NCAA March Madness. One team wins and the rest lose their final game of the year

20,000 runners start the Chicago Marathon Only one crosses the finish line first, leaving 19,999 losers. Some don’t even finish the race

50 women compete in the Miss America contest, which produces one perfect beauty and 49 plain Janes

Kids participate in sports today and everybody gets a participation trophy.  But in later life, the shock will come when they learn they lose more than they win.

Oddly, there are situations where high performers miss more than they connect.  A baseball player who hits 300 is a star.  That stat means he fails 70 percent of the time.

The best hockey players miss 4-5 shots for every one they make.  I guess the only players who aren’t total losers are the goalies.

And think about soccer – those losers run all over the field and hardly ever make a score.

Losing…failing…seems to be all part of life.  And then you die.

It would be a truly miserable existence – if we accept the description of winning and losing I’ve presented.

Very few win it all, and sometimes those who do are blinded by their success and miss the things that really matter:  hope, faith, love, mercy, forgiveness, sacrifice, humility.

Every person is a sinner. We are humbled (or at least should be) by our imperfections, shortcomings and failures. No matter how hard we try, we mess up.

Because of this, how blessed we are to have our Catholic faith.  We receive mercy and forgiveness we don’t merit, that was earned for us by the Son of God.

Some things I’m happy to lose:  shame, guilt, fear, anger, resentment, self-pity.  Losing can be beautiful.

The longer I live and the more I sin, go to confession, sin some more, confess some more…the more I think the losses I have experienced have allowed me to win at the most important game of life:  accepting myself, loving myself, know that I’m a child of God.

And I’ve finally come to terms with the sad fact that I’m never going to be a rock star.

 

It is the season of local elections in my quiet Chicago suburb.  In a few days, we’ll be voting for board members for an elementary school district, high school district, junior college, park district and library board.  There are others, but I’d have to look at the sample ballot to remember them all.

All the candidates have two things in common:

1. They claim to support prudent spending.
2. They want to expand programs and buildings.

I’m no financial genius, but it is difficult to reconcile these two approaches.  Having said that, the elementary school district uses a novel approach.  They claim that if I vote for their bond proposal my taxes will go down.  This is a remarkable twisting of the facts, likely to be difficult to follow, but I’ll try to explain.

The district is paying off its last bond issue, which means taxes will go down.  If the new bond issue passes, it will raise taxes, but less than they go down with the payoff of the previous issues.  What the pro-bond campaign doesn’t mention is that if the new bonds are rejected, my taxes will go down twice as much.

I know this is confusing.  But I do understand why the district wants more money; they want to build additions that would eliminate the need for portable classrooms at a couple schools.  The “portable” classrooms are used at schools across the country and are nicer than the homes millions of Americans live in.

But instead of building more classrooms, there would be the option of putting more kids in a smaller number of classrooms, rearranging space or staggering some subjects.  I’ve been on the boards of several Catholic schools and those are the sorts of things Catholics do.  But this is a public district. So the answer to a problem is to raise taxes.  That’s how wants turn into needs.

Catholic schools – and the parents who send their children to them – have learned to be satisfied with needs and let wants go.  When parents pay tuition (above the public school property taxes) to send their kids to Catholic school, they get really cost conscious.  They understand that education is a mission that often requires doing more with less.

I can pick out the Catholic-occupied homes in my neighborhood.  They have the most toys in the yard and the most obvious evidence of deferred maintenance.  If you have several kids and are sending them to Catholic school, you likely don’t have a landscape service and annual exterior painting.

But you have a better chance of producing the next generation of practicing Christians.

Campaign signs have sprouted up in every yard in my neighborhood.  They all ask for something.  On the surface, they want my vote.  Beneath that, most want access to my bank account.

I really wish various government organizations would stop trying to do more and try to figure out ways to avoid interfering in my life.  To demonstrate my commitment to non-support, I posted my own yard sign quoting Groucho Marx, “Whatever it is, I’m against it.”

The world needs more Grouchos.

Until a few days ago, I had never heard of a CNN program called “Believer – with Reza Aslan.”  But a headline about the show was so startling that I read the article and did a little research.

The headline:  Reza Aslan eats human brain on new CNN show ‘Believer’.

I’m not making this up; it is a real show and the “reporter” really ate human brain.  This begs the question of how far a reporter will go for a story, how much must a reporter experience to share with readers or viewers the “truth.”

I’m sure it isn’t as far as eating someone’s brain, in this case with an obscure sect of supposed Hindus.  (Hindus have universally condemned the report – except I presume the small group of brain-eaters who Aslan visited.)

I wondered why anyone would pursue such a story, so I visited the program’s website.  And there I found the answer:  “In this new spiritual adventure series, renowned author and religious scholar Reza Aslan immerses himself in the world’s most fascinating faith-based groups to experience life as a true believer.”

