San Diego and Money and Water

San Diego, Money and Water

Places and cultures are different; certainly cities.

San Diego is a "nice city". Different than most, I would wager.

I have been there a number of times, over a 27 year span. I have been to a bit of its downtown, to its coasts and harbors, to its expansive suburbs. I have stayed with people in around them, especially in La Jolla, "The Jewel" in Spanish.

Yes it is. A jewel.

If you visit and stay in cities the world round, San Diego is shiny and nice, clean, rich, and prosperous. Sure, there are poorer parts, like everywhere. But overall it is very nice. Better than most. The weather is amazingly pleasant, to boot.

Growing up prior, until the age of twenty-two, to first being able to visit California, I had already seen in so many television shows, movies, and presentations, the vistas and lands of the Golden State. It is everywhere in the entertainment world. Little House on the Prairie and M.A.S.H., not filmed in Minnesota and the Korean Peninsula, respectively. It is all California.

Many hours, days, weeks, of our lives, watching the lands and seas of California, via television, film, video, DVD and Youtube. We even watch and consume from the pens and computers of Californians, from Disney and all the other animators based there. We live in the California entertainment world. Even when we are not there physically.

I ended up visiting there a number of times from the Inter-Mountain West, with roommates and friends. Later I moved there, I worked there, I married there, I studied there.

San Diego was a choice place in the state, for sure. It is. And so close to the murder, mayhem, and general malaise of Mexico. But Mexico, Tijuana and border towns like it, are still doing better than many other places around the world.

When I was there in San Diego briefly last summer (2018), I recall driving around modern neighborhoods of La Jolla, near our religious temple, and seeing the neatly manicured lawns and bushes and gardens and paths, the bike ways and the parking, all the nice, modern apartments, and no trash, and much water, and everything perfectly coifed and groomed.

Shangri La, the modern day wonder town.

Crime is not as bad as other California cities in San Diego, the population is not as crowded.

Rents are higher? Assuredly.

---One experience I recall when I was being interviewed as an American with my northern San Diego roommate (Del Mar), in the far off city of Chillan, thousands of miles south of the United States on the opposite side of the equator. A teacher brought us to her class, maybe middle school age, to

But first, some information about me: I am from a college town in southern Indiana where my parents saw homes not too many blocks from my house without running water or electricity, or even hard floors. I guess they had dirt. Parts of Bloomington were not exactly third world, but we knew people who lived in humble circumstances.

My roomie from California, the one I was randomly assigned to stay with a Chilean family with--I will call him Paul--had different ideas than me about comparing the United States to Chile. He had served a church mission in New York City, and had grown up with some people who would be considered known celebrities, especially in the basketball world. He was used to a higher caliber of place, I suppose.

Me, I knew Indiana and Massachusetts a lot, Cape Cod and Kentucky and Wisconsin, some of tghe western U.S., some beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, even parts of the Caribbean and Spain. I had lived in various towns of Chile for my church mission, however, and I saw Chileans and Americans as being more the same than different, and so I answered when asked by the youth.

Paul, however, gave a different impression emphasizing the differences between the U.S. and Chile. He said it was more modern, more economically strong, and a few other things that contradicted my answer but were probably correct. He was correct.

California, and San Diego, are hard to compare with. Indiana doesn't compare, most of Chile doesn't, most of the world doesn't.

And above them all, at the bottom of the state, is this well-kept San Diego.

It means the same as Santiago, which is Spanish for James, which is also related to the ancient name Jacobo or Jacob. 

The chosen one of old, the new elect of the present.

It is quite a town.

What else did I wish to say?

This is a blessed place in many ways, and yet we must find our own jewels to inhabit, our own realms of beauty to discover. We cannot all live in San Diego, nor should we want to.

But it is a nice place to visit, and know people, and simply know that such a place exists.

Here's to San Diego! Go Padres.

Eric the Red: A Tribute to a Life, a Grand Soul

Eric the Red: A Tribute to a Life, a Soul

My tribute to the person and artist, teacher and analyst, husband, father, son, uncle, (grandparent?) friend, critic, fan, church member, priest, home town hero, Eric Samuelsen

I found out by two electronic means that the old friend and professor Eric Samuelsen was not much more for our mortal journey we recognize as life. (Weekend of September 21st, 2019). But it was a good ride, I would say. Most would agree. Much too young to leave, yes, but remarkably crafted.

