Just Something to Think About on a Wednesday
I continue to be overwhelmed by the stories coming out of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

• Talking about the possibilities of typhoid, malaria, etc. as a result of the storm.
• Watching people get rescued.
• Fires that can't be put out.
• Prisoners gathered and guarded on an overpass since the jail was flooded.
• The mayor saying that it is time to "abandon" the city for now as...
• American refugees are transported 350 miles to another sports arena for shelter.

And all this is happening in the midst of the most advanced and technologically civilization ever. But it makes little difference with the power of a Major Hurricane.

Well, I had saved the following quote last week to use this week on Monday. Then I put it off to Tuesday. I didn't know how to reconcile the words with what I was seeing on TV. But then I realized tonight that this IS the answer to the emotional turmoil. (Note: It will not get rid of the turmoil, it is the attitude which allow us to recover from the turmoil!)

So I present it tonight. It is part of the life profession of the Taize community. May we all be able to say it this evening, trusting in the loving grace and care of an eternally loving and graceful God.

Refusing to look back,

and joyful with infinite gratitude,

never fear to rise to meet the dawn

praising

blessing

and singing:

Christ your Lord.

- The life profession of the Taize Community
(Found thanks to SoJo email from Sojourners.
Here's the Taize website in English)

It Is Beyond Comprehension
The pictures from the Gulf Coast remain beyond comprehension. It keeps getting worse in New Orleans.

• People spending days trapped on roofs or in attics with high heat and humidity- and no way to get in touch with anyone.
• The hotel with all its windows blown out bore a startling resemblance to the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
• An oil rig wedged under a bridge.
• A casino picked up and moved.
• Stories that sound like they are from Erik Larson's book on the Galveston hurricane devastation on 1900.
• A row of Red Cross vehicles waiting to serve- but unable to go very far.
• Almost a deja vu to the tsunami pictures last Christmas.

Back in June, 1972 my wife and I were stranded in north central Pennsylvania after Hurricane/Tropical Storm Agnes dumped rivers of water and the Susquehanna River roared through downtown 10 feet above flood stage. That was beyond comprehension- a 1000-year flood.

And all most of us can do - all that most people in New Orleans can do - is sit and watch and keep from despair. The physical reconstruction will take a long time. So will the psychological. The post-traumatic stress will be rampant for years.

May God's comfort and strength be a light in whatever darkness may have fallen across the Gulf Coast tonight.

A Cup of Joe
I can't resist pointing out the latest news on the antioxidant front.

Coffee.

Java.

Joe.

At last- something I like is actually good for me. Who would have thought it possible!

The Power of Wind and Water
Hurricane Katrina.

She is now added to the list as one of the BIG STORMS. One of the BIGGEST, in fact.

Thanks to the presence of the Internet I watched TV from New Orleans last evening in the preparations for the Hurricane. I could read blogs from those in the midst of it. I could follow what was happening in great detail.

But even with all the technology, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I or anyone else could do about it. It was relentless. After a certain point, when you know it's coming, all you can do is run, or wait and pray. Only that last minute little jog to the east made a little bit of difference to New Orleans, but not to points east. Yes, the technology probably saved many lives, those who could get out of the way. Which is actually a big deal, don't get me wrong. Buildings and highways and infrastructure can get rebuilt. So it is good to save as many lives as possible.

But the awareness of such profound powerlessness is deep and will probably linger in many, many lives for many years to come. The awareness that when push came to shove all they could do was - nothing. It is at that point that we have two options. One is to give up. Despair, ultimate loss. The other is to believe that there is something- some power behind all this that can somehow make a difference. That is the point that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross called the last stage of dying- acceptance.

It is also the First Step of the 12-Steps. Only when we reach that point of accepting our powerlessness at the very core of our lives can we go anywhere truly profound.

My prayers are with those struggling this evening. For the homeless and frightened and despairing in New Orleans, east and north. May God's strength surround them and keep them in the palm of His hand.

Notes: Brendan Loy has some excellent pictures posted on Katrina. He also makes a very important point. This storm was not over-hyped. Only two seemingly small changes AT THE LAST MINUTE kept the whole scene from being a catastrophe only equaled by the Galveston Hurricane and the bombings of World War II. No that is not hype. We must not, as Brendan says, add to the culture of complacency about these storms. They are real and stronger than we think they are.

Computer Update
I am on a new laptop. The old one was beyond repair- or at least would have been too expensive when I could get a new one at a decent price. Got all my old data, so didn't lose anything I really wanted.

And It's Your Turn game site is back tonight as well.

At least where I am, things are good. But I also realize how small my problems were when I think about the destruction from Hurricane Katrina. It does help us put a lot into perspective.

Finding Our Life
A couple days ago I talked about a dream I had that led me to think about the freedom of the soul. Then along I come to this week's Gospel lesson- and, lo and behold- there it is again.

Matthew 16: 24-26-- "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?

As often as I have heard these words, they have a newer meaning this week after that dream. Again, what keeps us hostage does not have to cripple our soul. The Image of God within us, placed there at the Creation by the Creator, can make all the difference if we are willing to take the chance on God.

But that idea of it being a "chance" isn't really what it is. It is a promise. No matter what happens, I am convinced, when God is in charge, that about says it all. Now I don't mean that all will be rosy and the way we want it to be. But it will be the way it is supposed to be and we will have the knoweledge that God is in charge.

