Growing Pains

If there was one person who I might consider punching on sight… it would be Kirk Cameron.  OK. I wouldn't punch him... but maybe sling him a dirty look or two. Oh… I watched “Growing Pains” when it was on just as much as anyone who tried to avoid TV-sitcoms of the 1980s like the terrible cultural plague they were.  First… everyone knew it was a complete rip of “Family Ties” and Cameron was a second-rate version of Michael J. Fox.  But the thing that it reinforced to me… a poor white girl living in the city being raised by a single-parent… that popular American culture didn’t give a rat’s ass about me.  I was not normal.  I hated the Seever family then… and it was even worse after Cameron’s conversion to what I’d consider a very backwards form of born again Christianity.

Evangelical Christians don’t as a whole bother me… but I don’t appreciate ANYONE trying to tell me what God really says… and “really” means.  Really?  God thinks evolution is a sham? Did he TELL you this? Does the Bible tell you this?  Is the fossil record a cosmic test of faith?  Or is God playing a practical joke? Has anyone noticed that most Jews don’t take this “begat” stuff seriously... and it was their book first? Puh-lease… only God can decide who is going where… and from what I’ve been told… God loves us.  Even me… especially me… because apparently I NEED saving.  Every parent has a secret admiration for their problem children…no?

Anyway… some of the stuff that’s come out of his mouth makes me want to scream. You can use the Bible to prop up your opinion all you want… but that’s not going to make it any more or less your opinion… until God takes out advertising space during the Super Bowl at half-time… I’m going to use my best judgment when interpreting God’s will. I’m going to stick to the Bible... not as the literal word of God... but as a historical record of the ancient people of Israel... and their religion.... as well as the teachings of a really awesome Rabbi named Jesus who had his shit together. 

A few years ago… my in-laws gave us a copy of “Fireproof.”  It kind of sat in my TV shelf for a few years before I really wanted to toss it… but my husband felt bad about the idea of getting rid of the movie without actually watching it.  So one evening we popped it in…

Take all of the religious gobbledy-gook out of the movie… and it’s a solid movie about saving a marriage. Not deeply entertaining… but the sort of thing a therapist might suggest a couple watch together before they get a lawyer.  The premise of the movie is Kirk Cameron’s character Caleb… starts the movie out as a royal dick.  Selfish… full of himself... and controlling.  His wife works… but he wants her to do the housework, cooking and cleaning.  He’s using most of his personal savings to buy a boat when his in-laws need some extreme financial help with medical bills.  He surfs the internet for porn.  He’s also one of those guys who can really keep it together at work… where he’s the captain of the local fire department… and where roles are strictly defined… and then tries to apply the same logic and rules at home... and naturally comes off as being a misogynistic asshole.

His wife… who has the personality of a platter of cocktail shrimp… is the PR/Communications director of a hospital. She starts the movie out as a bit of a snippy shrew. One of the doctors at the hospital she works at is schmoozing her.  She spews out the usual litany of “you never help me at home” or “I’m too tired to do that because I’ve been working all day” sort of stuff that is probably stolen from a Couple’s Therapy workbook. And when she’s not making googy-eyes at the doctor at work... she’s off at her parents house martyring herself by looking after her mother... who is recovering from a stroke in a State that is somehow exempt from medicaid.

But the advice that Caleb/Kirk’s father’s character gives him… on how to methodically and consciously spend time trying to rebuild the relationship with your partner… is spot on.  And that makes me hate Kirk Cameron more… because besides the smarmy “I’m in with Jesus” stuff… he does exactly what anyone trying to regain intimacy should do with their relationship.  He works at it.  He works at it even when he doesn’t want to.  Even when there’s “nothing in it for him.”  Even when he doesn’t get results.  In Buddhism… we’d call the practice “radical Metta” or extreme lovingkindness.  When you love someone without expectations… you fill their heart… and at the same time… fill yours.  The more you work at it… the easier it becomes… but keeping up the lack of expectation… keeping it “unconditional” love… is the difficult part.  Our partners are NOT children.  We have expectations of them that even we don’t know about… and loving someone who is actively taking you for granted… and/or caught in a self-destructive spiral… there’s a lot of risk involved. It’s very hard to love without expectations that the love will be returned... and returned in the same way. We are used to getting “payoff” for effort. But the payoff for lovingkindless is the love it fosters within ourselves. Not the result it has in the object of our love.

