There has been an awful lot written about Donald Trump over the past few months. Those articles have examined Trump’s ever changing positions on almost everything except his own chronic physical position. That is what we will consider here.
No matter how a person may feel about Donald Trump – whether they support his candidacy or oppose it or may have heard the name someplace but can’t place it – everyone seems to agree that he often comes across as an ignorant buffoon who seems to have no control over or concern about what he may say. His intellect and/or veracity may not be totally to blame for that failing, however. There may be an underlying physical reason.
A person with proper posture holds his or her head so that the ears are directly over the shoulders. Watch Donald Trump, though. He habitually holds his whole head forward from his shoulders. That posture pulls his first rib out of position, puts undue stress on the scalene muscles, causes headaches and neurological problems and adversely affects a person’s emotions. Yoga instructors, chiropractors and devotees of the Alexander Technique tell us that chronically poor posture makes us lose touch with our natural rhythms and about the way we feel within ourselves.
Perhaps soon some television network will conduct an interview with Mr. Trump while he wears a cervical collar allowing him to hold his head up properly. That should improve the clarity of his thinking and let everyone know how he really feels about the important national issues.
[This is the eulogy that nobody heard. My brother, Jim, passed from this world on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2015. That tragedy was made even worse when his wife, my sister-in-law, Lisa, died of a liver disorder several days later. A joint memorial service was held for them and I had intended to give one of the eulogies. I prepared my comments, but less than 48 hours before the service I underwent a 7-hour medical procedure and I was not able to deliver the eulogy. This is pretty much what I would have said.]
First, I would like to thank you all for being here today. It is a sad time for all of us, and the whole family appreciates your love and support.
There are many of you who have known Jim for 30 years or more, and know a lot about him. I would like to mention just a few things that you may never have had the chance to know because he wasn’t your baby brother.
It’s true. Jim started out as a baby back in 1952, when Harry Truman was president and the only television station in Denver had been broadcasting for only eight weeks. It was a simpler time, but an exciting time for me because I was already four years old and my brother Lonny was three – and we had a new baby in the house. I still remember how our mother always made sure we had something quiet to do when the baby was sleeping. You don’t want to wake those babies. But whatever we were doing, we listened carefully and as soon as we heard the baby stirring we yelled, “Jimmy’s awake,” and ran to the crib to see him wake up, and to see him move about and play the way babies do. Just watching made us so happy. It was absolutely our favorite pastime (like most families, we did not own a television, so that one channel was not a choice for entertainment).
As we all grew, we continued to watch him play because whatever we did, Jimmy was tagging along. And we were still happy to have him there because he had that way that young children have to make whatever they do fun and joyful. The one place he couldn’t tag along with us was going to school. He hated to miss that and he couldn’t wait until he would be five years old and could come to kindergarten.
There was a problem, though. The rules said that children entering kindergarten had to be five years old by September 1st. His birthday was September 16th. He was crushed, but my parents met with school officials and convinced them to let Jimmy take a test to see if he was ready for kindergarten. He passed; he started school; and he was always one of the smartest kids in his class, even though he was often the youngest – by about two weeks.
He was a good athlete. He played some baseball and football during his school days, but his real passion was skiing. Whenever he could, he would get rides with friends or ride the ski train to Winter Park. He loved his time on the slopes and became an accomplished skier – until one of his black diamond runs was rudely interrupted by a tree, which blew out his knee.
Jim’s travels weren’t limited to ski trips. From the time he was in high school, he and his friend, Jan Jesser, used their vacation time to hop on Greyhound Bus or hitchhike to places like Crested Butte and Durango and Taos and Santa Fe for a long weekend or for a week or more. After they graduated, and he and Jan weren’t together as much, Jim continued to take those trips across much of the Western United States, just for the adventure.
His longest trip, and the one I considered as certainly the most adventurous, was when he took off by himself to spend six weeks traveling around Germany and Eastern Europe. He even went to some countries that were considered to be behind the “Iron Curtain” back then, in the 1970s.
One place that Jim somehow missed during his travels was the State of Ohio. Now, my wife Cathy was born and raised in Ohio, and when we got married there in February of 1980, I remedied that oversight by bringing Jim along to be my best man.
