It's time to leave hell behind

There's a great storyline in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" where the King of Dreams journeys into hell to free a woman he sent there for spurning his love from endless years of torment.

Dream arrives at the gates of hell, expecting opposition, and finds instead silence. To everyone's dismay, Lucifer Morningstar has decided to quit. He is tired of being the Adversary, worn out from orchestrating the cries of the damned, and tired of overseeing all the many demons and other denizens of hell. So he has quit, thrown the dead out of hell, and is now locking the gate behind him as he leaves.

I'll ignore the unusual soteriology, and focus instead on an interesting point that Gaiman is making through his little horror story: There is no situation so bad that we can't leave it, and no hell so horrible but we are there by our own choice.

I've been fighting hard with this job for more than two years. The pay is miserable, the hours are unbearable, and I am overtaxed even as my skills are underused. At the end of the day, I have little to show for what I have done, while a number of things I would love to be doing -- things that I believe are a fundamental part of God's creation in me -- are being neglected.

It's time to quit.

I don't have another job to go to right now, which is a little unnerving, but I have to consider some other factors as well. I think things are in my favor.

Do we have the finances to last for a while without regular employment? We have about three months' worth of liquid assets if I were to quit now and stop drawing a paycheck. Not a lot, and I'm concerned about insurance, but there is some sort of cushion. Plus, my wife would be able to work more hours and draw a bigger paycheck at her part-time job, and I would be able to pursue other avenues of income, including my own PR business, which has a growing clientele. Additionally, added time at home theoretically translates to more time to look for work and find new clients, as well as pursuing some creative options I need to look into.

Is where I am at a good place to be? I think that's obvious. It's not. This job sucks at my time; it keeps me from my children and wife; it drains me emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally, and keeps me at a desk so that I could stand to lose 35 or 40 pounds.

I miss two out of every seven days of my children's lives, and pour that time into a job that is increasingly difficult to do, doesn't match my lifestyle and is leading me to produce writing and editing that I'm not proud of. The hours are also insane -- somewhere between 50 and 60 a week, and it's about to increase, because my intern has gone, leaving me to write all the stories myself. I also can't trust my supervisors to care enough to do anything.

Will leaving give me opportunity to grow? I think so. I've got a few nice-paying clients, as I already said, including two I picked up just this week. That's something that will grow. Plus I have leads for part-time work, and have ideas for other challenging, interesting and productive ways to earn money that require time I don't have right now, ranging from a comic book idea I've discussed with Indigo, to ghost writing, free-lance copy editing and even writing a newspaper column from the point of view of the Religious Left.

What am I teaching my children? That they're more important to me than a job, or that I'd rather spend all my time in a dead-end position with a lousy employer than being with them? That it's important to chase your dreams and be what God has called you to be, or that you should settle for something less than what you are capable of?

What it boils down to for me is where God wants me. I think he wants me to leave, as evidenced by the complete misery I'm in by being here. And if that's what he wants, I'm prepared to take a step of faith and leave WCN behind.

The catch is that it can't be a step I take alone, because I'm not alone. I'm part of a family, and this decision has to be made with my wife's full consent. More than that, I'm part of a community, and any decision I make is going to have ramifications for my community of believers, whether it's hearing me whine and cry about how hard life is, or people stepping in and investing money in helping this to happen.

The last two years have been my worst, careerwise. I've gleaned some good out of it by reaching the point that I have a better idea what I'm capable of and what I require, but I think I'm at the end of the road with this place.

Sodom and Gomorrah, and gay marriage

Sodom and Gomorrah weren't destroyed because there were homosexuals there. They weren't destroyed even because all but five of the men who lived there were gay. (As a point of order, I feel I must point out that we don't know how many men and women who lived there were gay. The Bible doesn't address it.)

Here's what God provides as the reason for Sodom's destruction, as recorded in Ezekiel 16:48-50.

⁴⁸As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.
⁴⁹"'Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.
⁵⁰"They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen."

If homosexuality is the "detestable" practice in question, I think it's worth noting that it's the last of several reasons given for God's judgment, after sins like arrogance, gluttony, apathy and indifference to the plight of the poor. In fact, pride is mentioned twice -- cf. the "haughty" charge -- suggesting that was the main offense.

Even looking at the Genesis account of Sodom's sin in the case of the angels who visited Lot, you can see this. Yes, the Sodomites tell Lot to bring the men out so that they can lie with them, but that's not just gay sex -- that's gay rape, a wholly different matter from consensual sex, and certainly in line with a charge of cruelty to foreigners and strangers.

There's a Talmudic tradition that explains neatly what a sodomite is. The man who says "What's mine is yours, and what's yours is yours" is a saint. The man who says "What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine" is a simpleton. And the man who says "What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" is a sodomite.

If we're concerned about God judging America, perhaps we need to be less concerned with how non-Christians behave in their bedrooms, and start thinking more about how our own behavior within the Church squares up against God's standards and the call Christ puts on those who presume to call themselves his followers. The harshest words in Scripture aren't for the unbelievers or those outside the Kingdom of God. It's for those of us who identify ourselves by his name and claim to be part of the kingdom.

so long, mcgreevey

Big news in New Jersey: The governor has admitted to being gay, and has resigned from office.

My feeling is that the entire story hasn't broken yet. All McGreevey essentially said at his news conference today was "I'm gay, I committed adultery with another man, and now I'm resigning as governor." That doesn't flow. He never once during his speech provided a meaningful explanation for his decision to leave office.

The man he committed adultery with is Golan Cipel, an Israeli citizen whom McGreevey tapped for a high-paying state post on the anti-terrorism commission. (I believe it's a cabinet post.) That was a mini scandal in itself, in that Cipel was a complete outsider. The first anyone in Jersey had heard of him was when the governor brought him here after a visit to Israel two years ago. And of course, the federal government wouldn't work with Cipel because he wasn't a U.S. citizen and therefore lacked security clearance.

Cipel reportedly is filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against McGreevey in state Superior Court in Mercer County, and I've heard that he allegedly was trying to extort money from McGreevey. I've no idea what that's about, though; this obviously is a big news story, and newsrooms everywhere in New Jersey have been going crazy as people try to sift the truth from the rumor and innuendo.

So McGreevey avoided the scandal of being outed by outing himself, but to be honest, I don't think that many New Jerseyans really care if he's gay or not. If he lived in the South, being gay cost him the respect he would need to work with state legislators and probably the trust of the public as well, but that just isn't an issue in New Jersey. It doesn't affect his ability to govern the state.

During his resignation speech this afternoon, McGreevey said something about exposing the governor's office and the state to some sort of risk through his affair. I'm not sure what he meant by that; doubtless the major news agencies like the Associated Press, the Star Ledger, Bergen Record et al are going to be revealing more details about the relationship, particularly once Cipel does file the lawsuit and all the prurient details are out on the table.

Politically this probably is a windfall for the Democratic Party. McGreevey has taken one battering after another almost since the beginning of his governorship, and he was seen as unlikely to win re-election next year. Now with his resignation, Senate President Rich Codey will become acting governor and presumably would have the incumbent's advantage during the 2005 gubernatorial election. If there are problems owing to McGreevey's budget failures and other expenses, all he has to say is, "It's Jim's fault. I've only been here a year." Or the party could simply make him a sacrificial lamb, and let him retire from politics with a hefty pension, and run U.S. Senator Jon Corzine for the governor's seat. Corzine probably would win, given his general popularity in the state as a man who ran for Senate on his own nickel instead of using taxpayer money.

Plenty of people in politics and the media here in New Jersey knew, suspected or had heard that McGreevey is gay, long before his revelation. I wasn't surprised or shocked at all when he said it. My reaction about five minutes into his speech was, "For crying out, just come out and say it."

I don't think the average New Jerseyan cares that the governor is gay, whether they voted for him or not. Probably most don't even care that he had an affair, homosexual or not.

The fact that he appointed Cipel to the homeland security post as an apparent form of cronyism IS problematic to me, and I think to others as well. But that also happened about two years ago.

I'm waiting to find out exactly what led to the resignation.

creative discipline

From the Washington Post:

Hot sauce adds a kick to salsa, barbeque, falafel and hundreds of other foods. But some parents use it in a different recipe, one they think will yield better-behaved children: They put a drop of the fiery liquid on a child's tongue as punishment for lying, biting, hitting or other offenses.

"Hot saucing," or "hot tongue," has roots in Southern culture, according to some advocates of the controversial disciplinary method, but it has spread throughout the country. Nobody keeps track of how many parents do it, but most experts contacted for this story, including pediatricians, psychologists and child welfare professionals, were familiar with it.

When Isaac was living with us, we had to discipline him for a number of things, mostly because he had never learned any sort of self-control or self-restraint. Trouble was, our preferred method of discipline — time out — is completely useless for a child who is accustomed to being ignored. If the child is unfazed by discipline, it isn’t working. Sometimes you have to be creative when you discipline a child.

