Most of us make resolutions from time to time, whether at New Years or when

we’re unhappy with some weight gain, after returning from a sobering visit to a

doctor or dentist, or maybe after getting a bigger than expected credit card

bill. Unfortunately, most of our resolves don’t amount to much more than

wishes or good intentions. We can actually begin doing better, though, if we’re

serious about making some real changes in our lives. For example, if we 1) Start

with goals that are specific and measurable, like "I will spend ten minutes

of interactive time with each child daily," rather than just "I want to try to

have a better relationship with my children." 2) Commit to goals that are

achievable. "Losing thirty pounds by the end of the month" may not be realistic,

but limiting fast foods and fattening desserts to once a week is clearly

doable. 3) Make yourself accountable. Make note of your progress, and find someone

to partner with and report to on a regular basis. 4) Reward yourself for

successes. Allow yourself some enjoyable activity after you accomplish a task (not

before). 5) Refuse to say "I can't" to any of the above, but say instead,

"While I'm finding this really hard--I can and will find a way to do it."

Sometimes I’ve challenged myself and others by saying, “What if there was a

million dollar reward associated with meeting this goal?” In other words, if

we make the stakes high enough, most of us will do whatever it takes to get a

thing accomplished.

                                        * * *

Steven Covey, in his best selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective

People, promotes the idea of our writing a mission statement for ourselves, a

sentence or two that explains why we believe we exist. Some time ago I worked at

such a statement of purpose for my own life, not about my day to day work or

vocation as we usually understand it, but about a more basic life calling,

something that can define me and give me direction no matter what life stage I am

in, or how I happen to be making my living. It went something like this, “My

mission is to live a life that reflects a passion for God and a compassion for

others around me and around the world, beginning with my family and church

family. With them, and with God’s help, I want to help nudge all of creation

toward more harmony with God’s will on earth as it is in heaven.” I know that

sounds more than a little lofty and idealistic, but it was a good thing for me to

work on.

One young adult I know came up with this statement of her personal mission.

“To love and serve God by using and enhancing my time and talents and energy to

help others, one individual, one opportunity, one day at a time.” I liked the

way that one addressed the need for us to not only use our gifts for others,

but to enhance those strengths and gifts, and so actually adds to what we have

to offer others in a difference-making way.

                                            * * *

I remember hearing a story once about a man who needed to cross a frozen ri

ver. Not knowing how thick the ice was, he decided to crawl over the surface,

carefully spreading his weight over the ice to make sure it wouldn’t give way.

When he was halfway across, a local farmer, quite familiar with the strength of

the ice at that time of the year, boldly drove his team of horses and a

loaded wagon over the same surface. Needless to say, the man who was crawling got

up and confidently walked across to the other side.

Sometimes we have more anxiety than we need to because we don’t realize the

strength of what supports us, our faith, our family, our friends, our

congregational family. For example, I recently had someone tell me how sensitive he was

to his wife’s criticisms. Having had parents who divorced when he was young,

he lived in almost constant fear that the same kind of breakup could happen to

him and to his young family. What helped him was to have a good conversation

with his wife, to hear her reaffirm how important her commitment was to the

marriage and to their family, and to have her reassure him, and for him to

reassure himself, that she would not leave him--or if she ever became really

unhappy in the relationship, that he would be the first to know. In other words, to

hear a reaffirmation that the foundation under them was solid, allowing them,

by faith, to move forward in their journey with confidence.

                                * * *

Commentator Andy Rooney suggests that Memorial Days and Veterans Days become

times to not only remember the tragedies and losses of past wars but to work

at ending the holocaust of war itself. He urges us to find new ways of

preventing this barbaric human habit, and suggests we may need a “new religion” to

help us do this.

This got me thinking. What if a Supreme Being did establish a faith based on

a brand new agreement or covenant (‘testament’), one that would have its

followers worldwide 1) love and pray for their enemies instead of taking part in

destroying them, and 2) to choose suffering and even martyrdom rather than to

resist their Caesars or Saddams by violent means?

I’d like to tell Andy that I personally embrace just such a religion, at

least as I understand the teachings of its founder, Jesus Christ, who embodied the

messages of earlier Jewish prophets who proclaimed peace instead of advocated

war. Among these were revivalist preachers like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah and

others who represented a minority peace movement within Judaism.

Which makes me wonder, What if every Christian family and Christian

congregation were to pledge to respond to violence the way Jesus did, not because it

seems practical or workable in the short run, but because it is the way God has

chosen to bring salvation and shalom on earth as it is in heaven?

                                            * * *

A 2005 study (DNR 10/10/05) by the Kaiser Family Foundation came up with the

distressing conclusion that the television shows most popular with teens in

this country portray even more sex than the average TV fare. According to the

study, 70 percent of the 2005 prime time shows featured sexual content, with an

average of five mentions or depictions of sex per hour, nearly double the

amount of attention given to the subject in 1998, seven years earlier. On the

recent shows most watched by teens, like Fox’s The O.C., and ABC’s Desperate

Housewives, and others, the number was 6.7 scenes or mentions per hour. How can it

be healthy for kids to be exposed to this kind of barrage of casual liaisons

among unmarried partners--and with unprotected sex at that--and showing few or

no negative consequences for this kind of behavior? Is there any wonder that

our teens and young adults are finding themselves having more and more

distress over broken hearts and broken bonds, some of which may never be fully

repaired? And how might all of this get in the way of their establishing good

relationships that will be stable and enduring, provide a secure environment for the

next generation to grow and prosper? The more I think about it, the more

convinced I am that most of our TVs and DVD players could just use a much needed

rest.

                                    * * *

I couldn't help feeling some concern and confusion when I read in our local

paper that a newly elected politician had announced that he and his wife were

going to Las Vegas for a much needed post-campaign getaway. It's not that I

questioned his need for some R & R, or that I had any suspicions about his or his

wife's personal behavior on the trip. I just wondered why, since this

particular candidate had run on such a solid family values platform--and with so many

other great American destinations to choose from--why he wouldn’t choose to

invest his tourist dollars in a more reputable city like James Dobson's

Boulder, Colorado, as just one example? At least in my opinion, Vegas has done a lot

to deserve its reputation as a Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style Mecca for quickie

marriages, easy divorces, legalized prostitution, gambling and other forms of

anti-family activities. Again, I’m not wanting to make any judgments about the

character of the couple in question. But I take it as a lesson for all of

us--preachers, parents, and yes, even politicians--that what we say we are about

should be congruent with the ordinary, everyday choices we make. If we are truly

in support of pro-family values, we need to walk the talk, and not send

confusing messages to our communities or our constituents, and especially not to our

children.

                            * * *

During the last weeks of my 76-year-old brother-in-law’s life he sent this

heartfelt farewell message to each member of his family and extended family for

whom he had an email address. “I have felt I should express my appreciation

for all the words of encouragement that so many have expressed and also for the

love you have shown to me and my family. It has been quite a journey and it

appears that it is taking its toll. (But) I feel resigned to what God has for

me. God has been good and given me much to be grateful for. My family has

been very supportive. Sometimes I feel it will be a blessed experience to go thru

death and meet the Lord on the other side. I am convinced there is life

beyond here -- (that) we (do) have something to look forward to.

I want to again tell you all that I love each and every one (of you).

It has been great being able to have a number of you nieces and nephews in

our home and to have you as part of our family. Thanks to all of you for what

you have contributed to our lives over the years. When I think of the Church,

I count it a privilege ... that God counted me worthy to serve in the

ministry. May God be praised and His name exalted. Sincerely, Mark

I was moved by those simple words, straight from the soul of a truly good

man, and it made me hope I could have the opportunity to share these kinds of

reflections and goodbyes with my family and friends when I near my journey’s end.

                                                * * *

One of my wife’s nieces, Mary Ann Yutzy, wrote the following words about the

mixture of sadness and peace she felt on the morning she said her farewell to

her young adult son, Lem, who at 19 was leaving home for his first experience

in a church mission assignment thousands of miles away. “He is so tall,” she

wrote. “When I hug him, I barely reach his shoulder. All the words I said to

him were said against his shirt. My Son. I held him for the last time in a

long, long time this morning, and tried not to cry.

‘Be a faithful disciple,’ I said. ‘Let God be your first and greatest love.

Let all the other loves of your life be defined by that... Know that you are

prayed for every single day, and that I will always love you. I am so proud

of you, so glad that you are mine.’

Then she reflects, Is there really anything more to say? How do you say

good-bye to what you want to hold on to so desperately when you know that there

is, will always be, another, higher calling? How can you resent it when a child

does what you tried to raise him to do?”

Niece Mary Ann’s reflections remind me that, hard as it is, life is one big

series of goodbyes, yet each time of letting go is also a time of saying a

hello to another chapter, another start toward the rest of an unknown but

promise-filled future, another opportunity to learn and grow and be blessed.

                                * * *

Becky Zerbe, in an article in Christianity Today called The List That Saved

My Marriage, writes of a day she decided she had had enough of her husband’s

irritating ways, and so packed her bags and left for a stay at her mothers. Her

parents were willing to make a temporary home for her and her 14-month-old

son, but mother said, "Before you leave Bill, I have one task for you...." She

gave her daughter a sheet of paper on which she had drawn a line down the

middle, and told her to list in the left column all the bad things Bill did that

made him so hard to live with. Becky assumed she would then tell her to list all

his good qualities on the right hand side. Determined to have a longer list

of bad qualities than good, she started immediately to write down her many

grievances. But her mother had a different instruction for the other column. She

said, "Now I want you to write how you respond to those things. What do you do?"

It was hard for her to admit on paper things like, I pout, I cry, I get

angry, I'm embarrassed to be with him, I act like a "martyr," I sometimes wish I'd

married someone else, I give him the silent treatment.

When she got to the bottom of the page, Becky’s mom took a scissors and cut

the paper down the middle. Taking the left column, she wadded it and tossed it

into the trash. Then she handed Becky her list of responses.

“Take this list back to your house. Spend today reflecting on it, and pray

about it. Then if you still want to leave Bill, Dad and I will do all we can to

assist you."

