Hobbit-Sense at OneFreeGarden.com

Seven Prayers for Seven Gifts
Excerpted from a Novena to the Holy Spirit

Wisdom: Come and fill me, O Spirit of Wisdom, and reveal to my soul the mysteries of heavenly things, in their exceeding greatness, power and beauty. Teach me to love them above and beyond all the passing joys and satisfactions of earth and to prefer your wisdom over the so-called wisdom of this world. Help me to grow in your wisdom, especially during temptations, trials, and all the daily challenges that I face. Amen.

Understanding: Come and fill me, O Spirit of Understanding, and enlighten my mind that I may accept and believe the mysteries of salvation and the truths of your kingdom in order to stay on the path to heaven and serve your kingdom in my daily life. Help me to discern what is evil, and enlighten me so that I may be holy here on earth and live forever in the light of your glory with a clear vision of you and the Father and the Son. Amen.

Counsel: Come and fill me, O Spirit of Counsel. Help me and guide me in all my ways, that I may always do your holy will. Incline my heart to prefer only what is good; turn it away from all that is evil, and direct me by the straight path of your commandments to that goal of eternal life for which I long. Amen.

Fortitude: Come and fill me, O Blessed Spirit of Fortitude. Protect my soul in times of trouble and adversity. Sustain my efforts in holiness, strengthen me in my weakness, and give me courage against all the assaults and temptations of my enemies, that I may not be overcome and separated from You, my God and greatest Good. Amen.

Knowledge: Come and fill me, O Blessed Spirit of Knowledge, and grant that I may perceive the will of the Father in all things, in every moment of every day. Give me an awareness of the pointlessness of earthly things and the ugliness of unholy desires, that I may stay pure in all my decisions and use the things of this world only if they bring you glory. Tell me what I need to know for my salvation and for the service of others. Amen.

Piety: Come and fill me, O Blessed Spirit of Piety. Possess my heart. Purify me. Humble me. Enkindle in me such a love for God that I may be satisfied only in his service and lovingly submit to all legitimate authority for the sake of your kingdom. Make me increasingly uncomfortable with everything that is evil, so that I turn away from it and live only in you. Amen.

Fear of the Lord: Come and fill me, O blessed Spirit of Holy Fear. Penetrate my inmost heart so that I may honor, obey and prefer you and my Lord Jesus and my Father God above all else. Help me to despise all things that offend you, and make me worthy to appear before the pure eyes of your Divine Majesty in heaven, where you live and reign forever in the unity of the ever Blessed Trinity. Amen.

I’ve been reading a truly awesome book by Fr. Lorenzo Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat. If you’ve never heard of it, not to worry. St. Francis de Sales carried a copy around in his back pocket during the seventeenth century, so it hasn’t been on the New York Times best seller list for awhile. Still, alongside The Imitation of Christ, it’s considered the greatest post-mideival work of the Latin ascetic tradition.

I’ll let you skim through Fr. Scupoli’s preliminaries before I start sharing my commentary on the book; luckily, you can find them online for free, along with the rest of his treatise. Of course, I don’t guarantee the site I’ve linked to, just the actual text of The Spiritual Combat.

Once you get through the preliminaries, you’ll have a rough overview of Fr. Scupoli’s fourfold path to victory in spiritual warfare: distrust of self, confidence in God, proper use of the faculties of body and mind, and the duty of prayer. Today, I’ll begin my meditations on the first of these: distrust of self.

Here is the relevant passage for our discussion:

Distrust of self is so absolutely requisite in the spiritual combat, that without this virtue we cannot expect to defeat even our weakest passions, much less gain a complete victory. This important truth should be deeply imbedded in our hearts; for, although in ourselves we are nothing, we are too apt to overestimate our own abilities and to conclude falsely that we are of some importance. This vice springs from the corruption of our nature. But the more natural a thing is, the more difficult it is to be discovered.

