chuckles the car

For about a month the image below is part of what I have seen from my office.

What has stuck out to me is that white vehicle in the middle of the photo.While the driver of that vehicle has not been parked facing my office like this in the last few weeks, for several weeks he or she parked backed into the space so that the car constantly caught my eye due to a similarity my mind cannot ignore.

As I mentioned a while back, I have seen Toy Story 3 many times in the last two years, as it is one of our kids' favorites.  One of the characters is a clown toy named Chuckles.  All I can think about when I see this car from a distance is how much it reminds me of Chuckles.

Are there similar things that show up in your everyday life that constantly reminds you of something or someone else?

rolling in the deep

In what appears to be an embarrassingly growing trend in me liking songs about women standing up to or wishing revenge on their exes (What's that about?), I'm finding that I'm somewhat drawn to Adele's ridiculously popular Rolling in the Deep.  The lyrics are not written for me at all, but for whatever reason I enjoy the song.



I have every reason to not like the song.  I think it's the anthem of a woman who does not understand the role she had in someone leaving her, so she wants to stew in revenge mode.  One line from the song, emphasized below, gives away the singer's mistaken perspective.

The scars of your love remind me of us,
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all.
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless,
I can't help feeling,

We could have had it all,
Rolling in the deep,
You had my heart inside your hand,
And you played it to the beat.

This hearkens back to something that I noted that I have learned in the time since being married.  Many phrases mean something completely different to a typical woman than a typical man.  In my opinion the "it all" that they "could have had" has almost no connection with whatever the guy who left her wanted in the relationship in the first place, and that is why he left her.  He didn't understand her and she didn't understand him.  She had some fantasy about the relationship that she assumed had meaning to him, but that he probably did not even know existed, and so things played out the way they do when two people don't understand each other because they're only concerned about fulfilling their own irrational fantasies.

I am torn on enjoying this song for this reason.  Vengeance fantasies feed off self-righteousness, and this song is definitely a revenge fantasy, but in this case it seems screamingly obvious that the self-righteousness is unfounded.  The woman isn't without the man because she is too good for him.  She is without him, can't figure out why, and feels self-superior because she is stuck in the mindset that her fantasies should have been their fantasies.

I think that a lot of the popularity for this song comes from the fact that a lot of people—while it would be women in this case men are just as guilty—see relationships as ways to meet their own fantasies without concern for the other person's needs.  When the other person either takes advantage of the him or her using the fantasy or breaks up recognizing how much effort the relationship is going to be, a song like this speaks to the person whose heart and fantasies have been broken.

This is probably too much thought to give to a pop song, isn't it?

political drug season over

We just went through an election, and while I am as politically fascinated and informed as anyone you will meet, I hate election time more than most anything else.  Politics is a drug that sucks people in then causes them to exhibit the worst of themselves, myself unfortunately included. I prefer not to make a fool of myself, and I prefer not to have my opinions of others I respect damaged as well.

The one thing that I have been thinking of lately is the assertion that I often hear that it is a citizen's, and more so a Christian's, duty to vote.  I have also heard this couched in terms like thinking about who Jesus would have voted for.

Almost every conversation Jesus had was striking, but one that especially sticks out to me is his interaction with Pilate when the Jewish leadership was angling to get him crucified.  The charge they brought was that Jesus threatened the political structure that was in place.  He was to be the king of the Jews!  However, if Jesus' threat to Roman rule was even a remote possibility Pilate had every reason to want to punish, destroy, and make an example of Jesus.  After Pilate's personal interaction with Jesus, however, he took every opportunity available to a cowardly ruler such as himself to avoid sending Jesus to the cross.  Pilate had a reputation for brutality, but he was the one trying to save Jesus.

That speaks to me more than any other interaction Jesus had regarding what his political bent was.  More than Jesus paying the temple tax or explaining that we give to God and Caesar what they are owed, this points to how unimportant in the scheme of things politics was to him.  The one person who should have been the most concerned about a politically-motivated leader rallied to save him.  Based on what I have read from Scripture like this, not only do I not believe that it is our civic duty to vote, I do not believe that Christ would have voted either.

I will do a bit of an about face, though.  I am not Christ.  While getting involved with politics may have interfered with Jesus' ministry, that does not mean that I should not vote or be involved in politics.  There are worthy issues that Christians have addressed through the ballot box.  I say that with trepidation, however.  Political involvement and self-righteousness go hand-in-hand and both are addictive drugs that can very easily interfere with a Christian's purpose of being on this earth.  I have such a hard time avoiding both every election cycle.