It worked, she said. We’re still together, two decades later.

                            * * *

Which divorces are easier for children, the ones where one or both of the

parents is constantly picking a fight, is abusive to the children or to each

other, is strung out on alcohol or drugs, is having an ongoing affair? Or is it

when two reasonably good parents calmly announce they just aren’t able to work

things out, and that they’ve decided its better to separate as peacefully as

possible--all the while assuring their children that they will continue to be

their devoted parents no matter what?

There’s no doubt, of course, that children in the first kind of family suffer

the most from their parents self defeating, dysfunctional ways. But when it

comes to the effects of a divorce, it may the children with the seemingly sane

parents who have the hardest time accepting and coping with the breakup of

their family. They are the ones who are most likely to agonize over questions

like, Why can’t my good parents just learn to get along, like they tell us we

need to do if we have a conflict with a brother or sister? Why can’t they make up

and love each other, live together peaceably, like they’ve taught us to do?

So I’m thinking a case can be made for saying that the worse the marriage, and

the behavior of the parents in it, the easier the divorce, and vice versa.

Even when there is inexcusably bad behavior, though, the wish of most children is

that their parents would first get their act together and then stay together.

                                        * * *

One of my wife’s grandnieces, a mother of two young, active children,

recently wrote this reflection on facing the end of life, something we too seldom

want to think about:

“Tonight, Hunter, my four year old son, wanted to be rocked before he went to

sleep. And I love to do it, even though I think he's just trying to delay

bedtime. As he sat in my lap, he jabbered on and on as if talking would keep him

from falling asleep. Finally I told him that he had to settle down because

this was supposed to be quiet time...and he needed to (rest)...

So I said his bedtime prayers with him and gave him his hug and kiss,

cautioned him to be quiet, and not run out into the hall (so as not to wake up his

little sister), tucked him in bed and said ‘I love you,’ and that it was time

to sleep.

And I got to thinking, as people get older and their bodies don't work

the way they used to, is God gently saying, ‘Slow down, it's getting to be

your bedtime?’ Is God saying, ‘It's time to make the toys be quiet now?’ And

they respond, become kinder and more patient with other people's faults, they

seem to mellow. They're listening to Him. And He gently tucks them into bed and

tells them He loves them. And in the morning, they are refreshed and renewed

when they wake up to see His face.”

Some good words by grandniece Rosemary Hunsberger, young mother of two.

                                    * * *

My great-great grandfather Christian Nisly, of Swiss descent, came to this

country from Germany’s Rhine River Valley in 1804 as a 17-year old. We’re not

sure whether his parents had died and he was just in search of adventure and a

better life in the new world, or whether he, like many other young men from

his peace loving and persecuted Anabaptist community, left to escape

conscription to military service--something he believed was contrary to the teachings of

Jesus--or maybe it was both. At any rate, he braved 89 days at sea, enduring

hardships that included a severe storm in which the ship’s two tallest masts

were damaged, and according to written accounts, having an encounter with

pirates, before arriving in Philadelphia, where he worked as an indentured servant

to pay off his fare for his journey.

Its hard to imagine the sacrifices many of our immigrant ancestors made as

they took the risks they did to make a new life for themselves a land that

promised them freedom and new opportunities. But these are the kinds of ancestral

stories I’m thinking we need to learn more about and to pass on to our

children. Not only will that help them gain a greater appreciation of their heritage,

and for the blessings they have received from their forefathers and mothers,

but these are stories that can inspire them to make hard choices, take the more

challenging road of following their consciences and their dreams in ways that

can shape all the generations after them.

                                        * * *

My grandfather, Daniel Yoder, at age 20, asked his girl friend Fannie Troyer

to marry him. She was only 16 at the time, but that wasn’t an unheard of age

to be considering engagement in their rural Indiana farm community. She,

wisely, asked for some time to think about it, and he, in part because his father

had discouraged this particular relationship in the first place, just dropped

her and never went back to get her answer. In fact, soon thereafter he married

18-year-old Lucy Lehman. A couple of years later Fannie moved to Kansas,

where, at 19, she met and married Eli Nisly, with whom she had thirteen children

and lived more or less happily ever after. Here’s the interesting part. One of

her children, Mary, married my father, and of course became my mother.

Meanwhile my Dad’s father Daniel’s life didn’t turn out so well. His first wife Lucy

died at age 23 of measles, followed by their little daughter Anna dying of the

same disease on the day of her mother’s burial. Then his second wife Rebecca

died at 29 of tuberculosis, followed by her youngest daughter’s death of the

same disease. Third wife Elizabeth, my father’s mother, died at 35 of

complications in giving birth to her fourth child. Poor Daniel came to believe he was

being punished for the way he turned his back on his first love, Fannie, and he

later apologized, not to her directly, as the story goes, but to her husband,

my grandfather Eli. Daniel also once admonished my father never to treat

Mary, my mom, the way he treated her mother Fannie. But I wonder, in spite of all

the pain in my Dad’s family, whether maybe God worked everything out for good,

just as promised.

                                * * *

According to the Center for Media and the Family (mediawise.org), the video

game industry is the fastest growing media phenomenon yet, with 2005 sales of

well over $10 billion in the U.S. alone, and billions more worldwide. A study

that year of over 2000 8 to 18 year olds found that 83% of them have access to

at least one video game player, and that half have one in their bedroom, with

12% reporting they play video games they know their parents disapprove of,

even though only 21% reported that their parents actually had any restrictions on

what they play. Not that there’s not a lot for parents to disapprove of and

be concerned about, given the fact that many of the most popular games are also

the most violent, and that reaching higher skill levels in many of the killer

and shooter games introduce players to ever higher levels of violence, often

including violence toward women, police officers and other authority figures.

What is of special concern is the fact that so many kids are investing so

much time in this kind of intense activity at the very stage in their lives when

their brains are still in the process of being wired together--in ways that

will profoundly affect them for the rest of their lives--because of the pace of

brain development that continues until around the mid 20’s. I know video games

aren’t the only media that are conditioning our young to disrespect life and

disrespect basic values most of us don’t want to buy into, but just turning

kids loose in a fast-paced, M-rated game world where sex and violence become

mere entertainment strikes me as a terribly bad idea.

                                        * * *

A couple of months ago I got one of those e-mails that are forwarded and

re-forwarded all over the place, this one supposedly based on the philosophy of

the late Charles Schultz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip. In it you are to

answer a series of trivia questions like, Name the 5 wealthiest people in the

world, name the last five Heisman trophy winners, name the last five winners of

the Miss America contest, ten people who are Nobel or Pulitzer prize

recipients, the last half dozen Academy Award winners, and so forth.

The point is that few of us can remember many of the people who have made

even recent headlines, even though they are considered the best in their fields.

Most of them have their short season of making big news, but then are pretty

much off the radar.

After you read the e-mail, you’re supposed to then respond to a second set of

questions:

List three friends you had when you were in school. Name five people who

taught you something worthwhile. Think of a half dozen people who have made you

feel appreciated and special, five people you enjoy spending time with, etc.

The exercise makes the point that its not the people with the most

credentials, the most impressive resumes, or who have the most money, who make the

greatest difference in our lives, or who most remembered. Its our friends, people

who care about us, take a personal interest in us, people we love, and turn to,

when we’re in distress. That kind of famous is something we all can become.

                                * * *

According to research done by the Barna Group, more and more religious people

are choosing not to attend traditional Sunday morning worship services in

favor of such settings as house churches, marketplace ministries and Internet

groups. As a member of a house church congregation myself, I can understand that

option. For the first several centuries congregations met mostly in the homes

of fellow believers--and since neither Saturdays nor Sundays were considered

days off in the Roman empire, Christians had to meet early on Saturday or on

the first day of the week or some time in the evening for their meals together

and for their fellowship, teaching and prayers. But I can’t imagine

experiencing real church on some Internet site, to fellowship together in some chat room

in place of actually meeting people face to face. What would be missing for me

is the element of touch, the handshake or embrace of greeting, of the actual

breaking of a loaf of bread and the sharing of a cup of wine or grape juice as

signs of Jesus’ presence, of laying on of hands in prayer or baptism or

commissioning, or of anointing a sick person with oil as a part of a prayer for

healing. Somehow, for me, you have to be together, to touch, whether in the

intimacy of a living room in the case of a house church or the joining of voices in

prayer and song in an specially built sanctuary. Being there, face to face,

with God and each other, is what makes church happen.

                                    * * *

"It is not surprising that most people believe global violence is on the

rise,” writes Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Center at the University

of British Columbia and former UN official. But, he says, “most people,

including many leading policy makers and scholars, are wrong. The reality is that,

since the end of the Cold War, armed conflict and nearly all other

forms of political violence have decreased. The world (as a whole) is

(actually) far more peaceful than it was." I found those words surprising, and

heartening, even though I don’t have as much faith as some in political institutions

being able to create and sustain a peaceful world. But I applaud any signs of

progress wherever and however they can be found, and I resonate with the

prayer song, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” Yes, let it

begin with each of us taking time to make friends of neighbors who are

different from us. Let peace begin in our homes and families, where we honor our

commitments to our spouses--and our children--and where we respect our aged, and

take care of those who need our help. Let peace begin with each of us

regularly giving generous gifts to help rebuild the ruins created by war and the

devastation of poverty and the destruction of natural disasters like hurricanes and

tornados.

                        * * *

Yes, let peace begin with you and me and spread all over this land and all

lands--and from sea to every shining sea. That’s my prayer.

In the book of Deuteronomy we are urged to influence our children every day

to love God with all their heart, soul and strength. And we are told to impress

God’s good commands on our children when we sit at home, when we walk along

the road, when we lie down and when we get up.

But in our typically busy schedules we may feel there are all too few

opportunities to have those kinds of one on one interchanges with our children. But I

ran across a quote from the Dallas Morning News which stated that children

today spend an average of over an hour a day in the car with one or both of

their parents, presenting a new set of opportunities for some good conversations

between generations on things that really matter. And I wondered, what if we

had our radios or cassette players turned off during more of our travel time,

and had our ears and minds open to what was going on in our children’s worlds.

