Three Word Transitions
15/March/2010 10:52 Filed in: Special
Report | Week in
Review
"How's
that hopey, changey stuff workin' out for ya?"
Well Sarah, it ain’t workin’ that well right now and come to think of it things haven’t worked all that well for quite a while.”
As we have been promoting in our Wonder Springs weekly articles for a number of weeks, change we can believe in is really change we can understand and makes us comfortable. However, if change really is the only constant in the world, then real stupendous change is truly freakin’ scary and it makes us withdraw further into our old sense of security, and we exacerbate the problems. Hence in real reality “Change we can believe in.” is really the enigma of continual angst. To question whether how much of this current change is by design or chance only magnifies the apprehension?
Last week in the Chronicle we looked at a number of religious antitheses to New England Calvinism. Calvinism defines the prime concept of its theology in three words that begin with the letter “G” standing for “Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude. In this week’s “Why Me?” article we will look at similar three word theses, these non-Calvinist and other religious expressions use to express their believe systems.
Watching Glenn Beck last Friday, he unveiled a similar progression to use in his work as he attempts to encourage others to begin to move beyond change we can believe in, as this country attempts to reset the nation on our constitutional foundation. Those three words were “Faith, Hope, and Charity.” These of course come from the old King James - American Revolution era translation of 1 Corinthians 13. Our modern versions use love instead of charity and consequently lose the true perspective of what the Apostle Paul was really saying.
As a Mormon, Beck uses the term charity in its proper context, but I question whether it works with modern American Christian evangelicals who generally think of charity has getting something for nothing, generally from the government, or an NGO (non government organization. Charity in the true sense works within the LDS church because they tithe, consequently there is money to help out those in need, not just as a handout, but also a hand-up.
The average American Christian does not tithe, and the average giving runs about two percent rather than ten. If you factor out the minority of those real tithe givers that probably brings the average offering down to a level God only knows. That amount being just enough to most of the time pay the church staff and the mortgage on the church building. True charity in the New Testament Biblical sense is an impossibility.
In his context Glenn speaks quite often about honor. Whenever I hear the word honor I think of MacArthur’s farewell speech at West Point, which focuses upon the concepts of “Duty, Honor, Country.” Another three word deep concept, that seems to have lost its meaning outside the thought patterns of military officers. In MacArthur’s sense, honor is the centerpiece of one’s duty to country. In Beck’s honor construct with the Biblical, you lose the depth of Paul’s original meaning in Corinthians because honor is always a personal attribute and never truly transcendent or God focused.
In other words, honor is always subservient to integrity. When you speak about integrity a lot of those who think of their honor head for the hills. That number is just significantly less than those who only think of themselves, who would run to the wilderness, except that they fear that more than their shady consequences.
So in this twenty-first century context, I have come up with another three-word list that seems to be totally absent in our present conditions and another three-word program to alter the absent words. The three both common and transcendent moral factors missing from any and all discussions about fixing what is wrong with the United States and the world today are “Grace, Humility, and Beauty.”
To fix this problem I have come up with the HUT, a simple and cost effective method for restoring Grace, Humility, and Beauty. HUT stands for the acrostic Human Ultimate Test. Before we get to the HUT let us look briefly at our missing twenty-first century cultural mores.
Grace of course is also part of the Calvinist guilt, grace, and gratitude. Just as with MacArthur’s honor, for Calvinists grace is the causative human condition that moves a person from guilt to gratitude. In the missing American mores, grace begins the sequence and leads to humility, and humility allows us to find the missing beauty in all life. Humility thus becomes the centerpiece, as does honor with MacArthur’s transition.
Wherever you turn today you are met with arrogance rather than humility. Succinctly if you don’t believe with whatever is being said you are labeled as stupid, primitive, and culturally challenged. If you agree then you are a member of the club, the elite, the enlightened. The problem in the true cosmic sense is that if we really do agree, one of us is not needed.