I read through Facebook, the social media giant of its age, our 21st century time linked together as a global community, that Eric was in very bad condition. This came from his brother Rob; it was a heartfelt tribute to Eric and his life and battles, touching and sweet. I made a comment on it (Friday evening?) that hopefully reciprocates the feelings of respect and love for this person, so unique and valiant.

Then I received an email from my father, age 82, the next day (yesterday), that Eric had passed. All this in the last 48 hours. All in one warm weekend of September. The end of the baseball season, one where Eric's beloved Giants were out of the race anyway. Who cares about that? I would bet that Eric did. But there are bigger things than baseball, of course.

My father and Eric's father, Roy, were friends since the late 1960s, in Bloomington, Indiana, where Eric and I hail from, and where we have a few things in common. That makes Eric and I similar in a few ways. So perhaps I might possess a little more insight into who he is, and how that identity has affected me.

That said, however, Eric displayed some unique qualities that I do not, and for this I hail him, and must recount and postulate about him.

To me, Eric was a modern day strident Viking. Viking? Does that capture it? No, not really... not a literal Viking of yore, the ravager and pillager. Eric was a gentle soul, a large man, you might say gentle giant, very kind. Not a marauder or raider, but rather the opposite, the antithesis of the old legends of those Scandinavian voyagers. This Viking description, albeit genetic, is merely a convenient or cliched analogy to a mythical epic warrior who intrepidly forages across the earth. Like the namesake who discovered North America, this Eric of Indiana and Utah discovered some new grand territories and pastures, significant to me and others. In the 20th century version, this allusion to an  ancient Viking  explorer of continents, he is the modern day warrior (see Rush, progressive rock group) of an artist, a battler, an advocate for ideas and faith and art. Wow, he inspires me thus.

Eric was this. And of Norwegian stock, for sure. Norwegian blood made much of his life and character, I would argue. I think you will agree.

I thank God and the gods for Norway. We need more of it.

We could use more of Eric's type, undoubtedly.

I could ramble on, and will, but perhaps numbering things will take us to the necessary points.

1. Eric Samuelsen, first son of Roy Samuelsen, son of Norway, was a member, a dedicated follower, thinker, and leader, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and that is notable. He did things, he said things, he wrote things, he lived these things, to embody this faith, passion, and life long service. He has left a legacy, which can be documented, but other traces are more difficult to measure...

Eric grew up among his two younger brothers and parents and faith community in Bloomington, as mentioned. He was so many years ahead of me and them, Rob and Rolf. And thank goodness! He lead the way in many aspects for me and others. It had effects upon me, at least.

1a. Bloomington is a funny place. It is small and tranquil, in many respects, which leads to, many say, a better atmosphere for music and art of the like that his father was immersed in. Roy, Eric's eminent father, was able to establish himself as a formidable artist and performer in Bloomington, also a teacher and mentor to many. I, like so many others, and his sons, and on and on in the faith and secular community, looked up to this great operatic singer with the rich booming voice and presence. There was sublime majesty in his work and life. Roy passed away some short year or so ago, at a more appropriate age and with considerably less suffering than his son Eric. I think they are in Valhalla now, together, among the pantheon of the giants and saints of our mortal plain, redoubled in glory and power and majesty. What a sight they are! Eric is with his father, Thor is with Odin, as it were. And Mary is there, too.

Oh, yes! Bloomington. B-town. Let us step back from the heaven and re-alight upon the Hoosier grounds of the heartland. This town in Monroe County, southern Indiana, has these opera types, like Roy, and more musicians and performers and legends, many with instruments and ledgers and bands and tools and productions, and there are ever more academic professorial types, with their books and symposiums and lofty ideas and teachings and legacies, floating and roaming through the campus and the downtown and adjoining neighborhoods and subdivisions spread across the city and the country side. The rest of us, bumping around among the heady ones, ride our bikes, walk our dogs, drive our cars and bang our hammers to the beat of the rhythms of the rest of the world. We go to baseball practices, or swimming pools, we attend our classes, watch our television and movies, attend the occasional theatre production or opera or grand stage performance.

