Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#16 in a Series)

And none too soon.

Mother Teresa, Part 4

Kenneth Woodward wrote a nice essay for the Wall Street Journal about the Mother T story. Here it is:

A Special Breed of Saint
By KENNETH L. WOODWARD September 8, 2007; Page A12

Ten years ago this week I watched Mother Teresa's funeral on television, then got up the next morning to write an appreciative cover story on her life for Newsweek. All day long I imagined that she had turned in her sari, jumped into a convertible and headed to the south of France to write her autobiography, "From Calcutta to Cape d'Antibes: My True Story." In other words, I felt Mother Teresa was much too perfect, too spiritually self-assured, too much the "living saint."

I could admire her, but only at a distance.

I wish I knew then what we all know now -- that for the last half century of her life Mother Teresa was inwardly tortured by the sense that God had abandoned her. Even as she went about assuring the sick and dying of God's love, she herself felt only emptiness and loss. The more the religious order she founded prospered, the more her private religious life withered. We learn this from a selection of her letters to her spiritual advisers, published this week by Doubleday under the deceptively pious title, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light."

The title is laced with irony. Having pledged to live for Christ alone -- "I want to love Jesus as he has never been loved before," she confided -- she found only "darkness and coldness and emptiness so great that nothing touches my soul." The language is reminiscent of "the dark night of the soul" that the famous Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, described as a painful purgation. But for Mother Teresa, the night seems to have lifted only once, briefly, before descending again as a permanent condition.

I always suspected that beneath her veneer of self-effacement Mother Teresa was one tough Albanian woman. She had to be, pushing all the way up the church ladder to win permission for her Missionaries of Charity to work among "the poorest of the poor" in India. Hers became a worldwide organization with only one spokesperson, one decision-maker, one figurehead to take credit for the work her colleagues did. Cardinals and bishops glowed in this diminutive woman's presence. When she posed next to Pope John Paul II, as she often did, he was the other person in the photo. This winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace (1979) seemed invincible. But now we discover that she lost the taste for saving souls. "Heaven means nothing to me," she told her confessor.

What are we to make of these personal revelations? Reading them, I am reminded of another hugely popular saint, Therese of Lisieux. She entered a Carmelite cloister at age 15 and died nine years later of tuberculosis. Her reputation for holiness was based on a spiritually cheerful autobiography that was posthumously published as "The Life of a Soul." Among Catholics it was an international bestseller. Only later was it discovered that her own sister, Pauline, then head of the convent, had removed all the sickbed entries in which Therese described her spiritual dryness and how she feared a loss of faith. The unexpurgated version became a spiritual classic.

Like that 19th century saint, Mother Teresa was ill served by her admirers, I always thought, especially by the almost obsequious deference shown her by members of her own order. Pride, after all, is prime among the seven deadly sins, and I often wondered whether Mother Teresa secretly, even unconsciously, relished the adulation she received. Now we know that all she wanted was to live in the presence of God. Instead, she experienced only his absence. She took to calling him "The Absent One."
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A number of commentators have concluded from the letters that Mother Teresa lost her faith. They seem unaware that Vatican judges cited the letters as proof of her exceptional faith. That figures: What the church looks for in a saint is not just good works -- for that there are Nobel Prizes -- but solid evidence that the candidate for canonization was transformed, inwardly and utterly, by God's grace.
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From the letters I think we can say -- must say -- that Mother Teresa was a special breed of saint: a genuine mystic. The Catholic tradition includes a rich and subtle store of insights into the mystical life. By that I mean the lives of those men and women who seek to experience union with God in this life. Wanting this experience doesn't mean that God will gratify that desire. In any case, the experience is often short-lived. Mother Teresa tells us in her letters that she once felt God's powerful presence and heard Jesus speak to her. Then God withdrew and Jesus was silent. What Mother Teresa experienced thereafter was faith devoid of any emotional consolation.
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But the letters show us something else that is crucial in the life of a mystic: They need the council of others, usually those less spiritually advanced, for direction. No one becomes a saint all by herself, though we Americans like to think anyone can find God unaided. In the case of Mother Teresa it was a theologian, Father Joseph Neuner, who showed her how her sense of abandonment mirrored the experience of the crucified Christ himself, who felt the Father had forsaken him. Afterwards, she wrote, "I came to love the darkness."
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In the end, Mother Teresa had to rely on faith, hope and charity. These are the virtues expected of all Christians, not just the spiritual elite. She was one of us after all.

Mother Teresa, Part 3

GetReligion.org had a writeup about Time Magazine's Mother Teresa article. Their posting was fine, but the readers' comments to the posting were particularly good. Check it all out here.

