My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.

A Time to Laugh

by on ·Religion, The Way I See It

People joke about God having a sense of humor. I’ve done it, too. But, something happened to convince me that not only does God have a sense of humor, He sometimes uses humor to shake us up.

This morning – I am saying my a.m. prayers and have progressed to “hallowed be Thy name” when my mind begins to wander. Should I have Hazelnut or Arabica Dark Roast coffee with breakfast? Unfortunately, it is not unusual for my thoughts to stray when I’m saying my prayers. The Lord knows that I sometimes have the attention span of a two-year-old with ADD. I force myself to refocus and get back to the business at hand. I apologize to the Lord and start over as I always do whenever my prayer is interrupted.

“Our Father…” I get as far as “Thy will be done,” seconds before my cell phone pings on the nightstand beside the bed, indicating that I have a text message. I ignore the phone and apologize again for the interruption before restarting the prayer.

As I ask God to “Give us this day,” a loud, horn-honking car alarm goes off outside my bedroom window. Son of a biscuit eater, I think, then add Sorry, Lord.

I begin again and manage to finish praying without any more interruptions. And then the strangest thing happens. I turn on the TV to watch the news while making my bed. The set is tuned to the channel it was on when I turned it off last night. Grey’s Anatomy is on. Then comes the kicker.

Dr. Miranda Bailey (one of Grey’s key characters) stands before an altar holding glowing candles in the chapel. She stretches her arms to her sides, raises her head toward heaven, and begins to pray. She says, “Lord,” but before she can utter another word, a coworker arrives by her side and begins chattering. Although the intrusion is brief, Dr. Bailey’s frustration is evident. When the coworker leaves, Bailey turns back toward the altar and is about to resume her prayer.

“Lord,” she says again. Then she is interrupted by the phone inside the pocket of her smock. She pulls out the phone, glares at it, and sighs in frustration as the show goes to a commercial.

I am a little bit rattled by the parallel between what I just saw and my earlier experience while trying to finish my prayer. I pick up the remote control and change the channel while thinking how strange it was that the TV happened to be on that station and showing that particular scene. I don’t believe in coincidences. Surely, God was jesting, about my apologizing for the interruptions. In addition to wrath, mercy, and love, He does have a sense of humor.

Religion – like politics – is a touchy subject. Many people refrain from discussing those two topics because the conversation can turn from an interesting discussion to a nasty argument before you can say Hail Mary.

I am not a religious person, nor am I an atheist. I am spiritual. People who don’t understand my philosophy would likely label me a Christian atheist, but I reject that label.

Sometimes, when discussing the subject, I use the words religious and spiritual interchangeably because it’s easier and less time-consuming than explaining my viewpoint. As I see it, religion is a detailed tradition of organized beliefs and regulated practices shared by a like-minded community and often led and controlled by a person or person(s) who consider themselves called or appointed by God.

Being spiritual is having a one-on-one relationship with God or whatever one chooses to call the Supreme Being. Therefore, I do not feel compelled to have an intermediary or middle person – another imperfect mortal –interpret, explain, or orchestrate their understanding of the Higher Power to attempt to drive me to think their way.

People who claim to be spiritual instead of religious are not necessarily agnostic or atheist. On the contrary, many of us are God-fearing Christians. We just don’t want to be affiliated with religious institutions and groupthink that impacts people’s free will and common sense—shades of Jim Jones, David Koresh’s Branch Davidians, and Heaven’s Gate. And we do believe in prayer.

As author Stan Toler says, “You don’t necessarily need a great sense of humor to get God’s punch lines. You just need a great sense of faith.”

Amen.

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Creeping Normalcy

by on ·Food for Thought, Opinion, The Way I See It

Is there such a thing as normal anymore?  Or is normalcy, like beauty – in the eye of the beholder? I often wonder about that.

