Various & Sundry: Edible Rex vs. the Yankees vs. Matt Damon with a glass of champagne

Brr...it's rather chilly here in Northern California. Oh, did I say something wrong? Oh, so sorry. I'll see if I can make it up to you.

How about having someone tell you the story of Oedipus Rex? Always a cheerful little tale, isn't it? Well, what if I told you this version of Oedipus is performed by vegetables? What do you think now?



I think that Jocasta is one hot tomato.

I loved Jim Naughton's take on the theological worldviews of the Yankees and the Mets.

For what are these Yankees but heirs of theological rationalism in all its rigorous and systematic glory? Temporally, Derek Jeter and his brethren may dwell in the humble surround of the southern Bronx, but spiritually they are native to the Athens of Aristotle, the Paris of Aquinas, and the Rome of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. 

And what are these Mets if not mystics in polyester pants, cleated apostles who encounter God in an ecstatic flash that redeems long years of famine. Their Savior led them out of the wasteland of the Phillies and the Expos, and into a land flowing with milk and commercial endorsements. Their God has made the desert (the Hebrew word is 'Flushing') bloom.

If you happen to be in Napa and are in the mood for champagne, this sparkling wine trail map and guide might come in handy.

If, on the other hand, you happen to be in Morocco and want to find Matt Damon, all you need to do is go ask at the American Embassy.

Is there a doctor in the house?

I saw my Ob-Gyn this morning. TMI, you say? Well, I'm only telling you this because she told me a great story. Well, great in an aggravating way.

Here's the deal. Her husband, she explained, is the stay-at-home dad while every day she heads off to her practice at the hospital.

One evening at home, she told her daughter the old riddle: a father and his son are in a car accident and are taken to the hospital where they are rushed into surgery. The father, tragically, dies, but the boy can be saved with an emergency procedure. The surgeon comes in to where the boy is on the operating and says, "I can't perform the surgery. This is my son." How is this possible?

My doctor's daughter thought about this a while and decided that the answer must be...the son had two fathers.

My doctor tried again with a different scenario: this time a mother and a son in an accident, mother dies, nurse enters, says, "I need someone else to help; this is my son." How can this be?

My doctor's daughter thinks and decides this must be a lesbian couple.

*facepalm*

On the one hand, nice to have the acceptance of gay and lesbian couples and families. On the other...geez, the persistence of gender roles and stereotypes! How do you fight that?

Probably the worst Passover joke you will hear this year

Of course, it may be the best one you hear, too.

A Jewish man in England had been chosen by the queen for knighthood. When she tapped him on the shoulder with her sword, dubbing him Sir Cohen, he was supposed to say certain ancient phrases in Latin.

But when the time came, he forgot the Latin words. He panicked for a moment, then said the only words that came to mind, the first of the Four Questions of Passover: "Ma nish-ta-na ha-leila ha-ze?"

The queen looked at him for a moment, puzzled, then asked, "Why is this knight different from all other knights?"

From Joel ben Izzy's book The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness, reviewed here.

Review: The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness

I love a good storyteller, and Joel ben Izzy is an excellent storyteller. I actually heard him for the first time at, of all things, a convention for professional fundraisers as he told a story about King Solomon that illustrated how non-profit organizations need to be able to tell their own story.

The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness also starts with a story about King Solomon -- and stops just as Solomon reaches the crisis point. And then ben Izzy begins his own tale, which is just as harrowing.

A storyteller by profession, ben Izzy is happily married with two lovely children, making a living doing what he loves, when the worst thing that could befall a storyteller happens to him: he loses his voice. And it doesn't come back.

We have both the print book version and the audiobook version, and I ended up listening to the audiobook over the course of a couple of weeks as I drove here and there.

Now, one of the great things about listening to this book as an audiobook is that you know that somehow his voice does come back, since he's telling you the story. But I was still anxious to see how this would play out for him.

Another great thing about listening to this as an audiobook is that you get to hear him tell stories. Each chapter begins with another story from all over the world -- some I knew, but many I didn't. They're chewy stories, ones that have stuck with me since I heard ben Izzy tell them as I try to digest them fully.

And then ben Izzy does something really amazing: in telling his own true story, he helps you realize that you are (most likely) in the middle of your own story -- and that you don't get to skip out of it. You just get to go through it.

He concludes with one of the best explanations  that I've yet heard -- a hard-won answer drawn from personal experience -- of whether everything happens for a reason.

