Carey Rowland's blog

The Swan Song of J. Al DasCapital

For some it's a good thing; for others a bad,

   to be like the capitalist, or provoke socialist rad.

Back in the day, Rockefeller and Carnegie forged the enterprise deal;

   JPMorgan and Ford cranked up  capitalist zeal.

But then in '29 the machine broke down; all hell broke loose.

   It was a train wreck for sure, from engine to caboose.

Smart as he was,  Hoover was thought clueless in '32,

   so they brought in Roosevelt to set up a new deal crew.

The gov from New York saved us, so they say,

   with a big shot of socialism,  making work for payday.

 

Now these days, since the meltdown of '08,

   we've the same situation, but reverse, on our plate:

Big Spender Barack's in the driver's seat; he's catchin' the flack,

   while Money-movin' Mitt says its time to get back

to those good ole days when investors and innovators were calling the shots,

   before all these Keynesian Krugmanites got the hots

for quantitative easing, and stimulus, and priming the pump;

   'cause they give us a ride, but we don't get over the hump.

 

Now out here on Main Street where the grassroots grow,

   in the shops and garages where the mom and pops know,

we whip up the long tails; we push pins in the bubbles;

    we wink at the black swans and laugh at the troubles. 

Class warfare's just a phrase in some socialist goad, 

    inequality  just a pothole, a mere bump in the road.

No flash-tradin' froth, no credit default fizz,

    we just work with what can be, and we deal with what is.

 If the day ever comes when the gov regulates us beyond reason,

    or corporations have all the wealth tied up for the season,

we'll just stick out our necks and  we'll sing our swan song,

    cuz life in the free market goes on and goes on. 

Glass half-Full

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time for Soul-searching

America needs to find something else to do besides argue and complain. Each man, each woman has a destiny to fulfill. 

Get hooked up with some person or organization with which you can at least partially agree; get your hands, your feet, your mind busy, to solve the problems that confound you now.

Act on behalf of those whom you love-- those for whom you are responsible; assist those who are responsible for you.

If you are in a mess, Big Brother is not going to get you out of it. The government may toss a few greenbacks and food stamps your way, but ultimately you are responsible for your own life.

You go-getters out there--no corporation will fill your destiny. If you want to become an integral link in a corporate structure, remember: its all about what you can do for the company, not what the company can do for you. You do your job right and the good stuff will come after many days.

Get busy. Look around you. Find something in your vicinity that needs doing, and do it, whether that makes you underpaid, underemployed, or seemingly underutilized. There's a lot of work that needs to be done out there in getting this country turned around from our present dead-end of overinstitutionalism and overgovernmentalization. We need to restructure from the ground up. And I do mean the ground literally. This could involve growing some vegetables or something like that.

If you're at a loss as to how to find some direction, take some time for a little soul-searching. That's what I did a few decades ago, and I was never the same afterward. I wrote a song about it: Like Moses, like Martin Luther King, I took a walk up the mountain.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

 

 

The Give and the Take

If each person produces

a little more than they receive,

then the increase he induces,

our abundance may retrieve.

 

But if each citizen collects

more than he does contribute,

our collective task reflects 

a deficiency to distribute.

 

So how can each one be induced

in the system and in the fray

to make more of what's produced

than what he has consumed today?

 

But does it even make sense

to think of productivity this way,

when dollars turn to cents

and abundance slips away?

 

I mean the world is really not

so logical as we would wish;

some neglect to give from what they've got

when we pass around the dish.

 

Some will always get more than they give

while others give more than they get.

We see its just the way folks live.

So get used to it; don't fret.

 

If you're disturbed 'cause of inequality,

and you find this world's so unfair,

just make the most of your potentiality,

and try to do your fair share.

Selah.

Glass half-Full

 

 

Foundation for Debt Ceiling Research

Now is the time for all top dawgs to come to the aid of their country, y'all.

I'm talking about heavy hitters like Warren Buffett and Donald Trump, people whose impact can really make a difference.  If Donald and Warren want to contribute their money-gathering expertise to our national improvement, I propose they should organize three great charitable fundraising events. I'm suggesting that these guys do it because I'm just, like, one little guy with a big idea. But these two have the real wherewithal to get something done in the interests of balanced fiscality. 

