Of Rich Mullins, sons and their girlfriends, and my wife.

"That's why it's always such a hack off to me when people talk about my ministry. I tend to think my ministry is to clean up my hotel room before I leave. My ministry is to leave a generous tip for a waitress who's having a really lousy day and who's had a bad attitude when waiting on me. My ministry is to not tailgate people who are driving like idiots in front of me. If you're a Christian, ministry is just an accident of being alive...of being Christian. It just happens. And I don't know that you can divide your life up and say, “This is my ministry” and “This is my other thing”, because the fruits of Christianity affect everybody around us.”

Rich Mullins

Hello. It's been several months. I wish I could say I felt bad about that, but...

I was driving home after a weekend with my sons a few days ago. We do this sort of thing once a year, a little “guys thing” that has turned into a tradition over the years (Do it once, it's an accident. Do it twice, it's a tradition). Lots of music, fun, jokes, some arguing (it bothers their dad, but I guess it's to be expected among brothers) and lots of discussion, some light-hearted and some pretty serious. I was having one of those serious discussions with #1 son, who has gotten married since last we spoke, about work and how it sucks and what it means. There was some stuff in there about Kant too, but try as I might to figure out what he meant I just...kant.

Sorry. That's been there since the weekend, and I had to get it out of my system.

#1 son is newly married, as I said, and has moved to a new town, looking for work, getting ready to finish school, etc. He got a job without too much effort, but in retail, which he doesn't really like. A “Been there, done that” sort of thing. He talked of how hard it was to find meaning in a retail job, how absurd he felt catering to people working hard at jobs they don't like so they can buy things they don't really need, things that are going to satisfy them only momentarily until the NEXT BIG THING comes along, so they'll work harder to afford more things...it's a fairly standard complaint, but no less powerful for that. He had decided that the only way to make any meaning out of the short amount of time he spends with the customers who talk to him was to bring some sort of joy into their lives in that short amount of time. I remember he mentioned how easily the attitudes of other people affect him, that he can be in a bad mood and someone will do him some small kindness and it will lift his spirits and lighten his burden, at least for a while. And so recognizing that, he determined that he should use his time at work to do the same to the customers he sees, to help them find this thing or that and do so cheerfully and courteously, not so they can find and purchase something material and temporal but so that they can, at least for a moment, feel some small amount of joy, that someone cares enough to treat them with courtesy and respect. We agreed, I think, that in much of life we can be nothing more than mobile dispensers of small servings of grace to the people that we see. And that even though it may be all we can do, that's no excuse to not do all that we can do.

My first couple of shifts back from that weekend with the boys have not gone well. It would not be an exaggeration to say they have really sucked. Very busy, long hours on the road, difficult people, stressful situations, bad food, no rest. Monday was definitely that way, and this shift has been only a little better. The morning started badly, with truck problems followed by a couple of meetings (does anybody like those things?) but my boss decided we should eat at Chick Fil A for lunch. #3 son's girlfriend works at CFA, and when we walked in I looked behind the counter hoping to see her. She was there, working the drive through with the little headphones on, and I watched her rush around for a minute or 2 before she saw me and waved...

...and gave me a smile that lit up the restaurant just as it did the black, gloomy corners of my mood. Friendly, warm, at the same time open and a little shy it seemed, and absolutely brilliant. My morning brightened along with everything else. And I'll bet she didn't even realize what it meant to me.

Now, I wish I could tell you that I floated through the rest of the day on the luminescence of that smile, but I suspect you'd know better. It was lovely, and it warmed me to my toes, but it was just a smile. A couple of hours later I found myself tearing down the highway in a truck with no air conditioning to urgent business in the middle of nowhere. It was hot, sticky, and unpleasant, and my mood matched the circumstances. So you might say the smile didn't do that much good. I might say that, but I might be wrong too. Because, if we live our days as a series of ups and downs along a baseline of “normal”, where might I have been in the afternoon if not for the lift that smile gave me? The afternoon call in a malfunctioning truck was well into the negative part of the graph, but how much further into the negative might I have been if not for that smile, that small serving of grace that boosted me, for a little while at least, well into the positive.

My wife has this thing. We all refer to it, only half-jokingly, as her gift. She has this striking ability to cause people to open up to her for NO APPARENT REASON. Complete strangers, with little or no prompting, will just start talking to her, and tell her about themselves and what's going on in their lives, sometimes good, sometimes bad. It's amazing to me, and sometimes uncomfortable as well, some of the things that they will just say to her. It'll start off conventionally enough, talk of the weather or this grocery item or that book, and 2 minutes later they'll be telling her about parents that they don't speak to, or about being left by a girlfriend to raise her kid, or not being able to stop drinking, or...whatever. The very notion just horrifies me, but she smiles and listens and sometimes offers advice, always encouragement, and if led to do so, a little prayer too. We'll be walking through the store, I'll look around and see her talking to someone a couple of aisles over, and I'll ask the kids “Who's Mom talking to?” “She's doing that thing she does”, and so we go shopping for 20 or 30 minutes until she catches up with us. She doesn't push, just listens until they're talked out, and I've noticed that almost without exception the stranger walks away with a little brighter look and a little lighter step. A small serving of grace can do that.

