tali's wonderland

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2011-05-25T15:57:00.001-05:00

Apparently my account got hacked.

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Tali

Hey --blog

2011-05-25T14:32:00.001-05:00

Hello --blog you can thank me later http://email.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=email&zu=http://cnbc7.com

boys should read this

2008-04-25T15:47:00.001-05:00

Everything I know about women . . .
by Tad Safran

As a single man in my mid-thirties, I’ve spent 20 years trying to understand women, with mixed results. It wasn’t until six months ago, however, that I was given a clear insight into how the female mind works.

It came in the form of Lou-Lou, my two-year-old niece. I know, as a grown-up, that the onus is on me to teach her useful stuff rather than the other way around, but in this case, the instruction was mutual. I taught her how to wink, blow raspberries, burp and count to 10, sort of. “One, two, three, seven, nine, ten”, which is good enough for me, as, personally, I’ve always thought the numbers four, five, six and eight were overrated.

In return, I learnt more about women in two months than I had gleaned on my own in two decades. This does not mean, by the way, that I think women are like two-year-olds and should be treated as such. I love my niece. I respect my niece. I’d dive on an unexploded grenade for my niece, and not just to amuse her. I would only dive on it if there was real danger of it exploding and hurting her. Women are all individuals and I’m making generalisations, but in the two-year-old Lou-Lou is the undiluted, unaffected essence – the “id” – of womanhood. Here’s what I’ve learnt.

1 Ignore them

1If I come into a room and bounce up to Lou-Lou like a clown, trying to amuse and entertain, she blanks me completely. It’s as if I don’t exist. If I walk straight past her, however, I guarantee she will call out my name and want to play with me.

2 Bribe them

Gifts work. Preferably something noisy or sparkly. With Lou-Lou, that means stuffed animals that sing or sequined hair grips. With grown women, I suppose that equates to, say, cars and jewellery.

3 Compliment them

I’ve mistakenly always held that compliments are like diamonds: valuable only for their scarcity. Flood the market and they lose all value. Not so. Lou-Lou poos in her nappy, everyone cheers – as if she just came up with a workable solution to world hunger – and she beams like a lighthouse. The same works with grown women, although, of course, only the general principle applies rather than the specific example given here. (I learnt this one the hard way.)

4 Listen to them

I’ve spent my life trying to preempt what women want. I needn’t have bothered. If I just pay attention, Lou-Lou will tell me exactly what she wants: eat, dance, doll, jump, run, sing, play, read. Then all I have to do is organise it. How much simpler my life would have been if I had listened and acted accordingly.

5 Apologise

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter if you don’t even know what you’ve done. I might have slighted Lou-Lou by putting the wrong doll in the pram. What seems to you or me like a minor infraction is, to her, on a par with genocide. The best policy is to throw yourself on her mercy and beg forgiveness. But you must sound sincere. You don’t have to be sincere, just sound sincere. This is so elementary, yet how many men ignore this advice?

6 Let them do it

Whatever “it” is. No matter how ridiculous it may seem to you, let her do it. When Lou-Lou gets an idea into her mind, there’s no talking her out of it. In fact, be supportive, encourage her even. Then sit back and hope she discovers for herself that it was a stupid idea. The downside is that she might decide it was an excellent idea. One day, I found myself playing dolls’ tea party for two whole hours and drank so many cups of imaginary tea, I was imaginary peeing all afternoon.

7 Don't tell them what to do

The best way to guarantee that she doesn’t do what I want is by telling her to do it. The clever thing is to make it seem like her idea – and make it seem fun. One of my proudest moments was convincing Lou-Lou that watching the rugby World Cup final would be more fun than playing in the sandpit.

8 Don't complain to them

This is a tricky one. What I mean by this is, don’t burden her with your petty problems. When I complain to Lou-Lou about a bad meeting or a sore back, she couldn’t care less, but if there’s genuinely something wrong, she will instinctively sense it and, with one hug, pick me up more than I thought possible.

9 Don't argue

There’s simply no point. You will never win, and if you do win, it will be a hollow victory because of the mood she’ll be in for a long time afterwards. Quite frankly, who needs the aggro? This leads to my final and most important point:

10 Don't make them cry

There is nothing more distressing than watching Lou-Lou’s enormous, innocent brown eyes overflow with tears, while her mouth becomes a gaping, drooling, mournful air-raid siren that pierces through to the core of my heart. I’m utterly defenceless when she cries. And there’s no known antidote. Food? Monkey impressions? A pony? Stabbing myself in the eye with a chopstick? I will agree to anything to stop her crying – and doesn’t she.

original here

The Modern Gospels

2008-03-13T10:00:00.001-05:00

this is a transcription of a sermon given by a friend, original here.

I guess I’m here preaching today because someone was foolish enough to ask me to and I was foolish enough to say yes. It was kind of last minute and I really had no idea what to speak about. I asked myself: “Should I preach or should I teach?” If I preach I could be all hellfire and damnation and I thought that could be kind of fun. But that’s really not my style. And if I teach I could convince everyone that the Bible says all sorts of cool things it doesn’t really say. Lacking a seminary education I didn’t want to teach. So I thought it best to just tell you about my opinions and my personal experiences; those things I’m more comfortable speaking about, and better able to speak about.

I have to warn you. When I’ve shared in the past I’ve managed to offend half the room. If I happen to offend you let me apologize now.

So, before I begin I thought I’d tell you about myself since I’m relatively new to the church. I wasn’t raised in a religious home. My father is an ex-Catholic. And my mother has her own religious experiences that could fill a book. We didn’t go to church much when I was child. Maybe for Christmas or Easter we might go but otherwise not much. I became a Christian about 9 years ago, I was 19. I had mixed experiences with church until I found an emergent church plant in Baltimore County. My wife and I attended there for a number of years until we moved. Now we are here.

It is said that good artists are influenced by others while great artists steal. If that’s the case then please consider me a great artist because I stole this sermon from John Taylor-Gatto. I’m not ashamed because it was great 15 years ago and it’s still great today. Today I wanted to talk about the four gospels in modern times. As I said before I’m not qualified to either preach or teach. I’m going to give my opinion, my opinion from a Biblical perspective. It will tell you a lot about who I am and also how I perceive the gospel. I don’t think you have to agree with me or respect these things, I believe people best learn when they are given options and can decide for themselves.

The American Church has been in this weird sort of semi-consciousness for some time. Most Christians aren’t too concerned about denominations these days and it’s led to a time in history when church leadership is relatively unimportant. If you dislike leadership it’s easy to change denominations. But as a whole we believe in the gospel but sometimes how we behave and what we believe are different. Judging from our behavior I think we have written a new four gospels, gospels for a modern time, a wealthy time, and in terms of western life, a lonely time.

The first of these new modern gospels is the gospel of Fear. I don’t know exactly how Christians became fearful of the world. Jesus himself tells us to not fear. He tells us that the birds of the air are taken care of so we should expect, as God’s heirs, to be taken care of as well. This isn’t to say that there is not a healthy sense of fear, especially in the sense of fearing God.

I think of this like a horror movie. Invariably they begin like this. Jenny is home alone late at night waiting for her boyfriend Billy. All horror flicks have a character named Billy, have you ever noticed that? Jenny is waiting for Billy when she gets a phone call. Creepy, heavy breathing on the other end. Maybe a vague threat. The power goes out. She hears rustling in the next room. She calls out “Billy? Billy, is that you?” She’ll enter the living room. And there stands the villain. Jenny runs out of the house screaming only to be killed in the bushes.

Billy shows up for his hot date with Jenny. Billy will always enter the house without knocking. He calls out to Jenny.”Jenny? Jenny?” He searches the house thoroughly. He misses the creepy face in the window. The blood on the refrigerator. The power is out so he grabs a candle and heads into the basement. Billy isn’t so bright.

Eventually the heroes of the movie are not terrified of the villain like Jenny was. Nor are they fools like Billy. The heroes of these movies are brave; who understand the risks involved, and are willing to overcome the twisted adversity in their lives.

The church we have today in America isn’t a fool like Billy, rushing headlong into danger. We are a lot more like Jenny. We run away and are terrified of things that are different. We’ve moved to the suburbs, into Christian neighborhoods, into the areas that needed us least. And as the church begins to shrink, just like Jenny we wonder why we are dying.

The gospel of fear has deep roots.

The second Gospel we preach is the gospel of wealth. I’m not talking the prosperity gospel here, that is something different. America is the only country in the world where we drive a car to the poor house. In our efforts to keep up with the Joneses I think we’ve forgotten some basics in the Christian faith.

In the book of Acts the early Christians we not trying to gain possessions, they were giving them away! This is often a foreign idea to us.

What’s odd is that during some points in history the issue of ownership of goods was the exact opposite that we have today. Saint Francis of Assisi had an issue of everyone wanting to be poor. The Franciscans were a growing group of monks. Saint Francis, when homeless, had a not so difficult time of taking care of himself. But his group grew beyond their means. Joining them were an order of women, the poor Clares. And while both groups aimed to be poor they also needed to eat. So Saint Francis had an idea. He’d create a third group to join the Franciscans and the poor Clares, lay people. The lay people would work and give money to the order so the order could go on.

Indeed, if we all became monks the whole world would starve.

I’d like to think that the American church is a church of laypeople. A group of people who give generously at times, but are otherwise lost in terms of service to God. The wealth that most Americas experience has perhaps led us to believe that our neighbors don’t need Godly service the way the early Christians or Saint Francis provided it; I believe that nothing could be further from the truth. If America is a place where the poor can drive to the poor house, it is also a place where we can cry alone yet live in an apartment building. America can be a lonely place. We need less lay people and more Franciscans.

I want to ask you, and let you think about it: Do you think you are lay person? Is God calling to you a “Franciscan” lifestyle? Maybe it’s time for a change.

The Third Gospel we believe is the Gospel of Polarization.

We’ve done a great job of building and constructing a Christian sub-culture inside America. We have our heroes and villains. Dobson, Clinton, Robertson, gays, republicans, democrats. Pick your team.

The Church is a church of teams. Of good and bad. Of ostracization which we excel at. The Bible says: The man who fears God will avoid all extremes.

This polarization makes the church an unattractive place to visit. If you talk to unbelievers this is a major gripe with the church. The polarization creates judgment and judgment gives people the impression that we don’t want them here. I was at an event a couple months ago and a man stood up to speak, a man I believe was homosexual or queer or whatever the correct PC term is this week. He said he had been invited to church and he came and it profoundly changed him. He had found God. He had been “saved”.

I had to ask myself “Would I rather this man cease being a homosexual or would I rather him find the faith?” Our priorities need to be about people finding the faith. If anything we do pushes people away from Jesus then we need to take a second look at that. Thomas Huxley once said: It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.

The fourth and last gospel we preach is the gospel of apathy.

Shane Claiborne was a young seminary student when he found himself in a battle between homeless women and the Catholic Church. The women had taken refuge in an empty church and the Philadelphia diocese was trying to remove them. Everyone but Shane his ragtag band of seminary students turned a blind eye. That is, until the press got a hold of it.

We don’t know what it’s like to be homeless. Or poor. Or even wealthy, because the wealthy need the gospel too. We’ve forgotten that people, everyone, need the gospel. Because no matter how wealthy you are or how much you have, God’s inheritance promised us is worth considerably more than anything we have here.

My boss tells me often that I lack a sense of urgency at work. I wonder if we lack a sense of urgency here, at church, in our walk with God. How many people have you invited to church this week? This month? This year? How many were unbelievers?

If we truly believe in God and His word shouldn’t we be excited to share this stuff? Instead we are apathetic to the needs of people and apathetic to Christ’s command to bring more sheep into the sheepfold.

The problem with apathy is to outsiders it appears malicious.