Then, in what now seems quick succession, he met Lisa, married her, Paul and Sara were born, and the adventure and sense of exploration in his life got a new focus. Poet T. S. Eliot wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”
The place where Jim arrived was “family.” The baby brother now had his own babies. He remained a good son and a great brother, but he was even more a husband and father. We all thought he was a “rock.” He went to work for Mountain Bell, and stayed for decades. The company itself changed to US West and Qwest and CenturyLink, and I don’t even remember what else. Through it all, Jim took on some hard assignments, earned a good living and made sure that his family was never in need. When Paul and Sara had their track meets and soccer games and other activities, he was there for them. When neighborhood kids needed a safe, supporting place to hang out, they knew they could go over to see Paul and Sara.
Jim and Lisa did a great job of raising their children. Just look at Paul and Sara now.
I also want to mention what a great support Jim was to our parents – especially as they grew older. As an example, when our dad was 91 years old, he and our mother took an extended trip to Texas to visit some relatives. On Thanksgiving Day, our dad wound up in intensive care with a serious respiratory disorder. By the next day, Jim had arranged to take time off from work and flew to Dallas to help the family through that crisis.
Two years later, our brother, Lonny, needed a stem cell transplant to try to correct a rare bone marrow disease. Jim volunteered to be the donor. He went through all the tests and turned out to be a good match. Some complications arose and he became the back-up donor. Still, through the whole procedure he was ready and willing to come to Houston on a moment’s notice if he was needed.
Well, those are a few things that you may or may not have known about my baby brother. I miss him and I miss Lisa. Thank you.
Under the Oriental lunar calendar, the Year of the Monkey begins with the new moon on February 8, 2016 and lasts until January 27, 2017. Different cultures have slightly different interpretations of the various years, and in this post I will refer primarily to the so-called “Chinese zodiac.”
Most people know that the years in the Chinese zodiac cycle through twelve different animals. Additionally, each of those animal years cycle through affinities to the five elements – fire, earth, metal, water and wood. This will be the Year of the Fire Monkey, which occurs every 60 years.
I will be making some predictions as to what may occur during the next year, but I am not holding myself out as having extraordinary psychic powers. I am no more or no less psychic than you are – and that is true whether you are Suzy Skeptic who does not believe in the existence of anything “paranormal” or you are the world’s top psychic or astrologer (whomever that may be be at the moment).
The approach here is to assume that there are historical cycles such as those recognized by the Chinese zodiac, and then look at what has occurred in previous Monkey years. With that historical perspective, we should be able to extrapolate and predict what may occur during the next few months.
Before getting into that, let me say that the Year of the Sheep or Goat, which is thankfully coming to a close, has been a rough one. For the past several weeks I have been dealing with some personal crises that have limited my research and writing. Consequently, this year’s discussion is going to be more brief and cursory than have those in past years.
There is a children’s rhyme that begins: “Five little monkeys jumping on the bed/One fell off and bumped his head/Called for the doctor and the doctor said/’No more monkeys jumping on the bed.'” Monkey years are often like that. Acting on irrational exuberance without sound planning is the order of the day. Things may go wrong and need to be fixed, but in most cases, it is going to be done after the fact.
Buddhists and other meditators tell us about the “monkey mind” that keeps us from controlling our thoughts. While that unsettled way of thinking is with us too much of the time, it will be even more prevalent during the coming year.
The best advice would be to recognize these trends and try to quiet the monkey mind and act rationally before making any important decisions. That may not be possible for many of us over the next 12 months, however.
As the new lunar year is ready to begin, the American news media is focusing on the presidential campaign and the distressing state of the stock market/economy. Let us begin by looking at those topics. Continue reading “YEAR OF THE MONKEY – 2016”
For those of us temporally tied to the Gregorian Calendar, the new year of 2016 will begin in just a few days. This is the first of three posts leading to that event.