And then you get to hear what happens to Solomon.

But that's another story.

Various & Sundry: Clearing out the pantry, both virtual and actual

Isn't that beautiful?

As of yesterday, I finished (I think) all the edits for CnC for Adults and I've gone crazy with freedom! I cleaned out the pantry and put out a bunch of canned goods for the Boy Scout collection this morning, sorted the spices, and then, because as I say, I'd gone crazy, I tidied up the tupperware. Yes, that's the kind of life I'm leading.

And now it's time to clean out the virtual pantry. Are you ready?

Are election reactions past their sell-by date? Well, I'm willing to chance it. Here's one I think is worth reading: Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people from an official midwestern white person who explains why he did not vote for the Republican candidate, "purely for your education, such that you might be interested in winning an election on the national level at some point in the future." Hint: it's not because he wants free stuff.

You may have heard about people signing petitions about seceding from the union. A) Didn't we try that before? Didn't work out so good. And B), this post explains exactly what that would mean. Hint: no Social Security benefits.

One could almost call that passive-aggressive behavior. I thought this post offered an excellent primer in how to be passive-aggressive.

In other news, remember how I followed the Ivory Coast election about a while ago? Almost two years ago now--wow! Well, the new president dissolved his cabinet this week. Why, you ask?

"the decision came after a dispute Tuesday during a parliamentary committee debate over a possible amendment to the country’s marriage law. The change would make the husband and wife equal heads of a household. Under the current law, the husband is the head and makes decisions in the name of the family. Ouattara’s party supported the change, but other parties within the coalition opposed it."

I have to appreciate that the conflict came to a head over women's rights. Good luck, President Ouattara.

In the obituaries this week, David Durk gets his due. Remember Serpico? Well, it was really Durk and Serpico, testifying about police corruption in NYC in 1971. “It would be fair to say that without Durk, there would have been no police corruption exposé in The New York Times, no Knapp Commission investigations into the matter,” according to one source. Impressive and brave work, and boy were the rewards in heaven. He retired with a police pension of $17K a year in 1985.

I loved this story about a homeless boy taken in by a high school football coach. Very touching.

I am also often very moved by this blog from a contractor working in Afghanistan. A recent post answers the question, "So Ryan, what are most soldiers like?" Another explains The Best Phrase They Have in Afghanistan.

Here's a practical suggestion: Let's stop calling people leaders until they actually lead.

At the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, we use the simplest definition of leader that I have come across: people follow you. This definition intentionally omits any reference to rank or role. We see leadership as behavior-based. "Leader" is not a title you are handed just because you sit in a certain spot in a hierarchy; you have to earn it from those you aspire to have follow you.

Amen to that.

And finally, Ken Levine offers a reflection on his role model: Shari Lewis, in a wonderful story of generous professionalism. May we all be so good.

Not By Bread Alone, continued

Earlier this year, I posted about a program proposed by the mother of a friend of mine. Called Not By Bread Alone, this program provided toiletries, beauty products, nylons, and other items for women at the local food pantry.

Today I heard a follow-up story about the program. A woman came to the food pantry and was beside herself - simply ecstatic - to be able to get...a hairbrush. Because she didn't have one, not in any real sense. It had completely fallen apart. And, she told my friend's mother, if she'd had the money to buy a hairbrush, she would have bought something else.

It was also a good thing because, she said to my friend's mother, she was running out of elastics to hold her hair back. And now she didn't need to worry about that.

Just thought you should know.

World Domination Summit: Closing Story

We were about to be dismissed from the World Domination Summit. Our minds were already full to bursting from everything we'd heard and seen. Then the organizer, Chris Guillebeau, came on the stage. He said, "I want to tell you a story. It's an old story, you may already know it.

"There was a man who was about to go on a trip. But he decided before he left he should take some of his money and invest it. So he found a few people and he gave each of them some money and said, 'do something with this while I'm gone.'

"A lot of people have explained this story by talking about the character of the people who got the money and what they did with it. I'm more interested in the person who gave the money. Why did he do that? Why didn't he take it with him, or save it in a safe place? Maybe it's because he believed in the people he was giving it to."

Then he told us that there had been a little profit from the conference, and they had been trying to figure out what to do with it. And then, along came someone who wanted to support the conference through a private donation. When Guillebeau said there wouldn't be any sponsors, the anonymous donor said it wasn't about that. And they tried to figure out what to do.