So, the first  fundraiser would be a prize-fight in Atlantic City featuring George Soros v. David Koch.

The second would be a fight in Las Vegas between Bill Ayers and Charles Koch.

The third would be a tag-team wrestling match with the four heavyweights in Chicago.

Referees would be Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid.

Rush Limbaugh and Chris Matthews would serve as the official voices of USA Spurts.

All proceeds would go to the brand-new Foundation for Debt Ceiling Research, to be fiduciarially managed  jointly by Goldman Sachs and ACORN.

So Warren and Donald, when you get a minute, give me a call and we'll get going on this thing.

Glass Chimera

 

Rascals, Scoundrels, and Settlers

Rascals rock the boat. Scoundrels would sink it, but Settlers stabilize it.

The boat, in this case, is the USS America.

  The Rascals have sensed that something is rotten in Denver, or in Dallas or Detroit, or in anyTown USA. This is certainly true. But hey….they don't know what to do about it. And since their unemployed, or underemployed, or uneducated or unsettled condition renders the rascals relatively impotent to reshape the world according their tender sense of injustice, they take to the streets in protest. I can relate to it. I was out in the streets when we were in VietNam. Getting out there to make a stand seems like a cathartic something to do;  it is exciting, with all the comraderie and the shared suffering-- until the nearby residents, shopkeepers, and civic leaders start upping the ante on the physical consequences of Occupation. Then the cops hype their heretofore patient vigilance into riot-gear insensibility.

Behind the scenes, chronic malcontents would manipulate the wandering rascals, maneuvering their newfound funk toward some kind of revolution, as yet unfocused. Maybe its Lennon's revolution, or Lenin's, or Marx's, or Stephen Lerner's, Naomi’s, or David’s, who knows.

There is a lot to be upset about, for sure. The rascals are enraged about the greedy corporations, mad at the mediocre politicians, intimidated by the police, yeah yeah. They screw you, yeah yeah yeah. A witch's brew of issues boil up here: the destabilizing consequences of  competing globalized economies, inequality, outsourcing, bailouts for the 1%, outlandish executive bonuses, unpayable student loans, epidemic foreclosures, environmental degradation, polluted groundwaters, obsessive plastic lifestyles, plastic garbage in the Pacific, filthy pipelines, fracking, fricking...

 It is true that we Americans need to be roused, before it is too late, out of our hydrocarbon/carbohydrate stupor, part of which is our self-immolating oil addiction. Our petrochemical habit is a dependency that has economically castrated this formerly-great nation's independence, and greased us down into a red-light slow-idle energy complacency, comfortably numbed by an obsessive compulsion for visual and audial stimulation.

 Up on Capitol Hill-- where the WallStreet lobbying 1% conduct their dissonant orchestrations of unfunded mediocrity, the politicians pontificate about a lot of smokescreen issues. For instance, the so-called Solyndra-gate.

This is political grandstanding is dangerous. Their disengenuous inquisitions distract us from some imminent good news: New American job-creating possibilities  are actually being worked on, even as we speak, if the government does not obstruct.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, somewhere in America a few enterprising business people have, believe it or not, quietly settled into the tasks of doing what needs to be done.

… like, heating up technologies to elevate us out self-destructive oil addiction.

Yesterday, while up on a roof clearing gutters, I heard on the radio about two trailblazing west coast solar-tech  producers. Although Solar World and Solaria are not the the only two companies breaking new industrial ground, they are quietly settling us into a homesteading path that leads to real solar-tech cost-reduction productivity. Very soon (if not already), these manufacturers will, with a little help from their many power-hungry friends (US consumers), mass-produce photovoltaic roof- panels on an unprecedented scale. Affordability for John and Jane Doe will be the outcome.

 I tuned into the ear-opening update about Solar World and Solaria yesterday while listening to NPR's ScienceFriday. As it happened, Ira Flatow's enquiry to the companies' respective spokesmen, Gordon Binser and Dan Shugar, focused largely on a side issue; the issue was what Gordon Binser calls "illegally subsidized" Chinese dumping of artificially cheapened solar panels. But the entirety of thieir podcast discussion reveals far more than a cordial dispute between two industry leaders about trade strategies.  A half-hour listen draws us into a persuasive force field of updated solar capabilities. For instance, according to Dan Shugar and Gordon Binser:

 ~100,000 people are employed in US solar industry today. That's more folks than are working in coal mines, and more than in steel mills.

