quitting time

I've quit Facebook.

I've laughed at witty things my friends have said or shared, but it's time to stop. I've enjoyed sharing things of my own that people have liked, and I've enjoyed seeing the odd thing or two that I write go viral. But at the end of the day, I've had to add up the time I've spent on Facebook and other web sites, and ask myself if there aren't better ways to spend my time.

And so I quit. At the moment, my account is only deactivated, but if I don't change my mind by Jan. 5, I'm probably going to take the nuclear option and close my account entirely.

The day after I deactivated my Facebook account was Christmas. That morning I got up, I ate breakfast with my family and we unwrapped presents. My children and I played with their new toys together, we talked about what they had been reading lately, and at the end of the day I shredded some old financial documents before going to bed.

It was a refreshing day, filled with family and with real-world experiences. In the days since, I've watched “Doctor Who” with my children, played with the youngest, and read a book. I've even written a blog entry, in what I hope is the first break in a long and painful logjam.

It's not a change I expect everyone will want to make. My friend Jeff, for instance, is always quick to stress the value he perceives in social networking for building and maintaining relationships.

I confess, I've never seen this value, no matter how much Jeff has stressed it.

Relationships just don't happen over an Internet medium, except in the most bare-bones, utilitarian sense. Which of us, in talking about the great times we've had with friends, ever stops to recount a meaningful status update? We may share, away from Facebook, things that we saw or read there, but those are always sidebars to the main events of our lives.

I've always enjoyed the pictures my friend Ruth shares of her children, but the memories I treasure are from the visits I've had with her and her family. I recall with great clarity the Saturday afternoon we went to lunch in Port-au-Prince then caught up with one another in their living room.

Facebook lets me know when my brother has gone for a ride on his horse. Seeing him in person or hearing him on the phone, I get a fuller measure of his experience. His shoulders will slump with that so-good fatigue, and his voice will carry his excitement as he shares where he's ridden and what he's seen. You don't get that on social media. Conversation isn't just a two-way exchange of words; it's a dynamic system, where one person's enthusiasm and interest feeds the other's.

Break it up and remove that direct interaction, and you're left to interact with the cold text another person has left, often hours earlier.

In the end Facebook, like most of the rest of the Internet, involves sitting alone by the computer or with your phone, interacting with what you imagine the other person to be. It is the shell of a conversation, an echo of a relationship trying to emulate the real thing.

God knows we want the real thing. Relationships these days are so impermanent. Children move hundreds of miles from their parents when they move out on their own, and then move regularly with the demands of work. Even marriage isn't what it once was. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average marriage will last seven years.

Facebook gives us the illusion of permanency and connection. Thinking about your college roommate? Look him up. Want your parents to know what their grandchildren are up to? No problem! It's a piece of cake to share the contents of your digital camera in an album they can look through at their leisure. Feeling nostalgic for that guy in high school who used to look down his nose at you? Hey, no problem – he'll be sending you a friends request any day now.

Facebook has kept us networked with one another, but it hasn't brought us any closer together, and that's the difficulty I have with it. Too often, in fact, it tears us apart where we expect it to pull us together.

If you're my friend on Facebook, after the events of Sandy Hook, you probably saw me voice some thoughts on the subject of gun control. If you agree with me, you might even have clicked Like. But if you didn't, it's just as possible you got annoyed at what you saw as an attack on your Second Amendment rights.

Being the polite sort, you didn't say anything then, but it stuck under your craw. You've heard the gun control rhetoric before, and it's never impressed you. But when you came back to the site, my comment was still there, still obtrusive, and still annoying to you.

If we'd been in the same room, we might have had a conversation on the subject. We would have known when each other wanted to speak, and we would have paused and allowed for the back-and-forth of a proper discussion. In the process, we would have moved beyond the surface arguments to some of the deeper issues.

But since this exchange would have happened on Facebook, each of us would have said all that we wanted to, with no modulation for interruption or discussion, after the initial comment was made without having you specifically in mind. And so, though neither of us intended to, we've driven a little wedge between us.

It gets even worse when our friends get involved, because often they have no relationship to provide context at all. Disagree with someone's post, and you may be called delusional, or worse. Like the rest of the Internet, the Facebook platform just doesn't support actual dialogue and understanding as much as it does strong language and hard feelings.

As my friend Indigo once observe, “Social networking just brings people together. It doesn't guarantee what happens next.”

Facebook goes on, but it will go on without me. As much as I have loved George Takei's page, as much as I have loved the ecards I have seen, as much as I have enjoyed the clever fan pages and all the witty graphics that get passed around, and as much as I love hearing about Jeff's trip to the supermarket to buy some mustard, it isn't worth it.

If I take everything Facebook delivers, and I weight it on a balance against the other things that could be done with the time, particularly the value of the relationships that we sacrifice to use the service, Facebook cannot measure up. Most things in life are better in moderation, but Facebook? I have found that for me, at least, it is like the proverbial obese man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. There's nothing wrong with the buffet, but perhaps it would be better to go home and have a salad.

I'm setting down my tray and I'm walking away from the building, with no plan for the foreseeable future of going back.

This entry is a blog response to "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish."



Copyright © 2012 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

It's never a good time to go

One of my traveling companions called today and asked if I was ready to go to Haiti on Monday. "I'm never ready," I answered truthfully. "I just go."

I've traveled to Haiti three times in the past two years, and each trip was preceded by language study, sleepless nights, lots of prayer, reams of introspective blog and journal entries, and a general sense of inadequacy. The need is so overwhelming, and I am so inadequate.

On my first trip to Haiti in January 1991, I held a 2-year-old boy named Samuel who was starving to death. His hair was orange, an advanced stage of malnutrition. He hadn't eaten in three weeks. What did our team leaders instruct us to do in the face of this great need? We handed out bouillon cubes as we went house to house in an attempt to convert people.

The trip changed my life. I returned to Haiti after graduation, and worked first with STEM Ministries and then at Quisqueya Christian School. While I worked with STEM, we took teams to Jacques Fourcand's Mission of the Trinity and helped serve lunch to the children of  Cite Soleil, one of the poorest and most wretched slums in the nation. My clearest memory: We sat about 500 children, then discovered we only had enough food for 300.

We turned the rest away.

Haiti is one of the most special places in the world to me. I feel the closeness of God in that country in a way I rarely feel it here in the United States, and each time I have returned there the past two years, I have known with ironclad certainty that I was where I needed to be, and doing what I needed to do.

But Haiti has never let me be in peace. Every time I look in the mirror, I feel the morality that ties my weight problem to Samuel's. Every time I hear Americans whine about the Republicans and the Democrats, I think of a land that is still suffering from a culture of corruption and oppression nurtured under the Duvaliers.

I remember rows of people who lost arms and legs when the earth shook and their houses fell.

I remember the prostitutes who tried to get me to have sex with them, and then finally just begged for a couple bucks so they could buy food.

I remember the hunger that peered out from the eyes of every man, woman and child I passed in the streets; that followed me to restaurants I visited with friends; that looked in from the street outside the school where Georges al Reyes was throwing out a plate of food because he'd rather eat junk from the snack bar; that haunted my dreams and still haunts me today.

I think about Haiti every day. Sometimes I dream about it, and the smell of diesel fumes is so strong that I can step out my dream and be there, at the top of Route de Delmas by the sign that promises better musculation. Sometimes the dreams are nightmares, and I wake, wondering whether anything has happened to Sarah, to Nakosa or to Christina.

The need is overwhelming, and I want to be like the one who cried out

Come, all you who are thirsty,
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without cost.

I want to be like the one who feeds the nation with himself, the one who promises that one day every valley will be filled and every mountain will be humbled. I tremble when I think of him, because I am a wealthy man headed into one of the poorest nations in the world, and I know that God is just.

The need is so great. I am so small. How can I possibly meet it? I cannot.

I am going back to Haiti on Monday. I am not ready, and never will be. But I am going.



Copyright © 2012 by David Learn. Used with permission.