You know where this is going, don't you? I sure did, sitting there in my seat, thinking, "You're going to do this, aren't you?"

Suddenly, we were in the story, and it wasn't so theoretical any more.

As the attendees at the conference left the theater on Sunday afternoon, we each received an envelope--all 1,000 of us. Inside the envelope was $100 (do the math) and a note saying, "Thanks for making #WDS2012 a fantastic experience. We'd love to see how you put these funds to good use. Start a project, surprise someone, or do something entirely different--it's up to you."

I got my envelope and started crying. Why? Because it Scared. Me. Shitless. What was I going to do with this money? How could I use it wisely and well? How could I turn it into something else, bigger and better than the original investment?

It may be better to give than to receive. I also think it's a hell of a lot easier. My first impulse was to hand that money on to somebody else, somebody who could use it. But I already have $100 to give to others. I think the more challenging thing for me is to figure out something else to do with it, something different. I just have no idea what it is. Yet.

I'll be spending much of the week blogging about my experiences at WDS. I had no idea what to expect from it. I still don't know quite how to explain it. Maybe it has something to do with the underlying assumption that each of us is a good investment. Whatever it was, it was amazing.

Much more to come.

Various & Sundry, June 29

Happy Friday, everyone! Are you ready for a miscellany? Let's get to it!

The only good thing to come out of the death of Nora Ephron is a bunch of Nora Ephron stories, such as this great tale she tells of seeing Steve Wynn accidentally destroy a Picasso. Not just any Picasso. This Picasso. I also appreciate a woman who likes to eat.

A couple of posts explore how to be a good do-gooder--or perhaps more accurately, what are some of its challenges. This article, titled Post-Humanitarian Advertising: Because You're Worth It! is a fascinating analysis of #Kony2012 in the larger context of how aid and development is now being marketed. Key quote:

Kony2012 did not spread like wildfire because it stood in opposition to individualism and consumerism, but because it managed to turn the pursuit of global justice into an individualistic, consumerist activity. It did not aim to inspire feelings of universal moral responsibility, but commodified ‘universal moral responsibility’ into a consumable product that can operate within the capitalist culture most people readily understand.

The second is called Why the word "missional" bugs me and raises some worthwhile concerns, such as what is the difference between being somebody's mission and somebody's friend?

I loved this brief article on why you should hire introverts, and why you should leave them alone.

I also loved this much longer article on why the House of Hufflepuff kicks ass. It made me want to be a Hufflepuff, I tell you what.

Pulling from the vault, I found (after last week's church service) that I had this brief examination of the David and Goliath story that I think is worth sharing again. It's not the story we've been told it is. As I said,"I noticed David took 5 stones for his sling. Five. He's a confident little twerp, but he's not stupid." I love the David saga.

And while we're doing Toepfer promotional stuff, my sister has a cool YouTube channel. You should check it out.

This week in death

It's been another big week in death, obit fans. No big names, but some truly big characters left this world this week.

Let's start with Lord Revelstoke, shall we? Born James Baring and later the 6th Lord Revelstoke, he was a daredevil flyer, owned a recording studio used by (among others) the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, and a consultant to the Oxford Refugee Council.  Other than that, he led a rather ordinary life.

I loved the crazy tale of Raymond Scott, "a self-professed Ferrari-owning connoisseur of vintage champagne, beautiful girls and Cuban cigars, [who] sparked a literary sensation in 2008 when he claimed to have unearthed an unknown 1623 First Folio of the collected plays of Shakespeare." By a remarkable coincidence, a strangely similar 1623 First Folio had been stolen 10 years earlier from Durham University, 10 miles from his mother's house. He claimed it had been given to him by the friend of his true love, a dancer he had met in Cuba. So that seems like a reasonable alibi, then. Can't think why that didn't cut the mustard.

Then there's Mira Hamermesh, a documentarian whose own life was just as harrowing as the ones she documented.  Born in Poland in 1923, she fled ahead of the Nazis and got to Palestine.  Both her parents stayed in Poland and died.  She went on to make films about the untouchable caste in India and women living under apartheid in South Africa. As the Telegraph puts in, "her documentaries had explored virtually every regime of oppression except for the Holocaust." Finally, in 1991, she created a film about trying to find her mother's grave in Warsaw, called Loving the Dead.

In baseball news, umpire Harry Wendelstedt died last Friday.  As the head of the Al Somers Umpire School, he is responsible for every bad call made by an umpire.  Seems reasonable, doesn't it?

I was sad to hear about the death of Donald Smith, champion of Cabaret, as the Times puts it.  He created the Mabel Mercer Foundation to promote cabaret singing as an art form, "partly Mr. Smith’s response to obituaries and tributes that misleadingly described Ms. Mercer as a jazz singer." Ah, those obits, meddling in people's lives. Good work, sir, and here's hoping your good work continues.

Last but certainly not least, the tea world lost a giant this week in the death of Noble Fleming, official tea taster for Lipton for almost 50 years. "For decades, starting as a teenage apprentice, Mr. Fleming traveled to tea estates of 1,000 acres or more — primarily in India, Sri Lanka and East Africa — searching for varieties with specific tastes in the way an oenologist knows a chateau wine." I raise my Darjeeling to you, sir.

Various & Sundry, March 9

First off, don't forget to fill out the 2 question survey on what you want to see in The Infusion in future.  So far, reviews, religious reflections, and rants are leading the way. What, you don't like zombies?

Speaking of rants, a couple of updates to yesterday's post on Invisible Children.

I thought this post on How to Determine If a Charity like Kony 2012 Is Worth Your Money was a terrific response that helps donors with due diligence not only in this situation but in many others.  It tells you how to find out how a charity spends its money and what kinds of things to look for, using Invisible Children as a case study.

Also, while I was looking for an image to go with yesterday's post, I found this beauty, courtesy of The Onion:

Perfect.

And before this even started, I had tweeted this article from The Lark, The Onion's sacred counterpart: Church sends clown and puppet teams to war-torn Africa. Ha.

In other news, Church Marketing Sucks offers a great suggestion that organizations need to write about benefits, not features.

Features are all about you. It’s the checklist of whatever you have to offer. Certainly you care about it, but it doesn’t mean anybody else does. Features are how many services you offer and the incredible music and the coffee hour. But most people don’t come to church (or buy anything) because of a list of features. 

They do it for the benefits. Benefits are all about them. How does this church service (or product) benefit them? The spiritual change, the fellowship, the community–those are benefits. While features are external, benefits are internal. Benefits are all about what people get out of it, what they experience, what’s important to them.

Good to remember.

The NY Times had an article last week asking Does Couples Therapy Work?  There was a link within the article to another article called Bad Couples Therapy, written by a couples therapist who pointed out some of the pitfalls of the trade.  I recommend it to anyone doing pastoral care; great food for thought.

Finally, two writer-related tidbits: first, this excerpt from a story written by a 14-year-old Jane Austen:

One evening in December, as my father, my mother, and myself were arranged in social converse round our fireside, we were on a sudden greatly astonished by hearing a violent knocking on the outward door of our rustic cot. 

My father started — ‘What noise is that?’ said he. ‘It sounds like a loud rapping at the door,’ replied my mother. ‘It does indeed,’ cried I. ‘I am of your opinion,’ said my father, ‘it certainly does appear to proceed from some uncommon violence exerted against our unoffending door.

Love those sarcastic teenagers.  And from the same blog, JRR Tolkien had this to say about The Lord of the Rings to his publisher:

My work has escaped my control, and I have produced a monster; an immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and rather terrifying romance, quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody); and it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion. Ridiculous and tiresome as you may think me, I want to publish them both — The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. That is what I should like. Or I will let it all be. I cannot contemplate any drastic rewriting or compression. But I shall not have any just grievance (nor shall I be dreadfully surprised) if you decline so obviously unprofitable a proposition.

Glad they didn't listen to him.

Have a great weekend!

Sunday Funnies, August 21

This joke was posted as a comment in response to another Cajun salesman joke over at the MadPriest's blog. I thought this one deserved a wider audience. And the original joke some serious eye-rolling. h/t Hooper, whoever you may be.

So this Cajun guy used to work at a store in Louisiana, and he was a very faithful man who always took an opportunity to quote scripture when ringing up his customers. For example, if a child bought a stick of candy, he would say "Let the little ones come unto me." If a elderly couple came in for Geritol, he would say "Honor thy mother and thy father."

The owner of the store was always amazed that the Cajun salesman can think of an appropriate scripture in every single situaltion, and watches him closely to see if he ever fails.

One day, a rich Texas race horse owner pulls up in a stretch Cadillac towing a trailer with a thoroughbred on board. He comes in and says, "You folks here got a horse blanket?"