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If you don't want to read all 23 comments, and you trust my judgment, you can just read #3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, 20, 21.

The indications of her struggles with spiritual doubt and aridity are truly valuable and even inspirational. In a world of overweight “prophets” who prance the stages of high-tech evangelical superchurches shouting fundamentalist doctrine, or pompously robed automatons droning liturgical rite to snoozing masses, Teresa’s practice of the hard-core Christian Gospel remains an absolute beacon in the murk.

If her inner-faith had been marked by constant, rapturous encounters and visions in some cloister, how could she have ever torn herself away to care for the poorest of the poor? Therein lies both the heartache and the ineffable beauty of Teresa’s spiritual journey.

Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#15 in a Series)

Excitement and retribution. All on the same album cover.

Mother Teresa, Part 2

Carol Zaleski wrote an article for First Things about four years ago, in which she discusses "The Dark Night of Mother Teresa." Zaleski has some good insights, and provides a reasonable interpretation of what was going on with Mother T - and what goes on with us. Check it out here.

"We may prefer to think that she spent her days in a state of ecstatic mystical union with God, because that would get us ordinary worldlings off the hook. . . . [Yet] what made her self-negating work possible was not a subjective experience of ecstasy but an objective relationship to God shorn of the sensible awareness of God's presence. . . . The way Mother Teresa learned to deal with her trial of faith [was] by converting her feeling of abandonment by God into an act of abandonment to God."

Mother Teresa, Part 1

It's old news by now, but I'm running behind in my blog posts. Actually, it was old news already when it came out in August. But I didn't pick up on the story when it was first reported three years ago. It took a Time Magazine cover story to catch my attention.

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I've blogged in the past about how much I hate American news magazines, but after reading David Van Biema's article, I must acknowledge there can be good among the bad. Considering the kind of publication this article appears in, Van Biema's profile is surprisingly well-written, insightful, and even-handed.

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If you're a follower of Christ and have never felt that God is distant, then you won't identify much with Mother Teresa. But if you've had, or are having, your "dark night of the soul," then it's worth taking the time to read the article. Grab a cup of coffee, and ponder.

"I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God - tender, personal love. If you were there, you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'"

I'll Drink to That

"I would like a great lake of ale for the King of kings, and I would like for heaven's family to be drinking it through all eternity."

-- St. Brigid of Kildare (451-525)

Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#14 in a Series)

Darn, I missed it again!

Coming or Going

I've been doing a lot of traveling lately, for both business and pleasure. Maybe too much. Earlier this morning, I pulled an itinerary out of my briefcase marked, "9/20 ORD" and asked myself, "Why am I going to Chicago on the 20th?" The scary part is that it took me maybe 20 long seconds to recall the purpose of this trip. Could be a sign of excessive travel! Or early Alzheimer's.

Here are a couple things I've been thinking about while traveling:

I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet
At ATL, I avoid the shuttle train between the concourses and take the moving sidewalks, instead. It's an attempt to compensate for a lack of exercise in my daily life. I've been on and off these moving sidewalks so many times that I don't need to think about the transitions from "ground not moving" to "ground moving" to "ground not moving." But here's the kicker: every now and then, one of the moving sidewalks won't be moving. And usually, I'll walk on it, anyway, just for fun. And you know what's weird? I usually lurch getting on and off. My brain is so accustomed to having that piece of metal beneath my feet moving that it doesn't adjust well to the times it's not moving. It used to be that I could close my eyes a few steps before the beginning or the end of the dormant sidewalk and make the transition seamlessly, but lately when I've tried that, I stumble, anyway. Apparently, my brain is now calculating the distance and preparing for the transition even without the proximate visual cues.

I'm sure there's a spiritual lesson somewhere in here about learning to deal with life a certain way and not transitioning well to new realities, but frankly, I'm more interested in the physio-cognitive aspects of this phenomenon. Brains are amazing things.

Vogue, Glamour, Elle, GQ, . . . and Then There's Us
A recent poll of 1500 European hotel managers (see pages 2-3) reported that Americans are the 2nd best overall travelers, behind the Japanese, and the most generous tippers by far. One category that stands out, based on my own recent and upcoming travels, is Best Dressed. The Italians win this one, by far, followed by the French and Spanish. I'm planning to go to Italy next month, so maybe I'll pick up a few duds while I'm there. And perhaps I need to: the Worst Dressed in the poll were the Americans, by far. I've done my own survey on my last couple airport trips, and I have to agree. Just go to the airport and try to find someone dressed with any sense of style. When you do, it'll most likely be a foreigner. What is it about America that requires us to look like slobs when we go out in public? Why is comfort our highest value, and why are we so aesthetically clueless? Is there any connection between poor fasion and poor architecture and poor city design? Is it a coincidence that some of the world's best architecture is in Italy and France, the countries where the people dress the best?