~The industry grew by 69% last year.

~5000 companies are involved in solar technology here today.

~Labor expense is only 10% of the cost of solar panels. So the issue of Chinese (or developing nations) competition is not as difficult as we might at first think.

~The relative fragility of glass panels reinforces the logic of domestic production and distribution.

~Actual production levels of rooftop electricity are approaching (or already at) a scale that is competitive with other power-generating sources such as nuclear and coal.

~Last year, the solar industry in USA installed, operated and delivered 17 Gigawatts of electricity, the equivalent of 17 nuclear power plants in the middle of a day.

~In the summertime, there is a direct, favorable correlation between solar energy supply and the peak power demand occasioned by widespread air-conditioning.

~When smartly integrated, individual home installations (or institutional ones) can be connected to our existing power infrastructure (with modifications)  to inject electricity into the cumulative power grid. Thus, consumers can become net PRODUCERS of electrical power at certain times of the day, thus lowering their electric bills.

~As demand for solar installations has grown, the cost-reduction curve has followed the same pattern of cell phones, computers, and dvd players. Bet you didn't know that, huh?

~Solar World has over 1000 employees in Oregon, and has been making photovoltaic panels for over 35 years.

~In Germany, there are some peak-demand times when 40% of contributed electrical input is being generated by solar panels.

 I was quite impressed with all these statistics, both yesterday as I heard Dan and Gordon list them for Ira on the radio, and this morning when I replayed the ScienceFriday podcast.

 So hey! In the turbidity of all this stir-crazy Occupy controversy, and right in the middle of the bad banking news and European woes, here we find some very real, very timely good news about newfound American industrial innovation, and developing job opportunities on the dark-cloud horizon, maybe even on your community’s own rooftops.

 What Dan and Gordon communicated to Ira really comes down to this: the time for cost-effective solar design and application is no longer future. It is now. This is one sector of manufacturing that the Chinese will not be able to dominate, because our automated capabilities can effectively competetive with developing-world low-wage production expense (which is only 10% of a solar panels cost).

 And everybody needs a little sustainable wattage.

 So, all you angst-ridden discontented shivering souls out there--

Before you Occupy the frigid streets and possibly get thereby injured, infected or arrested, think about a productive alternative:

Occupy, for an hour or two while you fill out the application, the human resources foyer of your local appropriate technology producer. If you don't find one locally, maybe you'd become the entrepreneur-installer to heat up this movement in your community. Perhaps you'd  be the first one in your community to capitalize on this work--work that really needs to be done if America is going to continue to Occupy its Can-do legacy. The time to Occupy energy independence is now.

Think about it. Like Ira mused yesterday: we Americans invented the light bulb; we invented the energy-generating solar roof panel.

What’s the next thing (or process, or service) we need to invent to light our way out of this oil-pit we’ve dug ourselves into?

Glass half-Full

Uganda has come a long way since Idi Amin.

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/articles/for_the_sake_of_love/

The nation of Uganda has come a long way on the path to civilization since the dark days of Idi Amin's regime. Although that dictator had attempted, back in the '70s, to impose  his blood-shedding will upon his fellow Ugandans, his murderous manipulations were foiled by the neighboring Tanzanians. They ran Idi and his gang of thugs out of Africa when  he tried to export his cruel  program across their border in 1979. Thank God they put a stop to his campaigns of killing.

This is the first thing I think about when Uganda is mentioned, because I'm a sixtyish  baby-boomer who has kept, through the years, an eye on world news, and I remember this about Uganda: the murderous dictator, Idi Amin, who had been assisted by the Libya dictator, Qadhafi, and how he killed hundreds of thousands of his people just for the sake of...for the sake of ...whatever it is that tyrants are trying to do when they set their killing machines into motion.

But these days, Uganda is, thank God, a very different place. Just a month or two ago, my daughter Kim visited that nation and its capital city, Kampala. She was working there--assisting in, and reporting on, the Operation Christmas Child gift distribution. Kim, trained at UNC School of Journalism, was able to utilize some of her documentary skills, as you will see from these photos, which are accompanied by her report upon the Samaritan's Purse work there.