The humble really have a need for beauty, and search, sometimes at great personal cost, for its illusiveness. Not so for the arrogant because they are so busy trying to get something at the expense of someone else that they have lost touch with any form of transcendence. Beauty is really art clothed in common reality, as true art it transcends time and is not bound by time. Beauty is and remains, unless it is trivialized by human ugliness. In March 2010 everyone seems to be beating each other and everything material with an ugly stick. We are so busy looking at the thorns; we never see the rose.
This brings us to a brief description of the Human Ultimate Test, the soon to be world famous HUT. The HUT is truly the test for today, because if you can afford it you must get a certificate, and that certificate is the ultimate capitalist’s invisible hand. If you can’t afford to pay for the certificate, you can do it on your own and get all the benefits, just no certificate.
The HUT is an intensive two-week course and is guaranteed to change your life. If not completely satisfied, in the modern tradition, sorry about that. Furthermore most of your enrollment fee will be invested in charity. In this particular case, charity is the giving a hand-up American tradition.
I know you are so excited to know how HUT works!
Quite simply you spend two weeks alone, in a real hut, like the homes in which many American pioneers lived their entire lives, and most of the people in the developing world would consider a mansion. This hut will be of modern construction and you will be provided with resources sufficient to understand that all you have to fear is fear itself. One of those resources will be a video camera that you can use to chronicle your adventure and the living world around you. What you get out of your HUT experience is directly related to what you are willing to invest in the transcendence of its outcome.
Lest I forget, that hut will be located in Nowhere, not nowhere, but a real Nowhere at least a hidden distance from a modern seldom used transportation link (road). You will have no television, cell phone, or computer internet access. You will be alone with your God or all by yourself (your choice), without all the crutches of society that you believe makes you – you. There will be a small solar array that will allow you to charge your computer, video camera batteries, electric lights, and maybe a small refrigerator. You will be able to cook your food on a propane stove and if you need heat there will be a small wood stove.
So in absolute terms the Human Ultimate Test will assess your humanity in the context of historic real humanity and you will be equipped with the resources to make a true chronicle of this adventure of your renewal, to share with your friends and family. True leadership can only be taught after you learn that the mission is greater than your personal desires, and broader than your abilities. The HUT will allow you to begin to assess your leadership capacities and give you a direction and time to focus or refocus your life’s efforts.
Now to be completely fair, our initial marketing pitch will be to those who can really afford the adventure. And since the United States government is going to quickly begin redistributing wealth to pay for transfer payments to those less fortunate, we hope to sideline those government endeavors by donating or investing most of your HUT tuition into a Rural Business Development Company. Such an organization is defined by the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions regulations minus the rural emphasis. There are probably similar regulations in other states. The plan is to take the HUT program to all fifty states and internationally.
We are in the process of developing a sliding tuition schedule, that will include both onetime HUT opportunities, was well has lifetime and international memberships. Look at it this way, what you will learn about yourself, as a HUT participant is too priceless to put on your credit card, or to leverage your gold or silver.
The HUT idea came from the Ken Burns PBS documentary on “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” which I finished watching over the weekend. After listening to countless testimonies on how traveling to the National Parks changed people’s lives, I realized that a more rigorous natural experience could change the country in ways beyond change we can believe in. In true spin the HUT is better than the best.
This also is tied into my trek around Mt. Rainer on the Wonderland Trail over a decade ago. Each year only about 200 people complete the trip, while, when I finished about 14,000 attempted the summit and half made it to the top. After being caught in a freakish late summer snowstorm that forced me to abandon that first year trip, I had to come back the next year to complete the crossing from Mowish Lake to Sunrise. But during that first year I spent a night on the porch of a closed backcountry ranger cabin, which was the only totally dry place anywhere, and another couple of very soggy nights in an open sided log hiker shelter on the Mowish River.
Furthermore the HUT also incorporates some of the insights I have gained over the last couple of years living off and on (mostly on) in a 110 square foot hut on the Kettle River in NE Washington. This winter included flat screen high definition satellite TV and very marginal wireless internet, but watching the almost daily passing flight of a bald eagle, and seeing young chipmunks scamper through the rocks, gives a priceless tension with a human world; showing how silly and transient is much of what humans call important, or rather an infection of true insanity.