Sarah at Dylan's Lectionary Blog ended her thoughts on this extended passage this way:

As we follow Jesus, things will change -- us, our relationships, our world. Change means losing things as they were, but if we've caught Jesus' vision for how God is redeeming the world, we know that what we gain is of far greater value than the chains we lose. Jesus brings us out of old ways of being and relating that bring sorrow and death so that we can be free for new ways of relating to one another, and in the self-giving love in which Jesus forms us, we find real, deep, and eternal joy.

Thanks be to God!

I Agree- He's Not My Kind of Christian
Earlier this past week Pat Robertson got himself back into the news. Then Sojourners founder and author Jim Wallis responded in this week's SoJo email. I agree with Bro. Wallis...

Pat Robertson is an embarrassment to the church and a danger to American politics.

Robertson is known for his completely irresponsible statements - that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were due to American feminists and liberals, that true Christians could vote only for George W. Bush, that the federal judiciary is a greater threat to America than those who flew the planes into the World Trade Center Towers, and the list goes on. Robertson even took credit once for diverting a hurricane. But his latest outburst may take the cake.

On Monday, Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Robertson is worried about Chavez's critiques of American power and behavior in the world, especially because Venezuela is sitting on all that oil. We simply can't have an anti-American political leader who could raise the price of gas. So let's just kill him, the famous television preacher seriously suggested. After all, having some of our "covert operatives" take out the troublesome Venezuelan leader would be cheaper than another $200 billion war, he said.

It's clear Robertson must not have first asked himself "What would Jesus do?" But the teachings of Jesus have never been very popular with Robertson. He gets his religion elsewhere, from the twisted ideologies of an American brand of right-wing fundamentalism that has always been more nationalist than Christian. Apparently, Robertson didn't even remember what the Ten Commandments say, though he has championed their display on the walls of every American courthouse. That irritating one about "Thou shalt not kill" seems to rule out the killing of foreign leaders. But this week, simply putting biblical ethics aside, Robertson virtually issued an American religious fatwah for the murder of a foreign leader - on national television no less. That may be a first.

I find this whole thing so frightening and also so frustrating. We Christians wonder why people don't pay attention to us. We wonder why non-Christians will ignore (at best) or downright revile the teachings we hold to be true. There is not a very big gap between militaristic fundamentalism of any religion. Only the professed "god" of worship changes.

I don't know the Jesus that Robertson is listening to. It doesn't match what I find in the Bible of his teachings and life. Nor does the over identification with American politics as THE politics of God, make any sense. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I've been reading the Bible the wrong way for fortysome years. But I am more convinced than I ever was that what Jesus is about has nothing to do with Venezuelan oil or power politics.

It has everything to do with how we live and move and have our being. It has everything to do with making disciples. It has everything to do with leading us all closer to God.

And no one is ever going to convince me that assassinating someone will do that.

Don’t Be A Hostage

I had a weird dream the other night, the details of which are almost unimportant, other than they led to an important rediscovery and thought. The rediscovery came, as it often does, when I was thinking about the dream later in the day and trying to make sense of it. So, as I was talking to myself I started to tell the story of the dream. I began: “I was being held hostage…” and I stopped. That was the key to the dream. The sense of being held hostage- and in the dream- being threatened with being killed- poisoned, actually.

There are many things that can hold us hostage, of course. Emotions within us toward others; emotions others have toward us; memories that don’t want to get resolved; memories we don’t want to let go of so they can be resolved; unhappy jobs or family situations; addictions; circumstances beyond our control. The result of most of these is an often slow death by being poisoned. We are poisoned by our own situations or experiences and our lives get worse and worse.

What can be done? What CAN be done?

In the dream I discovered that the key is to let one’s soul/spirit be set free. In the dream I started floating and, as someone went to hit me with a stick to bring me back down, the stick went right through me as if I wasn't there. It was clear to me that the message was that the body isn't all there is. There's more. There's the essence of who we are.

We call it the soul. Or perhaps our spirit. I also like to think of it as the "image of God" within us that God created us into. That is beyond the body, beyond the earthly life. The things that can kill the body don't have to kill the soul. The things that we think keep us in bondage can never keep the soul in bondage- unless we are unwilling to allow our spirit to be freed by His Spirit.

That was, to me, a powerful reminder. We too easily allow too many things and too many circumstances to place too many restrictions on us. We fall prey to them. The freedom of the soul in Jesus Christ is unlike the freedoms we hold so dear in this country. The freedom of the soul makes our freedoms here pale in comparison. The freedom of God is, in the end, the one that allows us to be who we are called to be- Children of the Living God.

Kiddy Drinks- 21st Century Style
Our parents would get us "Shirley Temples" It was nothing more than 7-Up with a cheery and coloring. It was a kiddy cocktail. It was just a way to make us feel part of the family when we were at a resturant where alcohol was served and they were drinking. I'm not sure whether it was a good idea or not, but at least our drink had a name other than "7-Up." Well Join Together Online in their news summary has come across this:

U.K. Officials Choke on Kids' Beer
8/22/2005

A Japanese company wants to export "Kids' Beer," a soft drink with a frothy head that's packaged in dark brown bottles and marketed to children who "want to be a bit like an adult," the Telegraph reported Aug. 21.

Kids' Beer is nonalcoholic, but the marketing and packaging of the product makes clear that this is a drink for young people who want to use alcohol. "Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink," says one label slogan. Another reads: "For you who cannot drink, a bubbly head that you will like and a fizzy flavor that spreads refreshment through your body -- perfect for those evenings when you want to be a bit like an adult."

"Children always copy adults," said Satoshi Tomoda, president of Tomomasu, which makes Kids' Beer. "If you have this drink at events attended by kids, it would make the occasions even more entertaining."