Yes, Kim's facebook update about this situation in a formerly war-torn Uganda brings good news. And I received that news with a kind of deja vu, because it reminded me of when my other journalist daughter, Katie, had sent similarly upbeat reports from Vietnam a few years ago. Katie and her team of world-tromping Christian companions had been welcomed with open arms, in that country of Vietnam, which had been torn to bloody hell during the civil war of the '60s and '70s in which we had a dismal role.

Now these days...well, we live in dark days--hard times--in which the ominous clouds of depression and unrest seem to grow heavier every day upon our lowering prospects for peace and prosperity. But somewhere in the world today, children are joyful because the love of Chirst is being extended to them. Uganda is such a place (who'd have thought it?), thanks to the persistently beneficial work of Samaraitan's Purse, and other Christian outfits who reach out to underpriveleged folks everywhere.

I'm so happy that my Kim is an integral link in that worldwide network of mercy and provision. God bless 'em.

Glass half-Full

Faithful Presence

To change the world-- a noble challenge to which we Christians have always aspired-- now becomes a new call to service issued by James Davison Hunter, in his book by the same name: To Change the World.

Dr. Hunter's clarion call is preceded in the book by an analysis of historical and contemporary manifestations, among the people who call themselves servants of God, of that God-inspired inclination to make the world a better place. Hunter's analysis identifies three strategic camps within  American Christianity today:
~Christians whose dominant cultural identity is found in defending themselves and their institutions (especially the family) from encroaching secularism; (the "defensive against" camp, as defined by Prof. Hunter)
~Christians whose motivation for divine fulfillment is centered on working toward justice, and toward institutional and individual benevolence to help poor and oppressed people; (the "relevance to" camp as defined by Prof. Hunter)
~Christians whose purpose is to maintain and advocate a pure manifestation of Christ's work and teachings, with emphasis on peace and non-violence; (the "purity from" camp, as defined by Prof. Hunter)

After a cogent description of each, and consideration of their various impacts upon society as a whole, James David Hunter concludes his book's message with a new (although its as old as the prophet Jeremiah!) paradigm for Christian involvement in our secularized world. "Faithful presence" is the strategy by which we authenticate God's love for all people by adopting societal well-being as our own. This requires us to accept worldly responsibilities for the welfare of the communities and nation in which we live. Rather than despising worldly society we take our places, prepared and enabled by God, within it.

Our biblical example and precedent for this collaboration is found in the exhortation that Jeremiah issued to the Jewish exiles in Babylon, two and a half millenia ago. The prophet told them:

"Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile form Jerusalem to Babylon: build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." (Jer. 29:4-7)

I emphasize that last sentence because I think it summarizes well the essence of Professor Hunter's point. Even more importantly, though-- it is a biblically sound, potent call to service for our generation of Christians and all those who follow us--"faithful presence" in the community and nation in which we each live. Responsible presence, caring presence, contributing presence, and hey--presents! at Christmas and other appropriate times.

The "welfare" of which Jeremiah speaks above is not the governmental dole system which in some cases enables laziness and lethargy to overtake people who are down and out. Nevertheless, our welfare system--woefully deficient as it is-- is not beyond the capacity of our great God, through his son Jesus, to redeem and sanctify those unfortunate citizens (Christian and otherwise) who partake of it.
So do not judge those who find themselves stuck in that dolish "welfare" predicament. But rather, work as God's productive people, saved by the blood of the Lamb, to lift the levels of living water in God's sea of humanity so that all boats will rise within it.

Glass half-Full

The Gift of Speech

When you've got it, you've got it.
The trick is learning how to use it, then doing it.
Let's say you've got a knack for fixing things that are broken. Then your life's challenge becomes, as you progress from childhood to adulthood to maturity:

~identifying that  aptitude (as, for instance,for fixin' things), given by God and nature to you.
~learning how to develop that raw aptitude into a skill
~developing that potential through education or apprenticeship
~adding value, by the use of your improved skill, to whatever comes your way, then
~passing the "whatever comes your way" along, having improved it (ie "fixed" it)
~having acquired, now, a proficiency, using it to establish a livelihood
~serving those you love by providing sustenance for yourself and for them
~serving mankind by the use of your fully developed gift

Consider, for example, Lionel Logue, the "King's" speech therapist. Now there was a man who accurately identified his gift, learned how to use it well, and then made a real difference in the world.