Well Sarah, it ain’t workin’ that well right now and come to think of it things haven’t worked all that well for quite a while.”
As we have been promoting in our Wonder Springs weekly articles for a number of weeks, change we can believe in is really change we can understand and makes us comfortable. However, if change really is the only constant in the world, then real stupendous change is truly freakin’ scary and it makes us withdraw further into our old sense of security, and we exacerbate the problems. Hence in real reality “Change we can believe in.” is really the enigma of continual angst. To question whether how much of this current change is by design or chance only magnifies the apprehension?
Last week in the Chronicle we looked at a number of religious antitheses to New England Calvinism. Calvinism defines the prime concept of its theology in three words that begin with the letter “G” standing for “Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude. In this week’s “Why Me?” article we will look at similar three word theses, these non-Calvinist and other religious expressions use to express their believe systems.
Watching Glenn Beck last Friday, he unveiled a similar progression to use in his work as he attempts to encourage others to begin to move beyond change we can believe in, as this country attempts to reset the nation on our constitutional foundation. Those three words were “Faith, Hope, and Charity.” These of course come from the old King James - American Revolution era translation of 1 Corinthians 13. Our modern versions use love instead of charity and consequently lose the true perspective of what the Apostle Paul was really saying.
As a Mormon, Beck uses the term charity in its proper context, but I question whether it works with modern American Christian evangelicals who generally think of charity has getting something for nothing, generally from the government, or an NGO (non government organization. Charity in the true sense works within the LDS church because they tithe, consequently there is money to help out those in need, not just as a handout, but also a hand-up.
The average American Christian does not tithe, and the average giving runs about two percent rather than ten. If you factor out the minority of those real tithe givers that probably brings the average offering down to a level God only knows. That amount being just enough to most of the time pay the church staff and the mortgage on the church building. True charity in the New Testament Biblical sense is an impossibility.
In his context Glenn speaks quite often about honor. Whenever I hear the word honor I think of MacArthur’s farewell speech at West Point, which focuses upon the concepts of “Duty, Honor, Country.” Another three word deep concept, that seems to have lost its meaning outside the thought patterns of military officers. In MacArthur’s sense, honor is the centerpiece of one’s duty to country. In Beck’s honor construct with the Biblical, you lose the depth of Paul’s original meaning in Corinthians because honor is always a personal attribute and never truly transcendent or God focused.
In other words, honor is always subservient to integrity. When you speak about integrity a lot of those who think of their honor head for the hills. That number is just significantly less than those who only think of themselves, who would run to the wilderness, except that they fear that more than their shady consequences.
So in this twenty-first century context, I have come up with another three-word list that seems to be totally absent in our present conditions and another three-word program to alter the absent words. The three both common and transcendent moral factors missing from any and all discussions about fixing what is wrong with the United States and the world today are “Grace, Humility, and Beauty.”
To fix this problem I have come up with the HUT, a simple and cost effective method for restoring Grace, Humility, and Beauty. HUT stands for the acrostic Human Ultimate Test. Before we get to the HUT let us look briefly at our missing twenty-first century cultural mores.
Grace of course is also part of the Calvinist guilt, grace, and gratitude. Just as with MacArthur’s honor, for Calvinists grace is the causative human condition that moves a person from guilt to gratitude. In the missing American mores, grace begins the sequence and leads to humility, and humility allows us to find the missing beauty in all life. Humility thus becomes the centerpiece, as does honor with MacArthur’s transition.
Wherever you turn today you are met with arrogance rather than humility. Succinctly if you don’t believe with whatever is being said you are labeled as stupid, primitive, and culturally challenged. If you agree then you are a member of the club, the elite, the enlightened. The problem in the true cosmic sense is that if we really do agree, one of us is not needed.
