In Mexico the polite person does not send their wedding invitations through the mail to be delivered by a stranger. You must take the invitation (which is plainly visible in the clear envelope which carries it) to the person you are going to invite. It's very personal and personable. So Sam and Shadai have been making the rounds between his work and her classes to deliver their invitations personally to their invitados. So, when the Gonzalez family gathered the day before Easter for their traditional Sabado de Gloria, Sam and Shadai carried their bag of invitations that had been carefully addressed to the family.
Sabado de Gloria
What is Sabado de Gloria? It is the day before Easter in Mexico. But in the Gonzalez family it has a double meaning. Back when Josue and his brothers and sister were little his dad decided that they were going to begin a family tradition. Josue's mom's name was Gloria and so for "her" day every year his dad would make something like home made ice cream. But this was so time-consuming that he later changed it to snow cones and esquimos (something like a milk shake). The tradition continued until today all the Gonzalez siblings, their children and spouses and grandchildren and even some in-laws gather to celebrate Sabado de Gloria. Everyone brings food. Someone brings the snow cone syrups and the ingredients for making the esquimos (pronounced es KEY mos). In the back patio there were two solid blocks of ice about a yard and a half high and 12 inches square. They had two "scrapers" and it was quite a feat for the different people to scrape the ice, which ends up in the "handle" of the scraper and is then dumped into a waiting plastic cup (NOTE: if you have any Mardi Gras cups you want to get rid of, I know a group of people who will put them to very good use!) The best scrapers were the older people, of course, although the younger generation, having watched their parents do this for years, tried their hands at it as well. So, everyone eats snow cones, drink milk shakes, then they eat lunch, eat more snow cones and the men and youngsters go to a park nearby and play soccer, come back, and the rest of the afternoon is spent repeating the process.
But in the afternoon when everyone was relaxed and happy (which they always are) Sam and Tio Rene got up and got everyone's attention. Now Sam is bilingual and Tio Rene knows only a few words in English, but they proceeded to
pretend like Sam needed a translator. So Sam said a few words in English about their engagement and Tio Rene proceeded to translate and, to everyone's surprise, he translated it perfectly. This went on for about three sentences and everyone was laughing (they dearly love to laugh) each time Tio translated. Then things began to get a little quirky. Sam would say a long speech, turn to Tio Rene, and Tio would say maybe three words (laughter, laughter). Then Sam would say only a few words and Tio Rene would talk and talk and talk in Spanish to more laughter. The further they went the more we laughed as they hammed it up good.
Finally they got the invitations out and Sam said, "So, line up..." and began to call out the names of each family group. Each family or one person representing that family would come up, shake everyone's hands, get their invitation and give "abrazos" (a formal type of hug) down the line.
And so it went until everyone had their invitation designed by Sam and Shadai with the help of cousin Isaac.
Part of the spiritual landscape of American religion is the sizable role played by choice in a culture shaped in the free market - with freedom as a mythic symbol. It is not unusual to hear American politicians describing solutions to social problems as a matter of “trusting Americans as consumers.” It is as though we could “shop” our way out of life’s difficulties.
And thus it is that Calvinism, as a Protestant option, has never quite captured the mind of the American religious “consumer.” Our culture has long been driven by its own sense of freedom and the inherent right of every individual to make his or her own choice. Thus Christian teachings which do not give heavy weight to the importance of free-will (such as classical Calvinism) have never come to the place of dominance in American life. For Americans, religion is about a choice.
This is not all wrong - human beings do have freedom and it plays an important role within the life of salvation - even in Orthodox understanding. However, Orthodoxy sees our freedom as something flawed - we do not always choose as we should - nor do we always know what the good is to be chosen. Freedom has a role to play in the life of salvation - but is not itself what constitutes salvation. Indeed, our freedom is itself in need of salvation.
This brings me to the title of this short piece: the Kingdom of God is not a choice we make. There are many ways to describe the Kingdom - a variety of metaphors employed in the New Testament - but in every case the Kingdom is God’s Kingdom - not our response to God.