But God, to Whom nothing is secret, looks upon this with horror, because it is His Will that we should be convinced we possess only that virtue and grace which comes from Him alone, and that without Him we are incapable of one meritorious thought. This distrust of our own strength is a gift from Heaven, bestowed by God on those He loves. It is granted sometimes through His holy inspiration, sometimes through severe afflictions, or almost insurmountable temptations and other ways which are unknown to us. Yet He expects that we will do everything within our power to obtain it. And we certainly will obtain it if, with the grace of God, we seriously employ the following four means.

First. We must mediate upon our own weakness. Consider the fact that, being nothing in ourselves, we cannot, without Divine assistance, accomplish the smallest good or advance the smallest step towards Heaven.

I would like to focus on our “being nothing in ourselves.” What does this mean?

We are created from nothing, and so our essence, our self, is quite literally nothing. Our very being is, so to speak, on loan from God. And we mustn’t forget this. When we do forget this, or in other words, when we sin, we “reassert our nothingness” in the words of Fr. John Hardon’s wonderfully written Catechism. We reject God’s gift of existence.

Judeo-Christian mysticism has long emphasized this truth: everything we have is a gift, and we ourselves are images reflecting God’s glory, not the masters of a private universe entirely of our own making. Diverse authors talk of our nature as images of the Divine using terms such as “eye of faith,” the “spiritual man,” or the “unseen observer;” but all these terms mean the same thing: that which is aware of being aware.

Let’s investigate this concept with a brief exercise.

Drop everything you’re doing and find a place where you can rest in stillness. Sit back as an observer and watch your thoughts flutter by. Do not intervene; just watch. Everything will continue its maddening course for a brief while even in your absence, but soon things will begin to calm and only the noises of your immediate environment remain. Everything you are aware of in this moment, these noises, the occasional concern that arises in your mind, your personality, your memories, your beliefs, absolutely everything you typically identify with your deepest self, will be seen as something external. All that remains, like the surface of a quiet pond, is the image of God.

Fundamentally, every man is a mirror which reflects the dazzling light of the God through whom we live, move, and have our being. We cannot point to any one thing in ourselves we did not first receive from a friend, or a kind word, or a beautiful picture, or perhaps a good book. To use a metaphor similar to that of the mirror, we are all prisms which capture the colors of the world for a brief moment, only to scatter them back from whence they came as we are tossed along in the winds of the Spirit.

In ourselves, we are nothing; our life is hidden in God.

Don’t be impatient if you find all this hard to grasp. And if the thought of you not ultimately even being in control of who you are disturbs you, if the thought of you being completely helpless and entirely dependent on the existence, on the God, who surrounds you frightens you, that’s okay–it’s supposed to do that.

And that is why this recognition of our nothingness, of our utter destitution, of our unfathomable poverty of spirit, is so vital to spiritual combat–it exposes every flicker of pride and selfishness for what it is: a foolish delusion. To try and clutch the self is like grasping at sand; to exalt the self is like trying to carve a statue out of water because there is nothing solid, nothing unchanging, present to latch onto.

This truth cannot be emphasized enough; by acknowledging and keeping it in mind, we can avoid a great deal of trouble.

This is my first attempt at writing my conversion story. It’s horribly truncated and although I tried to include everything, everything somehow got left out. What can I say?  I gave it my best shot, and I’ll be guaranteed to shoot at it many more times before all is said and done. Also, dear reader, please forgive me if I’m blunt to the point of offense in some places. People tell me I’m a fairly honest guy, but regrettably, my honesty is not nearly as graceful as it is sincere.

Growing up, I attended in Bethel Baptist Church, where a dinosaur-themed Vacation Bible School first lured me into the sanctuary at the age of four.  I remember a small, brown Apatosaurus on display—one of the prizes for memory verses—and I resolved to win it.  So I did.