Going for a walk

During summer and winter breaks my first two years of college, I had the misfortune of working at a fast food restaurant.

Now I know that career counselors remind us that there is no such thing as a bad job, and that we should view every job as a learning opportunity. They say this because they never had to work in a fast food restaurant, where the chief lessons are that people will buy terrible, tasteless and unhealthy food if it's priced cheaply enough; that your hard work will never be recognized because the manager is either talking on the phone the whole day or just doesn't care how hard you work because he's bitter about working there too, and at his age; that sexual harrassment of female co-workers is acceptable; and that major corporations pay their executives massive salaries by underpaying the hourly workers who make their profits possible. (Today I would add the further lesson that there is nothing like a bad economy for humiliating intelligent adults by forcing them to compete with teenagers for unskilled labor positions.)

All that said, for someone in college who wasn't able yet to land an internship or a work-study arrangement, this wasn't the worst way to make a little pocket money. (Please note the emphasis on "a little.") A typical work day would see me working from 5 or 6 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon.  This in itself was not a Bad Thing. Work usually was busiest during the breakfast and lunch shifts, and there was consequently little time to think about how much I hated my job.

One day on Christmas break my freshman year, I drove home and shambled upstairs to my room.  ("Shambled" is a fairly accurate description of how I walked around after getting up at five in the morning and rushing to work.) After I finally crawled into a change of clothes, I walked downstairs to vegetate in front of something mindless, like "The Squire of Gothos," one of those Star Trek episodes that can be appreciated properly only from a state of mental vegetation.

Star Trek, alas, was not available, but I was not to be denied. Due to the wonders of TV programming, there is always something being broadcast that is suitable for inducing brain death. Admittedly, because it was early afternoon, my choices were limited to soap operas like "General Hospital" and "Days of Our Lives"; watching the muscle  men of the Power Team rip phone books in half for God's glory; or something educational on PBS, like Sesame Street.

Something educational it was, but it wasn't "Sesame Street," which admittedly has some really jamming tunes like "Put Down the Duckie." Instead, it was an episode of the spectacular, original run of "The Electric Company," the show that is remembered for gems like Arthur Crank, Easy Reader and "Fargo North, Decoder," as well as for launching the career of Morgan Freeman with his portrayal of a giant glowworm.

The episode on that afternoon was a gripper. Silent E was committing a host of outrages. As viewers watched in horror, Silent E vandalized the kitchen sink by turning the water tap into a roll of tape. From there it leapt to a hapless boy's head and changed his baseball cap into a cape.

It seemed unbeatable, until it finally met its match in Uncle Sam, who stayed the same and showed that even then, the Children's Television Workshop had a big-government liberal agenda to push.

That was Silent E, but for an episode of "The Electric Company," which had been created to help struggling readers, Silent E was just the beginning.

In one of the most compelling segments of the show, the Evil Spellbinder had just turned Letterman into a pound cake, and all hope seemed lost for our hero.

I heard the Evil Spellbinder cackle in triumph when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my grandmother scouring the living room. The Evil Spellbinder and Letterman would have to wait.

"Grandma, what are you looking for?" I asked her.

"I can't find my hat.  Do you know where my hat is?"

My grandmother had been living with us for the better part of a year. Now in the early stages of senility, she sometimes developed the urge to leave, even though she had nowhere to go. I was at her side in an instant.

 "Uh no, Grandma, I haven't seen your hat for some time.  Why do you want it?" I was stalling for time, trying to find some way to distract her. I have never been very good at this, as my distractions usually help people focus on what they're trying to do, with the result that they finish it much more quickly.

"I'm going for a walk," she said, and with that she turned and headed directly toward her hat.  Just then, my brother Steve came downstairs.

"Step Hen, have you seen my hat?"  Grandma asked him.

Now, my brother's name is spelled "Stephen," with a ph, but it is pronounced the same as "Steven." Because of this, people either spell his name incorrectly, with the result that the post office sends his mail to a Steven Learn serving a life sentence in Cuba, or they pronounce his name "step hen," as in "step on a hen."

This tragically happened to him when he was a child and our parents had taken him to a popular children's pizzeria for his birthday. One of the manager's responsibilities at this particular restaurant was to read over a speaker the names of children celebrating their birthdays.

After flawlessly wishing happy birthdays to awkwardly named children like Yehudah ben O'Shaugnessy, Rado Prbic and Alksandr Raskolnikovichamazov, the manager choked.

"We'd also like to wish a happy birthday to Step Hen Learn, who is eight today," he said.

Steve, who would burst into tears every time he heard the theme song for "The Incredible Hulk," began screaming at once.

"Waaahhh!" he cried. "He called me Step Hen."

He cried so loudly and for so long that the manager finally gave us our meal for free. And now Grandma had called him "Step Hen" and reopened that ancient wound. Already tears were pooling in his eyes, and I had to act quickly to save both him and our grandmother.

"Grandma, isn't that your hat over on the dining room table?"  As she turned to look, I grabbed her hat, and whisked it behind her head to Steve, who snatched it from the air and  tossed it on top of a bag sitting on the top shelf of the coat closet.

"No, I don't see it," she said, and she began walking toward  the closet.  "I guess I'll go for my walk without the hat."

"Grandma, you can't go for a walk without a hat, it's too cold!"  I lied -- it was 65 degrees outside.

"And it's snowing, too," Steve said sadly, still dwelling on being called Step Hen.  Iit hadn't snowed more than half an inch in the past year, but Steve was understandably disoriented.

"Well, then I'll go in the car," my Grandma said.  I deftly positioned myself between her and the door.

There was no need to point out that driving the car without a license is not quite the same as taking a walk.  In fact, since the whole point of going out was for a walk, driving defeated the purpose.

"The cars are both out, Grandma," I lied again.  The car I had driven home from work sat docilely in plain sight in the driveway.

"Well, I'll walk, then."

"Gee, Grandma, why not just wait until my mother comes home?" Steve asked. "She can take you for a walk in the car."

This succeeded where all subterfuge had failed. She could get both her walk and her car ride at the same time. It must have seemed quite a deal, because she took off her coat and went back to her room, just as the hat fell off the bag.

We had managed to keep our grandmother safely inside.  Steve went upstairs and cried until someone finally gave him a free pizza, and I watched the remaining five minutes of the Electric Company.

I never did learn how Letterman was saved from being sold for a dollar seventy-five at the bakery.  I may never know; it continues to be one of life's little mysteries.



Copyright © 1988, 1992, 2012 by David Learn. Used with permission.



Read the Original

Prayer of Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Introducing One Thousand Blank White Cards to the Homeschoolers

You have an hour to go with a group of homeschoolers, and the kids have already played Nomic twice. What do you do? You play One Thousand Blank White Cards, of course!

Like Nomic, One Thousand Blank White Cards is a game that seems tailor-made for homeschoolers. Originating in Madison, Wisc., One Thousand Blank White Cards is a game that provides a basic game structure but otherwise allows the players to create the rules as they go. In this case, they do so by filling in blank cards with whatever sort of action, illustration, penalty or other play that they want.

Aside from the creative aspects, the game is fairly basic. Play begins to the dealer's left and continues clockwise, with each person playing a card on either herself or another player, although players are allowed to respond to others' play with further cards. You're allowed to create, alter and even destroy cards however you want, and you can even create cards that evoke the spirit of other card games.

Another group I played One Thousand Blank White Cards with, for instance, saw cards arise with things like "Lose 50 Points If You Don't Have a Water Card." This immediately led to someone creating a "Water" card worth 20 points, and that in turn to a third, "Anti-Water" card. The potential for silliness abounds.

I introduced the game today to Oldest Daughter's logic club after we had completed the day's exercises in critical thinking. I handed each of the students five completely blank cards, explained the basic rules, and let them indulge themselves. Once they had completed their cards, I shuffled the deck, mixed in a few more blank cards, and dealt the first hand.