The Cajun man says. "Sure enough, we got'em, das for sure. Dey in de supply room, I'll go get you one"

Now, this store is only a little general store, and while they have horse blankets, they are all the same, just different colors. The Cajun man goes to the supply room, gets a blue blanket, and comes back.

"Dis here horse blanket will be 15 dollars, suh" Cajun man says.

The Texan says, "Son, that's not good enough, that there horse in that there trailer is Lightning Bolt, and he's gonna win the Loosiana Derby, and this here blanket ain't good enough for him. Go get a better blanket."

Cajun man thinks real hard, goes back to the supply room, and gets a green blanket, same kind, just a different color.

"Dis here a better blanket, gonna cost you 45 dollars" says Cajun man.

"That's still not good enough...what's your best blanket you got back there?" asks the Texan.

"Yessuh, I be right back, I garontee."

Cajun man comes back fronm the supply room with another 15 dollar blanket, this time a gold one.

"Dis here the best in the house, nothin'n but the finest for you and ol' Lihgtning Bolt. But, suh, I gotta tell you, it's gonna cost you 155 dollars, and dat don't include the tax, but it's the best in the house, dat's for sure..."

The Texan responds, "That's what I'm lookin' for, glad you found that for me, Lightning Bolt gonna look good with this here blanket, I'll take it!"

Cajun man goes over to the register... he pauses to think of a scripture verse appropriate for this scam... and his boss looks on as well... what will he say?

Cajun man looks up to the heavens, punches in the total with tax of 167 dollars, and as he rings up the sale, he speaks...

"He was a stranger, and I took him in!"

A story for World AIDS Day

I was very moved by this story written by a young woman in western Kenya.

When I was 14, I was sent home from school sick. When I reached home, I developed an acute headache and then I was hospitalised. There they discovered some symptoms of meningitis. I was in hospital for one full week, and recovered from the meningitis. But they also told me I was HIV positive. I was so depressed, I couldn't imagine where it had come from because I was so innocent. I used to think anybody who could test positive must have acquired it through promiscuity.

I was staying with my sister, but when I tested HIV positive, she thought it would harm the family and so she sent me away. When I very first got the news, she was a bit supportive. But then she started to tell me not to touch her children, not even to share the table with them, or to wash next to them. Due to the stigma she told me to leave her home, which was around 4km away from where I live now.

The thing I really appreciate about it is that it's a story FROM a person with AIDS rather than ABOUT a person with AIDS. It's a tough little story, but not without hope. And the woman herself certainly doesn't seem to see herself as a victim.

What happens next? You'll have to read it to find out.

Monday Morning Preacher: Personal vs. Therapeutic

Oh, man, this entry has been hard to write! I used a story from my personal experience yesterday to illustrate the story of the Good Samaritan. It raised the question for me: when does a sermon illustration using a personal story pass from sharing into over-sharing?

It's so much easier when sitting in the pews. From that vantage point, it's obvious at what point someone's preaching becomes someone's personal therapy, where they're trying to work out some of their personal issues through a talking cure with the congregation as therapist. And then I hit a sermon last week and had to figure out, "Am I preaching this because it's a good illustration of the gospel? Or am I preaching this for my own personal reasons?"

There's a distinction between the personal and the therapeutic in preaching, and I'm still trying to figure out where exactly that line is. Here's my basic rule: you know your preaching has crossed over into the therapeutic if your goal, when you preach it, is to get the congregation to make you feel better about yourself.

It's a constant balancing act, though, because, as in the sermon illustration below, I do wonder at what point, "I did this or that" becomes "I did this or that. Wasn't that grand?"

And there's no doubt that mixed motives abound in preaching. I still believe (in hope) that a good sermon can have mixed motives.

As always the goal in preaching is to make the gospel clearer to the hearers, and there are certainly stories in our lives that illustrate the gospel. Sometimes even the preacher does something worth noting. It would be terrible not to use them out of a severity that says nothing personal should be involved in preaching.

I am hoping that my personal story illustrated for the congregation as vividly as it conveyed to me that "loving your neighbor" is as obvious and neglected a call as it ever was. Even a priest can figure that out, if it's impressed upon them enough.

What do you think? Do you have any rules of thumb to keep personal sharing from the pulpit within the realms of acceptable behavior?

