Believers

A few years ago NPR resurrected an Edward R. Murrow radio program called This I Believe. It came on during my commute, and after a few listens, the program intro instinctively led my index finger to the radio Off button. The forced convictions of these essays were boring. I've gone back to them, mainly reading the essays rather than listening, and I found some value.

Still the emphasis on conviction is a problem. In my experience, a person of conviction is the person to act most pronouncedly contradictorily. Like Old Man Hemingway and his favorite shotgun.

Either that or a man of conviction is ridiculous like the Rolling Stones (still got that rock-n-roll attitude - banking on it at sixty-five). Or worse, Rolling Stones fanatics.

The priest and the boy? Yes, pronounced and extreme.

The Pope? Perhaps in Benny lies the difference between belief and faith.

The TIB programmers are aware of these human contradictions. On the TIB website, you can find reflective interviews with at least one of the original 1950's contributors. And I'm sure there would be more if most of the contributors weren't dead. You can also read/listen to the essays both old and new.

"...statesmen and secretaries, teachers and cab drivers."

The program opens the forum to Everyman including men and women of note - a socialist essay by Albert Einstein, an essay on prejudice by Major League Baseball's first African-American player Jackie Robinson, one by Studs Terkel (of course), Helen Keller (a series of jokes - just joking).

One of the creepiest of the modern essays ran on Sunday. It is the work of Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking. She has been present for several executions. Her conviction allows her the audacity to ask of the executed that he look directly at her so that he may see an expression of love as he is put to death.




I have trouble with conviction. I harbor broad empathy that leaves little room for hard beliefs it would seem. I am an optimist about nothing (which may be my faith).

It's not a mental state I necessarily advise.

wishy washy wishy
wishy washy

Before I was bound to fatherhood but after I started putting effort towards it

in fact long after because it began to look like a natural impossibility

yet before I could come to any conviction as to whether I needed to be a father in an absolute sense

I questioned a father and friend
I questioned a father and friend somebody who I shared fun moments of moral ambiguity and decadence

I told him I did not know what
I told him I did not know what or how
I told him I did not know what or how or if I could
I told him I did not know what or how or if I could or would
I told him I did not know what or how or if I could or would or should

I told him I did not know what or how or if I could or would or should teach a child a moral code since I do not own a compass

I asked him what his plan was for his own little girl

He said the Golden Rule sufficed




Well it does but you sure are going to sound like a broken record for the next eighteen years buddy. Now blow that out your saxophone.

This I believe

whatever you're looking for here, look deeper brothers and sisters. ;-)