Rainey Blogs on Some Days

"The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." Henry David Thoreau After watching Dead Poets Society over the weekend and hearing Thoreau's quote, I cannot get it out of my head. The weight of its truthfulness is bearing down on me. I think I am living a life of quiet desperation, the grand ambitions of youth replaced by "the resignation that living brings" to quote Jackson Browne's " Before the Deluge ." I think resignation and desperation go hand-in-hand. Desperation is the feeling. Resignation is one of its sources. Maybe most us reach that place where we resign ourselves to making a living because our families need us to do that. We step aside and let the next generation have their shot at life. "Happily ever after fails, we've been poisoned by these fairy tales" (Don Henley,  End of the Innocence ). Life never delivers what it promises, and this hollow ringing sound of resignation is even found among the famous and the su...

“Jewish law prefers that Jews pray communally rather than privately.” Joseph Telushkin, “Minyan,” in  Jewish Literacy , 719. I’ve been thinking about this notion for a few days after I read it because I get the impression that most of the Christians I know pray individually and about their own self interests more than anything else. I know this is true of me. But Telushkin, reiterating the teachings of the rabbis in connecting Jewish prayer to the concept of  minyan , where the minimum number of males required to conduct a worship service or say certain prayers is ten, says that public prayer prevents such personal expressions of self-interest. He says:  " . . . the rabbis apparently felt that public prayers are more apt to be offered for that which benefits the entire community, whereas individuals often pray for that which benefits only themselves, even if it be at the expense of someone else" (719). In Evangelical or Pentecostal services that I've attended, at some...

Growing up in Southern Illinois , I had never met a vegetarian. We were meat lovers. We felt like we were supporting local industry when we indulged eggs, ground beef, brisket, steaks, or pork chops since many people who lived in our area were farmers. We never talked about cholesterol either. But one night in college, it all changed. Marcia, my wife, had painstakingly worked on dinner for Mark and Victoria, a couple on our small Bible College campus in Springfield , Missouri that we had met on campus. Mark grew up in a missionary family and was a Missions major, so we figured that missionaries-in-training would eat anything. Marcia brought out one of her specialties: gorgeous lumps of ground beef wrapped with a strip of bacon. We called them "Bacon Wraps" and we thought they were beautiful. We later learned after moving out East that wraps were actually an uppity kind of sandwich that was supposed to be healthy, but being from a small Midwestern town we had never seen ...

I feel so retro sitting in the Newark Airport waiting to board a flight to Louisville to meet Marcia and the girls. People playing with electronic gadgets and listening to music or podcasts all around me. I almost brought my CD player, but that also would have seemed old fashioned, so 1990s, carrying around a Sony Walkman in these iPod days. But I could have listened to NPR this morning if I had it. Something else to mention--I'm writing on a steno pad! Who writes on a steno pad in this day and age? I should have a laptop computer, but I'm using a steno pad with a ball point pen, just like George Washington probably did when he wrote. This is so embarrassing. People sometimes look at me funny when I do this. "What's he doing?" they probably say to themselves. "I'll bet he's writing a letter to his mother." Or they think, "Why is that guy taking notes on paper in an airline terminal? I wonder if he's a terrorist, taking notes on how...

In a close vote, the United Pentecostal Church (UPC) adopted the cardinal as the denominational bird over the flamingo during its annual conference in Richmond , Virginia . While many important issues were discussed at the conference, including revising its doctrinal statement to adopt footwashing as an ordinance of the church and to establish a formal position on homosexuality, the bird debate seemed to awaken a sleeping Greater Richmond Convention Center filled with UPC pastors from around the country. Debate centered around whether the flamingo , which stands on one leg, or the cardinal , with its bright, red plumaged males and its drab, brown feathered females, most closely reflected the values of the denomination. Observers said the comments of the Reverend Larry Guenther of Cedar Rapids , Iowa , characterized the sentiments of the majority who voted in favor of the redbird. Folks, look around the room here. Look at our men, our ministers, with their mousses and hair oils and br...

I walked my dog today. His name is Rover. I know, it is an ordinary dog name, but I wanted something traditional for him. I mean, he is a dog, so why give him some avant-garde name for goodness’ sake? He is a Yorkshire terrier. I do not even know what that is . At least that is what I tell people. I have a dog leash that I bought at the Duquoin State Fair in 1975 and I found it in the attic last year. I guess I did not want to go around with a Bergen Record newspaper bag to pick up Rover’s poop—and a New York Times bag would have been a little hoity toity for me—so an invisible Yorkshire terrier on a stiff, fake dog leash seemed right, and there are no ordinances in Leonia requiring us to pick up invisible dog poop. As I was out walking Rover this morning, I saw one of the softball moms who lives two blocks away. She told me he was a cute dog, but then her dog got a little aggressive with Rover and I had to pull Rover back and tell her to have a nice day. We walked by the home sale...

With so much snow on the ground, my thoughts turn to summer sometimes. The fountain at the pond in the park where I do chin-ups in Mahwah , New Jersey constantly roars in the summer. It reminds me of the roar of the spillway dam overflow at Rend Lake in Southern Illinois where my grandfather used to take me to catch shad for bait and then fish a little farther down the river. We mostly fished in quiet waters where he could talk, but closer to the spillway the roar kept conversation at a minimum. My grandpa was a storyteller, but he could not tell stories above the roar of the spillway. Fishing by a waterfall is not able to support conversation. Fishing requires you to keep some distance from the next fisherman anyway and requires personal space to cast the line, to listen, to watch the movements of the line. This is at odds with storytelling, which requires intimacy. My grandpa loved to tell stories, so we mostly fished in the quiet of lakes or creeks. He could te...