We played this last weekend at a friend's house, and since everyone playing was in her mid-30s or later, the cards were silly but tilted toward the witty. We had a few cards that said things like "Swap cards with the person on your left" and "Trade places with someone else," but the majority said things like "Sing a Happy Song About Leprosy" and "Tell a Story About Your Teddy Bear." (I interrupted that one with a card that said, simply, "Shut up.")

Play today reflected the age of the players accordingly. They created a lot of cards that involved mildly humiliating or annoying tasks like "Crawl Like a Worm for a Minute" and "Hop Up and Down Until the Game Ends." (I saved that player after a few seconds with a card that read, simply, "Game Over.")

There were a number of cards that referred to specific players, like "Give Card to Joe," which led to some creative arguments among players as to which card should be given to Joe, that card or another one.

The phenomenon I found most interesting was the way players began creating cards to adapt their playing strategies to one another. Fifteen minutes into the game, there were cards being played that read in part "Play Right Away," thus allowing them to interrupt on someone else's turn; or "Card May Not Be Edited," so the player could be guaranteed her way. (Unfortunately for her, someone else played an Override card that allowed the card to be edited anyway.)

The game was a hit, mostly because the kids kept making one another do silly or embarrassing things. I am curious how things would have gone had someone played my card "Elves Attack Your Village. Lose 50 Points," especially since I always add nifty illustrations to my cards, but no one played that, so we never got to see whether a game would develop with points as a goal, or around a fantasy theme.

The game broke up when everybody had to go home, but I sent the kids packing with starter decks that consisted of the cards that they had created and the cards that were specific to them. (I have no use for a card that says "Mourn Billy's Lost Dignity," for instance, since there are no Billys in my family, though Billy's family may use it at some point.)

As they left, one of the moms told me that Nomic has been spreading. Not only has her family played it, she's seen her children teaching their other friends how to play it as well.

And now they have something else to share.



Copyright © 2012 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

ŝi skribas esperante

Se vi leĝas kaj komprenas tion-ĉi, helpu la revojn de mia filino. Ŝi ekblogas, kaj esperas ke aliuloj leĝos siajn vortojn.
Ŝia blogo estas tie-ĉi

Introducing needless complexity into Nomic

For those who are keeping track of these things, we continued to play Nomic today at our homeschooling logic club.

Nomic is a game of self-governance, created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber. Like any other folk game, there are a number of variants, but the version I am most familiar with and taught to the children begins with exactly one rule: that it takes a two-thirds majority to change the rules. We played the game last week, and even though I was introducing it to a group of preteens, the game was very well received.

We continued our previous session, and though we passed fewer rules this time than previously, we still had a good time. The new rules passed are as follows.

21. Firstly, if Billy is not present, then the writer must go first. For purposes of Rule 11, the computer counts as paper and the person operating the computer counts as the writer. Secondly, if a rule is proposed, it must be voted on unless the person proposing the rule decides to withdraw it. Thirdly, the turn changes to the next person once the vote has been cast. (This rule represents an interesting development in how the kids were viewing the game. They realized that, according to Rule 5, Billy should go first -- but Billy was absent that day. Additionally, since I had transcribed the rules to the computer and they weren't using pen and ink, they had to confront an unexpected shortcoming of their rules by redefining their terms. But most significantly, this is a rule that addresses multiple, unrelated problems at the same time. That's a huge leap in complexity.)

22. Rules pass by a simple majority. (They were doing the math and realized three-fifths might not always be easy if we didn't have five players.)

23. Turn passes by the roll of a die, rather than to the next person in the circle. (My idea. I keep trying to give the game more unexpected twists and changes, to keep people on their toes.)

24. You cannot have a turn three times in a row, no matter how the die rolls. (Oldest Daughter's suggestion. She had proposed the turn limit last week, but her effort failed when everyone favored the idea of turns rotating clockwise instead.)

25. Rules 2 5, and 7 do not go into effect until quarter past three. (I inject more chaos. Note that only two rules have been passed since my last turn. This is due in part to the X factor introduced by the roll of the die, but also because it was becoming harder to reach consensus on what rules to make, now that the basic fairness issues had been resolved.)

26. E____'s father does not have to vote on any of her rules. (There were a couple failed efforts to pass rules between Rule 25 and this one. Ironically, I was able to get my daughter's blank-check support for this rule by telling her I would support the next rule she proposed.)

27. David Diez and Mary (Joe's mother) may join the game; also, Rule 25 is no longer in effect. (The kids all thought Rule 26 was funny, but they also agreed with my daughter that it was a sneaky sort of thing to do.)

28. (I called for a vote on this rule before Joe could propose anything. The vote passed 5-1.)

The game was a hit the second week in a row, but at this point, I have no plans to continue it. Next time we meet, we will play a similar game a friend of mine in California has introduced me to, called 1,000 Blank White Cards. It looks interesting.



Copyright © 2012 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Introducing a group of homeschoolers to Nomic

When you have four children at your house for two hours, and only one hour of planned activities, what do you do? You play Nomic, of course!

Created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber, Nomic is an exercise in self-governance, quite literally. It begins with only one rule, that it takes a two-thirds majority to change the rules. Given that I was introducing it to a group of preteens who for months had been ending their weekly logic class with games like Munchkin and Pandemic, I wasn't sure if this game would fly, but it was very well received.

The game is still in its early stages of development, but it has the potential to become a major lesson in consensus-building, compromise, and parliamentary procedure -- in short, it's an interesting hands-on lesson in how government works A quick overview of the rules will reveal that the kids for the most part so far have been concerned with being fair and giving everyone a chance to be heard.

Nomic is one of those games you hear about, and tuck away for the appropriate time to play. I had heard about it in 1997 from one of my wife's classmates in college. A friend of mine ran a game on Delphi Forums several years ago, but the nature of the forum made it hard for the game to advance much. When I started homeschooling Oldest Daughter two years ago, I knew I'd have to introduce it to some other kids someday.

Someday was Friday. We played for about an hour, amid a lot of laughter and merriment, without rolling a single die, moving a single token around a board, or playing a single card.

The kids had so much fun that they want to continue the game the next time we meet. I'm wondering how long it will take them to realize that they can introduce more complex rules, and even start making deals with other players to gain support for personally favored rules; or how long it will take them to start arguing over what exactly a rule means, and trying to initiate massive reforms to simplify the rule structure.

I'm also wondering if the game will at some point progress beyond merely passing rules. One adult, after hearing about the game, immediately grasped its potential for a drinking game. (That one, at least, I hope does not occur to the kids for some time to come.)


The rules:

0. A two-thirds majority is required to change the rules.

1. A three-fifths majority is needed to change the rules. (They added this because they wanted me to participate, and thought that a simple majority would be easier than a two-thirds supermajority. Interestingly, they made the rule specify a "three-fifths majority," instead of a "simple majority," which could have implications down the road, should the group increase in size a few people.)

2. Isaac has to write the new rules. (That was my suggestion. The rule immediately passed, 4-1, with Isaac casting the lone dissenting vote.)

3. We have to discuss all rules before they are made.

4. We cannot eat Joe. (The club is about developing logic and critical thinking skills. An hour earlier, I had illustrated false connections with the statements "Pigs exist. Joe exists. Therefore, Joe is a pig." Now as I was asking the kids if they wanted anything for a snack, I mentioned that we had bacon, and let my eyes linger meaningfully over Joe.)

5. We will vote on Billy's rule first. (I had proposed a rule that we take turns suggesting rules. While this was on the table, Oldest Daughter suggested limiting the number of rules anyone could introduce to three in a row. Billy in turn suggested that we vote on my rule before Oldest Daughter's, since mine had been suggested first. Since the rules failed to specify an order for how to entertain multiple motions, it was decided we should vote first on Billy's proposal to vote on my proposed rule. Ironically, this meant that we voted on Billy's rule second, but I didn't want to muddy the waters even further, so I kept that observation to myself.)

6. We vote on the first rule that was proposed (This is where they started introducing a sense of order to how the game would work; up until this point, it had been a free-for-all.)

