The Bigness of God--A Christmas Sermon

This is my Christmas sermon from a couple of years ago. It's one of my favorites.


Every October, around St. Luke’s Day,
the seminary community at Sewanee
holds a series of lectures.

These are a pretty big deal;
they get big names in the theological community,
and alumni come back from all over the country to attend.

Well, a few years ago,
the lecturer was a certain Dr. Adams,
who was a big deal professor at Yale,
but getting ready to transfer to Oxford
and become an even bigger deal.

Dr. Adams is a professor of Christian ethics
who had just written a book on the theological implications of September 11,
so I thought that these lectures
were going to be really good.

Well, it turns out that Dr. Adams is very very smart.
Way too smart for regular folks like me to understand.

She stood stiff and still behind the podium,
and read her notes word for word
in a tone of deathly monotony.

Her lectures were full of five dollar words that most of us had never heard before—and mind you,
I was on the faculty,
so I was supposed to be one of the smart ones—
and I wasn’t alone in thinking that this lecturer
was so far above me
that it seemed a waste of my time even to try to understand what she was saying.

There was stuff in there about cosmic forces,
and stuff in there about God as a sort of life-force,
the ground of all being.
There was stuff in there about the deep anthropological need planted in all people to connect with the transcendent.

I’m not really sure what all was in there, actually.
All I could get was that Dr. Adams believed in a really really big God.

I am usually on the lookout for heresy,
and I didn’t find any,
though I probably wouldn’t have understood it if it had been in there.

Others around me—intelligent people—
either fell asleep
or struggled to follow her arguments.
When she finally finished,
and it was time for questions,

there was a long ringing silence—
a sound that’s death to a lecturer.

It means that your audience either fell asleep,
or they didn’t understand a word you said.


In this case, it meant both.


The silence stretched on so long it was getting embarrassing,
when finally someone stood up and hesitantly said, “Um…could you explain again about that cosmic transcendence thing?”

“Oh, sure,” she said,
and she stepped out from behind the podium,
away from her carefully prepared manuscript,
and said, “Well, it’s sort of like this…”
and gave us the information using words that we understood,
and ideas that related to our lives and work.

Her face was animated,
her gestures lively,
and her voice reflected the passion
that caused her to make this her life’s work.

Suddenly we understood.
When this brilliant, world-renowned genius
stepped a little closer and got down on our level,
we finally got it.
And she was right, it was really exciting stuff.

Her recap ended with these words,
and unlike the well-prepared portion of her lecture,
these are words I have not forgotten.

“The bigness of God,” she said, “is on our side.”

The bigness of God is on our side.

That is what we’re celebrating tonight.

The bigness of God, everything that God is,
all his perfection,
all his transcendence,
all his power,
all his knowledge,
all his compassion,
all his sheer cosmic hugeness,
is for us.

For us in every sense.
It is for us to make use of
and it is for us and not against us.

The bigness of God is on our side.

God’s people have always known this on some level, though we have from time to time lost sight of it.

We have claimed that our God
is bigger than all the other gods,
and that when he comes,
it’s gonna be a really huge deal.

We were so convinced of God’s bigness, and rightly so, that when a peasant girl gave birth to her first child in a stable in a Judean hick town,
nobody but she and her husband and a few shepherds even knew that anything interesting
was going on at all.

Nobody would have believed
that this rather pathetic circumstance
had anything to do with our very big God.

Knowing how big God is,
we were looking for a big sign—
an army,
a king,
an earthquake,
a political revolution.

In our dedication to God’s bigness,
we nearly missed some of the bigger signs that
were in fact given—
such as a star that shone as brightly as day light, and a sky full of angels singing praise to God.

Those sorts of signs are big,
because God didn’t want us to miss this event entirely.

But in the end,
there’s only one way to show what bigness is for.

Bigness is always manifest in smallness.

Think about it.

Think of the deepest,
most overwhelming, biggest love you’ve ever felt.
A sweetheart or a spouse,
a child or a parent,
a friend or a relative,
or maybe even for God himself.

That love is huge in human terms,
so huge it overflows our hearts,
so what do we do?

Well, tonight’s Christmas,
so how are you showing that love?

Did you buy someone something big—
a skyscraper
or an island
or a planet
or a city?

If you did,
we need to get together and talk about your tithe.

But seriously,
chances are you bought them something small.

A CD they’ve been wanting,
an MP-3 player,
a little-tiny gift card
for their favorite bookstore or restaurant.

Tiny, tiny things compared to the bigness of love.

Or even when it’s not Christmas,
we do little tiny things to somehow communicate the bigness of our love.

We cook a favorite meal,
we get up with the kids so the other one can sleep late, we put gas in their car,
we pick up a card in the grocery store.
We call just to say, hi, I’m thinking of you.

Tiny, tiny things, compared to the bigness of love.

God works the same way.

To show us the bigness of his love,
God stepped out from behind the podium,
out from behind two thousand years of
code and commandment,
out from behind prophecies
and revelations
and signs
and judgments,
and laid it out in a way that we could relate to.

A way we could touch, and hold, and love.

The bigness of God is on our side,
and if bigness is always shown in small ways,
that was never more true than it is tonight.

The God whose love is bigger than the universe
gave us a baby.

A tiny, tiny, helpless, little baby.

Now that is something we can understand,
something we can get excited about.

That’s what it all comes down to.

The bigness of God is on our side,
and is contained in this little person.

He’s dependent,
he’s hungry,
he’s so very small,
but he’s the biggest person ever born.

Even when this little person gets big,
he’s still just one man,
grown from just one baby,
but his Godly bigness flows out of him
and into everyone around him.

That is the great gift of God that we celebrate on Christmas.

Everything that God is,
everything that God does or has,
is for us,
is on our side,
and he wants to make sure we know it.

The smallness of the gift is the proof
that the bigness of God is on our side.
'

I KNEW IT! or Yes, there Really Were Earthquakes

Here I was thinking I was crazy, and I'm NOT! At least not for this!

I could have sworn I felt the floor, or maybe the bed, shake late at night on a couple of different occasions. I figured it was either small earthquakes or demonic possession, a la The Exorcist (something I try very hard not to think about late at night).

And it WAS! The ever-active New Madrid fault, just a few hours away from us, has been very active recently. We've been hearing about "the big one" that was coming since we were kids (a very short time geologically), and while they do still say that's coming (the SEMA and FEMA crews are actively preparing for it), what we're mostly getting is small 2.0-4.0 scale quakes...not strong enough to do much damage, but certainly strong enough to be felt.

Add to that the fact that our county, Lawrence County, Missouri, is actually situated on THREE fault lines, I shouldn't doubt myself. I really have been feeling quakes. So there.

The Date of Christmas

From time to time, people ask me why we celebrate Christmas on December 25. Or, they don't ask, and they believe what they were told. Most people have been taught some version of history that goes like this:


The Romans had a huge Solstice festival called Sol Invictus (the Invincible Sun) and the Christians took it over so they could convert it into a Christian festival and get rid of the pagan Roman practices in the area. So, really Christmas is nothing more than a made-up day designed to use a party that was already in place.


Okay, well...yes and no. The Romans did have a Solstice festival called Sol Invictus. And Christians have often associated the increasing Sun with the ever-increasing Light of the Son. And it's also true that when Christianity spread into pagan cultures, they often kept all the big parties, celebrations, and festivals, but put a Christian spin on them. I mean, why convert to a religion that takes away your parties? And Christianity has always loved a good celebration (despite this weird reputation we have for being joyless prudes--just not historically true).