Throughout the years that followed, I became familiar with the central tenets of Christianity and adopted them, opting to get baptized at the age of eight.  Always too precocious for my own good, I studied the Scriptures and often got in trouble for arguing with Sunday school teachers over the proper interpretation of certain passages.  However, toward the end of middle school I became bored with the Baptist Church, whose teachings seemed only to skim the surface.  I began examining my faith and asking the “big questions,” like is the faith tradition I have received trustworthy; why does God allow suffering in the world; is there only one way to heaven; and is there even a heaven at all?

But my religious instructors never engaged my inquiries in these areas. So I was left to explore them alone.

During high school, I took up a serious study of church history and theology as a hobby. That was when I discovered the writings of the early Christians, both orthodox and heterodox. Despite their differences, the religion (or religions) they described appealed to me both intellectually and spiritually. Ultimately, I sided with the orthodox authors, mainly because I found their arguments more balanced and persuasive. By the time of my junior year in high school, I had worked my way up to the medieval mystics.

In the middle of my senior year, it became evident to me that I couldn’t honestly continue to attend my Baptist Church, since I didn’t agree with their manner of worship or their teachings. I also admit to a personal grudge, because the congregation would never make much effort to accommodate me in church activities. For example, they would always ask my family to donate to the annual youth beach trip fund, but they would never reserve wheelchair accessible places (I’m disabled).

I was torn between whether to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy—the artistic, mystical, and liturgical tradition of which held a special appeal for me—or Roman Catholicism, which offered a more thorough and logical explanation of doctrine.  Eventually, with a little prodding from a Catholic girlfriend, my inner Vulcan won out and I went with reason over mystery.

But I remained restless.

College caught me right at the beginning of this spiritual exodus. My classes and time on campus afforded me the opportunity to conveniently investigate different ways of thinking. Above all, my course with Dr. Hawkins allowed me free reign to dive into the holy texts and traditions of non-Abrahamic religions, something I had not yet gotten around to doing. Such experiences broadened my cultural horizons, encouraging me to adopt a more free and philosophical interpretation of the Bible as well as a more advanced and articulate theory of its inspiration that does not discount the work of God in other religions. For example, I realized many of the ideas related by the Upunishads are comparable to those of Christian mystics. I also decided to adopt some concepts from the Tao Te Ching—the basic text of Taoism—into my own worldview, which is otherwise predominantly Thomistic.

Exploring the social scene of campus life also fueled my ongoing spiritual journey. After joining a Roman Catholic fraternity on campus, it became clear to me that man does not live by logic and doctrine alone—mystery is required. I just did not click with the culture of contemporary Christianity, be it Catholic or Protestant. When I first acknowledged this truth, it was very difficult to face because at the end of the day, the modern American churchgoing scene with all its glorious Cartesian ordering, rationalizing, and simplifying was the only world I knew.

Deep down, I wanted all the “smells and bells,” something which I think the ordinary form of the Roman rite has moved away from in recent years. I did explore the traditional Latin Mass, but it just couldn’t compete with the eastern liturgies I had witnessed while visiting Orthodox Churches prior to my conversion. Then I found Our Lady’s Maronite Catholic Church. Not only was it close to my house, it was an eastern Christian community in communion with the Catholic Church. The way I saw it, I could have the best of both worlds. But I had little idea what I was getting into.

From the instant I walked through the door into a narthex jammed with people shouting and laughing in a foreign language over the pungent smell of unknown foods, I felt immersed in some weird knock-off of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Within moments I was kissed and greeted by everyone within a ten-foot radius and ushered into the main sanctuary. Fortunately, the service was almost entirely in English and had exactly the air of mystery I was looking for.

Soon, I was discussing becoming a parishioner with Msgr. Donald Sawyer, the priest there, who is best described as a Lebanese-Texan redneck. During one of my first confessions at the Church, he pulled out a foot-long hunting knife and began casually cleaning his nails! The utter informality and familiarity present in the community was shocking at first. Everybody knew everything about everyone. No one was in a hurry to go anywhere, and it was common for folks to just hang around for hours after services.  I was practically assaulted by invitations to meals and special events!

