no trial, no jury. 

In this way, COVID is the perfect manifestation of our old enemy. You can do your best; you can wash your hands; you can wear your mask; you can avoid crowds and keep your distance.  It all helps. But there is no guarantee. 

I’m thinking about people I know who’ve died within the last few years, not of COVID. That eight track tape player in my head starts up with Pink Floyd: “How I wish, how I wish you were here.”

I lost Dad three decades ago;  I lost Mom ten years ago this coming New Year’s Day.  I’ve lost some of my dear cousins.  I’ve lost friends.  They are gone from me now everywhere but memory.

I would give anything for half an hour with any of them.

What I am trying to say is that I want to stop wishing things were over and to embrace the now.  I want to enjoy the people I have while I still have them.  The optimist says this is the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true; the realist knows that this is what we’ve got.  You’ve got to love each day as God’s gift.

I wish you all a joyous New Year.  

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas

By Bobby Neal Winters

The days have been getting shorter since late June.  At first we didn’t notice; then only a little bit;  then a little more.  By Halloween it was just about as short as it was going to be.  These days when I take my walk after work, I am welcomed back home by the stars if the night is clear.

One generation passes away, and another generation comes; /
The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, /
And [hastens to the place where it arose.

But the earth abides forever. /

And Christmas is once again upon us.   This year we have the so-called Christmas Star.  What they mean when they say that is that Jupiter and Saturn are getting closer in the sky.  When I took my walk last night and got home, I put my hand up in front of me and covered them both up with my thumb.  They have been getting closer together in the sky for a while, and they have been setting earlier each day too, but if you go out to look--weather permitting--it’s a nice sight.  Jupiter and Saturn also came close in the night sky back in 7 BC and Johannes Kepler, who laid a lot of the groundwork for Isaac Newton’s theories of planetary motion, thought they might’ve been the Star of Bethlehem. 

Jupiter and Saturn were associated with the Greek mythological figures Zeus and Cronus.  Zeus was the king of the gods and Cronus was the father of the gods.  Zeus had overthrown Cronus as Cronus had overthrown his father, Uranus.  Given that, it makes a kind of sense that Zeus and Cronus would witness the birth of the One who would displace them from that part of the world.

And now they are looking down on us again.  Best not think about that too much.

We are going through times of change.  Things are always changing, sometimes more, sometimes less, but changing.  But things stay the same too, as the Preacher from the Book of Ecclesiastes observed. Man is still the same animal he was 2000 years ago, 6000 years ago, 30 thousand year ago, but we’ve been building something else within us.  To put it in techie terms, the hardware is the same, but the software is being updated.

Our software has become so sophisticated that we can delude ourselves that we aren’t animals anymore.  We’ve got a lot of knowledge, and we think we are superior, but we forget whatever we know was purchased by others with blood, sweat, toil, and tears.

At Christmas, on Christmas morning, we can get a reminder of what we’ve learned and what we’ve lost.  When our children or grandchildren toddle out of there beds to see what Santa has brought them, they *believe*.  Santa is as real to them as the stars in the sky are real to you and me.  

I view this quality in them with joy and sadness.  The innocence is to be treasured, but you don’t want them believing in Santa when they are thirty.  (I will leave a pause here for Republicans to make their own personal joke about Democrats.)  They need to learn the world is full of greedy, self-centered people. (Here is equal time for the Democrats to jab the Republicans.) 

We are stretched far from our natural state. The innocence of that state is attractive, but there is no going back.  We cry when they learn to ride the bike Santa brought them; we cry when they stop believing in Santa.  As did our parents for us, and theirs before them.  Around and around the sun we go.

Things do change. But they stay the same too.  I still look at the stars with wonder.  What I know they are has changed, but the wonder remains.

Regardless of all the changes, the wonder is still there.

Merry Christmas.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. 

That Mourns in Lonely Exile Here

 That Mourns in Lonely Exile Here

By Bobby Neal Winters

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is my favorite Advent song.  Growing up, I didn’t know what Advent and had absolutely no idea there was such a thing as an Advent song.  They were all just Christmas songs to me.  Now every year I wait with great anticipation until I can hear those beautiful strains:

O come, O come, Emmanuel, /
And ransom captive Israel, /
That mourns in lonely exile here, /
Until the Son of God appear. /
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel /
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Israel was in Exile, has been in Exile, for longer than it existed, has existed, as a state. Indeed, the Children of Israel were in Exile in their captivity in Egypt.  Then they wandered in the Wilderness.  They had a Kingdom for a while and then they endured exile under a series of empires and continued to do so until this very day.