I occasionally state in sermons that “the Kingdom of God is coming whether you like it or not.” In this sense, particularly, it is not a choice we make - it is a gift that is given from God. In Christ, particularly in the fullness of His death and resurrection - the Kingdom of God has come. Though we still pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” we are not devoid of its presence now. “Thy Kingdom come” is a prayer for its fullness - but not for its inauguration.
The Kingdom of God is a reality already among us - though we frequently are oblivious to its presence. The heart of secularism is its assurance that the Kingdom of God is not here now, not yet, and perhaps only refers to something somewhere else or even nothing more than a utopian vision of the future. Of course, secularism and its infection of Christian thought is commonplace in modern culture. The world is not seen as sacramental, capable of bearing the Divine, but at best as a neutral playing field in which human beings choose sides in the religious contest of Christianity (or other religions or none of the above).
But the fullness of Christian truth and revelation is that the Kingdom of God has already broken forth among us, and the Christ who brought it forth promised that it would remain. Thus we eat and drink His Body and His Blood - not reminders of a historical event - but a foretaste of the fullness of the Kingdom. It is the Bread of Heaven - food, though not of the world yet in the world.
The whole of the sacramental life has this character of the Kingdom. And the sacramental life extends far beyond the Seven Sacraments that are traditionally described. The Kingdom has a quality that breaks into all of life unable to be restrained or hindered by man. We are not in charge of its arrival nor are we the masters of its growth. We may participate in its life and serve as its witnesses - even as citizens - but it is not our creation or something we offer to God. It comes from God and bears God.
I reflected on the song shared in the last post, written by St. Nikolai Velimirovich. There it seems clear - “Christ is risen, joy has been given.” Everything is made bright with the resurrection of Christ. It is not a choice other than for us to say: “Indeed He is risen!”
Cancer, My Teacher
BY TAMI PALUMBO
On January 15 of this year I received the most dreaded news from a doctor that anyone can receive, "The cancer has invaded your liver and it is inoperable. We can give you stronger doses of chemo with the hope that it would extend your life some months. But otherwise there is nothing we have to offer you." I have been fighting this battle with breast cancer six and a half years. Only God knows if I am nearing the end. Although it has been a difficult journey, it has been a fascinating one at the same time. God has taught me about His faithfulness, His goodness and His love. I want to give testimony of Romans 8:28 …that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (NIV)
Cancer has drawn me closer to God. Hosea 5:15b says…in their misery they will earnestly seek me. Spiritually speaking, I am not the same person I was almost seven years ago. In fact, it all started the summer of 2001. Mike was in CA at the time doing a residency for a doctoral degree and I was in Phoenix visiting my parents along with our five children who at the time were between the ages of 4 and 14. I was given the gift of a week of mornings to myself as my parents took all five of the kids to the VBS at their church. I took advantage of the time alone and spent time in prolonged Bible study and prayer. It was a time in my life when I was dissatisfied with my spiritual life. I felt I was spending more time "doing" than just "being." I remember crying out to God that I wanted to know Him more. I wanted to see His glory. I begged Him to use my life in whatever way to bring honor and glory to Him. I was even praying the Prayer of Jabez. "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory." Little did I know that by the end of August of that same summer I would embark on a new and quite frightful journey, yet one that has allowed me to experience God in incredible ways, to know Him more intimately and love Him more deeply.
Cancer has taught me to practice the presence of God. During our recent LAM retreat, Jack Voelkel pointed out a truth we all know yet sometimes forget, "I am never alone." Weeks before my initial diagnosis, I was leading a study on Psalm 23 with the women in our church. The morning of my needle biopsy, before we left for the hospital, I was rereading the Psalm and praying. I sensed the Lord tell me, "Take my hand, Tami – I will lead you. I will lead you slowly so you won't fall and I don't expect you to go quickly because you don't know the way or what lies ahead. But I will tenderly and lovingly lead you." God has never left me.