That's all for now. I need to go pack for tomorrow's trip.

Yearning for Intelligent Celebrities

I once heard Alex Trebek of Jeopardy fame on the radio. He was speaking to the National Press Club, and what stood out to me was how smart and eloquent he was, not just "another pretty face."



But there are plenty of pretty faces out there who probably ought to keep their traps shut. They may be good actors, but they certainly can say stupid things (so can I, but I manage to stay out of the magazines).



Case in point: Jodie Foster, as interviewed in the latest(?) edition of Entertainment Weekly (thanks to Friendly Atheist for profiling this on his own blog). Check out this quote from p. 41:

Are you religious?

No, I’m an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Even though I don’t believe in God. We celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids. They love it, and when they say, ”Are we Jewish?” or ”Are we Catholic?” I say, ”Well, I’m not, but you can choose when you’re 18. But isn’t this fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar?”

An atheist who loves religion and practices rituals for "fun." I haven't read the article, but from this risible quote, it appears this portrayer of tough women has marshmallow convictions under that steely exterior. What good is it being an atheist if you're going to practice religious rituals and tell your kids they can choose their own beliefs when they're 18? What good would it be to call oneself a "Christian" and participate in Ramadan, or a Muslim and celebrate Easter? For that matter, what kind of parenting is it that cares so little about guiding children regarding life's most important issue?

It seems to me that whatever you're going to be, you ought to be it, and stop playing around. That naive dreamer Jesus said something along those lines: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9.23).

Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#13 in a Series)

Spreading the joy of Jesus wherever he goes.

Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#12 in a Series)

This poor woman married a dummy.

Where Am I ?

Three business trips in three weeks. Slammed or out of town on the weekends. Add it all together, and we get a paucity of postings.

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I'll be back . . .

Need Advice? Ask the Imam.

The Internet has ushered many wonders into our lives, not the least of which is the opportunity to obtain advice on the thorny issues of life.

Check out these three websites for inquiring Muslims. You can learn a lot about their faith, in particular how incredibly legalistic it is. The Pharisees had nothing on these guys. (Sample question: If I burp while fasting and then swallow what I burp up, have I broken the fast? Answer: If it only made it to the throat and not the mouth, you have not broken the fast.)

• efatwa.com
• muftisays.com
• askimam.com - The "Fasting" section is fascinating, or you may prefer to click on the "Random" tab in the middle (or right, depending what page you're on) for samples of all topics.

I'm thankful to the true God that I don't have to live in constant fear of making a misstep and ticking Him off. I'm thankful that my ability to obey depends on more than willpower. And I'm thankful that in the form of Jesus, God came "to rescue us from the hand of our enemies and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days" (Luke 1.74, 75).

Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#11 in a Series)

And He can't dress you any better than that?

Noted & Quoted: Yes, Please

"God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy."

- George MacDonald (1824-1905)

What's Up

OK, architecture fans. Check out this site to see a beautiful comparison of skyscrapers that are now being built around the world. Tellingly, most of them are located in China and the Middle East. The one you see here is already the tallest in the world at 1700+ feet; when completed next year, it'll be something like 2600 feet tall - the exact height is still a secret. It's in Dubai.

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By comparison, the Sears Tower (the tallest in the U.S.) is 1720 feet tall.

Why The Constitution Prohibits The Teaching of Darwinism in Public Schools

An interesting excerpt from today's First Things blog:

The physicist Steve Barr tells the story of a lecture Daniel Dennett gave last year at the University of Delaware, in which he claimed that Darwin had shredded the credibility of religion and was, indeed, the very “destroyer” of God.

In the question session, a philosophy professor named Jeff Jordan suggested to Dennett: “If Darwinism is inherently atheistic, as you say, then obviously it can’t be taught in public schools.” “And why is that?” inquired Dennett, incredulous.

“Because,” said Jordan, “the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution guarantees government neutrality between religion and irreligion.”

Dennett, looking as if he’d been sucker-punched, leaned back against the wall and said, after a few moments of silence, “clever.” After another silence, he came up with a reply: He had not meant to say that evolution logically entails atheism, merely that it undercuts religion.

Barr notes that Jordan’s question reveals how the self-appointed defenders of the scientific method are trying to have it both ways. Don’t allow religious philosophy to intrude into biology classrooms and texts, they say, for that is to soil the sacred precincts of science, which must be reserved for hypotheses that can be rigorously tested and confronted with data. The next minute they are going around claiming that anti-religious philosophy is part and parcel of the scientific viewpoint.