The whole world probably has some tie to that Gregorian Calendar today, but it was not always so. In earlier times, humans lived according to the broad changes of the seasons without much need to specify any single, particular day. However, the uniting of significant portions of the world under the Romans brought the administrative necessity for a common calendar. In the year we now call 46 B.C., Julius Caesar, after consulting the Egyptian astronomer Sosigenes, decreed that the empire would use a calendar based on a solar year of 365 days, with an extra day added every fourth year.
Thus, the average year became 365.25 days. That became problematic, though, because the true solar year, based on the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, is really about 11 minutes shorter than was recognized by the calendar – and it changes by a second or two every few years. Consequently, the calendar became out of synch with the solstices and equinoxes by a whole day every 130 years or so. As the centuries passed, the celebration of Easter (as determined by the First Council of Nicaea) was moving closer to summer and the dates for the seasons had varied significantly.
The Catholic Church set up a committee of astronomers to study the matter. After many years of research, a papal bull was issued by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, changing the calculation for the celebration of Easter and modifying the old Julian Calendar. Under the new Gregorian Calendar, an extra day was added every fourth year, except no day is added to years that are divisible by 100, unless the year is also divisible by 400, in which case the extra day is added. In other words, the year 2000 was a leap year, even though 1900 was not. Simple, huh?
The Gregorian Calendar was adopted, sometimes hesitantly, by most of the so-called Western World by the end of the 18th Century. As a result of a need for uniformity in matters of global commerce, the rest of the world began using it for many purposes by the early part of the 20th Century.
While Pope Gregory’s decree established the length of the year, it did not say when the year should start. For a long time, the Church continued to use Christmas, December 25th, as the beginning of its ecclesiastical year. Other groups chose to begin the new year on January 1st – or March 1st – or March 25th – or on a solstice or equinox day. It took awhile, but here in the 21st Century there is a general agreement that the calendar year begins on January 1. That is the date coming at the end of this week.
There are various traditions for celebrating the transition from one year to the next. In the United States, it is common to “ring out the old and ring in the new” with a celebratory party featuring happy people and funky music.
It is also common to look back on years like 2015 with a desire to heal the many things that have gone wrong. We have been through mass killing and terrorist attacks, there have been wars and insurgencies. 2015 was not even an election year but the U.S. has experienced a divisive, media-driven political campaign filled with lies and demagoguery.
On a more personal level, numerous friends and relatives have suffered illnesses, injuries, physical deterioration, loss and pain. There is a need for healing on a personal, as well as a global, level.
Well, I would like to suggest a song you should listen to. It is performed by the Neville Brothers, who are the epitome of of funky New Orleans soul and rhythm and blues. The song is “Healing Chant” from their wonderful 1989 album, Yellow Moon. This is a powerful song that truly can help to bring healing. You should listen to it.
Now thank we all our God With heart and hands and voices, Who wondrous things has done, In whom his world rejoices1
———————————————————— Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.2
—————————————————————— Good and bad men differ radically. Bad men never appreciate kindness shown them, but wise men appreciate and are grateful. Wise men try to express their appreciation and gratitude by some return of kindness, not only to their benefactor, but to everyone else.3
———————————————————————– So, if you want to express gratitude for what you have received, that’s fine. However . . . who are you thanking? Any higher power such as God provides infinite unconditional love, unconditional giving and wisdom and has no need for receiving anything. The need for offering thanks exists only in your mind . . . .4
———————————————————————– We [atheists] do not give thanks because . . . our gratitude finds its way back to the giver and magically influences their life. Nor do we do it to earn merit points in some unseen deity’s gradebook. Instead, we give thanks for the most basic and humanist of reasons: because it teaches us to be mindful of the contributions others have made to ease our lives, and encourages us to show others that same consideration in turn.5
——————————————————————– Thank God I’m an atheist.6
———————————————————————-
I am writing this on the weekend after Thanksgiving, so my inspiration for including the quotations above is obvious. I previously wrote about gratitude in discussing Chapter 34 of the Tao Te Ching. The quotes used here lead to a different approach to considering the concept, however. They emphasize that what gratitude means to a person is directly related to his or her belief in the divine and to the role of the divine in this world.
Accordingly, almost everyone’s sense of gratitude is constantly changing, for as we move through life, our appreciation and understanding of God is necessarily modified and adapted by our experiences.