As Christians, we consider ourselves a part of that.  We are a people in Exile.  Our kingdom is not of this world.

This state of Exile is a hard thing to understand--or maybe not. This year with lockdowns and social distancing we might have some small idea of how that feels.

We are cutoff.  We are excluded. We are alone.  In so many cases, our connection to others is filtered through a computer screen.  While having that screen, that connection, is better than nothing, it is not the same.

We await a Savior.

Some thought it to be the President; some thought it to be his medical advisors.  Some said it would be Science; some are still saying that.

But if science gives us a solution that requires us to do something--and that is the only type that is being offered--and if we don’t do it, then we will not be saved.

It is as in the Days of Noah:  If the only way out of the way of the Flood is on the Ark and you don’t get on it, then you will be lost.

Science is now our Savior.

Emmanuel is God with Us.  As Christians we believe, Jesus was God with us, but God is also with us in terms of Wisdom.  It can’t be said often enough that Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Knowledge gives me the means of making bombs in my basement; Wisdom tells me not to.

O come, O Wisdom from on high, /
who ordered all things mightily; /
to us the path of knowledge show /
and teach us in its ways to go. /

We are in this coldest, darkest, loneliest part of the year, and we await a Savior.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

YouTube, Nihilism, Existentialism, and Uncle Bob

 YouTube, Nihilism, Existentialism, and Uncle Bob

By Bobby Neal Winters

Life is complicated.

I looked at that sentence and said it deserved to be its own paragraph.  I figured it could also be an essay or a book, but let’s spend a few more words on it.

I woke up very early last Sunday morning.  I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want my tossing and turning to keep my wife awake, so I got up and moved through my daily routine which put me in front of my computer where I started watching and listening to YouTube.  I am surrounded by friends who were educated in philosophy while I am not, and I try to pick up a little here and a little there so that I am not totally lost when they start rolling.  As a result of this, the YouTube algorithm brings me videos on philosophy.

Last Sunday morning, the Algorithm brought me videos on Nihilism and Existentialism.  Somehow the Algorithm has figured out that folks who get up at 4am on Sunday morning might be in the mood for a little Nihilism. (You might not think that’s funny, but the philosophical types are rolling.)

It was 4am and I was in my sweatpants, so I wasn’t taking notes, but one of the Existentialists (it was either Camus or Sartre) was quoted as writing about the “terror of freedom.”  At that point, something clicked in my brain and I thought that I needed to write about it.  

So I am.

The human race has been changing for quite some time.  We’ve been moving toward individuality.  There is both good and bad with this. On one hand, I don’t have to be mad at you for something one of your group did to me if he did it as an individual.  On the other hand, I am on my own a lot more.  I have to make more decisions. Life gets more complicated.

There are a terrifying number of alternatives at every instance.  Do I get married? Do I have children?  Do I get a job?  Do I become a criminal?  If I think of myself as part of a tradition, these thousands of basic decisions are made for me.  I get married; when I get married, I don’t write my own vows, I let the preacher do the same thing he does for everyone else. I have kids if they come, and I get a job instead of going to prison. 

Any old tradition will have a decision tree that has more alternatives than what I’ve just described, but you get the picture: I can save my thinking for the important stuff that is peculiar to me.  

The rub is that when we yield ourselves to a tradition, we “give up our freedom.”

The YouTube Algorithm (maybe I need to genuflect when I write that down; my tradition doesn’t say) also brings me computer programming videos.  Some of my favorites are by Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin. One of his videos is about the trend in computer languages.  I am condensing it quite a bit, but he said that the first computer programs were written by flipping switches on and off. You could flip the switches in any direction that you wanted to.  

You had perfect freedom.

But this freedom was too much.  It was easier to do things that were destructive to the machine.  It was easier to write programs that just didn’t do anything.  And in spite of the ease of doing destructive,useless things, writing good programs was difficult.

Because of this, more advanced computer languages were invented that took away a lot of that random freedom.  These languages provided structure in which certain random, potentially harmful things were more difficult to do.  But this loss of freedom provided a means for more useful, long lasting programs to be written.

A religion, if you embrace it, can provide you the structure that will keep you from doing useless, destructive things.  While one can mourn the loss of freedom that comes from embracing a religion (e.g. I can’t have sex without being married, I can’t drink alcohol, I can’t have electricity in the house), the return--for most--is stability.

I put “for most” in there on purpose.  There are always the ones who struggle.  Always.  But sometimes the ones who struggle within the structure are the ones we remember; many of them are remembered saints.

Anyway, I had to write this.  I’ve got more to say, but I’ve imposed on you long enough already.

 Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )