1. Nineteenth century author Mary Ann Evans, who used the pen name George Eliot once wrote the following, “Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are--chaff and wheat together--certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.” That’s the kind of feeling we all value in those who are our best friend soul mates, or our married life mates, folks who will understand and accept us even when we’re having a bad day and just aren’t in the best mood or on our best behavior. Of course we need to practice that kind of radical acceptance and tolerance toward others as well, while at the same time also exercising as much care as we can in order to keep from saying things that require too much filtering out on the part of the other person. In other words, we do well to have both an output filter, to keep us from saying inappropriate things in a less than a gracious way, and an input filter, to separate what is good from what is thoughtless or unhelpful that we hear from others, and from those we love. What a difference that could make in how we love, and live with, each other!

2. I recently heard speaker and writer Tony Campolo talk about a question he once asked an Amish bishop about what their rationale was for being against things like movies, television, radio, CD and DVD players, and the like. The response he got was surprising. “We’re really not against any of those things,” he said, “but before we adopt them, we just want to know how they will affect our lives.” In other words we want to know how will this impact our families and congregations. The bishop’s question for Campolo was, “How have things like television affected you? Do you think you are really better off with or without it?”

Campolo admitted the answer was probably “without it,” and in a recent talk to a group of folks in our area he went on to point out how the media we use have a way of shaping our values and affecting our beliefs. Even print media made us less dependent on others in our families and communities for direction, he said, sometimes a good thing, but maybe not so good as we become more and more individualistic and rely less on the wisdom of our elders. Electronic media have made us even less inclined to interact with others in personal ways, have made us more inclined to want to be passively entertained. It has especially affected the way we do worship, he believes, as we expect ever more interesting and attention-holding productions on Sunday mornings and become less active participants in our faith communities, and experience less time in face to face conversation and other connections together.

3. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and injuries incurred in the war in Iraq, a largely overlooked cost of the invasion has been the staggering number of individuals and families who have become refugees. According to the October 8, 2007 issue of TIME magazine, over 2.5 million Iraqis, in a country of around 20 million people in the first four years of the war became so hopeless about their future that they fled to nearby Syria and to other neighboring countries, with another 2.2 million having been forcibly displaced within Iraq itself. All together, that represents nearly one-fourth of the population. The toll this takes on families is almost unimaginable. Of the 200,000 Iraqi refugee children in nearby Jordan in 2006, only 20,000 were able to enroll in school, and of those, 6000 dropped out because of various hardships and difficulties they experienced. All face a bleak and uncertain future. In spite of this, only 535 Iraqi refugees were allowed into our country in 2006, as opposed to nearly 9000 granted asylum in Sweden, for example. I commend the individuals and congregations in this area who are sponsoring Iraqi and other refugee families. We should all feel a moral obligation to provide hospitality and hope to uprooted people and to do all we can to help bring an end to their suffering.

4. In an all too familiar scene, four-year-old Johnny goes ballistic in the supermarket because Mom won’t let him get, say, the sugar laden cereal he wants. The smart parent, rather than her getting into a power struggle with her son, gets on the child’s eye level, arms on his shoulders, and states her respectful but firm position, like, “I know you want this, but we don’t use that kind of cereal at our house.”

“But Mom, that’s the only cereal I like!”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t use this kind of cereal at our house.” (broken record response)

“But Mom...”

“Sorry, but we don’t use this kind of cereal at our house. You can either stop begging, or we’ll go to the car right now for a time out in your car seat. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll take you to your sitter’s, and mommy will finish the shopping and go to the Taco Barn without you. It’s up to you.” End of discussion.

Of course, Mother could take her son out and smack him instead of giving him a no-nonsense consequence. But that would be over in a harsh and heated instant, whereas removing him from the store, enforcing a five-minute time-out in his car seat (time doesn’t start until he cooperates), and bringing an abrupt end to the fun of shopping and eating out with his mom delivers a lesson that keeps on teaching for the rest of the day.

And in case you’re wondering, there are worse things than leaving a half-filled shopping cart in the grocery aisle. Like not doing whatever is necessary to teach Junior the meaning of No.

5. I’ll never forget an autumn day many years ago when we walked our oldest son, age five, to the end of our lane to get on the large yellow school bus picking him up for his first day of school. It was a moment we thought we had all prepared for, and even looked forward to, but it was still a lump-in-the-throat experience to see him bravely step into that other world where we could no longer protect him or watch over him as we had before. This is only one of the many experiences of letting go parents are faced with in their children’s journeys from birth to adulthood. From our children taking their first steps, first toward us, then away from us, as they become ever more mobile, expanding their circle of friends, getting a drivers license and being able to drive on their own, leaving for camp or for their first date and jobs or for college or career, parenting is one experience of letting go after another. Which means the direct and almost complete control we have during our children’s infancy gradually slips away from us, until in 18 or so short years it is for most practical purposes pretty much gone. In the meantime, we can either become involved in endless and rancorous power struggles, or we can wisely and gradually turn over more and more responsibility to our offspring, teach them good self-control, and in the meantime hope to develop the kind of good influence with them that can last a lifetime.

6. According to an August 29, 2007, Associated Press release, a poll conducted by the AP and MTV indicates that young people who consider themselves religious are happier than those who are not. The survey of 13-24 year olds indicates that 44% of young people say that religious beliefs are at least “very important” to them. Only 14% said they were not important at all. 80% of those who said that spirituality was the most important thing in their lives said they were happy, while only 60% of those who didn’t consider God important at all indicated happiness. Sociologists say these results confirm, for one thing, the importance of the sense of community found in most faiths. Less encouraging, according to an MSNBC report of September 16, 2007, quoting another study funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, 81% of 18-25 year olds list "getting rich" as either the most important or second most important goal in their lives. Many believe that if they pursue money early in their careers they will later be able to pursue the other things that make them happy and fulfilled. They would do well to heed the words of Robert Reich, a former Labor Secretary under President Clinton and current professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California Berkley who says, "Any young person who believes they can make loads of money first and then pursue their dreams afterwards is fooling themselves. The pursuit of money as its own end can cause dreams to disappear.” Or as the greatest authority on the subject once asked, “What will it profit a man or woman to gain the whole world, only to lose their own soul?”

(MSNBC September 16 ,2007)

7. I had a parent in one of my classes complain how addicted their teen had become to screen media. So they came up with a rule, “You’ll have to go outside for at least an hour for every hour you spend with the TV or the computer or playing video games. Amazingly, when her hour was up she’d just go outside and sit, wait out the next 60 minutes until she could come back in. Most of us probably don’t get that addicted, but if we wonder how dependent we’ve become on our favorite screen addictions, it might be good to actually log our use of various media in a given week, and then try eliminating or seriously limiting our use, and see what happens.

Bruce Bradshaw, in his book Change Across Cultures introduced me to the word reification, about human societies creating things that become their masters instead of their servants. In my lifetime, we’ve gone from a few folks in our community getting black and white TV sets that got one or two channels on a good day (with programming that went from six in the morning until ten at night) to now, where most of us have wall to wall entertainment and information that could take a lion’s share of our waking hours in a day if we let them. And in the last 50 years we’ve gone from having around 1000 theaters in this country featuring X-rated movies to now having millions of small theater screens, including even some cell phones, that offer pornography at the click of a mouse or the touch of a button. In that kind of media environment, the potential for harm and addiction are enormous.

8. According to the August 2007 issue of Harris Interactive Trends and Tudes, college students today are spending lots more money than students in any other era. Discretionary spending by this growing demographic group is $63 billion, up $10 billion since 2002. Food accounts for the largest chunk of that spending (37%); followed by clothing and shoe purchases. Technology is also very important to them, with laptops now outnumbering desktop computers among all students (63% have them - up from 42% in 2005). Digital cameras, MP3 players and portable game systems are also popular items on campus, and virtually all students now have cell phones (with fewer than half have a landline phone). In 2002 only 2/3 of students owned a cell phone. In addition to frequent calls, nearly 70% of students use text messaging and almost half take, send and receive pictures. The same issue reports that more than half of college students visit social networking sites (like MySpace or Facebook) every day. These sites are the preferred mode of communication for more than a quarter of students, whether communicating with friends on campus or staying in touch with friends across the country or around the globe. Online gaming has also increased in the last five years from just 2% of students in 2002 to nearly 25% today. All of this reflects the fact that today’s students have more money on their hands, if not more time, than ever. (Harris Interactive Trends and Tudes vol. 6. Issue 6 Aug. 2007)

9. I’ll never forget a wedding I did some years ago. When the time came for their vows, the bride pulled out a little scroll on which she’d hand copied her promises. He then got out his palm pilot and read his vows to her. Everyone smiled. Pretty much the same words, but the two forms of media were worlds apart. To illustrate how revolutionary recent changes in means of communication are, go back with me to rural Kansas where my parents were born just over 100 years ago. There was very little even in the way of print media in either of their childhood homes--a couple of Bibles, some hymnals, a handful of other books, no regular newspaper or magazines in the mail. And this was before rural electricity or telephones, and of course before radios or television or computers. Their communication was much more in the style of Abraham and Sarah than ours today--by word of mouth or by letter, by face to face time with neighbors and relatives and friends during the week, and then on Sundays for a simple worship service.

If we could picture a foot long ruler as a media time line, starting with Abraham and Sarah, nearly 2000 years before Christ, to the present, 2000-some years after, the most dramatic of these changes have taken place in about the last quarter of an inch of that ruler. Maybe this can help us understand how much of a challenge it is to maintain our perspective, and our integrity and sanity, in the media flood that has a way of overwhelming us.