I had been feeling like I should write about this since the weekend, but hadn't done so. We watched a movie about Rich Mullins a couple of days ago, and it was that movie that led me to the quote above, and that, with the smile from #3 girlfriend, finally pushed me into dragging out the laptop. So if there's blame to be had for this, there it is.

It's not at all a novel thought. Mullins is right though, our ministry isn't this thing we do that is separate from the other thing we do. Our every waking moment is, or at least ought to be, our ministry. Leaving a rude waitress a decent tip, ministry. Helping an impatient and demanding customer with courtesy and respect, ministry. Listening to the problems of a stranger, ministry. Smiling at a friend in the middle of a busy and difficult day, ministry. Treating a difficult coworker with understanding instead of impatience, ministry. In those ways and countless thousands of others we can be mobile dispensers of small servings of grace, small cups of water to slake the thirst of a parched someone next to us. It's so easy to overlook that. I absolutely suck at it. It's not that I never do it, but I know I don't do it as often as I should. I don't share the cup as often as it has been shared with me. But it strikes me as perhaps the height of ingratitude to consistently fail to pass the cup around, to share with others the small servings of grace given to us. We don't have to be stingy with it. It's a cup that, like the oil jar in the Hanukkah miracle, never runs dry. There's enough to go around, because the Well from which it springs is a Well that will never run dry.

May we be eternally grateful for that. And may we express that gratitude by sharing the cup.

Rich Mullins quote from Cornerstone 97, round table discussion re Contemporary Christian Music.

This is a repost of sorts, of something I wrote several years ago for Father's Day. I've done some very minor editing for grammar, flow, and to correct a couple of details that I am reliably informed were inaccurate. No corrections or adjustments were made to counter the "rose-colored memory glasses" effect, as I like the view through those lenses just fine.

For you, Daddy.

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It's been 16 years...

Mom and Dad had gone to Matador for the weekend to visit the folks. My family and I were supposed to go with them, but my older brother and his went with them instead. We stayed home so as to give them some time with Mom and Dad. “We'll go next time” I said.

Next time...

That Sunday morning I was at Albertson's picking up a few things for breakfast when my wife called. “Come home NOW. Just...come home.” It sounded bad, but not too bad, so I finished checking out and drove back to the apartment. My wife met me at the door with the news that Daddy had been out with his brother-in-law checking on the herd, waaay out in the boonies past Whiteflat, and Daddy had had a heart attack. A few minutes later, a follow up call, and Daddy was gone. There would be no Next Time.

How many times have I regretted not going to Matador that weekend? I would have been in the pickup with them, and while I hold no illusions that I might have been able to save him, at the very least I could have held his hand and told him good-bye.

I'm going to scatter-shoot here, as to present a flowing, coherent narrative of the man would take volumes, and more time that we're willing to spend.

He was the hardest working man I ever knew. I was a teen, he was in his 40's, and he could work me until my tongue dragged the dirt, and then he just kept going. Good weather or bad, AM or PM, weekday evening or weekend, if there was something that needed doing, there was no putting it off. He did the job until it was done, unless circumstances prevented it. If they did, he was back at the task as soon as he got home from work the next day. “It had to be done” seemed to be his unspoken motto.

The stock tanks had automatic valves that kept them full. One winter I came in from feeding the cows and told Daddy there was a puddle of water in the front corral. We went out to look and sure enough an underground line had broken. We went back inside, pulled on some warm work clothes, back to the corral and started digging. Lord it was cold, and in short order, we were soaking wet to boot. My feet were numb, my nose felt like it was burning with a cold cold fire, and my fingers were frozen to the shape of a shovel handle. I kept thinking “Why are we doing this now? How does he put up with this crap? Can't we wait until it gets warmer in a couple of days?” He just kept chipping and digging until we found the break. I looked at him at one point, and his nose was running so much little drops of snot were collecting on the end of his nose. It was (to a 15 y/o) gross, and I waited for him to wipe it off. His nose was as frozen as mine, so it took him a bit to feel that stuff hanging off the end of it, but when he finally did, he just gave a little snap of the head to flip it off, and kept on digging. I can see him as clearly as if it were yesterday, runny nose, breath fogging the air, muddy up to the knees.

My older brother was away at college, and his car broke down. Daddy and I drove to Abilene to try and fix it, but it was more than could be done in the dorm parking lot. We had to flat tow the thing 220 miles back home. It was winter (again) and cold and of course the broken down car had no heat, so he bundled me up in his coat on top of mine, a blanket around my legs and feet, and off we went. We stopped every half hour or so to check the chains. At one stop, it was so cold my teeth were chattering and I could barely speak, so he tried to rig the chains so I wouldn't need to steer the towed car. I rode with him in the pickup just long enough to get warm again, but the car was jumping around too much on the bumps, so we pulled over and I climbed back into that icebox on wheels. “I know it's cold, but I need you to steer the Mustang. If you get too cold back here, flash your lights and I'll pull over and warm you up for a bit.” I knew he needed to get home so he could get a little sleep before work the next morning, so I just toughed it out. We finally pulled into the driveway, pushed the Mustang out of the way, and he helped me into the house. Mom had kept the fire going in the big Franklin stove in the den, and we warmed up for a bit in front of it before going to bed. Before I stumbled my way to the bedroom, he gave me hug, long and hard, looked down at me and said “Danny, I couldn't have done this without you. You did a good job.” Hours of fatigue and aching cold melted away in an instant. I can remember that hug and those words to this day. Like it was yesterday.