I don’t know if the fear causes us to apathetic or if the wealth causes polarization. These things seem to be intertwined. I have to tell you, I’m not here to judge anyone or to pull them aside and scold them. If I were then I would have to start with myself. Truly, I haven’t invited many people to church. Nor have I sold my possessions. I, like many of you, have read and believed in these modern gospels. I have lived them all and kept their commandments whenever possible. I had bought into fear first. I was excellent at polarization for some time. I still covet a playstation 3 more than giving to charity. The gospel of apathy I read and don’t even realize it.

When I worked as a manager at a Cinnabon I really enjoyed having a customer complain. I know it sounds weird. I’m not talking about the kind of complaint where a customer yells and screams at me. But an honest concern. This told me something was wrong. And if something was wrong then I could fix it.

I’m not trying to be critical. Not of the church or Christianity. I wouldn’t want to merely spout off some complaints and leave you hanging. Instead, I think it’s important to point out these things so we can find a solution.

Friday I found myself in West Baltimore at Westside Assembly of God. Pastor Marshall told me that 7 people had been shot in the neighborhood in February. Two of them behind the church. One was killed instantly, the other ran around the building wounded, leaned against the church van which became covered in blood, went across the street and was summarily executed.

Pastor Marshall and his team find a way to be here. And despite the violence and poverty, the lack of tithing, they find a way to feed the community three meals a week. I felt considerably less afraid Friday then I felt two years ago when I participated in a church event there.

If we are to overcome our fear then we need to find something that terrifies us and do it, complete the task, and complete it in the name of the Kingdom. You’re probably too scared to as much as think about this. But go ahead, bite the bullet, and do something amazing or daring.

Some people might think, like me, that we need to change, that we need to become relevant to a changing culture. You won’t hear me disagree. But a lot of churches have tried to become relevant in ways such as changing their music, their dress code, or their style of sermon. They’ve become younger, hipper, and more energized. None of these things are unbiblical so I see nothing wrong with any of them. But I also don’t think the music, the clothes, or PowerPoint meet any needs or suffices for the long term. None of those address the core reasons why church attendance is down.

The message of Jesus is as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. It doesn’t need to be updated, it needs to be resurrected. We need to get back to the basics of our faith because the basics are timeless classics. Service. Charity. Giving. Salvation. An eternal inheritance. The ability to eat pork bacon. These things attract people today as much as they did then. Often we say “What we can offer people so they will come to church” Jesus didn’t offer that to the disciples, he offered “What are you going to do for the kingdom of God?” Jesus offered hard work, persecution, and poverty. But he also told us that it was all for the greater good. If we offer these same things I believe people will come back to the church. People want to help make the world better but they don’t want to be fixed. Our message of “Come to God to get healed” doesn’t attract people who don’t think they aren’t broken. We need to stop offering something an arrogant culture has no need for. Besides, how do they expect to get healed when the church is run and attended by so many other broken people?

I don’t know about you but I’m really tired of reading these current gospels which don’t address my core needs nor the core needs of the culture in which we live. I’m convinced that the modern Christian must be fearless, giving, moderate, and compassionate. Not merely in our beliefs, but in our behaviorisms.

We live in a society where we pay someone to mow our lawn, clean our gutters, and cook many of our meals. We’ve likewise come to believe that some politician or some pastor or some missionary will be doing our job of evangelism. Indeed, I’ve believed it for a quite some time; not in my head mind you, but in my actions. If I haven’t invited anyone to church don’t my actions reflect as much? We need to stop thinking that we can sub-contract out these types of efforts. If there is one terrifying thing about the modern gospels it’s that we fear offending someone we could reach out to, we are apathetic toward their plight, our wealth and charity makes us believe we are doing our part, and our natures don’t want to fraternize with difference.

Indeed, the cumulative effect of the modern gospels is that we have become nearly useless to the core message of the gospel itself: “Go out and tell the nations”. If the devil can’t get our souls he’ll keep us so busy as to be ineffective. We need to be more focused on what we, as individuals do, then what others are doing. The modern gospels are more concerned about the actions of others than ourselves.

I might give the homeless man a buck and he might buy beer. But ultimately I was charitable; I’ll be accountable to God for that. And ultimately if he buys beer he will be accountable for that. I believe and hope that God wants selfless people who are more concerned with their own actions then the actions of others. I can’t control the war, I can’t cure cancer or end suffering in the world but I can make sure someone who is cold gets a blanket, or the grumpy lady in Superfresh gets a smile. If we all started taking care of the silver coins God gives us we would make the world better and God would trust us with more. He tells us that and I believe it.

I don’t know if any of this resonates with you. But I think I learned more about myself writing this sermon than I have learned in a long time. The more I wrote the more it seemed that I was convicting myself. The more I thought the more I realized just how much I had read and reread these modern gospels. The more I did the more I realized I behaved in the manner that the modern gospels dictated.

We don’t need to wait for a special event like a visitor’s day to invite a visitor. Or a holiday to feed the homeless. Christians are supposed to be living this stuff out. What would happen if every week each one of us invited someone who is unchurched to church? My experience tells me many of them might never come back but some of them would stick around and share in God’s inheritance.

I used to think that the parable of the prodigal son was bunch hooey. Why would the father, who had already given his son his part of the inheritance take him back and give him more? This seems wholly unfair to the loyal son, as if the father was now giving part of the loyal son’s inheritance to the disobedient brother. But we must remember the father represents God and God’s personal shoebox of cash is without limit.

We have to remember that we have an inheritance with God. If you play the lottery and you haven’t won yet let me remind you that you have won an even bigger jackpot. This is something that I realized recently. It was easy to believe I was something as vague as “saved” but it was harder to realize that rewards awaited me now and they merely needed to be claimed. When this life is over we are all going to be in the black. If that’s the case why not go “all in” on every hand? With God opening his personal treasure vault we won’t ever be in debt if we play this game on His behalf.

Thank you for tolerating a hypocrite like me and enjoy your day.

"Am I a Torturer?"

2008-03-05T10:21:00.001-05:00

Am I a Torturer?
Justine Sharrock

March 03, 2008
The prisons in Iraq stink. Ask any guard or interrogator and they'll tell you it's a smell they'll never forget: sweat, fear, and rot. On the base where Ben Allbright served from May to September 2003, a small outfit named Tiger in western Iraq, water was especially scarce; Ben would rig a hose to a water bottle in a feeble attempt to shower. He and the other Army reservists tried mopping the floors, but the cheap solvents only added a chemical note to the stench. During the day, when the temperature was in the triple digits, the smell fermented.

It got even hotter in the Conex container, the kind you see on top of 18-wheelers, where Ben kept his prisoners. Not uncommonly the thermometer inside read 135, even 145 degrees. The Conex box was the first stop for all prisoners brought to the base, most of them Iraqis swept up during mass raids. Ben kept them blindfolded, their hands bound behind their backs with plastic zip ties, without food or sleep, for up to 48 hours at a time. He made them stand in awkward positions, so that they could not rest their heads against the wall. Sometimes he blared loud music, such as Ozzy or AC/DC, blew air horns, banged on the container, or shouted. "Whatever it took to make sure they'd stay awake," he explains.

Ben was not a "bad apple," and he didn't make up these treatments. He was following standard operating procedure as ordered by military-intelligence officers. The MI guys didn't make up the techniques either; they have a long international history as effective torture methods. Though generally referred to by circumlocutions such as "harsh techniques," "softening up," and "enhanced interrogation," they have been medically shown to have the same effects as other forms of torture. Forced standing, for example, causes ankles to swell to twice their size within 24 hours, making walking excruciating and potentially causing kidney failure.

Ben says he never saw anything like that. The detainees didn't faint or go insane, as people have been known to do under similar conditions, but they also "weren't exactly lucid." And, he notes, "I was hardly getting any sleep myself."

When I first set off to interview the rank-and-file guards and interrogators tasked with implementing the administration's torture guidelines, I thought they'd never talk openly. They would be embarrassed, wracked by guilt, living in silent shame in communities that would ostracize them if they knew of their histories. What I found instead were young men hiding their regrets from neighbors who wanted to celebrate them as war heroes. They seemed relieved to talk with me about things no one else wanted to hear—not just about the acts themselves, but also about the guilt, pain, and anger they felt along with pride and righteousness about their service. They struggled with these things, wanted to make sense of them—even as the nation seemed determined to dismiss the whole matter and move on.

This, perhaps, is the real scandal of Abu Ghraib: In survey after survey, as many as two-thirds of Americans say torture is justified when it's used to get information from terrorists. In an abc/Washington Post poll in the wake of the 2004 scandal, 60 percent of respondents classified what happened at Abu Ghraib as mere abuse, not torture. And as recently as last year, 68 percent of Americans told Pew Research pollsters that they consider torture an acceptable option when dealing with terrorists.

Critics of the administration's interrogation policies warn that the ramifications will be felt across the globe, including by Americans unlucky enough to be imprisoned abroad. Foreign-policy scholars fear the fallout from Abu Ghraib has already weakened the U.S. military's anti-terrorism capabilities. Lawyers warn about war-crime tribunals. But hardly anyone is discussing the repercussions already being felt here at home. It's the soldiers tying the sandbags around Iraqis' necks and blaring the foghorns through the night who are experiencing the effects most acutely. And the communities they're returning to are reeling as a result.

When i went to visit Ben in Little Rock, Ark., I wanted to know why this charming, intelligent, and overly polite 27-year-old had done what he'd done. For 10 days we rode around in his beat-up maroon 1970s Mercedes—running errands, picking up job applications, meeting his girlfriend for lunch. Ben wore pink shirts, hipster blazers, and color-coordinated Campers; he used hair products, which to his friends meant being a metrosexual; he listened to indie rock, watched The Daily Show, and wrote attitude-filled blogs on veterans rights, which meant being a liberal. He refereed football games, worshipped novelist Dave Eggers, and placed special orders at McDonald's so his meals would be fresh.

He was unemployed, fired from his latest job as a bank teller the day before I arrived. Ben had worked there for four months—the longest he'd held down a full-time job since coming home from Iraq. He'd tried tutoring high schoolers, bagging groceries, and doing IT support for Best Buy. Part of the problem, he said, was the lack of good jobs in the area, part of it his own "flailing and procrastinating." He had toyed with the idea of law school and scored a near-perfect 178 on the lsat entrance test, but then turned down offers from schools such as nyu. While I was in town he picked up an application for a job at his corner liquor store. In high school he was one of two students voted most likely to become famous. "The other kid became a doctor," Ben confessed, "and I, well, yeah..."

As a kid, Ben was a sort of Doogie Howser, blowing through school, asking teachers for more work, until his mom, fearing the classes weren't challenging enough, pulled him out in the fourth grade in order to homeschool him. His parents finally bought a TV set when Ben was in eighth grade. Ben says his dad was an original member of Pat Robertson's 700 Club. He was an executive for American Airlines, a job that moved the family around a lot: St. Louis, Kansas City, Nashville. After they lost their nest egg in the 1987 stock market crash, the family moved from Chicago's lakeshore suburbs to the South Side. Finally, when Ben was a teenager, they settled in Lonoke, outside Little Rock.

Ben took me to the town, 4,300 people and 22 churches. Tractors dotted the fields that hadn't yet been grabbed by developers. He noted a "Free Greens" sign advertising leftovers from someone's garden and the customary wave from passing cars. His condescension about the "bumblefuck" town cracked when he showed me a plot of land, near one that his buddy had just bought, that he saw as a potential home for a future family.

Ben pointed out the Grace Baptist Church, which he attends because he's friends with the pastor and his son, "not because I agree with their fundamentalist views." As an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas, Ben explored Buddhism and Taoism, but he returned to Christianity as a way to make sense of the world, even though sometimes it's "awkward reconciling my religion and military profession."