7. We take turns proposing new rules, going in a circle.

8. The first person to propose a rule is Billy, and we go clockwise.

9. You can change your rule that you are proposing before it is voted on.

10. Every five minutes we switch seats. (This was my idea. I wanted to show the kids that we could make the game about more than just changing rules.)

11. The writer is the person in the chair in front of the paper. (This was Isaac's idea. Poor boy had been writing down rules for about 20 minutes. He was a good sport about it, though.)

12. Whenever a rule is passed, we must clap three times. (One of the kids had started to see the potential the game has for more than just passing rules.)

13. When a rule is suggested, the person on the left calls the end of the discussion -- unless the person on the left is the writer, in which case it is the person on the right. (Here is their first effort to ensure that every proposal gets fair consideration. I plan to demonstrate the flaw in this rule next week, by calling for a vote as soon as the rule is suggested, before anyone has a chance to discuss it.)

14. All rules must be numbered.

15. If your parent has come, you can go. (One of the other parents had come to collect her son and two other boys. I pointed out that there was no provision for people to leave yet.)

16. Amend Rule 15 to say "ride." (This came after I pointed out that under our rules, only Billy could leave, since Joe and Isaac's moms hadn't come for them -- just their ride.)

17. Anyone who breaks the rules must squawk like a chicken. (We realized that no one had been clapping when rules were passed, in clear violation of Rule 12. So here we have our first attempt at enforcement with consequences.)

18. The writer will set the timer.

19. We stop the game when the first person leaves.

20. When you forget to clap, you must take the writer's seat. If multiple people forget to clap, the last one to touch their nose is the one to take the writer's seat. If you forget to clap and you are in the writer's seat, then you cannot switch when the timer goes off.



Copyright © 2012 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

open letter to n.j. gov. chris christie

Dear Gov. Christie:

The New Jersey Assembly today is expected to pass legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in New Jersey. As a person of faith, I am writing to urge you to sign this bill into law once it reaches your desk. Please do not veto it.

I've enjoyed the emotional intimacy and support of my wife for the past 13 years, through good times and bad, and I see no reason that my gay neighbors, relatives and friends should not receive these same benefits under New Jersey law -- including the benefit of calling one another "husband" and "wife," and not just merely "domestic partner."

I realize that you believe this is something that should be put to the general public in a referendum. With all due respect, though, Mr. Christie, this is wrong. Civil rights are neither granted nor denied according to mass consent. They are, as our nation's founders wrote, "endowed by our Creator" and they are inalienable.

Thomas Jefferson even listed among our most basic rights the pursuit of happiness, which for our gay neighbors, friends and relatives is obstructed by our state's refusal to recognize the dignity and value of their relationships with the designation of marriage. The duty of your office is to lead the way in seeing that these rights are upheld, not to defer those rights to the vox populi.

While our religious communities should be free to define and recognize marriage according to the context of their respective religious frameworks, one of the great strengths of our society is that it is nonsectarian, and is not governed by any ideology save a pluralist celebration of our differences. In that vein, and as a person of deep faith myself, I call upon you to sign the bill when it comes to your desk, and not to veto it.

David Learn

The Great School Trip Musket Fight

I know I shouldn't, but sometimes it's just too much fun not to play with my kids' heads.

Middle Daughter today came home from a field trip to the state capital where she visited some Revolutionary War barracks and saw a demonstration of front-loading muskets, including how to load and discharge them, by an actor in period costume.

"Did you get to fire the musket?" I asked her.

"No," she said as if that were a silly question.

"Oh," I said, sounding disappointed on her behalf. "When I went there with Evangeline three years ago, we all got to take turns loading and firing the muskets."

Her eyes went wide. "Everybody?"

"Everyone," I assured her. "Even the adults."

Rachel turned this over for a moment, and decided that there just hadn't been enough muskets to go around this year. After all, her class had taken the tour with students from another school, while the tour I'd been on three years ago was just for the charter school. A moment later we joined Evangeline, and I told her that her sister hadn't been able to fire the musket this year.

"Did we get to?" Evangeline asked.

"Oh sure," I said casually. "Don't you remember? They split us up into two sides, one for the British and one for the Revolutionaries, and we shot muskets at one another."

"With real bullets?" There was no skepticism in Evangeline's voice, just idle curiosity.

"No, muskets didn't use bullets, they use those round musket balls, remember?" I said. "They said there was no danger of anyone getting hurt, since muskets have such a limited range and don't aim that well either."

There was silence while the girls pondered this. Their younger sister Alex ran around on the wood chips of the school playground, while the last lingering students either finally were picked up or were herded inside by their teachers.

"I guess someone must have got hurt by accident, and they had to stop letting kids do that,," Evangeline finally said. You could hear the disappointment in her voice, not only for her sister, but for all the other students whom the state would no longer allow the unfettered joys of firing front-loading muskets at their classmates during field trips to state parks. Government bureaucrats can be so joyless and petty.

We got into the car and drove away, and soon the afternoon was filled with other activities like homework, karate class, and play practice, but as I tucked Rachel into bed, I discovered how the day's disappointment still lingered below the surface.

"Dad," she said, after I had given her a goodnight kiss. "I bet they just bought better muskets than they used to have."

I gave one of those who-knows shrugs that fathers are famous for, to concede that she might be right. The state's always ruining perfectly good activities by upgrading their equipment. Why not get new muskets too?

"Could be," I said, and I turned off the lights.

I just wish I could be there tomorrow when her classmates hear about all the great activities they missed.



Copyright © 2011 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Be as good as your dog

Talk about an ego booster.

Seventeen years ago, I was a frequent visitor to House of Blessings at #4 Rue Sambour, Port-au-Prince. In large part, I availed myself of the hospitality of Phil and Lonnie Murphy, whom I had adopted as family while I was in Haiti. ("Abused" might be a better word, but I like to think that I made up for it after my return to the E.U., when I steered some support their way from the Christian school where I was teaching.)

But aside from my time with the Murphys, I put in some time with the children there as well. In particular, I paid attention to Steve and Isaac Adrien, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old pair of brothers who had just arrived. I played with them, talked with them, and would gladly have taken them home had it been possible and realistic. (It was neither.)

I spoke for a while with Steve, during our recent September visit to Haiti. Now 19, Steve hopes in early 2012 to begin attending a unversity in Missouri, where he plans to major in business administration, so he can return to Haiti and make a difference to his people. I felt a sort of distant pride in him, aware of how much I had loved the little kid he once had been, but also aware how little I'd had to do with the man he was becoming.

Steve also told me that he had recognized me last March when he had been at the Cradle of Life Crisis Relief Center. Like me, he had volunteered with the relief efforts; and while we were there, he had been plagued by the thought that he knew me, but for the life of him, he couldn't recall why.

And then last August I led a team to Callebasse to build houses while we stayed at House of Blessings, and it clicked.

So, reader, be assured of this: If you pour your life and your love into someone, they will remember you.

* * *

Several others who had been associated with House of Blessings in 1994 still are connected with it, and I spoke with them while were in Haiti in September -- Wislande, Tania and Woody all believe me when I say I was there, even though they don't remember me.

After I left in 1994, Phil took in my dog for a month or so, until they were unable to keep him any longer. Ajax was a mountain of a dog, an indomitable Labdrador retriever, rising up over everyone, a mighty river coursing the length of his large pink tongue. He one of the best dogs I've ever known.

They all remember my dog.

And all this goes to prove that if you love someone deeply, you can mean as much to them and make as big a difference in their lives, as your dog.




Copyright © 2011 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Some actual good news

Following the example of the scriptures and the early church, the gospel is not "Christ died for your sins," but "God has raised Jesus from the dead and has made him lord over all." What a difference that makes, and what a much more powerful message.

Why the distinction? Because while both are good things, only one of them corresponds to the actual definition of good news?

The Greek word evangelion, which we translate as gospel or good news, originally was used in cities, territories, and towns that the Roman Empire had annexed. It wasn't a declaration of forgiveness, but that Caesar was lord, and because Caesar was lord, there would be peace, and prosperity, and roads, and a general improvement of life. 'Good news! You are now Caesar's subjects, and all your troubles are over. Ave imperator."

Of course, there also were oppressively high taxes, sons and daughters were taken away as slaves, men were conscripted to fight Rome's wars. This good news came at a high price. The only people who enjoyed it were collaborators with the Romans, the already-wealthy and powerful, and other corrupt people.

By declaring its own evangelion that "Jesus (not Caesar) is Lord," the early church subverted Caesar's message of good news with a much different one. And just as you could tell when Caesar had come to town by the general increase in misery and increased presence of Roman insignia and customs as people lived the way that Caesar commanded, you also could tell when Jesus had come to town, because of the way the social order was upended and people of no importance took center stage.

Forgiveness is an important part of the gospel, but from what Paul writes in the book of Romans, it's an effect of following Jesus, rather than the first step. "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For it is with the heart that you believe and are justified, and with the mouth that you confess and are saved" (Romans 10:9-10.)

It's also how Jesus and the early church invited people to follow him. But don't take my word for it. Check out Peter's sermon on Pentecost, Paul's sermon at Mars Hill, Jesus' invitation to the Apostles in the early chapters of John, Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well in John 3, his dialogue with the rich young ruler, or really any of his other declarations about his mission.

See for yourself how many of them are based on an appeal for people to accept his death for their sins, and how many are based upon his claim to be Christ, a king. People's sin may come up, but it's not the primary focus of the discussion.

I became a Christian because I was convinced I was a sinner in need of forgiveness; I imagine you did too. This has become normative in the church, but it's more a reflection of God's desire to reconcile all things to himself than it is a faithful representation of the message Jesus and the early church presented when they proclaimed the evangelion.

And really, why would we want to have a different focus from the one Jesus has?


Copyright © 2020 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Battered worshiper syndrome

There's a lie they tell in some parts that if you are following God, you will never be hurt.

Like the best lies, it has a germ of truth at the heart of it, twisted just so, so that the meaning of that truth is lost with its context and people trusting in a promise that was never made, rush headlong into disaster. You're told that if you have faith, you can overcome any affliction; that if you are following God, he will protect you from the fowler's snare, and on and on.

It's a crock. Pain is inevitable. As a wise man once observed, "Life is pain. Anyone who says different is trying to sell you something."

The Church with a Trendy Name has a monthly tradition called Philosophy on Tap, where about twenty of us get together at one of the pubs in Nova Bastille and discuss weighty issues like the Problem of Evil over beer. Not everyone who goes, attends the church; and not everyone who attends is necessarily a Christian. It's about the marketplace of ideas.

This past Monday, the question was about the balancing act between faith and reason; viz., Does faith trump reason, does reason nullify faith, or (more likely) how do the two interact? We were about ninety minutes into the talk, and discussion had wandered slightly, as discussions do; and we were talking about how faith sometimes just doesn't know when to quit. These are the moments where you are wracked with pain so deep that your only prayer is a heart-wrenching sob, and reason knows there's been a bait-and-switch and the show playing is not what was on the schedule. Faith persists.

Sometimes these moments come unexpectedly, after periods of great joy and spiritual ecstasy, when God has led the believer to a fantastic height and is letting her drink in the glorious view. The believer is lost in the wonder of the moment, and she doesn't even realize that she's standing on a precipice, until after God has pushed her off.

Other times, you walk into these moments in a willful obedience marked by a growing unease as the lights along the path begin to flicker and fail one at a time. You walk on, trusting that the Shepherd will see you through, while the shadows deepen and eager whispers spring up all around the thin nimbus of light that rapidly is fading into black. And then the light fails, you discover that your guide has vanished, the only path visible is the part right under your feet, and you know that one wrong step means destruction.

"God seems to take some sort of delight in getting us to that point, doesn't he?" I said, with a nod to "The Screwtape Letters": "Our plight is never more in danger than when one of these Christians, willing, but no longer desiring to obey, looks at a creation from which all signs of God seem to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

"And yet," offered one of our resident doctors of philosophy, "we have to assume that God has a good purpose for this, because he loves us."

"I don't know," I said, mostly to be ornery. "If you went home and your wife beat you senseless; and yet you defended the bruises and broken bones and other injuries, on the grounds that she really loves you and had a good reason for what she had done, I think there'd be a problem in your relationship, don't you?"

The comment got a few laughs, as I knew it would, but during a brief break while everybody kept the bartender busy with more orders, I took a moment to talk to the good doctor a bit more seriously.

"So what purpose would it serve?" I asked, in complete honesty. I didn't go into the sordid details with my friend, but God's scalpel cuts deep. Whether God abandoned you in the dark or pushed you off a cliff, it's not an experience you forget easily. The "Why?" simmers on the backburner long after the main course has been finished. "I can accept on faith that there's a purpose, but it'd be nice sometimes to get a clue."

"It would have to be something good for us," my friend put forth. "Or God would be as monstrous as your example suggests, and that doesn't match up."

"But what?" I repeated, and my friend drew the example of courage. A hero may display courage easily when there is someone else to protect him and to make sure he gets home unharmed, but when the hero doesn't have that support and still acts heroically, his heroism is more heroic -- and, my friend pointed out, it allows the wounded hero to better gauge the cost of heroism, and decide if the virtue is worth the cost.

"Or," I said, feeling an old wound heal just a little more, "it allows someone to decide that love is worth the pain, for its own sake."

Some people will tell that if you follow Christ, you will never be hurt. You'll overcome hardship, you'll be victorious in the face of difficulty, and God will not allow your foot to be dashed against the rocks. It's a bald-faced lie. Christ himself promises poverty, hardship and even death to the people who follow him.

All I can say is that whether he pushes you off the cliff, or leaves you in the Valley of Shadow, it hurts like hell. But in the end, by faith, I have to agree: It's still worth it, because he is.


Copyright © 2020 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Crisis of Faith

It's always interesting to see what children notice when you read them Bible stories.

Back in February, Evangeline was puzzled by the bizarre encounter between God and Moses recounted in "Zipporah at the Inn." Other times, the girls have alternately been grossed out or entertained by some of the stories contained in the book of Judges. And tonight, the part of the Bible that came real to Evangeline was in 1 Samuel 7, just before Samuel leads the Israelites against the Philistines at Mizpah.

Contextually, this battle takes place about 20 years after the Israelites suffered the crushing loss of the Ark of the Covenant to the Philistines; and after the Philistines sent the Ark back rather than endure the plagues the biblical account lists them suffering after the ark was captured. (Among other things, their god broke, their cities were plagued with rats, and a bunch of people suffered terrible hemorrhoids.)

The story in 1 Samuel 7 represents a turnaround in Israel's fortune. They've regained the ark, they've stopped worshiping the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and by the time the chapter has ended, they're going to have broken free of their Philistine rulers, at least for a while. It's an inspiring story.

What Evangeline noticed was this: "Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it up as a whole burnt offering to the LORD."

"A suckling lamb?" she interrupted. "It was still drinking its mother's milk?"

"Well, yes," I said, and started to explain the Israelite sacrificial code. "They would offer a young lamb that had never eaten anything but milk, because it was valuable, and --"

"That's horrible!"

She was crying. It was past bedtime, and she'd had a busy day, but this caught me completely off-guard. A dozen different responses jostled on my tongue. The theologian wanted to explain the typological importance of the lamb as it foreshadowed Christ's sacrifice; the former evangelical wanted to explain that this is the cost of our sin; the religion scholar wanted to explain the significance of animal sacrifice in the religion of ancient Israel.

Another voice was considering how my daughter was anthropomorphizing a sheep, and projecting her own imagined fear onto a farm animal 3,000 years ago. Those responses and others jostled on my lips for a chance to be uttered, and all died there as a wiser part of me put the Bible down, and wrapped my arms around her.