What if we used more of those drive times to ask and answer questions about

important things like relationships, values, and beliefs. I’m convinced that we

are most effective in our parenting when we establish the kind of rapport with

our young that happens when we are not talking down to, or talking at, our

children, but with them, as concerned and caring adults they can trust. So

whether we are tucking them to bed or chatting over breakfast, or talking in the

car, those times have precious possibilities for great parenting.

                            * * *

My most recent nomination for sainthood is Ruth Mary Byler, who died in

November of 2001 at age 84. Ruth, never married, was a truly beautiful person from

the inside out, devoting most of her life in helping out in a little urban

church in Knoxville, Tennessee, making her living cleaning houses for two and

three days a week, and giving the rest of her time to visiting folks, helping

with weekly services, teaching Sunday School and Bible School classes, and having

a weekly Story Hour for the kids in her neighborhood. Her frugal lifestyle

meant she mostly got around mostly by city bus, which she saw as another

opportunity to meet and befriend people.

I was touched by some correspondence about her written by Clarice Anne

Forsyth after Ruth’s death, Clarice being a part of a struggling family of nine

children being raised by a single mother whom Ruth befriended. “Ruth was more than

a friend to us,” she said. “She would have us to her place for meals often

and after each of the nine of us married she would invite us to come with our

husbands or wives and children for dinner.... she celebrated our weddings and

graduations and made quilts for our babies... All of us attend church today,”

Clarice wrote, and added, “Today there are two nurses, three teachers, an

electrician and an office manager among the nine of us. But we are still the

Powers family who was so desperately poor and almost friendless in the 1950’s...

As long as any of us lives, we will remember Ruth Byler and value her and

everything she did for us.”

                                    * * *

When our director at FLRC, Ralph Steger, and his wife June moved to our area

from the Midwest they decided to leave their aging TV set behind, expecting to

replace it with something better after they settled in to their new home.

Turns out they began to like life without television so well they’ve decided not

to get one after all. “We’re not as depressed as we used to be from hearing

bad news all the time or as upset about the dismal kinds of entertainment

programming that makes up so much TV fare these days,” he says, then commented on

some feedback he had gotten in the Sunday School class he teaches at his

church, where some retired members were lamenting about how bad the world was

getting, how hopeless everything seemed. Then he asked them how much of the day they

had their television sets on, and a number of them reported they had programs

like Fox News and CNN on pretty much constantly during their waking hours.

“Try giving your TV a rest,” he told them, and encouraged them to engage in

other kinds of activities and interactions with people instead. He’s thinking

television news, rather than giving us a balanced picture of what the real

world is like, gives us only exposure to the awful and the sensational, ignoring

all of the good things and normal events that are going on all the time but

aren’t considered newsworthy. Thanks, Ralph, you may just be on to something all

of us should be giving more thought to.

                                    * * *

Dr. Tedd Mitchell , director of the Wellness Program in Dallas, Texas, writes

how when he was growing up, he would come home from school, eat a quick

snack, dash off his homework, and head outdoors. Today, he says, kids are more

likely to watch TV or play video games after school. As a result, he says, we have

double the number of overweight children and teens, and more than one in ten

2-5 year olds is obese. He attributes the problem to not only more screen

time, but the fact that less than one in ten middle schools and high schools

requires daily physical activity for students. He recommends that we all have more

leisurely meals together as families and not eat meals or snacks in front of

our television sets. When we eat more slowly we sense when we are full better

than when we rush through our meals. If we have to eat on the go, Dr. Mitchell

says, we should try to have low-fat and nutritious alternatives available for

ourselves and our children. The second key is to move more often and more

energetically, he says. He recommends we use step counters, and have as a goal to

reach a total of 10,000 brisk steps a day. I’m sure nothing Dr. Mitchell is

saying is new to any of us, but when something as important as our health, and

our children’s health and well-being, are at stake, its all worth repeating and

paying attention to.

                                        *  *  *

USA WEEKEND 1/13-15/06

Sixteen year old Maria Jose Perez, a junior at St. Thomas Aquinas High School

in Fort Lauderdale, in a prize winning “This I Believe” essay done for

National Public Radio, describes how devastated she felt over losing a middle

school election bid for student council vice-president one year, to a fellow

student whose parents had provided hundreds of nice pens with her opponent’s name on

them, something she and her family could have never afforded. She was

determined to try again when she got to high school, this time by overcoming her

shyness and making a deliberate effort to befriend as many students as possible.

She would greet everyone within arms reach, she said, try to remember their

names and their interests and their problems, and to follow up with showing an

interest in their ongoing lives as students. Sure enough, she said, by her

sophomore year, there were students calling out her name in the hall, seeking her

out to tell her about their crushes or how things were going at home. But just

as her plans for running for another elective office began to look more

promising, she discovered her motives for doing what she was doing had changed. She

no longer had the same desire to run for something in order to prove her worth

among her peers. She had learned to genuinely care about her classmates,

saying, “No words can adequately describe the feeling I get when a fellow student

smiles and is genuinely happy to see me.” USA WEEKEND 1/13-15/06

                                    * * *

According to the National Institute on Media and the Family’s website,

mediawise.org, the average fourth grade girl in this country in the mid-nineties

played video games for about 4.5 hours a week, with boys spending over 7 hours.

Today more and more games are available on mobile phones and on the Internet,

as well as on DVD’s that are available everywhere, often circulated and copied

and passed on from one friend to another. So ten years later, girls in this

same age group are playing them for nearly 6 hours a week, and boys an

astonishing 13.5 hours. Its interesting to note that boys these days, who spend more

time with media, including video games, are a part of a trend toward lower

academic performance than girls, and are at ever higher risk for obesity and for

addiction to the kind of stimulation they get from highly intense and exciting

video games. And as retired Lt. Colonel David Grossman points out in his study

of a science he calls killology, they are being trained in the same way

soldiers are conditioned to shoot and kill, a set of skills he says adolescents

don’t need to be learning. Not that all first person shooter games are going to

cause users to become Columbine style killers, he says, but studies to date do

show a connection between lots of use of these games and more aggressive

behavior and less respectful attitudes toward life and toward other human beings,

especially women.

                                * * *

The older I get, the more convinced I am that in the end, our real wealth,

our real worth, will not be counted by how much acclaim or net worth we’ve

accumulated, or how many admirers or fans we’ve had over the years, all assets that

will be forgotten over time, but its all about how many friends we’ve made

during our brief stay here, the kind of people we’ve cared about and who will

likely come to our funeral and will actually miss us when we’ve gone.

If you think of it, every other investment we make will deteriorate, get out

of date, lose its value, or can be taken from us. The only assets that endure

are people--friends and loved ones who have blessed us, and we them, all of

which makes the playing field for the most important form of wealth pretty

equal. It doesn’t take lots of capital or special talent to give our love away,

invest in others in the way Jesus did, in claiming his followers as his friends.

When all is said and done, what more could we really want?.

The chorus of a song by Michael W. Smith that I especially like goes:

“And friends are friends forever

If the Lord’s the Lord of them

And a friend will not say never

because the welcome will not end.

Though its hard to let you go

In the Father’s hand we know

That a lifetime’s not too long

To live as friends”

                        * * *

In a January 2006 Senate hearing on media regulation Dr. Jeff McIntyer of the

American Psychological Association made as clear and research-based a case as

any I have heard on how increased exposure to media violence causes increased

aggression on the part of children. Just as we don't know how many cigarettes

may result in a smoker getting cancer, he said, so we can't say exactly how

much exposure to screen based and other kinds of visual violence will result in

kids becoming afflicted with more aggressive and destructive behaviors, but

he insists that, on the basis of extensive research, the link is absolutely

clear. When the media of choice is first person killer games, the link is even

stronger, in that kids are actually engaging in virtual murder and mayhem as

they are exposed to ever more sophisticated digital images that add to the visual

impact of the violence. Retired Lt. Col. David Grossman cites cases of

teenage school shooters who killed with deadly efficiency even though most of them

had not had actual experience using firearms, but they had all had endless

training in video game murder, and knew that to get the most kills, you aimed for

the head, and used as many rounds as possible in the shortest time possible.

In first person killer games, this is what you learn to do in order to score

points and advance to the next skill level. Its time parents take the

responsibility to make sure that killing is never seen by children as just another way

to have some fun and excitement.

                            * * *

What kinds of touch and other expressions of affection are appropriate, and

what are not, among friends, coworkers and fellow members of congregations? All

of us are aware of shows of affection that have gone too far, of intimate

conversations and touching of a romantic kind that has gotten out of hand,

resulting in experiences of big time devastation and regret. On the other hand, many

of us, whether single, married, widowed, and perhaps aged or living alone,

may really need more of the kind of reassuring signs that they are valued and

cherished, including having a hand of blessing on an arm or shoulder, or even a

gracious hug among close members of a family, or family of faith.

The best kind of guideline I know is to go by the same unspoken rules that

apply to members of a healthy biological family. Individual family cultures may

differ somewhat, of course, I grew up in a family where I almost never got a

hug from anybody except my good mother, but most of feel some of that kind of

touch is healthy and appropriate in a nurturing family. At the same time, we

are also instinctively aware of needing to never cross a line into any kind of

incestuous behavior. We wouldn’t think of sneaking off somewhere for some kind

of hugging session with a sibling or close relative. And whatever affection we

show in our families is not based on the age, gender or physical

attractiveness of a person, and is always and only in public, fully accountable settings.

In that way it is not only safe, but can be one of the ways we can bless one

another in the context of a close knit spiritual family with good boundaries.

                    * * *

An unsung hero I recently read about is Dessie Miller, a Church of the

Brethren school teacher in the Harrisonburg area, who in the Jim Crow days of a

strictly segregated Virginia, got the permission of the trustees of Camp Bethel

south of Natural Bridge to bring three young African-American girls with her as

part of the staff for a week of camp in the summer of 1944. Gas was rationed

and she had to repair three well-worn tires on her prewar vehicle on the way.