It was easier to comprehend things when I was much younger (darn near a hundred years ago). It didn’t require a rocket scientist mentality or a Ph.D. in political correctness to determine what was normal and what wasn’t. Back then, we learned in school that two plus two equals four. Nowadays, even that is arguable. Ask a scientist or mathematician, and that person might tell you that two plus two doesn’t necessarily equal four. Then, they’ll go on to explain that significant figures and rounding could produce a different answer. For gosh sake, I am not delving any further into that. Anyone who wants additional information about the quandary of two plus two had best start doing their research.

The conversion from normalcy to the existing status quo sometimes annoys me. Things that once fit neatly into boxes now bulge and punch holes through the container. I like the way a friend of mine described the situation when we were discussing it recently. He said, “Society is on the downstroke. The best days are behind us.”

My favorite television show is The View. The women on the program are intelligent, courageous, and outspoken. They don’t give a flying squirrel whether the public agrees with what they say, nor do they hold back on voicing their opinion. Even when they have a co-host or guest on the show whose ideas I strongly disagree with, who I feel is teetering on the border of idiocy, I still respect that person’s right to voice their opinion.

Like The View’s co-hosts, I am not bothered by people’s judgment of my viewpoint. However, I am astute enough to know that there are times when it is prudent to be diplomatic instead of shooting from the hip. I feel sorry for people who are so afraid of expressing what they honestly think because they fear that being candid will make them look bad, biased, or bonkers in the eyes of their relatives or friends. So, they suppress their true feelings and deny what they are really thinking. Then, later they silently fume about what they wish they had said. Been there. Done that. Years ago. Ain’t doing it no mo’. (Okay, I got a bit carried away there. But isn’t that the freedom of journaling?)

Getting back to the topic. I miss the days when if I received an unexpected wedding invitation from an acquaintance who I didn’t know very well, I didn’t have to wonder if it would be a heterosexual or same-sex marriage. Of course, the gender of the partners will not determine whether or not I attend the wedding. I don’t care who weds who. But, the fact that I don’t care about the gender of the couple doesn’t stop me from wondering. With the growing trend of parents giving their children unisex names, guessing the gender of someone’s S.O. isn’t as easy as it used to be. For example, if a wedding invitation reads, “… joyfully invite you to the wedding of Blair and Blake” or “the honor of your presence is requested at the marriage of Casey and Hunter,” there may be cause for pause. Suppose I want to buy the couple a set of engraved coffee mugs or embroidered gift towels; in order not to commit a faux pas, I need to know whether to buy “His and Hers, His and His or Hers and Hers.”

And look at families. As I see it, there is no such thing anymore as a normal family. Okay, I suddenly sense that using the word normal will be like pouring rubbing alcohol on a bleeding, open wound in some folks. So let’s strike it. Perhaps, in this instance, traditional is a more acceptable word to use. Traditional families like I used to see on TV programs during my generation’s younger days. Families like Father Knows Best, The Partridge Family, Good Times, and even The Jeffersons are what I mean by traditional families. They used to be referred to as nuclear families. I wonder, is the term “nuclear family” taboo now, too?

Traditional or contemporary families are more on par with This is Us and  Modern Family.

When I was a child, I had friends who may have had one or two step-siblings living in their home. Aside from the step-siblings, the children in the house all had the same last name. (Sometimes the step-kids did, too.) According to a study by Cassandra Dorius, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, “One in five of all American moms have kids who have different birth fathers.” So, there could be as many as five or more children in today’s household, each carrying a different surname connected with their numerous baby daddies. I suspect that this is now considered normal; oops, I mean traditional.

Well, those are some of my thoughts about normalcy.

Dare I publish this? People might consider me unreasonable, narrow-minded, or biased; whatever adjective suits their fancy doesn’t faze me. But in judging me, I hope that they will acknowledge that I am sincere in expressing my beliefs and opinions. I refuse to cowardly straddle the line and pretend to be impartial when I have concrete feelings about something.

I’m sure that even my critics would agree that Charles Addams was on point when he wrote, “Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.” With that – I do agree.