There’s a kind of old-fashioned animus in it all, an Enlightenment claim of a sort of—oh, I don’t know—enlightenedness about our escape from the dark ages of religion....

But there are other pieces of the puzzle that are worth noticing. The tides of book publishing shouldn’t be discounted. The flood of atheism books over past two years followed the flood of theocracy books over the previous two years—and for much the same cause: Because publishers are sheep, they follow in droves, and they want their new books to be like their previously successful books. If Sam Harris’ End of Faith had not made the bestseller list, Christopher Hitchens would not have written his atheism book now, however atheistical he happens to be.

Still, there are reasons Sam Harris started the flood. The attacks of September 11 fit in here somewhere: the sudden unavoidable awareness of Jihadism and radical Islam put a weapon in the hands of opponents of religion. Here are crazies announcing they want to kill us in the name of God, and thus—by the logical fallacy known as illicit conversion—everyone who believes in God must be a murderous lunatic. Here are neo-fascists who are creating theocratic states across the Middle East; and, by that same illicit conversion, America’s evangelicals and Catholics—and Orthodox Jews, for that matter—must want to build Gilead in Harvard Yard.

Callous - (Or Is There A Better Word For It?)

Callous

Function: adjective. Etymology: Middle English, from Latin callosus, from callum, callus callous skin

1 a : being hardened and thickened b : having calluses

2 a : feeling no emotion b : feeling or showing no sympathy for others : HARD-HEARTED

Sunday's

AJC reprinted an article from the Boston Globe about abortion providers who make sure the fetus is good and dead before extracting it during an abortion - this is to avoid running afoul of the partial birth abortion law. Under the circumstances, I guess the procedure, and the article for that matter, shouldn't be surprising.

But what left me agape was the callous manner in which the whole situation is discussed. For some reason, it brings to mind my visit to Auschwitz (or was it one of the other Nazi concentration camps?), where I saw lampshades the camp "doctors" made of human skin - tanned, stretched, and trimmed. Whether the skin was gained from conscious prisoners, unconscious prisoners, or corpses makes a difference to the "donors," I suppose, but modifies only by an irrelevant degree an act which is inherently, irreducibly barbarous.

Probably I've said this before, but I wonder if people will talk about our times 150 years from now like we do about slavery today: "Of course, it was wrong and immoral. How could anyone have defended it?" At least "religion" or "Christianity" won't be the scapegoat this time. We are on the side of protecting innocent nascent life from the death it has done nothing to deserve.

Here is most of the article, edited for brevity, and with certain parts highlighted by me for emphasis - feel free to add your own sarcastic rejoinders as you read. And if you wish, you can find the whole unadulterated article here.

In response to the Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many abortion providers around the country have adopted a defensive tactic. To avoid any chance of partially delivering a live fetus, they are injecting fetuses with lethal drugs before procedures.

That clinical shift in late-term abortions goes against the grain, some doctors say: It poses a slight risk to the woman and offers her no medical benefit.

"We do not believe that our patients should take a risk for which the only clear benefit is a legal one to the physician," Dr. Philip D. Darney, chief of obstetrics at San Francisco General Hospital, wrote in an e-mail. He has chosen not to use the injections.

But others, although they do not perform the banned procedure, say they feel compelled to do all they can to protect themselves and their staffs from the possibility of being accused. Upheld in April, the federal ban is broadly written, does not specify an age for the fetus and carries a two-year prison sentence.
In Boston, three major Harvard-affiliated hospitals —- Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's, and Beth Israel Deaconess —- have responded to the ban by making the injections the new standard procedure for abortions beginning at around 20 weeks' gestation, said Dr. Michael F. Greene, director of obstetrics at Mass. General.

"No physician even wants to be accused of stumbling into accidentally doing one of these procedures," Greene said.

Boston Medical Center, too, has begun using injections for later surgical abortions, said Dr. Phillip Stubblefield, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University Medical School. The decision came "after a lot of anguish about what to do," he said.

The banned method involves partially delivering a live fetus, then intentionally causing its death. Even before it was banned, the procedure was rare, accounting for a fraction of 1 percent of all abortions.

Instead, doctors typically cause the fetus' death surgically while it is still inside the womb and then remove it.

But now, if the fetus is not dead as it begins to emerge, a provider may be accused of violating the law. So lethal injections beforehand, carefully documented, preclude an accusation and prosecution.