My husband Mike has been an incredible example to me of faithfulness during these past years. He has accompanied me to appointment after appointment and treatment after treatment, yet there are times when even Mike cannot be by my side. For instance, during my radiation treatments I was placed in a cold, sterile room and told to lay half-naked on a stainless steel bed with just a small pillow for my head. After my body was lined up according to the infrared markings on the computer, the technicians would scurry out of the room as the foot-thick concrete door closed behind them and the red light would begin to flash "danger radiation." It was a lonely and frightening time for me. One day during my treatment as I was laying there feeling humiliated, I envisioned what it was like for Christ on the cross. I thought that I am in this situation of having cancer not by choice, yet, Christ chose to suffer and die and be humiliated on the cross because of my sins. My heart overflowed with gratitude and I felt God's presence in a powerful way that day.
I have had some of the best praise and worship times as I have had to sit quietly in a cold, dark room to wait an hour for the radioactive material that was injected in me to course through my body so a PET scan could be performed. I have felt his presence in the middle of the night when sleep evades me and my thoughts are racing. Psalm 23:4 has become a reality for me, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."(NIV)
Cancer has taught me that God is sovereign over all things. About six months ago, Mike suggested that I listen to a health report on Fox News. He thought it would be of interest to me. Poor Mike, little did he know how I would react. It was an interview with a woman who had written a book about her battle with breast cancer. There were many similarities between the two of us – our age, the stage and type of cancer when we were initially diagnosed, etc. She flew across country to one of the top cancer centers in the country for her treatment and she had a friend who is an expert nutritionist make up a specific diet for her. Seven years later, she is cured, looks beautiful and has written a book. She is healed and I am not. I began to cry, "That's not fair. She doesn't even have kids to live for." I sobbed that day there in my kitchen as I was preparing our meal. Then God impressed upon my heart. "Who are you the clay to question the potter what I am doing? I can do with her as I please and with you as I please." I had read just a few days before in my Bible reading Isaiah 29:16 "You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, "He did not make me"? Can the pot say of the potter, "He knows nothing"?"(NIV)
Jack's words during the same retreat hit a nerve with me as he reminded us not to compare ourselves to anyone else. God has specific plans for each of us. I took it as "Don't be envious of someone else's good health and strong body. God has a purpose for me."
Cancer has taught me about the "sacrifice of praise." I don't remember where I got this quote but I wrote it in my journal last July.
"When I think of a sacrifice of praise, I think of the word embrace. Embracing the will of God, even when the feelings aren't there, is offering to God your heart, wholly dedicated to his purposes. It is believing that, according to Romans 12:1-2, you can prove in practice that God's plan for you is "good, pleasing and perfect.""
We have experienced the sacrifice of praise various times as a family but one time in particular stands out in my mind. Mike and the children were in the Chicago area in August 2005 moving our oldest son into Wheaton College. I was in a natural health clinic in Cleveland, Ohio and I had just found out that the cancer had metastasized to my bones. Up until this time we had been optimistic about the treatment we had chosen to fight my cancer. I traveled to Wheaton to be with Mike and the children. As a mom I was very concerned about how we were going to tell the children the bad news and how they were going to handle it. I had asked many friends to pray for us as we shared this latest development with our kids. The evening after I arrived we sat the kids down and discussed the situation with them. We talked, cried and prayed together. Then we began to sing praise songs in Spanish with Jonathan accompanying on the piano. After a moment, tears were dried, smiles returned and joy was restored and God's presence filled the room. It is easy to praise God when everything is alright. It becomes a sacrifice to praise Him when we don't feel like it. But that is what we are told to do.
Cancer has taught me to surrender completely to God's will. By nature I am a controller. I love to plan and organize and make sure that everything is under control. My parents tell me that when I was in grade school and had to walk the length of our street to school, the neighbors would make comments that I didn't look like I was going to "attend" school instead I looked like I was going to "teach" school.
Cancer is something I can't control. Even though I don't like it, I have to surrender my will to God and say as Jesus said in the garden, "Not my will, but yours be done." I have learned that God can be trusted. In fact since I have taken my will out of the picture, God has been able to do much more than I ever imagined.