I discovered after a few weeks that his main means of sensory stimulation were tactile, taste and visual. No one had ever talked to him, so speech meant nothing to him, and corporal punishment obviously is out of line for abused kids who aren’t your own, no matter what you may think of it for your own.

But he loved to watch things. When I took him to walk the dog with me, he tripped every 10 feet and would lie there watching cars go by because he found it interesting. I finally got him to stand up by pulling his hat down over his eyes until he did stand.

I found that worked for time outs as well. Isaac absolutely hated being unable to see. So for him, time out became time in a chair with arm rests, with a bag over his head. (When his sense of balance improved, we started having him stand in the corner.) His behavior improved immensely.

We used the food thing primarily as a means of controlling his behavior at the table. He was accustomed to leaving the table, running around and eating at his leisure. Since he needed structure and discipline, the rule became, “Leave the table, leave your food.” He stopped leaving the table.

He also would feed the dog or throw bits of food on the floor. When he did that, he lost the rest of his meal.
If he didn’t eat the meal we gave him — he wasn’t used to fresh produce or healthy food, and preferred chicken nuggets and other processed junk food — that was too bad. At snacktime he got a normal-size snack, and had to wait until the next meal.

His eating habits and table manners improved tremendously as well.

So you have to be creative when it comes to discipline, since not every child is going to respond in the same way. E would think having a hat on her head is funny, although she otherwise hates being in time out.

On those grounds, I understand the hot sauce technique although I don’t think I would use it. For starters, I’m concerned about the associations it could cause with hot foods — I don’t want the girls to think they’re in trouble every time we eat something spicy.

Additionally, when time out is over, I can let the child out of her chair, or I could pull the hat off Isaac’s head. If you spank, it stings for a little, and then the punishment is over.

Hot spices can burn for quite a while. I once picked my nose after chopping jalapeños — a bad idea — and was miserable for about half an hour.

The hardest part of being an ex pat is the language

The worst part of living in a different country is not the diseases you may catch, it's not the new climes you must weather, and it's not the disorientation of being a stranger in a strange land.

The worst part is the language.

When you don't speak the same lanuage as everyone else around you, you have the mind of an adult burdened by the survival skills of a toddler. You're fully cognizant of your needs, and fully aware of how helpless you are to do anything about them, or even to articulate what they are. In the best of times, you bear this with grace and laugh at your difficulties. The rest of the time you want to run away and cry.

When you don't speak the local language, you are unable to communicate or understand the most basic aspects of life, from "Where's the bathroom?" to "How much do you want for that mango?" In no time at all, you feel like the stupidest person on the face of the earth, such as when I told the yard boy, "Remember, I am garbage" instead of "Remember to take out my garbage."

Eventually you learn important phrases like, "I don't speak your language." This helps, but only moderately. There are times that come too frequently when you trust this trusty phrase out only to discover that the national who is speaking to you is speaking English, and speaking it tolerably well, but they are putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable, or pronouncing a silent letter, or committing some other minor gaffe that makes their speech unfamiliar to you.

Stupidest person on earth is too mild for how you feel on those occasions. Now you don't even understand English, and what's worse, you've just insulted someone who was trying to connect with you by inadvertantly telling him that he's too stupid to speak English properly.

Go get a shovel, dig a hole and climb in. Your only hope as a missionary whose enthusiasm outpaces your mastery of the language is that the Spirit will move, and people will connect with God despite your failings.

I was a missionary in Haiti, but not the sort who did led open-air services and tried to win converts. I initially worked with STEM Ministries, which brought teams to Haiti and other countries for two weeks at a time; and then with Cradle of Life Christian School, teaching English grammar and composition to middle-schoolers.

As a result, I didn't do much preaching in Haiti, but I did try to share the gospel with a other people occasion, if for no other reason than they expected me to and I had the feeling that I should. My first conversation along those lines went something like this:

"If you accept Jesus Christ, he will take away your dogs."
"My dogs? I don't have any dogs."
"Everyone has dogs, ma'am. But when Jesus forgives them, it's though you never had a dog your entire life."

Bill Smith, an Assemblies of God missionary whom I knew, told me he once preached an entire sermon in Kreyol once he felt he had gained sufficient mastery of the language. The sermon went well and the Spirit evidently was moving, so he decided to take an altar call and appeal to the congregation that if anyone wanted to follow of Christ, they should signify it by raising their legs into the air and coming forward on their hands.

He got plenty of puzzled looks, but very little response to the altar call. The Holy Spirit was quenched.

Still, my favorite embarrassing gaffe was committed by the late Dale Preiser, another Assemblies of God missionary who had left the country before I arrived. I met him once after I had returned to the United States, when he came to visit my church.

Dale had been in Haiti for a while, and was concerned that he saw a number of believers who were mixing voodoo and Christianity, and going to the voodoo priestess for help when problems arose. The word he wanted was mambo. Unfortunately, the word he used was mamba, and for three solid months he went along Highway One, using this word in his sermons.

"Stay away from the mamba," he warned them. "Mamba is of the devil. You cannot use the mamba without shipwrecking your faith and endangering the faith of others."

Mamba is peanut butter.

Still, the Spirit was moving. I am told that people were very open to this teaching, and sales of peanut butter plummeted wherever Dale went.



Copyright © 2004 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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more on the sucking chest wound

We got a third-party update on Christian the other day. The good news: He's still attending the day care where the state Division of Youth and Family Services set him up after he returned to his parents. He's getting daily interaction with other children his age and the last I knew had a personal teacher to work with him on his psychocognitive development, where he was majorly delayed.

And he's talking! He's still behind a bit, as is to be expected, and apparently is not the most verbal person -- but he's talking in complete sentences and is able to communicate fairly effortlessly.

Thank God.

Chris is also living with his father, grandmother, aunt and two cousins. So he has something approximating family relationships. E definitely did a lot to prepare him for that.

Now the bad news: His mother is back in the state. She returned from Florida, where she had been working as a stripper, and apparently already has made a bid to get full custody of her children. That was denied, and she also gave up after her daughter had a fit during a visit and Judy had no idea how to handle it. But she still has access to the kids for visits, which can be a bad thing, given that she's the cause of the bulk of their problems.

And the really bad news is that Judy and her latest boyfriend have a child. This is her fourth that I know of. The first was put up for adoption, and Chris and Dominique were the next two.

The more things change ...

man, this job sucks

It just gets weirder and weirder here...

Where to start? About a month ago, a co-worker of mine named Vince was fired. Vince technically was mid-management. He was the arts and entertainment editor, but also had a lot of training responsibilities and did a lot of pinch hitting when needed. Why he was fired is irrelevant, but it caught no one by surprise, including him.

Several months ago, he had told our editor in chief, Tom, that when it came time for him to leave, one way or the other, he recommended that his post go either to me or to another editor.

Well, even though Tom knew that we both were interested in the job, he decided to hire a sports writer with no editing or A&E experience and made him the new A&E editor. That's pretty much how they work here; when someone is fired, they have the replacement hired two weeks before the firee discovers he is through. There is no in-house advertising of the position or anything.

Okay, that's annoying, but I can live with it. I think it's a piss-poor way to run a business, but it's not my business, and I'm tired of juggling editing and writing responsibilities anyway.

Last Thursday I came in to work and discovered that David Jay, the editor of our flagship paper, has been moved up to associate editor. (Vince's old title.) Jay has no writing responsibilities in his new post, will be in charge of backreading all newspaper copy, and is going to be the guru of pagination, layout and various other things. On top of that, his replacement is a 22-year-old college graduate whose only work experience is in a daycare and whose only newspaper experience was on the college newspaper. And she's editing our flagship?

I could kill.

No one -- not one person, except possibly Jablonski, knew about this change in the lineup. No one was given a chance to apply for the associate editor position, no one was given the chance to decide not to apply for it, no one was even given a chance to find out what the position would entail and whether they would be interested in it. What's worse, to create it, they apparently laid off two copy editors.

I could scream.

Tom knows I'm burned out on my current responsibilities. We've talked about it before, when he broke his promise that I was going to be reassigned to head up another office. I've mentioned before that I'd be interested in taking over the flagship paper -- and unlike Katie, I actually have eight years of professional experience in this business.

And -- this is going to sound all wrong, but I'm mad enough I don't care -- I'm a better editor and a better writer than Jay. He hasn't got a clue how to make a good layout, how to write a decent editorial, or even how to write a decent story. The previous copy editor told me she dreaded reading his papers, because he did virtually nothing with the news copy, leaving it entirely to edit and the stories for factual, grammatical and stylistic errors. Tom himself told me last year that he considers me the finest editor he has in this place. So why am I getting ignored for a position where I could conceivably help a number of other editors improve their work and thereby improve the quality of our final product? Why is responsibility for the flagship being given to a complete newcomer when there's another editor who knows the towns in covers inside and out?