Eric saw all of it. Bloomington venues brought us the world. And he would engage those worlds and add to them.

Bloomington also has its share of rednecks and country sorts, very earthy and crude, but sweet and noble in their own way. We went to school with them, and to church and scouting activities. But we, the suburban youth, were townies, as Angelo Pizzo of the seminal basketball film and the creators of Breaking Away, Oscar winning picture, were gifted at showing the greater world in their movies of 1979 and 1986. We were not the cocky fraternity guys of Third Street or Jordan Avenue. Townies, or "cutters" (children of  limestone stone cutters) a term that was invented by the writers of the aforementioned biking film, have their own status; we spoke with "normal" American accents, not the southern Indiana twang of Larry Bird and my other fellow dye in the wool Hoosiers. But we were definitely natives sons and daughters, loyal and animated for the games and times of the Bob Knight era, and proud of Indiana roots.

Eric needed to move on from Indiana for different reasons, but Bloomington was with him, repeatedly, as he did his graduate degree there later as a young married man, in order to be a full fledged professor, or as he lead the Maumee Scout camp in the middle of no where for a long hot Indiana summer, with his young bride Annette. He was a Boy Scout, yet a cerebral artist as well. He was a deejay on the local National Public Radio affiliate, WFIU; to my pride and satisfaction he was a favorite of some of my respected childhood classmates. He was a smart-artist-nerd and savant of sorts. He did brainy radio, and he was a vaunted San Francisco Giants fan! He played basketball, volleyball, but he wrote plays and songs, one of which I was able to perform my senior year in high school. He was constantly creating and engaging in the theatre arts. You can look it up. Some of it will not be recorded, but memorable among the rest of us.

He worked at Garcia's Pizza downtown; he would animatedly remark that youth of our church were different. He wanted to share this with others. He made me feel different, in a choice way. I don't know if my sisters had the same experience with him, perhaps not. I hope that they think of him as a good man of a curious disposition: a believer in things that are not always politically correct, but a person convicted of the goodness of God and his heritage, the heritage of a church movement that has its foibles. His father, Roy, a European emigre with two Mormon grandmothers back in northern Europe, was our bishop for a time in the 1980s. Eric had left town and returned in those times.

Take it from me, he was a presence. Maybe some did not appreciate it; perhaps I myself overlooked it a lot. I am glad that at least now, in this sad time of his eventual death, his impact has at least brought it to remembrance.

2. Teacher, preacher, writer, researcher, translator, interpreter, director. Eric taught Sunday school lessons, and seminary in the 1980s, that my older sisters were more privy to. I sat in on a couple, and what he shared stayed with me. He spoke of Hollywood and worse, the pernicious actors and factors that mixed in the milieus of good and noble art; influences that made the industries of entertainment a place of darkness and disturbing turmoil. Beware of the scion songs of the art world! But there was so much good to seek and withhold, that was very worthwhile. He, unlike my young family that listened to its music on a long play album, was no fan of Saturday's Warrior, a Latter-day Saint pop hit musical of the 1970s that exists in latent iterations till today. I learned of his encounter with this work and debut from later recountings of his freshman year in Provo. Other musicals have overtaken a lot of that public attention when it comes to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which are more of the mocking variety (see Parker and Stone, of vulgar/gross animation art, among others).

Eric was forever searching for the great stories. He would write and produce his own, he would direct and teach others. He inspired and directed them though out his years, more so in Provo, Utah, where he lived out his career as a professor and playwright, director and family man.

I took his theatre class my first semester at BYU in 1993. I took notes, physical and mental. I ended up earning a minor in theatre and film, based largely on his counsel; taking his advice to study those classes while aiming for the film arts, I could not sustain the interest or gumption enough to stay closely with the craft. The aspirations were there, to some degree off and on, but now at almost 49 years old, decades later I see myself back then as more of Steinbeck character, a bumbler and a wanderer of sorts. Think of the silly vagrant characters of Tortilla Flat, or Of Mice and Men ; I feel as though I have been an itinerant journeyman day-laborer in some of those stories, guys a bit lost who work to live but don't necessarily live to work, with jobs and careers that meander and sometimes lead to frustration and painful recognition of futility and fate. 