10. While some of our smaller colleges and universities are struggling to make ends meet, many Ivy League institutions are reporting phenomenal growth in their endowment funds, ao much so that the 2007 the Senate Finance Committee questioned why they don’t pass on some of that increase in the form of reduced tuition costs. Yale led the 2007 increase with 28% bringing their holdings to $22.5 billion. Harvard now has nearly $35 billion in endowments, after a 23% increase last year. According to an AP report of October 14, 2007, if these well funded schools were to spend at least 5% of their endowments, as other foundations are required to do, an additional $1.5 billion could be available to students.

Meanwhile, parents and students are increasingly feeling the crunch of the rising cost of higher education. If the cost of gas had increased at the same rate as college tuition over the last 25 years, it would now cost over $9 a gallon, and a gallon of milk would cost more than $15. Part of the problem is of our own making, in that we all tend to demand better state of the art athletic and other facilities for our students and want all the comforts and high tech media accessibility in student housing as we have become accustomed to at home. Maybe its time for some universities to appeal to more of a niche market, to attract students who simply want to interact with more really good faculty minds and not demand the latest in first class accommodations.

11. I had the privilege of doing a meditation for the memorial service of Sophie Wenger Suter, who died at age 97 in September of 2007. She was a stellar kind of person, solid in her faith, steady on her feet, and a consistently bright light to those around her. I reflected on the fact that her name is from the Greek word sophia, for wisdom, which is one of the most highly prized of all good traits in scripture, describing a state of graciousness and godliness, a life lived prudently and in a way that is a blessing to God and to others, as the writer of the Proverbs says, “Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding... Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” In contrast, I noted, the Proverbs also have a lot to say about folly, about people who live lives that are imprudent and foolish, who get themselves into lots of trouble and who experience lots of regrets. Not Sophie. She settled down with the love of her life, James Suter, and stayed married to him until death parted them over 57 years later. She worked hard and well, as the mother of her beloved adopted daughter Karla, and served as head cook at the old Virginia Mennonite Home for over 25 years. She used her money wisely, saved prudently and gave to the church regularly. To me, that’s a very smart woman, who while she completed only one year of high school and who made no pretension of being worldly wise, knew how to live well and to die well, and so truly lived up to her name.

12. My wife's sister Freda, in an e-mail to her siblings, recalls the old pump organ that occupied a prominent spot in the living room as they grew up. "Before the piano came into our lives," she wrote, "one strong childhood recollection is of mama sitting on the red organ stool on a Sunday evening laboriously fingering the keys, to find the right notes to 'Jesus lover of my soul' the one hymn she knew how to play by heart."

Freda went on to say that her older sister Gladys later took up the practice, so when the day came when their mother wanted to get rid of the organ she was the logical one to inherit it, but that it eventually found a home in their (Freda's) living room. She writes, "As time passed, it became a bit of an eyesore, and as we remodeled the family room, there seemed to be no right spot for that old pump organ. So it was relegated to a remote corner of our already overcrowded basement... Sometimes as I pass it, I look in those tiny mirrors on either side, and instead of this now sagging 72 year old face, I catch a glimpse of a little twelve year old curly head, as she lovingly dusts the old organ in days gone by," taking me back to memories of "past days and past times when life was so simple, when there was no need of computers or televisions, and an old pump organ was enough entertainment for a family of eight wonderful children and two loving parents."

13. Rosemary, a grandniece of my wife’s, wrote a recent e-mail “etiquette guide for non-pregnant people” based on some of the thoughtless things she’s experienced during her pregnancies. For example, “Commenting on someone's weight or size is usually completely taboo unless you are very, VERY well acquainted with the person.... (And avoid) the comment: ... "Are you still around?" Or, "Are you sure you're not having twins?" Trying to fix that by saying, "But really, you look GOOD...!" doesn't really fix anything... Asking a pregnant woman how she's doing sounds caring but she has heard it so many times that it is mostly just exhausting to repeat the answer again and try to think of a different way to say it this time. "Hi," or "Hello" is refreshingly brief. (Sometimes) the same people have asked each week at church about when the due date is. It is okay to ask once. Then either remember it; or, if you just can't remember it then by all means don't ask her to repeat it again every time you see her. ...and about belly pats...Why would someone assume that because you are pregnant it is okay to just walk up and pat your belly--without permission?" And when the baby finally... graces the world with its presence, only comment on how cute it is if it really is cute, and on the name if you like it! Never say, "That's different," or, "That's interesting," ...That is just a veiled way of saying "It’s awful..." And let her get her advice from the OB docs and the pediatrician, unless she specifically asks for yours.

14. The familiar New Testament texts addressing relationships within Christian households have always been problematic for some, as in wives being voluntarily submissive to husbands and servants being willingly obedient to their masters. But these were quite revolutionary texts to first century readers. For example, clear obligations are spelled out for both parties in each of the three relationships addressed, wives and husbands, children and parents, and servants and masters, where there was an undisputed superior and an inferior in each case. Husbands, the superior, had no obligations to their wives, only wives to husbands, to obey them no matter what. But both the apostles Paul and Peter require men to show the utmost love and respect toward their wives, in the same way that Christ loved the church and sacrificed his very life for her. Fathers, likewise, in those days had virtually unlimited power, and no demands or obligations with regard to their children, could treat them any way they wished. But here they are told to never be harsh with them or to mistreat them, but to bring them up in the loving nurture and instruction of the Lord. And masters, of course, had unlimited rights with regard to their servants, considered nothing more than property. Here they are commanded to treat them in a just and equitable way, remembering that they must answer to their master Jesus. In other words, believers are to act toward others the way Jesus would, with absolute impartiality, setting the stage for an end to all relationships based on dominance.

15. Daughter Joanna, who teaches media courses at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY, marvels at all of the podcasting and MySpace posting and text messaging many of her young adult students are into, for whom e-mail has become almost as outdated as our snail mail. Most are far less likely to check out and read a book than they are to check out a movie or to find entertainment and information on the Web, and she’s had to actually walk some of the students to the college library to show them where the books and journals are that they need for their research. She realizes how much of the media-based technology she’s teaching her students today will be out of date before some of them even graduate, and wonders how all of today’s innovations are going to affect future generations’ enjoyment of face to face interactions with friends and family members, and how it will affect their written communication, given how much shorthand is used in text messages and instant messaging, for example, as compared to actually writing a thoughtful personal letter home or to other loved ones. And I wonder how all of this will affect the preservation of written documents like letters and diaries that have long been the source of invaluable data for future researchers wanting to learn more about the day to day life of people in a given time period. So there may be a down side to many of our newer, high tech innovations, especially those that have to do with how we communicate with each other.

16. When the much anticipated Halo 3 video game came out in mid 2007, millions of copies were sold almost immediately. A student writer in the school newspaper of my alma mater, in an October 11, 2007, article entitled “Halo 3 Demands that the Fight be Finished,” even suggests enthused that the new game is "so good, (even) Jesus would play it."

I was glad to note that the next issue another student, Nick Meyer, called for a Christian “peace protest” in response, and wrote, “Halo 3 has taken at least 5.2 million gamers hostage as they enter into a narrative of conquering and proving themselves champions of an imaginary kingdom that will never exist. We must march on behalf of their freedom from this addiction as they squander precious time with wireless controllers in hand, trading endless hours for unfulfilling adventures ina world of fantasy. As if wasting away their lives weren’t bad enough, they are left with a warped sense of reality, finding real people boring and their roles in real life dissatisfying. Their ‘Bubble Shields’ isolate them from relationships, church and academics, keeping them from being productive citizens of their country and of the kingdom of God.”

I know Halo 3’s defenders will say, “It’s only a game,” but I'm still convinced Jesus would refuse to wield the "Spartan Laser, the Spiker, the gun turrets, and new grenade types" featured in this first person killer game. At least there’s no hint of his ever having given any support to the tired and tragic notion that evil can be overcome by incinerating our enemies.

17. My wife and I were blessed in being able to attend the dedication of our third grandchild on October 28, 2007, the Sunday before his first birthday, which is on the Eve of All Saints Day, Halloween. His father, our second oldest, addressed his young son with these words as a part of the dedication:

Ian, your (older) sister (our first) has taught us that as parents we are expected to produce lightning fast responses to a barrage of questions that typically involve answering a seemingly endless litany of one word, Why? No philosophy professor during college could have ever prepared me for the grueling interrogation a two year old would someday put me through. Furthermore we have been challenged to endure teary eyed explanations of (issues ranging from) why a family pet is no longer with us to suddenly justifying our favorite choice of cake.

We recognize that all too soon, Ian, you will also be expecting us to deeply examine what we believe and why. We pray that God will grant us the wisdom required to thoughtfully answer all of your whys, and we look forward to the spiritual and whimsical examinations you will demand from us. May we be constantly reminded that it is with a childlike faith unhindered by all the complexities of the universe that we are expected to trust in our Creator.

18. You may or may not have heard of the best-selling book, "How to Win An Argument," by Michael Gilbert, but Robert Heinemann, a professor of communication at Messiah College, in an article in their alumni paper, the Bridge, writes an interesting counter piece called "How to Lose an Argument." It's possible to win a debate between you and another person that results in obscuring the truth, he says, and so we actually end up being a loser. Or we can lose an argument in a way that further reveals truth, and so experience a net gain in the process. There are four situations in which it may be better to make our point, but then let the other person "win," Heinemann says. First, we should lose the argument if we're actually wrong, even if its hard on our ego to admit it. A second reason to lose an argument, or to stop pursuing it, he adds, is if we realize that the goal of our opponent is simply to win the debate. Revealing truth is more important than necessarily having the last word. Third, we should lose, or give up, an argument if we realize that our own goal is to simply win, in which case, he says, we're probably not listening for truth anyway. Finally, we should lose the argument if we realize its simply unproductive and unresolvable. We do this best, he says, by stating the position of the other side in a respectful way, by restating our own position in terms of the other person's perceptions, by clarifying areas of confusion, and then expressing appreciation for the conversation you've had. End of argument.

