Category: Soapbox

Symbols of Marriage

Posted on by Pete Schloss

It comes as no surprise that I am a fan of the institution of marriage. Yet much of the first half of my professional life was spent helping people to end their marriages in litigation. The last 10 years of my career was largely dedicated to helping people end their marriages with dignity, preserving their joint roles as parents through Mediation. My motivation was the belief that children have only one opportunity to experience the joy of childhood. This opportunity can too easily be infected by the fallout of an angry and dysfunctional divorce. Through experience I have come to believe the following:

  1.  Marriage is permanent or impermanent as a matter of choice.
  2. Some marriages are toxic, notwithstanding the best efforts of one or both spouses.
  3. Some marriages fail because of a failure of effort on the part of the spouses.
  4. A child raised by divorced parents who have a well thought out and well executed parenting plan is better off than a child raised by parents fettered to one another in a bad marriage.
  5. Children learn the tools of parenting by the example of their parents. Bad relationship habits are trans-generational. An abused or abusive parent usually raises a child destined to be abused or abusive.
  6. Marriages most often fail along the fault lines of finance. The second most likely cause of failure is one partner’s belief that the other partner has the responsibility for happiness in the marriage. Failures in either or both of these two primary areas leads to the casting of blame upon the partner, disgust for the partner, and a sense of suffocating incarceration in the relationship.

There is more that 35+ years in the practice of law has revealed, but you get the point.

Early in my career I came to disagree with the most common symbol of marriage, that being two permanently interlocked circles. I found the symbolism flawed because marriage is not permanent. Also, marriage (good or bad) changes people. The symbolic circles retain their pre-joined shapes in spite of the reality that people flex and shape to accommodate the other person and the demands of their partnership.

I believe that a more appropriate symbol is that of two flexible intertwined loops that create a strong yet severable bond. The loops are not broken in order to be joined and need not be broken in order to be separated. They retain their basic nature but must change their shape in order to be joined and accommodate the shared connection. In addition to our wedding rings, my wife and I wear rings that I designed over 30 years ago. On the face of these rings, against the background of a Templar Cross, is this well-worn symbol that I believe more accurately reflects the cooperation, respect, and continuing commitment to the work of marriage.

Peace Everyone. Pete

God By Any Name

Posted on by Pete Schloss

God, Gott, Dieu, Yhwh… and Allah.

God by any other name is still Creator. To borrow further from Shakespeare, “Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself,…”

According to Genesis mythology God created the heavens and the earth, light and dark, the plants and animals, and then humanity in God’s image and likeness. God toiled for 6 days and then “rested” the 7th day. Perhaps a more accurate description is that God either retired or took a sabbatical because from that point forward humanity took up the task of creating. We created nations, language, and religions… religions that define god in our image and likeness. In my country most call the Creator “God”. My German paternal grandparents named the Creator Gott, and my Lebanese/Syrian maternal grandparents (who were Christians) prayed to Allah. “Allah” is not a word unique to a theology, it is merely the Arabic word for God and the Arabic language predates Islam by centuries.

Humanity created all that divides us and in our division we imagine that the Creator takes sides in wars, politics, and sporting events. We created rituals that we imagine are necessary to communicate and entreat with the gods that we created. If God is universal, all powerful, and all-knowing then I doubt that God is confused by the names that we choose or the manner by which we address or invoke God. I doubt that God favors one archaic ritual over another, one nation over another, one political party over another, or one baseball team over another.

If there is a Universal Creator (a topic for another time), then I pray that God comes out of retirement and begins work on the 8th day to create peace, love, understanding and respect among those God created on the 6th day.

Peace Everyone. Pete

Expectations and Disappointment, a Parable

Posted on by Pete Schloss

Before we left the States for Spain to walk the Camino in 2013, I had declared my expectation that I would walk each and every one of the 815 kilometers, my pack on my back. I have since come to learn that such expectations are an endurance hike, and not a pilgrimage. In my case, being forced off for a few days because of illness created both a disappointment and an opportunity for reflection. I have learned from the experience that there can be no disappoint if one sheds all expectations.

I have wondered how this might have played out 1,000 years ago in the early days of the Camino de Santiago Compostela:

Expectations and Disappointment, a Parable. 

Somewhere on the Camino, the year 1013, a weary and travel worn Perigrino surrenders the burro which he has ridden into town to a shopkeeper. The Pilgrim then slowly hobbles across the village square, entering the imposing granite church that is the axis of the community. Confessions are being heard. Our Perigrino, adorned in his tatters, enters the confessional booth, and begins to recite the prescribed formula:

Perigrino: Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been one day since my last confession (Confession was a lot more popular in the 11th Century) and these are my sins. I have had impure thoughts, and I have broken my vow to the Blessed Virgin and St. James.

Priest: The breaking of a vow is a serious matter; can you tell me more?

Perigrino: Father, I am a Pilgrim walking the Camino. I made a vow to Our Lady and St. James that I would walk the entire Journey assisted only by my own two feet. Earlier today I stumbled upon a rock and found that I was unable to continue. A farmer took pity upon me and gave me the use of a burro upon which I traveled this day. I have just surrendered it to the farmer’s brother, a shopkeeper on the square.

