The Gospel Truth @preachersdemonpie: September 2012

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Zax Attax Sermon:

September 30, 2012

I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a lot of time lately following and communicating with my “friends” in the “Devil’s Playground”: Facebook. I find it fascinating, really, that people you think you know well, or people you’ve known but haven’t seen for years, or people you only know from “friending” them on facebook all have such wide and varying views of where our country exists in this time and place we call two thousand and twelve. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found myself absorbed by people’s comments, rants, and diatribes. In a way, even though I’ve found that some people’s extreme views and uncivilized commentary can be shocking and at times downright scary, on the whole I’m finding there may be some hope for humanity well past this dreadful economic downturn, regardless of which candidate is elected to assume our highly coveted but rarely respected position of Commander and Chief of the Free World.

That’s right, I said hope, and I wasn’t even attempting to further the 2008 campaign promise of my favored 2012 candidate, Barack Obama. The hope I see is that regular everyday people in this country are actually attempting to communicate with one another. This hasn’t happened for at least a dozen years, so I see it as a promising breakthrough. It’s still a far cry from “listening” to one another, but the first barriers of completely ignoring one another are beginning to come down, and it’s these impediments that have created the division that currently exists among our chosen political representatives. We don't listen to one another, and as a result, we’re sending our representatives off on fools’ errands, because as we all know, they don't listen to each other either. We blame our representatives for obstructing progress or taking advantage of slim majorities, but the reality is they have done nothing but behave like representatives of their constituencies, and in this bizarre way act as proof that our vehicle of government (The US Constitution and its inherent representative democracy) is working just as it should.

Of course, we can’t continue living like Dr. Suess’ North-Going and South-Going Zaxes for much longer and expect the survival of our country’s 230 year old political system and the “We the People” for whom it was created to protect. It’s for this reason that I suggest we look to our country’s brain scientists for help in finding out about how we can use our all too human brains to help us get out of this “Epic Standstill of 2012.”

John J. Medina, a developmental molecular biologist with special research interests in the isolation and characterization of genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders, has recently written a book called Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School that I suggest ought to be required reading for all citizens of our country. In his book, written in clear and concise laymen’s language, Medina outlines what we can make use of in the limited knowledge we have about our brains. Though all 12 rules he discusses are valid in our attempts to communicate with one another, two of the rules Medina outlines, “survival” and “wiring,” can be of particular help in our endeavor to listen and understand one another.

In short, he argues that brain science has shown that each of us is “wired” differently, and to assume that someone else understands you without each of us actually “listening” to one another is the key to our species ability to “survive” and even “thrive” on this planet. In other words, we as a species have made it this far because we have worked together. When we listen to and respect one another’s unique perspectives (wiring), and then make decisions that consider and include our individual perspectives, we persevere (survive). On the flip side, when we refuse to work together, we’re working against our species’ biological instinct to “survive.” Reading Medina’s book may not convince all people of the absolute necessity that we need to “work together,” but it will certainly remain as anthropological evidence that, if we don't work together, our species had fair warning from those who spent their entire lives studying the complex realities of the human brain.

“Look here, now!” the North-Going Zax said, “I say!

You are blocking my path. You are right in my way.

I’m a North-Going Zax and I always go north.

Get out of my way, now, and let me go forth!”

“Who’s in whose way?” snapped the South-Going Zax.

“I always go south, making south-going tracks.

So you’re in MY way! And I ask you to move

And let me go south in my south-going groove.”

Wow. It’s almost funny how this excerpt from Dr. Suess’ story, "The Zax," speaks volumes of where our country exists in this time and place we call two thousand and twelve. Could there be hope that we will look back upon this time in history and smile, knowing how prideful and stuck we each were in our unique wiring? But then, we would have to persevere through this election, accept its outcome, and actually begin listening to one another’s unique wiring, if we’re ever to survive and thrive.