Why is it so difficult to do what you know is good for you? Why is it so much easier to fuck off? It's easier to slouch than to sit up straight. Good posture takes effort. Easier to turn the alarm off and go back to sleep than to get up and go exercise. Easier to eat junk than to prepare a healthy fresh meal. Easier to abuse credit cards than save for a comfortable retirement. Easier to throw clothes on the floor than hang them back up. Easier to slump onto the couch and watch TV than invest time in deepening relationships, or visit a museum or use your brain. I read somewhere that your brain is more active when you sit and stare at a wall than when you watch TV.

But I digress.

Writing a couple thousand years ago, the Apostle Paul bemoaned this human predicament. In his letter to he Romans, Paul whined, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. "

My minister, Fr. Jim Nutter at Palmer Episcopal Church, says Paul is the most important person who ever lived. THE. And there are plenty of people to choose from. I don't know. Paul is a hard character to warm up to. You read his letters and some of them seem so much like mental masturbation. (forgive me for using the word "masturbation" in the same paragraph as my priest's name and while referring to one of the major league Saints). Paul seems to have conflicted, almost tortured ideas about sexuality and women.

But then, that same prickly Paul, difficult to warm up to, and sometimes downright tedious and anal gives us this:
1 Corinthians 13: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."


I know I'm going to keep fucking off. I'm human. That's how I'm wired. But I also have the capacity to love. That's side-by-side with my propensity for being a clod. It's a grandmother's love. Every blobby, smeared fingerpaint we make gets a prominent place on her fridge. In her eyes, we're brilliant, gifted and amazing--even when we've got acne and cowlicks. It's that love that always hopes and keeps plugging away, reminding us to turn off theTV and talk--or better yet, listen--to our loved ones, eat some green things, go for a walk, sit up straight. If we never got to experience much of that kind of love in the "real world," it's hard to tap into our inner reserves. But, I think it's there in most of us--certain psychopaths like some of my co-workers are the exception.

For another opinion, go here: http://www.fes-net.com/_lob/LOL/sounds/donotpassgo.wav