But every society has had a Solstice celebration, and Christianity no more had any need to take over the Romans' festival than anyone else's. Frankly, it would have made a lot more sense for us to take over Hannukah, but we didn't.

The date of Christmas comes from another source entirely.

You have to remember, though, that dates as we understand them now were much less exact in the ancient world. So, people get confused when they hear that the Solistice is on the 21st, but Christmas on the 25th. Neither of those numbers would necessarily have had any meaning in ancient times.

Same for Jesus' death date. Scholars now put it around April 4-7, probably in the year 29. But that's a very recent development. For centuries, starting from the very first century AD, the date of the crucifixion was thought to be March 25--and it probably was, the way dates were calculated back then. Remember, our calendars have had a lot of adjusting in the last 2000 years.

Why does Jesus' death date matter in the question of his birthdate? It matters because the ancient Greeks (the dominant culture in Jesus' day, even if it was being run by Romans at the time), believed that a Hero lived a perfect life, and that even included that life's timeline.

A perfect life began and ended on the same day--it was full, complete, perfect, with no remainders. And they considered that life began on the day of conception. Therefore, their ultimate Hero, Jesus, was conceived and died on the same day, March 25. We also celebrate the Annunciation on March 25, the day when the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she had been chosen to be the Mother of Jesus.

And what happens 9 months after Jesus' is conceived? December 25, Jesus is born.

And if there's already a big Solstice party going on, great. There's nothing stopping us from joining in the celebrations.

Christmas Fun

Apparently there's a guy who does nothing but collect really bad Nativity scenes. It's called The Cavalcade of Bad Nativities. It's awesome! You can go to his blog, Going Jesus, and check out both his pictures of all these truly...interesting...Nativity sets, and the captions he puts under them.

Who knew there were so many depictions of the nativity with animals, for example?

Grateful

It's the day after Thanksgiving, and we didn't have one of those moments yesterday where we all sat around and asked each other, "So, what are you grateful for?"

If we had, I would mostly have the same answers: my family, my friends, my health, a warm home, a working car, the genius of people who write books, the libraries and bookstores where we can get those books...you know, the usual. Just because those are "the usual" for me doesn't mean I'm not truly grateful. I am. I don't wake up in the morning, whatever challenges the coming day will pose, without being overwhelmed by gratitude at everything and everyone that has blessed my life.

But I want to express my gratitude for something a little more specific today. I am grateful to have been born a Christian, and I'm grateful to have been born in the United States.

The reason I'm so aware of those blessings today is that I've been reading a book called Princess: The True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia, by Jean Sasson. I have been made newly aware of things I knew before, but never in such a vivid and personal way.

So, in honor of Princess Sultana, her daughters, and all her Middle Eastern sisters, daughters of God who don't have the freedoms I have, I'd like to offer a few more things I'm grateful for.

• I’m grateful that I can go to church. Not only is Christianity legal in this country, but women are allowed to walk into places of worship. In some parts of the world, women are not allowed to go into the buildings of their own faith.

• I’m grateful that I don’t have to cover my face. I can look at the unique beauty of other people’s faces, meet their eyes, take in their expressions.

• I’m grateful that I can vote.

• I’m grateful that I can serve my country and my God as I see fit to do, using as many of my gifts as I can. And if that puts me in a position of authority over men, then it does.

• I am grateful that I chose to marry and have children, and wasn’t forced to do it.

• I’m grateful for my education, and for parents who encouraged me to read and learn.

• I’m grateful that my body is whole and has never been mutilated at the hands of others.

• I’m grateful for a husband who loves me, respects me, and doesn’t worry about gender roles very much, a husband who depends on me as much as I depend on him. I’m grateful that I got to choose him myself (though my mother did have some input into that).

• I’m grateful for my husband, but if (God forbid) something happened to him, I’m really grateful that my children and I wouldn’t have to move back in with my dad. Sorry, Daddy, you know I love you, but…

• I’m grateful that domestic abuse is illegal in my country and my religion.

• I’m grateful that my 13-year-old daughter’s biggest concern is raising her science grade and getting her crush to like her. She’s not planning a wedding, and she’ll never be anyone’s third wife.

• I’m grateful that polygamy is illegal in my country and my religion.

• I’m grateful that I can wear jeans.

• I am grateful that I can drive and am allowed to drive.

• I’m grateful that my daughters and my son are equally loved and cherished by all of our family and by our religion.

• I’m grateful for a life that’s been blessed, but just a little bit hard. When my parents told me, “It builds character,” they weren’t kidding. In our culture, you can get handed a lot, but if you don’t put in the work, you won’t succeed. Struggle builds character, and much as I resist it, I’m grateful for it.

• I’m grateful that my husband and I decide together what’s best for our kids. Nobody’s word is law in our house or our country… parents decide together.

• I’m grateful that I’ve never been so poor that I couldn’t protest injustice or mistreatment. I’m becoming more aware that I have to speak up for those who are afraid of losing what little they have by speaking out.

• I’m grateful to the men and women of my country and my religion who have fought to make sure that we have the rights, freedoms and dignity that we have.

• I’m grateful for a country and a religion that hold men and women to the same standards of virtue and citizenship.

• I’m grateful for an incarnational religion that says that bodies are wonderful, miraculous things that should be cherished and respected.

• I’m grateful that I worship a God who would have done everything he did if I had been the only person ever to live. There are no second class citizens in heaven… at least the way my religion understands it.

That’s a long list, and it only begins to cover everything we have to be grateful for. Think about it, and give thanks. And pray for the people who can’t say any of the above.

The Best Laid Plans, or Poor Sick AJ

Some of you know that last Spring, Abby auditioned for a pretty exclusive regional children's choir, Children's Choir of Southwest Missouri. She made it, of course, because she is awesome, and so every single Tuesday night starting in August, we've driven out to Springfield for rehearsals.

Their concert was this weekend, the thing they have been working for for 4 months. But last Wednesday, AJ came home from school with a sore throat and headache. She missed school Thursday and Friday. She was running a temp of about 102, and her throat was hurting her terribly, she was crying and everything.

We went to the doctor on Friday (our awesome nurse-practitioner, Nancy), and Nancy gave her one of those 3-dose antibiotics because she had a throat infection (not swine flu--we dodged that bullet again!). Nancy told her that if she was going to be able to sing Saturday, she'd have to miss the dress rehearsal and not use her voice at all--not even to talk to us. She had to write everything in notes. It was kind of funny. AJ can be very expressive in writing!

I got permission for her to miss the dress rehearsal Friday night, hoping she'd feel better by Saturday night, and have some sort of voice to sing with. But she really didn't. Her throat was still very sore, her voice was raspy and hoarse, and she kept having coughing fits--which hurt her throat even more. We thought we might try to go to the concert, so she could at least be there for her choirmates, but the coughing sort of precluded that. You can't sit in a choir concert if you're coughing up a lung--it disturbs people.

So, after all those months of work, our poor baby didn't even get to sing in the concert. It was really disappointing for her, and for us, but mostly it was just terrible watching her suffer with being so sick. Poor little thing.

That's not the only sickness we've had this season. Matt had the flu, which really took him out of commission for almost a week, and both girls had terrible sinus infections that kept them out of school for a couple of days. But we're mostly doing okay, thanks to Nancy and a lot of good luck.

And obsessive wiping down of all surfaces with Clorox disinfectant wipes.

So...World's NOT Ending?

Great...so what am I supposed to do with all my stockpiles?

Here's the article from NASA. Although, how much can we trust NASA? Who knows...

2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?
11.06.09

Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice.

Much like Y2K, 2012 has been analyzed and the science of the end of the Earth thoroughly studied. Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the science behind the end of the world quickly unravels when pinned down to the 2012 timeline.