19. Here’s a question to ask ourselves when we’re shopping for children’s gifts: How many brightly-colored, battery-operated, environmentally-unfriendly plastic playthings do children really need? No, I’m not another Grinch out to steal Christmas or spoil children’s birthdays. I believe every child should have lots of fun things to play with, and I mean every child in the whole world--in every refugee camp, every drought-stricken country and every miserable slum everywhere--including children who may work in sweatshops on the far side of the globe to help produce these high tech and highly advertised toys. So I believe in good toys. If play is the child’s work, toys are among the tools children use in their daily occupation. Active play with these tools helps them relax and have fun, stimulates their imaginations, offers them satisfaction in creating and building things, teaches eye-hand coordination and motor skills, and helps them learn to see tasks through from start to finish.

But can our children have too much of a good thing? Or of some not-so-good things? We already know some toys can pose a physical danger to children, like recently imported Elite Operations figures, Thomas & Friends trains, and other toys that are unsafe because of lead-paint concerns or design flaws that pose risks of harm. But what about so-called “safe” playthings that promote violence, prevent children from getting the physical exercise they need, or limit the use of their imagination and creativity? These may present a more subtle danger, as may just having too many toys, period.

20. Before doing any more toy shopping at the nearest mall, it might be a good idea to check out the kinds of playthings found on the shelves of some good nursery schools in the neighborhood.

I asked Rachel Diener at EMU’s Early Learning Center, “How many TV’s do you have?” None. “How many computer based DVD or video games?” None. “How many stuffed toys requiring batteries?” Not a single one. “How many brand name, manufactured toys, period?” A few, she said, mostly donated by parents, plus some sturdy wooden toys made by Community Playthings.

What I saw most of were sand tables, easels and lots of art supplies, along with shelves of plain wooden blocks, discarded telephones and various hats and other clothing items from thrift stores. And then lots of good books.

What we learn from experts in child development is that an infant may get as much enjoyment from a recycled plastic bottle holding a ping pong ball as from a store bought rattle. That a young child will learn far more from playing Pattycake on a loving caregiver’s lap than from watching a Baby Einstein or Brainy Baby DVD. That a preschooler may enjoy a box of wooden blocks of various sizes and shapes as much as a set of Legos. That children may gain much more from spending time in the natural, real world with other peers and adults than from surfing the virtual world. And that they will usually get a lot more more out of good books from the local library than from screen media in general. Sometimes the best playthings are free, simple and priceless.

21. In an era of moral confusion about lots of issues, it's time for people of faith and morality to state clearly that any kind of torture of our fellow human beings is not a family value. In a column in the November 2, 2007, Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh writer Tony Norman laments the fact that a practice like "waterboarding," a tool for interrogation used during the Spanish Inquisition (in which victims are made to literally feel like they are drowning), is even a subject for debate in a civilized society. He writes, "Isn't it interesting that folks who can calculate when life begins down to the mysterious movement of the zygote in utero aren't able to say with assurance what torture is even when someone is choking in front of them?" He is also chagrined by the fact that, "Folks who claim to distrust their government's ability to tax them fairly somehow find it easy to defer to its wisdom when it comes to torture."

He is especially concerned that in a so-called "Christian" nation that "Those who prostrate themselves before a tortured Savior every Sunday rarely think about the broken bodies and spirits of their 'enemies,'" and that "personal security has become such an idol that 90% of us would approve of the waterboarding of suspects to avert another 9/11." He fears that rather than our reentering a medieval period in our treatment of suspects, that "maybe we have never left our brutal superstitions behind," and that "maybe we're more like the terrorists than we'd like to admit."

22. According to the 2006 Healthy Community Assessment done by the “Strong Families, Great Youth” Coalition in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, a surprising 70% of area teens haven’t used alcohol in the past year or ever, and 43% of adults do not drink. Some other facts reported are that, contrary to the common assumption that all teens who drink do so just to have a good time, 30% of junior and senior high school students who drink do it alone, according to another recent national survey, and that boredom and emotional distress are among their chief reasons for drinking. That study also debunks the myth that when parents allow teens to drink at home they are less likely to drink outside the home. The opposite is true. Those teens actually have a greater chance of developing a problem with the use of alcohol, the drug most likely to be associated with the death of 16-year-olds, often involving alcohol-related car crashes, suicides, homicides and drownings. They also cite findings that alcohol affects teens in an even more negative way than adults, in that their brains are still under construction until their early 20’s, so that health risks from their alcohol use are both more serious, and more permanent, than is the case with adults. As if all these weren’t reasons enough to discourage teen alcohol use, the legal consequences of minors buying or possessing alcoholic beverages in Virginia, or using fake ID’s for doing so, can include up to a year in jail and fines as high as $2500.

23. At the outset of one of the most tragic and senseless conflicts ever, World War I, some 1500 women from 12 countries met at the Hague for a convention of what became the oldest women’s peace organization of all time, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Their goal was to persuade leaders of all nations to stop their war preparations and to avoid sending their husbands and sons to battle. Among those who supported their cause was Jeanette Rankin, a US Republican from Montana, the first woman to be elected to Congress and one of the few representatives who voted against our joining that War, which ended up costing more than $337 billion, a monstrous sum in those days, and resulted in the loss of a total of over twice as many servicemen as had died in all the major wars in the entire previous century. The civilian death toll was an unheard of 5 million people who died as a result of bombing, starvation, disease and exposure. On top of all the economic and other losses caused by World War I, the punitive and harsh terms of peace in the aftermath almost certainly set the stage for the rise of Nazism and the tragedy of World War II. So in hindsight, the women at the Hague, whom then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called “most dangerous,” were right, and the politicians and heads of state were wrong. We should learn to pay more attention to what our wives and mothers have to say about the folly of quickly resorting to the blunt instrument of war when there are international conflicts to be resolved.

24. Among the recent video games popular with children as young as six is Manhunt II, where according to a review in the November 1, 2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “You’re urged to sneak up on your enemies and execute them in a variety of ways. You may stab them with a syringe, slash them with a glass shard, slice them with a sickle, strangle them with a plastic bag, bash their heads in with a toilet seat--and that’s just in the opening chapters. When you’re playing the Wii (“wee”) version of the game, you use the motion sensitive controls to actually simulate the act of slashing and punching people.” In a November 17 letter on this subject to the editor of our local paper, Debbie Fordham of Weyers Cave writes, “Any parent who would allow a child to play this should be charged with child neglect.” Unfortunately, more and more parents are guilty of just this sort of looking the other way when it comes to the kind of violent video or online games their children are into, all too easily giving in to their begging for the coolest and latest versions they insist everyone is getting, regardless of their rating or their content. What will be the effect of this kind of indoctrination and desensitization on young developing minds? For help in learning more about this, and the content and ratings of current video games, <mediawise.org> is a good online source.

25. An ominous looking electrical storm caused Jeff Blackburn, pastor of the Greensburg Mennonite Church in central Kansas, to end his jog early on the evening of May 4, 2007. It was his wife Lori’s birthday, and he decided to make some popcorn to add to the pumpkin pie they were to have that evening to celebrate the occasion at home with their daughter. They thought little of it when Greensburg’s notoriously loud tornado warning siren went off, but went to their parsonage basement as usual to wait for the all-clear signal. Less than a half hour and a thunderous roar later, there was no longer any upstairs for them to return to. Actually, there was no more Greensburg since all of the homes, churches and businesses were virtually wiped out by the two-mile-wide twister, which took the lives of ten people in that little midwestern town. In talking about the utter sense of disconnection he felt after the storm, Blackburn said, “I can’t describe for you what it’s like to walk up into your house, and there’s no house.” Losing almost all of their possessions, he said, forced them to take a new look at their priorities. “Stuff isn’t very important when you don’t have much stuff left, when you’re just grateful to be alive,” he said, and added “I learned how materialistic I was when I had to list everything in my closet (for an insurance claim). No man needs 40 dress shirts. No man needs 20 pairs of dress slacks. You can only wear one pair at a time.” He also observed, “Disasters don’t make us who we are. Disasters reveal who we are.”

26. I wonder if those who deny that humans are a major contributor to global warming are the same folks who for years insisted there was no reliable evidence that smoking contributed to diseases like lung cancer. The damage to the earth that most reputable scientists are warning us about today appears to be the result of “smoking” of another kind, the discharge of millions of extra tons of carbon dioxide and other gasses into the atmosphere every year through all of the gas guzzling motor vehicles we’ve come to depend on for our convenience and status. In addition, we require too many sulfur spewing, coal-fired power plants to meet our demand for more and more electrical appliances, including summer-long air-conditioning even in our temperate climates. As if this weren’t enough, we keep contributing to the burning of millions of acres of irreplaceable Brazilian rain forests (sometimes referred to as the planet’s “lungs”) to provide grazing for cattle for ever more of the McBurgers we’d be better off without.

I’m glad to hear about more people of faith now joining others worldwide to urge better care of the earth, just as many of us have traditionally stressed that our individual bodies should be well cared for because they are “temples” of God.

