Merry Christmas!

Thoughts after Meeting for Worship...

...including a cartoon I drew during Adult First Day School.

This afternoon, I mostly want to write a poem to mirror yesterday's, called "Making the Lord ready for the House." It would start off something like, 

Dear Lord, You have showered and You have ironed, but You are still not as tidy as I would like for a visit...

But I don't think I'll get that finished for today, and it may be better as an idea rather than a complete poem anyhow. 

Falling behind...

So, I thought I was going to keep my blog up better this year, and in a sense I have. But not like I had intended. I also haven't quite kicked my "new blog" into gear yet. We'll see how that goes. Anyhow, here's a cartoon inspired by actual events.













And a poem by Mary Oliver, Making the House Ready for the Lord, because I like Mary Oliver.

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but

still nothing is as shining as it should be

for you. Under the sink, for example, is an

uproar of mice - it is the season of their

many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves

and through the walls the squirrels

have gnawed their ragged entrances - but it is the season

when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And

the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard

while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;

what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling

in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly

up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will

come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,

the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know 

that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,

as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

Catching up...

Well, maybe tomorrow.

But here's a cartoon. 

Knock Knock

Here's a very lame knock-knock joke that it's literally taken me several hours to draw and assemble.

I'm not sure that I'm really cut out for animation.

Rockin' the House

I've been drawing Mr. Miro for over twenty years now, but this is the first time he's been animated.

Look how happy he is!

Monday after a long, busy weekend

Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn't that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense.
It won't do!
It won't do!
You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!

- Selected Readings from the works of Mao Tsetung

Quaker Quaker

I'm in the process of setting up a new blog, without cartoons. Practically speaking, that won't really affect this blog, since my initial intention was always just to post my cartoons, but I probably won't post my sermons over here any more. 

There may still be the occasional philosophical ramble and/or rant, and miscellaneous personal reflections which you don't care about.  

{Insert Better Blog Post Title Here}

I'm writing the message for an upcoming memorial service - not for a particular individual, but for a group of people who are unconnected except that they were cared for by our hospice. That makes it difficult to focus: they (probably) don't want a sermon, but I need to try to say something meaningful.


I found this quote, while looking for another (which has eluded me, and I've spent way too long looking for it already), attributed to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger: 

“What was Aristotle’s life?’ Well, the answer lay in a single sentence: ‘He was born, he thought, he died.’ And all the rest is pure anecdote.”

Regardless of whether he said it or not, it captures some of what I want to say, in an inverse form: what we really care about is the anecdotal aspect. We are our stories, and that's what needs to be told. That said, I doubt I'll use the quote for the memorial service, so I thought I'd leave it here instead. 

The Good Chaplain?

I was driving away from a patient's house earlier this week, and wondering about all the questions I didn't ask. Some of them seem cliched - "Where is God in all of this?" - and yet I drove away feeling like a second-rate Rogerian therapist rather than a chaplain. 

Sometimes I feel like I do better in a crisis, rather than in a long-term situation, when there's really nothing to do other than sit with someone and let them know that they're not alone. 

The advantage of the long-term situation, of course, is that I'll (probably) be able to go back and ask those questions at a later date. 

How to Turn Grace into a Burden

The title is another placeholder, the title of a sermon that I haven't yet written - but something that was inspired by a recent sermon by my wife, particularly when listening to people speak out of the silence. 

The Sabbath is supposed to be a time of rest: is that punitive? Or part of the joy of recognizing that one is a Child of God? 

God didn't work for seven days straight. Are you more important than God?

All the Lonely People

Just a cartoon today.

Second Day

It seems too early, but I've been thinking ahead to Christmas... but maybe it won't sneak up on me this year.

Why We Need the Humanities

Because we're human.

Was that difficult?

Nozick and Reparations

I said I was going to talk about Nozick yesterday, and this isn't quite the post that I had intended, for various reasons. However, it's a start, and something that I've been meaning to address for a while now.

So, Nozick wants to dismantle the social contract (and part of this not being the post I had hoped for is not having a page reference from Anarchy, State, and Utopia for that). 

He's interested in negative rights, which is to say, the limits that other people's claims can have on the individual. (Again, a lot more to say there, but not today). 

Three particular things that Nozick is interested in terms of property rights (because what other kinds of rights would we be interested in, after all?). He describes them as "Original Acquisition of Holdings," "Transfers of Holdings," and "Rectification of Injustice in Holdings." The idea here is that, if you obtained something legally (your original acquisition), then it's yours: no one can take it from you (particularly the government, in the form of taxes). If you have something, you can sell it legally (the transfer of holdings). Note here, if you buy stolen property, you're out of luck: if the original acquisition somehow went wrong, then the transfer of holdings doesn't hold. You're not permitted to buy or sell things that don't have a "clean" original acquisition. We need to enforce property rights!