Greene said that in the experienced hands of hospital staff, the injections add no risk and are "trivially simple," compared with other obstetrical procedures. The main downside, he said, is that "it is yet another procedure that the patient has to endure."

Patients have not objected to the injections, he said.

"They all are appreciative of what we do for them and understand the circumstances under which we work," Greene said.

The injections are generally done in abortions after 18 or 20 weeks gestation. Medical staff inject either the heart drug digoxin or potassium chloride, a potentially poisonous salt also used in state executions.
San Francisco's Darney and colleagues have studied both chemicals and concluded that digoxin was safe but offered no advantages in the actual abortion procedures. They found no safety record for potassium chloride, but a few case reports suggested that it could be dangerous if accidentally injected into the woman instead of the fetus.

They decided that whether to have an injection should be up to the patient; some are comforted by the idea that the fetus has died before it is removed.

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Dr. Mark Nichols, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health & Science University, ... respects Darney and his point of view, Nichols said, "but at the same time I guess I'm a little bit more concerned about the risk for the faculty and staff here."

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Well, you get the idea.

Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#10 in a Series)

Makes me want to run to the bat room.

Having a Sikh Hair Day

From Faith Central:

This is Major Singh wearing a major turban - purported to be the biggest in the world at 30kg and 400 meters of cloth. He hopes it will be a source of inspiration to young Sikh boys who are opting for having their hair cut rather than covering it.

Find more fun facts about Sikh turbans on the Faith Central blog.

The Line I Most Want to Remember from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

"She's nutty as squirrel poo."

-- page 355

Would You Vote for a Mormon?

I have no affection for the Mormon church. I think Mormonism is a false religion, and assuredly not Christian.

Which leaves me no fan of Mitt Romney. And thinking there's no way I'd vote for him for president. But a recent opinion piece by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post has set me to thinking: maybe my aversion to Romney is misplaced. Here's an excerpt from Gerson:

There is a long tradition of American leaders who believe that religion is so personal it shouldn't even affect their private lives. But this rigid separation between religious conviction and public policy lies outside the main current of American history. Abraham Lincoln's theology, while hardly orthodox, was not his "own private affair." "Nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness," he asserted, "was sent into the world to be trodden on." Martin Luther King Jr. claimed that to find the source of our rights, "it is necessary to move back behind the dim mist of eternity, for they are God-given."

These were theological arguments, not merely rhetorical adornments. But they were also carefully limited.

American political leaders have generally not talked about soteriology -- how the individual soul is saved. In Christian theology, these choices are fundamentally private, and government attempts to influence them are both doomed and tyrannical. American leaders have also wisely avoided the topic of eschatology -- inherently speculative theories about the end or culmination of history.

But religious convictions on the topic of anthropology-- the nature and value of men and women -- have profoundly and positively influenced American history. Many of the greatest advances toward the protection of minority rights, from the abolition of slavery to the civil rights movement, came in part because people of faith pushed for them. And religious men and women made those efforts because they were convinced that all human beings -- not just all believers -- are created in God's image.

So what does this mean for Romney? Many Christians have serious problems with Mormon theology on personal salvation and the nature of history -- disputes that go much deeper than those between, say, Baptists and Presbyterians. These disagreements are theologically important. But they are not politically important, because they are unrelated to governing.

Romney, however, should not make [John F.] Kennedy's mistake and assert that all religious beliefs are unrelated to politics. What Mormonism shares with other religious traditions is a strong commitment to the value and dignity of human beings, including the unborn, the disabled and the poor. This conviction is unavoidably political, because it leads men and women to act in the cause of justice, not in order to impose their religion, but to protect the weak.

Given this common ground, evangelicals and other religious conservatives should not disqualify Romney from the outset. There may be other reasons to oppose him for president, but his belief about the destiny of the soul is not one of them.

What do you think?

Hey Guys, It Might Be Worth Checking Out . . .

(Click on the picture for a larger view.)
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Some Interesting Religious Stats

I lifted the following from the Faith Central blog. Sorry for the funky formatting:

1. Islam: Growth rate 1.84 per cent* with 1.3 billion followers worldwide
2. Baha'i faith: Growth rate 1.70 per cent with 7.7 million followers worldwide
3. Sikhism: Growth rate 1.62 per cent with 25.8 million followers worldwide
4. Jainism: Growth rate 1.57 per cent with 5.9 million followers worldwide
5. Hinduism: Growth rate 1.52 per cent with 870 million followers worldwide
6. Christianity: Growth rate 1.38 per cent with 2.2 billion followers worldwide
*rate of change of adherants to this religion between 2000-2005 as a percentage per year
Atheism is growing at a rate of 1.39 per cent and Afghanistan has the fastest growing population of Atheists.