Since, as someone has said, “Good planets are hard to find,” our Creator can’t be pleased at the prospect of the apocalypse that could happen as this one becomes less and less hospitable to human and other species worldwide.

27. David Gushee, in a column in the July 2007 issue of Christianity Today entitled “Old Fashioned Creation Care,” argues that old timey thrift and care for the environment go hand in hand. “The more I have gotten involved in the evangelical creation care movement,” he writes, “the more I have found myself drawn toward practices my grandparents did.” In other words, the concepts of “reduce, reuse-recycle” were around long before they became slogans in recent efforts to avoid polluting the planet with ever more waste clogging up our landfills. He particularly applauds such values as “hard work, modesty in consumption, consistent giving, and squeezing every last drop of value out of our possessions” that were a normal part of most people’s lives in earlier generations. My own parents, who were reared in very frugal families, and who went through the hardships of the Depression, never threw away even the smallest scraps of leftover food that might be enjoyed by a wild or domestic creature on our farm, and every spare piece of cloth found some use in a quilt or a braided rug. World War II seems to have been a turning point in American culture, when the propaganda machine that helped fuel the war effort was transformed into an advertising blitz to help keep US factories churning out ever more products and producing ever more profits. If we are to survive and thrive as citizens of God’s good earth, we’d better learn some good lessons on how to live from our grandparents and great-grandparents. Our great grandchildren will thank us.

28. In a September 18, 2007, piece in the Mennonite, Anna Groff addresses the problem of more and people incurring ever less manageable consumer debt. She cites Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren as predicting that if present trends continue, the US will find itself divided between a smaller group of reasonably successful and well to do families and a much larger number of households barely able to make it from paycheck to paycheck. While much of this problem results from individuals and families making unwise and irresponsible choices, Warren also faults greedy payday lending institutions and credit card companies for practices that prey on the poor. For example, she says a vice president of MasterCard admitted to her that a bank’s most valued customers are people who have declared bankruptcy. This is for two reasons, first because they can’t file a second time and second because they tend to be addicted to credit and are willing to make minimum payments for the rest of their lives. Warren claims that for every dollar charged, the average American pays more than $2 in interest and late fees, with the rate of their interest increasing because of their worsening credit, creating an increasingly untenable situation. In Theo Boers’ book on personal finances, Three Simple Rules, he advises 1) Spend less than you earn; make do. 2) Save now; buy later, and 3) Know debt; It can be helpful when invested in a home or business, but trouble otherwise.

29. Dr. Francis Collins, who grew up in a rural area near Staunton, went on to become the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institute of Health, and the author of "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief." He grew up in a family that didn't practice any kind of religious faith and considered himself an agnostic, then an atheist, until he came to faith at age 27, after an older patient of his who was dying of cancer shared her faith and asked him about his. This so unnerved him that he later spoke with a Methodist minister in his neighborhood who introduced him to Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis’s writings, especially the book Mere Christianity. But Collins also became persuaded that there was a limit to what science could explain about why there even was life in the universe, why there was anything at all instead of nothing, and as he reflected on what he calls the "irreducible complexity" and precision of the "physical constants in the universe," like the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics," and the universal awareness we all have of some sense of Moral Law, of right and wrong, good and evil. One of his slides near in a recent presentation of his I attended was that of Dirk Willems, a 16th century Dutch Anabaptist who rescued an officer who, in his attempt to pursue and arrest him, broke through the ice in crossing a river and would have drowned had Dirk not saved him, resulting in Dirk being captured and burned at the stake. This kind of behavior, he says, cannot be explained by evolutionary theory alone.

30. Are faith and reason incompatible? Do we have to check our brains at the door when we profess belief in God, or pray or engage in other acts of worship? Or is all truth, from whatever source, God’s truth, and if understood correctly, all of one piece? Hymn writer Thomas Troeger thinks so, and writes this thoughtful praise piece, to be sung to the tune of “God of grace and God of glory”:

Praise the God of faith and learning that has sparked and stoked the mind

With a passion for discerning how the world has been designed.

Let the sense of wonder flowing from the wonders we survey

Keep our faith forever growing and renew our need to pray.

God of wisdom we acknowledge that our science and our art

And the bread of human knowledge only partial truth impart.

Far beyond our comprehension lies a depth we cannot sound

Where your purpose for creation and the pulse of life are found.

As two currents in a river fight each other's undertow

Till converging they deliver one coherent steady flow,

Blend, O God, our faith and learning till they carve a single course,

Till they join as one, returning praise to you their source.

31. Associate professor of psychology Stephen Ilardi of the University of Kansas believes the reason we’re so depressed about our lives is because of the way we live our lives. In a November-December 2007 AARP magazine article entitled “Simply Happy,” writer Julia Klein quotes him as saying, “There’s increasing evidence that we were never designed for our sedentary, socially isolated, indoor, sleep-deprived, poorly nourished lifestyle,” noting that since World War II, as we’ve moved off the farm and become more modernized and urbanized, our depression rates have increased tenfold, and that this mood disorder has become an even greater problem with younger people than with older folks. Dr. Ilardi believes his approach to treating depression, called Therapeutic Lifestyle Change for Depression, or TLC, which involves being a lot more active socially, more aerobic physically, getting more sleep, and spending more time doing things, especially outdoors, rather than sitting around and ruminating about distressing things, is even more effective than antidepressants and traditional psychotherapy. He also bases this on findings that members of so called primitive tribal groups are virtually depression free, and that close knit, hard working, low tech Amish farm families also have amazingly low depression rates. He believes our bodies and our psyches just aren’t adapting to the sedentary, solitary and stressed lives most of us in the 21st century are living.

32. According to a November 16, 2008, n Associated Press piece, nearly half of teens age 13-18 use instant messaging on their cell phones and computers, compared to only about 20% of adults. Teens are also twice as likely as adults to use them for more sophisticated purposes than just sending text messages, like sharing music or video files or listening to music, often engaging in more than one task or in more than one conversation at a time. And while adults still send more e-mails than text messages, with teens it’s the other way around. One in ten teens in the survey on which the findings are based admitted to spending three or more hours a day instant messaging, about double the adult rate, and nearly a fifth are sending over a 100 IM’s daily, about triple the number for adults. One 14-year-old whose parents were trying to wean her from four hours of Im-ing a day is quoted as saying, “I could be practicing my viola or riding my bike... but I’d rather talk to my friends.” It’s interesting that this form of communication is also cited as being a way for teens to say things they would feel uneasy saying face to face, including asking for a date or even breaking off a relationship with a girl friend or boy friend. I’m not sure where this kind of high speed, high tech chatter is taking us as a culture, but I can’t help having some questions about whether they will help us build truly satisfying and lasting relationships.

33. Columnist Elaine Sommers Rich tells the story of Kayla and Marjorie Fuller of Columbus, Ohio, who take foster children into their home until they can be permanently placed. In January 1998 they took in 12-month-old Chris, suspected of being mentally retarded, maybe autistic. When he first came, Kayla said, “He rocked and screamed. He wouldn’t make eye contact... couldn’t stand to be touched and would scream and fight to get away...didn’t show any interest in toys... didn’t even try to crawl.

“The first night, after wrestling him into a clean diaper, I sat down in a rocker and pinned him to me while he screamed and flailed around, and I said, ‘Little boy, you will be loved in this house. so you might as well get used to it.’ I rocked him and sang to him and hung on until he wore himself out and fell asleep in my arms.”

Over the next several days they did everything they could to entice him into their world. They sang. danced. patted the kitties, showed him brightly colored toys. talked to him about everything they did, and ended each day rocking and singing to him. On the sixth morning they woke up to the sound of laughing on the baby monitor...Chris was standing, holding on to the crib railing and grinning....He crawled over to the floor lamp, patted it, and said “Dat?” They said, “Lamp.” He said “Yamp.” There was no stopping him after that.

Nine years later, Rich wrote, Chris, now adopted, had become the official greeter for new foster children. “I’m the big brother here,” he tells them. “This is a safe place and you don’t ever have to be scared here.”

MWR November19, 2007

34. Before he was even three, our grandson John began to reflect on the responsibilities and opportunities associated with growing up. So one day on a ride with his father he asked, from the back seat, “When I get big, can I drive the car?” “Well yes, after you learn to drive, and when you’re old enough to get a license, you can drive the car.” John thought for a while and then announced, “And Dad, when I get big and you get little, you can ride in my car seat when I drive.”

Which seems only fair, and in a sense, we are likely to experience a kind of reversal of roles some day, when we become needy and our children and others will have to take care of us.

My wife brought a similar topic up to him about a month before his third birthday, “John, when grandma gets very old and tottery and can hardly walk anymore, and you’re a big and strong and grown up man, will you help your grandma sometimes when she can hardly get around, or when she needs help to cross a street?” John had never thought about this, but seemed eager to help his beloved grandma in whatever way he could. But then he hesitated, “But grandma, there’s a problem. I’m not allowed to cross the street!” We all laughed.

There’ll be a lot for John to figure out before he is ready to drive a car or help anyone across a street . Meanwhile, in our own imperfect way, we are all helping him learn every day what it means to be a good, caring adult, finally ready to take on the challenge of being a good man--and perhaps one day a good father and grandfather as well.

35. Writer James McAlister includes the following characteristics of a good dad in an article

EVALUATING FATHERS on his website james-mc.com:

Fathers go to work when they don't want to, listen when they need to, and sacrifice when they ought to.

Fathers love their families without responding to unlovely attitudes or actions. And they endeavor to live in such a way that they don't have to regret their own words and deeds.