But enough about me! Eric was a more focused laborer, for sure. He entrenched himself in a faculty and arts community where he could assert his impact. And he did. I cannot tell you all of it, only a few parts.

He wrote some plays, some of which I watched, observed. He did an amazing job with the "Seating of Senator Smoot". I was completely impressed by the amount of research and historical background that he did for the play. This was a landmark time in the United States history for the queer folks of Utah and the Inter-Mountain West, a post-polygamous lot who made their debut in the halls of Washtington D.C. in interesting fashion. Perhaps like Muslim Congresspersons today?

Interesting, us American minorities. All of us are minorties, to some degree or fashion.

Thanks for that, Eric. I saw "Accomodations", a play dealing with the elderly and how we interact with them. 

And, I know there is much more that I have yet to see: I am positive Eric has worked out many fine productions in the years since. 

Heddagabler. Translator. Eric was the modern day translator and voice of Henrik Ibsen, illustrious Norwegian playwright, for his skills and sensitivities to that language and culture.

Eric served his two year mission in his father's home country. What a blessing.

Eric proclaimed a love for the Spanish language and a supreme respect for Garcia Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude". His appreciation for my second tongue was well received by me, and helped feel reaffirmed in my pursuits as would-be artist and writer.

Spanish, Latin America, a world beyond the American context. Eric was fascinated by it. Did he ever make it Colombia, land of the mysterious fake-but-real Macondo? I don't know. He certainly went there in his literary imagination, as he said he would read this tale yearly for inspiration.

The artistic and tragic world: Eric was part of that and more, much more that I do not know of.

Family man, man of the community, his impact in the last 25 years are more than what I can tell you of. But I know it is solid, and vast.

I know that Eric suffered a lot; my dad was Roy's home teacher much of the twenty-first century and I would gather indirect reports of it, at times being able to visit in person on trips back to Indiana from my parts of East Coast. I learned of his wife and children across the country, through reports of Roy and Mary. Mary, incidentally, read the tribute I wrote for my own mother's passing in 2014.

Eric, now marked by 2019, so shortly after the passing of his own dear parents.

I also always admired the two younger brothers, fraternal survivors now, who I knew as a youth as temporary caretakers in my home, counselors, Scout leaders, church authorities, friends.

Perhaps, as I have said, this makes little difference to some, but it has had its influences on me.

Eric was the eldest and perhaps wisest of them all. And yes, the biggest. The biggest heart? The biggest voice? The grandest soul?

3. Singer.

As I mentioned in FaceBook, learning of Eric's soon demise, physically, I recalled a scene that will forever be imprinted upon me and will live beyond the years.

In our small chapel on Second Street in Bloomington, where mine and other families were raised in our brand of faith and fervor, (or sometimes lack thererof?), Roy would belt the hymns of our faith, and when Eric was present the volume was raised. I basked in the joy of attempting to literally raise my own voice in amens and hosannas.

Gird up your loins...

Gird up your loins; fresh courage take.

Our God will never us forsake;

And soon we'll have this tale to tell--

All is well! All is well!

Those utterances, voice swells and communing as a congregation were our souls reaching up and out to God Himself. Prayers emitted, summoned, received, in power and grace.

No rock concert or other earthly incantation can touch me or leave the way that I would feel these emanations of our voices, our souls.

Thank you, Eric! Your booming voice, son of the opera tenor, was duly noted. It joined with your father's, with your family, with Suzette Gilchrist, with her husband and choir directo and organist, Kent, now passed these many years.. All of us, in God, from God, back to God.

Eric was a living embodiment to me of the power and grace and sublime beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and in that the Christ persona Himself.

Eric was a Christ-figure, a pro-Christ, in contrast to the anti-Christs famously featured in the Book of Mormon, to the modern Anti-Christs like Hitler, who subjected the great-grandparents of Eric in occupied Norway during the dark days of World War II, or anti-Christs that certainly have their sway in Hollywood and modern media.