Frankly, looking at the stories listed on the site, a better description would be:  “A guy who wrote a controversial book looks for the most obscure, shocking and disgusting sects on earth and hangs out with them doing weird things that will shock you.”

I doubt you need to be a scholar to hang with cannibals.  You really need to have really bad taste and a demagnetized moral compass.  And I can think of only two reasons to do it.

First, you just want to shock everyone and boost ratings for a television show.  I guess promising to dive into bazaar spiritual practices could generate an uptick in ratings.

Second, you subscribe to the journalistic perversion that to really report on a subject, you must immerse yourself in it.  This can be reasonable, as when a reporter spends a day as a substitute teacher to learn what it is like to be in front of 30 teenagers.  But few would suggest that to do a story on drug addiction a reporter should take heroin.  Few would suggest a crime reporter should take up robbery to better understand the criminal mind.

Perhaps Reza Aslan can only learn by doing.  But I think I could learn everything I would ever want to know about cannibalism without being a full participant.

In the case of the show “Believer,” I believe I can learn everything I need to know about the program without actually watching it.  I’d rather watch The Food Network.

Pilate asked the question.  Christ was the answer.  He still is.  And as it has been for more than 2000 years, some find the answer and many do not.

In daily life, I have always believed that truth was a beautiful combination of faith, hope, love and doing the next right thing.  The next right thing is what is honest and in many cases – simply what must be done.

I guess I’m pretty much a black-and-white kind of guy.  If everyone followed the Golden Rule and the 10 Commandments, the world would be a caring, safe place.

We live under a democratic form of government.  For such a government to work, people need common values and a common sense of right and wrong.  People have to agree on truth.

Agreement eludes us.  We find exceptions to each of the 10 Commandments.  Certainly, the law against murder shouldn’t apply to an unborn child or an elderly person not enjoying a proper quality of life.  Certainly, the law against adultery shouldn’t apply when your spouse gains 40 pounds or suffers a disabling injury.  The government isn’t really stealing when it raises your taxes or takes your property for its own purposes.

And what of lying?  It seems that lying is acceptable if you get away with it – or it supports a “greater good.”  This was the thinking behind the Hitler/Goebbels use of the “Big Lie.”  If you are going to say something untrue about your opponent, make it a whopper. People will think there is no way you would make up such a thing – and the mere scale of it requires vetting.

The news media are horrible suckers for the big lie.  So we get days or even weeks of reports that a goofy film caused the destruction of an American embassy, the Russians manipulated our election results and the Pope isn’t strongly pro-life.

We’ve slithered into a post-truth world where facts are less important than allegations, where the ends justify the means, where you say anything to further your agenda.  Reality is what works, not what is real.

Among the various professions that affect our lives, nurses and doctors poll the highest for honesty and ethical behavior.  The lowest scores go to members of congress.  Ironically, the people we trust the least will determine the future of the people we trust the most.  That’s what happens in a culture where truth has lost the power to persuade and the biggest lie carries the day.

We must do better than Pilate.

Among the many emails I receive each day is a news digest from lifenews.com.  I don’t read all the articles, but skim the headlines and click on the ones that pique my interest.

A couple days ago, each of the first two articles involved an attractive young women commenting on issues of life.  The headlines suggested their views were miles apart, and the proximity of the two stories enhanced what, to me, was considerable irony.

Woman number one, Barbara Pierce Bush, is the daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H. W. Bush.  While I’m sure being a first daughter has its downsides, anyone who spends many of her formative years living in the White House has to have lived a rather charmed life.  Having Secret Service protection, servants, a limousine and a seat on Air Force One would be a real kick.  She attended Yale and has been involved in various charitable efforts.

Woman number two, Adriana Lima, is among the highest-paid supermodels in the world.  She is one of the stars of the Victoria’s Secret promotions, which involves lots of running about in fancy underwear.  She is Brazilian, married a Serbian basketball star, had a couple kids, then got divorced.

As I said, one of the women is pro-life – the other pro-abortion.  But you might not immediately guess which is which.

Barbara Bush spoke to Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas last week.  She has been an advocate for abortion and same-sex marriage.  She told the Texas group:  “To me, Planned Parenthood is a one-stop shop for everything that has to do with women’s health and all social problems that don’t have to do with women’s health.  I hope you all realize the incredible investment that you’re making for both women and also their kids, their kids’ education and their income level.”

I think you can read between the lines of this rather said quote.

Adriana Lima is openly Roman Catholic and says she remained virgin until her marriage.  She says abortion is a crime, sex is for after marriage and that is something men must respect.  And she says her children inspire her.

I believe a live child is more inspiring than one who has been aborted.

So…we have a pro-life model and a pro-abortion descendent of Presidents.  Common sense and faith can show up where least expected.  And privilege never ensures decency.