The humble really have a need for beauty, and search, sometimes at great personal cost, for its illusiveness. Not so for the arrogant because they are so busy trying to get something at the expense of someone else that they have lost touch with any form of transcendence. Beauty is really art clothed in common reality, as true art it transcends time and is not bound by time. Beauty is and remains, unless it is trivialized by human ugliness. In March 2010 everyone seems to be beating each other and everything material with an ugly stick. We are so busy looking at the thorns; we never see the rose.
This brings us to a brief description of the Human Ultimate Test, the soon to be world famous HUT. The HUT is truly the test for today, because if you can afford it you must get a certificate, and that certificate is the ultimate capitalist’s invisible hand. If you can’t afford to pay for the certificate, you can do it on your own and get all the benefits, just no certificate.
The HUT is an intensive two-week course and is guaranteed to change your life. If not completely satisfied, in the modern tradition, sorry about that. Furthermore most of your enrollment fee will be invested in charity. In this particular case, charity is the giving a hand-up American tradition.
I know you are so excited to know how HUT works!
Quite simply you spend two weeks alone, in a real hut, like the homes in which many American pioneers lived their entire lives, and most of the people in the developing world would consider a mansion. This hut will be of modern construction and you will be provided with resources sufficient to understand that all you have to fear is fear itself. One of those resources will be a video camera that you can use to chronicle your adventure and the living world around you. What you get out of your HUT experience is directly related to what you are willing to invest in the transcendence of its outcome.
Lest I forget, that hut will be located in Nowhere, not nowhere, but a real Nowhere at least a hidden distance from a modern seldom used transportation link (road). You will have no television, cell phone, or computer internet access. You will be alone with your God or all by yourself (your choice), without all the crutches of society that you believe makes you – you. There will be a small solar array that will allow you to charge your computer, video camera batteries, electric lights, and maybe a small refrigerator. You will be able to cook your food on a propane stove and if you need heat there will be a small wood stove.
So in absolute terms the Human Ultimate Test will assess your humanity in the context of historic real humanity and you will be equipped with the resources to make a true chronicle of this adventure of your renewal, to share with your friends and family. True leadership can only be taught after you learn that the mission is greater than your personal desires, and broader than your abilities. The HUT will allow you to begin to assess your leadership capacities and give you a direction and time to focus or refocus your life’s efforts.
Now to be completely fair, our initial marketing pitch will be to those who can really afford the adventure. And since the United States government is going to quickly begin redistributing wealth to pay for transfer payments to those less fortunate, we hope to sideline those government endeavors by donating or investing most of your HUT tuition into a Rural Business Development Company. Such an organization is defined by the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions regulations minus the rural emphasis. There are probably similar regulations in other states. The plan is to take the HUT program to all fifty states and internationally.
We are in the process of developing a sliding tuition schedule, that will include both onetime HUT opportunities, was well has lifetime and international memberships. Look at it this way, what you will learn about yourself, as a HUT participant is too priceless to put on your credit card, or to leverage your gold or silver.
The HUT idea came from the Ken Burns PBS documentary on “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” which I finished watching over the weekend. After listening to countless testimonies on how traveling to the National Parks changed people’s lives, I realized that a more rigorous natural experience could change the country in ways beyond change we can believe in. In true spin the HUT is better than the best.
This also is tied into my trek around Mt. Rainer on the Wonderland Trail over a decade ago. Each year only about 200 people complete the trip, while, when I finished about 14,000 attempted the summit and half made it to the top. After being caught in a freakish late summer snowstorm that forced me to abandon that first year trip, I had to come back the next year to complete the crossing from Mowish Lake to Sunrise. But during that first year I spent a night on the porch of a closed backcountry ranger cabin, which was the only totally dry place anywhere, and another couple of very soggy nights in an open sided log hiker shelter on the Mowish River.
Furthermore the HUT also incorporates some of the insights I have gained over the last couple of years living off and on (mostly on) in a 110 square foot hut on the Kettle River in NE Washington. This winter included flat screen high definition satellite TV and very marginal wireless internet, but watching the almost daily passing flight of a bald eagle, and seeing young chipmunks scamper through the rocks, gives a priceless tension with a human world; showing how silly and transient is much of what humans call important, or rather an infection of true insanity.