In and of itself, this doesn't sound all that different from the old Kiddy Cocktail. But underneath it, I have a hunch it is. The whole approach is that the drink will make life better- or at least you can pretend it does. This is a set-up for addiction. It begins a programming of thinking about drinking as a way to change life. That wasn't why we had our cherry-colored 7-Up. We had no thought that alcohol did anything to you.

Which for me is the red-flag about this advertising. Yet is it really all that different from the gobs and gobs of drug ads we see that promise so many things? Probably not. It is all part of the cultural use of chemicals that can become so destructive.

Some Good News
The computer tech called me today and told me they got all the data off the laptop's disk!

Yeah!

They don't think the problem is the disk itself, but will do some minor checks. Can't see any reason to spend a lot of money repairing a nearly 4 year old laptop when the prices have dropped like they have.

But it is interesting with the laptop down. I have become so used to sitting in the living room with my wife, watching TV and me writing, reading, or surfing on the computer. It has been difficult to have to go downstairs and be separate to write and get things done on the computer.

So, will probably get a new laptop and get back into polite company instead of sitting down here and isolating in my cyber-world.

Excitement Grows
Today was the first day of students and parents coming in to school for registration and orientation. Summer in my job is slow. No students. Once in a while I see some and talk to others. But it's not the day in and day out kind of contact that makes my job exciting, fun, and worthwhile.

I noticed today that there is a lot of energy when things start picking up. It is what I do my job for. To see the new students coming in, to wonder what the year will be like, to know that this year will be unique- nothing like any that have gone before- fills me with anticipation and a sense of joy.

You can keep your endless paperwork. You can keep your computer reports.

Give me a school full of students that I can visit with, talk to, help when needed. That's what it's all about.

And it's still two weeks until school officially starts!

A Bummer of a Day
Yesterday, Sunday, August 21. What a bummer of a day.

We have been in Florida with my father-in-law and had tickets to return to Minnesota yesterday. Being "loyal" Minnesotans our tickets were on Northwest Airlines. But, hey, all signs said everything was okay even with the strike.

On most flights but ours, I guess.

When we got to the airport we are told that the flight is "delayed" and will leave about 45 minutes late at 2:30. Next it says 3:05 and then 3:30 and finally 4:05. We started boarding at 4:05 and got back home around 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 hours late. Okay. That's bad enough but can be coped with. Especially with trusty laptop, airport Wi-Fi and a couple computer games.

On most days but this one.

The computer, which had worked just fine a few hours earlier at the motel does nothing. Just looks at me. Doesn't smile, wink, or give me an icon. The hard drive doesn't do a thing. I try all the options I knew how and nada.

A call to tech support gave me even less hope. They did what I had done with a few additions. Still nothing. No disk movement, no nothing still.

Is it backed up? Well, the one MOST IMPORTANT FILE (read: the Quicken backup) is on a jump drive (Amen!). But all my pictures, and especially the pictures of the wedding last month, are on the hard drive. I can live without most everything else on the disk but the pictures are important. (They are in drive D:, one of the two segments on the disk. It boots from drive C:. Am I just hoping against hope, dreaming the impossible dream?)

So, I sit here on my desktop writing this. The laptop is in the hands of a repair shop. All I ask is that I can get those wedding pictures. Will there be more news tomorrow? Maybe Wednesday or Thursday? I sure hope so- and it better be good news!

Please!

A Parable
I first read this parable when I entered Seminary in 1972. It was the preface to Howard Clinebell's classic text, Basic Types of Pastoral Care and Counseling. It hit me like a ton of bricks then. It still does today, after a career of trying to live it out. Every few years I would use it in a sermon, prefacing it with the fact that it is a story that we cannot hear too often. It's message is timeless and always disturbing.



I thought of it again last week in the Apostle Islands. One morning we kayaked to a place where there were remnants from three shipwrecks. It was- and is- a dangerous seacoast. In the one shown here, the re-bars and wooden hull remain, 130 years later, a reminder that life's shores are where we need to be living.

Here then, the Parable of the Lifesaving Station:

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, But the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought of themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost.

Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of the members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as a sort of club.

Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in this club's decoration, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them had black skin and some had yellow skin. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's lifesaving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself. And if you visit that sea coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.

P. S.

In writing the above post I Googled Howard Clinebell's name and discovered that he died on April 13 of this year at age 83. A giant of the development of pastoral care and counseling, he was always growing and maturing. I was fortunate a number of years ago to attend a three-day conference he ran in Madison, WI on a theology of recreation, Ecotherapy, wildereness, and play.

In Honor of Br. Roger of Taize

Happy Are They
Brother Roger of Taizé

One of the first things Christ says in the Gospel is this: "Happy the simple-hearted!" Yes, happy those who head towards simplicity, simplicity of heart and simplicity of life.

A simple heart attempts to live in the present moment, to welcome each day as God’s today… Simplifying our life enables us to share with the least fortunate, in order to alleviate suffering where there is disease, poverty, famine…

Where can we find the simplicity indispensable for living out the Gospel? Some words of Christ enlighten us. One day he said to his disciples, "Let the little children come to me; the realities of God are for those who are like them."

And so we would like to say to God: "God, you love us: turn us into people who are humble; give us great simplicity in our prayer, in human relationships, in welcoming others."

More from Brother Roger, who was stabbed to death on Tuesday.

Source: "A Future of Peace: Brother Roger's Letter for 2005"

Random Acts of Blogging
Just some disconnected thoughts for today....

• Today is my wife's birthday. Nothing in particular to say about that other than it is amazing to be married to the same person all these many, many years. What a joy!