Fathers cry tenderly over sick pets, bury them when they die--and comfort their grieving children. And fathers who have suffered the loss of a child or a mate struggle to rebuild normal lives despite the overwhelming emptiness and seeming unfairness.

Fathers laugh at children's jokes that aren't funny--and sputter to keep a straight face when children's serious efforts go humorously awry. They embrace a child's crude, handmade Valentine as if it were a Rembrandt.

Quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger, father's discipline in love but never ridicule or embarrass.

Fathers say "I was wrong" more often than "You were wrong." They easily confess their own mistakes and give their best efforts to straighten them out. Fathers generously sprinkle "I love you" and I'm proud of you" into their conversations.

Fathers readily tear down their own dreams to build up their children's. And they remain faithful to their flock despite the lure of "greener pastures."

Fathers learn to do important stuff like toss balls, dash through sprinklers and lie on the driveway to gaze at the stars. They bend low to kiss away hurts and wipe away tears. They weep at graduations and weddings, realizing how quickly their children have grown up and away.

Rather than "stuff," fathers give better gifts to their children: patience, humility, honor, truth and duty. And they understand that respect must be earned, not demanded.

Fathers know that they may be the only visible earthly example their families will every see of an invisible heavenly Father. And they eventually realize that their greatest battles will be won on their knees, not by their bank accounts.

Fathers grow into the men their mothers dreamed they'd be.

From “Evaluating Fathers” at james-mc.com.

1. A “time out” for young children is one of the better forms of correction for their misbehaviors, and are especially effective when parents have lots of good “time ins” with our kids. In other words, the more a child values the good relationship and quality time he or she enjoys with a parent, the more impactful it is when that attention is removed. The recommended total time in a time out chair is normally no longer than a minute per year of age, so it certainly isn’t some kind of cruel and unusual punishment, and it’s also one that’s likely to work better when parents do some practice with their children ahead of time, when they’re not in the middle of some misbehavior, in order to teach the child what’s expected, and to remind the child that the time doesn’t begin until the he or she settles down and cooperates with the parent’s sentence. In one kindergarten class I read about, a teacher calls it a "better choice" chair, a time for a child to think through what he or she had done that was unacceptable and to think about the behaviors that would be more appropriate. Students sit in the "better choice" chair until they can tell the teacher what they did to get themselves in trouble and how they could have made a better choice.
In this way, instead of experiencing discipline as simply something that has children feeling resentful and angry, they hopefully learn to process and own their behavior and to consider ways of improving. That, after all, is the goal of all correction, to learn to do better.

2. In a recent blog by Amy Ard of the District of Columbia called, I'm Harboring an Undocumented Person, she writes, “It'll feel good to get this off my chest: I'm harboring an undocumented person. Growing at the rate of half a pound each week, somewhere between my rib cage and my bladder, this interloper is preparing to make his/her grand entrance sometime in the next four to seven weeks - and for the life of me, I can't figure out whether he or she is a true-blooded U.S. citizen. Unlike many of our uninvited, hardworking guests currently in the United States, this little stowaway doesn't have so much as a library card for documentation. And what about this meaningless "birth certificate" I'll sign with the aid of my coyote (okay, midwife)? I've looked that document over, and as far as I can tell it doesn't offer any guarantee that this new citizen will be productive, good looking, or give a hoot about U.S. foreign policy. Do we really want such an unpredictable kid running wild on the streets of Washington, D.C.?”
Most of us feel conflicted about what our response should be to undocumented workers in this country, most of whom are here because their situation is so desperate that they feel they have no viable choice but to go wherever they can in order to find work to support their families. But until we have been in similar circumstances, it may be better not to rush to judgment on this issue, but to look for humane solutions that can respect the dignity and respond to the desperation of these neighbors in need. (on Jim Wallis and friends website)

3. My Pittsburgh-based singer-songwriter son Brad wrote the following about a personal and family friend who took his own life after a losing battle with severe depression:
I know you saw no way out, but you didn't have to leave like this,
your soul consumed with pain and doubt, but you didn't have to leave like this,
you didn't have to leave us wondering
what we could've done, if anything?
I know you were suffering, but you didn't have to leave,
didn't have to leave like this.

you shone bright as any light, why'd you have to leave like this?
I see you when I close my eyes, why'd you have to leave like this?
why'd you have to leave us mystified?
we didn't even get to say good-bye,
how can so much life just die? you didn't have to leave,
didn't have to leave like this...

trade all colors in for black,
we love the one we can't get back,
I know you could've laughed again,
it's not all right, I won't pretend,
I know this sickness killed you, friend, but you didn't have to leave,
didn't have to leave like,
didn't have to leave us wondering
what we could've done, if anything?
I know you were suffering, but you didn't have to leave,
didn't have to leave like this...

4. Our second oldest son, away at work most days, is usually the one who gets to tuck his little daughter Madelyne into bed at night. From about two years of age onward one of the strange lullabies she’s requested most often has been Ave Maria, a beautiful Latin piece by Franz Schubert her father had learned for a Class Voice performance many years earlier in high school, with the words “Ave María, grátia plena, Dóminus tecum. Benedícta tu in muliéribus, et benedíctus fructus ventris tui, Jesus,” taken in part from God’s message to the young virgin Mary by way of the angel Gabriel, as recorded in Luke’s gospel, chapter one. Translated it is “Greetings, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women,” with the addition of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth’s words “and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.”
As the grandfather here, I’m pretty impressed by this nightly liturgy at my granddaughter’s bed, with her father conveying this profound kind of blessing, “Ave--Greetings--Madelyne, you, too, are full of God’s grace. May you, also, like Mary, be blessed among women, and may the fruit of every part of your life be a blessing to all the world.” That would be my greatest wish and fervent prayer for every child and grandchild in the world--to be loved and graced in such a way that blessings can flow from them to make the whole world a place filled with more of God’s love and light. So “Ave, every child, Good night and live well.”

5. Our son and daughter-in-law took their young family on their first extensive vacation trip in late spring of 2007, when their first born was 2 1/2 and their second child only 7 months old. Along with their spending time with some of our daughter-in-law’s family in Alfred, New York, and with our daughter and husband and their two-year-old in Rochester, they visited a zoo, an aquarium and spent some time at Niagara Falls, where they had a spectacular view of the Falls from the multistoried Embassy Hotel. Upon their return, we were all shown the narrated video version of the trip. At the end of their little documentary, 2 year old Madelyne is interviewed as to what she liked most about their vacation. Was it seeing the elephants at the zoo? No response. How about the big fish at the aquarium? No answer. Then was it going on the Sky Wheel at Niagara Falls, a giant ferris wheel with box seats and a breathtaking view of both the U.S. and Canadian falls? Still no response. So was it getting to play with cousin John Mark at aunt Joanna and uncle Chad’s? Still no answer. Finally she said just three words that summed up what she liked most about vacation, “Having Daddy home.”
When all is said and done, what children may value most is not where they get to go to, but who they get to go with and be with, and about enjoying more uninterrupted time with their parents, having Daddy and Mommy with them instead of away at work or elsewhere so much of the time.

6. Among a rash of recent books opposing the idea of any faith in God is one written by an atheist, Christopher Hitchens, called, God is Not Great--How Religion Poisons Everything. In his view, and those of numerous other anti-religious writers and speakers, Muslim extremists, Jewish Zionists and activist members of the Christian right are all cut from the same cloth. Their violent behavior and intolerant ideas, Hitchens says, bolstered by their fundamentalist forms of religion, are behind some of the most dangerous global conflicts we face. “Religion kills,” Hitchens says, “pure and simple. Get rid of it and we’ll all be better off. “
In light of the Inquisitions and Holy Crusades some believers have engaged in, I can partly understand why some people feel that way, but I also wish that before they simply dismiss the Christian faith, that folks like Hitchens would reflect on the fact that its founder, Jesus, even though living in a land occupied by a hated foreign power, radically opposed the use of violence and commanded his followers to love their enemies--all of them--with no exceptions. And that his early followers, for example the outspoken New Testament writer Paul, who was converted from a life committed to killing people who didn’t believe as he did, became a mouthpiece and martyr for Jesus’ way of peace and reconciliation. And that all of the church fathers during the first centuries of Christian history spoke out against taking part in war and abortion and other other forms of violence. I’m thinking that if we Christian believers today are to have anything of worth to say to turned off atheists, we’d better get back to some of these basic and historic tenets of our faith.

7. Gerald and Marlene Kaufman, authors of a great little book called, Monday Marriage--Celebrating the Ordinary, believe that much of the advice about marriage offered these days is misleading and even harmful, in that it creates expectations that are unrealistic and may be impossible for most couples to achieve in this life. The titles of the two sections of this down-to-earth book sum up its main points, Part One being about “Expecting Less,” and Part Two about “Giving More.” In my mind, that is a truly countercultural message in a day when we are told that pretty much everything we want should be fun, fulfilling, and easy to get, and that we can have all of this now, with little or no effort. The Kaufman’s write, “Our book is about marriage, to be sure, but it is more than that. Perhaps more than anything, it invites sacrifice, humility, and honoring God by serving our spouse, our children, and others.” They believe that expecting less in the way of instant gratification and focusing more on making others happy is the best way to experience a deeper and more satisfying life, and that happiness is really a byproduct of a life focused on living unselfishly. To experience that kind of maturity, they say, we may need to slow down our pace, reduce the volume of the noise around us and focus on the things that really matter, like loving God and nurturing the well-being of our partner and others.