Part of me is screaming that they're probably violating some sort of labor law in not even advertising these positions to staff first. It's certainly not taking the high road or trying to build employee morale or company loyalty.

I'm disgusted. I've picked up a client for the PR business and am on the verge of getting a few others, I think. Even if that doesn't work out immediately, I've also got resumes going all over the place for some other jobs.

I can't wait to shake the dust off my feet when I leave this place.

'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'

I have mixed feelings about Tim Burton coming within 20 yards of a "Willy Wonka" remake. For starters, his remake of "Planet of the Apes" was awful, lifeless, uninspired and incomprehensible. And it wasn't any good either.

For a second, I enjoyed the original "Willy Wonka." I disagree with you that it was Disneyesque and the book darker; as I recall, it was the exact opposite. Think about all things that happened to the kids in the movie, that Wonka was completely dispassionate about. His cries for them to stop were so disinterested they were hilarious. "No, please, stop."

From what I've read of the remake, they're hoping to make Wonka and his factory brighter and less threatening than in the original movie.

Bleah. Hollywood needs to get over its remake fever.

As an aside, how's this for a thought: "Willy Wonka" was a horror movie. I contend that this is so because horror isn't gross-out, however much the purveyors of Hollywood flicks want you to think otherwise. It's the imposition of the unreal upon the real, the supernatural with the mundane, the extraordinary with the dull.

"Willy WOnka" is comedic horror, but it's horror nonetheless. The horror we're familiar with today, popularized by too many "Friday the 13th" sequels and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is not classic horror, but a vulgar imitation that settles for cheap scares and gross-outs.

Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" isn't scary in the sense we usually associate with horror today, but it is disturbing or disquieting in what it reveals about the human condition and the insatiable hubris that drives us to bring ruin to ourselves and all those around us. (It's only because of the Boris Karloff flicks that we think of Frankenstein as being about Victor's creation and forget who the real monster is.)

And anyway, genres like fantasy and science fiction technically have their roots in horror, although they've become vast enough bodies of work that we now classify them separately.

Willy Wonka's not pure horror, of course, and I'm not claiming that it is. Doing so would be like comparing Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" with Shelley's book. It's got too many comedic elements to be classified solely horror. My point at the beginning, which I've probably overstated in my zeal, is just that it can be considered a horror movie in the proper sense of the term, and there were enough disturbing elements in the movie -- particularly the way each of the children is done in through their defining flaw -- that the classification is appropriate.

Henry V time for George Bush

He's been injured, badly, in Iraq. The Tribune Review has a story reports that Jeff Cole has been badly injured in Iraq.

Jeff,  20, reportedly was taken Wednesday to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C., after sustaining a broken leg and internal injuries. Jeff is from Level Green, Pa. He grew up in the house next to one I grew up in, but he's 14 years younger than I.

I've known him since he was 4. My clearest memories of him involve swinging around in the back yard, and his inability to keep his favorite fast food restaurant straight with a popular children's song. (He often told me about eating at "Old McDonald's.")

My impression from my mother was that he had no sense of direction at the end of high school and so joined the Army reserves with the plan that it would pay for college.

I'd be happy just to see him come through this alive.

I was disappointed by the coverage The Tribune-Review gave this story. It looks like the reporter just called the house and wrote up a news brief based on what his older sister knew. That's really shoddy reporting. No indication they even called Defense to find out if the accident was related to combat, or how exactly the one vehicle rolled over onto another.

His parents understandably are in a bad state right now. Don Cole has been showing every day of his age since February, when Jeff's unit was called up. When they got the call from the military brass that Jeff had been injured, they flew out to Germany to meet him there, and then flew back with him to Walter Reed on the military transport.

They've been there ever since.

But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath 
a heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and 
arms and heads, chopp'd off in a battle, shall join 
together at the latter day and cry all, 'We died at 
such a place.'

a human face to the war

If I had to give the war in Iraq just one human face, it would be the face of Jeff Cole.

A corporal in the U.S. Army Reserves, Jeff is no longer fighting for his life against terrorists or insurgents in Iraq. He is now fighting for his life at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., as a result of injuries he received while serving in Iraq. Unlike the faceless and nameless thousands I’ve read about who were stationed in the Middle East since the start of the war, Jeff is the first soldier I’ve known personally. He really is the boy next door.

The Coles became our neighbors in 1987, the year before I graduated from high school. I’ve known him since he was 4 years old and still small enough for me to pick him up by the wrists and spin him around in the back yard.

Having enlisted in the Reserves in part to pay for college, Jeff was called up for active duty in Iraq about six months ago. On July 15, he was in what I am told was an accident that killed two other people, when another military vehicle rolled onto the one Jeff was in.

Two other men in the back with Jeff were killed. Only he and the driver survived and, for a while, that was touch-and-go. Medics at the scene initially were concerned Jeff would bleed to death and then, when they had him stabilized, that he might lose his leg because of a compound fracture.

In Iraq, doctors managed to set the bones in his leg — although there are doubts whether he will ever be able to use it again, because of nerve damage — and operated to repair a punctured kidney. From Iraq, he was flown to Germany, where his parents were waiting for him, and then to Washington, D.C., where he was admitted to Walter Reed Hospital.

Jeff’s prognosis for recovery has improved drastically just by virtue of being at Walter Reed, but it’s still far from certain. Infection already has set in and he’s considered at high risk for fever and for pneumonia. He’s been in and out of consciousness ever since and there’s still some uncertainty whether he’ll come out of this with both legs, or even with his life.

Count him as another victim of the war on terror.

It’s taken me a while to sort out my feelings on what’s happened to him. I’ve been opposed to the war in Iraq from the beginning. This was a war to remove the sovereign of another state who had taken no overt action against us or our allies in 10 years. It was a war where we lacked the support of world opinion, where our drum-beating has been uncertain in its justification at best and where we lacked the moral authority we had after the first Gulf War.

In that sense, Jeff as a soldier becomes a fair target under the terms of engagement for those resisting the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

On the other hand, Saddam Hussein is a snake. I don’t doubt for a minute that Iraq is better today under its new government than it was three years ago under him.

If “accident” is simply a military euphemism for an attack that can’t be discussed for security reasons, then the people who primarily bear the guilt for Jeff’s injuries and for the deaths of his companions are his attackers.

In all likelihood, these are the same monsters who consider it sporting to behead innocent civilians and captured servicemen or who think that God considers it a glorious act of devotion to blow up themselves and as many innocent people as are around.

It’s because of such people that we cannot abandon Iraq until and unless its new national government asks us to.

At the moment, the Iraqi people are sandwiched between the hope for a democratic republic where basic human rights are respected and an unholy theocracy where those rights are trampled. They didn’t ask to be there, but that’s where they are.

Nations such as the Philippines have acquiesced to the demands of the terrorists and backed out of the coalition to save the life of a single prisoner. Each concession has emboldened the terrorists to pile one atrocity on to another.

If we leave Iraq before the nation is stable again, we will embolden the terrorists far more than they ever have been before. And there are many more Jeff Coles in Iraq and here in the United States whose lives would be put at risk by such a move.

I can’t blame President Bush for what happened to Jeff. In the end, that judgment belongs to God alone, who will make every president and king answer for all the blood spilled in these wars.

And even though I disagree that we had the right, the moral authority or the prerogative to invade Iraq, I don’t think he is some kind of monster for doing so. Whatever else Bush may be, he’s not a monster. He at least is trying to bring new order to the Middle East and to kindle hope for the future. He wants to make the world a better place.

And the world is not one boy who is fighting to make it to his 21st birthday, even though it seems like it to the people who know him.

cinderella revisited

Tonight my daughter made my day. Her mother was reading her "Cinderella" -- Evangeline's favorite story at the momenet -- and she objected to the story content. She didn't like the fact that Drizella, Anastasia and their mother were so mean to Cinderella, and wanted them to be nice instead.

That's good. She's starting to see how the way we behave toward other people can affect them, and that bad choices have bad consequences not only for ourselves but for other people.

Too cool, huh?

On the other hand, "There once was a girl named Cinderella who lived happily and then lived happily ever after" doesn't make much of a story.


Copyright © 2004 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Elmo must die

Some time ago at the Philadelphia Zoo, when I was speculating aloud whether it would be better to see Elmo trampled by stampeding elephants or gored by wild bulls, a friend of mine commented that I put a lot of effort into hating the little freak.

After I got over my shock — I hadn't even mentioned the possibilities of having Elmo's eyes pecked out by birds, or watching a Burmese python hug all his ticklish parts until he bursts — I had to admit that my friend was right. I do hate Elmo a lot. My fantasy TV special would be to have Barney the Purple Dinosaur choke to death while he’s chewing up Elmo, just as he falls over onto the Teletubbies, whom Thomas the Tank Engine is taking someplace.

Elmo is a scourge from God, sent to punish us for inventing batteries. On Judgment Day, I fully expect God to throw the vilest of sinners — by which I mean politicians, used car salesmen and journalists — not into a lake of fire, but into a roiling cesspool of Elmo sing-alongs that go on and on day and night without stop.

Really wicked people — and by that I mean the lady who stiffed me for a tip when I was a pizza guy — will find themselves in a room full of musical Elmo toys that all play the same songs at slightly different pitches and speeds.

I've had the chance twice now to share my feelings about the Red Furry Monster Who Must Not Be Named with employees of Sesame Workshop. The first was perplexed that anyone would declare an Elmo-free zone around their house and insist that Sesame Street videos could be shown in the house only if Elmo were limited to a supporting role.

The second was more amused, and suggested that I try something therapeutic, like writing down my feelings on Elmo for their marketing people, who have come up with innovations like Tickle Me Elmo, Chicken Dance Elmo, and Beeping Clicking and Whirring Drive Your Father Out Of His Ever-Loving Mind Elmo.

I've given it some though since then, and I've come to accept that Elmo is the cash cow that gives the golden milk. As long as Elmo is marketed to the exclusion of the other Muppets, he's going to bring in the most money and no one is going ask him to step down from the throne of gold.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Here follow my suggested Elmo toys that can be marketed to adults, increasing the amount of revenue he generates for Sesame Workshop and its educational videos and products.

Beat Me with a Stick Elmo. This Elmo doll stands 18 inches high, runs on a 4.5-Volt battery and comes complete with a 12-inch wooden stick the owner can use to strike Elmo whenever he annoys them. Whenever he's hit, Elmo screams in that adorable little voice of his, phrases like "Ouch!" "Stop that!" or "Elmo doesn't like this game." Suggested retail price: $14.99.

Push Me Down an Elevator Shaft Elmo. Covered in soft red felt, this motion-activated Elmo lets out a piteous yet heart-warming scream as he plunges 80 feet into stygian darkness where he meets his doom. Elevator shaft with sharp metal spikes at the bottom, not included.

Urban Legends Elmo. A must-buy for anyone who has ever believed "reliable stories" passed on by their friends. Remove Elmo's kidneys before stuffing him in a bathtub filled with ice! Replace Elmo's hand with a hook, and send him out to terrorize teenagers at the local Lovers Lane! Squeeze his hand and hear him spread salacious rumors about Bert and Ernie! Legal disclaimer: Not responsible for lawsuits resulting from repeating those rumors.

Sopranos Elmo. Marketed especially to New Jersey consumers, who love the violence and family intrigue of HBO's award-winning mob drama, this Elmo offers to whack Kermit the Frog, says "badda-bing, badda-boom" when you squeeze him, and tells people to "Fuggedaboutit." Cigar is included only for decorative purposes and cannot be smoked.

Operation! Elmo. Produced in partnership with Milton Bradley, this Elmo is educational. Children and adults can learn all about surgery and anatomy by cutting Elmo open and removing his internal organs. Added feature: Elmo's realistic screams remind children about the importance of anesthesia.

Having shared all this, I'm amazed to discover the wisdom of the Sesame Workshop employee who suggested I write this all down. I do feel a lot better about Elmo now, and while I'm not likely to relax the Elmo Free Zone my wife and I established, I'm also not going to ask for Marie Antoinette Elmo, Hari Kari Elmo or Black Death Elmo.

Just don't get me started on Disney Princesses.

Copyright © 2004 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'danger unlimited'

Does anyone else have "Danger Unlimited?" It's a John Byrne series done for Dark Horse around the same time as John Byrne's Next Men, but it's a series that didn't work out very well.

I got in a collected format. It wasn’t that impressive or interesting, and as a series it probably wouldn’t have lasted long anyway at DC or Marvel. He explains in the back of the colleciton that it failed to get going because of the “John Byrne 40,000” — the readers who automatically will read anything by John Byrne. Comic distributors as a policy start out at an elevated number of copies for the first issue of a new comic, which they reduce incrementally for the next two issues. Since everything is ordered three months ahead of time, it’s not until issue four is going to press that they have a clear idea of what the actual readership will be.

Orders for issue number one came out to 40,000. Issue two was 35,000. Issue three was 30,000. So by that time Byrne’s core readers had discovered that he had a new comic out, but about 10,000 of them couldn’t find it anywhere. If the core group can’t get it, it’s a sure bet the marginal readers won’t be able to find it either, and there’s no way to expand the market.

So he killed it.

Like I said, it had a long set up — I think he wrote it near the end of his marriage, which always takes a toll on a writer and his work — but it had some interesting ideas, particularly with the scene he ended up cutting when it became obvious the series wouldn’t work. (The one guy from the original Danger Unlimited whose memory was being restored turns out to be someone whose memories are being overwritten with a new set so he believes he’s the hero in question. The real man is dead and has been for close to a century.)

Could have been a good comic, but it worked out to pretty much just a side note in Byrne’s career.

'the hulk'

The Hulk's origin was only one of the things I hated about the movie.

In all fairness to Ang Lee, he was trying (to an extent) to be faithful to the Hulk's origins and powers as developed over about 40 years of continuity.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby set out the basic template of the Hulk's origin, with the gamma bomb that exploded while Bruce Banner was saving Rick Jones. Bill Mantlo later developed that in the mid-1980s by making Bruce Banner's father into a research physicist with a streak of paranoia who believed that his work with radiation had caused mutations that his son inherited. If memory serves, he also added the touch that the elder Banner had murdered his wife.

Peter David, during his remarkable run on the series in the 1990s, put forward the explanation that the Hulk gets stronger the madder he gets because his anger actually is leading to heightened cellular reproduction -- more muscle tissue, plus healing so fast that it appears the Hulk is invulnerable. (I think he stole that idea from the Hulk TV show.)

The nanobots were just a stupid addition. They really should have stuck with the basic origin involving Rick Jones and the gamma bomb. Predictable, but there's a certain strength in sticking to the essentials. You don't need to follow it in every detail, but you shouldn't chuck out the whole thing just because it's dated.

blue's clues: steve

I still like the urban legend I tried to start about Burns: that the SWAT team had to kill him when he went postal at the studio after showing up at work and saying, "Hi, it's me, Steve!" before letting it rip with an AK-47.

The whole situation with Steve's "brother" Joe showing up unannounced, moving into Steve's house and taking over all of Steve's things reminds too much of that scene from "Unbreakable" where the killer steals the family's house. I imagine a series finale where Joe and Blue play a game of Blue's Clues to figure out why there's a smell coming from the basement. The clues are a bundle of rope, a handkerchief and a human skeleton. Joe suddenly gets a crazed look, announces a commercial break, and when we return, Blue is nowhere to be seen. Joe, whose shirt now has red spots all over it, calmly says that Blue had to take a little vacation, but children can tune in next week for an exciting episode of "Green Puppy's Clues."

When I first started working at WCN Newspapers, Eowyn was in the middle of a Blue's Clues obsession. The reporter sitting behind me is named Steve Reilly, and I swear, every time he called someone, he would say, "Hi, it's me, Steve."

The maddening seduction of power

There's an old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don't know if that's true, but power does have a funny effect on the people who get it.

Take for example a man named Glenn. A handyman and contractor, Glenn made a reputation for himself in a township south of here in 1991 by donating a sizeable chunk of his time to building a large playground at the municipal complex. The local Republican Party, which had had a monopoly on political power for about 15 years, knew a good thing when one surfaced, and tapped Glenn to run for township committee in 1992.

Not surprisingly, he won. And that was where things started to go wrong for Glenn.

The problems started to surface in 1995, in the third year of his first term on the Township Committee, when another resident, named David, did the unthinkable. He not only mounted a campaign for the township committee under the banner of the Democratic Party, he won.

The trouble between Glenn and David began quickly. During the four years they served together -- each man was elected to a second term -- Glenn, who frequently called himself a champion of bipartisanship, called the much-shorter David a "dwarf piece of garbage," and reportedly even jumped across the dais to yell at him while he was talking to a resident after the committee meeting had ended.

As time went on, things only got worse. By virtue of being in power so exclusively for so long, members of the GOP had fallen into the habit of making deals that helped one another's financial interests. Word got into the community of a major land deal in the western portion of the township that would make some of the old-time GOP faithful a few million dollars richer. Glenn, who considered himself a watchdog for the public, saw nothing wrong with it.

By the time I came into the picture, in early 1999, there were days Glenn barely seemed to be in the same reality as anyone else. Anyone who disagreed with him was a liar. Any critique of his voting record was a personal attack. He became incapable of telling political allies from political opponents, and slapped down fellow Republicans on the township committee when they disagreed with him.

In his own eyes at least, it seemed Glenn was an unappreciated messiah. While his political opponents stayed at home watching TV and living the fine life, Glenn was wrestling with developers and fighting for the betterment of the community. He also considered himself an expert at everything, as he tried to demonstrate with one embarrassing display after another.