Though it took some getting used to, I began to feel comfortable inside this laid-back Mediterranean culture. It helped me slow down and taught me to value real people over the endless items on my hectic schedule. I came for mysticism, but I stayed because of the bright smiles and warm hearts. After awhile, I even got used to my fellow parishioners, men included, kissing me on the lips to greet me. Which was mighty strange at first, I must say!

Oh yes, as an addendum, I ended up getting re-baptized and confirmed in the Maronite Church. While studying the Church Fathers in preparation for being a Catechist, I discovered proper intention is necessary for a baptism to be valid. My old Baptist Church was independent and not a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, so baptisms performed by them were not automatically recognized. Moreover, at the time of my baptism, it was made clear that it was not a sacrament but just a public profession of faith. Thus, after speaking briefly with a canon lawyer, he recommended the move for re-baptism, or as its officially called, “conditional baptism.” So, I had the odd privilege of entering the Catholic Church two years after I entered her, and this time in a rite which suited me best.

I suppose all things work out for the greater glory of God and those who love him.

Courtesy the fellows at Creative Minority Report, I’ve watched an audition tape for a 16 year old girl called Maddie Curtis. I liked Maddie so much that I thought I might try to follow this season, so I googled and got to the official website to look at start dates and what have you, and couldn’t help but click to watch Maddie’s audition again.  And from one video follows another, and now I’ve watched all the featured auditions currently available, and a couple of other auditions stood out.

All three (including Maddie) have great voices.  They also had great stories and great personalities.  They were complimented on their honest, authentic performances, which were not carbon copies of the original artists but expressed themselves.

I think a lot of that has to do with the lives these three have lived.  Many people are close to their grandmothers;  not many 16 year olds spend their free time hanging out with grandma, or are, like Katie Stevens, prepared to talk about singing for her and winning for her before she can’t remember who they are anymore.  Seventeen year olds can’t vote or smoke or drink;  and yet at that age, Jermain Sellers began taking care of his sick mother.  And while, despite the huge efforts of parents of kids with Down’s in the last 40 years to mainstream them, many struggle with the idea of having a person with Down’s in their family, Maddie Curtis is proud of her four brothers with the condition.

American Idol and shows like it are great at introducing us to people with great talent and interesting stories.  But I imagine that many other people also found these three stories particularly touching, and these three talented people endearing.  And I think it’s because these three people have close relationships with people whose lives are very different from the norm– people who, either from their very nature or from their current condition, have their “quality of life” questioned.  There are people and places who would allow or even encourage the snuffing out of these lives simply because they involve pain, or won’t be able to take care of themselves, or can’t live up to “normal” standards.  We already know that rates of Down’s in the US has fallen where statistically it should be more likely (given older motherhood)– I don’t think it’s a stretch to infer that has something to do with babies with Down’s being aborted.

And yet these three most likeable contestants all come from families where the “abnormal” was their normal.  And that’s why all three were complimented not only on their voices, which, with training, are essentially received or not received, but also on the honesty of their performances.  They’ve experienced, at a young age, life’s breadth, with includes difficult illnesses and disabilities and all the rest.

And all of this is a long-winded way of pointing out that without Jermain’s mom’s suffering, Katie’s grandmother’s slow deterioration, and Maddie’s brothers’ “abnormality” we don’t get the wonderful Jermains, Katies and Maddies whose compassion, honesty, and lack of self-absorption not only make for compelling television, but enrich our communities.  Jermain’s mother, Katie’s grandmother, and Maddie’s brothers have been good, strong influences on these people, and they have been loved:  that sounds like an excellent quality of life to me.

