I Wuz Smart... Back in the Day

Last night it dawned on me, right in the middle of a game of Trivial Pursuit, that I am dumb.

I had suspected this for some time, to be quite honest. Over the past few years, I've found crosswords have become exceedingly difficult, unless they contain clues like '4 legged furry animal that meows and is usually named something ridiculous, like Fluffy: also, rhymes with 'hat'.' After some deliberation, I usually can get those.

But it seems that somehow, and at some point after my 33rd birthday, a latent 'stupid' gene clicked on (right around the time a latent 'welcome to balding and pot-bellied life' gene also turned on). I suspect it has something to do with my withdrawal from seminary at that time, which also translated into a general retreat from both my ministry and the rest of the world as well. Teeth that had been cut on CS Lewis, Eidersheim, Packer, and later honed on McGrath, Barth and Niebuhr, now sought something moist and chewy to gnaw on. I'd been a voracious reader all of my life: and by voracious I mean it in the fullest sense of the word (though I no longer remember the definition). I often would have three books by my bedside at night: a theological or spiritual tome, a work of literature, and then some piece of cotton candy fluff. I would read from all three each night, before going to bed. No wonder I had such difficulty falling asleep at night, what with the whirlwind of ideas flowing through my head.

Now, it's just the cotton candy fluff. The detective murder mystery, with the damaged existential-code hero (thanks, Thom, for that term), driven, lonely, yet curiously handsome with a sarcastic wit and an intensity that makes the charismatic Barack Obama look like an over-stuffed pillow. Or the 'supernatural thriller' that defies all logic in plot while fulfilling all criteria of the dime-store novel: the threatened heroine who despises the male lead until that terrifying moment when both are in danger, miraculously rescued and through shared experience fall deeply in love. Of course, she is beautiful. He, of course, is a damaged existential code-hero who is driven, lonely, curiously handsome and possesses an intensity that.... you get the point.

I have taken the occasional seminary course since the fall of '33 (that '33 being my age), and even engaged on an abortive study for an MBA. In both cases, I did quite well.

So it's quite possible that I am not exactly 'dumb'. Perhaps, I think, I have simply ceased to be 'smart'.

I've stopped asking big questions.

I no longer strive to see the bigger picture- that fulness wherein all things cohere, and the one who holds all things together.

I've removed most of those in my life with whom I can dialogue, and who challenge me.

I have forgotten what the word parousia means, and now not all of the movies I watch necessarily have to have a plot, provided the CGI is good.

And I find that I am missing myself: I used to be such good company (and I am not speaking this facetiously), both to myself and to others around me. But my retreat from the world was actually a retreat to the world: that chaotic, vapid mess that has so many voices speaking within it that no one bothers to listen anymore, because little is ever said anyway.

And now, for the life of me, I cannot remember the famous 20th century detective who founded the greatest private security company in America (Trivial pursuit: this was for yellow pie).

It was Allen Pinkerton, and I probably knew that when I was 26.