Cancer has made me long for heaven. As the disease has progressed, my ability to do things has diminished. I used to be very athletic. I grew up playing softball and running track. I loved to snow ski and water ski. Two years ago when we were in MN for the first winter in 24 years, my family had the chance to learn to snow ski. I longed to ski with them as I sat inside the chalet watching them slip and slide. Yet, unless God heals me, I won't be skiing again until I am in heaven.
This past February, some dear friends paid for us to go to Hawaii for a vacation. As our plane landed on the island of Maui, the pilot said over the intercom, "Welcome to paradise!" I chuckled as I contemplated that this earth is not paradise. Later in the week, as I sat on the beach enjoying the incredibly beautiful view, my thoughts turned to the true Paradise and I rejoiced in the fact that Heaven is a real place prepared for all believers and that it will be even prettier than Maui!
Cancer has allowed me to experience the love of Christ through the body of Christ on earth. I don't have enough room to even begin to tell of the numerous times we have been ministered to by brothers and sisters in the Lord during my cancer journey. From Keila and Kiana Pieters donating their long hair to have a wig made for me to friends sending us on a dream trip to Hawaii, God's love hasn't ceased to amaze me. From churches who didn't know us but took us under their wing anyway and provided for all of our needs because that is what Jesus says we should do. Our lives have been blessed though the love of the body of Christ.
I am feeling well right now. I don't feel like I have a terminal disease. I hope and pray for healing because I feel like there is still so much for me to do here on this earth. But my life is in God's hands. In Job 14:5 it says, "Man's days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed."(NIV) I hope this is not good bye, but if it is I will be waiting for you on the other side and "getting things organized" for all of you.
I would like to conclude with this passage of scripture from II Corinthians 4: 16 – II Cor. 5:1 "Therefore do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands."(NIV)
--Written March 1st 2008 and shared March 2nd at LAM retreat.
It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.
When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.
No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?
The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”
Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.
But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.
Are you sitting down?
Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.
These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.
The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush — showing not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.
“It’s a disaster,” says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. “Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take ‘Congressional risk.’ They say if you don’t get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects.”
It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point “where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics” that it would turn its back on the next great global industry — clean power — “but that’s exactly what is happening.” If the wind and solar credits expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won’t be made.
While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.
In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology, with 40 percent of global solar production. “Last year, we were less than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas markets.”
The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.
Bush Made Permanent by Paul Krugman, borrowed from the New York Times
As the designated political heir of a deeply unpopular president — according to Gallup, President Bush has the highest disapproval rating recorded in 70 years of polling — John McCain should have little hope of winning in November. In fact, however, current polls show him roughly tied with either Democrat.
In part this may reflect the Democrats’ problems. For the most part, however, it probably reflects the perception, eagerly propagated by Mr. McCain’s many admirers in the news media, that he’s very different from Mr. Bush — a responsible guy, a straight talker.
But is this perception at all true? During the 2000 campaign people said much the same thing about Mr. Bush; those of us who looked hard at his policy proposals, especially on taxes, saw the shape of things to come.
And a look at what Mr. McCain says about taxes shows the same combination of irresponsibility and double-talk that, back in 2000, foreshadowed the character of the Bush administration.
The McCain tax plan contains three main elements.
First, Mr. McCain proposes making almost all of the Bush tax cuts, which are currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, permanent. (He proposes reinstating the inheritance tax, albeit at a very low rate.)
Second, he wants to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which was originally created to prevent the wealthy from exploiting tax loopholes, but has begun to hit the upper middle class.
Third, he wants to sharply reduce tax rates on corporate profits.
According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the overall effect of the McCain tax plan would be to reduce federal revenue by more than $5 trillion over 10 years. That’s a lot of revenue loss — enough to pose big problems for the government’s solvency.
But before I get to that, let’s look at what I found truly revealing: the McCain campaign’s response to the Tax Policy Center’s assessment. The response, written by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office, criticizes the center for adopting “unrealistic Congressional budgeting conventions.” What’s that about?