 

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The World is Watching

by on ·Social Media

It never fails. As soon as I get comfortable with something, the rules change. In this case, it would be more accurate to say that my perspective – not the rules – changed.

Back in the day, I clearly remember when I said I wanted no part of social media (SM). And then, after thinking about it for, oh, about two years (no joke), I relented and opened a Facebook account and later one on Twitter.

I became an active participant and proponent of Facebook. I began refuting the negative comments from non-user relatives and friends who said things like, “People put all of their personal business online. I want no part of that.”

My response was often, “It is up to you how much information you chose to share. Smart people don’t reveal any more on FB than they would disclose to a friend, relative, or neighbor, in person or on the phone. You have to know your boundaries. ”

Then, the nay-sayers would come back with, “It’s dangerous. You meet all kinds of shady people online.”  Umm. So, don’t you meet creepy crawlers elsewhere, even in church?

SM has its drawbacks, but I know that some people would agree that it has brought people closer. It has even facilitated the search for estranged persons seeking to locate a long-lost friend or relative. And, wherein before, some of us only occasionally saw each other – usually at some sad event like a funeral, now, we share photos and videos of birthday parties, weddings, and cook-outs. We even get to see children and grandchildren growing up. And since COVID and its variants cause many of us to have second thoughts about mingling with large numbers of people, our social media pages are a welcome respite and safer alternative to group participation. SM is also an excellent venue for promoting our entrepreneur businesses and other endeavors. That’s my usual spiel, or it used to be.

HOWEVER, after recently watching the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma,” my endorsement of social media has come to an abrupt pause. It was as if a bright yellow, black-lettered YIELD sign dropped in front of me. My first thought was to close all of my online accounts, but then I regrouped. (I admit sometimes I tend to be impulsive.)

But WOW! The documentary narrated by several tech experts, former employees of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, is a definite eyeopener. If I had any idea that the ex-social media employees who produced the program were a bunch of disgruntled former workers, I soon put that thought to bed. So instead, I give kudos to those socially conscious whizzes who left their jobs in the tech world because they could not in good conscience continue to support what they saw as the manipulation and control of the masses by some rich folks with $$$ signs in the crosshair.

As one techie expressed in the film, social media is a drug and the account holders are addicted.

It is downright scary to hear the narrators explain the effect SM has on us all, especially young adults and children. Using a teenaged boy as a prototype, the film shows that some of us are so addicted that we don’t know what to do with ourselves when we are denied access to our SM accounts.

Meanwhile, we are given a disturbing look at some folks who are convinced that everything they read online is true because they found it on the Internet. Fake news and unregulated messages circulate on SM like California wildfires, and brainwashing the gullible with propaganda and gossip is big business.

This film reminds unsuspecting patrons that advertisers, promoters of conspiracy theories, divisiveness, and political discord are prevalent on SM platforms. SM managers are using access and power to their advantage. Not only will this documentary make some viewers angry, but it will also blow your mind.

As Kofi Annan said, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating.” If this film doesn’t make you think, then you don’t have a brain.

One techie in the film said he does not allow his children to use social media at all. Another asked the profound question – “Are we being outsmarted by artificial intelligence?”

The film will not convince die-hard fans to abandon their social media sites. I might close Twitter. I seldom use it anyway, but I don’t see myself giving up FB, at least not in the immediate future. However, I will be even more cautious about what I share and what things like quizzes, polls, surveys, etc., I participate in.

Some viewers may not be affected by what they learn, while others will think what I thought after watching it – be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Rainy Day Reminiscing

by on ·Dreams, Exercise

At 5:30 AM this morning, my cell phoned blasted an Emergency Alert flash flood warning loud enough to wake up the dead. Unable to go back to sleep, I got up, walked to the window, and opened the blinds. Rain was pouring like Niagara Falls. Considering the wicked state of the world, I expected to see Noah’s ark floating down the street any minute.