• Amazon.com just informed me that my copy of Doug Pagitt's new book, Preaching Reimagined, has been shipped.


• After one has spent some extended time on the water as I did recently in the Apostle Islands, one looks at all bodies of water differently. There is more respect, more awe, more fear.


• Which leads to this thought that came last week as we flew into Tampa, Florida from over the Gulf of Mexico and I looked down and saw houses and houses and houses built right into the Gulf. I wonder how those houses will survive the big storm that will hit there one day.


• I am hopelessly hooked (note: as an addictions counselor I did not say I was addicted) on the Jamble word game on the site, It's Your Turn. But they are down after a major disk and backup crash. Bummer!!!

And sadly at the end...

• Brother Roger, founder of the Taize community has died. I never met him, but I have high regard for his spirituality as he developed a true liturgical protestantism that appealed to many longing for such deep and profound roots. Here and here are some remembrances of him.

One of My Favorite Books
Last week at Adrian Warnock's UK Blog, guest blogger Glennsp had a brief post titled:Revelation the Most Unpopular Book in the NT. The opening was:

The Book of Revelation must be the least read book in the New Testament.
A lot of Christians have either never read the whole book or having read it once have decided it is too difficult and have thereafter left it well alone.

Of course it's hard to understand. We often read it the wrong way. We try to make sense of metaphors and images that are meant NOT to be taken literally. They are "secrets" for only the insiders to know in a society (Rome, originally) that was hostile to the church. Yet it is also one of my favorite books of the Bible. It is exciting. It is challenging. It is literature at its finest.

It's style is best described by what we today call "fantasy." The Epic- J.R.R. Tolkein/C.S. Lewis kind. Like all great fantasy it wraps the great story of good and evil in new images that make us sit up and pay attention. It is there to tell us in no uncertain terms that good wins. God wins. No matter how much we as humans fail, fight, and fear, the power of God is greater than the power of what is not-God.

I am a fan of epic fantasy in the first place. I am currently in book two of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. The ways humans in the story (as well as all kinds of other creatures) keep getting in the way or running away or fall to evil is nothing short of what we can see in the daily news. It may be set in a never, never land- but it is a mirror.

Hang in there, John of Revelation wants us to know. Good - God - will win. But what a ride it can be to go with him on the journey.

A Fitting Addition
I find the following a fitting addition to what I posted yesterday. It was wisely pointed out in the comments that lots of people ARE hurt by churches or The Church. (My wife and I have been among that group.) The comment yesterday was that this hurt happens when we subsitute religion or even church for a personal relationship with God and/or we push our personal agends instead of God's will. This, perhaps, can also be seen in what author David James Duncan calls "the 'missionary zeal' of self-righteous proselytizers." It is painful when the act of sharing the Good News sounds more like Bad News and condemnation and even hateful judgement. Anyway, here's the quote that I think says a great deal about what we may be lacking too often.

Let the Whole World Fall In
David James Duncan

True evangelism, based on the example of Jesus, does not suggest the "missionary zeal" of self-righteous proselytizers. It implies, on the contrary, the kind of all-embracing universality evident in Mother Teresa's prayer: "May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in." Not just fellow nuns, Catholics, Calcuttans, Indians. The whole world. It gives me pause to realize that, were such a prayer said by me and answered by God, I would afterward possess a heart so open that even hate-driven zealots would fall inside.
--found on Bruderhof.com

Bumper Stickers Make You Stop and Think
Every now and then I come across a bumper sticker that pulls me up short. Well, saw a car the other day with two of them that really stopped me shorter than usual:

The first:

Religions are just cults with more members

The second:

Churches eat souls.

It always makes me wonder what the background of such bumper stickers is. What experiences or issues has the person had with "religion" and "church?" Did they come out of an abusive religious family and now they respond with such malice and only slightly contained anger? Are they from a family that has a long history of anti-religious opinion or did they come to it on their own? I guess the counselor/psychologist in me wants to answer those questions because I want to find it hard to believe that anyone could hate the church that much.

I know there are, though. Some for "good" reasons some for less than good and some for downright evil reasons. What I have to remember as I see something like that is that God has the work to do to break into such a person's life, not me. I am not powerful enough to convince my own soul to do what's right some days let alone the person filled with such history and feeling.

It made me think about an incident I blogged on a couple years ago. I had been doing Servant Evangelism handing out Handi-Wipes by a port-potty during an event in the downtown square. One person asked me why I was doing it and I gave a standard answer about serving others for God. Wow! What a reaction I got. Here's how I wrote it back then:

“No way! God doesn’t have anything to do with this. Don’t try to push your sh*t on me. God doesn’t care about sanitation. You trying to show how much better you are than the rest of us? Nobody is anyone else’s servant.”

I remained calm and restated the simple fact that God wants His people to be there to help and serve others and this was a simple action of that. It didn’t appease the person. They kept commenting as they waited in line, pacing from one side of the area to the other.

It was a humbling and educational moment. We in the church aren’t used to reactions from people. Most of the time they ignore us. We’re not in their life, they aren’t in ours. Like this person, there are lots of different reactions to God and to us as His people. That was an education in patience and calm. And, like Jesus says to the church at Laodicea, I would rather you be anything but lukewarm. This person was passionate!

So perhaps the person with the bumper stickers is another passionate person, certainly not lukewarm! I wonder what God will do for them and how they can begin to see, hear, and feel the awesome grace of a God who loves them more perhaps because they are so passionate.