The human brain is designed to learn from what has occurred in its environment and to extrapolate and project those lessons onto subsequent events. It exists on the physical plane to help the body of which it is a part to survive on that plane.
However, the human mind – which is probably more than the brain – is metaphysical and capable of conceiving things beyond the physical. Such conception is limited by the mechanics of the brain so that our understanding of what we call the divine arises from the same type of extrapolation and projection of what we have experienced in our environment.
As each of us move through our lifetimes, it is only natural that our experiences will create a desire to more fully understand that which is metaphysical. We need to find religion – at least in the sense that the term may derive from the Latin re (again) and ligare (to bind or connect), implying that we wish to reconnect with that which is beyond our physical senses.
I was reminded of that basic human quest by Amy Putkonen, who has an interesting web site. On November 23, 2014, Amy commented here on what I had written about Chapter 77 of the Tao Te Ching, as follows:
I wish sometimes that I could find a church that I could attend that basically was in agreement with my own beliefs but that allowed me to believe what I want as well and accepted my beliefs because, as a Taoist in Midwest America, this is challenging to find. My distrust of religion has caused me to be wary of going to any churches. Years ago, I did go to Unity Church for several years. I enjoyed it. The community there was wonderful, but that church is about an hour away now and I just can’t see driving two hours a week to go there. I’ve thought of joining a Unitarian church, as they seem to have a more universal appeal, but they often seem to be more political than spiritual to me. Who knows… maybe someday I will find my church. Jury is still out on that one.
Then, on November 19, 2015 – 360 days later – she posted an essay in which she said:
Last week, Eric and I ventured out to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Minnetonka, a mere 15 or 20 minute drive from our house. (A very reasonable distance, given where we live.) Eric follows Eastern philosophy and does not consider himself to fit the Christian model either, so this seemed a good option to try. I did not have very high expectations because I had gotten it somewhere in my head that they were less “spiritual” than other churches – that they were more about service in the community. But lately, that slant has appealed to me so I thought that I would at least give them a try.
I was very glad that we did! It was the first time, EVER, that I have gone to a church and felt like it could be my church! Now this was only our first visit, so we must give it time, but it felt like love at first sight.
So, good for her. It may not be the end of her search for religion, but it did remind me of an old Peter, Paul and May song called “Hymn.” “Hymn” was primarily written by Noel Paul Stookey, and included on the 1968 album, Late Again.
There was always a spiritual core to the songs Stookey wrote, and after Peter, Paul and Mary quit performing regularly he was active in the area of Christian music. His best known composition is “The Wedding Song (There Is Love),” which he wrote for Peter Yarrow’s wedding.
In a 2012 interview, Stookey pointed out that his mother was a Roman Catholic and his father an ex-Mormon. He said, “We did an eclectic attendance at church. I had no real spiritual sense until I was 30 years old. I was touched by Christ’s life and that spirit and message, changed my life completely.” The song “Hymn” expresses his personal search, and is representative of what many of us have experienced.
Earlier this week, I was doing a meditation with some friends. It was suggested that whenever an extraneous thought came along we should acknowledge, “I created that,” and let it pass.
How far beyond the mind and meditation should that acknowledgement be extended?
II
Some of the news headlines from the past few days:
TERRORISM SUSPECTED IN CRASH OF RUSSIAN AIRLINER; 224 DEAD
ANKARA SUICIDE BOMBERS KILL 102; OVER 500 INJURED
42 DEAD IN SUICIDE BOMBING OF NIGERIAN MOSQUE
PARIS TERROR ATTACKS: 8 ATTACKERS DEAD AFTER KILLING MORE THAN 120 PEOPLE AND INJURING HUNDREDS
III
A young nun sits with her superior and asks, “Mother, why does God permit hundreds of innocent people to die at the hands of Satan and his violent terrorists?”
The mother superior replies, “Do not blame God or Satan, my child. You have caused those deaths.”
“How can you say that? I am cloistered, living at peace among my sisters. I pray for peace in the world at least eight hours each day. I do not eat the flesh of any living creature, and avoid even stepping on an ant that may cross my path.”