Not surprisingly, Glenn lost re-election in 1999, along with three other Republican committee members. For the first time in 20 years, the GOP had no representation in township government. It was an incredible upset, and contained for those willing to listen a warning against power-brokering and backroom deals.

Glenn wasn't willing to listen. While party officials opted to lay low for a while and plan for the next election, he continued to spout off rather publicly about the evil people afoot in the Democratic Party and how unappreciated he had been.

In 2000, he managed a letter-writing campaign against a Democratic committeeman seeking re-election, attacking his church attendance of all things, and penning some of the most poisonous letters I've ever read.

Not surprisingly after the Republicans lost the election that time as well -- the second year in a row, in a GOP-dominated township -- the party leadership apparently told Glenn to hit the trail.

I'd like to say that what happened with Glenn -- the slide from handyman benefactor to the shrill, embittered small-town politician -- is a rare thing, but I don't think I can. Politics, even local politics, can do strange things to the people who get involved in it.

Regardless of the party, there's an expectation among the party powerful that elected officials are going to toe the party line whether they agree with it or not. That's easy on issues where you
don't have a strong opinion, but eventually the choice will come of embracing the party position and betraying your conscience, or doing the right thing and standing by your convictions.

Very few people have the strength to be true to their principles when the pressure starts to sing the party tune. It gets lonely quickly, and power brokers usually don't get into those positions because they play nicely or fairly.

Most people start out with the small stuff, even if they don't realize it, by letting the party do their thinking for them. Some go beyond that and start playing games by voting for political advantage or to comply with what the higher-ups wish, a move that in time can lead them to abandon their own positions for whatever the party tells them. It's all the same sin, just in steadily growing degrees.

That's the path Glenn took. By the time he was through in politics, he saw nothing wrong with the Republican officers making themselves a few million dollars by adding sewerage to increase the land's attraction to developers, even though a Superior Court judge in Flemington had harsh words to say on the subject. Everything for him boiled down to a simple Republican-good, Democrat-bad formula.

That sort of simplistic thinking should bother everyone. By the time people start thinking that only good people are found on their side of the aisle, and that their side of the aisle is the only place good people can be found; that unless everything is done under their control, it's going to be done poorly; that everyone who has a criticism is a liar, a muck-raker, a troublemaker or a politically motivated malcontent; that the only view worth consideration is their own -- it's time for them to leave political life behind.

It's a shame politicians don't do that more often.

not really your problem

A friend of mine writes:

I haven't caught up on the news since last week, but last I heard there were 165 lawsuits pending from out-of-state same-sex couples who got married in Massachusetts, then went back home and are suing to have their marriage recognized legally.

So yes, it IS my problem.

The sanctity of your marriage, of mine, and so on, is not diminished at all by the existence of a civil union between two gays, even if that civil union is called a marriage and entitles its members to the same rights and privileges as a heterosexual couple as far as taxes, insurance, pool memberships and whatever else goes. Extending those privileges to gays and homosexuals in no way prevents you from filing as a married couple, from enjoying the benefits Sarah gets at her job, adopting another child, or from making important life-and-death decisions in the event of the other's incapacitation. With your marriage left intact, how is it your problem?

The church is not required to perform same-sex marriages because of the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion. Although some groups likely will scream "homophobia" when a church refuses to perform a gay wedding, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of James Dale v. Boy Scouts of America that government does not have the right to dictate inclusionary practices to a nonprofit organization -- and the BSA is not a religious group. With your church still able to view homosexual behavior according to the dictates of orthodoxy, how is it your problem?

Doubtless there will be gay marriages in some neighborhoods that didn't have them before. A couple with a piece of paper indicating that their union is sanctioned by the state (and maybe a church) is little different from a couple without such a marker. With the only outward difference between before and after being a piece of paper and official sanction, how is it your problem?

I'm not a student of history, but as I understand, marriage has become much more formalized in the last few hundred years, with couples going to church to be married in a lavish ceremony. It used to be that the service was a small civil thing, and that couples would go to the church to celebrate Mass together. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that's the direction we're headed now as a society -- civil unions for everyone, with the church blessing those it approves of and not recognizing those it disapproves of.

On a side note -- and this really isn't related directly to the topic at hand -- the Scriptures don't say much about what's involved in making a couple married. Paul pretty much states that when a man and a woman have sex, they're joined together in the eyes of God, which is why the Lord gives us the option of one partner or none. (Note: Insert standard digression here, about polygynous relationships in the Tanakh and whether they even were expressly forbidden in the New Testament.)

If that's the case, then wouldn't my friend Josh and his girlfriend Hagar be married in the biblical sense, since they are living together, with all that entails? If I understand the word in the classic sense, "fornication" isn't sex between two unmarried people as much as it is casual sex. (The word comes from the Latin "fornix," which is a brothel.)

The Netherlands have had civil unions for gays for a while now and it has destroyed the family -- last stat I saw said 65 percent of the kids born there in the last few years were born out of wedlock. Sad.

Using that kind of reasoning, I should point out that as the number of pastors and other clergymen in New York has increased over the last few hundred years, the city has seen a growth in murder, drunkenness, extortion, prostitution and corruption.

There are a great many many more social dynamics at work in the Netherlands than just civil unions for homosexuals. I would think the legalized prostitution and generally casual attitudes toward sex in general would do more to erode the concept of family, and probably drove the civil unions for gays as well.

We're probably going to keep going around the mullberry bush on this one as well. If one of our goals as Christians is to preserve the traditional family, we would do better to focus our attention on the root causes of what has caused family to unravel and start finding new ways to bind the strands together so it will hold in the times ahead.

The problem is that we keep viewing this as a political or civil rights issue. It's not. It's a spiritual one. Those driving the call for gay marriages have some legitimate grievances in there, and those who oppose them also have some legitimate objections. Deal with it in the political arena, and we're going to continue to divide ourselves against one another and further inflame heated passions.

Our goal should not be to get people to behave in a certain way, but to get them to the point that they put their faith in Christ, whatever their situation, whatever their sin, whatever their involvement. Lead them to Christ, and then let him begin the process of changing their hearts, which in turn will lead them to change their behavior. Transformation begins on the inside and works its way inexorably outward.

Since, as you acknowledge, the carnal nature is at enmity with the nature of God, trying to get sinful man to follow God's ways is much like trying to teach a pig to sing. You won't have any success, and you'll irritate the pig. And even if you do somehow teach the pig to sing, you haven't really changed its fate. It'll still get chopped up and turned into breakfast for one person or another. Don't focus on changing society's behavior, because you're not accomplishing anything except driving most people away from the gospel for the wrong reasons -- they see Christians as a bunch of controlling moralists -- and possibly making a few people more secure in their own righteousness so they have a comfortable, well padded trip to hell.

Look at it this way. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul writes to the Corinthian church that he has heard of a form of sexual immorality among the church that is unheard of even among their pagan neighbors. A fellow was having sex with his father's wife, and instead of being ashamed of it, was actually bragging about it.

Paul was outraged, much as I expect you would be too, and told the church to throw the guy the heck out and not have anything to do with him until he had repented. Paul's got all sorts of harsh words for this guy -- but he concludes by saying an odd thing: "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? Expel the wicked man from among you." In other words, "If this were someone outside the church, I'd say it's none of our business. But he claims to be a Christian, so I'm telling you right now to have nothing to do with him until he's repented."

What business is it of ours if people outside the church want to have same-sex marriages? It's not our business. It has no bearing on us; it's irrelevant to what we're here for. Share the gospel, encourage one another to follow Christ, and keep yourself living righteously.

As to prayer, I see no point in praying that the Federal Marriage Amendment go through. I think the writing is on the wall already that it will fail, and even if it succeeds, what is it really going to accomplish? Will it stop same-sex relationships, or will it simply stop same-sex couples in committed relationships from being able to extend insurance benefits to their partners, from being able to make critical life-and-death decisions for one another, and so on?

If you're concerned for people in same-sex relationships -- and I believe you are -- I would suggest praying for ministries like Exodus Ministries and Genesis Counseling (or whatever their names are). Those ministries aren't for everyone, obviously, but there are people who believe they have benefited from them, and there are people who have left the gay lifestyle and adopted a heterosexual one.

And if you're concerned about the country's growing acceptance of same-sex relationships -- and I believe you are -- then start praying for our cultural leaders, the arists, philosophers and other social architects who provide moral leadership to our nation. Pray for them, and pray that they will awaken to God's call on their lives. (Those leaders, by the way, don't live within the Beltway, by and large. They're concentrated in Los Angeles and in New York.)

You aren't going to like hearing this, but the truth is the "culture wars" are over, and the church lost sometime back in the 1960s. We failed to understand what the hippy movement was about and we were slow to provide the leadership our culture needed. We now live in a post-Christian society where our worldview no longer dominates, and where Scripture's testimony about God is no longer accepted as an authority.

