Jack’s Winning Words 1/10/18
“There’s no geist like the Zeitgeist.”  (Robert Hughes)  Try using the word, Zeitgeist (Zight guyst) in conversation today and see where it leads.  It’s a German word and means, the mood of a period of history, its ideas and beliefs.  What do you think was the Zeitgeist of the time you were growing up?  As I reflect, the early 50s were a comfort-calm in my life.  However, it was a false calm, hiding what was to come in the mid-to-late 60s.  ..and the geist of today?   ;-)  Jack

FROM FACEBOOK LIZ:  “unrest” is today’s zeitgeist. manufactured unrest, for political gain. ====JACK:  Times seem to change rapidly.  While your reference to the LGBT issue is relevant, even those initials are changing to LGBTQIA, and my reading sees that being replaced by "Me Too!"  Bob Dylan's 60s album, "The Times They Are A-Changing," again seems relevant.  Maybe today's geist is "rapid change."====LIZ:  the pendulum swings, & always returns to center...====JACK:  Pendulums are for the here and now, but are useless in the hereafter.

FROM DR JUDY:  Hmmmm.  Never thought about it that way Jack, the 50s were the calm before the 60s storm. Well we are certainly in a major storm right now. So I would hope that what is to come is the rainbow ====JACK:  Even the "rainbow" at the end of Noah's flood has been usurped by the LGBT movement.  Kermit, in The Rainbow Connection, asks: Why are there so many rainbow songs?  My favorite is "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow."

FROM ANONYMOUS:  Your writing about the comfort-calm of the 50's and then the upheavals of the 60's, putting things in a perspective that sometimes the current zeitgeist is more superficial than we are aware of, Pastor Freed, leads me to express that I see our current Zeitgeist as one wherein practically every institution is distrusted, government, media, school system, insurance systems, the benefit of regulations, the criminal system, even now the Supreme Court, and people being trained to lead them, sometimes studying years and years and being mentored and so forth to play their roles in administering institutions are now looked upon as likely to not lead well so that all sorts of people are evidently easily "moving over from one professional path to a totally different one". The qualities and training needed are sort of "being flattened out" and "becoming inter-changeable" from one profession to another, especially in what has been happening in the current administration of our President. It all makes me wonder what Zeitgeist is going to follow this one? Will more trust come about or will things blow up in a sort of chaotic way like they did in the 60's? Or maybe what we are experiencing is a Zeitgeist which has already blown up but I'm still trying to see it somehow as more calm and more effective than it is.====JACK:  Sometimes we become so obsessed with the "present" that we cannot see clearly into the future.  What calms me is the statement, "There is a God."

FROM MY LAWYER:  But, it was your calm.====JACK:  Part of the value of friendship and interaction is that we can help calm one another.

FROM RS IN TEXAS:  The geist of today seems to be one of uneasiness and anxiety - N. Korea, politics, etc.   A good reason to turn to God for reassurance and comfort.====JACK:  One of my favorite biblical stories is about Jesus and the disciples in a boat on the Sea of Galilee.  A sudden storm arises.  Jesus is asleep.  The disciples call out to him, "Wake up!  Don't you care about this situation?"  He awakens and says, "Peace, be still," and the storm subsides.  The story is being relived today.

FROM BLAZING OAKS:  It will certainly be interesting to see how history records the Zeitgeist of  this era, that we "see" as chaotic and uncertain, with an inept leader at the guiding wheel of gov't.  My  sister and I used to laugh at the quirks of some of our children, saying, "After all, he/she was raised in the 60's!" I, too, remember the late 40's and fifties as a time of serene peace and prosperity, after WW2.  To me they were happy times for most. But we still had the racial issues!!====JACK:  Is not the present geist of our own creation?  Trumpism, continuing racial unrest, LBGT, etc, didn't happen in a vacuum.  Perhaps that's what democracy foments...along with the good.

FROM CS:  I agree.  My brother used to say the 50’s were the best .  I said “Certainly not for everyone!”====JACK:  I don't care what era it is, there always seems to be someone at the bottom.  I always saw Jesus and his followers reaching out to help those people.  I always like it, when at the end of the worship service, the pastor says: "Go in peace.  Remember the poor."