"You're right," I said, as she cried silently over something that happened all the time in the lives of the ancient Israelites. "It is horrible."

I held her some more, while the Bible story lay unread and unfinished on the bed, and then asked her, "Do you think God wanted these sheep killed?"

She shook her head vehemently, no.

"I think you're right," I said, certain that a few people I know would take issue with such a statement. "One of the psalmists wrote 'You do not delight in sacrifice, O Lord, or I would bring it; but a broken heart and a contrite spirit are all your desire.' I don't think God wanted all these animals killed, especially like this, and I'm glad that's done."

We finished the story, we prayed, and I left the room so she could go to sleep.

In her own way, at her own level, I think Evangeline has just begun her first crisis of faith. She's come face to face with an unpleasant situation in the Bible, one where God doesn't come across as nice as his press agents and publicists make him out to be, and she's having to figure out how and if she can reconcile it. It's a journey that may take her all sorts of interesting places once she takes her first step in earnest.

And how striking if it should begin with such an innocent-seeming story.


Copyright © 2010 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Struck by the thunderous magic of Thor

About twenty-five years ago, I discovered a fantastic comic book called "The Mighty Thor."

I'd read the odd issue or two of Thor before, but it never caught my interest like it did this time. Written and drawn by Walt Simonson, the comic was well into a story that had suddenly spilled across nearly every comic book published by Marvel Comics. The Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and even Rom Spaceknight were dealing with unseasonable snow storms. Something called the Casket of Ancient Winters had been broken, and the end of the world was quite possibly approaching.

Simonson, I would discover, was quite a fan of Norse mythology. In less than two years' time on the title, he had transformed Thor from another superhero in a cape into a being of literally mythic stature. He wasn't fighting some random bad guy who wanted to take over the world; he was smack in the middle of Ragnarok, the Norse Doomsday in which Surtur would stride forth from Muspelheim to destroy the Nine Worlds in a fiery holocaust.

I was a late arrival to the story, but I was hooked. Simonson's writing and his art possessed a raw energy that I'd never seen in a comic before; his characters were unique and engaging; and I loved mythology. After one issue actually ended with Surtur lowering his sword into the eternal flame to set it ablaze, I nearly went berserk having to wait an entire month for the next issue to come out.

Thor and his allies won, of course, but the changes even that victory brought to the title and to the character of Thor were stunning. More story arcs followed, some sillier than others, until Simonson finally concluded his run by matching Thor against his mythological foe, Jormangandur, the world serpent. For those who don't know the myth, at Ragnarok, Thor slays Jormangandur, takes nine steps, and dies. Simonson pretty much followed the script on that one too.

Years later, I've come to appreciate what an amazing job Simonson did on "The Mighty Thor." Many comic book writers will tell one story after another; he told one long story consisting of several smaller, self-contained story arcs. It began with the destruction of a distant galactic core on Page One of his first issue, and didn't end until he brought everything to a satisfying conclusion in the issue following the battle with the world serpent.

Along the way, Simonson gave us Beta Ray Bill, brought us through Ragnarok, took Odin out of the picture, gave Thor a beard and Viking armor, and took some very deep and fascinating forays into Norse myth. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced Thor to Marvel Comics, but Walt Simonson is the one who truly made him Thor.

I have a few friends who used to read comic books and who now tell me when the subject comes up that they stopped reading them years ago. Fair enough; I can get just as tired of capes and costumes as anyone else. You know that Peter Parker's spider-sense will warn him before the bad guy gets the drop on him; you know that Lex Luthor will fail once again to stop Superman. It's one of the hazards of an industry where the heroes have to stay in the same essential cycle, lest their identity shift too much and they lose their appeal.

Still, when they're done right, superheroes have the same mythic appeal that the original Thor did, to the people who huddled in Heorot while winter lashed the doorposts and timbers and Grendel roamed the marsh. A good writer brings that out, by exploring the superhero metaphor in a different way, as Frank Miller did with "The Dark Knight Returns"; by making us look at them in a new light, as Mark Waid did with Superman in "Birthright"; or just by going back to the source material, like Simonson did with Thor.

When they're merely done competently, superhero comics are as ho-hum as any other popular novel. When they're done this well, they're worth reading again and again. They're also worth passing on.

Several years ago, Marvel began reprinting comics from its Jim Shooter years under its "Marvel Visionaries" imprint. Not surprisingly, Simonson's run on "The Mighty Thor" was included in those reprints. And not surprisingly, since I missed about half his run, what with one thing and another, I've made the effort to add these to my collection of trade paperbacks.

About six weeks ago, I handed the first volume to Evangeline to read, if she was interested. It took her a little while to get interested, but by the time the Casket of Ancient Winters came into play, it wasn't my enthusiasm that was driving her any more.

Twenty-five years after it first found its way into my life, the magic of Thor's enchanted hammer had caught her too.


Copyright © 2010 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Pensoj

Mi scivolas se mia geedziĝa estas finata.

Mi geedziĝis kun mia edzino antaŭ preskaŭ dekdu jaroj, konante ŝi antaŭe tri jaroj. Kiam ni geedziĝis, mi kredis ke nia amo sufus por tutaj niaj vivoj. Sed, ni estas tie ĉi nun, kaj mi ne povas diri ke mi konas se ŝi plu amas min ... aŭ se mi plu amas ŝin.

Kiel ni venis al tian lokon? Kiel povas du geviroj, kiuj diris ke ili amos ĉiam, rivi kie ili ĉiam, aŭ preskaŭ ĉiam, koleras? Mi ne povas feliĉigi ŝin plu. Kiam ŝi leviĝas matene, ŝi parolas kolere al mi; kiam ŝi revenas al hejmo poste sia laboro, ŝi parolas kolere al mi. Estas kiel ŝi ĉiam koleras, al mi, al aliulo, al ĉiuj kaj al ĉiojn. Kaj kiam ŝi koleras, ŝi uzas vortojn malbonegajn. Hieraŭ mi devis fermi la porton de la ĉam ke ŝi estis, ĉar ŝi estis kolerdiranta "Fiku tion! Fiku! Fiku!" denove kaj denove, unu foje poste alia. Ŝi ofte faras tion, kaj mi ja dormemas de tio.

Mi ja dormemas, kaj mi ne povas kontinui tiel. Hodiaŭ vespere, mi demandis de mi se mi povas kontinui geedziĝe tiel, kaj mi komprenis ke mi ne povas. Ni jam geedziĝas dekdu jarej. Kiel oni kontinui tiel por kvardek jaroj ke ankoraŭ venas? Kiel oni kontinui tiel por tridek jaroj ke ankoraŭ venas? Dudek? Mi ne povas, kaj mi ne certas ke estas iu kiu povas, sen feliĉeco sufa por diri "Mi amas mian edzinon."

Mi ne certas plu se ŝi plu amas min. Estas kiel nia geedziĝo mortis.

Ankaŭ, ni havas tri gefiloj; la plijunaj aĝas malpli unu jaro.

Mi ne volas por ili grandiĝas kun deedziĝo de ilia gepatroj ... sed mi ankaŭ ne volas por ili grandiĝas kun la kolero de sia patrino ĉiam kie ŝi estas.

Sinjoro Eternulo, aŭskultas mian preĝon, kaj trovigu por mi la respondon de tia problemo, ĉar mi ne scias via vojo.

Your message gets lost when there's too much information

There's an old saying in the news business: Less is more.

The point is that, often, being succinct communicates the message much more effectively than excessive verbiage. Flowery speech can sound impressive, but usually it just sounds pretentious. Give 'em the facts, get straight to the point, and let them decide.

This principle even can apply to personal communication as well. Including too much information can ruin the effect of your intended speech, and hopelessly garble your message.