Below, NASA Scientists answer several questions that we're frequently asked regarding 2012.

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
Answer (A): Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.



Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.



Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.



Q: Could a phenomena occur where planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.



Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?
A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.



Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the earth’s crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?
A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway.



Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?
A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.



Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of pending doomsday?
A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.



Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012?
A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.

Happy Veterans' Day

Thank you to all my loved ones who have served our country so faithfully and sacrificially. I am proud and honored to know you.

Kabbalah Girl Power

This is from the Babylonian Talmud, a widely used 4th century Kabbalah text.

See how marvelous is a good woman! For it is in her that the Divine Will is exemplified.

Mysteries

All the greater and wiser thinkers, even if they be not Christians, believe that the reason in man, instead of rejecting all this is deep and mysterious, cannot be satisfied without mysteries; that the reason requires truths which are above itself, just as the eye delights in looking upon an immense expanse of sea and sky.

-F.D. Maurice

Anniversary!

Today is Matt's and my 16th anniversary! Happy anniversary, sweetie!

I can honestly say that marrying my husband was the best thing I've ever done. I'm a better person because I'm with him than I could have been without him. It hasn't been perfect, and there were a few rocky years, especially in the beginning, but I wouldn't change anything. Even the difficult stuff made us closer and stronger.

I hear other women complain about the men in their lives, and I certainly know that some men can't be trusted or depended upon. And some men leave human destruction in the wake of all they do...things that their daughters and sons will be paying for for generations. I see it, hear it, know that it's out there, but it's very far from my experience. There's nobody in the world I trust more or enjoy more than my husband.

I do a lot of premarital and marital counseling, and one thing I tell my couples is that marriage can be everything you're dreaming of right now. It can be that ideal of friendship, support and passion that we all go into it hoping for. It doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen on its own, but it can happen. And it gets better every year.

And, it's not even 1:00 and it's already been a great day. Life is so good.

I love you, sweetie.

Would You Rather...

The youth group at my church has a book that's full of "Would You Rather" questions. Some of them are kind of goofy, but some are pretty thought-provoking. So, here's today's question:

Would you rather be rich or famous?

This seems like a no-brainer to me. I mean, what's fame for, if it's not to ensure wealth? What's the point of being a famous poor person?

So, obviously, I would rather be rich, if those were my choices. If I were rich, then I could quit my jobs and Matt and I could work on our books (which are terribly hard to complete when have to keep leaving the computer to go to work...) and then we could get famous that way.

But we don't particularly want to be famous, anyway. We mostly just want to be left alone. I don't really need to be rich, either--all I want is to have enough with some occasional extras: a night out, a vacation, a book or CD bought on the spur of the moment...

So, what do y'all think? Would you rather be rich or famous?

Is This a Joke?

When my sweetie woke me up this morning with the ominous words, "There have been some overnight developments," I had no idea. He said, "President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

I kind of snorted and said, "Yeah, right."

He said, "That was my first reaction, too. I read it on Yahoo, and I had to check the header to make sure I hadn't accidentally gone to The Onion."

I was still kind of sleepy, so I said, "It's not true. Someone has made a mistake or something."

He said, "No, it's true," and he turned on NPR. Steve Inskeeep was in the middle of saying, "...this prize will be controversial to many who do not feel his accomplishments have merited it..."

I was awake then. "For what?" I sorta shrieked. "What has he actually done?"

"Apparently," said my sweetie, "it's for bringing hope to the world and promising to work with other nations. They actually decided it just a couple of weeks after he took office."

"So he gets the Nobel Peace Prize for running for president?" I snapped (as though it were sweetie's fault--he gets to take a lot of my irritation with public figures). "He gets a Nobel Peace Prize for campaign promises?"

Sweetie nodded glumly. "I feel like I've fallen into Wonderland."

He's not the only one. This article, from the Times, says pretty much the same thing. The headline reads: Absurd Decision on Obama Makes a Mockery of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ya think?



The award of this year’s Nobel peace prize to President Obama will be met with widespread incredulity, consternation in many capitals and probably deep embarrassment by the President himself.

Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.

Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.




I can only hope that the president will be embarrassed by this. If he has any class, and integrity, he will decline this award and express his intention to earn it at a later date. I don't have any confidence that he will do that, though, especially after reading this from ABC News:



The president will travel to Oslo in December to accept the prize in person, the White House confirmed.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who woke the president to tell him the news, said Obama was "humbled."

White House press aides said they had heard from news reports weeks ago that the president was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize but they do not believe Obama himself knew of his nomination. The deadline for nominations is Feb. 1, meaning the president was nominated after being in office for just 11 days.



Has everything lost meaning? The Committee guy told Diane Sawyer today:



"President Obama has changed very dramatically international politics," Lundestad told "GMA's" Diane Sawyer today. "We feel he has emphasized multilateral diplomacy, he has addressed international institutions, dialogue negotiations. He has inspired the world with his vision of a world without nuclear arms. He has changed the U.S. policy dramatically. There's a whole list."



So, he's getting a Nobel Peace Prize for not being George Bush. Wow, I'm not George Bush, either, do I get one next?

More of our Vacation: Days 2 & 3

On the second day of our vacation (which was a month ago now!) we did two major things: the St. Louis Cathedral and the St. Louis Zoo. The cathedral is the reason that we went to St. Louis instead of some other place like Branson or something. Matt's book is sort of set in St. Louis, or at least a based-on-St. Louis location, so we had to go to the basilica (this is also why much of our vacation is tax-deductible). The most important part of that trip was seeing the mosaics in this cathedral. They are simply amazing.

This is the world's largest collection of mosaics, designed by 20 different artists, covering 83000 square feet, including about 41.5 million individual pieces (called tesserae), 7000 colors (I didn't know there WERE 7000 colors). It took 76 years to complete.

If you go to the link above, you can take a virtual tour of the cathedral and see many of the mosaics. Even the children were enthralled, and we actually had to go back another day to see things we didn't get the first time. I think you could spend months in there and not absorb all the detail.

Then we went to the St. Louis Zoo. The St. Louis Zoo is free, and you can have a completely wonderful time and not spend any money there. We, however, at at the cafe, and then we bought passes to the extra things that do cost some money. It was worth it--the passes got us into the Children's Zoo, the train, the carousel, the Sea Lion show, and the 3-D dinosaur exhibit. All of which we did, sometimes more than once (we were hot and tired enough at the end that we rode the train through a couple of times before we got off at our stop).

It was the only really hot day of our trip, but even then it wasn't really hot. Not the usual Missouri-in-August hot that it could have been. It was nice to see the Sea Lions, because they splash cool water on you. I think that was David's favorite part; all day he was, "Can we go see the Sea Lions? Can we go see the Sea Lions? When are we going to see the Sea Lions?" It was pretty cute. I think my favorite part was the carousel and the train--yay for sitting down!

The kids were extremely good and amazingly non-whiney that day. Actually, they were very good and non-whiney for most of the trip. It was nice.

The next day, Monday, we stayed at our condo. We sat through a time-share presentation so that we could get tickets for a free dinner at the Tiger Rescue place--not a problem, since we KNOW we have no money to buy a time-share. Matt and I tried to get some writing done, but then I had a migraine and Matt took the kids out to the town of Farmington, went to WalMart and wasted time so I could lie down. When they came back, I took them to the condo pool for a while. We didn't go anywhere; it was really relaxing and nice. We ate in the condo, and didn't spend much money at all.