8. My recent “insight of the month” is about the simple conclusion that every life decision is a love decision, that is, whatever we choose to do, or to say, or to buy, reflects what we truly love the most, what we consider most important to us at a given time. By instinct we all tend to be ego-centered, which means we love ourselves, and therefore love what gives us pleasure and happiness, that makes us feel most special and worthwhile. Nothing wrong with that except we’re tempted to put our own interests above those of others, and want to be seen as better than, as superior to, other people around us. We are also constantly being bombarded by message after message, ad after ad urging us to indulge in more and more things that appeal to our senses, to have us immediately buy the things we’d love to get our hands on, would love to own, and to have us think of our own needs and our own self-enhancement as ultimately important and being our perfect right. Jesus, along with many of the prophets before and after him, came to show us another way. Blessed, thoroughly happy, he says, are those who are poor, who are merciful, who love God with their whole being, above every other love, and who love their neighbor in need just as they love themselves, equally. All of which leaves me convinced that, for all of us, every life decision is a love-based decision, made on the basis of what and whom we love, and how much.

9. Sara Glick, in a letter to the editor of our Daily News-Record of June 9, 2007, wonders whether we’ve been asking the wrong question in the debate over creation versus evolution, that we ought to be asking more about how we humans developed in ways other than just physical. For example, Where do our concepts of good and evil come from? In the animal world, killing occurs primarily for food and protection, she notes. Humans, on the other hand, seem to kill for greed, sometimes for the pleasure of it, or in the heat of anger. Why? On the other hand, she asks, where does goodness come from? What is the source of ideals like justice... and self-sacrifice, beyond what is instinctual for survival? And where does creativity come from...an interest in painting, music and sculpture? Animals often communicate in quite lovely tones, she observes, but nowhere are these behaviors based on sheer aesthetic motivation. And where do our concepts of story telling and poetry come from, our concepts of God? the desire to know and understand history and of our origins? Even the highest order of animals is preoccupied with matters of present survival, not about what happened in the past, or about about developing creative visions of a new and better future. And where does our sense of conscience come from, our feelings of shame or guilt, our desire to do good, to be good men and women? All of these beg for explanation as to our origins as truly human beings.

10. In an e-mail newsletter I get called the Ivy Jungle, there is a piece in the June 2007 edition called "Porn Driven, Look-at-Me Culture,” based on an Associated Press release, which says, “The evidence of the mainstreaming of pornography is not hard to find in our culture today - from the provocative videos on YouTube to Myspace pages for adult film stars. Some researchers and observers continue to express concern over the impact this may have on young people - particularly girls. "Sexiness" has become very important to girls, the report notes, with an increasing push into outright raunchiness. High school counselors frequently find themselves consoling teenage girls who have undressed and more in front of web cams. Employers are increasingly implementing dress codes, and the American Psychological Association recently published a paper expressing concern about the sexualization of girls. One of their observations is that while boys tend to use pornography and other aspects of sex for their own pleasure, most of the increasingly young women who exhibit provocative behavior are doing so to try to get attention and acceptance from others, and for the pleasure of someone else - often someone they don't know well (or perhaps not at all, thanks to the internet). Some women claim this gives them more power with their sexuality, but many researchers are seeing a very negative impact - especially among teenage girls. (AP June 4, 2007)

11. According to a June 6, 2007, piece in the Chicago Tribune, the prevalence of cheating among high school and college students may be at an all time high. 74% of business school undergraduates, according to one study, admit to having cheated at some point in college, compared with the 68% of the general student population. Students recognize that cell phone cheat sheets and writing answers on the insides of water bottle labels are obviously wrong. However, some forms of cheating have become so common that many students don’t even recognize it. In 2002, in another study, 40% of college students did not think "cut and paste" plagiarism from the internet was even moderate cheating. 47% of high school students do not think it is wrong to try to find out answers from others who may have taken a test previously. While students become more creative in their cheating, many researchers say the problem lies beyond the classroom, with students simply emulating what they see as working in the "real" world. It looks like we nay have our work cut out for us as parents if we expect to produce a generation of young people who demonstrate consistent integrity across the board. For a start, we need to be sure we model it in the most consistent way possible, every day and in every situation, whether with people with whom we do business, our employers or employees, or the IRS. (Chicago Tribune June 6, 2007 sec. 1 p. 4)

12. In my old age I think about the eternal realm more, not always with so many of the easy answers I once had, but with a sense of great mystery--as being about something simply “too good not to be true,” and about Someone whose universal presence is too obvious to be ignored, while at the same time as one too great to be fully known and fully comprehended in this life. I’m reminded of a cartoon in which two fleas are making their way through a jungle of dense hair and the one says to the other, "Do you ever wonder if there really is a Dog?" Maybe that’s a little like the perspective we have in pondering the mystery of what seems so imponderable from our earthbound perspective. After all, any Creator and Lord of the universe who could be easily known and all figured out would probably not measure up as one worthy of being named God.
I recently reread some of Kathleen Norris's book, Amazing Grace, in which she quotes Karl Rahner, "If God's incomprehensibility does not grip us in a word, if it does not draw us into his superluminous darkness, if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely, close-hugged truths... we have misunderstood the words of Christianity."
I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on that incomprehensibility, that superluminous darkness. I’m trying to ponder more of what that might mean when it comes to the mystery of faith, and how I can experience more of it.

13. In her book Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris, one of my favorite authors, writes the following about her reaction to a middle class white clergywoman she heard pontificating on how we should just forget the part of the Christmas story that had to do with a divine birth and interpret the story of the angel's visit to Mary as simply being about God telling Mary that being an unwed, pregnant teenager was “okay.”
Norris’s response was, "I realized that my own anger at the woman's arrogance had deep personal roots. I was taken back to my teenage years, when the 'demythologizing' of Christianity in a misguided study of modern theology had led me to conclude that there was little in the religion for me. In the classroom, at least, it seemed that anything in the Bible that didn't stand up to reason, that we couldn't explain, was primitive, infantile, ripe for discarding. So I took all my longing for the sacred, for mystery, into the realm of poetry, and found a place for myself there. Now, more than thirty years later, I found myself in this room full of Christians thinking, My God they're still at it, still trying to leach every bit of mystery out of this religion, still substituting the most trite language imaginable. You're okay, the boy you were in bed with when you were both too drunk to stand is okay, all God chooses to say about it is, it's okay."
Which reminds me of how easy it is to try to create gods in our own image and to our own liking, instead of seeing it the other way around.

14. Our friends Mark and Marie Lenker, who live in Arlington, Virginia, have gone through a kind of bonding experience few couples ever get close to. Marie had been on dialysis for some years due to kidney failure, and Mark, miraculously, was found to be a compatible donor, the odds of which were described to them as being like winning a multimillion dollar lottery. On top of that, one of Mark’s kidneys had a rare extra blood vessel attached to it that made it an even more effective in the function it performed in his body. While that kidney was undesirable as a transplant, it was great for being his single remaining one after donating his normal kidney to his beloved. Needless to say, there were lots of anxieties and many prayers going into their decision to go ahead with the double surgery they went through in June of 2007. Fortunately, Marie’s new kidney has performed well, and Mark’s remaining one has, as expected, functioning more than adequately.
Most of us will never have that kind of opportunity to give of ourselves for the life and health of our spouse or other loved ones, but I find the Lenkers’ a kind of wonderful story, as some kind of metaphor for how we all need to find ways of giving of ourselves for each other’s emotional and spiritual--and even physical--health and well-being. How can we all find creative ways of becoming ever more united in heart and spirit, while still maintaining our own separateness and uniqueness?

15. In my book Lasting Marriage, the Owners’ Manual, I focus on four separate areas of responsibility for improving a relationships. The first is the Problem-Free area, in which partners concentrate on talking, working, playing and praying together in ways that add to the reservoir of good feelings between them. The second is the Mutual-Problem area, where they work together at becoming respectful and effective problem solvers and decision makers. These are the 50-50 areas of shared responsibility, where it takes two to make them thrive. Then there is the Personal Problem area, where each of us has 100% responsibility for our own personal behavior and, with whatever help is needed, to keep our own emotional, spiritual and physical health in order. And finally, there is the Spouse’s Problem area, over which we have no direct control, 0%, of the other person, but have the responsibility to be supportive and encouraging as he or she works with any of their personal issues that need to be addressed. I’m more and more convinced that a lot of relationship conflicts happen because we want to take shortcuts in our effort to fix things, and begin to invade, control and occupy our Spouse’s Problem area, in what should be considered sovereign space, rather than to invite someone into the mutual problem department to discuss how we avoid having those mar the problem-free areas of our lives.

16. Each summer when we have a dry spell, the grass on our lawn tends to turn brown, with the exception of several strips of green in our back yard where our septic lines are. Reminds me of a comment I heard once regarding marital faithfulness--that one of the reasons the grass may appear greener on the other side of the proverbial fence is because of something septic, a word which comes from the Latin, sepsis, for infectious. I know its a stretch to draw an analogy here, but in real life, things certainly aren’t as healthy and happiness-producing as they often appear at first. That other man or woman may seem like the greatest find of our life in some moment of our weakness and wishfulness, but the chances are great that this has mostly to do with our judgment being impaired by the temporary insanity we are prone to in a time of vulnerability--and based on a bad case of infatuation and foolishness. Of course these other imagined partners are sure to have their good points, but so does your wife or husband, who may in fact appear pretty attractive from the other side of someone else’s fence. The fact is, each human being represents a mix of qualities that range from good to bad, every person comes as a package. So it’s better to stay grounded in reality, and not become too enamored by what appears to be the greener grass on the other side. It might just be the result of some septic lines.