When she stopped to call the camp to say she would be late, the camp manager

made the mistake of asking her, “Do you have the colored girls with you?”

Apparently, through a switchboard operator in Troutville and perhaps others who

heard the conversation on a multi-party phone line, the word spread that there

would be a mixing of races at Camp Bethel that week, and when Dessie and her

friends arrived, there was an angry group of neighbors and parents waiting for th

them, with the local sheriff blocking their entrance. After some negotiation,

they were allowed to stay until the Camp board could have an emergency meeting

to decide what to do. Details of the story vary, but when all was said and

done, the camp was closed for the rest of the season rather than risking the

consequences of violating Virginia law and the prejudices of people in the

community.

When it comes to race relations, we’ve come a long way since then, but not

without the courage and the setbacks suffered by people of faith like Dessie

Miller and her three young friends.

                            * * *

Back in the eighties anti-porn activist Andrea Dworkin expressed the fear

that opening the floodgates of pornography would cause men to see every woman in

a sexually debased way, and treat them accordingly, so women would find

themselves ravished and raped as sex objects. Feminist Naomi Wolf, with whom I

sometimes disagree, laments the fact that in a day when pornography has become a

major teacher of what sex is, how it looks and how its done, it is actually

having some of the opposite affect, that it is deadening the male libido in

relation to real women, whom they begin to see as simply inferior porn. Real women,

who come in a wide variety of body styles, and who aren’t downloadable and

then deleteable at will, and who aren’t dying to have instant sex with whatever

male body may be at hand, are seen as just not being exciting enough to satisfy

today’s pornographized expectations. So the young women Wolf talks to on

college campuses feel they can never measure up, that even being willing to go to

bed with a guy isn’t enough in a day when sex, like the fast food industry, is

about everything being super packaged and super sized, where the more

appetites are stimulated by poor-quality material, the more junk it takes to satisfy

you, and the more unhealthy you become. So, concludes Wolfe, “the reason to

turn off porn might become, for thoughtful people... a physical- and

emotional-health one... in the same way that, to become an athlete, you rethink your

smoking.... e.g., Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity.” New

Yorker magazine, 2003

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/index1.html

In a book called The War Against Parents, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West

note that “non market work” that is, work that doesn’t earn money or produce

a marketable product, is given little value in our profit-driven society. And

that parenting, of course, is seen as the ultimate kind of non market

activity. This means that any parent who either decides not to hold down a full time

job--for the sake of spending more time teaching and nurturing their kids--has

to be almost apologetic about it. Its just not seen as adequately fulfilling

or rewarding, especially as those same parents are buying into the notion that

they have to have larger and larger homes and more and more electronic

and other gadgets for themselves and for their children, to say nothing of

having them enrolled in a high prestige university when they reach college age. Few

parents see themselves as the uniquely influential “professors” they really

are in the life-shaping “university” of their children’s pre-school world.

Hewlett and West also believe we should support legislation that would make it

more difficult for parents with children to divorce. “Instead of serving as a

mechanism through which adults express their commitment to others--especially

children,” they write, “marriage has become a vehicle for the emotional

fulfillment of adult partners.” They believe this thinking needs to be changed in

favor of adding to the sense of responsibility parents feel for their most

important assignment, raising healthy, unselfish and responsible children.

                            * * *

In the January 2006 issue of Sojourners magazine, sociologist Amitai Etzioni

is cited as saying that since the early 70’s the “parenting industry” has

lost most of its work force, citing the fact that today fewer than 40% of the

mothers and virtually none of the fathers of children three and younger are

willing to sacrifice any significant amount of their earning hours to take care of

their young at a time when their kids are learning the most about how to

become good, responsible and productive human beings. Much of that day to day care

and attention is being provided by underpaid and poorly trained day care

workers, he says, who may or may not be genuinely invested in providing the kind of

love and guidance associated with great parenting. Etzioni admits that the

traditional nuclear family of the 50’s was oppressive of women, its just that we

still haven’t come up with an alternative model for child rearing that seems

to work as well as that more traditional one. For all its flaws, he says, we

didn’t have school shootings back then, no epidemics of Attention Deficit

Hyperactivity Disorder or juvenile diabetes, teen suicide rates were lower, half of

what they are today, and academic achievement higher. Interestingly, he notes

that American employers complain that today's young workers suffer from “a

deficiency of character and an inability to control impulses, defer

gratification and commit to the task at hand.”

Sounds a lot like the generation of their parents who’ve focused too much on

getting more things and lack commitment to the task of mentoring and caring

for their young.

                        * * *

Danny and Polly Duncan Collum, in an article in the 2006 Sojourners magazine

called Taking Back Our Kids, laments the fact that our children are the focus

of massive ad campaigns aimed at one thing, getting our young people hooked on

consumerism and materialism, regardless of the effect on their health, values

or sense of well-being. They refer to Sociologist Juliet Schor’s finding that

at least one marketing firm “gets girls to organize slumber parties for

research purposed. Girls may be given a new TV show to watch, or a food to try, and

their responses are collected. It’s basically a focus group,” she says.

Schor has also stressed how certain products are promoted even in schools, and her

studies show that materialism is associated with children’s depression, low

self-esteem, and poor relationships with parents. The Duncan Collums article

also notes a Wall Street Journal report of a number of years ago that revealed

that some of the rise of Britney Spears popularity came about by adult

marketers pretending to be twelve year old girls and chatting online about how cool

Britney was, and how great her music was. “Unless parents find a way to get off

the consumerist merry-go-round,” the article goes on to say, “they will never

reclaim control of their family life and reestablish healthy connections with

their children. To do so will require getting control of our own ‘needs’ and

limiting our children’s exposure to commercial culture.”

Without a doubt, rearing healthy, god-fearing children today has become a

countercultural activity.

                        * * *

Feminist writer Naomi Wolfe, in an article in a 2003 New Yorker magazine,

laments that when she became of age in the seventies it was still considered

“pretty cool to be able to offer a young man with the actual presence of an

unclad, willing young woman. There were more young men who wanted to be with naked

(nude) women than there were (such) naked women on the market....(and) Thirty

years ago simple lovemaking was considered erotic in the pornography that

entered mainstream consciousness.” But all that has changed, she says, with

today’s kinds of pornography that introduces exotic forms of sexual deviancy as

being normal and expected, and female partners now being expected to think, look,

and perform like porn stars. Today, as a wiser, middle aged woman, Wolfe has

developed a more sober perspective. “If you associate orgasm with your wife, a

kiss, a scent, a soft body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; (but)

if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images

of cybersex slaves, that is what will turn you on,” and adds, “the power and

charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is

not ‘on tap’ all the time,” and she even refers to the text in the Hebrew

Bible that says, “rejoice in the wife of your youth...let her breasts satisfy you

always.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our young people could begin all their thinking

with that kind of perspective in mind, rather than being led down a path of

disillusionment and disappointment that robs them of the wonderful kind of

intimacy only a good marriage can provide?

                        * * *

For a recent seminar on the theme, From Tablets of Stone to an Information

Explosion, I created a timeline going back to the time of the lawgiver Moses,

around 1290 BC to the present, noting that the major advance in means of

communication in his time was from words carved on clay and stone tablets to the use

of papyrus, an early version of paper. The next major development, after the

use of hand carved or etched print blocks to make multiple copies, was in the

early 1400s, nearly 3000 years later, with Gutenberg’s printing press with

moveable type. Even then, books were expensive and newspapers and magazines were

not generally affordable to the masses. Even a mere hundred years ago, in the

homes my parents grew up in in rural Kansas, before the availability of

electricity or telephones, or the invention of radio or TV, the only communication

media they had were a handful of books, including a few Bibles and hymnbooks,

and the occasional newspaper brought from town. So in this past century more

changes have taken place in terms of a virtual onslaught of media than happened

in all of history since the first messages were carved on stone or on clay

tablets. Today each of us could, in theory, probably access more stuff right in

the privacy of our own homes than is housed in the entire Library of Congress.

When Walter Bruggeman speaks of a need for a pedagogy of saturation when it

comes to teaching our children our faith and values, I have to ask, how are we

going to counter the saturation of all of the other kinds of counter messages

coming at our families from all sides?

                        * * *

Margie Vlasits, a dear friend and a member of our house church, has blessed

us in the faith she’s shown since being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form

of bone cancer. Of course she’s had her share of angry and distressed

feelings, too, but four months into the experience, in an e-mail update to her long

list of friends, she wrote, “.... Each day I realize even more how valuable

relationships are. ..What a way to learn what is really important in life... A

couple weekends ago, we had the honor of spending a weekend with four wonderful

friends who have committed themselves to be open and honest and supportive...

through many of our life struggles... We went through child rearing, family

struggles, and church struggles, and we have laughed, cried, screamed, prayed

and just listened to each other, in addition to confronting and challenging

each other. Through e-mails, cards, and phone calls....we are (still) close...

How blessed we are. I hope that each of you feel free to tell us your low

spots and let us be close to you in them.

She ended her email with this piece by Dawna Markova:

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

Of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

To allow my living to open me,

To make me less afraid,

More accessible

To loosen my heart

Until it becomes a wing,

A torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance:

To live

So that which came to me as seed

Goes to the next as blossom

And that which came to me as blossom

Goes on as fruit.

                        * * *

My sister-in-law, Freda Zehr, recently sent us some email reflections on some

of the miracles she sees in her life, not necessarily spectacular,

sensational ones, but the everyday wonders that move her. In her own words,

“I find it a miracle each spring as I see my one bush of bleeding hearts I

planted years and years ago from my sisters plants, which she in turn got from

my mother’s own garden. As those heart shaped flowers take on their exquisite

color and their strands of beauty gracefully bend toward the ground, I think

of my mother each time I pass them, it feels like a part of her lives on--my

miracle.”