He was never shy about giving hugs, I suspect because he had had a difficult childhood with an alcoholic dad (a mean drunk to boot) and wanted to make sure we would always know how much he loved us. Because of that example, us boys weren't shy about giving hugs either. It was a normal thing, all the way through the teen years, to give him a hug in the evenings when he got home from work. One time I had come home from college for the weekend, got back in town early, and went by his work to see him. I walked in the front door, found him sitting behind the counter working on an order. When he saw me come in he got up, came around the counter and we gave each other a hug. “Hi Daddy.” “Hi there, Dandy!” (He gave nicknames to every one that he knew and liked. Long after the rest of the family started calling me Joe Dan, because it sounded more grown up, he still called me Danny, or sometimes Dandy. You might think I hated it. You'd be wrong.) We talked briefly, and I hugged him again before heading to the house. When he got home that evening, he told me that after I had left his boss came up and told my Dad how much he envied him. “I have 3 daughters” he said, “and I can't bring myself to hug them the way you just hugged your grown son.” I can remember to this day how astonished we both were, and how we thought it was so sad that his boss couldn't hug his children as easily as he did us.

For years he drank enough coffee, every day, to float a boat. He had always had allergies, and after a round of tests he discovered that he was allergic to coffee, among LOTS of other things. He tried substituting with hot tea, with mixed results. It's not that he didn't like the tea, it just wasn't coffee. One time we were on a weekend trip to Bonito Lake near Ruidoso, camped near a stream. The rest of the family was off on a walk, and Daddy and I were sitting around the fire while he cooked supper. He took a sip of his hot tea, sighed deep, and looked at me. "Danny, there's something about being here in the mountains, sitting by the fire, supper cooking, the wind blowing in the trees, and (through clenched teeth now) drinking a cup of hot tea that just isn't right!" Man, can I relate to that.

He worked for years selling truck parts, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Cummins parts catalog. It was a rare occasion that he had to consult the microfiche (!) to look up a number for an order. He was a square shooter too, and his customers knew that if Daddy told them something, they could take it to the bank. He would not lie to or cheat a customer, and they knew it, so much so that the other parts men would be standing around looking at the line of customers that wouldn't let any one but Daddy wait on them. After years of waiting for a decent raise or promotion and not getting it, he left that job to start up a new branch office for a Cummins distributorship. I worked there with him for a while, and we had a wonderful time together. I moved on, and after a time that Cummins distributor was bought out, and they laid off most of the sales force, Daddy included. After 20+ years selling Cummins parts, he was out of prospects. But Daddy was not one to accept defeat. He worked for a while selling cars (he was good at that too) but the money wasn't very good, so he went to work in the pot ash mines. The money was much better, but he hated the job, and with his sinus problems the underground work was not healthy. So in his 50's now, he and mom started over. They sold the house in Hobbs and moved to Plano, partly for the job market and partly so they could be closer to us boys (we had all ended up in the Dallas suburbs over the years). He worked as a temp for a while, and one of his assignments was in a warehouse for EDS. They liked him so much they offered him a permanent job, and he worked there until his death. The office was in Carrollton, and there was a little pond nearby that he used to go fish on his lunch hour. He had one of those little plastic pontoon boats, and he took it to work a few times to put it in the pond, but I think the cops made him quit that. We used to talk about going fishing together, but never seemed to get our schedules worked out. Man, I wish I had made time to drop a line in the water with him.

He was good with his hands. You know the verse “Whatsoever thy hand find to do, do it with thy might?” That was Daddy. He could fix or build just about anything. It was a very rare car problem that he couldn't diagnose and repair, he could handle just about any kind of construction or remodeling work, he could do appliance repair (he had once been a certified Maytag man), he and my maternal grandaddy rebuilt an old Massey-Harrison. I can remember a couple of spectacular kitchen remodels. And he loved wood-working, making all sorts of shelves, cabinets, little tables, potato bins, all kinds of home décor stuff. He would build it, and then he and Mom would paint or finish it. Sometimes they would pester me until I helped out. I always protested at first, but somehow found myself enjoying it in the end (I would never have admitted it at the time though). I still have a head board he built. Nothing fancy, just a simple pine plank headboard with posts, stained a beautiful dark honey color. If there's ever a fire, I don't know how I'll get that thing out, but it's coming out with me.

These are just the things that spring immediately to mind. There's so much more.

We took him back to Hobbs. The little chapel at the cemetery was overflowing. They had 30+ years of friends in Hobbs, and I think they were all there. His bosses at EDS flew in for the funeral. Old co-workers from as far away as California sent flowers and condolences. A pretty big deal for a man that the world would see as a simple truck parts salesman. But he was so much more than that. I learned from him what it was to be a Godly and caring man, not so much from his words as from watching him as he moved through this world, sometimes struggling, sometimes succeeding, always working. They played “Daddy's Hands” at the service, because as my younger brother remarked, he was always doing something with his hands, and it was always for us. Soft and warm when I was crying, hard as steel when I'd done wrong, there was always love in Daddy's hands. I still tear up when I hear that song.

It's been 16 years. 16 years, and there's not a day go by that I don't think of you Daddy, and measure myself against you, and come up short. You were the greatest man I ever knew. You were, and still are, my Hero.

I miss you Daddy. 16 years, and I miss you like it was yesterday.

Under our feet...

Hat to tip to my very good friend Richard Morris. This is cool stuff! Would that we remember this always.

Phantom pain

“The death of a beloved is an amputation.” 
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

It's a Sunday, and I'm on shift away from church and family, so I decided to pass the time getting lost in C.S. Lewis Quote-land. 

What's that you say? You've never heard of C.S. Lewis Quote-land? Oh, too bad. It's a lovely place, one of my very favorites. Still and all though, it's best not to visit too often; one can get lost there for hours.

I'm sure you've heard of phantom pain. It's the very odd phenomenon where a person that has lost a finger or limb continues to experience the sensation of it. They might feel a tickling or discomfort or even real pain, in an appendage that is no longer there. I'm not sure researchers have found a real, solid explanation for it; it may be out there, but I'm too lazy at the moment to Google it. This is the first blog post I've done since Christmas, and I don't want to get sidetracked...

(Btw, I myself have experienced something very much like this, "phantom Blackberry syndrome". It happens when, while NOT wearing your cell phone or pager, you never the less feel it vibrating at your side. Very strange. And I'm only half-joking.)

AAaargh! What did I say about getting sidetracked?

Phantom pain...

My wife and I were having burgers and fries with friends last night after English Country Dancing (don't ask right now, I'm trying not to get sidetracked). The conversation wandered hither and yon, eventually turning to family, and the loss of those close to us. It was a bit of an emotional moment, not terribly so, but mi esposa mentioned that it is completely normal and understandable that we should continue to feel grief for the loss, even after much time has passed. And that we ought not be surprised if that grief pops up at the most unexpected times. Both of our fathers have died, mine many years ago, hers only a few, but, said she, thoughts of both good men will well up at the most surprising moments, and the tears will often well up with the thoughts.

And that, with the Lewis quote that I found in my wanderings, made me think. 

The loss of a loved one results in something very like phantom pain. Parents are the legs upon which we stand, a husband or wife is a strong right arm, and while we can lose an arm or leg and survive, and even thrive, the loss never goes away. Like phantom pain, years after saying goodbye to my Dad, I'll feel an ache in a limb that is no longer there, and hasn't been for years. I've seen the same in my wife too. No pain medication can fix it; it can only be tolerated until it fades, only to come back at some point or another.

More from the inestimable Professor. In The Problem of Pain Lewis says "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” None of us like the experience of pain. It is, well, painful. And yet, we would be much worse off without it. How would it be if you were to inadvertently lay your hand on a hot surface and not realize you were being harmed until the smell of roasting skin assaulted your nostrils? The damage would be terrible, would it not? And I've read that the loss of the pain sensation is why lepers lose fingers and toes, and often go blind; they suffer an injury to an eye, or finger or toe, and not feeling pain, don't realize the injury until the damage is irreparable. Col. David Hackworth used to say "The more sweat on the training ground, the less blood on the battleground". And we've all heard the phrase "No pain, no gain."

So pain, while it is a Very Bad Thing, is a necessary part of life. We see that, even if we don't particularly like it.

And so what are the lessons we learn from this phantom pain, this amputation of the loss of a loved one? The most obvious of course, so obvious that it seems trite to say it, is that we should make the most of the time we have with our parents and spouses and children; they won't be here forever. But Lewis' megaphone metaphor has me thinking of something else. Something a little more hopeful, I think. For the Christian, at any rate.

I believe that we will certainly know each other in Heaven. There are certain instances in the Bible where a person still living, upon seeing a loved one who had died, recognizes that person. The most obvious of these are the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus; Mary recognizes Him, Thomas too. When He appears to the disciples as they are fishing, they know Him as Jesus, not just "some guy who somehow knew where to let down the nets". Even the 2 men on the road to Emmaus eventually know Him, though not until He prays over the evening meal (must have been a heck of a blessing!)

The Bible also speaks of the final day, when the dead in Christ shall rise, incorruptible. Called out of the grave, does it make sense to think of them arising as something other than what they were, as some weird, feature-less creature resembling a department store mannequin? No, not to me at any rate. While the Bible leaves some questions unanswered, I believe that we will know each other in heaven, not in the same way as here, but still know each other. And that thought gives me hope.

I will see my Dad again. My wife will see her father too. Unless Something Really Big happens in the next 40 or 50 years, my wife and I will precede our children, but you know what? That won't be the end of it. We'll see each other again, and it won't involve marital spats, or lectures over chores, or any of the mundanity of this life. I think we'll remember the relationships we had here, but that's all it will be, a memory (I picture my reunion with Daddy thusly: "Hey, I remember you. You used to be my Dad!" And he'll say "Yep. And you used to be my son. Come on, there's some people you'll want to meet, and some things you REALLY need to see!)

One of the verses I hang my hat on is 1 Corinthians 13:12. For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. There's a megaphone in that verse; on that day, all the stupid crap that makes no damn sense AT ALL will be understood. On that day all the times I've looked up to the heavens and said "I believe, but I sure wish I knew what the heck you think you're doing" will  be made clear. And on that day, we will know each other as we will know Him; completely, purely, perfectly. No emotional baggage, or hurt feelings, no missed words or words that should have been missed. We will know Him, and each other, fully. Completely.

And that phantom pain, the amputated limb of a father or mother or wife or husband or son or daughter? Maybe it's to remind us that there's something more going on. Someplace vastly better ahead. Maybe it's to keep me from getting too fond of this world, so that I lose sight of the world Where I Belong.

That thought doesn't make the phantom pain go away. But it does help me understand it, and put up with it.


Feeling like a refugee
Like it don't belong to me
The colors flash across the sky

This air feels strange to me
Feeling like a tragedy
I take a deep breath and close my eyes
One last time
One last time

Storms on the wasteland
Dark clouds on the plains again
We were born into the fight

But I'm not sentimental
This skin and bones is a rental
And no one makes it out alive

Until I die I'll sing these songs
On the shores of Babylon
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

Where the weak are finally strong
Where the righteous right the wrongs
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

Where I Belong by Switchfoot. Jon Foreman, Tim Foreman and Mike Elizondo, writers

The Ghosts of Christmas' Past

This is a repost of sorts. Last year I preached this lesson on the last Wednesday night before Christmas. I cleaned it up and edited a bit for the blog. Merry Christmas!

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It's funny to me how things stay with you the years. Some things just seem stick in your head, worm their way deep in and stay there, sometimes despite our best efforts to remove them. And for myself at any rate there's no accounting why some of the things that stick, should stick so stubbornly.

For instance, I can still recall, some 30 years later, the last line to William Faulkner's short story “A Rose for Emily”. I read that story exactly one time, for a high school English class. It was a good story I suppose, but not so good that it should still be with me. “There on the pillow next to him lay a single strand of iron-gray hair.”

Why on earth do I remember that?

But I also remember a time that Daddy and I had to tow my brother's car home from college. We lived in Hobbs, my brother was at ACU, and his Mustang had broken down. Daddy and I drove there to try and get it running, but it couldn't be fixed in the dorm parking lot, so we had to flat-tow it back home, 3 ½ hours away. It was a miserable trip. Wintertime, cold and windy. Of course, since the car didn't run I had no heat. 3 ½ hours bouncing and jerking on the end of a chain, cold and miserable. We got home, parked the car and went inside. My fingers ached, and I couldn't even feel my feet. Mom had a fire going for us, and I stood in front of it, exhausted, trying to warm up before I went to bed. As I stood there Daddy came up to me, hugged me and said “Danny I couldn't have done this without you. You did a good job today.” And like that the cold and fatigue melted, draining from the top of my head to
the soles of my feet and away. I can remember that like it was yesterday, in every little detail.

Not all things that have stuck are good.

To this day, if the temperature and wind and humidity are just right, I can close my eyes and
immediately I'm back in San Diego Recruit Training Depot. I'm almost afraid to open them, afraid that I might find myself on the grinder at the head of a Recruit Company, getting screamed at by a Navy CPO. It's that vivid.

We used to belong to a little home church in the Colony. Just 4 or 5 pretty close families, meeting in each others homes. I remember the time my friend Don, the best friend I suppose I'll ever have, lost his little girl. She got sick one evening, they took her to the ER, and bang, she was gone. I went to call other friends to let them know. Where we staying at the time we didn't have a phone, so I drove down the street to a pay phone. It was raining, and I pulled the van up close enough to stretch the phone into the cab. I remember calling Wanda Morris to tell her and breaking down before I could get the words out. The rain dripping in through the open window, the phone cold and wet, Wanda on the other end trying to figure out what on earth was wrong, me trying to speak through deep wracking sobs, wipers squeaking across the windshield.

I still remember that.

Most of the memories are pretty good ones though. In fact I have another memory from our home church, of Don Ledbetter, the friend who lost the daughter, a very good memory. He read a passage one Christmas about the birth of Jesus that has stuck with me through the years, not quite verbatim, but close enough. But I'll return to that in a minute.

I've always enoyed reading about the early Christian Church. It is always interesting to me the “strangeness”, the almost complete “other-ness” of early Christianity compared to the world around it. It was a odd off-shot Judaism, which was itself considered odd. We were weirdos and freaks. We were very different.

Christianity was strange because it was monotheistic.

All other religions of the time had a pantheon of gods. The Roman and Greek pantheon (recall that they were the same gods with different names) had 12 or so major gods, and dozens, perhaps 100's of lesser deities. In fact, each individual household might have its own particular god.

That's not all. Due to conquest, the Roman empire at the time was very cosmopolitan. And these conquered peoples all imported their own gods, as did visitors and travelers. So in addition to the Roman pantheon, the Egyptians brought along Isis, the Zoroastrians introduced Mithra, there were Druidish and Germanic gods...it is no exaggeration to suggest that there was no counting the number of different gods and religions in the Roman Empire.

Christianity though, like Judaism before it, insisted that there was One True God. All the others were either false or demonic. That was strange, and to many people, insulting and sacrilegious.

Christianity was strange because it was exclusive. No other god was to be worshiped.

Other religions of the time tolerated and/or assimilated each other. One of hallmarks of Roman conquest was it's tolerance of different worship. The Legions would come in, kick your behind, take your land, levy taxes. But if the conquered people would behave themselves, if they paid their taxes, sent men to the military when called, they were by and large left alone to live as they pleased and worship who they pleased. In fact, as a gesture of respect and tolerance you might do homage to your neighbor's god even if you didn't believe in that god. Christians were not only forbidden to do so, they rudely called the others false.

This caused problems with emperor worship too. The emperor was to be worshiped as a god, honored with sacrifices and oblations. This was blasphemous to Christians, and they were forbidden to do so.

Perhaps the biggest difference, the thing that non-Christians found strangest of all, was found in the character of Jesus Christ himself.

Other gods were, as a rule, super-sized and heroic figures. Jupiter was the King of the gods, standing with a lightning bolt in his hand, and Mars was the god of war, usually portrayed in full armor, with spear and shield. Venus was the beautiful and seductive goddess of love. Vulcan was the god of fire, at his anvil and furnace forging weapons for his fellow gods and sometimes, if his forge-fire got too hot, it would spew out of the earth as a volcano. And Mithra was often depicted as being born from a rock, already a strong and healthy young man, with a knife in one hand and a torch in the other.

Jesus, when the ancients compared him to the gods they knew, was so thoroughly ordinary, so disappointingly human, so frail. Not a mighty warrior, or a handsome lover. Not a stern dispenser of justice, ready to smite wrongdoers with a hammer or a lightning bolt. He appeared to be an itinerant preacher and malcontent, but that was about it.

Recall Mithra. He was the most commonly worshiped god in the Roman army of the time. A fine god for a soldier, strong and virile, chipping and breaking his way into the world out of solid rock, weapons in hand and ready to fight and conquer.

Remember I mentioned the passage my friend Don read, about the birth of Jesus? I thought of that the other day while reading of the Romans and their ideas about Christianity. Compare those ideas with this passage from “Moments with the Savior” by Ken Gire.

“The night is still when Joseph creaks open that stable door. As he does, a chorus of barn animals makes discordant notes of the intrusion. The stench is pungent and humid, as there have not been enough hours in the day to tend the guests, let alone the livestock. A small oil lamp, lent them by the innkeeper, flickers to dance shadows on the walls. A disquieting place for a woman in the throes of childbirth. Far from home. Far from family. Far from what she had expected for her firstborn.

But Mary makes no complaint. It is a relief just to finally get off her feet. She leans back against the wall, her feet swollen, back aching, contractions growing harder and closer together.

Joseph's eyes dart around the stable. Not a minute to lose. Quickly. A feeding trough would have to make do for a crib. Hay would serve as a mattress. Blankets? Blankets? Ah, his robe. That would do. And those rags hung out to dry would help. A gripping contraction doubles Mary over and sends him racing for a bucket of water.

The birth would not be easy, either for the mother or the child. For every royal privilege for this son ended at conception.

A scream from Mary knifes through the calm of that silent night.

Joseph returns, breathless, water sloshing from the wooden bucket. The top of the baby's head has already pushed it's way into the world. Sweat pours from Mary's contorted face as Joseph, the most unlikely midwife in all Judea, rushes to her side.

The involuntary contractions are not enough, and Mary has to push with all her strength, almost as if God were refusing to come into the world without her help.

Joseph places a garment beneath her, and with a final push and a long sigh, her labor is over. The Messiah has arrived.

Elongated head from the constricting journey down the birth canal. Light skin, as the pigment would take or even weeks to surface. Mucus in his ears and nostrils. Wet and slippery from the amniotic fluid. The son of the Most High God umbilically tied to a lowly Jewish girl.

Mary bares her breast and reaches for the shivering baby. She lays him on her chest, and his helpless cries subside. His tiny head bobs around on the unfamiliar terrain. This will be the first thing the infant king learns. Mary can feel his racing heartbeat as he gropes to nurse. Deity nursing from the breast of a young maiden. Could anything be more puzzling-or more profound?

The baby finishes and sighs, the divine Word reduced to a few unintelligible sounds. Then, for the first time, his eyes fix on his mother's. Deity straining to focus. The Light of the World, squinting.

Tears pool in her eyes. She touches his tiny hand. And hands that once sculpted mountain ranges cling to her finger.