Leaving the window, I walk to the table in the other room and open my laptop. As I pass the bookcase, I glimpse one of the books facing forward on the shelf. It is James Baldwin’s. I smile at the irony because the cover suggests I should not worry about the rain; the prophecy is for the fire next time.

It is predawn, the best time to sit down, do some writing, and introspection.

I think about one of my favorite Langston Hughes’ poems titled Harlem. Written in 1951, it begins with the line “What happens to a dream deferred?” Six years after he wrote that Lorraine Hansberry would parlay Hughes’ words into a prize-winning play titled A Raisin in the Sun. Although it has been decades since I first encountered the question raised in the poem, I think about it a lot. I suppose that a dream differed could wither on a vine, but it doesn’t have to.

I’ve read that Hansberry sometimes wrote during her free time while working as a waitress. I’ve never been a waitress, but the jobs I held, initially as a switchboard operator at the Pentagon and later in administrative positions, albeit some with creative titles, took priority over my dream since childhood to be a writer. The demands of a full-time job and the responsibility of singly raising two children after a divorce left little free time to pursue my dream. Throughout the years and to this day, I’ve often wondered what if my circumstances had been different? What if writing had been my primary profession instead of a sidebar? I’ll never know the answer to those questions, but I did the best with the time and resources I had, like Hansberry and numerous other resourceful souls.

Retirement has given me ample time to write but realistically speaking time is not unlimited. When I was still in the workforce, I seized every opportunity to compose everything from essays, letters to the editor, Op-ed pieces, poems, anything that inspired me, and that I thought I could get published. My perseverance paid off. I was fortunate to have some of my pieces published in The Washington Post, The Afro-American, The City Paper, and elsewhere. For three years, I supplemented my income writing as a contributor to the Metro Chronicle. That weekly newspaper stopped publishing decades ago, but I will forever be grateful to the editor, LaVerne Gill, for allowing me to swim in the journalism pool. Sometimes even the most unlikely angels arrive to help us along our way. In my now leisure time, I’ve published a book, and am working on another. I’m also a successful blogger with 12 years and nearly 400 posts to my credit. How blessed am I?

When I hear people say, I would have done this or that if I had had the time, but I had to work, I encourage them and try to convince them that it is never too late to pursue an obtainable dream. I say obtainable because an 80-year old whose lifelong ambition is to be a gymnast like Simone Biles might be a bit too ambitious. But then, you never know. Far be it for me to rain on anybody’s parade.

My cousin Akintunde Kenyatta was in his late 60s or early 70s when (like Ex-President George H.W. Bush, Wesley Snipes, and other over 50 brave hearts) he decided to jump out of a plane. Akintunde fulfilled his dream and proudly crossed skydiving off his bucket list a few years before going home to glory. I am still impressed.

Second to my passion for writing is exercising. Before the pandemic shut things down, I was an enthusiastic gym member for seven consistent years, usually attending three days a week. Before that, I was devoted to walking for exercise.

For over a dozen years, my neighbor and friend, Hazel Williams, and I regularly walked on most Saturdays. My treks started after she encouraged me to join her, walking inside the PG Plaza Mall. However, after a few years of strolling past storefront windows got boring, we opted for a change of scenery. That’s when we began walking outside, 5-miles round trip from our home to City Place (as it was then called) in Silver Spring and back.

Concurrently, we also began participating in walk-a-thons that raised money to support charities and causes like Osteoporosis, breast cancer, etc. Most frequently, we joined in the annual Fannie Mae Homeless Walk downtown on the National Mall. That walk took place every year on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Hazel and I participated for about 12 to 15 years during the 24 years that the annual walk was held. Unfortunately, Fannie Mae ended the fundraising walks in November 2011.

If I could go back to my younger self and deliver a message to her when she was feeling discouraged and stuck in a rut, I’d tell her, “Girl, don’t you give up. A dream deferred does not die unless you let it. Don’t let naysayers, dire circumstances, or self-doubt stop you. You’ve got this!”