Where are faiths growing fastest?

Faith Where is it growing fastest?
Baha'i faith Qatar
Buddhism New Zealand
Chinese Universalism Finland
Protestantism Afghanistan
Roman Catholicism Sierra Leone
Confucianism Northern Mariana Islands
Ethnoreligion Afghanistan
Hinduism United Arab Emirates
Jainism Uganda
Jewish Uganda
Islam Soloman Island (followed by Norway)
Neo Religionism United Arab Emirates
Shintoism Singapore
Sikhism United Arab Emirates
Taoism Laos
Zoaroastrian Netherlands

Figures taken from the World Christian Database

Noted & Quoted: Charles Spurgeon on Worthiness

“And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, from doing them good.” - Jeremiah 32.40

You remind me of their unworthiness. Yes, but observe that when he began to do them good they were as unworthy as they could possibly be. He began to do them good when they were "dead in trespasses and sins." He began to do them good when they were enemies, rebels, and under condemnation. When first the sinner feels the movement of divine love upon his heart, he is in no commendable state. In some cases the man is a drunkard, a swearer, a liar, or a profane person. In certain cases the man has been a persecutor like Manasseh or Saul. If God left off blessing us because he could see no good in us, why did he begin to do us good when we were without desire towards him? We were a mass of misery, a pit of wants, and a dunghill of sins when he began to do us good. Whatever we may be now, we are not otherwise than we were when first he revealed his love towards us. The same motive which led him to begin leads him to continue; and that motive is nothing but his grace.

(From a sermon in 1889)

Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#9 in a Series)

I've heard organists with two hands who could have used a miracle or two, themselves.

If You Get It, Fine. If Not, Fine. Whatever.

Peggy Noonan Does it Again

I like Peggy Noonan's writing. She has a big heart and a pragmatic mind and much skill at connecting the two in her Wall Street Journal essays.

About a month ago, I called your attention to an immigration essay she had written. Now there's another, this one from the July 7-8 edition of the WSJ. In this newer essay, she once again proclaims her love of immigration, but then goes on to explain why we really need to be an "English only" society.

Here's the first half of her essay:

It is late afternoon in Manhattan on the Fourth of July, and I'm walking along on Lexington and 59th, in front of Bloomingdale's. Suddenly in my sight there's a young woman standing on a street grate. She is short, about 5 feet tall, and stocky, with a broad brown face. She is, I think, Latin American, maybe of Indian blood. She has a big pile of advertisements in her hand, and puts one toward me. "MENS SUITS NEW YORK--40% to 60% Off Sale!--Armani, Canali, Hugo Boss, DKNY, Zegna. TAILOR ON PREMISES. EXCELLENT SERVICE LARGE SELECTION." Then the address and phone number.

You might have seen this person before. She's one of a small army of advertisement giver-outers in New York. Which means her life right now consists of standing in whatever weather and trying to give passersby a thing most of them don't want. If this is her regular job, she spends most of her time being rebuffed or ignored by busy people blurring by. You should always take an advertisement, or 10, from the advertisement giver-outers, just to give them a break, because once they give out all the ads, they can go back and get paid. So I took the ad and thanked her and walked on.

And then, half a block later, I turned around. I thought of a woman I'd met recently who had gone through various reverses in life and now had a new job, as a clerk in the back room of a store. She was happy to have it, a new beginning. But there was this thing: They didn't want to pay for air conditioning, so she sweltered all day. This made her want to weep, just talking about it. Ever since that conversation, I have been so grateful for my air conditioning. I had forgotten long ago to be grateful for it.

Anyway, I look back at the woman on the street grate. It's summer and she's in heavy jeans and a black sweatshirt with a hood. On top of that, literally, she's wearing a sandwich board--MENS SUITS NEW YORK. Her hair is long and heavy, her ponytail limp on her shoulders. She's out here on a day when everybody else, as she well knows--the streets are not crowded--is at a ballgame or the beach. Everyone else is off.

So I turned around and went back. I wanted to say something--I don't know what, find out where she was from, encourage her. I said hello, and she looked at me and I patted her arm and said, "Happy Fourth of July, my friend." She was startled and then shy, and she smiled and made a sound, and I realized: She doesn't speak English. "God bless you," I said, because a little while in America and you know the word God just as 10 minutes in Mexico and you learn the word Dios. And we both smiled and nodded and I left.

I went into Bloomingdale's and wrote these words: "We must speak the same language so we can hearten each other."

Please read the rest of the essay here, in which she lays out the case for speaking English in America. Hardly a novel position, but expressed well.