I don’t doubt that, while sinister influences are at work in some, many people who support abortion, euthanasia, and the rest of these “solutions,” do so out of a misguided compassion that thinks they’re keeping people from suffering.  But death isn’t an answer to suffering or difficulty;  it’s only an end to our interaction with those people.  There are places where these individuals, in pain, deteriorating, or with a perceived low quality of life can be excised from the picture– and those places are poorer for it.

It’s not compassion or love or self-sacrifice that drives “mercy” killings which are anything but.  And it won’t make us a more compassionate society.  What it will do is leave us with a future made up entirely of people who met some imaginary, ridiculous, and completely arbitrary idea of what constitutes a life worth living;  we will be a population of the most well-intentioned but least able to actually be compassionate executioners and survivors.  That’s a quality of life we can do without.  There’s a lot of talk about the value of diversity, but the diversity that’s truly dying out isn’t cultural or ethnic– it’s a diversity of experience which requires people to suborn their own interests for someone else.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to follow Idol from across the seas, but I can tell you I’ll be rooting for these three– they haven’t just got talent;  they’ve got heart.

Watch videos of Maddie Curtis, Jermain Sellers, and Katie Stevens at the American Idol Featured Auditions page.

I can’t recall if I mentioned but I am a native Bay Stater.  In fact, Ted Kennedy has been my senator for my whole life– in fact, he has been a senator almost as long as my parents have been alive.  I have had severe philosophical differences with the senator both on issues of governance (I’m a liberal in the classical sense, not in the big government sense) and moral ones (yes, red flag to a bull, the abortion issue).  I also have hated the mystical near-worship of the Kennedy clan in this area– I don’t believe fantasy of that kind is good for anyone, especially not the person (or group) being lionised.

The Catholic blogosphere, which generally crosses the political spectrum, has been ablaze with the subject of Ted Kennedy’s death.  What I have encountered has been just- neither sugarcoating his sins nor claiming to know the status of his soul.  I’ve had a lot of disparate thoughts about this subject, but I wanted to add my two cents in my own little corner of the internet.

From a Catholic perspective, there are a few things to be said about the senator.  There are rumors (many substantiated) of infidelity and alcoholism.  There is the sad story of Mary Jo Kopechne whose life was imperiled by Kennedy and whose death was caused by his failure to procure help.  And the clincher for most devout Catholics- the one thing that they really can’t get past- is his support for abortion.

And by all rights, abortion is something we should never “get past.”  There is no getting over so grave an evil.

But stories have started to trickle out that have made me look Ted Kennedy in a different light.  I don’t do well at personal malice (atleast of people I don’t know, excluding Andrew Jackson whom I despise– no room for explanation), so I never disliked Teddy K– in fact, he’s someone I imagine I would really like on a personal level.  He and his family also have my sympathy for having suffered so many tragedies.  It cannot have been easy to have been the last brother out of four when the other three all died young and tragically.

The stories have to do with prayer.  I heard someone say that the Eucharist was the center of his life.  I don’t know if that was true.  But I do know of two different people, both of whom disagreed with him politically, that they saw him praying.

The first is from Kathryn Lopez, who writes for the National Review, saw him at daily Masses in DC when she dropped in from an internship at the Heritage Foundation (a conservative thinktank).  And not just once or twice.  As she said, “[H]e probably led some people astray by his example. But our faith also teaches that we are all sinners and that there is redemption.”

The second is from a man, I don’t remember his name, who lives in the area of the basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, covered in the Boston Herald.  He described himself as a ‘small goverment guy,’ and also as someone who dropped into the basilica having been taught by nuns to visit our Mother daily.  He too saw Senator Kennedy there, in the pew, deep in prayer.  This gentleman, who serves as an acolyte at noon dailies, had hoped he’d be allowed to serve, political differences aside.  Most important to me, however, is that these stories were not told while the senator lived– his prayers were not for show.

There is no escaping the fact that Kennedy’s flaws and particularly his public political support for abortion have given scandal and also have harmed the Church through tacit encouragement of the view that one can be a Catholic in good standing and support morally objectionable causes that have been expressly prohibited by the Vatican.  But there is also no escaping God, whose standard shows all of us that our “good standing” leaves quite a lot to be desired.