Long live the influence and impact of Eric Samuelsen, mentor and friend, pioneer of explorer, inheritor of the Viking line of brave explorers, who dared to see new lands and bring with them the consequent visions of grandeur and Godliness.

Long live this Eric, Brigham Young University's Eric, Indiana and Bloomington's Eric, our home Bloomington Ward's Eric, Camp Maumee's and Boy Scout's Eric, church seminary's Eric, downtown Garcia Pizza's Eric, public radio WFIU's Eric, yea-- the Eric of the Norway Oslo Mission and the Eric of the stage and screen and play script.

The voice of Eric and all his family will be enjoined by thousands upon thousands today and forever, with God the Father, and the Mother, and Their Chosen Son:

Happy day! All is well!

We then are free from toil and sorrow, too;

With the just we shall dwell!

But if our lives are spared again

To see the Saints their rest obtain,

Oh, how we'll make this chorus swell--

All is well! All is well!

  

Text: William Clayton, 1814-1879 Music: English folk song

Victims and the Victimized

Victims and the Victimized

I will address you like I know you. Because maybe I do already know you. I think I do know you, actually. Perhaps I have known you for a long time. No one can completely know another person; even to know himself or herself totally, completely, is not feasible. But I know me and I know you enough to say some things that should make sense and be helpful. The people that I am addressing I know and I don't know, either way, but the same message should apply to either.

Maybe you were me a while ago, or maybe I will be you some day. A victim. Meaning, we are not the same person, but maybe I have been a victim, like you. Maybe someday I will be victimized. It can happen, it will happen, to some degree or another, to all of us. To each of us, to varying degrees, we are victimized.

It happens to us, victimization: individually, as pairs, as groups and families, as neighborhoods, as congregations, as larger communities of cities and regions, nations and planets.

But mostly I speak of victimhood now, to the individual. To you.

There is a difference between being a victim and being a target of abuse.

A victim can be from a one time affair, while an abused person has the repeated habit of being victimized.

Either one can have significant issues from these effects, a one time trauma or a continuous abuse, causing scars that do not heal well. A one time victimization can be enough to cause a lasting mental trauma that will not go away. Certainly abuse will have this effect. It all depends.

There are many types of victimization:

• Physical
• Emotional
• Mental
• Spiritual
• Criminal 
• Financial
• Societal
• Religious
• Governmental
• Political
• Social
• Paternal
• Maternal
• Fraternal
• Spousal
• Academic
• Work
• Accident
• Illness
• Death
• Torture
• Violence
• Fill in the blank

Any one of these types of offense or another act by one of these means may cause the victim to receive a trauma that the victim will remember, to varying degrees. Some forget about the offense and move on. Others have a hard time not forgetting it; are traumatized by the offense, and it affects them physically or mentally, or otherwise, to a perpetual detriment. Others may remember it when triggered by different stimuli.

Whatever caused this plight of making you a victim, be it big or small, I am not trying to rehash it to pick at a sore wound; I am not trying to make the scar stand out and embarrass or discomfit you.

I am communicating, sending this message, that it is was a bad thing that happened but it is okay, and somewhat healthy, to know that someone or something victimized you, and that it is okay, even good, to reflect on that offense, acknowledge it, and realize and understand that one should move on but that there are effects left over, that may affect you still, and others than just you. Accept that.

We go on to try to avoid those types of offenses in the future, moving on, having learned, at times very sadly, but significantly. And others who know of it deal with it too, sometimes worse for them in empathy, sympathy, or some other feeling of connection than that of the original victim.

Thus victimization is not just a two way affair, especially when known by others. When felt by others connected to you.

How many people know what happened? Why did they hear about it or learn about it?

It's good to share offenses with the proper people. Fear and distrust are natural. Self loathing can occur too, which is not good.

Sometimes we share the crimes of offenses with the wrong people, inappropriate for different reasons.

That happens. Sometimes we, as a victim, do not know how or when or to whom to share the grievance. Victims can be confused, even more than normal. That is completely normal.

That's okay, it happens.

In the end you have to know who to trust.

Do you trust yourself with this offense? Do you trust others?

Are you afraid? Of course you are, you were the victim. You do not want to be doubly victimized by sharing the original offense.

