Getting the Vote Out - Getting the Vote Right

The elections are at hand. Can you put aside all the negative advertising? Try. It is all designed to distract from the candidates and issues. Remember, this sort of thing is a Red Herring.

Early voting is available in Florida where I live. I will probably vote this week and avoid the lines on election day.

Probably the most effective thing we can do in an election is pray for guidance in our candidate choice and decision making. God probably won't wake you in the middle of the night to tell you how to vote, but prayer will clarify your thinking, and the guidance will be there.

If you have gone over your sample ballot and scratched out the scoundrels and incompetents; if you have set aside the Red Herrings they are trying to feed you; and, if you have focused on the character of the persons running for office, now you are ready for decision making. Now take a look at the real issues and make up your mind about them. Then vote!

Remember

The Hermeneutic of Voting

1. Pray for guidance.

2. Throw the Scoundrels out.
3. Identify and eliminate the Incompetents.

4. Choose the Party or the Person
5. Beware of the Red Herrings
6. Decide the issues
7. Pray for guidance.
8. VOTE

God bless and keep these United States of America.
Amen.

Early Voting

I voted today, using our early voting opportunities. It was an interesting experience. After being identified I was taken to one of the new electronic voting machines. The poll worker entered my precinct and id number and showed me how it worked. I found the machine easy to use. On the way out another poll worker explained how the paper trail worked and how the voting machines were electronically protected.

Of course, this is only Orange County. I don't know what machines are used elsewhere. All of this still requires faith, but it does seem to be an improvement over 2000, 2004, and the vote early and often tactics of my days in Chicago.

Vote - your vote matters!

Have we missed something?

Last night the Bishop visited our local parish for Confirmation. It was a cool service. About fifteen persons were confirmed. The Bishop preached a good sermon. I remembered my own confirmation and the text which was assigned: "Seek those things which are above," Col3:1). The Bishop didn't assign a text and I missed that.

All this got me thinking about the service, preparation for it and the content of it. We tell people that it is about their receiving the Holy Spirit. What we do, however, is focus their preparation on doctrine, church history, and liturgics.

No matter how hard I try I can not find any Scriptural authority for this. Nowhere are we told that we must be knowledgeable, liturgically graceful or orthodox in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Where in the training do we find the meaning of discipleship, of following Jesus in our daily life, of developing and deepening our relationship with God?

Have we missed something here? I know we are teaching a contemporary version of what we have always taught, but is that teaching people to follow Christ?

A Doctors's Visit is Half a Day

Remember when we were told how wonderful the future would be? We would live in a time when no one worked more than 30 hours a week. In this prosperous society people working part time so that their employers would not be responsible for health benefits, vacations, sick days and the like would not be a problem.

In this best of all possible worlds I would have a paper free office. Everything would be computerized. The computer would actually work. Viruses, worms, and crashes were not prophesied.

And best of all, I would have leisure time to pursue all my interests; but one thing was left out: a mandatory new hobby that consumes much of my leisure time. That hobby is personal medical care.

There are the medical specialists: the foot doctor, the joint doctor, the plumbing doctors (GI, Kidney, Urology), the heart doctor, the lung doctor, the nose doctor, the eye doctor, and perhaps the most important of all, the primary care doctor, whose job it is to to keep track of what is happening with the other doctors. This list does not include the various technicians and support persons such as audiologists, nor does it include the dentist, or dentists. Over all there must be at least 15 such caregivers.

Each doctor must be visited. A doctor's visit, my friends, takes half a day. Surely not, you say! After all they only spend ten minutes with you. True, but you must consider the other factors:

Travel time - No doctor is less than 30 minutes away. Usually the travel time is closer to an hour, especially if you must be on the roads during rush hour. On average? Probably 45 minutes each way or a total of one and one half hours.

Waiting time - In the outer office, if you are lucky 30 minutes, more likely 45. Then you are taken to an inner examination room, where you take your clothes off and freeze for another 15 to thirty minutes.

Consultation time - 10 to 20 minutes. If consultation time is any longer, you have some various serious problem which will involve adding other doctors, more appointments, etc.,etc., etc.

Recovery time - Remember when you went right back to work following a doctor's appointment? Now you get back home and have to rest for 30 minutes until you are able to continue your day.

Add it all up. It is usually three hours, often four. Dancing this dance with fifteen or more health care professionals can easily take a week or two out of each month.

The cost of all this is incidental. You just use the money you had set aside for all those leisure activities for which you don't have time because you are visiting doctors.

Hermeneutizing

I got a great email from Pastor Don Moore.

He says" I have always seen hermeneutics in a way very much like you do. It is communications with a purpose interpreted by the listener, or by the one who overhears.I was taught that there are three things to learn from what is heard. First, what does it say; what are the words and what do they mean when they are used and connected this way? ...Second, what does it mean; what is the force of what is said? ...Third, what does this mean about the communicator and about the intended listener...."

"...It is also really hard not to add opinions while interpreting the communication, but rather to go on evidence and assume the best possible construction (but not without wisdom and experience in play). This way is godly, but awfully hard to do."

Isn't that right on target? We have had some chats and I know from experience that Pastor Moore doesn't have any trouble telling me where he is coming from.

It is hard distinguishing my opinions from what I am hearing and to avoid muddying the communication. I am not sure, though, about giving the best possible construction to the words of others. If my goal is to avoid conflict, that is probably a wise choice. If, however, I want to really understand what is being said to me, I have to recognize that what it said may well be construed very negatively. This is probably a case of being wise as serpents and mild as doves.

So, what does this say about Hermeneutics and Hermeneutists? It says that thinking and understanding can be hard work. One of the people who taught me said, "It requires clarity of purpose and consistency of effort."