“I find a miracle in looking back over our nearly fifty years of marriage and

still finding my heart skipping a beat when I see him walking down the

driveway and find that not only do I love him as much as I did these many years

ago, but even more. I heard someone say that as you age, your loves loses the

excitement of youth and takes on the steadiness of age. Yes, the steadiness is

there, but, he is still the romantic love of my life...

Finally, “I find it a miracle as I look into the innocent faces of my

grandchildren and even more of a miracle as I see my own eyes in theirs at times, and

know that part of "living on" is our faith, our love our ideals living on in

them just as our physical features do.”

1. My wife’s niece, Mary Ann Yutzy, the mother of five grown children, wrote the following soon after the loss of her dearly beloved 76-year-old father (our brother-in-law): My days hold much joy that defies description or explanation. The ...cardinals at the feeder outside my sliding glass door. Their splashes of red against the gray (sky) never fail to brighten my day.  An X-ray technician whose understanding heart was like a drink of water to a dry and thirsty soul. Her own losses, so recent, made her quiet and gentle, and so, so careful of my grief.  An office tech at the doctor's office who chose not to give me a hassle, but openheartedly and generously changed the orders without requiring another appointment. And smiled.  Clean, warm sheets on a bed...being able to settle in with a quiet contentment.... And the satisfying joy of relationships. Good-natured exchanges with friends. All the blessings that friendships bring. I have been so blessed.  For the love of my sisters, the love of my brothers, the love of my Mama... And the steady joy of having a Heavenly Father who cares, who goes way beyond the ordinary to show His love for us. He hears my complaints, He listens and counts my tears. But ... He INHABITS my praise.

2. On my way to a nearby campus to talk with some college students about relationships, the image of the familiar food pyramid came to mind, where at the base there are the basic breads and cereals, then a large layer for fruits and vegetables, a smaller one for meats and cheeses, and at the peak of the pyramid some space for fats and sweets, for the desserts.  I thought, we should have a similar relationship pyramid that might have as its broad base the daily bread of unconditional love and lots of God-given joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control. This would help us respect and care about others regardless of whether we, or they, are having a good day, and to always treat the other as we would have them treat us.  The large middle layer of the pyramid would be for the everyday entrees of companionship and friendship, for the enjoyment of just being together, working together, listening and sharing with each other.  The erotic, romantic part of the pyramid would be the little peak at the top. I reminded the students that even the most amorous spouses spend only a fraction of their time in that mode, but are together mostly in very ordinary, everyday kinds of activities. If they’re not good friends, don’t enjoy just being together, they’re going to have a very boring and unsatisfying life. Unfortunately, our society has sold us on desserts as the main course. But without the solid foundation of friendship and of agape love underneath it all, it can make our relationships fragile and unhealthy.

3. My wife’s sister Freda Zehr sent us the following about four-year-old Dax, her grandson, who upon seeing a picture in the paper of a football star planning to enlist in the army told his grandmother, “The reason I don't want to be a soldier is because I wouldn't know who the bad guys or the good guys are, so I might shoot the wrong person. And I wouldn’t want to even shoot a bad guy, anyway.”  Then he said, in a voice that suggested an urgent note of ‘I hope so, I hope so,’ “There is never any war in this country. It’s only over in countries where there are no children. "Because the reason you can't have a war where children live is because you might kill them by accident."  Then, "Oh yes, I forgot, there was a war once in this country, but that was before any children lived here, because I saw the cannon down in Harrisonburg.  They shot big things out of it, but it didn’t hit any children because there were no children living here then. It was about a million years ago." "And you know,” he concluded, “You have to be tall to be a soldier, like uncle Jay (who is 6’ 4”). I will be too short to be a soldier, because my mom is short and my daddy is not tall." Anyway, all the wars will be over by the time I grow up, right Grandma?" To which she replied, a little shaken, "Dax, I really hope so."  If only we could truly be able to assure Dax there would never be war where there were children. Meanwhile, he’s trying convince himself that sensible, caring adults would never let that happen.

4. Seems like there’s a lot of church shopping and church hopping going on these days, perhaps sometimes for good reasons. Yet I can’t help but wonder whether it may also reflect a kind of consumer mindset where we keep looking for the best spiritual bargains, checking out where we can get the most possible benefits for ourselves and our family. That’s not all bad, in that we do want our church to be a good fit, to somewhat meet our needs, but we are also called to be about creating the kind of church that can meet the needs of others in the hungry and hurting world beyond us--and not just be in it for what we can get personally. Tim Stafford, in an article in the January 2005 issue of Christianity Today, tells the joke about a man who is rescued after spending 20 years on a deserted island. His rescuer is amazed that he’s built several impressive structures during his twenty year stay. “Wow,” the rescuer says, “What’s that beautiful stone building overlooking the bay?” “That’s my home,” says the castaway. “And what’s that building over there with the spires?” “That’s my church.” “Well then, what’s the other building with the bell tower?” “That,” he replied, “is the church I used to belong to.” In real life, maybe most folks wouldn’t leave a church in which they were the only member. On the other hand, we might just be the very member of our congregation that’s giving us the most trouble.

5. I’ve long held the view that individual nuclear families need the help and support of a larger faith family, a caring congregation, to help them thrive, especially during times of stress. But even in good times we can benefit from having a kind of spiritual “extended family” in place that can be an encouraging and positive influence for our children, folks who reinforce our values and bless and nurture us and our offspring. Tim Stafford, in an article in Christianity Today entitled, “The Church, Why Bother?” makes the point that a New Testament based faith will see being a part of a visible and accountable “body of Christ” not an optional thing, but part and parcel of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. If it didn’t exist, we’d need to help create it.  Stafford cites the third century North African bishop Cyprian as saying, “He is not a Christian who is not in Christ’s church... He (or she) cannot have God for his Father who has not the church for his/her mother.”  To those of us who have grown up in an age of so much emphasis on individualism, that may seem like an unwelcome and foreign idea, but one we need to think about. We are created for relationships, and not just marital and family ones.  Of course we could all give examples of where the church has been an oppressive or unfaithful “mother,” but in the end, it is pretty much whatever we members make it. And whatever problems it has needs to become a part of our mission to help repair and resolve, not just things to run away from.

6. A growing number of American teens, now estimated at some one million, are into some form of self-mutilation, or cutting, according to psychologist Matthew Seligman, author of the book, Working With Self-Harming Adolescents. These kids are not necessarily suicidal, they’ve just developed an addictive need to take a razor or some sharp instrument and cut or scratch skin on their arms, legs or other parts of their bodies until they bleed and are left with marks. This is a phenomenon that is extremely hard to understand, and should never be considered acceptable under any circumstances, says Dr. Seligman, but he also cautions parents against making the problem worse by overreacting to it and risking driving the behavior further underground.  A lot of the spread of this disturbing trend is through peer pressure--kids influencing other kids--but it happens only where there is already something deeply troubled going on in a teenager’s mind or his or her life, according to Seligman and others. Most cutters describe it as giving them relief from the feelings of numbness or emotional pain they are experiencing, and as somehow adding to their feeling of being in control of their distresses and turmoils. At any rate, it’s a serious cry for help we can’t afford to ignore, but must respond to in a firm, calm and compassionate way, seeking professional help as needed, especially for the depression that typically goes with it.

7. One writer I’ve benefited from has been Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spent many months in prison and was finally executed because of his active opposition to Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Party before and during World War II. While I strongly disagree with his finally becoming so desperate to remove this madman from office that he felt he needed to became part of a plot to assassinate him, I can understand and appreciate the moral agony he went through in making that decision. Our responsibility is to think prayerfully and courageously about how to respond to the many evils in the world and times we live in, and like Bonhoeffer, to be willing to make hard and costly choices, if needed, to respond in the way we believe Jesus would, which I believe would be with nonviolence.  Already in 1933, when most German church leaders and their congregations were giving their unquestioned support to Hitler and were turning a blind eye to his actions aimed at exterminating Jews and other minorities, Bonhoeffer wrote in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, “Like ravens we have gathered around the carcass of cheap grace. From it we have imbibed the poison which has killed the following of Jesus among us... A people became Christian...but at the cost of discipleship, at an all-too-cheap price...We poured out rivers of grace without end, but the call to rigorously follow Christ was seldom heard.” Hard words, but words we still need to hear and heed today.

8. Christopher Buckley, son of political commentator William Buckley, is the author of a best selling satirical book, Thank You For Smoking, which was made into a movie in 2006. Buckley writes about people who work as lobbyists and public relations persons for enterprises that can cause harm, and even death to people--as in the tobacco, alcohol and gun industries. In a March, 2006, segment on the PBS program NOW, he describes an interview he had years ago with a seemingly well put together spokesperson for the now defunct Tobacco Institute. As she sat at her desk in her elegantly furnished office, casually smoking a cigarette, he asked her how she justified being in her kind of work, to which she replied, candidly, “I have to have some way to pay the mortgage,” which got Buckley wondering to himself how much of the evil in the world is being perpetrated in the name of “paying the mortgage.” “If that’s the underlying problem,” he mused, with tongue in cheek, “maybe we should all just rent.” This does raise the question, In what ways, and for what reasons, are we willing to sell our soul, or at least our values, our well-being, or the life and well-being of others, for the bottom line, to be able to afford our dream house, or to put our children through college, or to build a retirement nest egg for ourselves, regardless of the effects of our work on the environment, or on other people, or on future generations? Rather than spend our working days doing more harm than good, maybe it would be better to just rent.

9. A chilling AP article in our local paper (DNR 1/20/06) described a series of incidents of homeless folks in the Fort Lauderdale area being beaten by young people who are attacking them at random as a cruel kind of sport. According to the Washington based National Coalition for the Homeless, there have been nearly 400 documented cases of such brutality, usually involving white males under 20 armed with baseball bats, rocks, or just fists and feet, and involving 156 deaths over a six year period. Sadly, the numbers appear to be on the increase, says Michael Stoops, executive director of the coalition. “They (the kids) do this because they can, can get away with beating a homeless person and nobody will care, and the homeless won’t be able to fight back.” And, in fact, many victims may never report the crimes done against them, but simply try to find other, safer places to spend the night. “You’ve got to sleep and be half awake at night,” one homeless man is reported as saying. Maybe some more of us need to experience some sleeplessness in trying to figure out what motivates young people to behave this way. Where does their rage come from? What are they missing by way of having their own most basic needs met for good role models, being loved and cared for as kids, and growing up with some good tough-love boundaries and correction? And what role does our increasingly violent media/entertainment culture play in this awful problem?