“How did you feel when you heard of the innocent deaths, my child?”
“Mostly I felt sad and confused.”
“Anything else?”
“For only a second, a part of me felt a spark of anger that such things could happen.”
“That spark, my child, is enough to ignite huge conflagrations far beyond the walls of this convent.”
IV
John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, refers to Satan as the “Prince of Darkness.” It also tells us that Satan was formerly known as Lucifer. I guess we already knew that because three centuries earlier, in his Inferno, Dante Alighieri had called Satan Lucifer (among other names). “Lucifer,” translated from the Latin is an adjective meaning “light-bringing” or a noun referring to the morning star.
Hmmm.
V
The Nylons was an a cappella singing group formed by four underemployed actors in Toronto, Canada in about 1978. The personnel in the group changed over time, but during the Nylons’ most productive years (starting in 1982 and going until about 1990) the members were Claude Morrison, Arnold Robinson, Paul Cooper and Mark Connors.
The group is best known for its fine cover versions of rock and roll standards like “Happy Together,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “Town Without Pity.” Members of the group also wrote some excellent songs. The Nylons’ best album was the second one released in 1982, entitled One Size Fits All. It includes a song by Mark Connors and Paul Cooper called “Prince of Darkness.”
Pay attention to the lyrics. If we haven’t “created that,” we surely can.
We are extremely pleased to announce that Leila Catherine Koskimaki was born at about 9:42 a.m. on Monday, November 2, 2015. At her birth, she weighed 6 pounds, 15 ounces; and she was 19 inches long.
Not only was this baby once the youngest person in the world, she is my granddaughter. Here is a picture:
The name Leila (and its variants, like Layla) is derived from Hebrew and Arabic names for an angel of the night. The name became popular in the English-speaking world in the early 19th Century due to the popularity of characters with that name in two of Lord Byron’s narrative poems – Don Juan and The Giaour. In 1880, when the U.S. Government began tracking the popularity of babies’ names, it was one of the top 200 names for girls. Its popularity decreased over the next several decades, but it has made a big comeback since 1990. In 2014, it was the 241st most popular name for U.S. babies, and 171st for those born in England.
It is a pretty name.
The song “Layla,” by Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon, was first released in 1971 on the album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, by Derek and the Dominos. It is a good song (Rolling Stone ranked it Number 27 on its list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”) with contrasting movements that were composed separately by Clapton and Gordon.
Eric Clapton has said that the song was inspired by the 12th Century Persian poet, Nizami Ganjavi’s, classic poem, “The Story of Layla and Majnun.”
More importantly, in November of 2015, mother and baby Leila are both doing fine.
I have led a pretty sheltered life; and it is probably better that way. Last night a kid came to the door selling some cleaning solution and telling me how my purchase would help him get into nursing school and away from the drug scene in inner-city Jacksonville, Florida. Who knew? I bought an overpriced bottle and he moved on. My conscience was assuaged.
Recently, I also became aware of another drug crisis. The dealers are out there selling our kids and our middle-aged and our elderly drugs that even Keith Richards – yes, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones could find such a bad drug that he had to warn us about it – warned us about nearly 50 years ago. These pushers happen to wear lab coats and stethoscopes and sit in medical offices or behind desks at pharmaceutical companies, so some of us don’t notice them very often.
The drugs they are pushing include many in the benzodiazepine family that are supposed to help with anxiety, seizures, insomnia and other conditions. The first such drug to be marketed, in 1960, was Librium (chlordiazepoxide), followed by Valium (diazepam) in 1963. Valium quickly became the most prescribed drug in both the United States and the UK; and perhaps the most abused. It is highly addictive and overdosing can lead to many serious consequences, including death. These dangers were recognized at least by 1966, when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the Rolling Stones’ hit song, “Mother’s Little Helper” – the “helper” being Valium.1
The next widely marketed benzodiazepine was Klonopin (clonazepam), which was patented in 1964, and has been sold since 1975. Another rock music related story involves Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac. For what seems like decades, she was the poster girl for cocaine abuse. In 1986, she determined to kick that habit and checked into the Betty Ford Clinic. She was able to withdraw, but was prescribed Klonopin to assist in her sobriety. She continued to take Klonopin for the next eight years, until the side effects became too much for her. It was then she found that quitting the tranquilizer was even worse than getting off cocaine. The process took her several months, including 47 days of in-patient treatment. She describes the experience as: “I felt like someone opened up a door and pushed me into Hell.”2
Xanax (alprazolam) is another wildly popular benzodiazepine drug. It was first developed by Upjohn (which is now a part of Pfizer) in 1969, and has been marketed since 1981. Xanax, in both its original and generic forms, is still one of the 10 most prescribed drugs in the United States.