We're all Lionels, if we apply ourselves and our potentials to life's challenge.

There was a point in Lionel's life when all the education that he had sought pertaining to the use of speech began to contribute significantly to improvement of other people's lives.

In his book about his uncle Lionel, Mark Logue describes this turning point of effectiveness. About Lionel Logue's early attempts at speech therapy, Mark writes, on pages 30-31 of The King's Speech:

"His first success appears to have been  with Jack O'Dwyer, a former soldier from West Leederville, in the Perth (Australia) suburbs. Earlier that year, Logue had been sitting on a train next to a soldier and watched, intrigued, as he leant forward to speak to two companions in a whisper. 'Mr. Logue thought the matter over, and just before he got to  Fremantle he gave the soldier his card and asked him to call on him,'  a newspaper (had) reported.
"O'Dwyer, it emerged, had been gassed at Ypres in August 1917 but had been told in London that he would never speak again. At Tidworth hospital on Salisbury Plain suggestive and hypnotic treatment was tried but failed. And so, on 10 March 1919, the unfortunate man had gone to see Logue.
"Logue was convinced he could help. So far as he could tell, the gas had affected the throat, the roof of the mouth and the tonsils, but not the vocal cords--in which case there was hope. At this stage, though, it was only a theory. He had to put it into practice. After a week, Logue managed to get a vibration in O'Dwyer's vocal cords and his patient was able to produce a clear and distinct 'ah.' Logue continued, trying to show him how to form sounds, much in the same way as a parent would teach a child how to speak for the first time. Less than two months later. O'Dwyer was discharged, quite cured...
"...Encouraged by his treatment of O'Dwyer, Logue went on to repeat his success with five other former soldiers..."

And the rest is history. Sir Lionel Logue embarked upon a path of providing  speech therapy to people who needed his help. Ultimately, he changed the world  for good. Especially when he, seventeen years later, coached a stammering king to speak a clear message of hope during Britains's darkest hour.

Lionel used his gift, and thus captured a king's stutter, then went on, seventy-three years later, to capture the imagination of a jaded, over-stimulated movie-obsessed culture. God save the speech therapist!
...And any other person who knows what they're doing, and is willing to take a crack at making the world just a little bit better place.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

1Chronicles22

David said to Solomon:
 "My son, I had intended to build a house to the name of the Lord my God. But the word of the Lord came to me saying,
 'You have shed much blood and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to My name, because you have shed so much blood on the earth before me. Behold, a son will be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side; for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days.'"

This indicates, I believe, that God's plan for his people is to move us beyond shedding each other's blood, and toward non-violence as the way to honor our Creator. Those of us who can appropriate such truth will extend the work of God's prince of peace beyond the brutal nature of our human history.

In the wake of yet another tragedy of national scope, my prayer in Jesus' name is that we will, some day, overcome by his grace our vengeful wickedness.

Glass half-Full

The Abyss of Desire and the Mountain of Age

Every teenager discovers the abyss of desire, but during the first years of that lifelong encounter, he/she does not understand the insatiable nature of it.  Desire, in all its worldly  forms, especially the impetuous sexual kind, is a bottomless pit. While it does lead to intense pleasure and a lot of fun, desire does not lead directly to lasting fulfillment.

As a person travels, through this life, deeper into the bottomless pit of desire, he/she will experience momentary satisfactions, but they are always short-lived, sometimes only instantaneous. Periods of yearning or striving between sexual release can be very frustrating.

True love, on the other hand, bears a sumptuous fruit called deep fulfillment. Our experience has shown that faithful lifetime union with one sexual partner provides the deepest expression of this fulfillment.

That spouse becomes, in fact, much more than a regular sexual partner. That person becomes, as life is lived, an invaluable partner in every avenue of life, not just the sexual one.  In fact, the sexual union becomes, when healthily and regularly expressed, secondary in importance as the couple grows old together.

The sojourn of life, taken as a whole, is something like climbing up a mountain, and away from the abyss. When you are young, just starting out, you may be in a forest or some such occluded position, unable to determine your position in relation to everything else around. You are clueless and you don’t know where the hell you are.