Another Reason Not to Let the Kids Watch TV

Remember my May 13 post about Mickey Mouse being a terrorist? Terrorist was, of course, my term, and certainly not that of his Hamas creators. Nor is he named Mickey Mouse, but rather Farfur.

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In any case, according to Hamas TV, Farfur has now been killed by an Israeli Jew. You can read about it here, or just go watch the short video here.

There's something criminal about what these people are teaching their children. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes when they stand before God. (I don't want to be in my shoes, either, but that's a different story!)

The Most Surreal Country on Earth?

Surreal to me. But not to those who have to live there. Zimbabwe is run by a lunatic with a Hitler moustache, and things just keep getting worse and worse.

Take this article, for example:

IMF warns Zim inflation could hit 100 000%

August 01 2007 at 12:04AM

Prices in Zimbabwe could be 1 000 times higher at the end of this year than they were at the beginning, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted on Tuesday.

Once the breadbasket of southern Africa, Zimbabwe's economy is crippled by acute food, fuel and foreign currency shortages.

"If recent monthly trends continue, IMF staff projects that year-on-year inflation could well exceed 100 000 percent by year-end," Abdoulaye Bio Tchane, director of the IMF's Africa department, said in an interview in Maputo.

Zimbabwe already has the world's highest inflation rate, now officially running above 4 500 percent, although analysts believe the figure to be double that. Critics blame the policies of President Robert Mugabe, including the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms.

Hundreds of business people and traders in Zimbabwe have been arrested and fined for overcharging or failing to display prices, but the price blitz has worsened shortages of most basic goods such as the staple maize-meal, cooking oil, meat and sugar.

Mugabe's African peers have largely refused to intervene or even criticize him as things have gone from worse to worse over the last several years. The Organization of African Unity is practicing the wrong kind of unity.

He Sells Cellphones . . . and Sings Opera For the Queen of England

From the Wall Street Journal of July 27, 2007:

A snaggle-toothed Welsh cellphone salesman is poised to make a splash at some U.S. record retailers next week -- even though his CD of opera solos isn't officially supposed to come out until September. In June, Paul Potts became the ugly-duckling winner of the British TV competition "Britain's Got Talent" with his rendition of the Puccini aria "Nessun Dorma." The victory made the 36-year-old an instant celebrity in the U.K., where his CD, "One Chance," made its debut last week at the top of the British album chart. But footage of his performance has also ricocheted around the Internet -- one clip has been viewed more than eight million times on YouTube, exceeding any other YouTube video uploaded in the last month.

The result: Some U.S. fans appear willing to shell out about $17 for an imported version of Mr. Potts's CD that will be available next week, even though the TV show he appeared on has not aired in the U.S., and his delivery has won him scorn among some opera buffs. "One Chance" has climbed into the top 10 CDs on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble's U.S. Web sites based on presales -- higher on Amazon, a spokesman says, than musicians such as Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen achieved when their albums were available only as imports.

The show Paul Potts appeared on was Britain's Got Talent, an obvious cousin of American Idol. But I've never seen Simon Cowell be so positive the few times I've seen Idol as he is with Paul Potts. OK, maybe Potts isn't "world class." But he's got to be the best singing cellphone salesman you've ever heard.

Listen to him talk about himself in the interviews before and after each performance. Look at the audience reaction to his voice. Something about seeing this guy do well touches me deeply. I can't really explain it, but watch his first appearance here, and perhaps you'll get a sense of what I mean. There's something redemptive going on.

The semi-final is here, the final is here, and the winner is announced here.

Enjoy.

Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#8 in a Series)

This won't help you on MySpace.

He's Not Making This Up

Noted and Quoted: Making Life Count

"I've spent a lot of money on booze, birds, and fast cars - the rest I just squandered."

- George Best (1946-2005)

If Voldemort Ran the World . . . It'd Probably Resemble Iran

What kind of a place is it where women get rounded up on the street for having too much hair peeking out from under their scarves? Where they get taken to jail because their jackets are too short? Where the police are forbidden to tell anyone their own names? (Hint: It's the same kind of place where the president denies that the Holocaust ever happened.)

Iran, like many Muslim countries, is being run on a false concept of human nature and human dignity. Voldemort would be right at home running such a society.

From Agence France Presse:

It all starts with one simple sentence, spoken almost in a whisper, but which has a thunderous effect.

A female police officer deployed in Tehran's latest moral crackdown tells a woman that her manto (overcoat) is too short and infringes Iranian Islamic dress rules.

"Azizam (my dear), good afternoon, if possible could we have a friendly chat, please allow us to have a small chat," the officer, a graduate of Tehran's police academy, tells the young woman.