10. According to a February 2006 Washington Post story, many of today’s soldiers are finding that the hours they spent playing first person shooter video games helped prepare them for the real thing. One 29-year old combat engineer, whose all time favorite games were “Halo 2” and “Full Spectrum Warrior,” (the latter developed with help from the U.S. Army) describes one of his first combat experiences, “The insurgents were firing from the other side of the bridge... We called in a helicopter for an air strike. ...It was like ‘Halo’ but it was real.” Rear Admiral Fred Lewis, a 33-year Navy veteran who heads the trade group that puts on the military counterpart to the glitzy Electronic Entertainment Expo, is quoted as saying, “The soldiers we’re training now are the children of the digital age who grew up with GameBoys.... Live training on the field is still done, of course, but using simulations to train them is not only natural, it’s necessary.”  But retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson cautions, “Remember the days of old Sparta, when everything the Spartans did was towards war? In many ways, the soldiers of this video game generation have replicated that,” and then he adds that many of the soldiers he’s worked with were “on more intimate terms with the culture of video games, reality TV shows and Internet porn than with their own families,” but, he adds, when they actually shot people, especially innocent people, ...I saw guys break down. The violence they saw in video games hadn’t prepared them for this.”

11. A 2006 Parents Television Council report finds that children are exposed to darker and more realistic forms of violence in cartoon programs than ever before, 6.3 incidents an hour, actually more than found in prime time programs aimed at adults. Programs like the Cartoon Network’s “Teen Titans” and ABC’s “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” are especially graphic, often featuring “intense fights with swords, guns and lasers.” In one reported scene in Fox’s “Shaman King” two characters have a long sword fight, one character is knocked out by a blow to the head, and his opponent reaches into the chest of his screaming victim and pulls out his “soul,” leaving him dead. Parents Television Council’s founder Brent Bozell makes a distinction between “Tom and Jerry” forms of fanciful violence and the hard, dark violence that can create anxiety in kids, or which, according to Dr. Michael Rich of Harvard Medical School’s Center of Media and Children’s Health, desensitizes them to where they come to believe violence is even more prevalent--and more acceptable, than it is in real life.  Meanwhile, the Cartoon Network’s response to the study is to announce that “we are confident that our standards-and-practices policies ensure that the programming on our air is age-appropriate... (and) suitable for their intended viewers.  If it were up to me to make choices about what programs kids like my own grandchildren can watch, I would take that kind of self-serving statement with a huge grain of salt. (AP, DNR 3/3/06)

12. According to some 2005 numbers, approximately 56% of 13- to 17-year-olds now carry cell phones, up from only 5% five years earlier. Is that a good thing? According to a piece written by Greg LaPlant in a recent supplement on children and youth in our local paper, some schools have begun tolerating cell phones as long as they are turned off during class, while some, as in the entire Detroit, Michigan school system, have banned them outright, seeing them as a disruption and a distraction to what school is all about--and their middle and high school principals are confiscating them at an average rate of four a day.  There is of course the obvious convenience of children being able to notify their parents as to where they are, or where and when they need a ride to or from somewhere, and in an emergency, its always good to be able to be in touch. But cell phones are increasingly becoming a status thing, and are used for lots of text messaging, playing games, taking and showing pictures, listening to MP3’s, as in nonstop music, and get this, even to access Internet pornography on the more sophisticated phones available today. Sometimes I’m glad we were able to raise our children in at least somewhat simpler times, in the 70’s and 80’s, but all of us need to think together about how to use what kinds of technologies in ways that truly enhance life and enrich relationships--in ways that are healthy for all of us. (DNR supplement,2/28/06)

13. According to writer Peggy Perdue, a recent study done by Synovate researchers found that 43% of parents say they want to be their child’s best friend, while 65% of teens believe their parents are trying to be their friends. There is certainly evidence that when children look up to their parents and have a good relationship with them, that they are much more likely to turn to them when they have a problem rather than just keeping it to themselves, or simply turning to their peers for help. What sometimes happens is that when parents who feel guilty for not spending enough time with their kids, and are trying too hard to be liked by them, that they may neglect other aspects of parenting like setting good boundaries and having fair consequences for bad behaviors.  Unfortunately, the piece I read by Perdue was headlined, “Being a Parent vs. Being a Friend,” as though the two could not coexist, when in fact her article suggests we combine this new kind of friendship with traditional roles of parenting, and that we still insist on our right and responsibility to say “no” to our children when we need to. Or as local columnist Luann Austin wrote in our local paper only several days later, “If you respect your kids, are honest with them and like them, you won’t have to try to be their friend. You will be.” What a blessing it would be if that kind of parental respect would result in our children and teens feeling free to confide in us when they face a problem for which they need some serious help.

14. According to a UCLA study, 52% of their college freshmen say they frequently attended a religious service before attending college, but by their junior year, only 29% reported doing so. If that isn’t enough to cause some concern, The Center for Youth and Family Ministry (CYFM) at Fuller Seminary offers the troubling statistics that of 69 students reporting with a church background, out of 234 to whom they had sent a survey, all of them had consumed alcohol, 69% had been involved in some kind of sexual encounter, and 20% reported having 40 or more sexual encounters (with the same or multiple partners) in the last12 months. I don’t have stats as to how these numbers compare to young adults who attend a Christian college, but I think all of us would agree that being away from home and from ones home congregation for the first time, is a faith testing experience. One Christian college student, in reflecting on this, wrote, “I went to college feeling totally ready, excited to just get away and do something new..., not realizing that I was entering into the most intense battle I’ve experienced yet in life. Spiritually, mentally, relationally…in every aspect…my freshman year was a battle.” Not everyone’s experience will be the same, of course, but one thing does remains constant, for young adults and older ones as well--all of us will always need good support and encouragement, at any life stage, as we examine our faith and live it out in the kind of anything-goes and anything-can-be-believed kind of world we live in. Youth Group Kids Drop God in College (battlecry.com) Is there life with Christ after high school?

15. Luanne Austin, in a column “Respect, Honesty, Love (are) Key to Befriending Kids” in our local daily, speaks of the importance of our modeling the values and behaviors we want our offspring to live by. “So if you’re trying to teach teens to not be materialistic or wear the brands everyone else is wearing, take a look at yourself. Are you hung up on buying Eddie Bauer, Harley-Davidson, Lexus or Gloria Vanderbilt?” ...And if the values being portrayed in the movies and TV shows they (your children) watch are not your values, maybe you shouldn’t watch them.” “Kids hate hypocrisy,” she went on to say, “Dad lectured me about smoking marijuana but he drank too much. Mom lectured me about cigarettes, but she smoked two packs a day. If you’re trying to instill some good character in them (your kids), you’d better be living it yourself or at least trying to, and sharing your struggle with them, apologizing when you fail.” I totally agree that it’s not hypocritical to try to keep our children from repeating mistakes we’ve made in the past, nor do we need to have reached perfection as adults in order to avoid the hypocrisy label. But. like her, I agree we need to be honest with them, admit our own shortcomings--then explain why we are working to overcome them. If there’s one thing I’ll always appreciate my father for, its his being a big enough man to admit to us when he had done something he later regretted.

16. The February 13, 2005 issue of TIME magazine featured an article with the headline, “Happiness Isn’t Normal.” It’s about a best selling book by a University of Nevada professor, Steven Hayes, co-authored by Spencer Smith, in which he says the American obsession with feeling good is preventing us from living good--and that if we aim to truly live well, we can expect as much pain as happiness. Hayes calls his approach "acceptance and commitment therapy," and advises folks not to fight negative feelings but to accept them as part of life. The first sentence of his book is "People suffer," and he goes on to say, “Life includes a big chunk of pain, and it includes a big chunk of living. But if you're not willing to have the pain, you're not going to get the living.”  He adds, "We don't get good training in how to sit with pain anymore; [we used to have] spiritual traditions of fasting, where you didn't eat even though you were hungry in order to connect with the suffering of other people. Most of those traditions are gone. Now it's only the educated elite who go for 10-day silent meditation retreats who get that kind of experience.”  While Hayes isn’t necessarily writing from a religious perspective, some of it sounds a lot like some things I read in the New Testament, like “Blessed are those who mourn,” and “Blessed are those who suffer persecution for doing what’s right,” and “Those who seek to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, will find it.”

17. Writer Rebecca Traister, in an interview with Psychologist Steven Hayes of the University of Nevada and co-author of the best-selling book, "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life," quotes Hayes as saying, “We have to ask why it is that we have (so much) substance abuse and addiction, self-control problems and even suicide when most people say they're happy. It's because most people aren't living the ways they want to be living, and that comes from how they're managing their own pain... Western culture promotes feel-goodism. In part it's a side effect of having technology to make things easier or feel better. It's natural progress, so we don't have to do the sweaty, hard things our forebears had to do,” he says, “But inside that is a meta-message, which is that you're supposed to feel good from morning to night. And on top of that, add commercialism and medications--If you consume the right products, eat the right pill, drink the right beer, drive the right car, you believe that you're not going to feel anything you don't like. What I'm saying is that that is not the definition of a meaningful life, and I'm saying people know it.  (So) “What I would do with a client is help them learn what their values are. And... when I say, "What do you want your life to be about?" I've never had somebody say, "What I want to be is the driver of an SUV."    (Instead) What they tell me are things like, "I want to contribute to other people" and "I want to be a loving person." And that, Hayes says, is what it means to “live good.’