There are more than 20 different benzodiazepines currently being prescribed. According to an article in the February 2015 edition of JAMA Psychiatry, in 2008 (apparently the most recent year for which accurate data is available), more than 5% of US adults between the ages of 18 and 80 were prescribed one of more of these drugs – including at least one of every ten women over the age of 65.3 Xanax, alone, is responsible for more that 100,000 emergency room visits each year.
The FDA has approved drugs like Xanax for treatment regimens of up to eight weeks. As a Class IV controlled substance, 30-day prescriptions may be issued with up to five refills. Still, many physicians guide their patients through much longer periods of use (like the eight years for Stevie Nicks) as an “off-label” use. Why do they do that? To quote one doctor from another article in the February 2015 JAMA Psychiatry:
Benzodiazepines remain popular because of their consistent and reliable effectiveness against many symptoms of anxiety, relatively good tolerability, quick onset of action, and possibility of use on as as-needed basis. Furthermore, alternative medications, such as antidepressants, have not been as useful for anxiety disorders as they had initially seemed to be.4
However, the negative effects of long-term use are substantial and well recognized. They include depression, memory impairment, personality changes, nausea, dizziness, headaches, sleep problems and many other things. Because benzodiazepines are highly addictive, those problems become much worse as a person goes through withdrawal, and often continue for many months after withdrawal is completed. Recent research indicates that the risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease increases by as much as 84% when the drugs are continued for more than six months.5
I am bringing all of this up now because I recently learned that someone I know well has been taking Xanax, exactly as prescribed by a doctor, for several years, and is now trying to withdraw. It is a terrible thing to watch someone who has been active and involved with life for more than six decades spend most of the time in bed worrying when the pain will end.
If anyone reading this believes in the power of prayer or healing energy, please send some for the many thousands of innocent people are fighting through this kind of withdrawal right now. They need it.6
I have a friend named Harry who told me, “My doctor is concerned that I have started drinking brake fluid. But I’m not worried; I can stop any time.” Would that it were so for Xanax.
I recently received an email from the Tibetan Association of Colorado informing me of the following statement issued by the Office of Tibet in Washington, D.C., on September 25, 2015:
“His Holiness arrived in the United States earlier this week for a medical evaluation. Upon completion of the evaluation, the doctors have advised that His Holiness take complete rest. As a result, His Holiness will be returning to Dharamsala, India, next week and will not be able to visit the United States next month. We deeply regret cancellation of the visit.”
As I am writing this, I believe that the Dalai Lama is being “evaluated” at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; though it has not been said that he is ill. Rather, it seems that he went to the Clinic for a routine annual physical.
The email from the Tibetan Association of Colorado says that it was sent to me “with the hope that you will join us in prayers for His Holiness’ health and quick recovery.”
Last week, Congressman John Boehner told a news conference that he was alone with Pope Francis I after the Pope addressed Congress, and that the Pope asked Boehner to pray for him1. Boehner humbly asked the news conference, “Who am I to pray for the Pope?”
And who am I to pray for the Dalai Lama? But I will. Your prayers, I’m sure, will be welcome, also.
“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
We start with a famous quotation – one that I received in an email just a few days ago1 – which is often attributed to C. S. Lewis. It appears, though, that Lewis never publicly wrote or said those words. He probably did not even believe them.2
Here in the 21st Century, a time when what was once considered frivolous New Age thought has subtly infiltrated even traditional religious institutions, the quotation seems a reasonable concept that a spiritually inclined person might believe. However, it is certainly not the traditional Christian belief.