I will make no excuses for Senator Kennedy’s actions;  they are grave ones indeed.  But reading all these little tidbits, listening to the eulogies at the wake and the funeral (Teddy Jr.’s was especially good), I felt little tugs on my memory.  Wisps of the story wafted around my brain until I could finally grasp just whom this Ted Kennedy I was just starting to know reminded me of:  the tax collector in the temple.

Remember that parable?  Two men go to the temple to pray.  The first is a pharisee who thanks God that he follows all the laws and is better than lots of other people, including the second man.

The second man, a public sinner by virtue of being a tax collector, doesn’t even approach the front, doesn’t even look heavenward.  Instead, so conscious is he of his sin that he only stands, pleading with God, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!”

I don’t have any special knowledge of anything, let alone Ted Kennedy’s soul.  But, for all his faults, though they were grave and in some cases persistent, I just have this inkling that he clung to prayer like that second man.  The good father at the Byzantine Rite church we go to occasionally said today, in that Tradition, we say that we are the first of sinners in the Liturgy– a Liturgy which is suffused with petitions for God to be merciful.  Perhaps that is the lesson of Senator Kennedy’s life to those of us who remain- a reminder that we are all wholly dependent on the mercy of God.

And just because it’s a beautiful prayer that bears repeating, here is the prayer Byzantine Rite Catholics (in various Churchs- e.g. Ukrainian Catholic Church), say before receiving the Eucharist:

I believe, O Lord, and confess that You are indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God, Who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.

Of Your mystical supper, make me a partaker this day, O Son of God, for I will not speak of Your mysteries to Your enemies, nor like Judas will I give You a kiss, but like the good thief will I confess to You.

Remember me, O Lord, when You shall come into Your kingdom.

Remember me, O Master, when You shall come into Your kingdom.

Remember me, O Holy One, when You shall come into Your kingdom.

Not for judgment, nor for condemnation be for me the partaking of these Your Holy Mysteries O Lord, but for the healing of my body and soul.

O God be merciful to me a sinner. God, cleanse my sins and have mercy on me. Innumerably have I sinned, forgive me, O Lord.

Considering that I wasn’t born until basically all western tv shows (I’m not including Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman) were off the airwaves, it’s kind of ironic that I have such an affection for a couple of old western TV shows and a few b-movies.  Some of them were pretty cheesy, and they didn’t have the pizzazz of modern film technology, and they often didn’t have the money a lot of other films did, too (theirs was a brief heyday).  But there’s something that resonates with me, and I think it’s probably why, even when they are a bit dated, they aren’t irrelevant.  

The first thing obvious has to be the setting.  A number of westerns mirror the attitudes the arose from, a sense that man was under assault by increasing “civilisation”, not in the sense of philosophy, but real estate, that the cities sapped something out of people.  I’m not sure if I can say conclusively what it was, but it had something to do with a person feeling honest about who they were.  I happen to be a big fan of what I consider “politeness” but it can be used to shield true intent, or restrain people from being themselves.  It also could be that more people living closer together seemed claustrophobic.  But at its essence, I think westerns reflected a great love for the idea of some sort of solitude in which a person could discover who he was, and test himself against that idea, even if that solitude took place with a whole bunch of livestock.

But even more than that, the westerns reflected a sort of certainty about a few things, a certainty I think a lot of people long for (even if it’s not always a good thing to be so certain).  There was no modern sense of a flexible moral order (not on the big things anyway);  and, contrary to our modern sensibilties of feeling stifled very quickly, these were a reassurance.  So, the lone wrangler could take on the cattle baron, not in spite of his relative lack of temporal power, but because he had a sense of something more powerful than him that he could call upon, a final justice, even if it were only a whisper in his soul.  The tale of a man taking upon himself an enemy who has much greater power than he does isn’t new in any sense, but it does resonate, mostly, I think, because people more often feel themselves as Davids, not Goliaths.