Finally, Nozick recognizes that there needs to be something to "rectify" any problems that come along, i.e., the property transferred back to the rightful owner. And he also recognizes that, in some cases, simply giving back the thing itself will be insufficient, because there will be other costs involved. If your grandpa stole $100 from my grandpa after the war - let's say in 1948 - then you don't merely owe me the original $100, because that's now worth approximately $1000 today  (and that's setting aside interest, etc). Note that you're assumed to have benefited from your grandpa's theft, and therefore are liable for his debts. All in the name of preserving property rights!

Here's the thing: what happens if we apply this to, for instance, the Cherokee Nation? What happens when we apply to the descendants of African slaves? Fill in the blank yourself: in what ways has "original acquisition" gone wrong? Are you really willing to defend "Manifest Destiny" (and who knows, maybe you are, but you can't do it using Nozick). 

If the holdings weren't acquired justly, then they can't be transferred justly. If something has gone wrong, there ought to be a rectification of injustice. What might that even look like?

(After writing this, I decided to Google "Nozick and Reparations," and came up with this post by Matt Bruenig, which is worth reading if you found my blog post interesting.)

Placeholder

This is actually the beginning of a new series.

Also, I realized that I need to post something about Nozick. 

So, you have something to look forward to.

Healthy Food

I have written about cooking Indian food before, so I won't repeat any of that.

However, this is one of those times when I feel split between Psycho Killer's "Say something once, why say it again?"

and King Crimson's 

"I repeat myself when under stress.

I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat.."


Not that I'm under stress, exactly - 

but I do repeat myself sometimes. 

New York(er)

My guiding sense of "what a cartoon should be" has really been shaped by the New Yorker. Not that I have any sense that I'm going to be published there: I've read about what it takes, and I just don't do it, for a variety of reasons.

I don't think I've ever done a "desert island" cartoon, though, even though I once did an analyst's couch. It seems to me that Mr. Miro might be perfectly happy on one.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming

When I'm driving around, I often come up with things that I want to write on my blog - clarifying statements, positions on various issues, etc. 

And yet somehow when I'm actually at the computer, it all leaves me. But as I've said in the past, this blog was always intended to be primarily about the cartoons.

This one was inspired by a conversation that happened a couple weeks ago. I didn't actually say Mr. Miro's part out loud, though.

Post-Halloween drag

...probably because of all the candy.

This cartoon was inspired by my wife, but it seemed funnier when said by Old Man Grumpus.

All Hallow's Eve

Actually, around here the kids went out begging last night. The cats were not amused. We bought an absurd amount of candy, and handed out most of it.

A cartoon about a dinosaur

[The previous content of this post has been removed from this blog]

Funeral Friday

I have two funerals today; I didn't know either of the people very well, but it's part of my job. I don't mind it too much, but it's an odd thing to find myself doing - certainly not what I would have anticipated ten years ago when I first started seriously thinking about seminary. 

This is a cartoon from our last team meeting.

Old Joke

I don't know why this popped into my head a few days ago - not quite with this image in mind - but I stumbled across it a second time on a blog that checks popular quotes.

Speaking of which, I have a new favorite website that I'm sure I'll forget about pretty quickly, but may be handy next time I see some inspirational nonsense on Facebook.

Hump Day

My meeting was cancelled today, giving me a bit more than I usually have on Wednesdays. However, I still have deadlines.

Funky jazz!

I just realized that I can put the record player back together, which I'm hoping means I can finally listen to Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim. You can just enjoy this cartoon.

Sorry for the absence

I've been trying to post regularly this year, and it's gone okay... but I've been collecting a lot of cartoon ideas without taking the time to sit down and draw them (as minimal as my drawings my be most of the time).
Anyhow, here's the first of four posts for the week, and maybe more.

I'm better now

I'm not sure how to describe this exactly: it was something I did for another picture (which I may or may not have posted). It's a drawing on a puzzle - and what you have is a picture of the drawing on the puzzle, taken partway apart.  It mostly lives in a box, put together, but the whole point of the cartoon on a puzzle was to take it apart.

Anyhow, it reflected how I felt at the time, and while I still conceptually like the idea, it's not how I feel these days. 

Better picture of an older picture

I've posted this before, but I was going through old drawings and paintings and found this, and thought I could give you a better version. More to come, and hopefully some more cartoons in the next week or so.