She looks up at Joseph, and through a watery veil, their souls touch. He crowds closer, cheek to cheek with his betrothed. Together they stare in awe at the baby Jesus, whose heavy eyelids begin to close. It has been a long journey. The King is tired.

And so, with barely a ripple of notice, God stepped into the warm pool of humanity. Without protocol and without pretension. Where you would have expected angels, there were only flies. Where you would have expected heads of state, there were only donkeys, a few haltered cows, a nervous ball of sheep, a tethered camel, and a furtive scurry of curious barn mice.

Except for Joseph, there was no one to share Mary's pain, or her joy. Yes, there were angels
announcing the Savior's arrival-but only to a band of blue-collar shepherds. And yes, a magnificent star shone in the sky to mark His birthplace-but only three foreigners bothered to look up and follow it.

Thus, in the little town of Bethlehem...that one silent night...the royal birth of God's Son tiptoed quietly by...as the world slept.”

No mighty warrior. No thunderbolts or hammers or spears.

No goddess of love, or fertility.

No glorious palace on Mt Olympus, or dramatic emergence from solid rock, chipping and breaking and fighting and conquering the very earth to emerge ready for battle.

Christians worshiped a puny little God. Born to humble circumstances, he grew to be a carpenter as an adult. He had no home. His family thought he was nuts. His friends were common laborers, or worse, prostitutes and tax collectors (and in the Jewish world of the time, one was as bad as the other). And in the end He died the most humiliating of deaths, crucified between two common criminals.

No wonder they thought Christians were crazy.

Remember how things stick with us? Another of those things that really stick with me are Christmas cartoons. I remember the first time I watched “Frosty the Snowman”, and how horrified I was when towards the end Santa walks into the green house and finds the little blond girl crying over the puddle that used to be Frosty, with his hat and pipe lying in the water. Frosty was melted! A few minutes later Santa of course does his “Christmas magic” and Frosty comes back, but for those few moments I was inconsolate. I remember being absolutely heart-broken.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” is another one. I love the whole thing, but that one moment, when Linus explains the meaning of Christmas...It doesn't matter how many times it's been on, or what's going on in the living room at the moment. When Linus walks out on the stage and says “Lights please?” the volume must be turned up, everyone has to be quiet and still, so I can listen, just as I did as a 6 year old boy.

And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And Lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shown round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them “Fear not! For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest, and on earth Peace. Good will towards men.

Remember the words to O Holy Night? His law is love, and His gospel is peace.

He didn't come to conquer with the sword, to enslave, to beat down. Rather He came to offer peace, to conquer with love, even to the death. To give His life a ransom for many. Let us resolve, as much as is possible in our human frailty, to do the same.

Merry Christmas my friends, my brothers, my sisters.

And Joy. Joy to the world.

The Lord is come.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says President Barack Obama's first priority in his second term should be to lead the country on gun control.

In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Bloomberg says the kind of violence resulting in the deaths of 20 schoolchildren "only happens in America." And he says it happens "again and again."

Bloomberg has been an outspoken gun control advocate for years. He noted that New York state has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, and New York City the lowest murder rate of any big American city.

The mayor says it's time for the president to stand up and tell the country what needs to happen — not go to Congress and ask what legislators want to do.

Article found here.

Un-freaking-believable. This is what passes for political leadership in NYC?

His first priority should be gun control. 

Our foreign policy has no clear direction. Instability in the Middle East, Syrian revolution and possible war with Turkey, Iran is working on developing nukes, North Korea continues work on ICBMs, China and Japan rattling sabres over the Senkaku Islands.

We are 16 trillion dollars in debt. That's $16,000,000,000,000. We add roughly $1,000,000 to that every minute. Our tax revenues are no where near enough to make a dent, we're molding a mill stone around the necks of our children and grandchildren that gets bigger every day. We're inching closer galloping head-long towards a real fiscal cliff, not the "scary headline" fiscal cliff that you're hearing about in the news, but a for-real, default on the sovreign debt, plummeting standard of living, unable to pay for the essentials of government much less the optional, out of money fiscal cliff.

And Mayor Bloomberg thinks Obama's first priority should be gun control. But you know what's worse? There are undoubtedly thousands out there who heard him say that and nodded their heads in agreement.

It disgusts me that we're having this conversation right now. I think the notion of gun control is not just unconstitutional, but ignorant and foolish as well. I understand the emotional appeal to a certain kind of person though. If they must wring their hands and talk about bans and background checks and gun show loopholes, hey, some people think it's worth pursuing. But there's no good reason we should have this conversation right now, while the bodies aren't even in the graves yet, except that that same sort of person apparently feels no compunction whatsoever against using a tragedy like this to score political points. Just the tiniest bit of decency would compel them, one would think, to hold off on the grand-standing for a few days, but we mustn't let a crisis go to waste, right? And so we have the conversation.

Back to Bloomberg. This sort of thing happens only in America he says. Apparently the Honorable Mayor has never heard of Anders Breivik and the Workers Youth League camp. Or Matti Saari and Seinäjoki University. Or  Farda Gadirov and the State Oil Academy. And did he sleep through Rwanda, and Iraq, and the Balkans? Is he ignorant, or just taking advantage of great opportunity?