Celebrity Christianity-
20th Century Report
BeneDiction led me to SoMA's article on the most famous Christian of the 20th Century. It is quite an article that should lead us all to do some serious thinking about how we make celebrities out of those who profess their Christian faith in highly public ways.

The main problems with "celebrity Christians" - they are:

• A. Celebrities
• B. Human
• C. Sinners like all of us.

As a result when they fall (and they will fail us in some way or another in almost all instances) we are disappointed and wonder if faith is really all it's cracked up to be. We forget that grace is given because none of us is ever good enough to get what God has to offer.

In addition there are those whose inner conflicts, demons, personality flaws, and worse discover ways to mishandle the faith, abuse it, manipulate it for their own self and ego. It becomes a source of power that they want more of. It can become a source of self-righteousness instead of the humility of one forgiven sinner living in a world of sinners.

It is no wonder that the Bible reminds us not to make idols of anything or anyone.

Back Again
Short reason for missing yesterday-
I had no connection. It was down and didn't get back today until this evening.

So now I have three missed days. Oh well. On with the show.

A Culture of Fear-
Even in Public Radio
A link thanks to Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine reminds us of what the FCC has managed to do over the past few years.

WUKY cancels radio program over offensive content
By Jamie Gumbrecht
HERALD-LEADER CULTURE WRITER

A few weeks after The Boston Globe called The Writer’s Almanac radio program “a confection of poetry and history wrapped in the down comforter voice of producer and host Garrison Keillor,” WUKY-91.3 FM canceled the daily featurette for offensive content.

The five-minute segments aired on the University of Kentucky’s public radio station at 11 a.m. until Aug. 1. It opened with soft piano music and the voice of A Prairie Home Companion’s Keillor remembering major moments in writing history. It was a break for history between news broadcasts and pop music, each day ending with a poem and the wish to “be well, do good work and keep in touch.”

But in a time of Federal Communications Commission crackdowns on radio content, WUKY officials say, the poems Keillor read were too risky for airplay.

“I don’t question the artistic merit, but I have to question the language,” WUKY General Manager Tom Godell said. “It’s not that he’s behaving like Howard Stern, but the FCC has been so inconsistent, we don’t know where we stand. We could no longer risk a fine.”

Reaction to the cancellation has been minimal so far, Godell said. WUKY managers decided to stop carrying the Almanac after a recent spate of language advisories, although they were tracking the content for about a year, Godell said.

The warnings, issued by the program’s production company, came about Curse of the Cat Woman by Edward Field, which contained violent themes and the word “breast”; Thinking About the Past by Donald Justice, which also used the word “breast”; and Reunion by Amber Coverdale, which contained the phrase “get high.” The poems were scheduled for broadcast between July 23 and Aug. 12.

WUKY never heard complaints about The Writer’s Almanac because the station always edited potentially offensive language, Godell said. Prairie Home Productions and American Public Media, the segment’s producer and distributor, do not edit or select the content.
--Lexington Herald-Leader

There is a culture of at least uncertainty, if not fear, among some broadcasters today. No one knows who's listening and who's going to complain about who know what. Keillor made this comment in response:

The fact that someone is troubled by hearing the word "breast" is interesting, but what are we supposed to do with A Visit From St. Nicholas and the "breast of the new fallen snow"? Should it become a shoulder or an elbow? I don't think so.

The pendulum swings, I know that. But when quality is subsumed to some unknown standard of "decency" that makes no sense, the pendulum is swinging in the wrong places.

More From the Wilderness
Well, it took me 2 whole days to recuperate. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, sore calf muscles, and the need for sleep are all better. As I waddled out of bed on Monday and Tuesday morning I asked myself, "Was it really worth it?" My answer was clear. "Yes it was."

First, it is always worth the time and effort to introduce new people to the wonders of wilderness and nature. In one way or another I have been doing that for over 30 years. The reaction of young people to the countless stars in the Milky Way that we never see in the suburbs or cities is irreplaceable. The lessons of working together to make the kayak move smoothly or even just to get supper ready are essential.


For me, it is also that moment of being on the water. I have been "haunted by water" as Norman Maclean said in A River Runs Through It. I grew up on the shores where the West Branch of the Susquehanna River meets Pine Creek- Tiadaghton- in northern Pennsylvania. Water is special and exciting and fearsome. Canoeing, kayaking, sitting on the bank watching the river flow. These are sacred events, places where and when the holy can break through. One need only live through a major flood, hurricane, or overly windy day to know that this is not something to play with. It is a power greater than oneself and to come face to face with that power in water is awe-inspiring.

But above all it is worth the time to discover thimbleberries, bunchberries, and birdsfoot trefoil.




It is worth the time to sit and watch the sun set.








It is worth it to be with the youth who are at but a beginning of a lifelong journey.

Join the World Book Tour
Doug Pagitt is photo-blogging his "World Book Tour" promoting his newest book, Preaching Reimagined. (Okay, it's actually a family vacation to Washington, DC, but, hey, what better way to get "exposure"?) Looks like they're having a great time. Go to The Pagitt Blog and enjoy the World Book Tour with him.

No, I haven't bought my copy yet. And while this may look like it, it really isn't a prostituting of my postModern integrity just to get a free copy. That way when I give the book a great review, you will be able to trust my opinion as completely unbiased.

A Chilling Reminder of Danger
Peter Jennings death a few days ago was a chilling reminder of the awful toll that smoking takes on our world. It is insidious and devastating.

Newsman Peter Jennings' death Sunday from lung cancer, four months after he revealed he had been diagnosed with the disease, hammers home the overwhelming health threats posed by smoking -- even to ex-smokers, experts say.