#TBT

My copy of the Portable Nietzsche fell apart many, many years ago; since some of the books are included in their entirety - such as Nietzsche's late polemic, The Antichrist (the title is more ambiguous in German than it seems to be in English). Anyhow, I took the pages of that book (translated by Walter Kaufmann) and made my own cover. I recently rediscovered it while (finally) organizing my books.

Throwback Monday

I ran across this while organizing my books: the "cover illustration" and working title for my manuscript (the title is from to Robert Solomon).

That's all for today.

Back to School (not for me, of course)

A shout out to all the English teachers out there - Imma rooting for ya!

Some guy named Chris? Day

Again, inspired by true events.

Anthony Hopkins Day (or something like that, I forget who this day is named after)

Inspired by true events!
(Even if I know what I'm talking about, it doesn't always need to be explained; that is, I need to gauge my audience's knowledge of a particular issue before proceeding.)

Humid Tuesday Evening

Trying to get caught up on my cartoon ideas, but that may mean that there's less text to accompany them - lucky you!

Inspired by True Events!

This is actually a quote from Team Meeting last week, one of the social workers paraphrasing what seemed to be happening with one of our clients. 

This isn't a job where I get a lot of (non-morbid, non-blasphemous) cartoons ideas!

Thursday already?

The week has somehow flown by, but I will briefly tell the story I alluded to last time.

I bought a "new" CD: Cheap Trick, at Budokan, and was listening to it with my wife (who was unfamiliar with it). I was reminiscing about listening to this as a junior-highschooler, and she asked what I thought me-in-the-early-eighties would think if "he" could see me now. 

I think I would have been happy to see that I had a pretty wife, and a nice house. I would probably have been happy to know that I had a PhD and had written a book, even if the book got mixed reviews (no link!). I would have been surprised to learn that I was working as a hospice chaplain, although that's more difficult to gauge: as I've said before (somewhere, I'm sure), my family wasn't very religious when I was growing up, but at some point I developed a curiosity about mystical traditions (mostly Sufi and Taoist, Buddhism came much later). I have more thoughts on that point which I might write out later. 

But the thing that would have surprised me the most? Ohio. It still kinda surprises me. 

Long Sunday

I was going to write a fairly long post about listening to my newest CD, but it's already been a long day and I'd rather draw than write right now. 

So that gives you something to look forward to - both a drawing (at some point in the future) and a story about me listening to a CD. For now, here's a cartoon inspired by true events!

Thursday Evening

Dinner guest (who already knows I'm a hippy)  - should be a pleasant evening.

Wednesday Night

Not the evening I imagined, but not bad.

Sunday before the storm...

Still waiting to hear back to see if I need to write two short book reports sometime before Thursday...

Overcast

I don't have much to say at the moment - trying to get out of a writing assignment that would have to be finished in a couple days, and also trying to get started on a much, much larger writing project that would potentially take the next year to complete. I may talk about one or both at some point, but for now, just a cartoon.

Just a cartoon for today, but I'm working on some other stuff.

I was listening, listening to the rain...

...I was hearing, hearing something else.

A cartoon for your Sunday afternoon.
It's even biblically accurate.

Throwback Tuesday

You've probably figured out by now that I more or less just post old drawings as I find them, without regard to the day of the week.

But seriously, you need to watch this movie.

Last Day of June

You'd think I'd have better things to do than to post old cartoons mocking students...
but you'd apparently be wrong.

Throwback Sunday

Looking through old notebooks, I found this and realized I hadn't posted it before. 
I tell people how, when I was in seminary, I gave up on taking "regular notes" after the first semester, and just drew cartoons in class. Usually, that's followed up with something to the effect that, when I look at the cartoons, I get a larger sense of what was happening in class, what the relevant theological point was, or something to that effect.

Not with this cartoon, though. I just like Bowie.

Samstag - with no sermon tomorrow!

At long last, a Saturday that I can more or less enjoy!

The phrase in the punchline, by the way, was a "googlewhack," and completely unintentional. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't stealing a phrase from George Herbert Mead, or someone like that.

Did I mention that I was a hospice chaplain?

Freitag

I'm not sure which is more absurd, my wife learning German, or her somehow turning it into a contest. I suppose I need to start soon, but talk about slow and steady...

Also, things at the hospice are coming along, but not quite what I'd hoped for. Maybe next week will be better.

Thursday night

...which is kind of like Friday night around here.

Anyhow, I think Waldo is the ultimate 5 with a 4 wing, dressing in a unique fashion and yet somehow able to get lost in a crowd.

Mr. Miro is a fan.