Sermon: The Good Samaritan

[first half of sermon preached on 7/11]

Earlier this week, I was working in my office at home when I looked out the window and saw a medical supply truck in front of the house next door. It kind of surprised me because my neighbors are young—probably younger than me—and I see them all the time, two men, J. and R., one or the other of them walking their Pomeranian C. around the block.

Later that day, I was watering the plants in the front yard when a woman walked by with C. I told her I had seen the truck and asked if she minded telling me what was going on. She told me that J. had an inoperable brain tumor. He had had several surgeries before, but this time, there was nothing they could do. I asked if it would be all right if I brought over some food and she thought that would be fine.

The week flew by and then yesterday, there I was reading all of these beautiful commentaries on the Good Samaritan and how we need to love and care for our neighbor. Neighbor, neighbor, neighbor they said, practically in flashing neon, until finally the message got through to this priest: maybe it would be better at that moment for me to check on my actual, physical next-door neighbor than to labor earnestly over this sermon.

I didn’t do much. I went over with a note that had my name and phone number and explained that I was available if they needed a driver or a car or a guest room or food or someone to take care of their dog. And that I hoped they would call me.

R. answered the door. I gave him the note and told him what I hoped I could offer. He gave me a hug, and then said, “You’re Laura, right?” I took a guess and asked if he was R., which he was. C. barked at me and I said, “Everyone knows C.,” which we do. And I came home to work on this sermon and a much better idea of what to say to you.

I realized I don’t know my neighbors. Maybe it’s not like this here. Maybe you know the people who live next door to you or on your block. I’ve lived in small towns where everybody knew everybody and what car they drove. Maybe it’s like that here. But in most places I’ve lived, I’ve known the people I work with, the people I go to school with, and the people I worship with. I didn’t really know the people who lived around me. One or two, sure, but for the most part, my neighbors—my physical neighbors—have been a mystery to me. They are not part of my groups: my church, my family, my profession. I realized reading the Good Samaritan this time through how odd it is that the people I call by the technical term “neighbors” are the very people that I often literally walk or drive by.

I’ve tended to assume that they have their own groups of family, friends and colleagues who will be there when they need them. But maybe they don’t. Or maybe there’s something we can offer by our very proximity that family and friends can’t provide. In any event, I learned yet again the obvious lesson of The Good Samaritan: loving your neighbor means loving the people you meet as you go about your daily business and not just the people in your group. And helping them is the business you need to attend to.

[Second half of sermon was illustrated by the Tolstoy story The Three Questions.]

Did God create science?

I've been thinking about science. 

This all started last weekend when I read an article in the Huffington Post called The Nonscience of the Scientific Arguments Against Evolution.  What got me was one of the comments which said,

Attention evolutionists....Let me spell it out for you....

God created science! So you cant say religion is anti science, makes no sense, so squash dat man!

Oh, the logic!  The logic!  It hurts!

But since then, I've been pondering: did God create science?  Because when I think of science, I don't think of a thing, but a process.  I think of science as a way of approaching creation, using observation and testing hypotheses.  I think science is accountable to a creator God because it must be faithful to the creation observed. 

But I am falling into my own pet peeve of making science a being rather than a process.  I commented about this on Icearc's blog yesterday, saying, It annoys me to hear, "Science says," when it's really, "Based on evidence we have discovered through the scientific method, we currently believe..." One of the things I appreciate about the application of science is that, given replicable results, people will change what they used to believe in the face of new evidence. 

Sadly, I do find that religion is anti-science more often than not.  Why, though?  Why is religion so against data and evidence?  Over on the InternetMonk site, there's an Update on the Creation Wars talking about an Evangelical OT scholar who was pressured to resign from the seminary where he taught after posting a video in which he said,

“if the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult…some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God’s Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness.”

I did it again, assigning "religion" agency as if it was a person.   Why is a certain kind of religious worldview so threatened by data?  For me, as a lover of books of all stripes, stories have meaning beyond the literal "this is how it happened."  What happened to us that we have to limit ourselves to making the Bible a news report rather than an epic tale?

Andree Peel

Yesterday, I said that I found myself drawn to WWII books these days, and later on I think I discovered why: it's the obits! Especially the British ones which seem to feature amazing WWII veterans and survivors every day. I feel immersed in these stories from that period because many of the actors from that time are now dying.

Yesterday, I read the story of Andree Peel who ran a beauty salon in Breton when the Germans invaded. She didn't stay in her shop quietly.