Priest: My son, your sin is not the breaking of a vow, but in possessing such arrogance as to presume to tell our Lord what your Camino should be. God in his infinite Knowledge and Mercy provided you with a burro to continue your journey, but your disappointment, fathered by your expectations, has no appreciation for God’s Grace…. A serious sin indeed.

Perigrino: For my sin I am heartily sorry Padre, and I willingly embrace your penance.

Priest: My son, for your penance you shall go to the river, and divesting yourself of your robes. You will bath and clean yourself of all expectations for your pilgrimage on the Camino.

Perigrino: Excuse me Padre, but is it not more common to just require that I recite 3 “Our Fathers” and 5 “Hail Marys”? Besides I have already bathed this year.

Priest: So my Perigrino! Do you now also impose your expectations upon the penances that I give?!? By the way, I almost forgot, what were the impure thoughts?

Perigrino: Uhm, well, I don’t really know. I have always given 2 sins, and since my parents are both dead I can no longer use “disobedience”.

Priest: I see. Well, for the impure thoughts you could have had you get your 3 “Our Fathers” and 5 “Hail Marys”… and after you bathe, wash your clothes and line your cod-piece with fresh herbs. I

think that your odor is delaying the Second Coming of Christ.

The Pilgrim was true to his word. He recited the prescribed prayers, bathed, and washed his clothes. Unfortunately, some habits die hard. As the Perigrino was searching for fresh herbs to line his cod-piece, he could be heard to declare, “I swear by the Blessed Mother and St. James that I will complete the rest of my pilgrimage without further interruption!” Soon thereafter the Pilgrim chose a three-leafed vine-like plant to line his cod-piece.

Peace Everyone, and a Buen Camino! Pete

Human, Except in Mind and Deed

Posted on by Pete Schloss

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the human mind. When we are presented with a scenario that lacks details, we often supply them from our expectations, our experiences, and our belief systems. In the face of a reported “drug deal gone bad”, a carjacking, or other newsworthy event, if important details are lacking we tend to unconsciously supply them to complete the picture. The mind conjures up details of age, gender, and race. The quest to know the details is the natural tendency of an inquisitive species. It drives our explorations, it drives our scientific inquiry, and it even drives our theologies.

Creation stories, such as presented in the Old Testament, are not only a story about Creation, but examples of the creation of a story. Imagine if the transcribers had known the structure of the solar system, galaxy, and universe. Imagine if they had known the relationship between mass and gravity, time and light. Those “knowns” would have been interwoven into a story that still included created aspects to explain the important unknowns.

As a child in parochial elementary school I was never satisfied with answers like, “Well Mr. Schloss, it’s a mystery”. I was once sent to the Principal’s office because I persisted to question how God could allow non-Christians in China to be condemned to eternal damnation when there was no opportunity for them to know Christianity. I sensed then, as I have come to believe in adulthood, that there is a point where fair inquiry becomes offensive to those who have abandoned fair inquiry.

When we declare natural or human tragedies to be “punishments from God”, or the results of an election, a war, or even a football game to be evidence of “the will of God”, we abrogate our humanity as inquiring beings. Worse yet, we abandon our free will to be agents of change and we become guilty of a great moral failing by pretending to be human in all but mind and deed.

Peace Everyone. Pete Schloss

Of Frogs and Teachers

Posted on by Pete Schloss

Years ago, I read that if a frog is cast into a pan of boiling water it will immediately react to save itself and jump out of the pan. However, if the frog is placed in a pan of cool water and the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will remain in place oblivious to the fact that it is being cooked.

I have accepted this account on faith but I still wonder if it has ever been experimentally proven. I would never consider torturing some poor frog to satisfy my curiosity, however recent events have brought me to the realization that the sacrifice of a frog is unnecessary since I have the example of a teacher, my father.

My dad began teaching in 1949, which was the year that he and my mother married. By 1959 they had brought 4 sons into the world, of which I am the oldest. My mother was also a teacher, but she chose to stay home to raise the children until I started high school. Dad’s teacher’s salary, supplemented by summer work and the small stipends he received for coaching football, basketball, and track, were the family’s sole source of support. From his income, my parents provided our family with the following:

• A custom-built brick home in south suburban Chicago

• Parochial grade school educations

• One newer car and a second older car

• A camping trailer that we used for annual summer vacations, traveling throughout the United States and Canada

• Excellent health and dental care

• Undergraduate state college educations for the children that included our tuition, books, room and board

My dad was not a financial wizard, he was a teacher. Teachers in the 1960’s, along with firefighters, police officers, factory workers, truck drivers, and a myriad of other professions, were the pillars of middle class America. The real strength of the “American Dream” was not in the strength of our military or the wealth of the “top 1%”, but in what average workers could accomplish for themselves and their families.

Had something suddenly occurred in our society to deprive these workers of their ability to provide for their families in the manner that I have described then there would have been a declaration of a national emergency to address the crisis. In other words, the frog would have immediately reacted and leapt from the pan of boiling water.

Unfortunately, the America of my youth was bathed in a pan of cool water. The temperature of the water has gradually risen over the last 50 years to the point that the middle class of America it is being cooked out of existence.

As for the experiment, frogs need not apply. We have enough teachers, firefighters, police officers, factory workers, truck drivers…

Peace. Pete Schloss