Ben was still in high school when he enlisted as a reservist; his friend Brandon had asked Ben to accompany him to the recruiter's office as a "bullshit detector." In the end, he enrolled along with Brandon, applying twice before he finally bulked up enough to meet the weight requirement. He saw it as a chance to get out from under his parents' thumb and learn about computers. But mainly it was his idealistic sense of duty—right out of Starship Troopers, the 1959 Robert Heinlein novel that is now a cult hit in military circles. "Like in the book, there's the idea that to be a full citizen you have to contribute."

Ben was called up to go to Iraq in February 2003. His father told him the invasion seemed like a mistake, but they didn't have time to discuss the subject much; he died of cancer a month later. Half an hour after the funeral, Ben was on his way to Kuwait.

In iraq, ben was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division; since there was no computer work for him to do, he was made a prison guard.

Things on the Tiger base were pretty "ad hoc," Ben recalls. Some orders, like the mandate that the heavy Kevlar helmets be fastened at the chin at all times, were clearly posted on the wall. Others were left to word-of-mouth, including instructions about detainee handling. Military-intelligence officers issued various orders; then there were the anonymous ogas, a.k.a. other government agencies, code for either private contractors or cia officers with civilian clothes, long beards, and fake names like Joe Stallone and Frank Norris. The chain of command was chaotic.

Ben was soon promoted to warden and made small changes on his shift: Guards had to limit stress positions, and detainee rations were increased from crackers and peanut butter to whole Meals Ready to Eat, which were served three times, not two times, a day. He enforced a ban on cameras to discourage the degrading treatment that usually came when soldiers posed with prisoners for trophy photos. "But I could only do so much," he admits.

When he was first ordered to soften up detainees, "it didn't seem so weird," Ben says; nothing in the war zone was normal. "You don't think about what you're doing until later." He was asked to stand in on dozens of interrogations, to help intimidate the subject: one more body, one more gun. The small room was usually crowded with guards, military-intelligence officers, and ogas. They were told to wear T-shirts, not uniforms that would signal their rank. Under the single bulb, the interrogator would loom above a prisoner seated in a child-size chair. Sometimes the room suddenly went dark and strobe lights flashed on. Other times the soldiers would bang pots and pans in the detainee's face, blare loud music, blast air horns and sirens. The sounds were meant to disorient, but also to mask the screams. More than half the time, even if they were cooperative the detainees were beaten, kicked out of their chairs, punched in the windpipe or gut, pulled by the ears—blows that wouldn't leave lasting marks. Occasionally things got out of hand, but with their medical training, the military-intelligence officers could stitch up or bandage injuries, avoiding a call to the medics and an entry in the logbooks that the Red Cross could read.

The first time Ben saw a detainee get beaten, he took the lead interrogator aside afterward to ask, "Was this stuff really allowed? Didn't it violate the Geneva Conventions?"

"These aren't pows; they're detainees," he was told. "Those rules are antiquated and don't apply. You can't get any information without breaking that stuff." Ben asked other officers, but "it was basically like, 'Dude, you're actually worried about how we're treating them? They wouldn't afford you the same respect.'"

If there is anything Ben hates, it's not having all the information. Like most, he hadn't listened when the Geneva Conventionswere covered in basic training. But as it happened, when first arriving in country he'd asked a military lawyer for a cd-rom of various documents, just to have on hand. Now, scrolling through the text on his laptop, Ben saw what anyone could: All prisoners—civilians and combatants—are protected against violence. There is no separate category for unlawful combatants. "Outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment" are prohibited. Abuses like those at the Tiger base were "grave breaches." War crimes.

Ben made a verbal complaint to his platoon leader and later to his platoon leader's boss, asking for an investigation. The officers seemed surprised. "They said they'd look into it and tell their superiors," Ben recalls. "But it didn't seem like a priority." Nothing happened.

"I'm not one of those hardcore 'Duty! Honor! Country!' guys," explains Ben. "But I had signed a contract with rules and obligations. I figured that I did the responsible thing by notifying people. I felt helpless not being able to do more. But at least I'd covered my end." He tried quizzing the guards under him about the Geneva Conventions, but they "just wanted to fuck with people." He developed a reputation as a softy.

In the summer of 2003, the interrogators threw a detainee against a concrete wall, punched him in the neck and gut, kicked him in the knees, threw him outside, and dragged him back in by his hair. For the entire two-hour ordeal, the prisoner wouldn't talk; Ben later found out he spoke Farsi and couldn't understand the interrogators' English and Arabic. Afterward, Ben hid behind a building and cried for the first time since his dad's death. "It was like a loss of humanity. Like we were trading one dictator in for another. I had to weigh my integrity against my duty. Why couldn't I stand up more? Why was I hesitant?"

Ben told me this as we were sitting in his bedroom back home in Little Rock; by the end of the story he had climbed into bed and pulled blankets up around him and was hugging a pillow. There were tears in his eyes, and he apologized for being so "weird about this stuff." Ben writes poetry, and he's fiercely loyal to his Army buddies. But now, for the briefest moment, I saw rage in his eyes.

War, ben was discovering, is "not like what you see on TV. It's insanely boring and depressing." His trip home at Thanksgiving in 2003 lasted just long enough for him to discover that his girlfriend had a new man. Back at Tiger, he joined a group of grunts watching a Michael Moore dvd. It struck a chord with them. "I was never political before I went to Iraq. But I was already disgruntled and fed up just being in Iraq. The movie made me angrier."

It wasn't Fahrenheit 9/11 that so resonated with the soldiers; it was Roger & Me, a documentary that follows the decline of Flint, Michigan, after the General Motors plants closed down. Ben saw "connections between U.S. policies away and at home, how the administration is willing to sacrifice regular people. They were throwing people out of their homes in Flint just like we were taking people out of their homes in Iraq. We got all misty-eyed. It was emotional and had a lingering effect on us."

Ben began to think about what was behind the abuses he'd seen. Soldiers were sent off to war with the promise that they'd be heroes. They had been trained to kill bad guys, not baby-sit detainees. "You need to think that you're there for a reason, that there is some purpose," Ben says. But now people at home were saying the war was a mistake; body counts were mere blips in the news. When Ben first arrived in Iraq, he played soccer with locals; a few months later Iraqis wouldn't even set foot on the base. More and more, the soldiers turned their anger on the prisoners. They poked them with rifles, called them "towel heads" and "sand niggers." Guards would let other soldiers "snag a guy to fuck with or whatever, as long as it didn't leave a mark."

About a month after Ben left Tiger for good, an insurgency leader detained there, Maj. General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, was suffocated in a sleeping bag—a technique that, like waterboarding, Ben had heard was used but had never seen. The General, as he was known, was one of the 160-plus detainees who have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, according to aclu attorney Hina Shamsi. Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, the man accused of murdering Mowhoush, claimed he'd been following orders. In 2006, he was convicted of negligent homicide and dereliction of duty and sentenced to 60 days of barracks confinement, the equivalent of house arrest.

After ben came home in March 2004, he was treated warmly. "I was at Applebee's one night and a guy overheard that I had just come back from Iraq," he recalls, "so he bought me a Jack and Coke." He was offered discounts on cell phones and cars. "I finally felt appreciated after feeling used for so long."

But the welcomes couldn't silence the questions that kept him up at night. Ben loves to debate, perhaps because he usually wins, but now he was endlessly, fruitlessly arguing with himself. "Every human being instinctively knows right from wrong. There is never a justification for torture." But then again, "Is softening people up wrong on some levels? I don't know. It wasn't beneficial to them, but it was presented as necessary." He had seen a side of himself he didn't know existed, and now he had to live with that. "In combat you question your mortality," he told me. "In these prisons you question your morality."

I asked Ben point-blank if he considered himself a torturer. It was a hard question to ask, a harder one to answer. He said he didn't know. He asked me how other soldiers in his situation had responded. Most, I told him, didn't even brook use of the word "torture" instead of "harsh interrogation." He finally said he guessed he didn't want to have to think of himself that way, and that it was time to go meet his girlfriend.

When he first got back from Iraq, Ben had nightmares and couldn't remember things; this was infuriating, since he'd always prided himself on his perfect memory. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with ptsd, but he refused medication. Instead he blew $14,000 on bar tabs his first four months home. "I drank every night. I'd wake up next to a stranger at around 4 p.m. and head off to the strip club again." He traveled some, because "you can reinvent yourself when you're out of town." He also reenlisted; he'll be on active duty until 2013, which means that once a month he has to cut his perfectly messy hair and show up at the local base. He thinks the military needs people like him, "people who can see both sides of things."

When Ben first started speaking out about torture, posting to blogs and testifying for a human rights group, he didn't use his real name. Then, gradually, he grew bolder. Brandon, his high school friend, Army buddy, and now roommate, encouraged him, so long as he wasn't trying to become famous. He got the occasional blog flame—"un-American commie bastard"—but there was none of the reprisal from the Army that he'd feared. Nor, for that matter, any call from the various military investigators looking into human rights abuses. No one seemed to care.

People cared when Specialist Joseph Darby spoke out, though not always in the way he would have wanted them to. Darby is the Army reservist who turned in the Abu Ghraib photos. He hates the term "whistleblower," which is understandable, since it's earned him others like "rat" and "traitor." He's gotten death threats, from phone calls and emails to just whispers around his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland. His sister-in-law's house was vandalized; his wife was verbally harassed and the police refused to help.

I met with Darby at a Starbucks in a strip mall along a busy four-lane route. He is still in a sort of witness-protection program the military put him in after his role in the scandal was revealed. He didn't want me to detail his appearance, which has changed somewhat from the recognizable round face that appeared in magazines and on television. This, he said, was his last interview before he put Abu Ghraib behind him forever.

He said being in hiding wasn't so tough; he'd always kept to himself. His marriage was rocky while he was in Iraq, and seclusion had forced the couple back together. Whenever our conversation got difficult, he fiddled with his wedding ring.

Darby joined the Army Reserves for tuition money when he was 17, but he never did end up going to college. Instead, after returning from a deployment in Bosnia in June 2002, he found construction work off the books. Eight months later, he was called up again to go to Iraq. When his unit was assigned to guard prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Darby asked for a job where he wouldn't have too much contact with the detainees; with his temper, he didn't trust himself around the Iraqis. He became the guy you called to get a mop, garbage bags, or meals brought up to the tiers.

Unlike Ben, Darby didn't witness any abuse; he came across the torture photos by accident. The desert heat had warped his own snapshots, so he asked Corporal Charles Graner for some pictures, hoping for images of camels and tanks. Scrolling through the CD, he laughed when he saw the pyramid of naked Iraqis. Then he got to the simulated-fellatio pictures.

He insists he's not a goody-two-shoes tattletale or a saint by any stretch. "I'm as crooked as the next MP," he explains. "I've bent laws and I've broke laws." Months earlier, Graner (who is now serving a 10-year sentence) had shown him a photo of a prisoner tied up in a stress position and said, "The Christian in me knows this is wrong, but the corrections officer in me can't help but love to make a grown man piss himself." Darby says he was too tired to think much about it.

It took him three weeks of soul-searching to decide whether he should turn in the photos. He finally took them not to his superior officers but to the Army investigation office, where soldiers can report everything from sexual harassment to theft—a breach of the chain of command that many would later hold against him. Four months later, Darby was sitting in the Abu Ghraib mess hall; cnn was on, showing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's congressional testimony on prisoner abuse. Darby had no idea his tip—which military investigators had assured him would remain anonymous—had led to a national scandal. He heard Rumsfeld name various people who'd provided information—"first the soldier, Specialist Joseph Darby, who alerted the appropriate authorities...My thanks and appreciation to him for his courage and his values."

Darby dropped his fork midbite. Oh shit. He felt 400 pairs of eyes on him. Seymour Hersh had already published his name, but as Darby says, "Who reads the damn New Yorker?"

His mom was dying of cancer; now, the compassionate-leave request he had filed a week before was rushed through. When his plane touched down stateside, officers were there with his wife. They escorted the couple to an undisclosed location, where they lived with around-the-clock security for the next six months. He didn't get the formal thank-you he'd expected from the Army, though a personal letter from Rumsfeld arrived at one point—asking him to stop talking about how he'd been outed.

When the Abu Ghraib photos splashed on television sets, people in Cumberland watched, hoping their loved ones weren't involved. Not all were so lucky. Kenneth England saw the pictures of his daughter, Lynndie, as did the welders and machinists who work with him at the csx railroad. They supported him as best they knew how: by not mentioning it. While Pentagon flacks spun the scandal as the work of a few bad apples from Appalachia, people in the area hung yellow ribbons and "hometown hero" posters for the accused MPs. Reservists' wives organized candlelight vigils.

"Everybody needs his time over there to mean or count for something," Sergeant Ken Davis, a teetotaler nicknamed Preacher Man by the other MPs at Abu Ghraib, told me. "It has to be right in the greater scheme of things. But if the U.S. government was truly at the helm, ordering the abuse, then it actually means nothing. And now we live with ghosts and demons that will haunt us for the rest of our lives."

Davis, who has a clean, bleachy smell to him and says "dang" a lot, was in some of the photos, and he says he reported the abuse to his superior. For that, people at the police department near Cumberland where he worked call him a narc. He's become an Abu Ghraib junkie, attending the trials, testifying at some, collecting photos and evidence, corresponding with the accused. It's a way, he says, to get closure. "A lot of soldiers, when we come back, are lost. You don't belong anymore. It's especially true for a unit accused of abuse, when you hear lies about what happened and people deny what you saw." At 37, he's particularly worried about the younger soldiers he served with. "They were put in situations where they had to do things they didn't agree with just to survive," he says. "All they know about being an adult is the military. We've got a lost generation on our hands."

Military recruiters always had it easy in Cumberland. Beyond honor, responsibility, and meaning, they pitched a paycheck and a ticket out. It was on the steps of Cumberland's City Hall that Lyndon B. Johnson first announced his War on Poverty back in 1964, but neither the coal mining industry, the railway, nor a series of short-lived manufacturing booms could win that battle. Of the big factories in the area, only the paper mill is still open. One in five residents live below the poverty line, a third more than the national average. A food bank operates out of a former bread factory. In February 2007, a high school football player shot himself during a game of Russian roulette.

I often asked people in town what they thought about the war, but conversation inevitably turned to jobs. Supporting the troops was akin to union solidarity—a pact among the people doing the country's grunt work. As one ex-Marine told me, "Sometimes you just have to do what you can to get by. And you have to be able to believe in the validity of what you're doing."

People told me the threat against Darby was exaggerated. The university's chaplain had been harassed for hosting an anti-war event, the newspaper's columnist threatened for advocating gun control, but no harm had come to either of them. Colin Engelbach, the commander of the local vfw post—who called Darby a "borderline traitor" on national television—said that by "get him," people just meant they would make Darby's life hell.

Engelbach is a small guy whose eyes had trouble meeting mine. He spent ten years in the National Guard and four on active duty, though he didn't see combat. Now he works double shifts making depleted-uranium munitions at Alliant Tech. For several months after our interview, he called me with "dirt" on Darby; the overall message was that Darby had put himself before his comrades, that he was not a real American.

"People aren't pissed because I turned someone in for abuse," Darby told me. "People are pissed because I turned in an American soldier for abusing an Iraqi. They don't care about right and wrong."

Five miles down from Cumberland, Cresaptown, home to the 372nd Military Police Company's headquarters, is little more than the junction of U.S. Highway 220 and Route 53. There's no town hall, the civic improvement center is shuttered, and old toys sit forgotten on the front porches of houses behind low wire fences. It's only a few steps from Pete's Tavern to the Big Claw bar and the Eagles Club, which a few years back launched a minor scandal by admitting a black man. ("He may be a nigger, but he's also a cop," one Pete's regular told me, "so they had to let him in.")

Driving down the hill into Cresaptown, the first thing you notice is the sweeping expanse of glimmering barbed wire and corrugated metal buildings that house the roughly 1,700 inmates and 500 employees of the Western Correctional Institution. The 161-acre property used to be the Celanese factory, where you could swim in the public pool for a quarter. Next door is the brand new $24.8 million prison, built by out-of-state contractors and lauded as a state-of-the-art maximum-security facility. The 372nd's inconspicuous brick building is down the road, past the Liberty Christian Fellowship, the technical high school (whose sign declares "teamwork" the word of the month), and the Boy Scout building.

On most afternoons you'll find John Kershner, a sergeant with the 372nd, sitting at the Big Claw smoking his usa brand menthols with his change lined up on the bar, ready for his next dollar-fifty Miller Lite. The night I was there "Sarge" was talking more than he had in a while, he admitted. He was polite in an old-time kind of way, making a point of taking off his well-worn Eagles Club hat indoors, revealing a balding shaved head. His light blue eyes were shielded behind his thick glasses. Sarge knows Darby well; he was the guy who hired him to work off the books at his self-storage-construction company after the two served together in Bosnia—though it was Darby who told me about this later, not Kershner. "People here feel more hurt by this whole thing than anything," Sarge whispered into my ear. "I just wish Darby would shut his mouth and let the rest of us move on."

Sarge had to sell his construction business when he deployed to Iraq. Now employers tell him he's either overqualified or, at a war-weathered 56, too old. He's been filing for his veterans benefits for two years now but continues to get the runaround. He knows what most everyone in the bar does for a living—he's a roofer, he's a pharmacist, she's a beautician. "I'm not saying that the photos were correct," one of the other patrons, his work boots still muddy, told me. "But our people had their heads cut off."

"Other countries can torture our men to death and it's okay, but if we drop one decimal dip below our standards, you have guys paying the price," Sarge said. "Now you need permission to even shoot back when you're under attack. You let them win there, and we'll be fighting here next."

There is a peace group in Cumberland. It's spearheaded by Larry Neumark, the Protestant chaplain at local Frostburg State University whose cardigan sweaters and soft voice conjure up Mr. Rogers. Early on in the war, the group—mostly composed of faculty from Frostburg and nearby community colleges, who clung to each other as a "lifeline"—struggled for attention. "You'll be accused of being unpatriotic and un-American if you speak up," said Neumark. A local college has rejected courses with "peace" in the title as unpatriotic. "But in the last six to seven months people have been more willing to talk."

When I first visited Cumberland in December 2006, Neumark told me that he had caught hell for inviting Ray McGovern, a retired cia officer, to speak on campus against the war. By last spring, he was having a hard time filling the pro-war slot on a panel discussion he was setting up. Torture, though, was another story. Neumark had proposed a discussion about the topic, but people were "very on edge" about it, as Daniel Hull, a member of the group, told me. Even the activists were split on whether they should "go in that direction."

Eventually Neumark did pull together his panel, featuring a man who had been tortured in the Philippines during the Marcos regime. About 100 students, many of them earning class credits, listened to him recall mock executions and solitary confinement. One student argued that the Geneva Conventions were outdated. "Has fear been used to effectively deaden our critical senses?" Neumark asked. An audience member stomped out. In the back someone snoozed. "Torture is a form of terrorism," offered Neumark. "Why do you think people aren't speaking out about this?" No one had an answer.

In ben's two-bedroom apartment in a suburban complex, the shades are always down and the lights are dimmed. An Ikea rug covers the cheap wall-to-wall carpeting, Yellow Tail wine bottles line the mantle, Aristotle and Dostoevsky serve as toilet reading, and a large-screen TV with a PlayStation 2 dominates the living room. Ben shares the place with Brandon, who circumvented the postwar job problem by taking a civilian job at the nearby Army base. He seems more stereotypically military than Ben, with wide biceps, close-cropped hair, and a closetful of Army T-shirts. But he writes poetry and acoustic songs about things such as post-traumatic stress and how he almost reflexively hit his girlfriend one day and never regained her trust.

One afternoon, with a sitcom on TV and his dog skidding around the sofa, I grilled Ben about torture. After returning from Iraq, he studied the philosophical theories surrounding the issue to prepare for just these kinds of conversations—particularly in case he ever got to talk to Senator John McCain, to whom he'd written during the drafting of the Detainee Treatment Act. We discussed the ticking-time-bomb argument—the hypothetical challenge arguing the morality of torturing someone who knows where a bomb is hidden—which Ben called "total bullshit" since "we aren't living in some fantasy 24 kind of world where those sorts of situations occur." Besides, he said, torture will induce false confessions. And most of the detainees at Tiger didn't even have anything to confess; like 70 to 90 percent of those jailed across Iraq, according to a 2004 Red Cross report, they'd been arrested by mistake.

When the Abu Ghraib photos came out, Ben was on a trip around Europe. He pretended to be Canadian, and the whole thing pained him—because he's a patriot, and because the images brought back memories. "It was like a bad nostalgia," he said. "But it was also embarrassing. I just didn't want to be associated with it."

When I asked Ben if Brandon judged him for what he did in Iraq, he said they don't really talk about it. "It's two separate parts of our lives and we keep it that way," Ben explained. "It's like, 'Iraq sucked. Now get on with it.'" He said he doesn't talk about it to anyone close to him—he'd tell his mom, he said, but she has never asked and he doesn't want to bother her.

His girlfriend, Gretchen, flat out doesn't want to know. Gretchen trained Ben as a teller at the bank. She's gorgeous, with long dark hair and tall leather boots. Within a week, they were making out; six months later, she's sure he's the one. They seemed too young to be talking about marriage, until I saw their friends with kids, mortgages, and ex-spouses.

I asked Gretchen if we could have coffee. "It's not like I know anything about what happened over there," she said. "I probably should, but he doesn't talk about it, and I don't want to think about it." Gretchen blushed when she asked me what Abu Ghraib was. ("She doesn't know much about politics," commented Ben, "and that's to put it nicely.") "I realize I'm naive," she said. "I get upset about stuff that's sad on TV." She didn't have a "real opinion about the war. I figure the people in charge know more, so I trust them."

But Gretchen did know how Ben would "tear up" sometimes, like when he was fired from the bank, even though he said it was no big deal, or how he only stayed for five minutes when he visited his dad's grave, or how he used to wake up in the middle of the night shouting. She thought Ben liked her not being political because she didn't argue with him. I thought he liked the escape.

When i was in Little Rock in January 2007, Ben was chastising himself for not having spoken out more about the war. He had just bought a new Web domain, WaitingToPanic.net, to consolidate his blogs and had big plans for building his veterans site, Operation Comeback, into a full-on grassroots movement. Human Rights Watch had encouraged him to work for them, and he thought that was a great idea. But he was also excited about cheap properties in the area, and when he got upset by our conversations about Iraq, he told me he'd been trying to "block it out a little bit."

A year later, when I checked in with him again, he had bought a brand new three-bedroom house in Lonoke, the town where he'd grown up. Gretchen had moved in with him. He was working with the military as a communications expert—the "resident computer geek," as he put it—at the local base. He was up for a promotion to Warrant Officer candidate. His new website was blank and he hadn't posted on his blogs in months. And Senator McCain had never called.

"I'm told that I'm courageous for speaking out," he said. "But I wonder if I get blamed enough for the bad things I've done. Did I stand up enough? Using a situation to justify it, like I did, doesn't make it right. It's the sense of being helpless that still weighs heavily on my soul."

Interesting Article

2008-02-27T10:21:00.001-05:00

The Party Faithful
by Ann Sullivan

"Feb. 26, 2008 | Amy Sullivan is a senior editor at Time, a liberal Democrat, and an evangelical Christian. One of those things is not supposed to be like the others, but she argues in her new book that her fellow Democrats need to reach out to her fellow evangelicals if they hope to build an electoral majority. In "The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap," Sullivan describes how Democrats like Gov. Jennifer Granholm have won over white evangelical voters without changing sides on such hot-button issues as gay marriage and abortion. Sullivan spoke to Salon about the importance of language in reaching out to evangelicals, the supposed decline of the religious right, and why Democrats should court religious voters when they are doing so well among an even-faster growing demographic: people with no religious affiliation at all..."

um . . . i don't think this is what they meant . . .