Jennings, the face of ABC News for more than two decades, quit smoking 20 years ago. But he admitted starting again after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

According to the American Lung Association, about 87 percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, and 40 percent to 50 percent of new cases may occur in former smokers.

As an ex-smoker this reminds me of how I may have permanently damaged my own life. I started smoking on a regular basis at age 18 and quit for the last time when I was 42. It has been 15 years but Jennings' death reminds me that I am not out of the woods. With either cancer or the power of addiction.

Lung cancer as my own family found out last year with the death of my nephew at age 26 is a real killer. It is usually not found until it is too late to operate and can progress in many different fatal directions. It is one of the most avoidable of cancers in most people who get it.

Because most lung cancers are diagnosed at a late stage, the five-year survival rate is only 15.2 percent, compared with 63 percent for colon cancer, 88 percent for breast cancer and 99 percent for prostate cancer, according to the lung association.

In 2005, lung cancer will take about 163,500 American lives and will maintain its place as the number one cancer killer, outpacing deaths from the second, third, fourth and fifth most common causes of cancer deaths combined, Dr. Bill Solomon, and associate professor of medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York City, told HealthDay last spring.

Addiction- and cigarette smoking is an addiction as powerful as addiction to heroin- is cunning, baffling, powerful. Conventional wisdom is that addiction continues even when you stop living it and, should you start up again, the addiction acts like you had never quit. That is part of why, even after 15 - 20 years, one must always know that they can start up again without warning. And that may bring about the other deadly side-effects.

Experts advise that if you're an ex-smoker with a cough, get to a doctor and get screened.

If you're a smoker, stop.

"Quitting is good. It's always good to quit, no matter how long you've smoked," Edelman said. "You'll reduce your risk of lung cancer, reduce the degree to which you have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, reduce your risk of other types of cancer and of heart disease. The data is very clear. Even if you're 75, you can benefit from stopping."
--Blockqoutes from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Health page.

Now with the announcement from Dana Reeves, a non-smoker, that she has lung cancer there has been an increase in news information about lung cancer. It IS the deadliest and most common of cancers, yet, probably because of the stigma of being self-caused by smoking, still gets little research money when compared to other cancers or even self-caused diseases.

For Real???
Okay. Got the link in the latest Tourbus from Bob Rankin. Call me skeptical or whatever, this is really something else....

Jinxed computer users might be sending out a bad vibe, researchers suggest

Jen Horsey-Canadian Press

August 6, 2005

TORONTO - Some people seem to carry a computer curse, frustrated by a plague of viruses, hard-drive failures, power surges and software conflicts that appear and disappear without rational explanation.

They blame their machines and suffer the scorn of others who accuse them of doing something wrong. But researchers at Princeton University may have an explanation: these computer users, it seems, could be sending out bad vibes.

"There are some people who seem to have a natural rapport with computers and other complex machines, and there are other people who seem to manage to break everything even without touching it," said York Dobyns, analytical co-ordinator at Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR).

The laboratory has for 26 years studied a phenomenon that just might have something to do with it.

Through countless experiments, the researchers have tested whether people, through their consciousness alone, can somehow affect the output of various devices.

The devices - including mechanical and electronic gadgets - produce random outputs when there are no humans around.

The experiments appear to demonstrate a small, but statistically significant, anomaly: study subjects seem to be able to change the output of the machines merely by thinking about them.

"Viewed collectively across all of the experiments, the odds that this is all just a statistical fluctuation are ridiculously small," said Dobyns. "One in a trillion would be the right general ballpark."
--from Canada.com Technology

I kept looking to see if this was a send-up by The Onion or some similar humor site. The more I looked, the more it seems to be for real. I can understand that there are people who are themselves hard-wired in such a way that they either get computers easily or computers forever confound them. I am the former; my wife is the latter. She just has an extremely difficult time managing to work easily with these things. She does it- and quite well, actually- but how and why they work and how to work with them can be a real challenge.

I also believe in "vibes." Those are whatever those feelings and thoughts and electromagnetic fields that we as humans send out. Some of which I guess could be affecting sensitive electronic equipment.

Come to think of it I do know people who have computers that won't do for them what they do for me.

Hmmmm.

[Voiceover: Meet pmPilgrim. He thought he was reading the latest news. He was sure the day was quiet and calm in his Twin Cities suburban home. But little did he realize that his computer was truly a gateway into....

The Twilight Zone.]

A Weekend of Growth

pmPilgrim resting along the shore of Lake Superior in the Apostle Islands of Wisconsin.

So why would a 57-year old, out-of-shape, and a little overweight, guy spend a weekend doing something relatively strenuous and definitely physical that he has never done before? Why would he bother to take 5 high school sophomores and juniors along with him? Why would he sleep in a tent with a slim layer of air in his Therma-rest pad between him and the hard ground? Why, why, WHY?

Well, among other reasons- because it's there.


It was a magnificent weekend in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in far northern Wisconsin. I have never kayaked in my life. I am not what one would call a "physically active" person. Exercise is a four-letter word in my life. Yet every now and then I do these crazy things.

My first visit to the real wilderness of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota was when I was 45 (and just as out of shape as I am today.) It was a life-changing experience. I have since made a number of trips there. The opportunity came along this year to develop a leadership development, wilderness experience-type trip for some high school students. I contacted the great people at Wilderness Inquiry in Minneapolis for outfitting and trip logistics so I could focus on the programming. They suggested that for just a 3-day trip, the Apostle Islands would be perfect. They were right.