I get it.

Think about this, and learn, and grow, and learn how to trust yourself and others. It's good to review and share it, to not let it traumatize and be double- or triple-victimized.

That's enough for now.

I love you, I trust you, as far as I can trust and respect you, and no one is perfect. Certainly not me.

But you can trust me.

I have been there, in ways, and things happen where we are victimized. You, me, me, you, us; it happens.

And such is life. C'est la vie; that is no banal cliche.

Judaism: To Me, to You

Judaism: To Me, to You

(Inspired by thoughts the weekend of Sept 14, 2019).

Whether we realize or recognize it or not, we all have relationships with many different things and phenomena. Consciously, subconsciously, overtly or covertly, we all deal with everything: the weakness or strength of those relationships depend on a lot of factors. Like gravity to celestial orbs, or the awareness of their pulls, we are affected by them whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not. We all have strong or weak relationships to things, ideas; to so many endless things!

For example, every human being has a relationship with the sun. Likewise, we have a relationship with the moon, also. The connection to the moon is probably a weaker relationship with it--this lifeless earth satellite that we observe mostly at night--as opposed to the gaseous oven of our nearest star that at times blinds us, but assuredly keeps us alive. However, despite their differences, both heavenly bodies offer significant relationships to each human, and millions, or billions or even trillions of animals and plants, too. All of those things affect the rest of us as well.

We humans all have a relationship with climates, regions, languages, music. My wife has a relationship with a climate due to Mediterranean experiences. She has has a relationship with this particular temperate climate: southern California, southern Spain and northwest Africa, south-central Chile, south east Spain; I do also, I too have lived in this climate, considerably less than her: southeast Spain, south-central Chile, Israel and Palestine, southern California. My daughter does have a relationship to this climate too, which would be: southern California, south-central Chile.

Beyond the physical and the temporal, we all have relationships with more meta-physical entities: our governments, economies, religions, entertainments, artists, novels, etcetera. It goes on possibly forever: Families, priests, store owners, teachers, pets, books, on and on... Each entity provides a different relationship, weak or strong, formidable or seemingly meaningless.

I would like to consider Judaism as a key relationship that all of us should consider. 

We all have strong or weak relationships to organized religions: their thoughts and ideas, their practices, their examples and impacts, their peoples and legacy.  Some of that connection might be personal or immediate, while other things and effects of them are harder to gauge, which are more general to our everyday history and existence.

I will make this personal and impersonal, both subjective and relatively objective, to let you mull it over and reflect upon. 

Judaism, the people known as Jews, and their history and presence, have been around in our collective conscience as long as we human historians have been able to track. The Bible is part of their and our legacy; Adam and Even and Noah and Enoch predate Abraham and his children and grandchildren, whether we recognize them as prominent spiritual or historical figures or not. Millions if not billions of us do recognize them as hugely significant to us, then and now. They, these ancient Biblical personas, even figure into our personal and collective futures, according to some. I believe it, but that may be beside the point.

Moses of the Hebrews began the written chronicles, according to many. These are the five books of the Greek-named Pentateuch, the basis for the Law or the Torah of ancient and current scriptures, valid up until today. This led to the Hebrew hero Moses, the legacy of Joseph of Egypt; an Israelite favored by his father Jacob, the one apportioned the kunya of Israel, a given name by Jehovah, or nickname or title, if you will, to signify his and his people's importance. Like so many "El" people in the history of the Hebrews: Samuel, Emmanuel, other Hebrew and later Jewish heroes, as a group known as "the Israelites", a tribal identity later to become known as Hebrew and Jewish, specifically through that ancient language and the tribe of Judah, one of Jacob's twelve sons.

Don't get too lost, it's all there in the Bible and modern day interpretations of scriptural and secular history. Paging Josephus or Herodotus! 

