Coming Up For Air

"'17 Learn to do good; seek justice, review the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. 18 Come now, and let us reason together,' says the Lord, 'Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword"; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." Isaiah 1:19-20 ( New King James Version ) Joshua Rothman grippingly describes interacting with someone in a virtual environment in this week's issue of the New Yorker magazine. "I watched, merely interested. It was obvious that he was a virtual person; I was no more intimidated by him that I would be an image on the screen. Then he got closer, and closer still, invading my personal space. In real life, I'm tall, but I found myself craning my neck look at him. As he loomed over me, gazing into...

 "Come now, and let us reason together," says the Lord, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Isaiah 1:18 ( New King James Version ) In Jonathan Acuff's Stuff Christians Like , he observes a little boy and his swirl of soft serve ice cream. He is allowed to include any topping he wants. Confused by his options, the little boy accidentally covers the gleaming service of his treat with mustard. Spotting his mistake, an employee instantly offers the little boy the chance to start with some new ice cream, but he won't. Instead, he settles. He mixes the mustard into a sickly swirl, and he chokes down every spoonful. If our hearts have been pricked by Isaiah 1's charges of dishonoring God by failing to honor those made in His image with the goods He gives us, we have come to a mustard moment. Only, that sickly shade is replaced with the scarlet red of obvious guilt. Our ef...

From Isaiah 1 (N ew King James Version ) – 16 "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes: cease to do evil, 17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor, Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow." Jacob Marley came to visit me over Christmas. Unlike his visit to Ebenezer Scrooge in The Christmas Carol , he came to me late on December 23 – and he stayed within the confines of my flatscreen to play his part in the movie. Nevertheless, his words might have been directed to me, and they have stayed with me these four months. Marley tells Scrooge that since Marley's death, he has been wandering the Earth. This, says the ghost, is to compensate for the fact that in life Marley's spirit never left the counting house. He never shifted from, he confesses, the transactional mentality toward life that his job enforced. When Scrooge tries to comfort Marley that he was a good man of business, Marley is emphatic: ...

Rachel Robinson, widow of Jackie Robinson, is a queen, formidable in her own right. Traveling through Ken Burns's Baseball documentary, I never fail to be impressed with her quiet dignity alongside him, and as she tells his story in the years that follow. This year, however, I noticed a kind of prejudice in my reaction toward her which, in its way, can be just as limiting and one-dimensional as racism. I decided that in the division between Those Who Are Strong and Those Who Are Weak, Mrs. Robinson was strong. Case closed. Next. More evidence never made much of an impression on me, even in the same documentary, since I already rendered my verdict. I needed to look again. The same woman, lively yet genteelly imposing, lived on past the world watching her reaction to her husband's heroic part in baseball's integration. She lived on to suffer his untimely demise, to grieve to the extent that she confesses carrying a cardboard cutout of him from room to room in the days after ...

In the movie Gettysburg based on Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels , a Mississippi thespian named Harrison has taken up wartime employment as a spy. This brings him to the attention of Gen. James Longstreet, who trusts him with a particularly crucial mission. Harrison complains that the worst thing about his job change is the absence of an audience. "When you do it right," he frets to Longstreet, "no one knows you are doing it. It's very hard on an actor." Entering month six of mostly home bound unemployment following 13 years as a counselor and professional chatterbox, I feel his pain. I've developed some definition of discipline sending blogs and job applications out into cyberspace, but reactions both instant and regular are missing. This reality as the new normal made the exception of all the more sweet. I posted a Bible-based encouragement that we should keep in mind the hidden witnesses of our actions undertaken by faith, those who may not g...

This week I read William Manchester's Controversy and Other Essays in Journalism 1950-1975 . It is hampered by a ponderous title and his need to unload publicly an otherwise understandable literary grudge against Jacqueline Kennedy. Still, his dealings with those of superior stuff and status do yield some insight for the rest of us. "Rich families," he diagnosis evenhandedly after intimate involvement with the Kennedys and others, "are not happier, but they have a clear concept of the source of happiness and unhappiness. Unlike the rest of us, they cannot blame whatever disarray there is in their personal lives on the lack of ways and means." The outsized power Manchester sees given to blame and resentment, even as he yields to some of it himself, is worth considering as we come up for air. Such embittering or defensive forces are even at work in the privileged environs of the idealized Oval Office on The West Wing . With enough wealth that the President is sur...

Looking back on them once I am employed, one of these moments would be known as the one in which I spotted The Job Lead. One of them will glow as the one in which I reviewed the job requirements that just seem to make perfect sense, in retrospect. One of them will stand above her peers as the moment in which I massaged to the verbiage of the description of my next job into my cover letter and resume in a way that made the employer's seeker-sorting algorithms sing. One of the phone calls answered with resolved cheerfulness will forever after be known as the one in which I got The Interview, and her more honored sibling, likely, the one in which I was offered The Job. Writing about the days and weeks as they go by, however, such illumination and inspiration is difficult to discern. Both scrunching myself into the requirements of an entry-level customer service position and stretching myself to pass inspection for a supervisory position a little beyond what my career has thus far enta...