Our experience shows that if you can find a life partner, the journey is much easier, and more meaningful, because you can share your thoughts and feelings along the way. Sharing burdens makes them easier to bear. The sharing itself is easier to accomplish if your partner is intimately familiar.

 This climb up life’s mountain is strenuous; by the time you get to the top, you’re plumb worn-out.  But guess what, when you reach that incredible height—with the life long lived in the distant environs behind you—the perspective is a broader panorama. You can see clearly where you’ve been and where you are; you can more accurately determine your location in relation to everything else around, and the wide world.

 This is called wisdom; it is something you accrue as you ascend the mountain of this existence.

What about when you get to the top?  I call that arrival maturity, or old age, or maybe, in some contexts, retirement. But guess what. You can’t stay up there forever; there’s not much to eat up there, and the only water is what falls from the sky, and it gets cold. So you have to walk back down. But hey, as you descend that mountain of life, you find the traveling to be less strenuous than the climb up was, and easier to manage because you know where you’ve been and you know where you’re going, and of course you have gravity working with you instead of against you.  It’s all downhill from here.

 That cliché could have a double meaning of course: it’s all downhill from here. The descent is not as demanding as the climb up, but it is degenerative, insofar as you discover that the old body, having ascended to the heights, ain’t what it used to be. In fact, it might be downright falling apart. So you need to take it slow and easy going down. Don’t get in a big hurry. Speed is for young bucks.  Old folks can just enjoy a stoll.

 Along the way, the abyss of desire has always beckoned, but together you’ve handled it well.  If you haven’t handled it well—well, life goes on anyway, and you’re still kicking.

 Our experience shows that having a community of support in the life expedition is quite helpful.  But that help should be authentic, which means trustworthy, and consistent with our individual purposes, not diverting us from our chosen mission. In regards to the abyss of desire, that troupe of people with whom you’re sojourning must strengthen and encourage the faithful bond that further unites a man with his wife. The truly precious community honors the marriage bed and does not intrude upon the hard-earned bond.

 That is very different than, say, other groups or entities (such as show business) in this world whose intent may be to titillate or distract faithful couples  from their  fruitful union. You know what I’m talking about—forces like tv or the internet or sketchy work situations.

Take Twitter for instance. It can be a fun little ditty; it can be a useful communication tool. But when an old fart like me get tweets from unknown women accompanied by suggestive pictures, it is a useless diversion; in fact, it’s damned dangerous, because it beckons me, deceptively, to answer the death call of the abyss instead of the faithful union that I and my wife have worked so hard to achieve.  You may think, Freudian-like, that I’m repressing some legitimate desire to have sex with other women.

No.

I’m not suppressing any good thing; I am resisting, to use an old-fashioned term, the evil so that the good can continue to flourish. I don’t care what Janis sang before she od’d. You don’t necessarily do a thing because it feels good. The deceptive allure of those online women, or live ones for that matter, is as hollow and misleading as an empty wine bottle, as short-lived as Eve’s apple which disappears in the eating of it or is  cast aside to rot after a few bites.

Sexual fidelity in this life yields what we Christians call the fruits of righteousness. They are delicious, nutritious, and very satisfying. Couples who learn to truly love one another, learn also how to utilize the sexual union in a way that intensifies and simplifies their life purpose together.

 Here’s one last thought about that downhill walk from life’s mountaintop. These days, we have a multitude of man-made medical procedures and  pharmaceutical extenders  to keep us propped-up so we can keep the journey going, instead of terminating at a point that it might have ended in earlier periods of history. So with stuff like blood pressure medicine and Viagra and whatnot around, the experience of aging on that downhill stroll  is in a kind of uncharted territory. Be careful how you handle surgeries and chemical substances. Don’t eat the green acid or whatever.

And keep your sights set—not so much on yourself--but on the one for whom you have cared, and who has cared for you. Consider also those others whom you hold dear, and you’ll not stray too terribly far from the favorable course. Then lo and behold you encounter at the bottom of the mountain a valley of death that takes you, whether you like it or not, into the abyss that you were able to elude for so long.

You need fear no evil, but defeat it.  Christ can help you with this.