The postmodern society Gen X inherited and now is beginning to lead is a society where moral absolutes don't exist, and the superiority of one religion or one set of morals isn't a given. Try to justify your disapproval of gay sex without once referring to Scripture, and you might get a sense of why this is a lost cause. Society has moved on, and trying to get it to go back is like keeping away the tide with a broom.

penultimate

I was thinking about this word, and searching for a use other than its definition of “next to last,” when it occurred to me that the word has a great Arthurian flair. “Sign the contract,” quoth Sir Lancelot, “but use not the Pen Ultimate unless thou are worthy.”

insipid worship

The worship team at our old church used to lead us through the song, "I Can Sing of Your Love Forever." Lyrically, the first verse is not that bad, although it is too me-focused for my tastes:

Over the mountains and the sea
Your river flows with love for me.
I'm happy to be in the truth
And I will daily lift my hands
For I will always sing of
When your love came down.

I can sing of your love forever.
I can sing of your love forever.
I can sing of your love forever.
I can sing of your love forever.

The chief fault of the song is that it really does seem like you'll be singing of his love forever. The band usually played the chorus over and over again, and as you'll notice, there's not much variety to the lyric sheet at that point. Natasha decided at some point to spruce it up by singing, "But I can't sing this song forever."

Another of the popular songwriters whose work we sang in worship was Scott Underwood. Underwood seemed to have the notion that God was schizophrenic and would have an identity crisis if we didn't remind him who he was. Note the stunningly insightful chorus:

You are God of the heavens and God of the earth
You are God of our Saviour's virgin birth
You were God on the cross and God over hell
You were God before man and God when he fell

You
You are
You are God
You are God, God, God
You
You are
You are God
You are God, God, God

Underwood seems to love pointless repetition, as evidenced by this other gem we used to sing:

You are my shepherd, I have no needs
You lead me by peaceful streams
And you refresh my life
You hold my hand and You guide my steps
I could walk through the valley of death
And I won't be afraid
Because you are in control
You are in control
You are in control
You are in control

It's good to acknowledge that God is in control of the situation, but why do we have to repeat it four times in a chorus that is going to be repeated at least four times itself before the worship leader realizes that we're starting to depict God as a control freak with his booted foot pressing down on our heads?

Still, the all-time most meaningless praise-and-worship song I've ever encountered is this one:

Every move I make, I make in you
You make me move, Jesus
Every breath I take, I breathe in you
Every step I take, I take in you
You are my way, Jesus
Every breath I take, I breathe in you.
Waves of mercy, waves of grace
Everywhere I look, I see your face
Your love has captured me
Oh my God this love
How can it be?

It has a great, catchy melody, but I've never yet found a single person who can tell me what the song means. I like a good mix. The music has to be nice, but I want to be able to worship God with my mind as well. I have a hard time doing that with a lot of the praise choruses in circulation at the moment.

Okay. I feel better now.

Praise choruses are a reaction to the reliance our parents' generation had on the hymns to the exclusion of much else. Played on an organ as though they were a dirge, hymns exercise the mind but not the body. Praise music, with its much catchier tempos and updated instrumentation, allows us to worship with our bodies, but not as often our minds.

When I first became a Christian almost 17 years ago -- it'll be 17 sometime this July -- I took to praise music and CCM like a duck to water. It was alive, vibrant and everything the music at my parents' church wasn't.

I'm a little older now, and I want more balance. I still get bored to tears by the music at church when I attend with my parents, or when I attend with my grandmother-in-law, because it's so lifeless. And when it's just a catchy melody mixed with empty words, I can still only get halfway into it. Both my body and my spirit long for perfect worship and unity with God, so I long for even an imperfect fusion of the approaches to worship.

Give it 20 or 30 years, and I figure the bulk of the junk we sing today will have filtered out by then. Of course, we'll have new junk to contend with, but that's how it usually works.

'where's god when it hurts?'

Today I finally finished Philip Yancey's book, "Where's God When it Hurts?" It's a fantastic treatise on pain and suffering that remains refreshingly orthodox without settling for any of the pat answers we so often like to give people when they're hurting.

Yancey starts out by talking about the nature and benefit of pain, by looking at some leper colonies and what happens to people when their nervous system fails to convey pain messages. (I always had understood leprosy to be a condition that causes the flesh to rot and decay, but that's inaccurate. Leprosy deadens sensation so that the pain receptors no longer work. The damage to flesh comes from not noticing injuries and having them treated.)

He drew a compelling parallel between biological pain and the more exquisite forms of suffering we know. Pain is the body's way of saying that something is wrong; the suffering of the soul is the world's way of screaming that something is wrong and not working as it was designed to.

From there Yancey explores the traditional answers we have for pain; that God is using it to punish us for sin, to teach us something; that God is incapable of or unwilling to stop our pain, or that he just doesn't care; and so on.

It's interesting. Yancey never really attempts to justify the horrorific suffering we sometimes experience -- the death of a child, genocide, grief, paralysis, prolonged or terminal illness -- but he does steadily march toward the Incarnation and the point at which Christ identified with our pain so thoroughly that he cried out in despair that God had abandoned him.

He also makes the interesting statement I hadn't considered before, or at least not in that light, that suffering brings out what is already in us. A marriage where husband and wife lean on each other for support will be made even stronger by suffering, but one where that is not the case is more likely to strain under the load. Paul writes that suffering produces character; character, perseverance; and perseverance, hope. And hope will not be disappointed.

His conclusion is not that we're wrong to be upset, or even to scream and shout and demand an explanation why we're suffering, just that we're wrong to think that God is oblivious to what we're going through, because every suffering we endure, he's already endured with us and for us throughout the Incarnation and especially on the Cross.

For me, that's comforting, because it's nice to remember that God is a foster father who has lost his children at times, and so he understands that grief that overwhelms me sometimes from out of the blue. He was a man who lost his father, as I one day will lose mine, and I don't doubt Jesus groaned beneath the weight of the responsibility that dropped upon him before he was ready to carry it.

The penultimate chapter was about the CHristian response to pain -- not just our own pain, but the pain of others. Paul wrote about he wept over the losses of other believers, and how he burned inwardly when he knew of fellow Christians who were led into sin. The challenge for us as the Body of Christ is to feel the pain in the body's toes and fingers even though they're thousands of miles away, being tortured in the Sudan, Saudi Arabia or China. It's to feel the grief Indigo goes through with her situation at home, or to share the anguish of Respectfully Brian P., Victoria, Greg and Don, and all the rest of us losers who set sail upon the H.M.S. Naked Glittery Squirrel.

And of course, not just to feel their pain (to borrow a phrase from Bill Clinton), but to share it and carry it for them. I pray every day that I can carry the pain inflicted on my son and on Evangeline by what DYFS did, and although I don't doubt that's what keeps the wounds fresh for me, I also don't doubt that it helps them, just as I'm sure it's helped Indigo, Cats, Greg and the others here whom I've prayed for.

The last chapter was about the Resurrection, because that's where it all suffering ends. If there is pain in heaven, at least it will be pain without grief and without tears, and it will be pain more wonderful than any joy we've known on earth.

It was a great book. I hope I've whetted your appetite to read it.

guerilla gardening gone wrong

Earlier this spring I planted a packet of morning glory seeds with the goal of planting them at various places around the yard. There's also a no-parking sign by the street that is kind of dull to look at, so I was thinking how neat it would look to have a morning glory tendril winding around the signpost and bursting into bloom.

So yesterday evening I'm planting it, when my neighbor comes down the street, sees me working by the post, and asks if someone knocked the sign over, as has happened before.

I explained what I was doing, and he said, "Um, Dave, you know this is my yard, right?"

I was mortified. It's about seven feet past the property line, so there's really no way not to think the sign isn't on his property. I don't know what I was thinking. It just flat-out didn't occur to me that I was digging a hole or planting a flower in someone else's yard.

I apologized profusely, and he was really cool about it. He even suggested other neighbors' yards where I could plant morning glories, suggested some work I could do in his back yard, and joked that he might come over to my yard and remove a few bushes that he doesn't like.

If there is an election held this year for Stupidest Neighbor on the Block, I think I would win hands down.

lloyd webber, adapted

Evangeline watched "Jesus Christ Superstar" again yesterday, and gave me regular updates on what was happening. "Daddy! There's a bus with a cross on it!" "Daddy! People just appeared out of nowhere!"

Afterward, I was walking through the room when she tried to wrap something around my leg, and started to sing, "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. Grab Daddy's leg for Jesus Christ."

I can only hope she sang that at vacation Bible school today.

information too public

I believe in open records, and I believe in putting public information in the hands of the public.

I also believe it's possible to have too much of a good thing. That's what's happening now with the Quakertown School District salaries, which the school board is printing next week in its agenda, and which The Quakertown Eagle has printed in the pages of the newspaper.

The push to publish these salaries began last month, when school board newcomer Tim Lewis first requested it. In the two months since he joined the board, Lewis has been fairly aggressive about taking the board in the direction he wants it to go, and he's voiced a lot of rhetoric about making Quakertown into a "blue ribbon" school district and having "open communication" with the public, without ever really saying what he means by that.