17. On July 7, 2007, a rash of people went to casinos, bought lottery tickets and got married, all betting their luck on the numeric magic of the date 7/7/07. According to a current issue of Time magazine noting this, hundreds of couples in Las Vegas waited for hours in record heat for marriage licenses. The posh Venetian Resort hosted 77 weddings on that day, and some 500 pairs tied the knot at the Little White Chapel, including groups of seven couples at 7 am and at 7 pm. The Time article noted that Britney Spears had been wed in that same chapel in 2004, but as fate would have it, that marriage lasted a mere 55 hours. But then it wasn’t on a lucky day, which apparently accounts for the difference. Or not.
As is the case with a lot of things, I may be making too much of this. Maybe this was mostly a case of couples, in good fun, simply choosing a memorable date associated in their minds with lucky numbers. But I can‘t help but think that a lot of the effort, time and money invested in planning around the right alignment of numbers could have been better spent in working on the right alignment of some good qualities that truly make for a successful marriage. How about having a good pool of shared values and goals? How about making sure each brings a good supply of personal happiness, patience, kindness, peaceableness, gratitude, joy and unselfishness to the relationship? There you have seven traits that are pretty much guaranteed to make a marriage last.

18. I recently heard someone say, “Never attribute anyone’s actions to malice that can be explained in some other way,” which sounds like some extremely wise advice to me. In other words, we shouldn’t automatically assume the worst, that another person is intentionally trying to hurt us by what he or she was doing, or failing to do, that bothers us, that they are undoubtedly are staying awake at night deliberately thinking up ways to frustrate, hurt or ignore us and our needs. Since we don’t have some kind of supernatural X-ray vision into another person’s actual motives, wouldn’t we all be better off if we gave folks the benefit of every reasonable doubt? If there are two or more equally plausible explanations for a behavior, why not let a tie go to the other person you care about? For example, he or she may just have had a bad day, or just wasn’t thinking carefully at the time, or was operating under severe stress, just wasn’t in the finest form, was just plain thoughtless. Or maybe he or she is just a slow learner, needs some good, patient reminding and teaching. All of these and more may be alternate ways of looking at things that upset us, and could result in much less hurt and distress After all, we don’t always do so great in the good behavior department, either, and without a doubt would appreciate being judged by our motives and intentions, not always by how the other person feels impacted by our imperfect words and actions.

19. Author Henri Nouwen, in his book of daily meditations called Bread for the Journey, writes, “We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.”
I’ve always appreciated Nouwen’s wisdom in this and in so many other areas, and it does seem to me that in God’s economy, nothing needs to ever go to waste. In other words, even our past grief and suffering, the slights and hurts we have experienced, don’t have to reduce us to becoming victims, but can be transformed into something that can make us stronger and better people, and make us better able to have empathy for, and minister to, others going through similar kinds of distresses. Far better to have our list of past grievances and losses become a part of our “wounded healer resume,” adding them to our list of credentials for become better caregivers and servants to others. In other words, to become wounded healers.
What might your or my “wounded healer resume” look like? And how might it be useful in adding meaning and blessing to our own lives and to those of others?

20. In author John Drescher’s address at the Family Life Resource Center’s 20th anniversary on July 1, 2007, he described some of the changes he’s seen in families in the last fifty years of his life. One of the areas he expressed concern about was the influence current exposure to media is having on family members of all ages. He cited some commitments the writer of Psalm 101 makes that he believes should be the basis for all of our decisions on how we choose to expose ourselves, or not, to the many forms of media so available to all of us these days. First, “I will walk with integrity of heart within my house.” Then, “I will set before my eyes no vile thing.” “ I will look with favor on the faithful of the land so that they may live in my house.” “No one who practices deceit shall remain in my house.” “No one who utters lies shall continue in my presence.” Each of these has to do with the basic question, How can we exercise the same discretion about who is allowed into our living rooms, and with what messages, when it comes to their being virtually present via media as we would regarding their actually being invited into our homes in person? To me it makes sense to practice the same kind of wise discernment in either case, and not allow a barrage of negative input into our children’s lives without our having some careful monitoring and protection in place. Some of these entertainers deserve to just be disinvited from our homes and from space in our heads.

21. Writer Michael Kinsley, in a column in the July 30, 2007, issue of TIME magazine, notes with dismay the number of billionaires who are engaged in an all out effort to save a tax-code provision that allows them to pay an income tax of 15% on some of their earnings that come indirectly through capital gains, instead of the 35% some of the people cleaning their toilets are having to pay. While he admits that we’re all self-centered and greedy at times, he wonders whether some of the superrich may have contracted a particularly bad strain of the disease that makes their greed really astonishing, even though they justify this by making a distinction between ordinary income and capital gains that begins to be lost for most of us who see how these gains, all without any investment of actual perspiration on their part, turn them into multibillionaires. What to Kinsley makes this even more mystifying is that, unlike a few wealthy folks like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, who are investing in good causes in ways that have earned them a lot of respect, these others are trading away something they actually crave (more respectability) for something they have no conceivable use for (more money). What is worse, he says, is that they begin to look like “unpatriotic ingrates who won’t share with their country even a fraction of the blessings it has bestowed so spectacularly on them.”

22. Antonio Aja, a Presbyterian USA Associate for Immigrant MInistries, writes the following “Immigrant Creed.”
“I believe in Almighty God, who guided the people in exile and in exodus, the God of Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon, the god of foreigners and immigrants.
“I believe in Jesus Christ, a displaced Galilean, who was born away from his people and his home, who fled his country with his parents when his life was in danger, and returning to his own country suffered the oppression of the tyrant Pontius Pilate, the servant of a foreign power, who then was persecuted, beaten and finally tortured, accused and condemned to death unjustly. But on the third day, this scorned Jesus rose from the dead, not as a foreigner but to offer us citizenship in heaven.
“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the eternal immigrant from God’s kingdom among us, who speaks all languages, lives in all countries, and reunites all races.
“I believe that the church is the secure home for the foreigner and for all believers who constitute it, who speak the same language and have the same purpose.
“I believe the Communion of the Saints begins when we accept the diversity of the saints.
“I believe in the forgiveness which makes us all equal, and in the reconciliation which identifies us more than does race, language or nationality.
“I believe that in the resurrection God will unite us as one people in which all are distinct and all are alike at the same time.
“ Beyond this world, I believe in Life Eternal in which no one will be an immigrant but all will be citizens of God’s kingdom, which will never end. Amen.”

23. Adam K. Levin, head of the consumer website credit.com, and the former director of the New Jersey division of consumer affairs, describes what he calls “ acquisition ecstasy,” “the feeling that comes over you at the the big-box store when you’re in front of that 50-inch plasma TV and you know you could bring it home with just the swipe of your credit card.” You hand it to someone, they give you something you really want and you don’t have to think about paying for it for 20 to 30 days. It’s almost as if your endorphins take over. And then, unfortunately, the reality sets in.” Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us that for the first time in history, the savings rate in this country has dropped to below zero, that is, we are borrowing at a higher rate than we are saving for future purchases or for emergencies, or for our retirement. Add to that the fact that if we are only making the minimal required payments, we end up paying exorbitant interest to credit card companies and very little on the principle we actually owe them. It is the folks who can least afford to pay this kind of interest that most often become victims of a system that has become enormously profitable by appealing to our human tendency to want more and more things to make us feel happy or loved or beautiful or worthwhile. The fact is that happiness can neither be bought nor borrowed through any of the estimated 40,000 credit card offers out there wanting us to get hooked on “buying now and paying later.”

24. One of the reasons so many of us American consumers are in such financial distress is that the number of things we consider necessities rather than luxuries, needs instead of wants, keeps growing. A 2006 Pew Research Center survey, for example, found that compared to a similar study done ten years earlier, there were more than double the percentage of Americans in 2006 who believed that microwaves were a necessity--68% as compared to 31% a decade earlier. Likewise, 51% believed having a home computer was a must, compared to 26% in 2006. For cable or satellite TV, it was 33% compared to an earlier 26%, and for dishwashers, it was 35% in ‘06 while only 13% in ‘96. Having home air conditioning was deemed by 70% to be a necessity, compared to an earlier 51%, and clothes dryers 83% and 62%. This kind of “must have” mentality extends to some items that weren’t even on the 1996 survey, like cell phones, for example, which 49% of today’s Americans feel they couldn’t do without, and high speed Internet, which 29% now feel they have to have. Someone has said, “True wealth is based on the number of things we can joyfully and freely live without.” Maybe we should see having that kind of wealth as being the greatest necessity of all. (Plan Ahead, Get Ahead, Summer 2007)

25. One of the best things coworkers, friends, family members and married couples could do to maintain better relationships is to heed the words in a verse of a song I like called “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love,” by    which goes, “We will work with each other, we will work side by side, and we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride.” The word pride here doesn’t mean arrogance or having an air of superiority, of course, but an appropriate sense of respect for ones self and for the other alike, not feeling down on ourselves, but valuing ourselves and each other as God does. When we are in some kind of bruising conflict, or anytime our own dignity is being damaged by another person, our tendency is to do the opposite of what the song urges us to do, to attempt to destroy another’s dignity and demolish another’s pride. What this does is create ever more defensiveness and add to the likelihood that the cycle of hurting and hurting back continues. But what if we regarded our friend or our partner’s dignity and self respect as being as precious as our own, and sought to do everything we could to guard it, to save it, rather than to destroy it out of our own feelings of insecurity or threat? I’m thinking this would be a great motto to post on our refrigerators or our bathroom mirrors, “We will guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride.”