9/11

It's hard even to know how to remember this day. We didn't do anything formal here, no community services or anything, but we did talk about it. The kids don't remember--David wasn't even born and the girls were 3 and 4. Matt and I read this earlier this evening, though, and I thought it was worth thinking about:

"... the only reason 'a box-cutter can bring down a tower' is because on September 11 our defenses against such a threat were exclusively the province of the state. If nineteen punks with box-cutters had tried to pull some stunt in the parking lot of a sports bar, they'd have been beaten to a pulp. The airline cabin, however, is the most advanced model of the modern social-democratic state, the sky-high version of the wildest dreams of big government; it's Massachusetts in cloud-cuckoo land. So on September 11 on those first three flights the cabin crews followed all those Federal Aviation Administration guidelines from the seventies.

By the time the fourth plane got into trouble, the passengers knew the government wasn't up there with them. And, within ninety minutes of the first flight hitting the tower, the heroes of Flight 93 had figured out what was going on and came up with a way to stop it...On the fourth plane, they didn't follow the seventies hijack rituals. On Flight 93, they used their cell phones, discovered that FAA regulations weren't going to save them, and then acted as free men, rising up against the terrorists and, at the cost of their own lives, preventing that flight from carrying on to its target in Washington. On a morning when big government failed, the only good news came from private individuals.

For thirty years, passengers surrendered more and more rights for the illusion of security, and, as a result, thousands died. On the fourth plane, Todd Beamer and others reclaimed those rights and demonstrated that they could exercise them more efficiently than government. The Cult of Regulation failed, but the great American virtues of self-reliance and innovation saved the lives of thousands: 'Let's roll!' as Mr. Beamer told his fellow passengers.


That's been my basic rule of thumb since September 11: anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing, not just for the war on terror, but for the national character in a more general sense."

--Mark Steyn, America Alone



I hope it never happens again, but fear it will. The state, federal, and volunteer emergency management people assume it will; it's just a matter of time. God have mercy on us, and God bless the USA.

Thought for Sunday

One should never despair too soon.

--Frederick the Great

My Sweetie's Birthday!

My sweetie's birthday was on Thursday, the 3rd. Actually, it probably wasn't the world's best birthday--though he always says, "This was the best birthday ever!"

I made him breakfast Thursday morning (which most of you know I never do--he usually makes it for me, actually). Then before he had to go into work, we went for an early lunch at Taco Bell, brought our tacos home, and watched an episode of The Office on the computer (The Golden Ticket!).

Then he had to go to work...and Thursday is his longest day of the week. So, he left before noon and didn't get back until after 10 (long past his bedtime). But I let the kids stay up and wait for him, and we gave him his presents. He got some clothes, a book, and his big present--the new DVD/VCR...with a working remote!

So, for two days, he's been playing with the remote...fast-forwarding things and frame-by-framing things just for fun. He watched a bunch of episodes that we couldn't watch before when the old remote didn't work--it's been like having a whole new DVD collection.

Anyway, I coooked dinner last night (Friday, because he wasn't home Thursday). I made Philly Cheese Steak pizza--it was really yummy, if I do say so. I stole the recipe out of a magazine at the doctor's office when we went to see if AJ's hand was broken (it's not). Sabra made him a cake, and David took him to the Mt. Vernon football game.

I guess it wasn't so bad, for a grown-up birthday.

Anyway, Mom and Dad, I just want to thank you for raising him to be so great. He's the best; I love him so much.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie! I love you!

Our Vacation, Part 1

So, now that we have this awesome new minivan, it makes taking trips a LOT easier. We'd been hoping all summer to take a vacation to St. Louis, and we'd been helped out by our AWESOME friends John and Nancy (who gave us a week in their time share condo that they would have lost otherwise), but we weren't loking forward to cramming the three kids in the back of the sporadically air-conditioned Taurus.

Thanks to my WONDERFUL in-laws, that problem was solved!

So we got up Saturday morning, August 8, because the kids like to be loaded into the car in their pajamas when it's still dark, and we drove northeast. It was a leisurely drive with no stress, no need to "make time," and very little fussing from the kids. We stopped for breakfast at McDonald's and got such good service that I had to call the manager over and let him know. We stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall used bookstore in St. James, and a gas station in some town that had Icees on sale for 25 cents.

For all of our dawdling, we were still at the condo in Farmington (about an hour south of St . Louis) by noon...and apparently check-in wasn't allowed until 4:00 (our bad--you have to read the fine print!). So we drove into the town and ate lunch at a pizza place called Bobarino's. It was incredible!

With time to kill, we wandered around the historic section of Farmington. We went into several antique shops (Farmington is a serious antiquers' paradise), a Christian bookstore (where David spent his own money on a balloon), and a very girlie boutique (which made David and Matt decide to just wait outside). These were all old shops, and you could tell that families used to live above them.

The French-settled areas of northeastern Missouri, most of which are along the Mississippi River, are very old settlements. They have old, beautiful Catholic churches and lots of French names and themes. Later in the week we went to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri (notice the French abbreviation of Sainte--the feminine form of Saint in French), which was another beautifully historic place.

So we finally went back to the resort, killed some time in the golfers' clubhouse (where you could only watch golf on TV--the kids weren't allowed to change the channel!), and finally were allowed into our room. Well, apartment, really--it was a one bedroom deal that was bigger than Matt's and my first couple of apartments! We unpacked, and I took the kids swimming at the condo pool.

It was a really nice start to the vacation. We did a ton of stuff, so there's more to come!

A Thought for Sunday

It must forever be kept in mind, regardless of how much the modern mind insists on changing morals and beliefs to suit new conditions, that right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong is everybody is wrong.

-Fulton J. Sheen

The 20-Year Difference

Here's Kat in 1989, age 18:

"Like, oh, maGawd, I would totally never drive a minivan! Those are for, like, suburban soccer moms! No way!"

"Gah, cheerleaders are such bimbos, and they're brainless and a waste of space. What do they even do besides wear too much makeup and show their underwear at football games?"

Here's Kat in 2009, age 38:

"Oh, my God! We got a new minivan! It's gorgeous! I've wanted one for so long! Now I can drive all those kids to soccer practice! This is the best thing ever!"

"Actually, cheerleading is a serious sport that combines athleticism, performace skill and community leadership. And cheerleaders have to be smart--most schools require that they maintain at least a B average to stay on the squad...What's that? You want me to coach a middle school cheerleading squad? Sure, I'd love to do that! I'm so proud that my daughter is a cheerleader!"

Yes, as the song says, time changes everything!

The Answer to Exorbitant Bonuses Given to Bailed-out Execs

Okay, so a few months ago, y'all will remember, the government started bailing out banks and corporations right and left. And then there was a bit of a stink when it was revealed that AIG, the hugest of all the companies being bailed out, was using our tax dollars to pay its executives these obscenely large bonuses.

My friend Nancy (not the nurse-practitioner, but the one who lives on Martha's Vineyard) is NOT a woman to just sit back and grumble when things like this happen. So, she wrote her senator, John Kerry (yes, I know...but that's a different post) to let him know just what she thought of that.

Many, many months later (this week, actually), Nancy received an email back from Senator Kerry's office basically telling her not to worry her pretty little head about it, because the government was taking care of everything (and yes, that is a paraphrase).

Another of my friends, Kim, didn't think the Senator's post was a sufficient response. Here's how Kim responded:

Well, one good way of preventing abuses like exorbitant bonuses when a company has received a bailout from the government would be... and, I'm just thinking out loud here... DON'T bail out companies!

