Nothing points up how out of touch I am with current culture in this country like reading a list of the top-selling CDs of the last year. Or the top ten movies. Or the best-selling novels. I don’t recognize any of them. And this current crop of popular singers–who are they? I hear their music on the radio and it all sounds alike. And the gospel music sounds like the rock stuff.

I’m trying hard not to be an old fogey about these things. I buy CDs of Alison Krauss and Union Station, the best blue-grass band ever, and they’re not ancient. I love Neil Young, but he is. My favorite is the songsters of the big band era; “old” goes without saying.

Now, I’m not against going to a movie occasionally, if it’s the right kind. Lately, there have been some good ones out there. Late Thursday afternoon, I bought a ticket to see “The Good Shepherd,” a story of the old OSS and the beginnings of the CIA. After an hour of this movie, I found myself puzzled to the point that I left.

I wondered who, for instance, decided that the best way to tell a cinematic story is to cut it up in bits and pieces and disorient the viewer? In that movie, a scene from 1961 is followed by one from 1939, then we cut to 1945. Back and forth. None of it made sense. Do these people not know you tell a story by starting at the beginning and going forward to a conclusion? Or would that be too simple, too juvenile? Did Kurt Vonnegut create this fractured-storytelling business with “Slaughterhouse 5”? At least his made sense, eventually.

I wonder what is the process movie-makers employ when they decide, “Let’s make the hero a sad, silent, miserable type. And let’s give him an unhappy home life. Let’s have his child be emotionally abandoned and overwhelmed by sadness. Oh, and let’s make the United States as unscrupulous and murderous as its enemies.”

Perhaps the biggest questions of all are: why do movie critics rate these shows so highly? and why am I paying good money for this?

“I don’t need this,” I rationalized, and walked out and went home to supper.

Reflecting on the negative, depressing outlook of that movie reminds me of something from my teenage years. I might have been 15 or 16, and we were living on the Alabama farm that is so remote Dad named it “Fishhook Ranch” because “it’s at the end of the line.” Some relative had driven up from Birmingham and brought a stack of magazines they were discarding. There might have been other kinds, but all I recall are the Redbooks. Now, I have no idea what Redbook magazine contains these days–or if it still exists–but in those days it was a “woman’s magazine,” you’ll pardon the expression, filled with stories of love affairs and broken hearts.

Now, you’re 15 years old and 15 miles from town, no car, no license, no money, and only three television channels running the kind of mindless clutter which we now call “the golden age of television,” which is actually a joke on everyone who was not there. In that case, you’ll read anything. So I read Redbooks, hour after hour. And hated every minute of it.

It was depressing. The wives were unhappy, the husbands were unfaithful, the children were selfish, the bosses were tyrants, the neighbors were pests, the inlaws were infuriating, and every marriage was a disaster. If they weren’t getting a divorce, they were coming down with terminal diseases and dying. But, for some unknown reason, I kept reading.

Finally, after I had taken all of this I could stand, I would walk outside into the sunshine and think, “What junk. Why do people write that? Why do they print it? Why do they pay good money for that? Are there people with such miserable lives?” I felt like I needed a bath. My mind surely did.

Wonder why I read it? I mean, other than the fact that there was nothing else to read.

The only answer I can think of is a line from a wonderful comic strip called “Grandma,” drawn by cartoonist Charles Kuhn. She was a funny lady and looked a lot like everyone’s grandma back then. (These days, grandmothers are young and stylish and hold jobs. In those days, they wore black shapeless dresses that reached their ankles and tied their grey hair back in buns and sat on front porches a lot.) Anyway, Grandma was explaining to a friend that she wore her shoes too tight because, “It feels so good when I take them off!”

Maybe I was reading that trash because it made my hum-drum life seem more interesting in contrast. It felt so good when I stopped.

I have never liked unhappiness.

Before our farm family owned a television set, my uncle Cecil Kilgore had one and we used to walk a half-mile and watch theirs. Everyone in the crowded living room adored sitcoms, particularly “I Love Lucy.” I could not stand it.

“Why doesn’t Lucy just tell Ricky what she did today and clear up all the confusion?” I would ask to no one in particular. “She is deceiving him for no good reason, then he overreacts and it all gets out of hand.”

Finally someone would humor me and say, “Because if she told him, there would be no story and the show would be over. That’s why.” Okay, good point.

But still. I did not like those sitcoms and still can’t sit through most of them these days. Everyone gets off from putting others down and deceiving one another. You get the impression writers planning these things have a sign on their wall, “See how unhappy each person can make the others.” Who needs that?

Abraham Lincoln has frequently been quoted as saying, “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” I believe that. There may be some genetic factor that predisposes some people to a positive attitude and others to pessimism. But ultimately, happiness is a choice.

And I choose to be happy, to be positive, to be hopeful about the future and not pessimistic.

That’s what sparked the little poem below. I suppose it’s necessary to explain the obvious here: I am not a poet. I do not understand meter, feet, and rhyming schemes. So, if you do, you’ll want to skip this.

If you like it, feel free to pass it along or use it. No permission is required.

THE ANGEL AND THE MULE IN THE PULPIT

Some folks can find fault in every cause,

Aspects to criticize, hidden flaws.

Every sermon–no matter how effective–

Has something about it slightly defective.

The pace was all wrong: too fast or too slow.

The volume was amiss: too loud or too low.

The tone was not right: too harsh or sentimental.

The structure was poor: too plain or ornamental.

The approach was off: too soft or legalistic.

The message erred: too rigid or too plastic.

Too many stories or not enough light.

Too many scriptures or no new insight.

Sermons are preached by pastors;

That’s generally the rule.

Pastors are complex beings–

Blends of the angel and the mule.

Angels are messengers from God;

Preachers qualify in that respect.

Mules are stubborn and frustrating,

Creatures of strong back and stiff neck.

Angels require nothing from humans;

God is their every resource.

Mules depend on God, too,

But need the help of men, of course.

So when your pastor is being angelic

And delivering messages that gleam,

When you’re praising him to high heaven

For living in the celestial stream,

Or when you find yourself frustrated

And consider his ministry overrated,

When his leadership in the congregation

Leaves too much to the imagination,

Pray for God’s strength to be upon him.

Ask for divine power to be given.

Pray the Lord’s will to be done here

Even as it is up in Heaven.

Prayer is such a comfort to the pastor

But truthfully, that’s not the end of his quest.

Remember, the next time he flirts with disaster,

Beasts of burden sometimes need a rest.

(by Joe McKeever, Baptist Association of Greater

New Orleans. joe@joemckeever.com)