"I love you" is probably the most beautiful thing to say in any language. Still sweet, but a little less impressive, is the declaration, "I love you more than anyone." But your point is lost forever if you go on from there: "I love you more than my ex-girlfriend, and more than my co-worker Sally. Oh, and you remember Laura from the party last month? I love you more than her. And I love you heaps more than the barista at Starbuck's. She means nothing to me." By this point, the chances are good that the speaker has dimmed the flames of passion for a good many days to come, if not for all time.

This is a lesson teachers should heed as well. No one could ever fault someone for saying "I decided to become a teacher because I love children." Expect pushback should you ever say, "I decided to become a teacher because I love 12-year-olds."

Because sometimes, you know, it's just a good idea to leave well enough alone.


Copyright © 2010 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

My friend the jackal

Job's wife gets one line in the book, and we all roast her for that.

"Are you still holding onto your integrity?" she asks him, as he sits in the ruins of his life, scraping the sores that ooze all over his body, with a shard of broken pottery. The poor man is numb with grief over the deaths of his ten children as she confronts him, mad with her own grief and loss. "Curse God and die!"

Meanwhile Job's friends browbeat him for 36 chapters, telling him that he's only getting what he deserves. Job's wife merely wanted his suffering to end. These vultures won't be happy until he's really suffered, and yet we calmly discuss them as merely errant in their thinking.


Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Tears deferred still come due

It wasn't until I held the baby that I cried.

I had been at the Centre Hospitaliere du Sacre Coeur in Port-au-Prince since about nine o'clock that morning. Lord knows, there had been plenty of reasons to cry before then. The parking lot of the medical center, after all, was a tent city of sorts, providing shelter to some 56 people who had suffered some form of injury following Haiti's disastrous earthquake on Jan. 12.

For starters, there was Joshua. It's hard to tell how old he is, but his future looks like it will be a bleak one. He suffers from club feet and cerebral palsy, two conditions that are difficult anywhere, but especially in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

Sitting with Joshua, it's hard to feel down. He can't speak any language that I know, but he smiles constantly and he loves to smack his eager hands onto yours. You can turn it into a game, where he tries to smack your hand before you can move it away, and he cracks up when he misses. Or you can let him get into an easy rhythm, clap-clap-clap, and he finds it hysterical you do something unexpected and suddenly change the rules.

The head nurse at the clinic told me that Joshua's mom wants him back because his condition makes him useful as a beggar. A brutal story if true, but that didn't make me cry.

Then there's Katura. She's a vivacious little girl; in the United States she would be attending kindergarten and mastering the fundamentals of reading and writing. Instead, because she lost her right leg above the knee in the earthquake, she's sleeping in a tent in the parking lot of a hospital, and getting around in a bright red wheelchair.

The skin has mostly closed up over her wound, and when the medical crews change the dressing on her wounds, it's a perfunctory thing. It doesn't ooze and it doesn't seem to hurt her at all. God willing, she'll be outfitted with a prosthetic device and can begin the task of learning to walk all over again.

She has a long road ahead of her, but I didn't cry when I played with her.

Or there was Karl. He's a little bit older than Ketura, probably somewhere between the ages of my two older daughters. When I met him on Thursday, he was quiet, but not with the quiet of deep thought. He was overwhelmed by all that had happened, from the devastation to his country down to the fracture in his left patella that had left him in a wheelchair.

I did everything I could to get a smile out of Karl, but nothing worked.

Still, when I had wheeled him to the door outside the X-ray room and asked him if he wanted me to stay with him, he said yes. So I sat there, and told him jokes, and showed him a picture of my infant daughter, and when they had finished the X-ray imaging, I wheeled him back to the parking lot where he and the other patients have been living.

I felt deeply for him, and wished I could bridge the gulf between us to bring him comfort and assurance, but still I didn't cry.

There are others there, with stories too horrible to think about. There is a woman with a pressure wound so bad that you can put your entire hand into her side; there are adults and children alike with braces screwed into their legs to immobilize the pieces of shattered bone, but I expected horrible injuries when I came to Haiti, so while I ache for them, I didn't cry.

But then there were the babies. Twins, they were born last August and came to the hospital some time with a minor injury that has since healed. They have no home to go to, their mother has no way of providing for them, and so they have been allowed to stay in a tent out of compassion and a sense of human decency.

Their lives are so innocent, their needs so simple, and their promise is unbridled.

I picked one of them up, and I held her in arms that have missed another baby for the past four days.

And then I cried.


Copyright © 2010 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

After the quake: pressure wounds and delayed treatment

The doctors told me the woman had been trapped under the rubble of her house for days.

When an earthquake shook Haiti to its foundations on Jan. 12, she was one of the lucky ones. Unlike an estimated 200,000 people killed in the earthquake, she survived. And unlike other adults and several children staying at the clinic with her, the debris that fell on her didn't break her bones or require doctors to amputate her limbs.

But she was trapped and unable to move until rescuers freed her.

The human body, with its grand design of skeleton and muscle, is meant to be a poem of smooth motion. But when it is held still for days on end, as this woman's body was, the rhythm of the poetry is ruined. The concrete pressed down on her leg, and cut off the flow of blood.

When there is no relief from the tremendous pressure, the skin breaks down and splits open; and as the pressure continues, additional tissue dies.

"For some people, the pressure wound has gone so deep that it's gone all the way to the bone," said Krista Duval, a doctor of osteopathic medicine from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. "These people will have very serious scars for the rest of their lives."

Krista was one of 18 people on a medical team that left from Quisqueya Crisis Relief Center on Thursday to run a medical clinic at at the Centre Hospitaliere du Sacré Coeur, in downtown Port-au-Prince. The medical team treated some 100 people who came to the clinic that day, as well as another 56 who have been living in tents in the parking lot of the medical center.

While several of those patients are receiving physical therapy and followup treatment to amputations that were needed after Haiti's horrific Jan. 12 quake, many others are receiving treatment for other injuries serious in their own right, such as the pressure wounds suffered by this woman.

Treatment takes time and patience. Gauze dressings must be changed at least daily, and a steady regimen of antibiotics contains the threat posed by infection.

Time, patience, and medical personnel. Most visiting medical crews leave Haiti after a week or two, and unfortunately, Haiti still lacks the infrastructure to provide the long-term medical care these patients need.

When the earthquake struck on Jan. 12, it destroyed more than an ability to provide immediate care for the victims of the quake. It also brought crashing to the ground the country's ability to provide long-term care in the weeks and months that are still to follow.

That was particularly in evidence on Friday. The medical center we visited is an 18-bed private hospital located a short distance from the wreckage of the National Cathedral. The building, although it survived the earthquake and the many aftershocks that have followed, is badly damaged.  The hospital is still standing, and doctors and nurses working with teams from the Quisqueya Crisis Relief Center have been able to use its equipment, but until repairs can be made, the hospital is effectively closed.

And hospitals and medical care remain in great need. On the day I joined the medical team, there were some 100 patients who came to the clinic. That number has dropped from the  average of 300 that visited the clinic when it first opened, but it remains high.

In the parking lot of the medical center stand a dozen tents, housing 56 men, women and children suffering from injuries suffered in the quake, or caring for those who had.

"Every day we discharge a few and admit one or two," said Beth Milbourne, 30, a registered nurse at Greenville Memorial Hospital in South Carolina who quit her job in the United States and moved to Haiti three weeks  ago. She has been going to the clinic at the medical center every day since.

One of the patients admitted Friday was an elderly man who required an operation because of an obstructed urinary tract. Dave Drozek, a general surgeon from Ohio University who performed the surgery, spoke to me a moment about the operation as orderlies lowered the patient onto a makeshift cot under a tent in the parking lot.

"We're transitioning to more regular day-to-day needs," Dave said of the work he'd been doing that week at the clinic.

But, as he also noted, many of those needs have been delayed because of the pressing nature of the trauma inflicted by the quake.


 Copyright © 2010 by David Learn. Used with permission.



Tweet

On the eve of going to Haiti: Letter to myself, age 22

Dear 22-year-old self,e

In a sense, this may be one of the most pointless things I have ever written, since it comes 17 years and some months too late to make a difference in the trip you are about to take to Haiti, but foolish or not, I am writing it.

