Snapshots and Synapses

I’ve been thinking a lot recently… okay, I think a lot normally… but my mind has been troubled by the growing hatred in America. I’m not sure when it started, but somewhere in the past 30 years we’ve reached a point where we are a very polarized country where we just can’t seem to talk about issues. I see symptoms everywhere: generation gaps, workplace feuds, political firepots, divorce trends, suicidal bullying, and the list goes on and on.   Related to the upcoming presidential election, I typically see one of two actions on social media sites: attack or avoid. Anyone and everyone who sides with the views of the opposing camp is treated like an enemy, a subverter who cannot be trusted. Or maybe we like the person but just can discuss certain issues with them so we can keep everything at a “nice” level.   The problem with avoiding the issues is that they never get resolved, and going into fight or flight mode distances us from others. I imagine that prior to America...

America, America, how far have you fallen? Babylon the great has fallen indeed! You who have led the world in idolatrous pleasures and submitted yourselves as another’s treasure! And conquest? No one needed to conquer you! For you gave it away with all that you do… to forsake your inheritance for a bowlful of stew: the addict who desperately grasps for a fix, completely oblivious, the eyes so transfixed on that death-dealing high that will bring him down low! So lower and lower and lower you go! So sad. So true! Still you question “What’s truth?” “It doesn’t fit my agenda… I must bury it!” “But then I always preferred darkness to light.” Babylon the great has fallen indeed! copyright ©2012 Mitchell Malloy ( http://mitchellmalloyblogspot.com/ )

I’m convinced the world, our society, is starving for goodness. It’s not just a desire for goodness, or even a yearning for goodness. There is a legitimate need in each of us to know and be a part of what is good. It’s a hunger that is not being met, and therefore the world is starving.   So what does that have to do with the title “Becoming a Man”? Everything.   A few weeks ago, I walked up to a breakfast café for a cup of coffee. I was walking up to the door ahead of an older woman, an older woman who incidentally had delayed me in the parking lot as she took her own sweet time, gingerly adjusting her car in her chosen space. In frustration and hurry, I backed my car up and parked in a decidedly distant spot, yet here I was approaching the door before her. The thought entered my mind that I should hold the door open for her, but she had already delayed my morning coffee! I knew if I held the door open for this lady that I would then be compelled to hold it for the ...