We had perfect weather, other than the wind and waves which kept us from seeing the famous sea caves from the water. We had to settle for a hike to see them from above as shown in this picture. We saw more stars than any of us had seen in a VERY long time. We had a minor show of the Northern Lights on evening after some remarkable sunsets.

But that doesn't answer why?

I will be writing more about this in the next few days but the bottom line is always, for me, found in that overly quoted, but still overly true statement from Thoreau:

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

When I come into the presence of "wildness" or wilderness or the power of nature, I am taken to a new place in my own life and soul. I come face to face with the Creator in a way that I cannot escape the power, the hope, the fear, and the life that has brought countless generations to their knees in humility and worship. The sense of beauty, awe, holiness, and transcendence found in nature is what many, many people are looking for in drugs, alcohol, relationships and the life. Here it is for a little bit of work and effort. Here it is in all its fullness.

• If I can discover a little bit more of it
• If I can be reminded by it of my Creator and Redeemer
• If I can share, for only a moment, the possibilities of awe
• If I can open up new possibilities for some teenagers in their own journeys

Well, I guess that's why.

In Memory- Peter Jennings

(CNN)

Everyone is calling it the end of an era. This past year saw Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather retire from their network Evening News posts. Yesterday the third of those Big Three died of lung cancer. Each of the three had their own individual strengths and things they were best known for. But for me Peter Jennings was the calmest and most soothing of the voices during 9/11. I can't remember any specifics. But I do remember taking my news surfing breaks on ABC because Jennings led the pack in keeping things from sounding too hysterical. That in itself is quite a legacy.

But these past months have seen the outward signs of a major shift in Evening News. The names and faces we came to know so clearly in our living rooms are leaving. News reporting and TV news coverage has changed. Just as TV news itself was a revolutionary shift 50 some years ago, so has the Cable, 24-hour news, and the Internet brought a significant shift. News is seen differently now. News is no longer packaged the same way. It has niches and audiences. The styles vary depending on ratings, politics, and personality. We don't believe everything we read anymore, but we tend to believe too much fringe stuff too easily.

News has never been "impartial" and news outlets have always been in the center of political controversies. Our day is no different and perhaps it is, in reality, a move away from the "trusted anchorman" to the reporter or venue that agrees with me.

In any case, we pause tonight to remember Peter Jennings. Trusted, calm, reporter, and a person of integrity.

The Principle
Found this, thanks to Hamo, at Backyard Missionary

The Central Organising Principle

Gordon Crosby once said that in all his years of service he has never (and he emphasized ‘never’) seen a group go from community to mission. Rather, he said one should organize around mission and community will follow.

As I have talked about before, this is one of the secrets of success of the AA 12-step movement. AA, they say, has but one primary purpose, that of helping the alcoholic who still suffers. AA's traditions make sure that other things like money, power, prestige, personal ego, etc. get in the way. Once you build a community, if that is your first stage, you lose the willingness to admit new people. But if you bring people together in common mission, the community will, if it is a viable and meaningful mission, follow.

Sixty Years-
May We Never Forget
From:Bruderhof.com

On (Not) Getting Used to Hiroshima Day
Johann Christoph Arnold

As the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima approaches, attitudes toward it range mostly from the casual to the ignorant. Not that the menace is any less. Scientists say the world's nuclear arsenals contain enough firepower to blow up our entire planet. Flaring tempers in India and Pakistan have recently brought both nations to the brink of atomic war. Just last year, the White House announced its interest in further developing our nuclear stockpile - this time with more "usable" mini-nukes and weapons that could be launched from outer space.

Yet, as I look around at my children, my grandchildren, and their peers, I sense little, if any concern. Both generations have grown up since World War II. As the last hibakusha (A-bomb survivors) die over the next years, they will lose the opportunity of ever hearing a first-hand account. Before long, Hiroshima will be reduced to a sentence in the history books. The true magnitude of its horrors will be forgotten for good.

The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a horrifyingly perfect example of the awful paradox and its need to choose at times between the truly awful and the unthinkably terrible actions of war.

Okay, I'm Cheating
The header above says it is August 5 and there's a post above this with an August 6 header. But the clock above it all may very well say that those days and times haven't even occured yet.

Isn't technology wonderful? I can get all my posting written and finished and then ignore the blog for a couple of days. I am busy this weekend with a group of recovering and hopefully recovering teenagers. I will fill you all in next week with some information and even pictures. But I wanted to make sure that there is a post for August 6. With all the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II discussions, I didn't want to miss that one.

The events that ended the war remain a defining moment of the world we live in. So I wanted that post to be there on August 6.

So, you're computer isn't playing games and H. G. Wells time machine hasn't finally been invented. It's just technology at work.

Belly-Button Birthday
That's what they call the day you were born as opposed to your sobriety birthday. Well, it was mumble-mumble57 years ago today that Dora and Harold's first son was born. That's me. What a ride it has been so far. As time continues to move on things just seem to get more and more interesting. Which is really how it should be as far as I'm concerned.

Well, I have a hunch that author Anne Lamott would probably agree. I have just finished her wonderful sequel to Traveling Mercies. Plan B continues her at times "R-rated" musings on life and faith that is a pleasure. Perhaps someday I'll talk more about that. But for today I want to give you a series of her quotes on aging. They express it far better than I can in her chapter titled "untitled."

• I smiled with a secret smile of pleasure in being older, fifty plus change, which can no longer be considered extremely late youth, or even early middle age. But I would not give back a year of life I've lived.


• Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life- it has given me me. It has provided time and experience and failures and triumps and time-tested friends who have helped me step into the shape that was waiting for me. I fit me now.