2008-02-01T12:46:00.001-05:00

it's about 1/3 of the way down the page

why are we supporting israel?

2008-01-31T14:47:00.001-05:00

MIDEAST: Faeces Change the Face of Gaza
By Mohammed Omer

GAZA CITY, Jan 28 (IPS) - A stream of dark and putrid sludge snakes through Gaza's streets. It is a noxious mix of human and animal waste. The stench is overwhelming. The occasional passer-by vomits.

Over recent days this has been a more common sight than the sale of food on the streets of Gaza, choked by a relentless Israeli siege. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans, almost all of its able male adults among a population of 1.5 million, crossed over into Egypt last week to buy essential provisions - and a new lease of life. That has staved off starvation. But streets continue as sewers.

The rain has not helped. The sludge has spread, and the stench with it. Starved of timely income and essential supplies, municipal services have all but ceased.
"The smell," says Ayoub al-Saifi, 56, grimacing as he holds a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. "The stench of the sewage...my wife has asthma, and she can't breathe."

Saifi lives next to what has become a newly formed pool of waste. This used to be the street leading to home. "It's getting worse day by day," says neighbour Said Ammar, an engineer, and father of four.

The sewage treatment plant in al-Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City requires 20,000 litres of fuel a day. Last week Israel ceased delivery of all fuel and supplies to Gaza. The consequences have been catastrophic.

Without fuel to pump it away, the waste backs up, flooding the streets and clogging the plumbing. The local ministry of health has declared this an environmental catastrophe.

Doctors have warned that a medical catastrophe could follow by way of spread of cholera and other diseases. That is at a time when not even life-saving medical services are on offer any more.

"We have to choose between cutting the electricity on babies in the maternity ward, cutting it to heart patients, or shutting down our operating rooms," says Dr. Mawia Hasaneen, director of emergency at al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza.

The World Health Organisation released a statement Jan. 22 warning of serious health difficulties arising in Gaza Strip, isolated by the Israeli siege, the Egyptian border and the Mediterranean Sea.

"Frequent electricity cuts and the limited power available to run hospital generators are of particular concern, as they disrupt the functioning of intensive care units, operating theatres, and emergency rooms," the WHO said. "In the central pharmacy, power shortages have interrupted refrigeration of perishable medical supplies, including vaccine."

Christine McNab, acting director in the communications department in Geneva adds that "our current concerns are about the supply of electricity to health facilities, the ability to move medical supplies into the region, and the ability of people to seek care outside of Gaza.

"McNab notes that even if the full blockade is lifted, additional measures would need to be taken by the international community against any further disruptions.

Israel has blocked off fuel and supplies to Gaza because it says it faces rocket attacks from the Palestinian area, which elected Hamas, the Palestinian party that does not recognise Israel.

Official Israeli sources say that about 150 homemade rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel since Israel commenced this latest raid. Two Israelis have been slightly wounded and several others treated for shock.

Israel has retaliated with firing from tanks and attacks by F-16 aircraft firing Hellfire missiles into Gaza's neighbourhoods. At least 76 Palestinians have been killed, and another 293 injured since Jan. 1, officials here say.

Through the suffering, many Palestinians still do not blame Hamas.

"Hamas has never been the problem. The occupation has always been the big problem," says Ammar. He instead blames Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who administers the West Bank Palestinian area, and who has been in talks with Israel.

"Abbas doesn't deserve one percent of the respect that (former Palestinian leader Ysser) Arafat earned. Israel will never find someone as good as Arafat. He gave them a historical chance at two states. Yet despite this, they (Israel) laid siege to him."

Rajaa Shalil, 38, and mother of four in Rafah at the Egyptian border, says "my respect for Hamas has increased more than ever. I love them for their empathy for the weak."

But not all of Gaza's residents feel this way. "Both Israel and Hamas are the reason for this," says resident Abu Mohammed. "Before, we were all in better conditions, but since Hamas took over Gaza they have been unable to handle it." (END/2008)

can anybody verify this?

2008-01-30T11:55:00.000-05:00

Sen. Obama Steps Up for Gov. Richardson

"I had just been asked a question -- I don't remember which one -- and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn't going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, 'So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?' But I wasn't paying any attention! I was about to say, 'Could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening.' But I wasn't about to say I wasn't listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, 'Katrina. Katrina.' The question was on Katrina! So I said, 'On Katrina, my policy . . .' Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, 'Obama, that was good of you to do that.'"
link here

...

2008-01-30T10:44:00.001-05:00

i haven't gotten any email in about 24 hours. at all.

this makes me nervous.

i agree...

2008-01-24T18:02:00.000-05:00

...that scientology is whacked out.

seriously - they're nuts.

but is anyone else disturbed by the idea that the rest of the world thinks it gets to decide whether a particular faith can exist?

"when they came for the communists
i did not speak out
because i was not a communist..."

it sure as hell disturbs me.

this guy i would vote for

2008-01-22T14:24:00.000-05:00

This is one of the greatest speeches/sermons I’ve read in such a long time. How will WE, as Americans, continue in bringing about tolerance and unity today, and how will WE, as Christians, be Christlike to our fellow Americans?Things have got to change… - Rebecca

(paragraph breaks added by me)

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Church, Atlanta, GA. Sun, Jan. 20, 2008

The Scripture tells us that when Joshua and the Israelites arrived at the gates of Jericho, they could not enter. The walls of the city were too steep for any one person to climb; too strong to be taken down with brute force. And so they sat for days, unable to pass on through. But God had a plan for his people. He told them to stand together and march together around the city, and on the seventh day he told them that when they heard the sound of the ram’s horn, they should speak with one voice. And at the chosen hour, when the horn sounded and a chorus of voices cried out together, the mighty walls of Jericho came tumbling down.

There are many lessons to take from this passage, just as there are many lessons to take from this day, just as there are many memories that fill the space of this church. As I was thinking about which ones we need to remember at this hour, my mind went back to the very beginning of the modern Civil Rights Era. Because before Memphis and the mountaintop; before the bridge in Selma and the march on Washington; before Birmingham and the beatings; the fire hoses and the loss of those four little girls; before there was King the icon and his magnificent dream, there was King the young preacher and a people who found themselves suffering under the yoke of oppression.

And on the eve of the bus boycotts in Montgomery, at a time when many were still doubtful about the possibilities of change, a time when those in the black community mistrusted themselves, and at times mistrusted each other, King inspired with words not of anger, but of an urgency that still speaks to us today: ”Unity is the great need of the hour” is what King said. Unity is how we shall overcome.

What Dr. King understood is that if just one person chose to walk instead of ride the bus, those walls of oppression would not be moved. But maybe if a few more walked, the foundation might start to shake. If a few more women were willing to do what Rosa Parks had done, maybe the cracks would start to show. If teenagers took freedom rides from North to South, maybe a few bricks would come loose. Maybe if white folks marched because they had come to understand that their freedom too was at stake in the impending battle, the wall would begin to sway. And if enough Americans were awakened to the injustice; if they joined together, North and South, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, then perhaps that wall would come tumbling down, and justice would flow like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Unity is the great need of the hour — the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country. I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans. I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.

We have an empathy deficit when we’re still sending our children down corridors of shame — schools in the forgotten corners of America where the color of your skin still affects the content of your education. We have a deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months; when families lose their homes so that lenders make a profit; when mothers can’t afford a doctor when their children get sick. We have a deficit in this country when there is Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others; when our children see nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree today, in the present, in the twenty-first century. We have a deficit when homeless veterans sleep on the streets of our cities; when innocents are slaughtered in the deserts of Darfur; when young Americans serve tour after tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged. And we have a deficit when it takes a breach in our levees to reveal a breach in our compassion; when it takes a terrible storm to reveal the hungry that God calls on us to feed; the sick He calls on us to care for; the least of these He commands that we treat as our own. So we have a deficit to close. We have walls — barriers to justice and equality — that must come down.

And to do this, we know that unity is the great need of this hour. Unfortunately, all too often when we talk about unity in this country, we’ve come to believe that it can be purchased on the cheap. We’ve come to believe that racial reconciliation can come easily — that it’s just a matter of a few ignorant people trapped in the prejudices of the past, and that if the demagogues and those who exploit our racial divisions will simply go away, then all our problems would be solved. All too often, we seek to ignore the profound institutional barriers that stand in the way of ensuring opportunity for all children, or decent jobs for all people, or health care for those who are sick. We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price. But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won.

It starts with a change in attitudes — a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts. It’s not easy to stand in somebody else’s shoes. It’s not easy to see past our differences. We’ve all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks to drive us apart — that puts up walls between us. We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don’t think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays — on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system. And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity. Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media.

And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation. So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others — all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face — war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts. But if changing our hearts and minds is the first critical step, we cannot stop there.

It is not enough to bemoan the plight of poor children in this country and remain unwilling to push our elected officials to provide the resources to fix our schools. It is not enough to decry the disparities of health care and yet allow the insurance companies and the drug companies to block much-needed reforms. It is not enough for us to abhor the costs of a misguided war, and yet allow ourselves to be driven by a politics of fear that sees the threat of attack as way to scare up votes instead of a call to come together around a common effort. The Scripture tells us that we are judged not just by word, but by deed. And if we are to truly bring about the unity that is so crucial in this time, we must find it within ourselves to act on what we know; to understand that living up to this country’s ideals and its possibilities will require great effort and resources; sacrifice and stamina.

And that is what is at stake in the great political debate we are having today. The changes that are needed are not just a matter of tinkering at the edges, and they will not come if politicians simply tell us what we want to hear. All of us will be called upon to make some sacrifice. None of us will be exempt from responsibility. We will have to fight to fix our schools, but we will also have to challenge ourselves to be better parents. We will have to confront the biases in our criminal justice system, but we will also have to acknowledge the deep-seated violence that still resides in our own communities and marshal the will to break its grip. That is how we will bring about the change we seek.

That is how Dr. King led this country through the wilderness. He did it with words — words that he spoke not just to the children of slaves, but the children of slave owners. Words that inspired not just black but also white; not just the Christian but the Jew; not just the Southerner but also the Northerner. He led with words, but he also led with deeds. He also led by example. He led by marching and going to jail and suffering threats and being away from his family. He led by taking a stand against a war, knowing full well that it would diminish his popularity. He led by challenging our economic structures, understanding that it would cause discomfort. Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination. That is the unity — the hard-earned unity — that we need right now.

It is that effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope — the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before. The stories that give me such hope don’t happen in the spotlight. They don’t happen on the presidential stage. They happen in the quiet corners of our lives. They happen in the moments we least expect. Let me give you an example of one of those stories.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organizes for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She’s been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and the other day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat. She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we begin. It is why the walls in that room began to crack and shake. And if they can shake in that room, they can shake in Atlanta. And if they can shake in Atlanta, they can shake in Georgia. And if they can shake in Georgia, they can shake all across America. And if enough of our voices join together; we can bring those walls tumbling down. The walls of Jericho can finally come tumbling down.

That is our hope — but only if we pray together, and work together, and march together. Brothers and sisters, we cannot walk alone. In the struggle for peace and justice, we cannot walk alone. In the struggle for opportunity and equality, we cannot walk alone. In the struggle to heal this nation and repair this world, we cannot walk alone. So I ask you to walk with me, and march with me, and join your voice with mine, and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us, and lift up an America that is truly indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all.

May God bless the memory of the great pastor of this church, and may God bless the United States of America.

-Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: The Great Need of the HourAtlanta, GA | January 20, 2008

follow this link

2008-01-17T11:12:00.001-05:00

now

i swear rebecca...

2008-01-10T11:46:00.000-05:00

... i'll post something soon.

really.

sigh

2007-11-19T23:42:00.000-05:00

no more pictures of tali.

tali is not photogenic.

meh.

also - tali craves adventure.

whatever that means.

2007-11-08T20:22:00.000-05:00

hee hee

2007-10-15T21:38:00.000-05:00

stranger than strange

2007-08-10T13:29:00.000-05:00

Took this yesterday outside of my office in Woodlawn. I love these
little surprises.

Would you believe 695 is right behind this?

a question

2007-08-03T15:38:00.001-05:00

what's the best compliment you've ever received?

Tali

Last test, I promise.

2007-07-27T21:04:00.000-05:00

Testing again

2007-07-27T20:59:00.001-05:00

This time from the iPhone.

Life is good

Tali

Power

2007-04-01T21:53:00.000-05:00

watching the Prestige tonight, i recalled an urban legend i heard once about nicola tesla. i will now pester you with it. for real information, go here

tesla is the inventor of (or contributor to) an astounding number of inventions. he was a contemporary and competitor of edison (the light bulb guy?) and well known for his work with light, electricity and magnetic energy.

according to the story, tesla claimed to have invented an honest-to-god ray gun. eager do try his new toy out, but fearful of the damage it might cause, he directed the weapon (which was some how designed to refract off of the earth's atmosphere) towards the frozen north.

contemporary news articles, which made no mention of tesla's invention, reported an unrelated event - an unexpected and severe earthquake in an uninhabited area of alaska.

the next day, the story says, tesla dismantled the machine and burned his notes.

there's a part of me that almost wants to believe this story. i love the idea that someone was smart enough to craft something so powerful, wise enough to recognize its implications, and self-controlled enough to let it go.

that blows my mind.

The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.
Proverbs 15:4

If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.
James 1:26

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness.
James 3:7-9

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence
1 John 3:17-19

In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:16

funny, i can't seem to find anything about letting them hear my clever rhetoric or convincing arguments.

Matthew 18:3

2007-03-07T22:02:00.001-05:00

The sun dapples Cory's broad freckled shoulders as she hunches forward in her plastic lawn chair. Her head is down, but twisted slightly, as if she's trying to crack her neck, or work out an algebra problem she can't quite grasp. Her hands are clasped tightly together, elbows pressing her pastel summer skirt into her thighs, and I'm pretending not to notice the way her left thumb worries away at the inside edge of her right hand. Or the way her legs shake and her flip-flops beat a staccato rhythm in the dirt.

Her posture defines her.

I'm stretched sideways in my camp chair - back against one arm, leg flung over the other and my left boot heel dug into the cup holder. Brea lounges sideways in the V made by my legs and torso, fiddling absently with the strings hanging from my cargo shorts while the grown-ups drone on and on in the heat - an indistinct buzz that hovers somewhere just above and to the left of her six-year-old consciousness. My sunglasses grant me an artificial poker face.

I'm trying to define myself with my posture.

"Cory."

She's still not looking at me. She's waiting for the moment to pass. She's waiting for this sudden mood to leave me. She's making herself small until it does. Without looking at her, I slowly arch my back until it cracks, then casually play another card.

"You're going to do it eventually." It's almost a code - dredging up in her mind a dozen other times I've gotten my way. For what it's worth, I feel like a manipulative bastard, but this is the only way I know. One of these days, I'm going to say that to her again, I'm going to push her one too many times, and she's going to look me in the eyes and tell me where to stick it. And on that day I will dance a jig.

I will hop right out of my chair, God will for one shining moment bless me with the rhythm I've never had, and a choir of Southern Baptist angels will provide the background music while I dance the kind of jig that lets the whole rotten world know that this girl is no longer afraid of it. Then, of course, the record will skip, the choir will disappear and I will sit back down - because I am too cool for that crap anyway.

Today I just wish she could meet my eyes.

"Why?" Her voice is plaintive, and after a second she looks up at me. She's also rocked back in her chair the smallest bit, an infinitesimal prelude to standing up, and I force myself to relax. Why.

Because you cannot live your life in fear. Because if you look like a rabbit the wolves will find you. Because you have been a victim once - more than once - and I have made it my mission in life to prepare you never to be one again. Because I am stubborn. Because I want to see you turn your festering wounds into battle scars that testify to your strength rather your suffering.

"Because it'll shut me up, and I think we both want that."

"Fine." She stands up and turns to grab her purse, telegraphing irritation in her quick motions, then panic in her almost stumble.

"Who's it going to be?"

"What? You're not picking for me?" Sarcasm. Lovely. A single brow arched over my sunglasses and she lowers her eyes. I don't know why people respond to that, but they do. It's like some random superpower I've inherited from my father. Like I said, I'm a manipulative bastard.

"No," I answer slowly, waiting for the last of the irritation to fade before continuing. "You get to pick - anybody you don't already know."

It's a decent party - families on picnic blankets, children flying past adults (adults dodging children's squirt gun fire) and single twenty-somethings doing the Eternally Awkward Dance of the Single Twenty-Something. She scans the crowd for a moment, and I can almost hear the wheels grinding in her head.

No men, obviously. And no cutesy-girl types - they tend to attract men. An older married woman would be safest, but the ones not talking to their husbands all seem to have their hands full with their kids. Her options dwindle as she narrows the field. Finally, she points to Cassie Williams - 29, single and known to be categorically disinterested in boys. Safe.

Cory gives me one last pleading look - which I smile and ignore - before shuffling slowly across the yard to do the impossible task I have set for her. To introduce herself to a stranger.

Head still resting on my knees, Brea twists to face me. I wince for a moment as her hip burrows itself in my stomach. Before I can recover and shift her weight, she drops a bomb on me.

"Why is Cory scared?"

Thank God for sunglasses. Thank God that on hot summer days tears can be passed off as sweat if you turn your head at the right moment. And most definitely, thank God for every little girl who will never really know the answer to that question.

Why is Cory scared.

In spite of the heat, I pull Brea towards me, tucking her head under my chin as I look for the words to not tell a six year old that we live in a world where, in the final analysis, a woman's right to say "No" exists only as long as a man allows her that right. That when "No" is ignored, some women lose the ability to say it at all. And that some of these women, who have had their voices stolen, blame themselves because they could not scream. So they hide.

"A long time ago," I tell her, finally, "Some one hurt Cory very badly. And now she's afraid of people." Brea sits up to meet my eyes - looks right through the sunglasses because grown-ups have always met her gaze and presumably always will. For a moment, I'm caught up in the way she tilts her head back and to one side like her father and furrows her brow like her mother. Then she nods.

"I'll go help." She says it casually, as if announcing her intention to go grab a soda or a cupcake, and hops down from my lap. As if it was as simple as that. Just "go help."

Cory is still moving at a snail's pace across the lawn, and Brea catches up to her easily. It's so natural to watch her little hand slide into Cory's big one. To watch Cory frown down at her, then slowly return her smile. To watch Brea's confidence melt into Cory. To know that in the middle of my friend's back yard on a sweaty Sunday afternoon, I am having my concepts of courage, faith and hope completely rearranged.

2007-02-22T22:41:00.000-05:00

the tragedy of the modern church is not that we have turned away from God. it is that, believing ourselves turning to Him, we have turned away from men.

2007-02-01T02:08:00.001-05:00

a broken world
needs a broken heart
to understand it

2007-01-24T20:12:00.001-05:00

this is only a test
mobile blogging is hard

regarding forgiveness

2006-08-28T22:22:00.000-05:00

are you remembering to forget?

or forgetting to remember?

safe harbor

2006-06-05T22:45:00.000-05:00

on the second floor of my office building, my boss's father keeps his business. he is one of the kindest, friendliest, most encouaging people i've ever met. if i could offer half the witness he does with his treatment of others, i'd consider myself wholly blessed.

so when business took me up there this afternoon, i eagerly popped my head into his office and we ended up talking for about 20 minutes. he asked about my family, my upbringing, my brother, and my church. it was a thoroughly enjoyable conversation in a way that few are. so when he asked me how i was finding the company, i was delighted to tell him how much i'm loving the enviroment, how amazing his sons are, all this joy that's bubbling out of me as we're talking. talking with him makes me joyful - i wish i had that gift!

so in my clumsy and indirect fashion, i told him how, as i'd driven home after my first day i was struck by the fact that i hadn't heard anyone speak badly of anyone else - not once. and he kind of tilted his head to the side and said "that's funny - that's been coming up in our bible studies lately, how we're not to harbor enmity against others, because christ killed it on the cross."

the wheels started turning in my head as i considered that - that hatred isn't the opposite of grace, nor anger, nor resentment nor bitterness. those are all facets of enmity - positive, active, hatred or ill will. it's not just failing to choose forgiveness, it's choosing unforgiveness.

grace chooses love above all else, puts the needs of others before the self, resulting in unity and deeper relationship. enmity chooses pride above all else, places the demands of the self first, and creates discord and seperation.

so if we are saved by grace, if christ's work was to provide grace for us, if we are to walk in his footsteps and live as he lived, then mustn't we put away every ill thought, every buried resentment, every willful remembrance of hurt? because in remembering these things we not only fail to follow him, we work against him.

where credit is due

2006-06-04T20:48:00.000-05:00

i'm feeling disconnected lately, it's been a while since i had anything resembling daily devotional time, i'm smoking again and i keep feeling like God is getting farther and farther away. all day long i've been stressed like something horrible is happening or just happened or about to happen.

but i remember this - we praise Him in the storm, and when we fall begin again at our beginnings. so:

i'm thankful for my roommate's father rebuilding his PC so that i could still get my work done when i couldn't do it on my Mac.

i'm thankful to my mother for giving me a laptop that i can use from here on out.

i'm thankful for my Mac, that is perfect for me if not for business.

i'm thankful for my truck, and that it's so wonderfully and comfortably beaten up.

i'm thankful that my next move is already going smoothly and i don't feel down to the wire stressing about where i'm going to live.

i'm thankful for my job and the amazing Christ-like examples my coworkers provide in their grace, acceptance and encouragement

i'm thankful that said job pays well.

i'm thankful that my relationship with my mother has been so transformed.

i'm thankful for my community that can admonish and encourage with equal gentleness and love.

i'm thankful that God loves me enough to make me worthy of His love, even when i struggle against Him.

i'm thankful for mary's involvement and servant's heart, for travis's transparency, for aaron's continuing example of love lived out, for dave c's compassion, for jeff's truthfulness in difficult places, for shannon's ability to build relationships between the women in her community, for dave and lorrie's enthusiasm and generosity, and for andie's constant hugs.

dry

2006-05-21T00:17:00.000-05:00

i was talking about a friend recently about writing, and i remembered how much i miss it. but i really don't have anything to write about.

i wonder if there's a metaphor in that.

loving the sawah wynn

2006-04-30T21:12:00.000-05:00

today i want to talk about my friend sarah lynn.

i met sarah lynn at a bonfire and the first thing i noticed was that her shirt was cut very low. which was a nice change because up to that point i'd been thinking that my shirt made me look fat.

the second thing i noticed was that she was sidling shamelessly up to one of the guys. which was also nice because it was better than thinking about the guy on the other side of the fire who i wanted to sidle up to, but i had too much pride. (not the good kind of pride that says "i don't have to act up to get some one else's attention, i'm enough just as i am." it was the kind of pride that said "if i tried to act up i'd just look foolish, and no matter what i mustn't look foolish.")

the next time i saw her i noticed that she had a very short skirt on, and i got to feel smug again because my skirt was much longer. i'm not sure what i would've gotten to think had i been wearing one of my short skirts, but that's neither here nor there.