My favorite thing about the westerns, though, isn’t that.  It’s that they are often little morality plays.  I think here it’s helpful to review a couple of my favorites, watched once or twice on TCM or AMC.  And surprisingly, for all the gunslinger mentality, in some of them there really is a very strong attitude of non-violence.  Two of my favorites, both starring Gregory Peck and both dealing with being haunted by violence (and doing some hunting) have striking endings.  In The Gunfighter, the main character wreaks vengeance with his dying breath, but because of the torture he has endured, it’s a very hollow, sad sort of victory.  And while there is a firm sense of “moral order” in The Bravados, it’s not unexamined.  Peck’s character pursues five criminals for killing his wife;  he manages to capture or kill four of them.  His dogged pursuit seems a righteous cause until the last few minutes, when he discovers that his certainty of guilt was misguided the whole time.  (I recommend both these films, although be aware that Bravados has an entirely useless love interest.)  

So, even though both these films seem violent and (initially) to justify the very vengeful paths of the main characters, in the end they take a much more critical approach.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that both films condemn it very strongly through showing the hollow victory and the depth of wrongdoing it can lead one into.  Now, not every western has these themes, but there are a lot of good ones.  The Searchers is a classic that addresses grief and despair poignantly but with great subtlety.  I would also consider Cheyenne Autumn, a fantastic film about governmental mistreatment of Native Americans, to be a good example of the genre.  That film challenges viewers on ideas of justice, kindness, honesty and honor, right as might versus right as doing right by others, etc.  Many other films towards the end of the sixties and into the seventies explored the difficulty of change and growing older.  Of course, there were plenty of shoot ‘em up films, too.  But I think as a genre it has a lot to offer.  Even western TV series are surprisingly full of mini-morality issues.  Though they had interludes of love interests and plenty of shoot-outs, they didn’t shy away from tough subjects.

They also didn’t shy away from the idea of conscience.  And perhaps that’s why this topic came to mind.  I have to admit, TV is a big temptation for me.  I really enjoy film and TV, and there’s something about my imagination that latches onto characters.  My mom likes to remind me that the characters in books, plays, movies and TV shows aren’t real, but I often treat them like they are (not in a disturbed way (no creepy stalker photograph walls with candles), but I really have a knack for understanding characters).  In the past year, I’ve really come to like a couple of shows I think are great.  But there’s been something bothering me, and it’s that conscience seems to have taken a big hit.

I think it’s that conscience seems to have become subjective.  So, Burn Notice, which is a great spy/action show, has a character who helps people and is generally on the “right” side.  But he doesn’t care what happens to anyone on the “wrong” side.  He has set people on the wrong side up a few times to take a pretty nasty fall, usually involving their deaths.  And not only does he seem unconcerned, but the show offers no sympathy for those characters.  I also really like NCIS, which has a great cast of characters.  But the lead, who is completely heartbroken and blaming himself for the murder of his family, seems to have no compunction about murdering their killer, or generally doing some shady dealings.  Where in a western, a character would be torturing himself over whether he’d done the right thing (or outright acknowledging that he’d done the wrong thing), these characters take it all in stride.  And so, even though I watch them faithfully, there’s a jarring disconnect between the characters I like and some actions which are more easily swallowed when done by the villain.  

What makes the cowpoke eternal?  Well, it’s not the writing oftentimes (which can get pretty canned), and it’s not the guns and horses.  I think it’s that the heroes of those films often seemed to stand outside of the society that spawned them (both as 20th century creations and characters grounded in a past reality).  There’s a timelessness because they don’t yield to the age, either age, setting or movie. The cowboy was an almost accidental splicing of surety that there was a good, and a good deal of doubt that he fit the category.  There are a lot of great films and TV shows out there these days, but sometimes I really miss the cowboy.