18. "It is foolishness and a public madness to fill the cupboards with clothing, and allow men (human beings) who are created in God's image and likeness to stand naked and trembling with the cold so that they can hardly hold themselves upright." These words are from a fourth century sermon by one John of Antioch, a straightforward and uncompromising preacher and later bishop who became known as John Chrysostom--which means "golden mouth." But his eloquent preaching, considered the best in the early church, eventually got him in trouble, and led to his exile and untimely death. John delivered his fiery sermons to congregations who, after years of experiencing persecution, now enjoyed the official blessing of the government, and he spared no words in denouncing things like abortion, prostitution, gluttony, the theater, and swearing. About the love of the popular sport of horse racing, he complained, "My sermons are applauded merely from custom, then everyone runs off to [the races] again and gives much more applause to the jockeys, showing indeed unrestrained passion for them! ... No one thinks any more of my sermons, nor of the holy and awesome mysteries that are accomplished here." Bishop John’s straight talking bluntness finally made him too many enemies--in the imperial family and even among fellow bishops--and John was eventually denounced as a heretic and sent into exile. I wonder what would happen if we preached and practiced the same kind of boldness in addressing moral issues of our day!

19. Randy Salzman, Charlottesville-based doctoral candidate and a former journalism professor, in an article in Eighty-One magazine entitled “Growing Up Stupid,” is afraid our culture is suffering from having a generation of young people who have been programmed to “Just do it!’ and more recently, “Blink. Don’t Think.” “Kids have always done stupid things,” he says, but he wonders if we’re promoting a new level of irrational and impulsive thinking and behaving. Generally speaking, he says, advertisers and broadcast media don’t want consumers to use their brains but to simply buy now--or use or get now--and do any regretting later, urging us to join the “Pepsi Generation,” to “Supersize” everything, and “Spice up the Night,” even though it may lead to obesity and diabetes, or to live with the mindset of one Northwestern fraternity that sells T-shirts that say, “Freshmen Girls, Get ‘Em While They’re Skinny,” in spite of the possibility that it might get young men who act from that kind of mindset behind bars for rape. In a recent issue of James Madison University’s The Breeze, I couldn’t help noticing a little item in a personal section called Darts and Pats, in which a sadder and wiser student lamented, “A ‘what-in-the-world-was-I-thinking?’ dart to myself for the stupid Spring Break mistakes I made,” signed, From a junior who wishes she couldn’t remember all the dumb stuff she had done.

20. Barbara Pleasant has a great review of Richard Louv’s book, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder,” in the Feb-March 2006 issue of Mother Earth magazine. “After-school hours once spent climbing trees or sloshing along stream banks are now used by clicking away in front of a computer,” she writes, “Nature is taught in schools and appears regularly on TV, but children rarely experience it first hand.” Louv’s book cites study after study that show that hands-on involvement with the great out of doors can increase children’s creativity, attention spans, and their ability to concentrate. He suggests that when looking for a house, the availability of hiking and biking trails nearby may be just as important as getting the best real estate deal or being in the best school system. He also recommends inexpensive camping trips, unplugging our TV sets and computers, making a garden, going fishing, and just lying on the ground and looking up at the night sky. Pleasant thinks that if children came with an instruction manual, that some of those ideas might appear on page one. Reading this reminded me of all of the unforgettable, unprogrammed times I had growing up on our farm when I spent hours, alone or with a friend or family member, just roaming, wading, climbing, watching birds and other wildlife, building dams in the little stream that ran through our pasture, and having some of the best times of my life in God’s great out-of-doors. I just hope my grandchildren can enjoy some of the same benefits.

21. Our family was saddened to hear of the death of Peter Wagler, one of my older cousin's grandsons, who enlisted to serve in Iraq at age 17. He and his family were active members of the Berean Baptist Church of Hutchinson, KS, and although Peter's parents were personally opposed to his choice, they nevertheless signed for him to go, and he became a part of the crew of an M1A2 Abrams tank in Company D, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Brigade Combat Team in Iraq. He was killed January 23, 2006, along with a fellow crew member, when a roadside bomb tore into the most vulnerable area of the tank. Young Peter was buried near Hutchinson, Kansas, February 10, on what would have been his 19th birthday. Home schooled, he was known as bright and precocious, always wanting to be where the action was. According to his father, when Peter went in he was talking about a military career, but as his first year went by he began to talk about other interests he wanted to pursue after he came home. While I didn't personally know Peter, I guess this was the closest relative of mine to be a casualty in war, and in the weekly e-mail to my adult children in which I shared this story, I included the following prayer by Cardinal John Henry Newman: [in the book, Prayer in All Things] MAY GOD SUPPORT US all the day long, till the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is over and our work is done, then in his mercy may he give us a safe lodging and a holy rest and peace at the last. I still mourn the untimely passing of my cousin, twice removed, so much in the prime of his life.

22. On Feb. 9, 2006, a full page ad appeared in The New York Times with the headline: "Our commitment to Jesus Christ compels us to solve the global warming crisis." This groundbreaking and somewhat ambitious statement announced a new Evangelical Climate Initiative, and was signed by 86 well known evangelical leaders, including the presidents of 39 Christian colleges. It marks the emergence of a growing number of establishment Christian groups, including the National Association of Evangelicals, beginning to speak out on the long neglected issue of creation care. Leading the way has been Rich Cizik, NAE Vice President for Governmental Affairs, who was quoted by The Times as saying, "I don't think God is going to ask us (so much) how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created." From my perspective, it may well be that God is concerned about both, but its certainly true that, as a poster I saw once stated, “Good planets are hard to find,” which means that in a time when glaciers in arctic regions are breaking up at an unprecedented rate, we’d all better start taking this issue more seriously, and to take a look at lifestyle choices that are more likely to leave a good earth behind for our children and their great grandchildren to enjoy. Certainly God would have us care for the physical earth with the same kind of respect as he would have us show in caring for our physical bodies.

23. I spoke with a young wife and mother not long ago who told me about an experience of going with her grandmother to her grandfather’s grave. There the good grandmother, with the grief of her husband’s loss heavy on her heart, told her granddaughter, “Here we are at a place where its too late to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and we can no longer say, ‘I love you.’ Everything that’s been said and done, or that's been left unsaid or not done, remains in place, buried.” This made a profound impression on the young woman who shared this with me. “I decided then and there,” she said, “that I would never let a day go by without telling my husband and my children how much I love them, and that I’d always do my best to keep my accounts short, and never let the sun go down with an unresolved or unforgiven issue between me and the people I love, if I could help it.” What a great thing for all of us to think about, along with the words of poet William Voires I ran across some time ago, “Life is too brief, Between the budding and the falling leaf... for hate and spite... Life is too swift, Between the blossom and the white snow’s drift... For bitter words... Life is too great, Between the infant’s and the (grown) man’s estate... for petty things...”  Good words to remember well before we visit the remains of our loved ones in a cemetery, where it is too late to say ‘I’m sorry,’ and where we can no longer say, ‘I love you.’

24. Rabbi Arthur Waskow spoke to his congregation recently about the signs of a modern Passover he sees as happening in the streets of America. It’s coming, he says, not from a written book, but from the hearts, minds, legs, and prayers of a people mostly of Hispanic origin, and is happening in Spanish rather than in Hebrew. He was referring to the more than 2 million people who were taking to the streets demonstrating against what they saw as modern day Pharaohs advocating making it a felony to live in the U.S. without proper documentation, as well as making it equally criminal to feed, house, educate, or comfort such people. They are also deploring the building of more and higher walls between Mexico and the US, with orders for armed border patrols to kill anyone attempting to cross. This, the rabbi claims, is a mindset not unlike the ancient Egyptian kings who ordered the murder of the male children of a people whose name, "Hebrews," literally means "the ones who cross over," in other words, wetbacks who migrated to Egypt because they were in dire need, and who then crossed back over into Canaan because of their oppression. I’m not prepared to make a political judgment on what we should do in the face of millions of people in poverty living south of our borders, but I am concerned about how we are to follow the Biblical injunction in Leviticus 19, “When aliens live with you in your land, do not mistreat them. The aliens living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love them as yourselves, for you were once aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord.” Faith in Action, by Clare Hanrahan, quoted in Sojomail 4/06

25. Retired United Methodist missionary Ruth Clark is in a quandary. She’s gotten to the place where she has a problem with paying that portion of her income tax she sees as financing a state of permanent war, so the IRS has raided her bank accounts, taking all of the savings she had. Also, every month the IRS seizes 15% of Clark's Social Security income, often leaving her without enough to meet her living expenses. "I intentionally live on the edge of poverty to avoid paying for the war machine," Clark explains, then asks, "Would it be right for me to murder? Would it be OK for me to make children orphans? Do you think it would be OK for me to support a war where children are maimed, where they lose their arms, their legs, their eyes? How can I pay for that?" This has begun to be a problem for a growing number of individuals and families who believe in being subject to those in authority, but at the same time take seriously that, as outlined in the same passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans, that love for fellow human beings means not doing any “harm to a neighbor,” whether next door or in some far country. This is a tension all of us to have to deal with in a government which is supposedly of, by, and for the people, its citizens. Even as we take seriously Jesus’ words to folks living under foreign occupation in the first century, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” we still have to ask, “What does it mean to render to God what is God’s,” if God is truly Lord over everything and everyone?

26. According to an April, 2006, AP report, the creators of Sesame Street have released a new line of videos targeted for children as young as six months of age called Sesame Beginnings, in spite of the fact that the American Pediatric Association still recommends that children under two watch no TV at all, and no children should be allowed the hours and hours of viewing time taken for granted in most homes. The fact is that early exposure to best selling DVD’s for the very young, like “Teletubbies” and the more recent “Baby Einstein” and similar programs may not give kids so much a head start in their education, but may, according to many experts, simply give them a head start in becoming addicted to the screen. At least according to the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, “There is no evidence that screen media is beneficial for babies, and growing evidence it may be harmful. Sesame Beginnings will encourage babies’ devotion to TV characters that have been licensed to promote hundreds of other products.” Bottom line, there seems to be little doubt that young children are programmed by their Creator to learn best through direct social interaction with parents and other caring adults. In other words, media based learning for children will never even come close to being as good as lap-based learning in the warm arms of caring moms, dads and other good adults.

