To Choose or Not to Choose (part 2)

As promised earlier today, here are my second round of thoughts stemming from last week's After the Bachelor show. Be sure toread Al's, er, uh, I mean "Anonymous" comments for that post.
My purpose in writing this is not to bash Brad Womack, although he probably deserves it. I agree with Anonymous Al and all his comments. The little bit I've read about this guy confirms his cad status. I want to write about placing yourself in positions where making a choice, good or bad, is difficult and the situation could have been avoided.

Let's start with Mr. Womack, or anyone else playing the role of Bachelor or Bachelorette in search of a spouse. One has to take on a fairly selfish perspective to come along and choose from your own personal supermarket of potential spouses. It is preposterous in my mind to think that you can over the course of five or six weeks get to know one person over 14 others enough to seriously contemplate spending the rest of your life with him or her. The few times I've watched any of these shows, I've always been disturbed by the level of physical intimacy explored by the spouse hunter with every member of the harem.

Which leads me to a potential "blame the victim" label. The two women who were so hurt when Mr. Womack chose neither of them put themselves in a bad position. They committed way too much emotionally and physically to this guy, knowing full well that the other women were probably doing the same. He acted anything but gentlemanly with them, but they should had assumed the equal treatment going around.

Why do people put themselves in positions like this? This isn't about taking a risk in order to gain great rewards. Don't put yourself in a position where you can't make a good choice. When talking about a faith journey, there are so many ways to apply this. We tell people to flee temptation. The minute you feel like you could make a bad decision about anything, you should run the other way. Other people simply choose not to choose when it comes to faith. Of course, not choosing is still a choice.

Nothing profound here. I've probably waited too long to post again. Any profundity has grown cold. Moral of the story is don't put yourself in a position where you can't make a good choice.

Random thoughts for the day

I promise to post "To Choose or Not to Choose Part 2" within 24 hours (that would be 2:49 pm EST according to the time on the sanctuary computer, Thursday Nov 29) for those of you dying to read it. For now, here are some interesting and random thoughts I've been pondering today.

- Here's a link to a Brian Russell's sermon on compassion. I love the short prayer of Bob Tuttle he lists at the beginning. I really enjoyed hearing Tuttle's stories when I was a student, but this prayer is serious food for thought.

- Here's a link to Keith Drury's article on the extension of young adulthood. How much farther can it go?

- This morning our family devotions came from Ephesians 6:10-20. How do you talk about spiritual warfare with a 7 year old and a 9 1/2 year old? The warfare part was really cool to them - they are boys after all.

To Choose or Not to Choose (part 1)

This post is proof positive that it is better to go ahead and go to bed instead of channel surfing. Instead of making the better choice, I gave in to the temptation to watch a little tv before going to bed. I came across The Bachelor: After the Final Rose. Apparently, at the end of this season's matchmaking attempts, the producers were given an ending they never expected. Apparently, when the day of reckoning came, he did not choose either of the final two women. The links and comments on this are numerous. Here's a link to the Google search on "Brad Womack".

Having not watched the show at all and having only read about 30 lines of text regarding the show, I don't really have an opinion on the guy's decision. I did watch the final 30 minutes tonight where the two dissed women confronted him. And I did read enough after the show to find some evidence that the guy might be a cad.

Putting all judgments aside on this guy, I do want to address one thought I had while watching him squirm tonight. What an impossible situation to be in! First of all, there is nothing real about this reality tv show. The show's premise is that it's about how single men and women interact in the courtship process. But honestly, it looks more like the QVC of spouses. You have one person given fifteen possible mates that he or she has to narrow down to one over the course of about five weeks. It's hard enough to work through all the emotions of this with one person at a time, much less a dozen or more and to do so while the cameras roll.

I watched this guy struggle with justifying why he did (could not?) commit. How many times do we have difficulty making commitments when it comes to our faith journeys? Is it because we find ourselves in impossible situations or is it because of something else? How often do we put ourselves in "impossible" situations where our decisions impact our faith journeys?

I have a lot more similar questions and thoughts to add, but I really need to get around to making the right choice and get in the bed. Until I get around to posting part 2 of these thoughts, what are yours?

Give me a break!

I'm sorry, I just have to rant for a second. What should be a cause for celebration has turned into set of wacko advisories. The first two seasons of Sesame Street are now available on DVD. What could be better than that? Apparently, a lot of things. Those first two seasons have been deemed inappropriate for today's toddler - click here for the story.

Luckily, I can make up my own mind. I even bought my 7 year old son a real pocket knife for his birthday. Guess I'm either too stupid or too dangerous or maybe even both.

Who Cares?

Sunday the Houston Dynamo beat the New England Revolution to win their second consecutive Major League Soccer championship. Now let me say what 99.99% are thinking, "Who cares?" Probably none of you even knew there was a Major League Soccer league, much less that they had a championship game yesterday. I happened to come across while channel surfing during a football game. I saw it was soccer and kept on going. Only because it was a "by the way" comment during Sunday night's football game did I know the game was as significant as it was.