Christians have long believed that the body – indeed, all the material world – is the loving creation of God. Humans are seen as “enfleshed spirits,” with the body being much more than a machine that can be cast aside and traded in for a new one when it wears out. The Apostle’s Creed, which is from the 4th Century, affirms a belief in “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.” That view is still the accepted dogma and is probably the main reason that most Christians reject the idea of reincarnation.
Still, the thought that we are immortal souls with a temporary body has long resonated with some Christians. A training manual for the YMCA, published in 1900 (the year C. S. Lewis celebrated his second birthday), states, “Men often say, ‘I have a soul.’ That is not the highest truth. We must learn to say, ‘I am a soul, and I have a body.'”3
The basic idea is much older. In fact, one of the basic tenets of the so-called “Gnostic heresy” of the 1st and 2nd Centuries was that the spirit, or soul, is more important than the body.
For those who believe in reincarnation, the idea is even older and very easy to accept. For example, in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna reminds us that “as a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.”4
Underlying all of these expressions is the belief that there is something eternal within each of us, and probably within every living thing. It is from that perspective that we finally get to the new Song of the Week, “Highwayman,” by the Highwaymen.
“Highwayman” was originally a reflection on reincarnation by noted songwriter Jimmy Webb. Webb is the writer of a string of hits beginning in the mid-1960s – songs like “Up, Up and Away”; “Wichita Lineman”; “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”; and many more, including, of course, “MacArthur Park.”5 Clearly, Webb knows how to pen a popular tune; though most of his songs, to quote Oscar the Grouch, are just “not my cup of mud.”
Webb has discussed the composing of “Highwayman” in several interviews. It seems that in 1977 he was in London for a recording session and spent a long evening partying with singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson. When he finally got to sleep, he had a vivid dream in which he was running down a dirt road, carrying a brace of pistols and being pursued by police. The dream awakened him, so he got up and wrote the first verse of the song.
He wasn’t sure where the song was going, but in thinking about what he had written he realized the highwayman, who had been hanged, had not really died; but had moved on to his next life. Webb then wrote three more verses describing incarnations as a sailor who died at sea, a workman killed while constructing Hoover Dam and an astronaut who will “fly a starship across the universe divide.”
Webb recorded “Highwayman” for his 1977 album, El Mirage. I don’t know whether he accepted the idea of reincarnation or was just creating another of his hit songs. His father was a Baptist minister who worked in rural Oklahoma and Texas, so he certainly did not learn about reincarnation while he was growing up. Still, with Webb singing each of the verses, the song clearly told of consecutive incarnations of an eternal soul.
Webb then offered the song to other singers – some of whom, like Glen Campbell, recorded it; while others, like Waylon Jennings, chose not to6.
A few years later, Jennings was working on a “country super group” project with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash. It was suggested that “Highwayman” would be good for them because each of the song’s four verses could be sung by a different member of the quartet, and the title “Highwayman” seemed appropriate to their reputations.
They recorded it. The single became the Number 1 Country song in nation in May, 1985, and remained on the charts for some 20 weeks. The song fit them so well that they named their “super group” the Highwaymen.
Their recording adds nuances to the song that did not exist in previous versions. In part, that was because Nelson, Kristofferson, Jennings and Cash are all better vocalists than Jimmy Webb. More importantly, having a separate person sing each verse permits more diverse interpretations. Do the verses actually recite incarnations of a single soul, or are there four souls who are now together in Eternity? Are the seemingly separate souls actually one Unity that includes us all?
The video shows us four riders, reminiscent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The image is reinforced about 35 or 40 seconds into the video, when the highwayman is being hanged at the end of the first verse. Through a doorway, a rider on a pale horse appears and then moves away. Does that represent Revelation 6:8, which says: “And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was death, and Hades followed him”?
I will close with another quotation, this one from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.”
shoulders. That posture pulls his first rib out of position, puts undue stress on the scalene muscles, causes headaches and neurological problems and adversely affects a person’s emotions. Yoga instructors, chiropractors and devotees of the Alexander Technique tell us that chronically poor posture makes us lose touch with our natural rhythms and about the way we feel within ourselves.