the funny part is that i should've felt better noticing all of her flaws in comparisson to my own presumably less sinful state. i found an awful lot of them - you generally can if you're looking. instead i kept feeling worse and worse. i noticed my tummy more, and my weak chin, and without getting too specific it should be noted that my upper body is designed in such a way that would render the wearing of a low cut shirt an exercise in futility.

but, since everybody else liked her, i had to act like i liked her too - otherwise somebody might think that i was petty. or judgemental. or snide. or jealous. or just plain mean-spirited.

the problem with sarah lynn (other than her disgusting ability to fill out a blouse, which i think is horribly unfair of her) is that she works with special needs children. in my book, that's just showing off. and she tells boys when she likes them in a non-threatening and mature sort of way. well, she did once anyway, and for some things, once is enough. and also, she's nice to everybody. everybody. how rude.

anyway, our Father must've decided at some point that He'd had enough though, because one day i discovered that i actually liked her. i guess i should tell you about some awakening experience when i came face to face with my black little heart, but that's not what happened. which is good, because if i had i'd probably still be mired in self-contempt. this time He didn't do it directly (He's sneaky that way).

instead He moved me in baby steps to a place where i cold see past my insecurities to how amazing she really is. so loving sarah lynn is a little bit like loving God - i know she loves me back even though i don't deserve it.

train wreck

2006-04-12T22:46:00.000-05:00

can't change course and can't slow down
progression towards the inevitable
   marked by signs
   screaming "bridge out ahead"
but the track keeps going
   and so do i
while some demented engineer shovels coal
   faster and faster.
   (should've fired him years ago.)

the fall.

the crash.

and you're calling me

hopes, desires, dreams scattered in the snow
   like so many passengers
   broken or burning or both.

stumble to my feet,
   bleeding but breathing
   blinded by smoke
   feeling my way towards light

baggage stored away
   but not thrown away
   scattered like landmines amid the debris
   trips me, brings me to my knees

and you're calling me.

and i know, if i follow the sound of your voice,
i won't trip again
   (no more blood in the snow)
i'll escape the wreckage
   (no more smoke in my eyes)
i'll be warm, and safe
   (no more wolves howling over freezing winds)

but the burning debris is also warm
if i stop
   just this once
   just for a moment
   just a step out of the way
i'll be warm
i can salvage something
   some of that baggage
   carry it with me

and you're calling me.
   fainter now
   i've stopped listening
   i hear movement
i can save something
   i'll find you later
   i have a train to repair

Safe Place

2006-03-24T02:16:00.000-05:00

i'm sitting in starbucks, pouring through max lucado's "gentle thunder" while waiting for the other members of my learning cluster on new testament greek to arrive. at the table nearest me, two men in their early thirties are discussing the health of their mega-church's bible studies. when one of my friends arrives, he comments that two guys across the room are discussing their house church.

another starbucks, another day, another meeting. i see my friend's things on a comfy chair: a leather jacket, a note pad, and a book labeled "understanding god." so i sit mine down next to his. but when i return with my mocha, it's a total stranger reading the book and we end up talking god and church for the next half hour.

i like the encouragement that comes from seeing others pursue christ in the world. i like knowing that i can take him where ever i am openly. i like being reminded that he's not a hush-hush, quiet voices subject.

i don't want to retreat to safe, cloistered bubbles apart from the world, prelabeled "christian," where unbelievers fear to tread. i want them to over hear me talking about god - not because i'm so wise or well-spoken, but because it opens conversation. i want them to hear me admitting my struggles and flaws, learning by osmosis that we are not perfect and don't expect them to be either - and that old white republican men haven't cornered the market on god.

i need to be always aware that having god's spirit in me means i am always his hands and his feet, even when i don't want to be. a (relative) stranger, a non-christian, asked me for a ride the other day, and i said i couldn't because i didn't have enough gas. but the truth was that they were pushing me out of my comfort zone, and what really bruised my heart was realizing that i was showing them a counterfeit of god's love - a love that would only step out so far. i need the accountability of outside eyes watching me for signs of his love.

maybe i'm alone in liking it this way. maybe there's a reason to have christian places to go, read and fellowship. but i'm not sure how i feel about that anymore.

a question

2006-02-26T01:50:00.000-05:00

if we become proponents of nothing, do we become proponents of apathy?

Miracles & Truths

2006-01-22T19:31:00.000-05:00

Miracle - God Himself descends from On High, trailing Clouds of Glory, to show me where my lost keys are.

Lesser Miracle - Aaron remembers seeing them and Scott drives to their last known location and is able to locate them in a darkened theater.

Dubious Miracle - I manage not to lose them in the first place.

Miracle - A man on heroin has a vision, wherein an angel instructs him not to get into a particular vehicle. Moments later, the vehicle - whose driver is also high - loses a brief but nasty battle with a tractor trailer. The man's life is spared and he quits cold turkey.

Lesser Miracle - A woman losing a twenty year battle with alcoholism is convinced by a church-going neighbor to enter yet another program. This one works.

Dubious Miracle - A fatherless youth raised in a poverty-stricken neighborhood is able to complete high school and college without ever wrestling with an addiction.

From a certain perspective every good thing is a miracle, divinely wrought in our lives through means both holy and mundane

Divine Revelation - God Himself descends from On High, trailing Clouds of Glory, to tell me which of several jobs I should take.

Lesser Revelation - An offhand comment by a friend inspires me to scan one more time over the want-ads, where I notice for the first time the Perfect Job. I fly through the interview and begin my lifelong career as an obscenely over-paid brownie taster.

Dubios Revelation - My friend and I pour over the paper together, and she points out a job to me that I had missed.

From a certain perspective, are all truths "revealed truths," shown to us at the proper time through means both holy and mundane?

amazed

2006-01-15T19:25:00.000-05:00

the more i know about God, the more i become aware of the inadequacy of my ability to convey His truth in any meaningful way. and the more i am confident in His ability to use me anyway.

buy the lie

2006-01-12T00:33:00.000-05:00

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy . . .
- John 10:10

and he does. he steals us away from our Father, he kills what joy remains in us, and he destroys our souls a day at a time.

then he holds up our pain and our grief, offering them as evidence that there is either no God at all or else no righteous and loving God.

and we buy it. scary.

i finally get it

2005-12-09T19:34:00.000-05:00

and you need to get it too

he's not interested in judging you

he just wants you to come home

Be The Ball

2005-11-26T03:37:00.000-05:00

That thing you want to set in motion - the one you need to see arch perfectly through the blue sky and come to rest in the place of your choosing - that's the Ball.

See a need, meet it.

Hear a call, answer it.

Find a void, fill it.

Lack truth, speak it.

Need recognition, give it.

Desire more, offer it.

And various other affirmations of the obvious.

Be in motion.

Be the Ball.

Shame About Your Love Life

2005-11-08T00:49:00.000-05:00

"Sure, I think cars are great - I'd love to have one myself. But if God never chooses to give me a car, hey, I'm cool with that, too."

"You're spending $30 a month surfing Carmax online."

"So? There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not really looking, I just, y'know, want to see what might happen."

"Uh-huh."

* The precedeing was not directed at anyone. The following is directed at everyone:

Thirty dollars a month is a lot to spend looking for a bridge partner.

The problem with people who are looking is that they aren't content where they are. They're not grateful for the Gift of Singleness. They're looking for someone else to complete them. They're not enough. They're . . . Desperate.

Right. Well, I am looking. For a date, for a boyfriend, and ultimately for a husband. Please do not be alarmed - the deafening sound you hear is merely every unmarried male within earshot scrambling to find a hiding place. (They'd sleep a lot better if they knew I've already ruled most of them out.)

Own it, people. If we're not ready to be honest about our desires, we're no where near ready to act on them.

Needful Things

2005-09-27T11:59:00.000-05:00

I'm standing in the Hair Goodies aisle at CVS. It's two in the morning and I have a dilemma.

In my left hand, there is a ClippyDo - the hairband I use to secure the mangy tangle that sprouts from my scalp every morning. Having carelessly broken it's predecessor, I am now looking to this replacement ClippyDo to guarantee a continuation of the previous few week's Acceptable Hair Days. Twenty-three days, to be specific. Twenty-three days without a single Bad Hair Day.

In my right hand, a twenty dollar bill is clutched. It represents gas in my tank and food on my table for the next three days. It is my security blanket. As my eyes travel back and forth between the $3.69 ClippyDo and the grubby but beloved twenty dollar bill, I ask myself a question.

"Do I really need this?"

I'm at the food court. It's Sunday afternoon, and there's talk of a movie in the air. I want to go. I really, really want to go. I want to see the movie, and all my friends are going.

But I've got five days between me and my next paycheck, and sixty dollars to bridge the gap. My gas tank is empty again, and I do love my morning coffee. And my lunchtime polish sausage. And the occasional chai.

A movie is eight dollars, plus the inevitable popcorn. Plus a trip to the diner afterwards. A third of my budget in one night. The same question.

"Do I really need this?"

It's late again. The clock just dragged itself past midnight and link group is still going. I'm loving it. The conversation, the fellowship, the connection.

And in the morning . . . work.

Work that I'll be late for because I won't get to sleep until after one if I leave now - and I don't seem to be leaving now. I'm looking around at the faces of people I love and people I'm learning to love, and work in the morning seems distant and unimportant. And maybe it is. Time is in as short supply as money and I know I have to prioritze. So I ask myself

"Do I really need this?"

"Why?"

It's the unspoken question that applies to every need. I need the ClippyDo to feel put together - to feel something close to attractive. To not feel insecure and frumpy. I need to go to the movie to not come home and feel lonely and bored. To not feel out of the loop. I need the time with my Link Group to feel like part of the community. To feel like I'm contributing something and to feel like I'm learning how to Play Well With Others.

I need food to keep this body alive and sleep to keep it moving. I need a job to keep the food coming and the sleeping place warm. I need companionship to give value to everything else. Or do I just want them?

What's the difference, really, between a need and a want? Maybe needs are survival based and wants are merely preferences, but then . . . what's the difference? Survivial is not a need. It is a preference. (A preference that will ultimately be thwarted, by the way. As I am given to believe, we will all wake up one morning to discover that our fondest desire - to continue traipsing about this imperfect planet - has been denied us.) Yet we spend most of our lives scrambling to meet wants that we dress up as needs - starting with food, moving into tastey food, and finishing somewhere between air-conditioning and SUVs.

The truth is, I don't need food. I want food so that my tummy will not hurt and I will stay here a while longer. I don't need sleep. I want sleep because it empowers me to do other things and prevents me from passing out at what would likely be very inopportune times.

Sometimes I wonder if we don't make our wants into needs to justify giving them undo importance. So . . . what do we really need?

And why?

the Fresh Meat Syndrome

2005-08-11T19:05:00.000-05:00

She is, quite simply, the most enchanting creature you have ever laid eyes on. The way her hair cascades down her back, the way her teeth flash when she smiles, the way her gorgeous eyes meet yours without hesitation or reserve - all perfect.

You've been working your way through the crowd towards her for twenty minutes. You make small talk in order to edge closer, exchanging brief distracted words with people who's faces you forget as you search the room for hers. Finally, you're there. You start, stammer, and come up with some stunning bit of wit or commentary - maybe your A Material reserved for women like this.

She laughs, and you find utter fulfillment in that laugh. You smile, basking in the glow of her admiration for even so small a thing, as you deftly turn your opening sally into what you hope will be a much longer conversation.

Then, out of no where, some other rat bastard has the unmitigated gall to interupt your communion with the enchanting creature. Sputtering, you realize that you've been demoted to one of two potential suitors. Unbelievably, you're about to become one of three. Then four. Before you know it, you've been bumped out to the outer edges of the conversation. With nothing else to say, you shrug your shoulders and wander into the theatre to find a seat. Welcome to church.

Did she come here to meet one of you, or did she come to meet Him?