 

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A Private Conversation about a Public Matter

by on ·Cousins, COVID, Health, Vaccine

My cousin Butch is one of the most intelligent people I know. But he is also extremely modest, and I can imagine him cringing when he reads this.

I enjoy conversing with him, and although we don’t always agree on things, we are both open-minded enough to listen to each other’s viewpoints and respond civilly. We have had dissenting perspectives on subjects from the death penalty to the COVID vaccine (and now it’s back to wearing masks).

Below are snippets of our (abridged) conversation from about a week ago.

ME:  I am so tired of hearing the talking heads on TV chatter about the COVID virus, its variants, and the insistence that everyone take the vaccine. The folks who will take the shot have likely taken it already, and those who don’t want it will not be convinced to take it. The exception is for those who wish to take it but cannot get it for some reason or another. Although I took the shot, I remain convinced that we all are guinea pigs. I didn’t start having intermittent skin rashes and some other issues until after taking that vaccine – two months after my second shot. My dermatologist says it is likely caused by something that I am allergic to. Uh Huh. When I told both him and my primary care physician that this stuff wasn’t occurring before I got the shot, they fell silent. (What I forgot to tell my cousin is that I’ve talked to at least three friends/associates who months after that second shot are experiencing unusual health issues they’ve not had before.)

MY COUSIN: I know this COVID news gets old but, the fact is people are dying at a rate not seen for over a hundred years. It is terrible, and when we don’t take it seriously enough, it gets worse. Japan would not be restricting attendance to the biggest money-making event (the Olympics) of recent times if there wasn’t something to it. Americans (in general) are less sensitive to this because we have a less community-centric ethos than many other countries. We pride ourselves on our individualism and “every man for himself” thinking imposed upon us by centuries of robber barons and imperialists dictating the rules of the game. “If they die, they die” so long as they (the powers that be) have access to all measures to preserve themselves! Think about Rupert Murdoch. Do you think he didn’t vaccinate as soon as he could? Think about the orange one (I know nobody wants to [think about him], but) he surreptitiously got vaccinated and who knows what else for himself and his family, but what did Murdoch and [the orange one] feed their sheep? “It’s a hoax.” “It’s not that bad.” “You need to be a soldier and get back to work.” “You better go back to school.” “Scientists don’t know what they’re talking about.” “Listen to us or listen to your gut.”

Critical thinking tells us that the people who manipulate you for personal gain are probably not the most reliable sources for information regarding your personal safety (unless you are part of their “in group”). Dr. Fauci has dedicated his professional life to saving lives. He didn’t do it to be on the cover of “Time” magazine. Now he’s taking outrageous slings and arrows because he speaks inconvenient truths. Unfortunately, sometimes science gives us the information we don’t like or want to hear but listening and taking it always makes us smarter. Denying it could lead to our downfall. Murdoch and 45 don’t care about the meatpacking workers and food service workers dying, so long as they can be replaced. The “sheep” need to recognize this.

ME:  I know why the scientific community keeps quiet about possible long-term side effects because they are trying to encourage everyone to take the stuff. But I think they should be upfront and tell the public that some people are having allergic reactions and side effects lasting longer than a few weeks after the second injection.

MY COUSIN:  We’ve had at least 70 million people here take at least one shot and not anything alarmingly close to that here since the early J&J rare blood clotting issues. [He is referring to a link that I emailed him about some of the side effects of the vaccine.] That is not to say that these vaccinations are 100% safe, but they have never been. And but for vaccinations, the world might well be overrun with polio, smallpox, and rubella right now. I never wanted to get the shot, but the evidence was clear that my chances of surviving the shot would probably be better than my chances of surviving a bad case of COVID; plus, I hate getting sick.

I enjoy debating issues with my cousin and find it refreshing. Interestingly, some laypeople can have a civil discussion about controversial topics when numerous close-minded public figures, including rogue Congressional legislators, behave like temper-tantrum throwing spoiled brats.

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