An aside and plea: Read the Bible and go to Sunday school! Go on a Friday night service to synagogue, go to a Friday sermon of mosque and study the Quran, listen to the sermons of the Muslims and scholars, attend Saturday services with the Seventh Day Adventists, watch their television programming, study with the Witnesses at Kingdom Hall on a weeknight, attend a Protestant gathering or revival, visit a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint visitor center or historical park, attend a Catholic mass at Midnight or a Sermon Saturday evening, talk to a man or woman of the cloth, dialog with military and civilian chaplains and clerics. Read the famous secular and quasi-religious philosophers and thinkers, Darwin, Kant, Nietzsche, Jung, Spinoza, Marx, Friedman, and on and on. Take classes and attend lectures, both paid and free. Read, watch, discuss, analyze, ponder, and collect. The truth and truthes are out there. They are in you and in us, too. Check out a Greek Orthodox liturgy or chapel, or find and connect to any number of Hindu or Buddhist shrines. See what Bahai or Unitarian Universalists are about. Meet them, talk to them, soak it all in. Talk to atheists and economists, theoreticians and scientists of all makes and, of course, consult with your friends and family and media types. Do not live in a self made bubble. Strive to find places where you may not agree, but find those people and places! This includes books, periodicals, and articles and shows and presentations of all natures.

Anyway, there is a lot to take in and absorb, to process, for all of us. Narrowing it down, perhaps it is easier to scrutinize today's Jewish presence, for the sake of this current understanding and purpose of this argument, and investigate our own lives in relation to it, them, and us. It may be one angle to a start. And it by no means can be ingested in one blog post. It will take life times of searching and learning. Just this simple yet broad topic alone.

I was born in 1970, a time when the modern state of Israel had been forcibly established, rocking the Arab and Muslim worlds post World War II, thus creating rippling effects on all of us. The early 1970s, a time when Henry Kissinger, a German-born Jew and directly affected by the rise of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, was one of the most powerful people in the world; a person who I would argue has had his policies and ideas kept and enforced more by the United States and its allies larger than any other single person then or since, which means currently 19 years into the 21st century, years, decades, generations after Nixon and his Secretary of State's tenures in the White House. (See balance of power, U.S. foreign policy). 

On the more personal level, I was born of a mother whose sister, (one of four, but one she was close to for me growing up), was married to a Jewish man who raised the four cousins, his children, more or less Jewish. I knew them and their father considerably growing up. I was exposed to a bar mitzvah and some of the culture at an early age in and around Boston.  I also grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, which in my neighborhood had a disproportionate number of Jewish families, and therefore I mixed with and befriended my share of Jewish cohorts at an early age, and on through high school. I noted when they would miss school during the High Holy Days. I observed when some would complain about learning too many Christmas songs in music, despite the fact that our music teacher herself was Jewish. Some practiced kosher dietary laws, and their parents had different world views.

I also watched movies, television, listened to music and concerts, and attended plays and read books, even secular ones apart from the Bible. 

Judaism is alive and well in our media and print. News flash! 

Politics and social history are also rife with the Judeo-Christian influence and ethic, if I may put it so.

My parents were counseled by a secular (I think) Jewish counselor during their separation and divorce; I grew to know him. I had a Jewish English teacher and, perhaps others, in high school who, according to my high school chums who had studied with her the year before, while I took a different course, "harped on the Holocaust daily", which for them was overplayed or was emphasized too much.

Even then and all these years later, I might side with her. Mrs. Granich, a Jewish-American, a survivor of an awful century of extermination and terror.

I have thought for decades, until now: How would it be if half of my people (American, Latter-day Saint, Hoosier, German-Irish-American, what have you), were wiped out in a tragic genocide? How would it be if my kin had been starved and murdered in droves?

I cannot fathom it fully, I do not think. But it would certainly form me, affect me at so many levels.

It does affect me still, and I am a goy.

I am non-Jewish, according to Judaism. However, I am part of a faith that is strong in Utah where the joke is that Utah is the only place where a Jewish person is considered a "Gentile". More on that later, maybe, if you do not get it.