Well, Congress “scores” tax legislation by comparing estimates of the revenue that would be collected if the legislation passed with estimates of the revenue that would be collected under current law. In this case that means comparing the McCain plan with what would happen if the Bush tax cuts expired on schedule.
Mr. Holtz-Eakin wants the McCain plan compared, instead, with “current policy” — which he says means maintaining tax rates at today’s levels.
But here’s the thing: the reason the Bush tax cuts are set to expire is that the Bush administration engaged in a game of deception. It put an expiration date on the tax cuts, which it never intended to honor, as a way to hide those tax cuts’ true cost.
The McCain campaign wants us to accept the success of that deception as a fact of life. Mr. Holtz-Eakin is saying, in effect, “We’re not engaged in any new irresponsibility — we’re just perpetuating the Bush administration’s irresponsibility. That doesn’t count.”
It’s the sort of fiscal double-talk that has been a Bush administration hallmark. In any case, it offers no answer to the principal point raised by the Tax Policy Center analysis, which has nothing to do with scoring: the McCain tax plan would leave the federal government with far too little revenue to cover its expenses, leading to huge budget deficits unless there were deep cuts in spending.
And Mr. McCain has said nothing realistic about how he would close the giant budget gap his tax cuts would produce — a gap so large that eliminating it would require cutting Social Security benefits by three-quarters, eliminating Medicare, or something equivalently drastic. Talking, as Mr. Holtz-Eakin does, about fighting waste and reforming procurement doesn’t cut it.
Now, Mr. McCain isn’t unique in making promises he has no way to pay for — the same can be said, to some extent, of the Democratic candidates. But Mr. McCain’s plan is far more irresponsible than anything the Democrats are proposing, and the difference in degree is so large as to be a difference in kind. Mr. McCain’s budget talk simply doesn’t make sense.
So what are Mr. McCain’s real intentions?
If truth be told, the McCain tax plan doesn’t seem to embody any coherent policy agenda. Instead, it looks like a giant exercise in pandering — an attempt to mollify the G.O.P.’s right wing, and never mind if it makes any sense.
The impression that Mr. McCain’s tax talk is all about pandering is reinforced by his proposal for a summer gas tax holiday — a measure that would, in fact, do little to help consumers, although it would boost oil industry profits.
More and more, Mr. McCain sounds like a man who will say anything to become president.
Recently I visited my Nana, the most beautiful 82 year old in the world. We talked, ate, talked, sat outside in the warm rain, watched America's Funniest Videos, and Star Wars: A New Hope, which I spent most of explaining the plot to her.
Obama: The Know-too-much candidate? by Roger Simon, borrowed from Politico.com
Having had the national media at his feet for more than a year, Barack Obama now finds them at his throat.
The fault is his. He has disappointed us. He is not winning every voting bloc in every state. He cannot close the deal.
Running against an older, white candidate, Obama has been losing the older, white vote.
Zounds. What did we ever see in this guy?
The Bubba voters, the NASCAR voters and the Joe Six-Pack voters don’t seem to like him. (This is according to exit polls, whose accuracy is an open question but whose results are the crack of media analysis.)
Pennsylvania proved to be the turning point. Even though it had been clear since the earliest polls that Obama would lose Pennsylvania, the press was shocked by Obama’s loss of Pennsylvania.
The significance of this loss becomes clear when you see it as part of a larger picture: The superdelegates, the party insiders who will decide the nomination, are watching events very, very closely. And what do they see?
Obama has now lost the popular vote in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. He has been hurt by the irresponsible statements of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Obama insulted small-town Americans when he accused them of “clinging” to guns and religion.
Hillary Clinton has accused Obama of being “elitist and out of touch.” (And Clinton should know: She lived in a governor’s mansion for 12 years and in the White House for eight, and you can’t get more in touch with real America than that.)