This whole situation is due to a nation that has developed not only a detrimental sense of entitlement, but one that has morphed Uncle Sam into Daddy Sam. The government's job is not to bail out private individuals when they make mistakes (often knowingly), nor businesses either! Hell, the government can barely manage themselves for goodness sake! They are DEFINITELY not a good example of how a business should be run! Our government had already spent more money than they were going to receive this year by APRIL!!! The EARLIEST in history (usually we don't run out of money until August - which is sad enough!). It's like the blind leading the blind here, for goodness sake!

And, yes, I realize that without bailout funds this could lead to significant economic turmoil - but, seriously, without the threat of utter failure, what's going to keep these businesses in check in the future? In the back of their corporate minds has to be the knowledge that another bail out is possible - equating to riskier (including ridiculous bonuses) fiscal behavior. And, although I know this isn't popular, I think America IN GENERAL needs to feel the ramifications of their gluttonous spending.

There was a time when being an American meant working hard and reaping the rewards from that hard work. Today, we want the rewards up front - we'll work for them later. The abuse of credit is what led us into the Great Depression, apparently we didn't learn our lesson then and it needs to be re-taught. Why is everyone so surprised when history repeats itself?

America is fiscally hemorrhaging and all Congress (both sides of the aisles) wants to do is put a band-aid on it, so they can look like they're doing something about it and keep their seats. What we need is economic surgery - hell, we may even need amputation, if we really want to survive.


To which I responded, AMEN, SISTER! Anybody else have any thoughts on this?

July Observances

July is:

Monthly Observances

Air-Conditioning Appreciation Days (7/3-8/15)
Bereaved Parents Month
Bioterrorism/ Disaster Education & Awareness Month
Blueberries Month
Cell Phone Courtesy Month
Dog Days (7/3 -8/11)
Family Reunion Month
Hemochromatosis Screening Awareness Month
Herbal/Prescription Awareness Month
International Blondie and Deborah Harry Month
International Group B Strep Awareness Month
National Child-Centered Divorce Month
National Grilling Month
National Ice Cream Month
National Horseradish Month
National Hot Dog Month
National Make A Difference to Children Month
National Recreation & Parks Month
National Share A Sunset With Your Lover Month
National Wheelchair Beautification Month
Sandwich Generation Month
Smart Irrigation Month
Social Wellness Month
Tour de France Month
Women's Motorcycle Month

Weekly Observances

National Unassisted Homebirth Week: 1-7
Freedom Week: 4-10
Be Nice To New Jersey Week: 5-11
Sports Cliché Week: 5-11
Nude Recreation Weekend: 6-12
International Chicken Wing Week: 10-12
Sinclair Lewis Week: 12-18
National Parenting Gifted Children Week: 13-19
Rabbit Week: 15-21
National Ventriloquism Week: 16-19
Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) Education & Awareness Week: 18-25
Captive Nations Week: 19-23
National Independent Retailers Week: 19-25
National Baby Food Week: 21-25
Lumberjack Week: 23-25
Moby Dick Week: 31-8/1
National Get Out of the Doghouse Day: 20
National Hug Your Kid Day: 20
National Lollipop Day: 20
Health, Happiness With Hypnosis Day: 22
Cousins Day: 24

Daily Observances

Canada Day: 1
Second Half of The Year Day: 1
U.S. Postage Stamp Day: 1
Zip Code Day: 1
Halfway Point of 2009: 2
Earth at Aphelion: 3
Stay Out Of The Sun Day; 3
Fourth of July or Independence Day: 4
International Day of Cooperatives: 4
Take Your Webmaster to Lunch Day: 6
Father-Daughter Take A Walk Together Day: 7
Tell The Truth Day: 7
Hot Dog Day: 9
Get to Know Your Customers Day: 16
National Ice Cream Day: 19
National Drive-Thru Day: 24
Tell An Old Joke Day: 24
Cow Appreciation Day: 25
National Day of the Cowboy : 25
Parents' Day: 26

YES!! Parents' Day is coming up! That is AWESOME!

And we didn't miss Hot Dog Day...David will be thrilled.

And I do appreciate cows...truly I do.

But (and I feel like I've asked this before) what do we DO for Zip Code Day?

A Message from Iran

Many of you know that I am involved in several Harry Potter online discussion groups. One of them has several international members, including two from Iran.

I inquired after them the other day, what with the violence they've been experiencing there, and one of them, a young man named Amir, wrote me back privately. He's written me before, but I hadn't heard from him in a while. Here's his post.

Hi dear Strider.

I saw that you mentioned about Iran in one of your posts. Yes, Iran is dangerous now, but as you know, freedom is something that is hard to achieve. Many of our young people have been killed by the hands of the government, like Neda for example (Neda was a young girl that was killed by anti riot police, I think that you know of her).

Many of our people were tired of Ahmadi Nejad, because not only he was stealing people's money and ruining Iran, He was destroying Iran's relationships with other countries. So, our people went to the other candidate's side, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi. These candidates were the enemies and rivals of Ahmadi Nejad. They wanted to repair all that Ahmadi Nejad has ruined. But you know, government used fraud and cheating in the election. And now, people of Iran are protesting.

BUT, we cannot do this alone. We need support, from all of the people in the world, I didn't mentioned this in the group messages because I thought that it is not good to talk about politics in the group.

Strider, we need support from the U.S.A and Europe, from their people, from their governments. It is time to leave the past and help each other.

Please, tell this to anyone you can, that Iranian people need support from other countries, we need someone to rescue us from the hands of our murderer governments, from the great satan, Ayatollah Khameneii.



Here's what I wrote back:


Thank you for writing to me about this. I wish I had some influence over our government policies; as you know, our President is new and we aren't quite sure what he will do when it comes to the relationship between our countries.

I will tell people what you've told me, and I can always write letters and send emails to our representatives in the government. I'll do whatever I can. You're right, freedom is hard to acheive...but worth the fight, I think.

God bless you and your country,
Strider

Ed McMahon, 1923-2009

Ed McMahon, one of the ringing voices from my childhood, died early this morning in Los Angeles. If you're interested in knowing more, I blogged about him here.

A couple of fun facts: Ed was Catholic and went to Catholic University, and he was a Marine fighter pilot in WWII and Korea. He first worked with Johnny Carson on a 50's game show called "Do You Trust Your Wife?"

I remember being at my grandparents' house, and if I heard Ed's voice doing his famous, "Heeeeeeeere's Johnny!" then I knew I was up too late. After that it was the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes commercials and Star Search.

He led a pretty interesting life (I wrote more about it at that other blog), but he'd been doing badly the past few years, including suffering from bone cancer and a broken neck. I'm glad he's free from the pain now.

Rest in peace, Ed.

A Guest Blog By My Sweetie

The following reflection on Fathers' Day was written by my husband and fellow writer. I thought it contained some pretty important thoughts, and I wanted to share them with you.

So, here it is, Fathers' Day again, and twice in the past twenty-four hours I have heard people—well, men actually; specifically fathers—refer to the day in ways that make it sound like the consolation prize/year's-worth-of-Free-Turtle-Wax version of Mothers' Day.

Yesterday, driving into Kansas City to visit my own father, a disc jockey asked men to call in and tell her whether Fathers' Day was a 'real' holiday or a made-up holiday. The first man to call in was himself a father who affirmed that it is, indeed, a made-up holiday. His wife, he said, deserves her own holiday, but he certainly doesn't. When pressed, he said that she puts up with the kids, works outside the home as well as within, generally makes life nice for everyone in the house, and he doesn't do much of anything.

The disc jockey tried to wheedle him into admitting he does more than he was letting on. “Noooothing?” she asked. “You don't even take out the traaaash?”

“Oh, I do some things,” he said, “mostly around the house and with the car. I do stuff with the kids when she needs a break.”

“But you have a job, right? You bring home a paycheck.”