Neil Diamond has revealed the inspiration behind his number 1 hit Sweet Caroline. By the way, after forty years, it's working its way back up the charts. Who really cares?

A-Rod and the Yankees cut a new deal. He'll probably retire a Yankee. Even for die hard baseball fans, who really cares?

All of the above will make great answers for the 2007 edition of Trivial Pursuit or maybe win you a huge cash prize on the new game show sure to come out soon called Who Cares? . Perhaps the last two items are more noteworthy than the first because despite David Beckham, nobody really cares about soccer in this country unless their kid is playing it.

How many times have you oohed and aaahed over someone else's pictures of their grandchild when you really didn't care? How many times have you listened to someone spill their guts when you really didn't care? How many times has someone bored you with some story they though was just great but you thought, "I don't care!"? How many times have you been that someone?

I'll tell you who cares - good friends. Friends really do want to see all the new pics. Friends really do want to listen to you when you need it. I remember one time showing up unannounced at a friend's house at suppertime just to tell him some insight I had received while reading Ecclesiastes. It was during an especially vulnerable time in my life emotionally and spiritually. When it was over, I was pretty sure he probably thought "Who cares?" but I also know that he really did.

The best place to find friends like that is at church. They'll care about things that nobody else ever would. Friends at church will stick with you through things that no one ever would. At least they should.

God cares too. He may be busy keeping the universe going, but he also cares that your team won the MLS championship, that your favorite song was inspired by a president's daughter, and that someone with an overinflated ego may ruin the chemistry of your favorite baseball team. He cares about other stuff in your life too. While you're giving thanks for the many things in your life, remember he cares about everyone.

In Honor . . .

Today is when we take a day off to celebrate Veteran's Day despite what the calendar says the date is. Whether you honored the veterans Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, make sure you do. Saturday I was awestruck as never before on this holiday. My sons' Cub Scout Pack did their annual Veteran's Day project of placing flags on the graves of veterans. We began the morning with a short ceremony to honor the parents of any of the scouts who were veterans and paying tribute to all who have served our country.

After this very moving ceremony, the scouts dispersed to place the flags. I helped a group of the youngest scouts identify the appropriate graves for a flag. As we moved into an older section of the cemetery, the graves of veterans were more frequently found. We came across a whole section of WWII vets. Moving up the hill, the vets became thicker still. We had moved into a section of WWI vets. My older son was working in a newer section of the cemetery where the veteran graves were much farther apart.

It occurred to me why this is so. During the days of WWI and WWII, it was truly seen as a privilege and an honor to serve. It was seen as a duty to country. That's not the case anymore. It saddens me to view the current politicalization of how the military is viewed today. Since the Vietnam Conflict (is that PC term?), there have been many mixed feelings about how to view the men and women who serve in the Armed Forces and even more mixed feelings about the actions they are asked to take by their commanders. That's a shame. They deserve better. And we should still consider it our duty to serve. I hopefully will not die with many regrets, but having not served will probably be one of them.

To all the men and women who have served our country and are doing so, I salute you. Thank you for saying yes to the call of duty.

Broken Streaks

This has been the week for broken streaks. The Indianapolis Colts finally lost at home after 12 or 13 consecutive home victories. But even in their victory, the Pats were crying about "extra crowd noise" being pumped into the stadium. My streak of 8 consecutive wins at Free Cell on my office computer was broken as well. I was feeling like I was in the zone too, on my way to break my record streak of 16 wins. I guess I got overconfident and played a few bad cards.

Breaking a streak can have very consequential effects on our lives. Just ask people in the southeastern US what it's like to finally break the streak of rainless days and get some much needed water from the sky. Your checkbook can balance perfectly for months and then a careless error in the wrong column can crush your finances.

Sometimes the timing of the end of a streak is of more consequence than the actual ending itself. Just imagine if Cal Ripken, Jr. had suffered some injury that sidelined him just a few games away from breaking Lou Gehrig's record of 2,130 consecutive games played. Can you imagine being second on the list after almost twenty years of never missing a game? It would still be an accomplishment, but people would probably remember the injury more than the total.

Our ordinary lives are full of winning streaks that we don't notice until they are broken. We may not know that we have been happy for 187 consecutive days until something comes along to bring us grief. We usually don't realize that we have been "living on top of the mountain" of our faith journeys for 13 straight months until we have spent a week or two in the valley.

Honestly, we don't even think of our lives in terms of streaks so the metaphor may be a useless one. We do think of our lives in terms of good times and bad times, strong moments and weak moments. And we prefer for the good and strong to be longer in duration than the bad and weak. My thoughts for today are, "What do we do when the streak is broken?" What do YOU do?