And it’s hard, hard… impossibly hard work.  It’s so easy to be resentful in a relationship.  I can’t tell you the number of times… “Fuck…he did it again!” comes out of my mouth in a week.  And when shit is wrong in the house… we don’t want to blame ourselves… and who else is there to blame?  The captive audience… the person or persons we live with. I don’t have kids… and the dog does not leave his dirty underwear in the bathroom under the sink. So I see it... swear... and dirty underwear becomes a symbol of everything that’s wrong in my marriage.  Petty... sure... but if you’ve been in a long-term relationship... you’ve been there too.  Or... you’re living in some severe denial.

Anyway… the list of things Caleb’s father gives him to do is called “The Love Dare.”  Again… it’s filled with a lot of scripture quotes that are as usual… taken out of the context of the scripture they appear in.  This “Dare” is supposed to last 40 days… and in the course of the movie we see Cameron’s character struggle… first completing the dares in a half-baked and half-assed manner… but then going all-in… tossing out the computer he used to surf for porn on.  Paying for his in-laws medical expenses with his boat money. Cooking and cleaning and taking care of his wife when she’s sick.  He changes… he’s not a terrible actor… so you can see the subtleness of the change.  Passion and lust and “chemistry” are things that make us fall head-over-heels in “love” with someone… but WORK… is what makes it go from rose-colored love… to deep, rich red intimate love. He breaks through the shell of resentment and anger his wife has built around herself... not by trying to change her... but by changing himself. And that's the key to having an adult relationship in a nutshell.

But the spokesperson... Mr. Cameron... holy Moses this guy has his head up his tuckus... telling homosexuals they’re unnatural (Um... there are same-sex pairings in nature.  All the time.  It’s “unusual” not unnatural.) and trying to scientifically prove the existence of God... as well as the whole "where's your cross between an alligator and a platypus Creationism crap"... well... after I stop laughing I’m just going to read myself a little Richard Dawkins until I settle down and write my open letter... “Dear Evangelical Christians... trying to prove intelligent design is America’s #1 cause of athiesm.  It’s in your best interest to stop... thanks...”

I'm not faithless. I keep what I do and don't believe as private as I can. I admire Jesus and his teachings. I respect the church tradition I was raised in. But I believe that every world religion has a creation myth that is just that... a myth. A way the spiritual wellspring of a people is explained. Genesis has similarities to Sumerian and Babylonian creation myths... and Persian creation myths. I'm not stupid... I can't say... "This several thousand year old account of the creation of the world is the one that... OBVIOUSLY... actually happened despite scads of evidence to the contrary..." so I choose to believe that the creation of the world is best explained by science... and the creation of the Judeo-Christian world... by Genesis. Though the two worlds inhabit the same space... they're different... with different laws of physics.  

In one world... the power of God can heal and raise the dead. In the other... the BELIEF in the power of God can improve your health... or comfort your grief... and change the path of your life. Because whether or not God exists is moot... because we're left to do His work regardless. In our daily lives... in our relationships... and trying to merge the two worlds is futile. It's a massive waste of energy that could be better spent serving God. Why? Because we all live on the one world... but not everyone lives in the other. Some live in the world where Ishmael was the sacrifice instead of Issac. Where the dance of the gods brought the world into being. Where the Water Beetle brought earth from the depths of the ocean to make the earth so it had a place to rest. And some... only live in the world of matter... which has as much awe and wonder as any other world. You can't reconcile the world of faith with the world of matter without making yourself a cause of suffering on both worlds. Nor can you separate them completely. But it will take the pain of growing past blind faith to get us there.

Yellowstone Jones and the Caldera of Doom.

It should be a movie title… no?   

So this year’s summer vacation was to the oft-visited vacation haven of Yellowstone National Park via the drive from hell across Nebraska and southern Wyoming.  (Really… if you’re going to Yellowstone from the East… take 90 and go through South Dakota.  When you’re disappointed that a cyclone didn’t whisk you off to Oz… well… you’re not in Kansas anymore… you’re in Nebraska.  It’s the armpit of the Midwest.) 

Anyway… how can anyone explain the natural wonder that is Yellowstone?  You really can’t.  For 99% of the people who visit… it’s a hell of a lot of driving and walking around to see the “natural attractions” while dodging Chinese tourists who insist that umbrellas are better than sunscreen and completely ignore the “The Placid-Looking Bison want to kill you…” warning signs, while listening to an endless litany of whining small children who have been dragged to see yet another stinky rock belch sulphurous steam…  just like Daddy after the Superbowl.

