The State

Central Planning vs. Dorothy

Rev. Steve Schlissel - May 23, 2019

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, it wasn’t unusual to hear Huntley or Brinkley (or Cronkite or Reasoner) mention on their nightly news program yet another of Russia’s Five (or Seven or Ten) Year Plans.

Those projects–which, luckily for the promulgators, would be played out behind an Iron Curtain of darkness and secrecy, nevertheless–were launched with fanfare and braggadocio. Each “Plan” was announced, not in the form of a hopeful declaration of intent, but as a boast, a firm expectation that a designated obstacle to Russian world domination would, in five (or seven or ten) years, be ‘dismantled.’ Or, if the Plan was to create (ex nihilo, natch) a particular pillar, one the Party was sure would lead them nearer to the promised utopia, then it would surely, in five (or seven or ten) years, be “mantled.” After all, reality *had to* yield to official Soviet attention and resolve.

Who, I wonder, conceived of these brazen Plans? They must have emanated from the mind of a Kremlin ladder-climber who hawked them as proofs justifying their atheism. “Who needs Calvin’s God when we have been blessed with Moscow’s decrees?”

Come to think of it, maybe they were the brainchild of a closet-Christian who urged his “comrades” to loudly proclaimed each Plan as official policy, knowing that in the end, they’d be little more than recurring opportunities for the Living Lord to humiliate the petty pompous tyrants at Central Planning by displaying the foolish presumptuousness which characterizes all pretenders to His throne.

Be all that as it may, that series of grand-plans-become-grander-failures has long predisposed me to contentedness with plans of a much humbler character, that is, plans with plenty of ‘ifs,’ ‘perhapses’ and ‘maybes,’ along with a few ‘we’ll sees.’

Like a plan I had today. Before setting myself before my hostile keyboard, I headed for the deck with a modest five-minute mindset: Pull out the green zero-gravity lounger and 180° myself for 300 seconds under God’s gift of a bright sun on a no-humidity afternoon. A feeling coursed through my aging veins that it would be presumptuous NOT to lean into such an effort.

Well, wouldn’t you know, my five-minute plans were neither more secure nor more immune from providential overrule than Russia’s five-year wishes. For no sooner was I in the 180° pose than my 4-year-old–delicious Dorothy said to herself, “What a good idea,” and decided to lay atop Grampa’s chest. For a moment I thought I heard a sound up above my head, like Bobby Burns himself doing play-by-play: “And there we have it, friends, yet another instance in which a mouse-or-man’s best-laid schemes can be seen ‘ganging aft agley.'”

But there was surely a difference twixt the out workings of those Russian plans and those of the humbler Brooklyn origins. With Dorothy’s plan added to mine, the scheme IMPROVED. Aye? Aye.

And it was about to get better, even as hopes for a quick, sunny snooze dissolved faster than Alka-Seltzer in boiling water. You see, dearest Dorothy, facing downward, observed some activity in the deck biosystem, and started offering (priceless) commentary on the same. [Note: To Dorothy, ants belong under the generic “bug.”]

Dorothy speaks: “Where is the bug’s Mommy? She didn’t go with him?”

As we faced different directions, I didn’t quickly grasp that Dorothy thought the appearance of a lone ant walking around an otherwise “deserted” area begged for an accounting. Her mental reckoning continued aloud:

“The police bugs must have arrested the Mommy bug. That’s why she wasn’t there.”

Yes, I nearly choked with glee, but seeing Dorothy was satisfied by her hypothesis, I offered no alternative.

(As if, “The Mommy has a tech job in Manhattan,” or the like, could or should satisfy! No, a mother’s absence IS ordinarily best explained as resulting from imposed force. Feminists [of both genders] have really become idiots: poor lost souls, crippled and manipulated, bound tight while their mouths claim, “Free at last.” They are life-deniers who’ve become so hardened, they routinely dismiss biological reality and inescapable truth without so much as a shrug.)

Discovering a precious love, two generations down, who thinks a baby without a nearby Mommy is a circumstance begging an explanation–that is more refreshing to my soul than any five-minute shluff could ever be. Who could have planned it? Not the Soviets, that’s for sure.

Then Who?

“And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the Lord. “And as for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord : “My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children’s offspring,” says the Lord , “from this time forth and forevermore” (Isaiah 59:20-21). Amen.