Monster: Steppenwolf protest song of '60s could be today's anthem — and that's sad

  Back in the crazy, rebellious and arrogant optimistic Sixties, my favorite band was "Steppenwolf."

  They made it big with "Magic Carpet Ride" and then "The Pusher."

  But, to me, it was their 1969 prophetic classic "Monster" that touched me, then a teenager peering fearfully ahead as the Vietnam War escalated.

  When my draft number came up a couple years later, it was low enough that I was one week from induction as an Army medic trainee before Nixon's suspension of the draft saved me.

  Now, I'm a graying 60-year-old man. And I look around and, other than our wonderful technological advances, little has changed.

  Raspy, now old John Kay could still belt out "Monster" today and it would fit, perfectly.

  And that, to me, is incredibly, deeply sad.

  Consider a portion of the lyrics to that song:

"Our cities have turned into jungles

And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching.

America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster...."

Believe or not believe: It's important to know what you really embrace, or reject

Believe, or not believe.

Your choice, and I'm certainly not going to judge anyone's choice. It's highly personal, and your value as a living, breathing, sentient being does not change, regardless. 

That said, this video simply shares the unadorned, basic Christian message -- without the politics, without the holier-than-thou attitude, and without compromise.

Not everyone can accept it. Even those who do accept it too often add other agendas, political, social, ethnic, etc. agendas they wield like clubs against others.

Secular activists browbeat believers, Some believers demonize skeptics. It makes me think of errant believers and Christianphobes alike being condemned, some day, to writing on a galaxy-sized blackboard, for eternity, John 11:35, "Jesus wept."

As much as "accepting" Christ, living a life afterward that honors his love, sacrifice and embrace of all of us "sinners" is the point, at least for this cynical preacher's kid who has seen way too much judgment and far too little grace and humility.

Stupid reporter tricks: The Case of the Exploding Cigarette

I recently was reminiscing with a colleague about stupid reporter tricks.

I've committed . . . a few.

 I recalled that, some 35 years ago at a Spokane, Wash., alternative newspaper, I stuffed match heads into the cigarettes of my managing editor while he was at lunch. 

He returned, and I could hear his Zippo click open. He must have gotten two, maybe three puffs before the flare. (That is not him below, by the way. But it illustrates the tale, albeit it bit exaggerated.)

I still recall the shrieks of obscenities that blew forth from his office, followed a ragged breath or two later by an angry, "Mims! Get in here!"

 Not only were the still glowing shreds of tobacco just beginning to halt their rain onto his desktop, but he claimed the flare had singed his moustache and eyebrows.

Good thing that he was my friend. Remarkably, he still is.

Also, good thing my current editor at the Salt Lake Tribune doesn't smoke.

Hey, I may be 60 now, but that impish 20-something guy is still sloshing around inside and occasionally rears his horned head.

After all, years after the Exploding Cig Incident, I left a phone message note for my boss at Associated Press with a number that answered with a recorded come on for a dating service. 

It began, "Hey, big boy . . ." I kid you not.

Said editor was both irritated and amused, I think, in equal measure.

He was less reticent about his orders to never do that again.

AP also brought out the beat/worst of my competitive nature. Misdirecting rival UPI reporters, unscrewing mouthpieces of pay telephones after racing to one to dictate breaking news, ducking under police barricades to get close to mudslides and semi truck explosions . . . and being chased by a bull during one of the latter incidents as I crossed a pasture, after climbing through a dry canal under a blocked off freeway.

I may grow up, some day.  

Probably, when I'm dead.

 

Anniversaries: The rare jewel of marital commitment is a generational gift

Today, my son Rob and daughter-in-law Rachel celebrate 16 years of marriage. 

In a time when people struggle with commitment, I'm proud of their devotion to, and love for each other.

Also this week, my daughter Brenda and son-in-law Idal mark their first year of marriage, their lives now busy with my newborn grandson. May they also find the depth of love and commitment Rob and Rachel have.

Recently, Barbara and I marked our 40th. In January, my Dad and Mom, ages 91 and 86, will be married 65 years.

Dad will remember, Mom probably will not. But even as Alzheimer's disease continues to take her memories, she continues to be devoted to "Daddy."

 It seems, after all, that Love endures.

St. Paul was right, when he declared (1 Cor. 13, NIV): 

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

"Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

"For we know in part and we prophesy in part,  but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

 

Miracles: They come in small, squirming, grunting and wide-eyed packages

My last installment from the Beltway trip is the best.

Gettysburg, D.C., Fort McHenry, etc., were all on my "bucket list," to be sure.

The best part of the trip, though, was one I had frankly given up on ever happening: holding a grandchild who would carry on our crazy, good, bad and indifferent gene pool to another generation.

I have two other grandchildren I love deeply. Joshua and Lela. I like to say they were "born in my heart," though not my bloodline.

And I mean that with all my heart.

Holding Gabriel was precious, though, in a way I had not expected to experience.

I marveled at all those ancestors -- now including my wife, Barbara, and myself -- who culminated genetically in that tiny, grunting, squirming bundle of boy I rocked in a Towson, Md. townhouse for two weeks.

Add that to the generations of his father, Idal, represented. . . men and women stretching back into the mists of West Africa's nation of Cameroon.

Gabriel's heritage, then, spans three continents and most people groups, other than Asian. Amazing. A lot to put on a (then) 7 pound, 5 ounce infant, though.

And if there is such a thing as generational healing, perhaps it culminates in Gabriel's advent, too. A couple centuries ago, some of my relatives bought West African slaves and used them to gain wealth on plantations throughout the Deep South.

When I visited Gettysburg, standing on Little Round Top, I mused that I trod ground where my southern ancestors fought and died, ultimately losing a decisive battle that ushered in the demise of slavery in America. 

And at the end of that Civil War, a Maj. Mims was a signatory of the Appomatox surrender registry for the defeated Army of Northern Virginia.

Standing in the rows of Union troops witnessing that surrender likely were other relatives, the Sprouls from Maine, and not a few runaway slaves who enlisted in the U.S. Colored Troops divisions, men who signed up under the name "Mims," having long since lost their own names.

Irony. And justice. All those historical metaphors.

But the best part of Gabriel was inexpressible.

How do you describe the warmth, peace and fulfillment of holding a newborn grandson?

God bless you Gabe, Lela and Joshua.

May the heritage this grandfather passes on to you be one of faith -- in God, your family and yourselves.

And Gabriel? Never forget your parents named you so for a reason. Your name? 

It means: God is my strength.