• I have grown old enough to develop radical acceptance. I don't think that if I live to be eighty, I'm going to wish I'd spent more hours in the gymn or kept my house a lot cleaner... On the day I die, I want to have had dessert. So this informs how I live now.


• If you haven't already, you will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply loved person. But this is also good news. The person lives forever, in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through, and you learn to dance with the banged-up heart. You dance to the absurdities of life; you dance to the minuet if ikd friendships.


• I love my life more, and me more. I'm so much juicier. And as that old saying goes, it's not that I think less of myself, but that I think of myself less often. And thst feels like heaven to me.

--from Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott

Catching Up On Some Books
It's been awhile since I have talked about what I've been reading. As usual I have several books going at once and have just finished a couple. So here goes:

• Bleachers-John Grisham. A good, classy storyteller who often, to my thinking throws away his endings. They are either so far out to be believable or just so cheesy that you go, Oh No! This is in the latter. He had me all through the story. Fears, losses, angers, missed dreams, lost loves. But at the end it just... ends. And they live sort of happily ever after with much too much ease. It may be that life is just like that, but it appears to me that he runs out of tension and gives up. Overall, a good read, however.
• Eye of the World- Robert Jordan. Fantasy at it's Tolkein-Lewis best. This is the first book in the Wheel of Time series that is now up to Book 11 to be released in October. Fantasy stories are always about good and evil. But the journey is always arduous and powerful. Jordan does a great job. This book was recommended by a friend's husband. Well, I'm hooked! (Just added Book Two- The Great Hunt to the booklist on the sidebar there.)
• Rule of Four- Ian Caldwell, Dustin Thomason. Like the more controversial DaVinci Code this one deals with ancient literature and people long gone. A thriller that takes place over one long Easter weekend at Princeton concerning a deep, profound riddle hidden in a 15th Century text. What a ride!
• Death and the Sun:A Matador's Season in the Heart of Spain- Edward Lewine. This is a story of a season of bullfighting in Spain with Torero Francisco Rivera Ordóñez, a fourth-generation bullfighter. When I was in Spain a few years ago I attended a corrida and found it fascinating. Issues of the morality of the event are set aside in this entralling visit to a timeless craft and entertainment.

So many books, so little time!

Age Changes Perspective-
Sort Of
As August dawns, I usually spend a few days thinking about getting older. Thursday is my birthday. I'll have more to say on Thursday, but the topic came up this evening as my wife and I were talking. She started by commenting about the ad on TV for the DVD of the TV series, Victory at Sea. She said that she used to use part of that when she was teaching. I paused and said, "Back then it was recent events. Do you realize that when you were teaching, it was less than 25 years after the end of the war?"

Then I reflected for myself. "You know, whenever I see a car with a Vietnam Veteran license plate, I am still surprised when the person driving is an older person."

In my head a Vietnam Veteran is a person in their early to mid 20s, not someone 50-something, balding or gray-haired. Hey, in my head that also describes me since I am of that era. It is a standard of human life, I think, that we keep this image of ourselves (and our generation) as being some magic younger age. That is for me one of the great mysteries of getting older- but it explains a lot about people I have known over the years.

We do refuse to accept the changes that are happening within and around us with our own lives because we really don't see them. In our mind's eye we are still able to do whatever we want to do. Don't confuse me with facts. You don't understand. I'm fine. So when it comes time to sell that house and "downsize" or accept the fact that your child is now an adult- and probably older than you think you are- it becomes a major battle.

We become afraid that once we give in to aging it will take over and we will immediately become invalids. It's behind the unfortunate promise extracted from children: "Promise me you will never put me in a nursing home." The child accepts when the answer should be, "No, I can't promise that because I may not be able to do what you need me to do to take care of you."

Yet my generation is facing that issue in the most painful ways. Our parents are getting older. They have lived longer than their parents generation and have been generally in better health for longer. They, like we will be in another 25 - 30 years, are not able to put it all together into the reality we face. Family feuds and disagreements will grow. At times it may even look like the 60 all over again as neither generation really has ever come to understand the other.

I pray that I will be able to remember this when I have to sit down with my father-in-law. I pray that I will remember that just as I still expect Vietnam vets to be in their 20s, he and his generation expect the Korean or WW II vets to be that age. It is all in perspective and in how we manage to guard and keep each others dignity.

THAT was a HOT Month-
But It Is Summer
July was one of the hottest Julys on record here in the Twin Cities. For those of you who think we don't have summer up this way, consider this. At my front yard thermometer we had:

2 days at 100 or above;
16 days in the 90s;
12 days in the 80s
only 1 day with the high in the 70s.

We had a day when the dewpoint was at a decidedly very high 80! The average high temperature for the month was 91 and the average low was 67. But, hey, that's summer.

Actually it's been 17 years since we have had this many days at 90 or above, although they tell me that it was hotter a few years ago.

Which brings me to the big question.... So What? Why is it that we spend fo much time dealing with weather. It takes up a lot of time on a nightly newscast. Locally here it is about two and a half minutes- a lot of air time.

Especially when we can't do a single thing about it.

Or perhaps that is why we spend so much time with it. It may be the ultimate example of our human powerlessness, our ultimate inability to do anything about our lives and our fate. We can be as "weatherwise" as we want, we still have a hard time doing anything but playing the odds with our forecasts.

One last comment- I actually like the hot weather. When you consider that our average low temperature for the year through yesterday is only 7 degrees above freezing and it becomes clear to me that this fleeting moment of heat will be but a memory in the not too distant future.

So, sweat away.