Last month, Louis took the rhetoric a step further and, in the name of openness, pushed for a vote to publish the salaries of every school district employee in the board's June business meeting agenda.

Legally, the board has the right to do it, and so does anybody else who wants to, including the newspaper. Unlike with a corporation such as Merck and Co., the salaries of district employees are a matter of public record. Essentially anyone can walk in off the street and ask for this information, and the school district has to provide it "as soon as possible," according to Alexander McGimpsey, an attorney for the Iowa Press Association.

That right is guaranteed by Executive Order 11, issued by former Gov. Brendan Byrne, and it extends to the names, titles and positions of school employees, copies of their contracts, their salaries and how much money they actually get paid.

It extends beyond the schools too. According to the state sunshine law, you can get the same information about the municipal employees who pick up your garbage every week, and about the nice young police officer who gave you a ticket when you were rushing to your daughter's dance recital.

So the information is public, and the school board is within its rights to put the salary information in the agenda, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why in God's name they would want to do it.

The information is public - but that doesn't mean the school board needs to rent airtime on a radio station to advertise it, and it certainly doesn't mean the newspaper has an obligation to print it.

There's useful data to glean from the salary information - median salaries, how the district compares to neighboring districts and statewide - but printing everything? How does publishing the names, positions and salaries of more than 200 people meet a newspaper's goal of advancing the public good?

I liken this to the genies in "Arabian Nights." It's much easier to let the confounded thing out of the bottle than it is to get it back in. In the meantime while it's loose, it's impossible to contain.

And this genie is going to cause a lot of problems now that it's loose, not the least of which will be resentment.

Teachers and other school employees, even though they acknowledge that their salaries are public information, are going to resent having the information being made so public. Longtime district employees are going to resent discovering that they make less, proportionally or otherwise, than colleagues who have been with the district a shorter time. And everyone's going to resent the board for starting the whole thing.

Then there will be the comparisons. Parents and their children will compare the salaries of teachers they don't like to the salaries of teachers they do. Other taxpayers are going to compare what they earn to what the district pays its employees. You can bet your boots there's going to be some anger about unpopular educators who make more than the person doing the checking.

What's worse is the timing. Even though Lewis has said time and again that this isn't about teacher salaries, the district is in the middle of negotiations with the union. I know how I'd take it if I were a negotiator working for the union.

I'm mystified by the perceived need for the salaries to be published in the first place. If this really is about openness, it's an unnecessary move, because the district's track record has been above reproach in my experience.

I've worked in this business for eight years, and I've never encountered a school district administration more open with the public than this one. When I asked Superintendent of Schools Paul Ortenzio for a copy of the salary list, I had a copy before I left the room.

Other times I've called him on the phone with a half-hour's worth of questions about a board policy or action, and he's always been patient and forthcoming with an answer to whatever I've asked him. The same is true for other members of the administration I've dealt with. In terms of openness, there isn't much room for improvement.

Ironically, since the whole issue came up last month, a host of people, including Lewis, have called me and begged me not to print the salary information in the newspaper.

It's not my decision, but to be honest, I'm not sure where they're coming from. If you start kicking stones down the mountainside, you shouldn't be surprised when it starts an avalanche.

And an avalanche is coming. It doesn't take a genius to see that.

God's politics

A friend of mine writes:

I agree that both parties are evil (to some extent) with some good people in them. But I believe God has a sense of priority, and ranks the death of innocent human beings in the millions over rich grinding poor (which has happened forever and ever and will continue till the end of time) or the destruction of the environment. A human is worth more than many sparrows, neh? And so I think He will allow the Dems to get their butts kicked until they get it together on this issue.

Alas, I believe he is laboring under a false supposition that these things exist in isolation of one another. History has shown that when left to itself, industry is not naturally inclined to clean up after itself, and will leave a mess of horrifying proportions in the earth and in the water, viz. Love Canal, the PE&G problems celebrated in "Erinn Brokovich," God only knows how many Superfund sites in New Jersey, and so on.

These aren't environmental issues that have little impact on humanity; they're environmental issues that have a direct impact on us and on our children. Serious birth defects -- including fatal ones -- can be linked quite often to what big business has done to the environment and then left alone.

The issue I have with the GOP on this score is that it's more willing to let big business off the hook environmentally and to relax the pollution standards than the Democratic Party. (Bush's decision to abandon the Kyoto Accord, his decision to relax standards for arsenic in drinking water, to lessen emission and mileage standards for gas-burning vehicles, the willingness of his administration to pursue an energy policy relying on coal-burning plants, yada yada yada.)

And yes, the poor you will have always, but take a look sometime at the amount of Scripture devoted to addressing injustice, the oppression of aliens and strangers in our midst, the exploitation of the worker, and the cruelty of the oppressor who hoards wealth for self-indulgence. It's a vast amount of Scripture. It's hardly right to wash our hands of the biblical mandate to care for the needy just because they'll always be around.

As to what sins are the biggest affront to God ... well, I'm not going to dispute that abortion is one of the greatest horrors of modern America, and I'll say for the record that I am flat-out opposed to abortion in just about any circumstance. (The chief exception that comes to mind would be when the mother's life is in danger.) I've felt that way ever since I understood the issue.

Using a stand on abortion as a litmus test for political power, though, seems really absurd. That would suggest that God was asleep at the wheel when the Democrats had a majority hold on the COngress during the Reagan years, or that he was busy elsewhere when Clinton soundly beat the elder Bush at the polls. And perhaps he was confused in letting Christie Whitman be governor for eight years in New Jersey, when she's a pro-choice Republican. (Not to mention that Jim McGreevey, a pro-choice Democrat, is our current governor, and he beat out Brett Schundler, a pro-life Republican.)

I try to be careful about saying where God stands politically, because when you get down to it, he doesn't really take sides. That would make him subordinate to an ideology. The best we can hope for is that we're on his side, which is something I don't think either party can really make a reasonable claim to be.

At best, the parties can claim that God has raised them up for some purpose, much as he raised up the Chaldeans, Assyrians, ROmans or any other empire in the past. And then he cast them aside and judged them when he was through.

May God show us mercy when it comes time for that.

Our toxic political zeitgeist is driving the national divide

Something to consider as we head toward the presidential election:

Barring some kind of paradigm-changing, cataclysmic event, [pollster John] Zogby sees the election and its outcome in almost apocalyptic terms.

"Welcome to the Armageddon election," Zogby says. "I've never seen anything like it. We're partisan and polarized and in two warring camps."

Zogby likened this year's election to the watershed election of 1800, which saw President John Adams lose to his vice president, Thomas Jefferson. That election was so divisive - Adams was demonized as a "royalist," while Jefferson was reviled as "an atheist and a whoremaster" - that Americans would call the presidency of James Madison, who succeeded Jefferson, the "Era of Good Feelings."

Today, after years of growing polarization, the next president - whether Bush or Kerry - will face another historic opportunity to reach out to the other side and attempt to begin a period of healing, if not "good feelings." But at this point it is difficult to see the losing side accepting such an olive branch.

But at some point we must find accommodation as a nation - even unity. I am as certain of this one thing as John Zogby is of the outcome of the election.

If we remain divided, we will fall. And hard.

This divide has been bothering me for years.

Much of the prevailing political divide has its roots in Bush's narrow win in Florida in 2000; much else of it has to do with the Republican attempt to impeach Clinton in his second term, driven by the pugilistic realpolitick of Newt Gingrich. Many liberals still dispute the legitimacy of Bush's victory and resent the Supreme Court for stepping in and ruling in such a way that Bush was able to take Florida, just as many conservatives still revile Clinton for his peccadilloes.

I'm not convinced that Kerry can win the election. So far, he has been unable to get a message across or even to appear as charismatic -- but the growing sentiment against Bush may be all that he needs to win.

We'll have to see what happens, but I do hope that the talking heads in both the GOP and the Democratic Party will be able to treat one another with at least the modicum of respect that's due them as human beings. I don't recall much nastiness in the Reagan races. Quite the opposite. When Mondale tried to make an issue of Reagan's age. Reagan responded with aplomb: "I see no reason my opponent's youth and inexperience should be held against him."

Despite his use of racial dog whistles and other shortcomings on civil rights, I don't recall anything in the Reagan campaigns like the loathsome and racist Willie Horton ads that Lee Atwater's team threw against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election, or the negative tone of George H.W. Bush's re-election campaign.

The negative, personal and extremist language of the politics has to stop. It's divisive, it leaves voters disenfranchised and it discourages meaningful participation in a democracy. 

It's probably going to be even worse this year since neither major candidate is particularly inspiring to the general public, however they may appeal to the core constituents of their own parties.

Hopefully Kerry and Bush and their campaign managers will take high road this time around, instead of the win-at-all-costs road, and we'll be able to survive this election with our wits and nation intact.