Are his statistics any better? After "only in America" we should probably check. It's true that New York has some tough gun laws, and that NYC has a very low murder rate. Texas law is fairly lenient, gun ownership is much more widespread, and Texas rate is slightly above New York's. But gun laws in New Jersey, right across the river from New York, are similar, and yet the rate in the Garden State is higher than the Empire, and on a par with gun-crazy Texas. Montana's laws are pretty lax, and their murder rate is much lower than New York's, New Jersey's or Texas'. Even more interesting, murder rates have been trending downward for years in places with stringent laws and lax; so if tough gun laws are the answer, then why do states with lenient regulation follow the same trend, and often at similar rates? Could it be that there's something more going on?

I do need to give the Mayor his props though. In a difficult time he's not above making a joke to try and lighten the mood. At any rate, I found it funny when Bloomberg says Attorney General GunRunner's boss should tell the rest of us what we need to do about gun violence. It has to be a joke right? If Bloomberg was serious he'd be pressuring the President to hold his Attorney General accountable for illegal gun trafficking, meddling in the affairs of a sovreign nation, and facilitating the murder of a Federal Agent. Okay, it's not that funny a joke, but I'll give the Mayor an E for effort.

Bloomberg is right about one thing though. It happens again and again. It's not going to stop either. Homo homini lupus est is as true as it ever was, our pretensions of civility and enlightenment notwithstanding; run on by your local clinic and watch a partial-birth abortion if you want to see the latest in lupine fashion. No, it's not going to stop, and because mankind is wonderfully, horribly, tragically creative in finding ways to do violence to the innocent, it can't really be prevented. It can only be resisted, sometimes to great effect, sometimes to little, but resisted it must be. A pox on those who, because they are too timid to do so themselves, would deny others the most effective means to do so.

Hey Mayor Bloomberg. I hear rumors of a convenience store on the lower East Side that is selling Coke in 32 ounce cups. Why don't you run on down there and catch those vile scum in the act, and leave those of us that don't live in your fair city alone. Hell, I'm a reasonable man, I'll make a deal with you. I'll never drink another Super Big Gulp again if you'll at least try to educate yourself before opening your big mouth and lecturing the rest of us.

Musings on Linux distros and desktops

I've been using Linux for about a year and a half now. I've been interested in Linux for a lot longer than that, but my previous laptop, an Everex model somethingorother, had some hardware bits that didn't play well with the distros I was interested in. The mobo on my Everex went south :-( , which gave me an excuse to get a new machine :-) . I went shopping for a netbook, looking for something that would let me dual-boot, and ended up with an Acer Aspire. Had it about a week before I got around to installing Ubuntu, and it's been penguins ever since.

One of the things I love about Linux is that it allows me to do whatever I want with my computer. I'm not a Windows hater (Apple, however, is another story), and it's true that one can customize Windows to a certain extent, but there are things one cannot do without incurring the Wrath of Redmond. Entirely their perogative. In Linux however I am the final authority on what happens on my laptop. I am Root!

One of the good things about Linux is that it lets me tinker with things. One of the bad things about Linux is that it lets me tinker with things...

I'd had Ubuntu installed for a year or so, happily playing and tinkering and customizing. And it started to get a bit, well, buggy. Odd things happened, or didn't happen. My fault, and I knew going in that I might break something. But again, if something breaks in Linux, and you can't find the problem, or don't want to take the time, an new installation is relatively easy. And did I mention that I like to tinker?

Out with the old, in with the new! Ubuntu 10.10 had served me well, so I tried Ubuntu 12.04. It took me all of an hour to decide that I hated the new Unity look, and that led me on a several week long experiment with different distros. I tried OpenSUSE, Fedora, Puppy, Kubuntu, and finally settled for a bit on Mint. It was nice, but Gnome3 at the time was not very customizable, and Cinnamon was a work in progress, so I settled on Xubuntu. Which is where I've been for a couple of months. It's nice, relatively quick, but a bit boring and sometimes kinda cheap looking. The new distro bug bit again, but there's nothing out there that fits my needs like Ubuntu (although Fedora came very close). I finally decided to stick with Xubuntu but give Gnome3 a second chance.

What a difference a few months can make.

Gnome3 is a very pretty desktop. There is a certain elegance to it, it seems quicker than xfce (I know, it's not supposed to be, but it sure feels like it), and it can now be customized in ways that it couldn't be before. I installed it last night, and with a few clicks, checking this option or that, installing a plug-in or 2, I have an elegant, fast, easy to navigate desktop that fits my needs and my desires. It looks nothing like old Gnome; one could make it so if one wanted, but what would be the point in that? I've already gotten accustomed to having everything at the top of the screen, I like the way it handles Workspaces, the Acitivites hot spot is cool (and finally the Windows button has something to do), and the global search (I think that's the right term) is very handy. It's a new way of handling things, without being so new that it's too confusing.

So it's Xubuntu with Gnome3, at least until the bug bites again...