Moment By Moment Till Forever Passes By

2005-07-10T23:22:00.000-05:00

I wonder if God ever asked anyone to commit to Him forever? I wonder if I'm even capable of it. Most of us can't commit for a single day. And even if I commit in all sincerety to live the next week for God and God alone, what is the vaule of that promise? What is the value of intentions? Easily made, easily broken, sometimes impossible to keep. The truth is, I have trouble giving Him this moment, never mind promising to return to Him future moments that He hasn't even given me yet.

But I think about it a lot. What if God wants me to stay single? Could I do it? What if He wants me to continue this nomadic existence for the rest of my life? Would He really make me do that? What if I'm supposed to lose my job tomorrow? Sure it maybe for the best ultimately, but I like having money to go out with my friends. And on and on and on.

It's called borrowing trouble. I expect myself to be able, right now, to accept all of the worst possible things that could happen - things that probably never will happen and couldn't possibly all happen - because that's want God says is best. I'm mentally preparing myself for a lifetime of the same series of disasters I've experienced over the past few years. No, for the rest of my life to be a series of sacrifices in the name of God.

Maybe that's what it'll be like. Maybe it won't. It scares me, no question, but at some point (and i think this is that point) I have to recognize that all the worrying I've done in the past has been no help in dealing with the present. The only thing that helps me in the present is God. Which means that worrying today is useless, because only God will be able to help me tomorrow.

I can't decide to follow Him tomorrow. I can only ask myself if I'm truly following Him today.

Finish This Sentence

2005-07-07T22:32:00.000-05:00

A Samaritan Is . . .

. . . Good, right?

Wrong. In the eyes of his contemporaries, a samaritan was the mongrel half-breed of jews and non-jews. They were perceived as uneducated, ill-mannered, irreligious and just a tad unholy. They were what happened when God's Chosen people went bad.

But after two thousand years of repeating the same story over and over, you say "Samaritan" and I say "Good." It's all we know. The only samaritan you ever hear about was good, ergo all samaritans are good.

Be careful what stories you carry - they might be the only truth that gets heard.

Stealth Dating

2005-07-04T22:50:00.000-05:00

Transparency:

the willingness to live one's life as an open book.

Stealth Dating:

the refusal to be transparent about one's romantic entanglements.

I know, you really, really like this guy. You think it could be something special. And you certainly don't want to ruin it by getting the whole community involved. And what if you make a mistake, cross a line prematurely, fail or commit some major sin - you're supposed to be setting an example!

Sorry, but no. You are setting an example - with your whole life, not just the easy or obvious parts. In moments your not even aware of, with people you may only speak with a handful of times, you are showing them what christianity looks like in this culture. You're showing them how a christian woman handles her job, her friends, her family and her education. You're setting a bar in speech, behavior, dress and attitude.

And by building a hedge around this aspect of your life you are living a lie. You're choosing to show only a part of the picture.

Single women all feel lonely at one time or another - but not you. You are the image of Contented Singleness - an image based on a lie that presents an impossible standard. You never seem to be lonely, so why should they?

Dating women are wrestling with issues that pop up in all relationships. How much time should we spend together? How far can we go physically? How do we behave in groups? How do we develope a mutual spiritual life? How are you helping them, exactly?

You gave God your whole life, remember? Not just the aspects you were comfortable displaying. If you're in this to find your comfort zone and set up shop, you picked the wrong religion. Every moment of every day of your life is an example to some one. Deal with it.

WARNING: Explicit Material Beyond Link

2005-06-27T23:37:00.000-05:00

WOW

that's it. just "WOW".

She Already Knows (And So Do All Her Friends)

2005-06-26T22:50:00.000-05:00

This is the first of my "dating posts." I considered carefully whether to include them in this blog (as opposed to my other, lighter blog) but decided it is, for me anyway, a spiritual issue. I'm going to try to post one a week, in addition to any regularly scheduled posts. Enjoy.

She Already Knows (And So Do All Her Friends)

You have a friend, probably a good friend, who is head over heals in love with (or infatuated with) a particular girl. And even if you didn't know him, it'd be fairly obvious. He makes up excuses to be around her, does ridiculous things to get her attention, and becomes absolutely tongue-tied when he finally gets a chance to speak to her.

Somehow, out of all the women he knows, she's the only one that got a birthday present/card. He would leave the emergency room to help her move, drive to another state to be "there for her" when she mightcouldpossibly have flunked a midterm, and get out of line for Star Wars tickets if she wanted to go have coffee.

And he thinks she's an absolute idiot.

He is hiding safely behind the knowledge that she couldn't possibly know how he feels, since he Hasn't Told Her Yet. Dude? She knows. I know you're scared to tell her, but she already knows. I know you're waiting for the right time to tell her, but she already knows. I know you don't want you're friendship to change, but she already knows.

So the question is - how much does he really care about this girl?

Because if she already knows and isn't into him, he's making her uncomfortable. Or if she already knows and is into him, he's wasting her time while she waits for him to ask her out. Neither of those scenarios have her best interest at heart, do they? It comes down to a question of what he wants (to keep putting it off) versus what she wants (for him to stop being so creepy or just ask her out).

I know you're scared - it's okay.

She already knows.

And so do all her friends.

Right Relationship

2005-05-26T23:12:00.000-05:00

what does it mean to "be in right relationship with God?"

what does it look like?

Wait Upon The Lord

2005-05-20T23:34:00.000-05:00

Image:

Upon entering your garage early one morning, you discover that during the night your hammer has hopped off the workbench and started pounding away at everything it came across. Can you imagine that ending well? Or maybe your car has taken off to work without you. You get to the office and discover that the copier has been running all night - making copies of nothing because there wasn't anything to copy. Your computer has locked up because it's busy running processes you never asked for, but it doesn't matter because pretty soon the sprinklers kick on and you run out of the office soaking wet.

I love it when God gives me a real opportunity to serve Him. I love the feeling of rightness that comes from knowing you've done the right thing in the right way at the right time and you've gotten to be a part of His plan. It's amazing. So I start looking for ways to serve. I hop right off the workbench and start pounding at everything that looks like a nail. And you know what? It never works out. Ever.

I don't get to write the script. It's easy to forget sometimes that I am a tool in the hands of Almighty God, and He knows better than I where I should be and when.

Normal, Healthy _____

2005-05-18T08:50:00.000-05:00

statement:

if everyone does it, it must be normal.

assumption:

what is normal is therefore healthy.

problem:

everyone lies, but lying is not healthy.

everyone steals (in some fashion), but stealing is not healthy.

everyone says unkind things, but saying unkind things is not healthy.

everyone has premarital sex . . .

yet the justification remains "it's perfectly healthy - everyone does it."

-->does not compute<--

Tuning In

2005-05-15T22:45:00.000-05:00

Last spring it was all I could do to raise my voice above a whisper during worship.

This struck me this morning when I found myself unable to not sing along - even though the band was only running a sound check. I still can't carry a tune, but somehow that doesn't matter anymore. The line between "quality" and "best i can do" has begun to blur in my mind, and I wonder what that says about God's acceptance of the most humble offerings.

Light Up Your World

2005-05-11T23:27:00.000-05:00

So this business about "salt and light" - specifically the "light" part. We were discussing that verse among others in link group Monday when I had what I will call a psuedo-mini-epiphany.

Light does not exist for it's own sake - never has, never will. The sun is a beautiful thing, but it's not for looking at. It makes it possible to look at everything else. In other words, we're not here to simply shine, or to somehow draw attention to ourselves, in an effort to draw attention to Christ. There are those people who will look at you and say "I want what she has" but they're just as likely to imitate your wardrobe as your religion, if there's nothing else there.

What part of truth are we illuminating for others? Are we giving them comfort, confirming their convictions, or just muddying the waters?

Pleasing God

2005-04-27T23:56:00.000-05:00

My last boyfriend and I had one major problem - I never got any feedback. Period. Now mind you, I don't say this to denegrate him - he's a very nice person. But after a while, I stopped trying to do things for him, because I never had anyway to know if I'd done something right or not. How many times does a guy send flowers to a girl who never says "thank you"?

I want to do things for God, I do. Call it gratitude, call it love, whatever. But how do I know if what I offer him is pleasing to him? Sure, it'll be pleasing in the way that a four-year-old's crayon magnum opus is pleasing to his parents, but still. How do I know? I'm afraid that - without feedback - I'll get to that same point where I just give up.

Thoughts?

The Plank In My Own Eye

2005-04-22T00:55:00.000-05:00

Forgiveness - Reason #586

If a friend's behavior has offended you, your sense of offense often leads you to treat them in the very same fashion which first offended you.

Lord deliver me from my own hypocracy.

Surface Life

2005-04-18T01:50:00.000-05:00

It's another way of saying "shallow." Or "superficial." It's about my relationship with Him lately. It's waking up one day and realizing that I've barely scratched the surface but I've already stopped digging - then remembering that I realized it yesterday but didn't do anything about it then either. It's knowing that I know better, knowing what I should do, and still not doing it. It's questioning my motivation, questioning my capacity, questioning my desire until the moment has passed me by. It's staying home when I should get off my butt. It's staying out all night when I should be home. It's resting in the knowledge that I'm on the right path, and ignoring the fact that I'm not going anywhere.

It's my life. Right now. With no depth, no devotion, and no desire for more.

It's a reason to pray.

Critical Thinking

2005-04-14T13:36:00.000-05:00

from the other side of the wall, i hear a voice. it's a voice I've been hearing since i arrived, and expect to go on hearing until i leave. one by one the days of my life will be measured out by the unchanging cadence of this voice, repeating eternally the same conversations.

. . . well, he is a pain, but he's my father, so, you know, of course i'm going to take care of him . . . no, my brother can't help - well, he won't, so i guess i'll just do it all . . . would you believe it took him two hours to get up this morning? anybody else whould've just left him in bed, but not me . . . not that he's planning on leaving me anything in the will. now, my sister, on the other hand . . . i have a life too, what about my life . . . no, i live with him . . .

actually, we weren't even in this market until i came along . . . found it all by myself and it is BIG . . . had to convince them to do it, but i was right . . . making a lot of money, thanks to me . . . no, no, i don't mind, after all, it's not about me . . .

little by little my patience wears thin - full up with the combination of self-pity and self-agrandizement that streams into my office daily. (not to mention that he routinely gets caught in lies to cover his own mistakes.) what i am trying to establish here is that i am fully justified in the absolute scorn and contempt that i feel for this man.

and that brings me up short everytime. because i am NOT justified - not by any measure. his sins are no less covered than my own, and i am confronted with the knowledge that it is i who have no excuse.

Loving God

2005-04-13T00:24:00.000-05:00

there are two principle metaphors used throughout the bible to describe the relationship between man and God. the father and son metaphor with God as the parent is used repeatedly in the new testament - often by Christ in his parables. the ardent bridegroom and fickle bride metaphor is more common in the old testament - used by the prophets trying to call israel back into right relationship with God.

does God use existing relationships to help us get a handle on how we should relate to Him, or did he design our biology so that our relationships with others would pattern after our relationship to Him? and why do i suspect that the answer is "yes"?

the parent/child relationship is easy for me - in terms of humility and obedience. not that i have them mastered by any stretch of the imagination, but i can understand the principle sufficiently to desire the actuality. a child obeys a parent because the parent is wiser and generally posesses information beyond the child's capacity. duh. and who could be more wise or posess more information than God Almighty?

but the bridegroom/bride relationship . . . love God? i have issues with that. oh, i want to want it, but it scares the living crap out of me. there's a part of me that can completely trust Him in the abstract, can trust Him enough in actuality to obey Him even when it doesn't make sense to my eyes, but is terrified to trust God enough to love Him. and honestly, my rational mind can't even wrap itself around the problem.

somewhere in there, i'm still terrified of getting burned.