I would have loved to do some day hiking.  I went prepared for copious day hiking… but a combination of a severe allergy to lodgepole pine pollen that clogged my sinuses rock solid and started the fastest sinus infection I’ve ever had in my life… and not quite realizing an elevation of 8000+ ft. above sea level was in fact… quite high for a native Illinoisan… hiking the backcountry became completely impossible.  

But the tales are true… it IS the Serengeti of the American West.  As a veteran of many years of watching Marty Stouffer’s Wild America… I knew that there was still actual non-zoo wildlife in the US.  And last year’s visit to Glacier National Park confirmed it.  We saw Mountain Goats… and Bighorn Sheep on the side of the mountain. But Yellowstone was what we literary folks call fecund. 

Life was everywhere… from primordial soup living off of the excrement of the volcanic hot springs… to bison causing traffic jams to rival downtown Chicago at rush hour.  Squirrels of every size and color… ravens trying to steal your lunch… and yes… I did see both black and grizzly bears… AND wolves… what our guide called the “fanged trifecta” of viewable wildlife.  

There were meadows there that should replace the definition of the word in the dictionary.  Long rivers with looping meanders… and thick coverings of geese and water fowl.  Vast thermal spring fed wetlands. Swans.  Heurons.  Elk browsing willows along the shoreline.  While rafting down the snake river… we watched an adult osprey stoop in its flight and splash into the water… bringing out a large, red, wiggling cutthroat trout… and then fly it in wide loops around our head until it suffocated from the air pressure in its gills. We watched a lucky coyote running off with something suspiciously weasel looking in its mouth… and dozens of other examples of the food chain in action. It was pure wilderness… and through all of my hacking and congestion… I looked on the beauty of God’s creation and was filled with the appropriate combination of fear and awe.  There is a place on earth where I am NOT the top of the food chain… the master of my landscape… and here I am… standing inside the body of a living volcano… watching a predator through a spotting scope that could scoop out my insides like they were made of double-fudge mocha chip ice cream.  That would slurp my bowels like noodles…

And then I would turn around and watch someone in a tube top… hanging out of the sun roof of their Lexus SUV… trying to take photos without flashing the pronghorn… and the spell would break.

And that’s Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons.  The beauty and majesty of nature…  and while floating down the Snake River watching the Grand Tetons emerge from beyond the canyon ridge… you can see Sandra Bullock and Michael Eisner’s house… and part of Harrison Ford’s 800 acre wildlife and aging Hollywood icon preserve… before going into Jackson for the 2pm shootout in front of the “Ripley’s Believe it Or Not” museum.  It’s in danger of becoming the American-side of the Niagara Falls in everything but scale.  The Wisconsin Dells of the great West…

So besides the souvenir sinus infection… the trip left me rather sad.  It’s not just the ecology of the place that is fragile… not the balance of nature and man… mountain and molten rock… but it makes me wonder what the actual purpose of vacationing in the wilderness is?  Why do we climb the mountain in our crew-cab 4X4? For the 1% who strap on their daypack… wear appropriate shoes… and hike into the backcountry… yes… they’re experiencing the wilderness.  They’re doing something that several people die trying to do every year.  (Though usually from mishap and stupidity… and not actual dangers.)  But for the rest of us… we’re viewing wilderness from the safety of our cars… like Yellowstone is a giant nature drive-thru… but we’re shouting into the clown’s mouth but will never get our order.  We will never see the Wild America that Lewis and Clark saw when they viewed the vast herds of Bison on the American Plains… eventually… even the Artic will be available on Google Maps… and that’s what makes me sad… that we’re running out of wild places that have never heard the footfall of man.  Every time some shaggy biologist in the Amazon announces the discovery of a new species… I shudder.  And not with excitement… but at the continual narrowing of our world.  

There are a contingent of Yellowstone freaks who are waiting for the time when the Yellowstone volcano erupts… spewing ash and smoke into the atmosphere on a catastrophic scale.  There’s a force under there said to be ten times of what we saw when Mount. St. Helen’s erupted.  The explosion would usher in a new ice age… a volcanic winter… that will make all of those crazy Montana “preppers” smile and count their cans of beans and boxes of shotgun shells against the impending breakdown of society.   Sometimes… Sometimes… I hope they’re right.