I know that you're still upstairs, somewhere, wearing clothes that haven't fit me in years and that were never exactly fashionable in the first place, so I write this in the hope that it will do some good, somehow. Often the value is not in the hearing, but in the saying.

Right now, you're pretty excited about the trip you'll be taking in two days. This is something you've been looking forward to since January 1991. You remember that, right? That was when you took a short-term missions trip to LaGonave with STEM Ministries, while everyone else in the college fellowship headed to Urbana, Ill., for the big missions conference.

You didn't say much at the time to the others on your team, but the experience was one that you found to be deeply meaningful. There was that moment in LaSource where you realized that Pentecostalism wasn't what you had thought it was; and then there was that boy, Samuel, whose stomach was distended, whose hair was going red from malnutrition, and who you learned hadn't eaten a decent meal in weeks.

So, as I say, you're keen to be headed back to Haiti, to work with STEM. You're an idealist at heart, and since the Peace Corps called to say they were ready to assign you in Africa, and then called back 15 minutes later to say, "Never mind, we just realized you're an evangelical Christian," you've been looking forward to the door that it appears God has opened for you. No Fortune 500 job for you, you are going to make a difference!

Oh, Dave, you're such an idiot. You really have no idea what's going to happen, do you? Over the next two years, everything is going to hit the fan. Everything.

For starters, you're going to see need - real need. Not like the men at the homeless shelter you volunteered at one night your freshman year, who had a place to stay and food to eat because the United States has the wealth to feed its indigents when we want to.

No, we're talking the sort of need that comes when you have 8 million people in a nation where $3 is a decent day's wages and most people are unemployed. It's the sort of need where children sleep on the concrete driveway of the Jamaican restaurant on Route de Delmas. It's the sort of need where 14-year-olds are so underfed that they look like they might be 8.

It's a need that will slap you in the face every time you step out the door and interact with the people. The beggars in particular will overwhelm you. Some will be adults and some will be children; some will be sincere and some will merely be con men preying on you.

There will be no escaping that need. It will greet you when you wake up in the morning, it will haunt you when you get something to eat, and it will steal its way into your dreams. No matter how many times you discuss it with others, no matter how often you pray about it, and no matter how you try to rationalize your way around it, you will never make peace with it. Never.

One by one, your illusions are going to fail. Right now you have some pretty naive ideas about Christians, about Christianity, and about missionaries. You understand Christianity as forgiveness of sins, Christians as American-style conservatives, and missionaries as bastions of indomitable faith in God.

Over the next two years, you're going to realize the inadequacy of evangelicalism to deal with the problem of suffering and need; you're going to begin appreciating just how radically liberal Jesus was in his social attitudes, and you're going to discover that missionaries are just as human as the people in your church back home. Many missionaries whom you meet will disappoint you, just as you will disappoint them.

Incidentally, God is going to die while you're in Haiti. It'll be a combination of things that will finally do the old bugger in, but one day the light will fail and you will start crawling around on all fours in the dark to find the body. Eventually you will, and you'll wonder how you ever thought such a sad and miserable thing was worthy of worship.

Which is not to say it'll be all bad in Haiti, because it won't be. It'll be two of the hardest years of your life, but even though it sets you on a path that ultimately destroys the evangelical brand of faith that took you there, you will treasure your time in Haiti for the rest of your life.

You're going to meet some tremendous people and have some tremendous experiences that will still shape you years later. There'll be the Haitian church services you attend, particularly the ones with Herve; there will be the time you realize that while it hurts to turn away 200 hungry children, at least you were able to help feed 300 others; and there will be friendships with people like Elizabeth Gerritesen, Brian VanWyhe and Dan Kramer; with Tammy Lynn Johnston; with Rick Root; and with the Murphys and the Herseys.

(There is a funny story about how you meet the Murphys. I wonder sometimes if Lonnie remembers it, or what her kindergartners called you.)

The reception you get when you return Stateside will be underwhelming. I hate to say this, but your own pastor is going to dismiss what you did as "not missions work." and from time to time, the lack of interest other people have in your experiences there will lead you to question whether you really accomplished anything. Sometimes the loudest voice there will be the one in your head.

Ignore the gainsayers. The difference you make to the people you meet will be real and lasting, especially when you become a teacher. A Jewish tradition holds that to teach a child is to be as a parent to her. In less than a year of teaching, you will have 40 children who will never forget you, nor the lessons you teach them.

It's going to come to an end far too soon for you, and when it does, it won't end nicely. I haven't liked that ending for 15 years now, and frankly, I think it's time for the curtain to rise on a second act.

Now 39,

Dave Learn



Copyright © 2010 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet

Ebooks and the storied history of reading

I don't like ebooks.

I'm sure the convenience of carrying an entire library in your bag is a wonderful thing, and like others before me, I'm all for reducing waste and conserving resources. And of course I adore the idea of being able to keep books "in print" in perpetuity. I've never been able to find a copy of "The Elder Edda" in translation when I've looked, but there's no reason to believe that would be a problem with an ebook reader in my hands. There's so much to appreciate about ebooks, really.

I can't do it, though.

The reasons for this disinterest are all around me. They're the 1930 edition of Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" and "The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" that used to belong to my grandfather, the copy of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's "Good Omens" that I have read a half-dozen times in the past ten years, and the hundreds of other books that line almost every room of my house.

Books are more than just stories; they are memories. There is the trip I took to Alaska in 1988 while I was reading "Paradise Lost," the conversation I had with Steve Hersey about "The Divine Comedy" in Port-au-Prince, the time I woke my roommate by talking in my sleep about "The Brothers Karamazov," and the tears I shed over the final chapter of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

Sometimes these memories are marked in the book with little notes, bent pages or other tells, and sometimes not; but the associations are always strongest with the copy I was reading at the time. The story may be the same in another edition or copy, but the pages I have are old friends, and they know me just as I know them.

In the end, books are more than just the words that they contain. They are sensations. A book is the rustle of paper as you turn the page, it is the rough yellowed fibers under your fingers. It is the ache in your hand that you're vaguely conscious of after holding the book open one-handed for an hour while you were doing something else.

And just as books are connections to their previous owners, so they also are bridges to our children. Already I've been able to hand my daughter treasured books from my childhood and watch as the exact same words on the exact same pages carry her away in wonder, horror, and awe. It doesn't matter if it's "Something Under the Bed is Drooling" or Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." It's my book, and it's having its effect all over again.

Ebooks do none of this.

They read well enough, it's true, without the too-bright gleam of a computer, and as for transporting eager readers to realms of wonder, I am sure they do that as well. But it's also hard to imagine building a sentimental attachment to an ebook. "Here, Evangeline," I can't imagine myself saying. "I've had this computer file since I was your age. I'd like you to have it now."

Gone also are the other thrills of books. The wonder of walking into a bookstore to find something new to read, the thrill of running my eyes along a shelf of books for a familiar friend to read and rediscover, and the delicious smell of old books in a library either personal or public -- those are all gone with an ebook. All that is left of the selection process is a sterile screen and an experience no more transporting than browsing the Internet for something to buy.

Books are friends; books are life. An ebook is neither. It might as well be a jpeg or text file for all the emotional attachment it will get.

Something else ebooks lack: permanency. When I read a book, I can put it down for a day, a week, a year, or even a decade. When I return, I know not only that the book will still be there, but also that its contents won't have changed. The same foolish typos, the same controversial language, the same bold ideas will still be exactly as I left them.

We've already seen with ebooks that this is not true. It was only in July 2009 that Amazon erased copies of "1984" and "Animal Farm" from the Kindles of customers who had bought them. Books that can be erased or that can be changed, are not books.

The marketing mavens believe that ebooks and ebook readers are the way of the future. I fear they are right; I hope they are not. For as long as I can, I am going to continue to read books the way I always have, and hope that my children will as well.


Copyright © 2018 by David Learn. Used with permission.


Tweet