Her first act of defiance took place as German troops entered the town, when she gave shelter to a group of fleeing French soldiers and begged her neighbours for civilian clothes for them so they would not be captured.

And, oh, by far was that not her last defiant act. She joined the Resistance and

Within weeks she was made head of an under-section of the organisation, responsible for sending information to the Allies...By establishing contacts in the dockyard, Andrée was able to pass on information about naval installations, as well as about troop movements and the results of Allied aerial attacks. [snip]

During her three years with the Resistance – during which she was known first as Agent X and then as Agent Rose – Andrée helped save the lives of more than 100 Allied pilots. Her team used torches [flashlights] to guide Allied planes to improvised landing strips and smuggled fugitive airmen aboard submarines and gunboats on remote parts of the coast, often feeling their way in the dark past German coastal shelters.

Fleeing to Paris after D-Day,

She was arrested and taken to Gestapo headquarters where she was stripped naked, interrogated and subjected to a series of tortures, including simulated drowning and being savagely beaten around the throat.

Was that a bit of a smackdown of so-called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques?

The stories of her narrow escapes--plural--from execution are incredible.

As a firing squad drew near, she wrote later, the terrified prisoners heard a telephone ringing in the camp commandant's office. It was a message from the Americans to the effect that the firing squad had been seen entering the camp and that if they wanted to live, they would spare the lives of the prisoners. The soldiers fled.

After the war, she opened a restaurant in Paris. Again I am struck by the incredible stories of derring-do that exist in ordinary places. I'm just sorry to be missing so many of them.

Andree's advice for a good life? "The secret to a happy life, she observed, was a good companion – and eating the main meal of the day at lunchtime." She died at the age of 105.

Reconciliation

I've grown more skeptical of media narratives about sports personalities since reading Andre Agassi's memoir. One person who seems to have gotten marked with a certain story is Shani Davis, the speedskater, who was touchy and aloof and not part of the team, at least according to the stories we saw.

One thing Davis did do on record was call Stephen Colbert a jerk. Colbert, as you may know, rounded up financial support for US Speedskating when one of their corporate sponsors went belly-up. Before the Olympics, Colbert talked with Al Michaels and asked him what it would take to get him to say again, "Do you believe in miracles?" A la doubting Thomas, Michaels said, "If Shani Davis thanks you for getting him a gold medal, then I'll say I believe in miracles."

Voila:
[It's a long clip, so you might want to skip to 6:10--or the very end from 8:08, which is what I really hope you'll see.]

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Freud Rage - The Iceman Counseleth - Shani Davis
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Skate Expectations

In case you didn't get to it, what I loved was that Colbert invites Davis to say, "Stephen, you're a jerk!" and in so doing takes away any sting those words might have had. I thought that was such a beautiful moment, turning what had been divisive upside-down into an opportunity for reconciliation.

It also, for me, changed the narrative about Davis from a cold and prickly person into merely a normal one, human and unscripted. And in what was clearly a planned moment, to me it appeared that Davis was set free from the story the media has created for him.

More on Mark

I was dashing out the door yesterday when I wrote that post on Mark. Since then I've been pondering him a bit more--or more precisely the people around him.

There's Paul who doesn't want to be slowed down by Mark when he might be a liability.

There's Barnabas who takes Mark under his wing and gives Mark another opportunity to make an impact.

And there's the Christian community that thought enough of him to attribute a gospel to him.

Obviously, I sympathize more with the Barnabas-type person in this regard, but only in the abstract, I fear. I tend to be more of an "It would just be easier for me to do it myself" type of person rather than spend the time it would take to bring someone else up to speed. Especially someone who had blown it previously.

And I think there is a balance, here. I think Paul and Paul-types have some reasonable arguments to make against investing vast amounts of time in people who simply turn out to be duds.

But Mark, evidently, wasn't a dud. Barnabas (one of my favorite Bible characters) seems particularly apt at picking the good 'uns out of unlikely material, Paul being one of them himself.

I read a story recently (all right, it was in The Interpreters Bible (1952), if you must know) which I would like to be true:

In World War I a fine lad in the battalion with which I was serving failed through illness in face of the enemy and was court-martialed and punished. All that the colonel said to me was, "We must show him that we still trust him, or the lad will go to pieces." And not once did he allude to the unhappy incident, but not only treated the boy with the old friendliness, but a few weeks later in a particularly tight corner put him in command of the very company with whom he had been when he made his slip. In a few days' grim fighting the lad won honor after honor, and promotion for gallantry in the field. "What else could I do?" he said to me. "I failed him; and he trusted me."

