A Rainbow of Rationality

Nobody’s Opinion: I had planned to write about Sean Penn tonight. He was in the news again, getting some award and using that moment to impress upon the world how President George W. Bush should be impeached, along with his whole administration: “The President, Vice President and …civil officers of the United States office.”

He didn’t say how many civil officers…probably at least a thousand or so. Never mind that the firing of the whole top structure of our government, leaving us vulnerable to a major strike, while the whole world is standing on a precipice of global burning, might be caused by such an effect.

Never mind that even Nancy Pelosi knows that this is an insane idea at the moment.
(But then again, being third in line, she might have put him up to it.)

But, what can you expect? Sean Penn’s father was a director in Hollywood who was blacklisted for not testifying in the McCarthy trails. His personal assistant is Andrew Dawton Lee, a former drug dealer who once worked for the Soviets as a spy.

The only color this man can see is red: the only fist he makes is with his left.

Sean Penn likes to fancy himself as an intellectual of the most Supreme Being. As James Brown, a supreme being of soul would say, he is, “Talking loud and saying nothing.”

More than likely, too much cocaine for too many years has put a cloud on any hope of rationality coming from his tormented face.

Yep. I was having trouble, I didn’t even want to make fun of him…it was like the subject put a plug of thick black tar in my writer’s block.

And then, I opened up a Christmas card. A card I was NOT expecting.

It was from an old boyfriend named John and his wife, Vicki. And the most marvelous story was in it.

Now, I’m not sure if Sean Penn is religious. Probably like most liberals he hates religion and considers it all a man-made farce.

Whenever I meet someone who does not believe in a Supreme Being outside themselves, (as Sean Penn and my old boyfriend John) I always feel sad for them, because they don’t know what they are missing.

Much like the couple that you meet that are childless---childless because they decided to remain childless in order to devote their lives to themselves and their own pleasures. Those of us who have children just can’t imagine anyone not knowing the ultimate experiences in life’s journeys that they have missed.

It’s like they are passing up the library at Alexandria, or a trip around the world, or seeing a rainbow once a month. What a pity.

In their proud moments of liberal rationality, they think that since they know themselves so well, they know they would be bad parents, therefore they are doing the rest of the world a favor. They are WISE and compassionate in their decision, and selfless.

After all, it’s their right not to put up with all that hassle.

But, back to the story, which was about John’s mother Charlotte, and rainbows.

Now, I don’t know too many people who are not simply in awe at seeing a rainbow. Throughout history they have been considered by most cultures as omens.

The Greeks thought that it was a path between Heaven and Earth. The Hebrews thought that it was a symbol of covenant between God and man. The Christians believe that Jesus will come back, surrounded by rainbows.

I happen to be able to find the rationality of faith in a rainbow. I will try to justify the rationality of the concept of God in the event of a rainbow…at the right moment.

I know, I will explain.

Let’s see…I once took an Art History class in college. By the end of the class I had so much knowledge about art, that I could look at any painting, tell you who did it, what style it was, what year it was made, in fact, I was such an expert I could have gotten a job at a museum.

The only trouble was that, AFTER the class, I noticed that I had lost all the joy of looking at any painting, because I would instantly analyze any painting I looked at. It was horrible, and maddening. I hated it.

It took quite a while to “forget” most of what I had learned.

Mark Twain explained this same concept after working on the river so long. He had to memorize so many passages and river bends, that after a while, he lost sight of all the beauty that a river can hold.

It happens. And when it comes to rainbows, you can look on them simply as scientific wonders of the sun’s refractions, and take it no further.

You can do that.

Now… back to my old boyfriend John and the story.

Over the summer John’s mother had died. She had remained a strong force in my life and was like a second mom to me. She was a tiny woman, but abundant with life till the very end.

At Charlotte’s funeral, I finally got to see John again. The last time I saw him, I was still in high school, and he was off to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. He was now an established professor at the Virtual Environmental Laboratory School of Design in North Carolina. Highly educated, highly intelligent…he mapped caves.

It was almost funny how different John and I had developed in our opinions on politics and views on life after all these years.

John and his wife were childless, but had lived a full life exploring the world. It was so good to see him, and to tell him about his mom, and her deep love for him.

But the Christmas card held a surprise…

John; “On the drive home (from the funeral) we saw a double rainbow in the northeastern sky. Driving east, we thought our car might catch up with it. The real surprise came when we did and the end of the rainbow descended to actually touch the hold of our car! We regret that there was no place to stop in the middle of the highway to look under the car. What if there was indeed a pot of gold under there?”

Now, to a liberal, a skeptic…if any one considered this a “sign” from their dear departed mother, a message from her to her beloved son, they would say they were still in the suspicious middle ages.

Like the student that masters the “scientific” facts of the event, they would miss the whole conception of the forest because they only see the trees in front of their face.

The very fact that this event happened at the specific time in John’s life, never to have happened before, deserves exploring. A liberal would not think twice about this, even though mathematically, it would be impossible to ignore.

Funny, liberals will only go so far in their deliberations.

Is there a “life” after death, as all religions believe? Hasn’t the human race all throughout history experienced “signs” which are actually, in many cases, mathamatically like winning the Power ball?

Sometimes events, like a bird flying into a church and landing on a coffin.

Or a song on the radio, at a particular time.

In any other logical and rational explanations, they can be nothing BUT the obvious. A communication from something or someone, meant for a particular person.

Why is that considered wacko?

All throughout history, people have wondered about this sort of thing. Why did they see a rainbow right after a loved one’s death?

There is a logical rationality in believing that if something out of the complete ordinary happens to you at a certain time in your life, that it may be a sign from God, or some other force that we simply do not know much about, that defies the skeptics.

Liberals are always talking about having open minds, but have so little openness when it comes to religion, because they might have to actually think.

Not something Sean Penn is really good at, and that’s why this subject was so much more exciting then repeating boring platitudes from a lonely man.

As for my friend John…something tells me he might be a little more open minded about it all. Charlotte probably knew that John was so blinded by his own educational bias that she had to hit him with a bolt of rainbow rationality. That’s my Charlotte!

Nobody’s Perfect: Sean Penn also said Rush Limbaugh was “high as a kite on OxyContin,” Bill O’Reilly was “factually impaired,” and Sean Hannity was “simply a whore to the cause of his pimps.”

Well, what you expect from someone who studied to be an auto mechanic.

Nobody Knows; My favorite poem about rainbows is the famous one by William Wordsworth;

My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky
So was it when my life began
So is it now I am a man
So be it when I shall grow old, or let me die.

Nobody Cares; Tibetan Buddhists say that when a great yogi dies, rainbows appear over his hut.

Right after John Adams died, there was a rainbow appeared outside the house.

And a very dear, wonderful, and incredibly brilliant friend of mine once got a rainbow message…
And I wrote this whole thing for him.

Now, wasn’t this much more fun than that boring old Sean Penn?