“Oh, sure, sure. But she does the real work. What I do is nothing. She's the one who needs a special day, not me.”

A few hours later, I was talking with a friend on the phone and he mentioned that his wife is upset because she can't afford to make a big deal out of Fathers' Day this year. Their family finances have been upset by an unexpected death in the family, a long, drawn-out trip to Arkansas, and lost shifts at the hospital. The checking account is bare. At dinner last night, he said, she broke into tears because he gave her a great Mothers' Day and she can't reciprocate. And his response was to put his arms around her and coax a smile out of her by saying, “Sweetheart, Mothers' Day is a real holiday.”

He wouldn't dream of not celebrating Mothers' Day in a big way, he told me. But Fathers' Day? It's enough that she would do something if she could. He really doesn't need anything more than that, because he doesn't really do anything around the house anyway.

These are not isolated sentiments. My own father and both my grandfathers used to say the same thing: Mothers' Day is real, Fathers' Day isn't. And the sense seemed to be that everyday is Fathers' Day when you get to go to work, and deal with the kids only a few hours a day, and come home to a cooked meal, and not go through childbirth.

A massively informal poll I conducted with this one friend on the phone, the guy on the radio, and my two brothers, seems to confirm that men see Mothers' Day as the day they formally thank their wives for 364 days of work (365 if the women have to clean up from their own Mothers' Day breakfast-in-bed), and Fathers' Day is the day they feel guilty—perhaps are purposely made to feel guilty, under the guise of being 'appreciated'—for not doing much of anything. I call this the 'Fathers' Day as Giant Stick to Goad Me Into Doing More Around the House'-theory of the holiday.

Sounds like a conspiracy to me. If it's true. But I don't think it's true.

I think what's going on is that men are trained now, from an early age, to think of their contribution as niggling compared to the contribution made by their wives. This might be an unintended result of the Women's Movement, I don't know. I wonder if it's not the adult male corollary of something I see my children do, when I say to one, “You did a great job on that picture,” and the other will say, “Why don't you like my picture?” Or I'll give one a hug and the other will say, “I'm not special.”

The idea seems to be that love (or praise or whatever) is a commodity, and there's only so much of it to go around. If I give it to one, then there's not enough left for all the others. I have to remind my children that love and praise and appreciation are not limited. They are drawn from a bottomless well; no one will go thirsty just because someone else's bucket is full.

Men—being the either/or, black-and-white thinkers that they are—have gone from thinking that theirs is the only contribution in the house that matters, to thinking that their contribution doesn't matter at all. Now that we celebrate what we used to derisively refer to as 'women's work,' now that we have two-income families and mom is just as likely as dad to work outside the home, there seems to be a sense among men that their contribution doesn't really matter anymore.

“She does the real work. What I do is nothing. She's the one who needs a special day, not me. I'm not special.”

With the men I know, that's not false modesty. They say that because they really believe it. My friend on the phone really believes it; the guy on the radio seems to believe it too.

Perhaps we should take the opportunity this Fathers' Day to remind our fathers that their contributions, however much they wish to downplay them, are real and vital—that their contribution is not less because others are now doing more.

Fathers' Day is not a consolation prize. It's a real holiday, just as real as Mothers' Day. Men should be helped to see what they do as enabling the family to function, in ways every bit as important as what their wives do.

The well of appreciation is bottomless; there's plenty enough to go around.

Spooky Things

Recently I've been researching things like UFOs and the whole alien myth-or-fact argument. I have discovered that West Virginia is replete with stories of mysterious and spooky things--in my research Mothman and The Cornstalk Curse have been particularly relevant.

I have two friends that live in West Virginia, so I asked them if weird things ever happen where they live. Caina said not really, but she kind of wishes they would! Alicia, however, had a lot to say about it.

Here's what Alicia said:

So many. Most revolve around ghosts, from stories related to small-town, local family stuff (certain houses, roads, old forgotten grave yards, etc.) to bigger ones, like the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (TALA) which decided to profit off that whole "Ghost Hunters" show from Sci-Fi Channel. (Well, the new owners were already renovating and opening TALA to the public for tours, etc. before the show came along, but, still. .. Hell, I don't know why I sound bitter about it. I'd probably try to profit off it, too, haha.) I think any place that has an old abandoned mental health hospital or prison or school will have those kinds of stories.

The old West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville is supposedly ridiculously haunted - it has a reputation for having been a very cruel and unusual punishment kind of place, so...

As far as closer to my neck of the woods is concerned, two of my favorites are my county's courthouse (where Sid Hatfield was killed) and the old Lake Shawnee Amusement Park (in the county beside us). I have no experience with the courthouse being haunted - I worked there for two summers and spent a big chunk of my life there because my mom and my best friend's mom worked there, and I never "saw" anything.

But, Lake Shawnee...freaks me out. The first time I drove by it, I had no idea what it was. I'd never heard of it or been there. All I could see was an old abandoned ferris wheel (maybe a hundred yards from me?) and I just got this overwhelming feeling that I was not in a safe place (actually, my exact thought was "This place is haunted - speed the eff up" - it was around one in the morning and I was alone, haha).

A year or so later, some channel did a show about it supposedly being haunted, and I had no idea where they were talking about until they showed that damned ferris wheel. I freaked out. You can see daylight pictures of the park HERE (and if you read some of the comments, ignore the ones about people hearing carillion bells - my alma mater is just a few miles from this place and has a 48-bell carillion, so, duh, I imagine it wouldn't be hard to hear them on a clear night, ha!).

I think one reason this place (and state in general) is so riddled with ghost stories (and perhaps ghosts themselves? ;) is its age. Maybe not so much its age, but the age of things that are still here. It's very common for public buildings still in use here to date back to some point in the 1800s. Many homes still in use were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s (my parents home, for example, is over a hundred years old).

And, of course, the graveyards. My friends and I use to frequent a forgotten one here in my town when we were kids - high on top of a mountain and with death dates in the 1800s. Never experienced anything scary there, though - it was always daylight :) My dad's family's cemetary (which is actually made up of a couple of old families local to where he grew up - not just his) is also very old; there's a grave marker there for a Confederate soldier.

And on a semi-related note (simply because you mentioned moths, haha), we get some absolutely GIGANTIC ones in this county - I'm talking, wings that span out past your ears big. I haven't seen any that huge in a while (not outside at night as much as when I was a kid growing up here), but I did run into what I think was a Luna moth a couple of weeks ago which isn't all that rare or too huge, but pretty :) I can't figure out how to paste the picture in this email, but HERE is a link to it.

End of Term

Well, I turned in my grades a few days ago. Spring term is over. I only failed two students for plagiarism this time. (sigh...)

I had some top-notch students this term, and I am so grateful for them, because they really kept me from despairing over the bottom-notch ones. I had students who couldn't put a sentence together. I had to spend a whole class period teaching a 200-level class how to write a 5-paragraph essay (and this was at Drury, a private university, not at the community college).

The co-existence of excellent students with abysmal ones tells me that the problem really isn't with the schools. I think it's in the homes. I think that the difference is students who had parents who took an interest in their school work, who read to them, and who communicated with their teachers. And maybe even corrected their grammar from time to time.

I don't know. I know what my kids are learning in elementary and middle school, and there's no reason in the world for them not to be able to write a short essay by their second year in college.

It's very frustrating, because these students are in training to be our teachers, nurses, and businesspeople. Some of them are going to be great, but some of them should worry us. A lot.

