FAME IF YOU WIN IT
There was a time when you’d have to be from a distant
planet not to recognize the name John Wayne. For lots of reasons the
name’s still way up high on the recognizable scale. It’ll take a long
time before a whole generation will say, “Who ‘s that?” But it'll
happen, won't it.
There’s something sad about that but there it is. It’s like my Cassie
says (she’s my little Yorkie dog, bilingual, speaks Dogese and English,
but speaks English to no one but me}—she says it doesn’t matter, the
thing that really matters is living with integrity.
I’ve told her more than once that I wish she would speak English to
everyone but she just won’t have it. Just wants to live a quiet life of
integrity. Now and then I tell people Cassie speaks English and they
only laugh—I told her that and she said, “Well, what do you expect?” I
told her she could earn a lot of money and be famous. That was a
mistake!
Immediately, there she was up on her hind legs waltzing all over our
little apartment floor, giving me the Jimmy Durante impression and
singing a couple of lines from one of his hits, Make Someone Happy.
Make someone happy,Make just one someone happy;Make just one heart the heart you sing to.One smile that cheers you,One face that lights when it nears you,One girl you're ev'rything to.Fame if you win it,Comes and goes in a minute.Where's the real stuff in life to cling to?Love is the answer,Someone to love is the answer.Once you've found her, build your world around her.Make someone happy, Make just one someone happy,And you will be happy, too.
When she got to, “Fame if you win it/comes and goes in a minute,” she
really started that Durante head-shaking business with her front paws
out sideways. Sigh. That dog!
Still, I can’t deny that she’s right on target with her philosophy of life.
You don’t begrudge celebrities like John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Tom
Hanks their fame, do you? Others who you think are too coarse or crude
or who work hard at being offensive—you might wish they didn’t have as
much influence or prominence. It’s true they don’t care a button about
what people like me think and that makes sense to me; working from their
perspective why would they?
Look, there’s only one Jesus! The rest of us were born into a fallen
world and it was inevitable that we’d end up sinning—God knows that
better than we do. That’s why he didn’t send any of us to save us; he
came himself in and as Jesus of Nazareth.
I’m aware of my own sinfulness and I don’t in the least find it
strange that everyone else is as I am. What troubles me is how some of
us truly exult in our evil—evil that targets the voiceless, the weak,
the vulnerable, the helpless and makes hell out of life.
I wonder if there are people who truly, actually, sincerely and
genuinely don’t give a damn about the agony they inflict? Do they
never—never—lie in the darkness of their room at night and wonder who or
what they are, what they have become? I suspect there are such people
but, dear God, what moral insanity that is, what an awful moral death
that is.
They weren’t born that way! Who knows how many factors
[individual/familial/cultural] that begin the slide down into such an
abyss, into such slavery where men and women look with pleasure at the
chains that bind them? Or is it worse if they don’t even think of them
as chains but as honor beads or medals of glory?
People with power [fame, money, intellect, brute strength,
whatever]—when it’s used for evil it isn’t just personal guilt, it’s
world-shaping.
Sigh.
When it's used to ease pain and lift people—that's
world-shaping too. It doesn't matter that people don't know God is using
them, he's doing it and it would be wonderful if they knew it.