So far, however, there has been no great stampede of superdelegates to Clinton. (Since Super Tuesday, Obama has picked up 87 and she has picked up seven, according to his campaign.) Which just goes to show how out of touch and elitist the superdelegates must be. Or else, how politically savvy they are: They don’t find it shocking that Obama can’t win every demographic group in every state.
Not that he has to. No Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson has won the white vote. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton found that if you win enough of the white vote and an overwhelming percentage of the black vote, you can get to the White House.
But what about Obama’s bigger problem? Comparisons are already being made between Obama and Adlai Stevenson, who was an intellectual (read: loser). Obama used to teach law at the University of Chicago, one of the brainiest universities in the country.
And Americans don’t want presidents who are too brainy. (Obviously.) We would rather plunge into foreign wars or fall off economic cliffs than have presidents who know too much. That is because braininess is elitist, and being an elitist is the worst thing you can be if you want to be president.
Obama now gets this. Since his loss in Pennsylvania, he has been emphasizing his non-elitist roots. At a recent news conference at a gas station in Indianapolis, he said, “I basically buy five of the same suits and then I patch them up and wear them repeatedly.”
(I guess Obama thinks this is supposed to appeal to the working classes, but my father was a truck driver, and he would have thought that owning five suits was a lot.)
At the same news conference, Obama said that what he ate while growing up also reflects his non-elitist upbringing: “I was raised in a setting with my grandparents who grew up in small-town Kansas, where the dinner table would have been very familiar to anybody here in Indiana: a lot of pot roasts and potatoes and Jell-O molds.”
That settles that, I guess. Diet is destiny. But does anybody besides me find it a little dismaying that a person feels he has to campaign for president in this country based on whether he ate Jell-O molds as a kid? (Though, now that I think of it, how did my mother actually suspend those little marshmallows in the Jell-O? Wires?)
Wouldn’t it be more refreshing if Obama was saying what he used to say: that it is wrong to “slice and dice” voters into isolated groups and that it would be good for America to emphasize what unites people and not what divides us?
But Obama’s new approach is valuable for one thing: It teaches us that everything our parents told us was wrong.
“Study hard so you can go to a good school and get a good job,” parents say. “And stop dressing like a bum!”
But not if you want to be president.
I have a new love in my life: Peter Kreeft. I've been listening recently to some free audio on his website. Several are fascinating, but it all began with this one. It's not that his arguments for God's existence are new. Rather, they are takes on what Christian philosophers have long said in the debate. But as of late, in especial regard to all the heavy blows various scientists and thinkers have tried to land on God, I think the soundness of these old arguments on Kreeft's lips ring quite clear. It's about 75 mins long, which isn't exactly brief, but I'd say about half an hour in, things really start rolling, and he articulates a few of the arguments in ways I've never heard, and powerfully. And interestingly, the question and answer session at the end is the best I've ever heard, with intelligent, relevant, and difficult questions. I'll let you decide for yourself what you think of his answeres to the direct questions.
Faith has been taking a difficult route for me lately. It's really hard to articulate what's going on with me. I suspect, however, that my understanding of my life, hope, and goals are very much oriented around myself, what makes me happy, what stimulates me and challenges me, what I think I should be doing. It's been a difficult transistion coming home, and I still feel very much in limbo about where I'm supposed to be or what I'm supposed to be doing. Furthermore, my trust in God to handle these issues has wavered, and as I've pondered these things, I'm realizing that the lack of trust is as much the struggle's source as it is the result. As a Christian, one bound to Christ, how is it that my life of faith should be oriented around my own desires, bound by the limits of my intellect? Am I not to entrust my life to God, the one who created me and everything else out of nothing? Is he not the very purpose for which I and everything else was created? The natural equation of Creation? Therefore, whose life am I living really, and whose desires am I to be centered on?
Lots of questions, but perhaps the answer is more simple than I've thought it would be over these last several silent months. Interestinly, yesterday's sermon held a few poignant & challenging quotes that spoke to this very issue of trust, which I'll be wrestling with for a while, I think.