26. I’ve heard more than one woman lament, after discovering that a spouse or boy friend has been using pornography, that one of their more difficult things to deal with is the thought of being compared to images of artificially endowed and highly erotic females portrayed on porn sites or on X-rated videos or DVD’s. Certainly that understandable distress is one of many reasons why men of integrity will want to stay clear of this kind of addictive, juvenile and destructive behavior. Another big reason is that the world of pornography is one huge, fake, fantasy and a totally for-profit enterprise. The female actors in these seedy scenarios are typically so modified by plastic surgery and/or anorexia that they are often more like humanoids than real women, plus the scripts they operate from, in which they come through as dying to have sex with whatever man is showing an interest in them, is totally insincere and false. In real life, most of them have nothing but disdain for the men who are drooling over them, they just want the money they can make by doing what they are doing, along with whatever feeling of power or fleeting fame they might gain in the process. But the bottom line is all about profit. If we men weren’t so gullible and dumb, we would see through all this, how artificial and unreal this actually is, and would begin to truly prize that real love of our life who, when she says, “I love you,” really means it. That’s gold. The other is fool’s gold, a plastic and empty imitation of a real relationship.

27. John Cloud, in a piece in the August 27, 2007, issue of TIME, notes that back in the 60’s, when a major pharmaceutical company advertised an anti-anxiety medication in medical journals as something to be prescribed for people who can’t make friends, who can’t get along with others, or can’t adjust to retirement, the FDA stopped the ads, saying that drugs are for treating illnesses, not to deal with normal challenges people face in life. Cloud believes that today there’s a shift to seeing life stresses like job losses, relationship breakups, or accidents or illnesses, as forms of grief diagnosable as clinical depression, and to be treated with both psychotherapy and antidepressants. Allen Horowitz and Jerome Wakefield, in their recent book The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal sorrow into Depressive Disorder, agree. We have created a “legal drug culture,” they say, around the idea that there’s something pathological about feeling blue, rather than seeing sadness as a part of being human and of living in a less than perfect world. Not that there aren’t sometimes biological bases for depression, but normal sorrow, they believe, is useful in our gaining social support, protecting us from aggressors and teaching us that in many cases there are things we need to do to help prevent some of the bad things that happen to us.

28. One of the reasons mental health care is so expensive in our country is our depending too much on psychiatric specialists and psychotropic medications to provide all of the help people need. Remarkably, in some less affluent countries where people can’t afford a lot of inpatient treatment and all of the available drugs on the market, patients actually do as well if not better. Among the reasons given are that when people can’t afford, or don’t have access to, more expensive forms of health care, they are more likely to draw on other resources around them to help them get better. For example, friends and family members may take more time with, and show more support for, distressed friends, and if they are hospitalized, a family member is likely to come along so the person isn’t alone in what can be a very stressful environment. Maybe we have forgotten the importance of ordinary lay people providing good first aid for each other, before, during and after we avail ourselves of the help of specialists and of their prescriptions. A good definition of first aid I found in a Red Cross manual is that it is “the immediate and temporary care given to persons who are injured or have suddenly become ill. It includes immediate care until further assistance is available, words of encouragement, and confidence in knowing what we are doing.” I’m thinking we need to learn to apply that to emotional stresses as well as physical ones.

29. A 2007 study by researchers at Stanford University found that children given the same French fries and chicken nuggets in different packaging consistently reported that foods wrapped in MacDonald’s wrappers tasted better. The same was true when things like carrots and other food items not ordinarily associated with MacDonald’s were used in the experiment. A carrot in a plain wrapper just didn’t taste as good. This tells us a lot about some of the influence advertising has on making us ever more gullible consumers, as evidenced by our increased use of the bottled water (with familiar, highly advertised name brands) Americans are beginning to drink to the tune of nearly 30 gallons a year per person, in spite of the fact that the water available to most of us on tap is just as good and safe and in some cases even better, and virtually free. Water sales in 2006 exceeded $10.8 billion in the US alone, adding 2 billion pounds of unrecycled plastic waste to our landfills and consuming countless barrels of oil to produce the plastic containers and to transport the product from as far away as the Fiji Islands, France and Italy, according to a report in the August 20, 2007, issue of TIME magazine. As someone who has so far resisted buying his first bottle of water, something I feel should be as accessible as the air we breathe, I find myself on a bit of a crusade to discourage folks from adding that over-advertised item to their personal and family budgets.

30. In August of 2007 full page newspaper ads began appearing in leading Minnesota newspapers that enlist parents in a crusade to help them say No to their children, and to combat the culture of “More, Easy, Fast, and Fun.” The National Institute on Media and the Family and the Minnesota PTA are the primary push behind Minnesota Say Yes to No, a statewide ad campaign endorsed by a coalition of more than a dozen parent, educator and health organizations. It aims to promote powerful community conversations across the state about how to raise more successful, healthy and self-reliant kids. This coalition offers parents explanations and examples for using No the right way with their kids following the reading of the book NO: Why Kids – of All Ages Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It, by Media and the Family Institute President, David Walsh.
“Parents have been looking for solutions on how to compete with MySpace, text messaging and the television for a long time,” says Rosie Loeffler-Kemp, president of the Minnesota PTA. “Say Yes to No will give parents and educators answers and tactics that puts them back into control of their homes and classrooms.”
Having been in personal conversation with David Walsh, and having read and recommended his book in my parenting classes, I’m hoping “Say Yes to No” will be a campaign that will spread everywhere.

31. Alma Jean and I have come to see parenting as being one experience of letting go after another, from the time our three took their first wobbly steps, first toward us, but then so often away from us, and as they became a part of a larger circle of friends and peers, and left us, for school, for camp, for their first date, for a term of service, for college, for work, or marriage--its been one bittersweet separation after another. I still think back to that first time when we walked our youngest child and only daughter down the aisle of the Park View church to “give her away” to her beloved Chad Heatwole, even though we were gaining another son, and since have been blessed with another grandson as a result.
Henri Nouwen, in his book of daily readings called Bread for the Journey, writes,
“Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves up to great suffering, because those we love the most cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies, the pain of leaving can tear us apart.
“Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life is stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking."

32. An example of a picture being worth a thousand words is one of a brown eyed child with a cleft palate in an ad I saw not long ago for an organization called The Smile Train. For $250 they offer life changing cleft surgery for some such child in some third world country who could otherwise not afford it, and the ad goes on to say that the group has provided for over 250,000 such operations. The text at the top of the page reads, “Give a child with a cleft a second chance,” and the thought of this wistful, beautiful child getting such a chance makes giving a generous gift for that person seem like something you really want to do, especially since the ad promises that, due to grants made up front to cover overhead costs, 100% of the money given goes directly for that purpose.
So often what is missing in our giving, and what keeps us from being more generous, is our lack of seeing or knowing real people, young or old, whose lives, along with ours, could be blessed by our giving. Daniel Berrigan writes,
“Somewhere in your life hope you might see one starved person,
the look on her face when the bread finally arrives.
Hope you might have baked it, or bought it, or even kneaded it yourself.
For that look on her face, for your hands meeting hers across a piece of bread,
you might be willing to lose (invest) a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little even.”

33. Stacy Rector of the Open Door Community in Atlanta writes the story of Philip Workman, a homeless drug addict who was charged with killing a police officer in the act of robbing a Wendy's in Memphis in 1981 while high on cocaine. A man claiming to have witnessed the robbery said he saw Workman aim at the policeman and fire. Turns out that the so-called witness’s story didn’t hold water, since he wasn’t even in town at the time. Besides, ballistic experts demonstrated that it couldn’t have been Workman’s gun that caused the officer’s death. Be that as it may, Philip Workman was given a death sentence in spite of the victim’s own daughter and five former jurors asking for clemency because of false testimony in the case. On the day of his execution, when asked what he wanted for his last meal, he requested that some homeless person be given a vegetarian pizza on his behalf. The state of Tennessee said they couldn’t use taxpayer money for that purpose, so Philip was strapped to the gurney without his meal, and after 17 agonizing minutes, breathed his last. But when the word got out about his dying request, one Nashville resident, along with some of her friends, donated 150 pizzas, $1200 worth, to a local rescue mission. From there the word spread, and gifts of pizza just kept multiplying, until in the end, over 1500 homeless people across the nation had enjoyed a pizza meal because one person preferred to die hungry in favor of someone else getting something to eat.           Hospitality August 2007

34. According to the September, 2007, Journal of Pediatrics, researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute conclude that parents who want to give their infants a boost in learning language should limit the time they expose them to DVDs such as "Baby Einstein" and "Brainy Baby." The researchers found that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them. Baby DVDs and videos had no positive or negative effect on the vocabularies on toddlers 17 to 24 months of age. "The most important fact to come from this study is there is no clear evidence of a benefit coming from baby DVDs and videos and there is some suggestion of harm," says Frederick Zimmerman, lead author of the study and a UW associate professor of health services. His associate, Andrew Meltzoff, adds, "There are only a fixed number of hours that young babies are awake and alert. If the 'alert time' is spent in front of DVDs and TV instead of with people speaking in 'parentese' -- that melodic speech we use with little ones -- the babies are not getting the same linguistic experience." "Parents and caretakers... instinctively adjust their speech, eye gaze and social signals to support language acquisition. Watching attention-getting DVDs and TV may not be an even swap for warm social human interaction at this very young age."

35. Gary and Mona Shriver have written a great book entitled, Unfaithful--Rebuilding Trust After an Affair, based on their own experience of recovering from a relationship torn apart by infidelity. They each describe the pain and the progress of months of painful recovery, and how the two eventually developed a ministry to other couples based on their own struggle. Mona minces no words in describing how gut wrenching the experience