  27. Barrett Seaman is the author of a recent book called Binge, What Your College Student Won’t Tell You; Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection. His book is based on two years he spent observing the lifestyles of college students at twelve universities, including UVA, Duke, Harvard, Dartmouth, Stanford, and others. He finds that a distressingly large percentage of today’s young adult students are taking part in regular binge drinking and random sex when they leave home and find themselves in a college culture that is largely free of any kind of moral direction or restraint. Quoting from the book jacket, “sexual relationships are often casual and ambiguous, alcohol and drug use are widespread and dangerously unchecked, (and) anxiety and depression are common.”  Commenting on this disturbing picture in the Spring 2006 EMU alumni magazine Crossroads,, Bonnie Price Lofton writes “today’s students [in secular universities] aren’t making up moral structures, they are living mostly without them, changing their morals from one situation to another, shaped by the dominant peer culture in each setting.” She then cites William Willimon, former dean of the Duke University Chapel, who recently wrote an article for the Christian Century in which he urged universities to again become places “where the young are initiated into the wisdom of the past” rather than abandoning young adults “to their own meager resources because they have nothing of value to say to them.”

28. The March 31-April 2 Spring Home and Garden issue of USA Weekend features an article by Melanie D.G. Kaplan entitled, The New American Dream Home, with the subheading, “Meet the lucky families whose home theaters, kitchens, bathrooms and backyards are the extreme in home customizations.” What follows are descriptions of extreme makeovers like the couple who invested $200,000 to “convert their basement into a sci-fi-themed home entertainment center that puts most local theaters to shame.” Outside their personal theater is a fully stocked candy counter, popcorn popper and hot dog griller. Then there is the lucky couple with the $400,000 kitchen makeover, with two sound-absorbing dishwashers, a walk-in cooler, a breakfast nook with plasma TV, three heating drawers for dishes, and a gas fireplace. Or how about the recently divorced developer who installed a “wet room” in his bath area that has a shower with ten shower heads which, if used simultaneously, dispense 25 gallons a minute. I realize that, compared to the homes of well over 95% of the world, most of our residences would represent the epitome of luxury, but there was something about the excesses in this article that truly made me sick, even though I do want this to remind me that I, too, am embarrassingly rich by comparison, and I too need to hear Jesus’ reminders that all of us who are “rich in things and poor in soul” are in danger of experiencing God’s woes, rather than the blessings promised to those who are content with enough.

29. Sociology professor Christian Smith, in some work he did for Soul Searching, a 2005 book on the religious beliefs of teens in America, concludes that a majority of young people claim to be religious, but aren’t really very interested in any commitment to a community of faith, and are adopting a belief system he calls Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. The new MTD creed goes something like this: 1) There is a God who created and orders the world and watches over human life, 2) God wants people to be good to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions (the moralistic part), 3) The chief goal in life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself (the therapeutic part), 4) God does not need to be particularly involved in people’s lives except when needed to solve a problem (the Deism part), and 5) Good people go to heaven when they die. It could be argued that any religious philosophy or belief system that encourages people to be good to each other is a lot better than one based totally on self-indulgence and pleasure-seeking, but it is also clear that this watered down version of Christianity isn’t really the legacy Jesus meant to leave behind. But the fact is that this generation of young people may have picked up this kind of Pablum not so much from disagreeing us older folks, but by imitating the ways we actually live out our own everyday lives--by professing to serve the God of the Bible, but actually living by a feel-good set of values not unlike Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

30. Singer-songwriter Meredith LeVande made an appearance at James Madison University in March of 2006 with a lecture on “Women, Pop Music and Pornography,” in which she deplored the increase of sexual images in popular music.  LeVande, with a degree in women’s studies at New York’s University of Rochester, used a power point presentation to show how increasingly sexualized images of recording artists are used in music video clips, billboards, MTV, and in magazines to promote their careers, and this has become so common place it doesn’t even raise any eyebrows anymore. The corporate world has a vested interest in this development, she says, in that pornography seems to be among the few things that can be said to be truly “made in the USA”, and media giants like Viacom and News Corp. have major investments in the porn industry, and benefits from anything that makes it more acceptable and more desirable. The result, though, of creating a kind of homogenized view of what a desirable female sex symbol is like represents a demeaning and dumbing down view of women, Le Vande says.  I find it refreshing to hear this from a woman artist who isn’t selling her body, and her soul, in order to make in the music world, and is refusing to let the male-dominated world of corporate-sponsored sex dictate her values and behaviors. For more information about her message and her music, you can go to meredithlevande.com (that’s meredith l e v a n d e)

31. Former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich of Ohio recently wrote, “Who ever imagined that we would live in an America where the "merciful" would be called soft on crime? Where those who "mourn" would be called whiners, and where the "meek" would be told that arrogance is a virtue? Who ever imagined that the sacred role of "peacemaker" as described by Matthew in the Beatitudes would be recast as a traitor? This inversion of truth and the perversion of our basic values must be challenged, he says. Don Kraybill, in his book The Upside Down Kingdom, stresses the ways following Jesus is meant to revolutionize our ways of thinking and living, in that what is seen as poverty by the majority is seen as wealth in God’s new order, what is seen as popular and sought after in one realm is given little significance in the other. The poor, the powerless, even our enemies become the focus of special love and attention for people living under the new reign of God, the kingdom ruled from heaven. “Kingdom players follow new rules,” writes Kraybill, “They listen to another coach... Kingdom habits don’t mesh smoothly with dominant cultural trends. They may, in fact, look foolish.” If that is true, our task as parents and as followers of Jesus is to create families and communities that are countercultural where, with God’s help, we are promoting a way of life that is, actually, right-side-up.

32. Self-help guru Byron Katie suggests four questions to ask about a painful belief. First, Is it true? Second, Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Third, How do you react (feel) when you think that thought? and Fourth, How would you be without that thought? While I’m always a little cautious about simple formulas, I do like Katie’s focus on truth, which the Bible insists will set us free, making me also wonder whether if something doesn’t set us free (to become more whole persons), if it is really true. As in a piece my singer-songwriter son wrote, I know a girl who thinks that she's no good, it's her best explanation for a messed-up childhood, it's hard to shake a story when it's running in your blood...but just 'cause you believe don't mean it's true, tired preconceptions about those different than you, divide the world up neatly into black and white and blue, but just 'cause you believe don't mean it's true... there's lots of different stories in this world, and some'll squeeze you tighter than an oyster does a pearl, but some'll have you flying high as any flag unfurled, So a good question to ask is, Does what we’re believing about yourselves about others, about God, really stand the truth test? Let’s do the best we can to make sure. (author of I Need Your Love--Is That True?)

33. Luanne Austin, in a column in our local paper entitled, “Respect, Honesty, Love Key to Befriending Kids,” tells of a time she and her mother sat in her high school principal’s office after she had gotten in trouble, and having him talk to her mom as though she, Luanne, wasn’t even there. “Is she doing this for attention?” the principal asks. Mother: “She’s angry at me for divorcing her father. She’s doing this to get back at us.” Luanne is thinking, “Don’t ask me (of course). I’m just a nonentity sitting next to Mom.” Austin went on to describe her Dad’s method of parenting as lecturing, going on and on and on about what she should be doing and thinking, how she is a disappointment to everyone, etc. etc., in spite of the fact that he had been a serious trouble maker when he was her age, something he could never admit or talk about. “It would have helped. The honesty would have helped,” she wrote, “would have been him more human, and more credible than his speaking from a position of superiority” and, to her, hypocrisy. Parents do need to be and to model everything they really want their children to be when they become parents, she goes on to say, to be friendly and fair, but also steady and stable in their drawing good lines that protect them and keep them from harmful and hurtful consequences as much as is reasonably possible. All of which takes really loving them, with a lot of that love spelled r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

34. A February 2006 Washington Post article on how virtual reality, in the form of first person shooter video games prepares soldiers for real war, cites the case of Marine Sergeant Michael Stinetorf, who was with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, nicknamed the “suicide battalion,” which traveled far ahead of the main invasion force entering Iraq in March of 2003. He saw a lot of combat action that gave him a considerably more sobering view of violence than he had experienced in the James Bond and the Grand Theft Auto III shoot-’em-up games he had played a lot as a kid and young adult. Since returning home in September, 2004, he says he “can’t stand watching his friends play those kinds of games, much less play them himself.” Stinetorf, at 23 and a freshman at Grossmont College in San Diego, who hopes to someday study medicine, is quoted as saying. “It just doesn’t appeal to me anymore,... I found the easiest way to release all the violence (I’ve been through) is to walk away from it all, is not to surround myself with it.” So he has decided to avoid shooter games and violent movies and TV shows, and refuses to talk about how many people he killed in Iraq. “That’s one thing I don’t get into,” he says, “even to my closest friends. It’s kind of a way to separate yourself from it.” Reading this got me to praying even harder that parents and people of faith everywhere will decide to just separate themselves from all violence, period.

35. Katherine Greider and Roberta Yared, in the March 2006 AARP Bulletin, report on an Italian psychologist Serenella Salomoni, who had a team of researchers interview couples over 50 to see how having a TV in their bedroom affected the frequency of their lovemaking. Turns out that those who kept television viewing out of their bedrooms reported experiencing sexual intimacy an average of seven times a month, compared to an average of only 1.5 times for those with TV’s next to their beds. The article also quotes sex therapist Aline Zoldbrod, author of the book, Sex Smart: How Your Childhood Shaped Your Sexual Life and What to do about It,” as saying, “Past the falling-in-love stage, sex doesn’t just happen unless you make it happen... You can’t just coast, you have to steer. And if your TV is in your bedroom, then you coast into watching TV.” Whether or not we may consider any of this information relevant to our personal lives, I wonder what affect television and DVD viewing are having on other aspects of our relationships--for example, on how much conversational time we spend with our spouses or children--or other friends and loved ones--in our living rooms, our kitchens, our family rooms. Not everything about our having some screen time may be necessarily bad, but we may at least need to ask, among other things, what is it replacing that may be even better?