"A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly everyday to someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong in order to be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsaken in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge." -- A.W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous
"Uncompromising trust in the love of God inspires us to thank God for the spiritual darkness that envelops us, for the loss of income, for the nagging arthritis that is so painful, and to pray from the heart, 'Abba, into your hands I entrust my body, mind, and spirit and this entire day -- morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Whatever you want of me, I want of me, falling into you and trusting in you in the midst of my life. Into your heart I entrust my heart, feeble, distracted, insecure, uncertain. Abba, unto you I abandon myself in Jesus our Lord, Amen.'" Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust
"The natural world overwhelms us with its splendor, its beauty, its immensities and fragilities, its incalculable diversity, its endless combinations of the colossal and the delicate, sweetness and glory, minute intricacies and immeasurable grandeurs. It is easy, and among the most spontaneous movements of flowered meadows, the emerald light of the deep forest, the soft, immaculate blue of distant mountains, the shining volubility of the sunlit sea, the pale, cold glitter of the stars. This is a perfectly wise and even holy impulse.
"But, at the same time, all the splendid loveliness of the natural world is everywhere attended -- and, indeed, preserved -- by death. All life feeds on life, each creature must yield its place in time to another, and at the heart of nature is a perpetual struggle to survive and increase at the expense of other beings. It is as if the entire cosmos were somehow predatory, a single great organism nourishing itself upon the death of everything to which it gives birth, creative and devouring all things with a terrible and impassive majesty. Nature squanders us with such magnificent prodigality that it is hard not to think that something enduringly hideous and abysmal must abide in the depths of life. Considered 'from below,' from within the system of nature, the force that drives and animates and shapes the whole of the organic world seems to achieve an almost perfectly transparent epitome of itself in those lavishly floriferous but parasitic vines that -- urges always upward by a blind, thrusting, idiotic heliotropism -- climb toward the light of the sun by constantly struggling out of the shadows in their thirst for the light, extending one tenuous tendril after another toward the sun to swell and slowly suffocate the boughs they entwine, until they burgeon forth at the last in such gorgeous and copious flowers that one might forget what had to perish to make such a triumph of beauty possible."
From The Doors of the Sea, David Bentley Hart
From the university sermon "What is Truth", by Rowan Williams, at the outbreak of the Gulf War (1991)
It would not be difficult to say of our present conflict that is large measure the price being paid for self-delusion on a massive scale by both sides -- a delusion that could be summed up in tediously simple form by defining it as the refusal to believe that acts have consequences. There is the refusal to believe that a ruthless enemy could have both the skill and the resolve to engage in steady but unpredictable escalation of the scope of conflict: the dismissal as alarmist of threats to other parties, or threats of what we are learning to call ecological terrorism. There is the underlying illusion that technological sophistication guarantees control of the course of a conflict. There is the foolish supposition that the presence of an enormous military force will allow diplomatic and economic pressures to operate effectively. On the Iraqi side there is the illusion that the promise of further inhumanities will simply intimidate and the assumption that, because this is a world in which brutal aggression is habitually ignored by the self-appointed guardians of law, democracy, or justice, this particular blow to political pride and economic greed will be passed over too. Further back still are the idiotic habits of supporting the enemy's enemy as a friend, whatever that country's morals (a habit tried and tested in what was once South Vietnam, and brought to near-perfection in Central and South America), and the infantilism of the arms trade pursuit of markets in detachment from the flesh and blood of actual international politics -- and from flesh and blood simpliciter.
As we're all well aware, the US was at war in Iraq some time ago. I remember it vaguely, seeing General Schwarzkopf a hero, even going to a parade of sorts in Louisville where he passed by in a motorcade. I wonder if the simple victory the US found in that war was what we were expecting this time around, too. I was fascinated to read today William's summation of that war in that time to be as untruthful and fruitless as many of us see the war we're in today. In this first bit, he lists five key elements of that war. I think we can argue those same elements, though tweaked, can be found in our war today.