The Problem With The Media

We were talking about journalism on one of my writing groups, and my friend Kim Wilson posted the following reflections on it. I thought they were pretty insightful, and I'm posting them with her permission for your consideration. I'd love to know your thoughts. --Kat


In my opinion, change within the media needs to start with credibility. My journalism teacher from long ago was from the old-school way of thinking. I imagine he's rolling over in his grave at what our modern day media has become. Anyway, when I think about friendly persuasion, I think about credibility. After all, how can any media source accomplish persuasion if their credibility is questioned by readers/viewers.

For what it's worth, here are some changes I'd like to see implemented among the various newsformats (television, print and electronic):

1. Correct use of terminology.

One of my pet peeves in today's media is the word "Soldier" when used as a universal term referencing military members. The U.S. Military is composedof Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines. When I see or hear the incorrectusage of "Soldier" I want to tell the reporter or anchor to go up to a Marine and ask him/her how he/she likes being a Soldier and see how the Marine reacts. This particular inaccuracy tells me the person behind the story hasn't done their homework. Servicemembers get prickly over this and rightly so. Each member chose a particular branch and they're proud ofthat branch. Most of the time, their unfavorable reaction to being called a Soldier stems from pride, not ego.

2. Higher standards of reporting.

On Monday the Trentonian (a Trenton, NJ newspaper) published an article about a police involved shooting (the officer discharged one shot). The reporter wrapped up the article with this prose: "Detectives in the copshop's Internal Affairs Unit have been summoned to investigate the incident,which is standard practice when a police officer unloads his or her heat." When I came upon that paragraph, I stopped. Certain I'd read it wrong, I went back and reread the paragraph. My first thought was, "Unloads his or her heat? You gotta be kidding me," followed by "An editor actually approved this copy?" For anyone that's interested, you can read the article in its entirety at http://tinyurl.com/5eepfa

3. Misleading headlines.

How many times have you gone to an online news site, clicked on a headline only to find the headline had nothing to do with the article? Or, the headline completely contradicted the article? I feel duped when this happens. One occurrence, I can tolerate, but after a second time, I stop visiting the site.

4. Don't be in a such a hurry to scoop.

It seems today's media is obsessed with scooping each other. I understand the concept of scooping (really, I do.) and that it's a fundamental part of journalism. However, it's gotten to the point that most of the time factual information is sacrificed for the sake of holding the title of "You heard/read it here first." I don't know about you folks, but I'd rather wait a little longer and get an accurate story, versus a quick dose of misinformation.

Anyway, as I said earlier, I believe persuasion begins with credibility. I look forward to reading what others have to say about this topic.

Happy writing,
Kim

Abby is Awesome

Sunday was the end-of-year choir concert for the middle school and high school. They also gave out choir awards, and guess who won the Performance Award, for being the best performer and having the best voice in the whole 7th/8th grade choir?????

Abby, that's who. Could you not tell that from the headline?

The whole choir voted, and they voted to give Abby that award. How awesome is my baby????

My 2nd Favorite Month

Actually, my favorite month is not April. April is my second-favorite month. I love the flowering trees, especially. Two of my favorite flowers are lilacs and dogwoods, and those are out in profusion in April. Here in the Ozarks, we have dogwood of all different colors, thought I think that maybe the ubiquitous white is still my favorite. And of course, since Easter is usually in April, it's the perfect time to tell the story of the legend of the dogwood tree.

Another thing about April that I love is that after March's cruel teasing (is it winter? is it spring? I don't know!), April might have some cold days, but it can only move toward springtime. Of course, that means not only warmth and sunshine, but also storms, which I really, really love. We've already had some excellent and dramatic thunder storms; they were incredible. There's nothing like a good thunderstorm.

In case you were wondering, my favorite month is October. But April's a really close second.

An Easter Quotation

Without Easter, there can be no reason to suppose that Good will triumph over evil, that love will win over hatred, that life will win over death. But with Easter we have hope; because hope depends on love; and love has become human and has died, and is now alive forevermore, and holds the keys of Death and Hades. It is because of him we know--we don’t just hope, we know-- that God will wipe away all tears from all eyes. And in that knowledge we find ourselves to be Sunday people, called to live in a world of Fridays.

-N.T. Wright, Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship

Happy Easter!

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

After a very long Lent, Easter is finally here. Holy Week was long, brutal, exhausting, and strangely and deeply satisfying. It always is all those things. The exhaustion is welcome; it's the fatigue of a race well run. Of accepting a challenge--to keep watch with Jesus--and rising to it. Sure, it takes a lot out of you. But at the end, you greet the dawn knowing that you were faithful, even when it was so hard to be.

The cold and rain didn't dampen our Easter celebrations here (and hey, the heater in my car works now, so I have nothing to complain about). At home, we hid eggs in the living room and dining room (with help from AJ, who is now too old to hunt eggs--or so she tells us). At church, we hid eggs inside the church while everyone celebrated in the parish hall.

In my World Religions class, my unit on Christianity began during Holy Week, which has never happened before. It was kind of cool. It was a nice calendrical backdrop to my lesson that the most important holy day in Christianity is Easter (not Christmas, even if you like Christmas better) (but seriously, what could be better than Easter?).

I wish everybody a blessed Easter season. 50 days to celebrate before it's back to life as usual.

Christos Anesti!

Alethos Anesti!

Denied!

Well, I ran for school board here in Mount Vernon, but I lost. :(

Yet, I am not discouraged. I have a plan for next time. Here it is:

All y'all need to move down here and vote for me.

I lost by a pretty small margin, which I calculate to be the other guy's relatives and friends. So, if my relatives and friends come down and vote, I am so in.

So, my dear ones...if you could get to work on that, that would be great.

Love you!

Harry Reid Says Taxes are Voluntary Now!

Umm ...sort of.

"Of course you have to pay your taxes...but the fact of the matter is that our system is a voluntary system."

The link is here. I still can't figure out how to embed video in a blog entry.

Okay, I fell for it

Okay, fine, I fell for it. The Katie Couric quotation from the last post was from Media Research Center...on Wednesday. April 1.

See where I'm going with this?

So, yeah...Katie Couric didn't really say this. Not that she wouldn't have or couldn't have, but she didn't. I don't pay any attention to April Fool's Day, it's just not on my radar at all, so I missed this.

Sorry about that folks. If I post something this awful next April 1, feel free to call me on it.

(PS: You should have seen the ones I didn't post...sometimes procrastination pays!)

Oh, Now I Get It

In case any of you have been struggling to understand all this stuff about bailouts, stimulus packages, etc...and maybe even been trying to wrap your minds around even the concept of trillions of dollars, you don't have to worry any more. Katie Couric has explained it all for us.

"For many Americans, it can be tough to grasp how all this deficit spending will turbo-charge our economy and end the recession. Tonight, with the help of a few visual aids, we'll show how everyone gets a macro-cosmic boost whenever Uncle Sam opens his wallet....Think of each dollar in the economy as a jelly bean. You and I each have a few jelly beans, but the government has a whole lot of them. In a recession -- a jelly bean shortage -- we might feel like holding on to our jelly beans instead of sharing them, but that would bring our jelly bean party to a grinding halt. But if Uncle Sam re-fills the jelly bean bags of those who are running low, our party can go on and on....And if we ever find ourselves running out of candy, Uncle Sam can always make more -- he owns the jelly bean factory! The fun never has to stop...."

-- Katie Couric explaining the economics of bailouts on the April 1
CBS Evening News.

Now, Katie Couric is an professionally trained economist, and I'm not...but is there something a little screwy about this?

She seems to be forgetting that if Uncle Sam has a huge bag of jelly beans, he got them from us in the first place.