I don't think Barnabas is just being nice. I don't think we're asked to be nice. It's something far more challenging than that. I haven't put a finger on what to call this kind of love, but some kind of love it must be.

This is a brief excerpt from a book I love called "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller which seemed appropriate for the season. He's writing about going to hear a folksinger who tells this story between songs.

The story was about his friend who is a Navy SEAL. He told it like it was true, so I guess it was true, although it could have been a lie.

The folksinger said his friend was performing a covert operation, freeing hostages from a building in some dark part of the world. His friend's team flew in by helicopter, made their way to the compound and stormed into the room where the hostages had been imprisoned for months. The room, the folksinger said, was filthy and dark. The hostages were curled up in a corner, terrified. When the SEALs entered the room, they heard the gasps of the hostages. They stood at the door and called to the prisoners, telling them they were Americans. The SEALs asked the hostages to folow them, but the hostages wouldn't. They sat there on the floor and hid their eyes in fear. They were not of healthy mind and didn't believe their rescuers were really Americans.

The SEALs stood there, not knowing what to do. They couldn't possibly carry everybody out. One of the SEALs, the folksinger's friend, got an idea. He put down his weapon, took off his helmet, and curled up tightly next to the other hostages, getting so close his body was touching some of theirs. He softened the look on his face and put his arms around them. He was trying to show them he was one of them. None of the prison guards would have done this. He stayed there for a little while until some of the hostages started to look at him, finally meeting his eyes. The Navy SEAL whispered that they were Americans and were there to rescue them. Will you follow us? he said. The hero stood to his feet and one of the hostages did the same, then another, until all of them were willing to go. The story ends with all the hostages safe on an American aircraft carrier.

I never liked it when the preachers said we had to follow Jesus. Sometimes they would make Him sound angry. But I liked the story the folksinger told. I liked the idea of Jesus becoming man, so that we would be able to trust Him, and I like that He healed people and loved them and cared deeply about how people were feeling.

May we too join people where they are as we celebrate this feast of God's living among us, the incarnation.

Preface of the Incarnation:
It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth because you gave Jesus Christ, your only Son, to be born for us; who by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, was made perfect Man of the flesh of the Virgin Mary his mother; so that we might be delivered from the bondage of sin, and receive power to become your children.

Vague thoughts on right, wrong and Henry Clay

I read an interesting story this morning on a sermon prep website. I doubt I'll be able to use the story in the sermon I'm preparing, but I thought I'd share it here.

It purports to be a true story about a "people experiment" done by a Virginia Theological Seminary professor named Reuel Howe.

At this particular lab, the group was given a piece of wood, and told to reach some agreement about its length, without measuring it in any way – purely an eyeball estimate. Then they were to gather as many others as possible who agreed.

One person had been told beforehand the exact length, but he was not allowed to reveal the source of his knowledge. As far as the rest were concerned, he was guessing just as much as they were.

The estimates varied widely. The only agreement was that no one agreed with the one person who had the correct answer. He tried to gather several groups but couldn't get other people to agree with him.

So eventually, he joined a group who advocated the wrong answer.
When he was asked, at the end of the exercise, why he would throw his lot in with a wrong answer, when he knew the right one, he replied, “I’d rather be wrong than alone.”

As I said, I don't know if this is true, but I find it at least possible to believe. It's such a human story: so sad, and so sweet.

"I'd rather be wrong than alone" reminded me of the quote "I'd rather be right than president," which I tracked down (thank you, Google!) as a line from Henry Clay who was defeated in his presidential bid four times. Here's Wikipedia's take on the phrase: "When Clay was warned not to take a stance against slavery or be so strong for the American System [i.e. high tariffs, anti-free-market economy, if I understand it correctly], he was quoted as saying, 'I'd rather be right than be President!' This remark has been quoted or paraphrased by several presidential candidates since, as a statement of principle over ambition."

I suspect that even if the first story didn't actually happen, there's a lot of truth in it; it's often so much more comfortable to be wrong than to be alone. And, oh, how familiar it sounds in our own current presidential race. Wouldn't you rather be right and be president? If you had to choose one or the other, which would you choose?

Picture is of Henry Clay speaking in the Senate.