Throughout my life, I have had interactions with Jews and Gentiles. The dual relationship, somewhat symbiotic in the West. It has been the air I breathed, at times. Politically, Israel has been a constant. The nightly news brought me Begin, Sadat, and Carter. The huge NBC series "The Holocaust" left a huge impact in my conscience, probably when I was eight years-old. Yes, Mrs. Granich, my maligned English teacher, no small thing, that. Later I grew up with Spielberg and others, whose Jewishness was either directly evident or more sublimely presented. They say that E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial, represented his Jewish isolation in a Gentile Arizona. And of course,  later he brought to life so many millions, and certainly residual survivor's guilt in his epic, "Schindler's List". A couple years later after watching that must-see film, I, like millions, visited and respected his grave in Jerusalem. A Gentile German who saved so many people of Judah in a dark and crazy time. May he and others be blessed forever. Saleh.

It is rich and deep, this interplay of Judaism with me, my family, my neighborhood, my region, my country, my world and planet. There is no end to it, despite the pogroms of the Russian steppes, the cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition, the aforementioned German Holocaust--a painful irony of nomenclatures-- persecutions of all places and times, sackcloth and ashes of the Old Testament, the Law and Prophets, Sunday School classes and General Conferences, usually during Passover and the High Holy Days (wait, some cosmic coincidence or perhaps by design?) seminary early mornings or institute by night during college... Learning the Good Book, learning the laws and the prophets.

My friends, my enemies (sometimes, unfortunately), my playmates, my crushes, my jokes, and comedians, entertainers and story tellers, my counselors and professors, my film and T.V. makers and music teachers, my books and magazines and comics, my music (David Lee Roth of Van Halen is from Bloomington, who knew?). My God, even, is Yahwei, even my vacations to Caribbean touched on the Israelites in Jamaicans and far off places.

All this BEFORE I went to Israel. I was there for a summer at the end of college and it has not left me.

Jerusalem, if I forget you. (Reference to Jewish artist, Matisyahu).

Here I am. Here we are, sons and daughters of Israel.

As my ultimate Jewish hero, Yeshua, the son of Miriam of Nazareth, was, is, will be, so are we: we are in the air and history of our planet. I recall my first visit to New York City and receiving a tract from a fervent Jew for Jesus. I have met and seen them the world over, in person and through literature and media. Larry King? Dinah Shore? The Three Stooges? Adam Sandler...

I remember a Persian Christian neighbor, recommending her favorite author, of whom I read, Malamud.

Who are they? Who are you? Who am I?

In the end, we are all the Elect of God. We are the Chosen, as Chaim Potok has titled a great book.

I hope to find out what that means. We must.

Aside: As many times in my rants and writing forays such as this, there were things shared that I intended to do, and other things unexpected.

Judaism: to me, to you

Hurrah and hallelujah.

Rejoice! We are alive and free to speak of it! God bless our Constitution, the secular Torah of the ages!

We are good, we are Jew and Gentile, bond and free.

Amen.

I give thanks to many people and things:

God! He is alive, and His unspoken bride, His begotten, too, if possible in the realm of possibilities.

Mercy.

Passion.

Compassion. 

Understanding.

Patience.

Thrift.

Kindness.

Godly sorrow.

Witnesses of justice and peace. Warriors, of truth and strength.

Observers, of good and ill.

Parents, and parents of their parents. Back to our first parents! May we never forget!

Books, and authors and writers.

Shabbat shalom, and a heartfelt shalom havarim. La he trai ot. Song of our family.

Shalom. Shalom.

Poets, priests, politicians. (Shout out to Gordon Sumner, aka Sting. We saw him perform a few weeks ago! No, he is not Jewish, but a citizen of the kingdom that brought us Ivanhoe, and those memorable Jewish characters and influences).

Judaism. Jewsishness. My friend Sandy who wished to do a doctorate in Latino Jewery in the Americas. The southern accented rabbi who read the Friday prayers in Kuwait, and afterwards shared lox and gevelte fish. Bosses and colleagues, past and present.

Life. 

The Universe.

We give thee thanks.

Judaism has and always will be a part of it. Thank you Jewish people.

Thank you Orthodox Jewish man on the bus in Los Angeles when I was a graduate student. Thanks for your light and knowledge and understanding, and humanity. Thanks to professors Stein and Wolfenstein and Baum, whether secular or believers, your humanity and intellect is observed.

Thanks for your Godliness. Your Divine spark. Your survival.

Your pervading influence, known and mysterious.

We are grateful.

We are they, they are we.