So...say I have 10 jelly beans (it's jelly bean payday) and Uncle Sam takes state and federal income taxes, medicare, social security, gas tax, property taxes, and sales tax. That's 7 jelly beans, leaving me with 3 to pay for my mortgage, student loans, utilities, food, clothes, medical care, birthday presents, car repairs, house repairs, insurance, personal loans and Girl Scout Cookies.

Is Katie saying that I shouldn't be so tight-fisted with my 3 remaining jelly beans? The government might have a whole lot of jelly beans (something I'm not convinced of), but if so, it has them because it took my 7 jelly beans. Katie seems to be saying that if I just shared my 3 jelly beans with the government, rather than keeping them to take care of my family, we would all be having a lot more fun.

But then she says that if the government's bag runs out of jelly beans, they can just make more. But if that's true, why do they need my 7 jelly beans in the first place? And why should I be complacent about handing over my remaining 3?

And for what? So that our jelly bean party doesn't come to a grinding halt? Do I care about our jelly bean party? If every jelly bean represents a dollar, I must have missed my invitation to the big Mount Vernon dollar party.

The thing is...the government can't just make more money. Every piece of paper represents something of value...gold, perhaps, or items in trade, or hours of your life that you trade for compensation. Doesn't anyone remember the depression, when Germany printed millions of dollars and it was all worthless? It has to represent something.

And government can't just create jobs, either. I might get more jelly beans if I have a government job, but to pay for my job, the government has to take even more jelly beans from me and everyone else. Why not let people keep their jelly beans and let them create the jobs? That way, I have not simply handed over pieces of my life for a handful of jelly beans someone's just going to take away, anyway.

But like I said, I'm not an economist, not like Katie Couric.

Article on Abuse

I wrote this article for posting in article directories, but I thought it had some good information, so I thought I'd post it here, too. I don't know anyone whom I suspect is in this kind of situation (okay, actually, I might...), but if you do, feel free to pass it on.

“He Doesn’t Hit Me”: The Less Obvious Forms of Abuse

It seems incredible that in this day and age, any woman would not recognize the abuse that she herself was suffering, and wouldn’t take steps to improve things. After all, we’ve heard public service announcements, watched after school specials, and reacted in horror to the stories of friends. Maybe we even told ourselves, “I would never put up with that!”

Sometimes, though, I think that it’s our very educatedness that works against us. I’ve heard women say things like, “He never hit me, so I never thought of this as abuse. I thought that it was just what marriage was like.”

There are lots of forms of abuse that don’t involve hitting or other forms of physical violence, and they can be hard to recognize, especially if you’re in the middle of one of them. But look honestly at some of the following and ask yourself if any of these things apply to your relationship. And remember, any form of abuse can be found in almost any relationship—marriage, straight relationships, gay relationships, or teen relationships. While the vast majority of abuse victims are women, men can also be on the receiving end of abuse, especially these non-physical kinds.

Some of the following categories are borrowed from HelpGuide.org, but the text is mine.

• Dominance. The abuser has to make all the decisions for you and for the whole family. His wishes are the only ones that matter. He never wants your input into decisions that affect everyone.

• Humiliation. He puts you down, especially in front of others. He metes out compliments when he wants you to do something, but seldom out of spontaneous affection.

• Isolation. He controls when you will and won’t see your support system—friends, parents, siblings—gradually decreasing your dependence on them and increasing your emotional dependence on him. Eventually you find yourself caught with nobody to turn to.

• Threats. Threats are especially effective when you have children, but they can be used against you personally as well. Sometimes these threats are only implied with a look or a tone of voice, but you understand what he means.

• Intimidation. This is using the threat of physical force against you by using physical force in front of you. He may pull out weapons, break things, hurt pets, or put a fist in your face. He never touches you, but the implied threat is that if you don’t comply, you will be next.

• Denial and Blame. Abusers never take responsibility for their own actions. Either what he did wasn’t that bad, or you should have known better than to cause him to do it. After all, you provoked him.

• Financial control. Do you have to ask him for money—even money you earned-- and account for every cent? If he makes all the financial decisions and keeps you in a state of child-like financial dependence, that’s abuse.

• Religious abuse. Abusers often try to use a religion’s teachings about the proper roles of men and women to keep women obedient. At best, this is a serious misreading of the teachings of most faiths; at worst it takes away a woman’s last refuge of comfort and strength.

• Crazy-making. This is a subtle tactic of undermining the woman’s confidence in herself and her own competence to reinforce the woman’s dependence. He might, for example, hide her keys, and when she goes to look for them, he reminds her how scatter-brained she is and how much she needs him—an assertion reinforced when he himself “finds” the keys. The woman automatically assumes that she is at fault. She feels like she is going crazy because she can’t do anything about it.

If you see yourself in any of these categories, please get help. This is NOT what intimate relationships are supposed to be like. Sure, there will be compromise and sacrifices, but those things need to come from both sides, not just one. Both partners give some things up for the health of the whole, but the point of that is that you get from the relationship more than you’re giving up as an individual. If that‘s not the case, you may be in an abusive relationship. At the very least, you and your partner need to have several long talks.

You can start by calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-787-3224, or going to the front of your phone book. There IS help. You may find it hard to believe right now, but you’re not alone.

Buddhapalian

If you're not Episcopalian, you might not be aware that our Diocese of Northern Michigan has nominated one single candidate for the position of its new bishop--though how you can have an election with only one candidate is beyond me. Haven't they tried to do that in places like the USSR, communist China, Iraq under Saddam, and Cuba? It worked out so great for them...

The candidate is The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, and the big scandal about his nomination is that in addition to being an Episcopal priest, Forrester is also an ordained Buddhist monk. That may seem strange, but this is the Episcopal church, and "dual-faith" clergy are (sadly) not all that uncommon. I know of at least a few others--a Christian/Muslim and a couple of Christian/Druids.

Now, I don't have anything against Buddhism or Buddhists. In fact, there's a lot that's really cool about Buddhism. I mean, the 8-Fold Path? That rocks. If everyone followed the 8-Fold Path, the world would be a lot better place.

But Buddhism and Christianity are not ultimately compatible.

Christianity advocates the primacy of sacrificial love, including its redemptive and healing powers. Buddhism teaches that love and attachment are the cause of all suffering and we need to be extricating ourselves from all those feelings and relationships (though I don't deny that love can cause a lot of suffering).

Christianity teaches that the afterlife is a place where our attachments are perfected; we will be with each other and with God in such a state that our sinfulness no longer mars our relationships. Heaven is perfected love of God and each other. Buddhism teaches that the afterlife usually results in rebirth, where we have to try yet again to get this right, but if we attain enlightenment, we go to Nirvana, where all our attachments are severed and we are absorbed into Nothingness.

Christianity teaches that each individual is made in the image of God and can reflect that image to the world. Buddhism teaches that your idea that you exist is an illusion, so stop being so attached to your selfhood.

And, most importantly, Christianity teaches that the love of a personal God was made into a human being in the person of Jesus Christ, and that we can still know, love, and serve Jesus in prayer and in our neighbors. He will even help us to do all that through his gifts of grace. Buddhism does not believe that a god/God exists--it is an atheistic religion (yes, you can have an atheistic religion), so there is nobody out there who listens, cares or acts. You are repsonsible for your own enlightenment, and you have to keep trying, perhaps through hundreds of lives, until you get it right.

Buddhism has a lot to recommend it, including a powerful prayer tradition, a strong ethical system, and a certain peacefulness at its center. I hope everyone takes the time to learn more about it. But it's not compatible with Christianity, and I fail to see how a Christian priest can possibly try to commit to both. At the very least, he shouldn't be made a bishop, who is supposed to be the leader and chief shepherd of the Christian community.