1. "There is an underlying illusion that technological sophistication guarantees control of the course of conflict." -- How many of us have heard the rumor about laser-guided missiles? You know, the kind that will always find their mark with no loss of civilian life? In the last month, I have heard two separate reports of our own bombs falling on civilian functions. I wouldn't say this is common, but then again it isn't uncommon. It has happened before and may happen again. Furthermore, our enemy's tactics pay no heed to "technological sophistication." They are about creating havoc and death and taking whomever they can with them, but all the while with the occupying American troops in mind. Indeed, there has been little if any controlling the course of conflict in this war.
2. "There is the foolish supposition that the presence of an enormous military force will allow diplomatic and economic pressures to operate effectively." -- This is generally the thinking that backs last year's surge in American troops. The idea is that with more troops, insurgents will be better contained and the consequent peace will allow Iraqi politics to function. But the effectiveness of the surge goes only so far as the troops themselves. Remove them and chaos erupts again, or don't and it erupts all the same (Al Sadr case in point).
3. "On the Iraqi side is the illusion that the promise of further inhumanities will simply intimidate and the assumption that, because there this is a world in which brutal aggression is habitually ignored by the self-appointed guardians of law, democracy, or justice, this particular blow to political pride and economic greed will be passed over too." -- In their insatiable thirst for terror and glory, the insurgents perpetuate inhumanities and enforce "brutal aggression", not so much because they believe it will be ignored (obviously, we're at war with them), but indeed because they intend to incite and arouse the political pride and economic greed of the "self-appointed guardians" who thought it a good idea to appropriate a little justice in a part of the world that does not understand nor seeks the promises of our democratic justice. This is not to say that there are not individuals who know of it and would love to have it, but this dream of justice will never be reached by invading militarily a nation because of falsified claims and untruthful intentions. I was horrified yesterday to read a reporter's conjecture that the Bush Administration's long-term goal is not peace but permanent military presence in the Middle East. God forbid it.
4. "Further back still are the idiotic habits of supporting the enemy's enemy as a friend, whatever the country's morals..." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. could tell you quite a bit about what the US was doing in South Vietnam. But Vietnam wasn't a one-off situation. More recently, of course, there are the allegations of how the CIA backed Afghan militants with arms and funds to assist them in their fight against the Soviet threat of the time. The same has been said about Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi war against Iran, et cetera.
5. "...and the infantilism of the arms trade's pursuit of markets in detachment from the flesh and blood of actual international politics -- and from flesh and blood simpliciter." -- One example of this that comes immediately to mind is how the US currently supports several nations world-wide whose governments engage in conscripting children for war. Consider also the recently arrested "Merchant of Death", who dealt in arms to all sorts of people, including the US Pentagon.
Williams continues: How are we to confront such a tapestry of deceit and self-indulgent fancy? This is a sermon and not a political essay, and so it must be said here that we confront it by examining it in ourselves: by excavating our own passionate deceits, our own preferences for believing that the world is not, after all, independent of our will, and that we can clear an innocent space where the discharged arrow of our actions can fall. We shall not truthfully see the web of lies in which our public life buzzes away until we have recognized where the fissures of the same untruthfulness run across our own moral vision. The decay of peace begins with me and you, though alas it is far from true that our individual penitence will restore what has been globally fractured. Still, to try to identify the sin of the politician without identifying, bitterly, with it is simply to treat the world's untruth as something that does not touch me. And that denial of belonging together is precisely, precisely, what the untruth of our public and international life consists in. If you wish to know the pertinence of religious faith to the political realm, here is one answer, in a recognition of the need and the possibility of shared repentance.
"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) It's easy to point our fingers at our politicians failings. I don't think the fact that we're all sinful exempts them from their own responsibilities, yet peace does not begin with pointed fingers. As Williams shows, we can't expect that our small sins will fall harmless without consequences. Rather, it's those "small" sins that are complicit in knitting the first threads of the "tapestry of deceit and self-indulgent fancy", so that we do peace little honor when we willfully forget that. Can it be that peace is the first casualty of untruthfulness?