And while I'm at it, I'd like a pony ...

your bias is showing

A couple weeks ago, the supervisor of Public Works in Quakertown died unexecptedly. To replace him, the mayor tapped his father. It's an appointed position that pays about $8,000 and no one really disputes that his father is qualified for the post.

But you know the media. We have to a big deal out of everything, and so we ran an editorial criticizing the impending appointment as inappropriate because a family appointment like that -- not even the mayor's in-law, but his father for crying out loud -- at the very least has the appearance of nepotism.

The mayor called me up today and reamed me out for about half an hour. It's okay; that's an occupational hazard.

In the latest development, I found out today that the buzz around town is that the Quakertown Democratic Party has bought me off. (The Eagle generally has been regarded as the Republican paper for years.)

I find the notion of being in the pocket of a political party to be a thoroughly amusing one, and will be insufferably pleased with myself for at least a week. As I told the Democratic chairwoman, as long as both parties hate me, I can feel good about myself.

(As a side note, I wish that I would get something while I'm in all these pockets, but I don't seem to be having much luck.)

The irony is that I'd say if anyone has grounds to accuse me of bias, it's the Democratic Party. The GOP usually gets more coverage in The Eagle because Quakertown is a Republican community, and the GOP holds all the elected positions in the township (and most of the school board). It's a given that whoever in power is going to get more favorable press, quantitywise, by virtue of being the party in power doing things.

I'm short on righteous indignation anyway. I find it more amusing than insulting to be accused of stuff that's so far outside my character. It's like when a parent in my second year of teaching accused me of giving his son bad grades because he's black, or when I was accused by someone in Hillsborough of being racist. All I can do is laugh because it's such an absurd notion.

And laughter usually does more to deflate critics than anger would, anyway.

triumphs and setbacks

I'm torn between the feeling of tremendous accomplishment and tremendous disappointment this year where the yard and the garden are concerned.

I'm pretty sure I've stated on the forum before that I'm committed to the organic philosophy where my garden and yard are concerned. In short: no pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers. Everything is done the way God designed nature to do it itself.

First is the good news that makes me feel like I've accomplished something. We've come a long way. The guy who owned this house before me didn't share the organic philosophy. He sprayed weedkiller and pesticides everywhere, and bombed the yard with Miracle Gro and other chemical fertilizers. When we moved in, there was a token layer of top soil, the earth was compacted and painful to walk on in your bare feet, and there was virtually no grass. There were entire chunks of the yard where literally nothing was growing, and when I dug the ground with a shovel, I never found a single earthworm. (You kind of need them for healthy soil.)

Today, through the efforts of reseeding the lawn piece by piece and fertilizing with compost (plus some Milorganite, an organic fertilizer produced by the city of Milwaukee from its sewage), we have a lustrous green lawn in the back yard. You can walk on it and treat your toes to a trip across a spongy green carpet. There are flowers blooming everywhere, and some of the parts of the yard that never supported anything are bursting with life. (The back quarter of our yard is an area I haven't planted anything in at all. I'm giving it a sabbath rest and letting it regenerate on its own. All I do is pull up maple seedlings since I don't want it turning into woods.)

Every time I dig into the earth with a shovel, I find earthworms. They're everywhere again. We had a flea problem last year that I eradicated with beneficial nematodes, an organism that also kills lawn grubs and termite colonies without harming people, pets or the lawn. I actually want to get some more of them to make sure the termites we had in the back corner of our yard really are all gone.

Plus I see lots of ladybugs. Ladybugs, to the uninitiated, are one of the nicest insects God ever created. They eat other insects that we consider pests, such as aphids and ants. A garden with ladybugs is a garden that has a happy gardener.

Best of all, my daughters enjoy gardening with me. Now 4½ years old, Eowyn helped me plant sunflowers, corn, tomatoes, pumpkins, beans, morning glories and ornamental maize this spring before she got bored and went inside. She also has helped me turn the soil, stir the compost and dig holes where I don't want them. Ruth, being only 19 months old, has not been quite as big a help, but she's enjoyed digging holes, planting some sunflowers in the wrong spot, and pretending the turn the earth with the spade fork.

Overall, it's a good situation, and I couldn't be happier.

Except for one thing: There's a good chance our soil has some hazardous contaminants, including lead. A gardener down the street had his soil tested and found that it is so contaminated it is unsafe for children to play in, let alone to grow food in.

Things were looking so up, and now potentially to have some idiot rob us of some of the triumphs of gardening is just ... well, it really stinks.

We were fortunate in that we were able to rent a garden plot not far from the house for only $10 a year, and in time to plant some vegetables. The plot's even bigger than what I was able to squeeze out of our yard, but it's not as convenient as going out into the yard to pick lettuce, tomatoes or beans right before a meal. It's also a site that has never been farmed before, so the soil has less organic material than the garden I've been using for the last four years -- and therefore will not grow the food as effortlessly as I was hoping to get this year.

I'm sure that eventually life will clean our yard of any impurities and make it safe to grow food in -- if in fact it is contaminated, which we haven't established for certain yet -- but that probably won't be in my lifetime. Certainly not while we own the house.

too much public information

As you probably know, I work for a community newspaper. This differs from a larger metro daily or other major daily newspaper in that our focus is limited to one community. Quakertown is about five square miles, and anything that happens beyond those borders is of no interest to us unless it impacts directly on the township in some way.

As a result, the stuff that we report on matters to the community, and our readers can get quite passionate about the paper since it's "theirs." A good community paper shapes not only terms of the debate but the debate itself. Done right, the paper reflects the character of the community and defines the community. What we write about and don't write about is a big deal.

Last month, Tim Louis, one of the new members on the board of education, decided to go beyond his rhetoric about how he wants to make the school board have "open communications" and to turn the schools into "blue ribbon schools." He decided it would be a good idea to publish the salaries of the every school district employee in the agenda to the school board's June business meeting.

Now these salaries are public information, at least in Iowa. Under an executive order by former Gov. Brendan Byrne, incorporated into the state's 2002 Open Public Records Act, select personnel information of public employees must be released upon request -- including salaries, W-4s, contracts and in some cases (if not all) their resumes as well.

Personally, I think Louis is crazy for wanting to do this. The information is public -- but that doesn't mean the school board needs to rent a billboard to advertise it. Salaries are personal information, and even though teachers sign off on that privacy when they sign a contract with a public school, there still is an aura of confidentiality around this information that should be respected. The district should release it when asked to, but I don't feel they should be actively distributing it.

The part that really bites is one of the owners of the newspaper wants us to beat the district to the punch. Yes, that's right -- we're about to publish this information in the newspaper with our next edition. I've already received calls from four different people alarmed over rumors that I've requested the salary information and received it. (Both rumors are true.)

I don't see a need for us to print the information either. There's useful data I can glean from the salary information -- median salaries, how the district compares to neighboring districts and statewide -- but I don't see a need for us to print all 200-some salaries, which include the details for everyone from the superintendent down to the maintenance workers and secretaries.

But printing all of it? That's just crazy. We're going to be stirring the pot tremendously with this one. Students and parents alike are going to compare the salaries of good teachers and bad, they're going to compare what district employees make to what residents in the community make, and I don't doubt this is going to be a major point of contention with the teacher's union. Did I mention the district is in the middle of negotiations with the union?

The amusing part to this is that Louis is one of the people who called me, begging me not to print the salary information in the paper. What did he expect? This never would have occurred to the owner if Louis hadn't suggested it in the first place. He kicked the first stone down the hillside, and now he's aghast that there's going to be an avalanche. What's that Jesus said about counting the cost before you start building a tower?

So anyway, here I am entering all the information into an Excel spreadsheet so we can print it on Page Three of the paper next week, with an accompanying story to give it some context. I was talking with the superintendent about it when he gave me the list and I said, "They're going to kill me when this hits the paper." He sympathizes -- he knows I'm not the one driving this -- but he agrees with me. This has been done before, and he's never seen it work out pleasantly either.

The double irony to this is that today I wrote the first draft of an editorial explaining why it's so important that we publish these salaries in the newspaper. (The editorial will be reviewed and probably altered somewhat by the higher-ups on the editorial board.) Tomorrow, I'm writing a column saying what a stupid idea I think the whole thing is. The two will run side by side.

What happens in Quakertown isn't generally of interest outside its borders -- but the issue of Public Right to Know vs. Public Need to Know is something that should be of interest to anyone involved in the news business, including people whose only involvement is to read them.

Usually as journalists we equate the two, or even insist that the public right to know information can supercede classifications that ordinarily would place it outside the domain of "right to know." The most obvious example of that would be the Pentagon Papers published by the Washington Post under Katharine Graham.

My feeling is that sometimes the public need to know isn't there, and that we can do more harm than we do good in publishing the information. And unlike the salaries of teachers in the Quakertown School District, that is an issue of national relevance, at least in the news business.