"My dear there is a problem with your manto. Please do not wear this kind of manto. Please wear a longer manto from now on."

Some are just let go there, but others are escorted to waiting minibuses with dark black tinted window panes and labelled "Guidance Patrol."

A girl in a short white manto whose long hair was tumbling out the front of her headscarf is taken by the police to one of the minibuses on Vanak Square in central Tehran -- an unexpected and unhappy end to her shopping trip.

Another arrested woman is already inside the bus. She begins to cry. "I promise, I promise!"

And the minibus doors slam shut.

Tehran's police have said they are operating a three stage process in implementing the new wave of a crackdown on dress deemed to be unIslamic, which started with some intensity on Monday afternoon.

First, women are given a verbal warning on the street. If the problem is not resolved there, they are taken to the police station for "guidance" and to sign a vow not to repeat the offence. Should this be unsuccessful, their case is handed to the judiciary.

"Sure my manto is short, but there are many others whose clothes are more seductive than mine and they walking by without any punishment," one of the arrested girls in the minibus complained bitterly.

The arrested women will now go to a "centre for combating vice".

Their parents will be phoned and they will bring a longer coat and fuller headscarf for their daughters. If the young women sign the pledge they will then be released.

"We want our words to have an effect on people," a female Iranian police officer, who by law was not allowed to give her name, told AFP before being dispatched to take part in the crackdown.

"Our method is through guidance and via words. We do not face an instance that prompts us to be physical. We do not have any bats or sprays, in the toughest instances we may grab her hand and 'guide' her to the minibus," she said.

"I am doing this it as it is my duty and my job is supported by the religious teachings," another women clad in the black chador uniform of Tehran's female police added.

A girl confronted by the female police for having overly short trousers and transparent stockings apologizes.

"I am wearing stockings but, sorry, they are too light. Sorry I will change them, definitely I will change them. Now can I go?"

Not everything goes so smoothly.

One young passer-by rounds on the police for devoting such resources to moral crackdowns rather than other social problems as the minibus -- now filled with "badly veiled" women -- speeds away to the police station.

"Shame on you, look what you've done! The people's problem is not this, go fix your traffic situation, people are stuck in traffic for hours, go fix other real problems," she shrieks.

There was already considerable controversy inside Iran when the first stage of the "plan to increase security in society" was launched in April.

Many conservatives have applauded the drive, but moderates have publicly questioned whether Iran would be better off tackling poverty and crime rather than slack dressing.

Just before the new crackdown started, popular television host Farzad Hasani grilled Tehran's police chief Ahmad Reza Radan about the drive on his talk show, accusing the police of "not differentiating between people and thugs."

An old woman in a black chador in Vanak Qquare echoed the sentiment. "Our youth have no peace of mind. They are afraid to go out, they are afraid that if they go out they will be taken to the police. Aren't they saying that there is freedom?"

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Did You Hear the One About the Episcopal Priest Who Decided to be a Muslim, Too?

So, this Episcopal priest in Seattle walks into a mosque and says, "Hey, I want to be a Muslim, too..."

This joke-in-the-making is actually a true story. The Rev. Anne Holmes Redding decided to be both Muslim and Christian, "100% of each," according to her. The local bishop in Olympia, WA (near Seattle) said - really! - that it was fine and that it opened up exciting possibilities for interfaith dialogue. But the bishop of Rhode Island, where she was consecrated, saw it differently and suspended her for a year of study and reflection. Kind of reminds me of the parent who sends little Annie to her room to "Think about what you've done."

Rev. Redding's conversion was announced in the diocese's June newsletter. It's a rather approving article, as you'll see (p. 9).

The First Things blog has an excellent summary of the matter and the inescapable theological issues it raises. It's worth the read.

I'm glad to read that there's someone in the Episcopal church who's holding this woman accountable. Now, if they would just tackle the heretic Bishop John Shelby Spong. But we'll save him for a future post.

Jesus Goes to the Movies

The people responsible for Campus Crusade's Jesus Film claim that their movie has been seen or listened to by 6,223,295,000 people.

The CIA pegs world population at 6,602,224,175 (of which 4,795,026,261 are age 15 and over).

So does anyone besides me find Crusade's numbers incredible?

In·cred·i·ble (Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Latin incredibilis, from in- + credibilis credible)

1 : too extraordinary and improbable to be believed

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Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#7 in a Series)

"Would that be WD-40, or do you prefer olive oil?"
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I'm Done. It's Good.

But that's all I'm saying.

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Sorry, I'm Not Taking Calls or Answering e-Mails Today

Art Worth Getting Excited About

Art appreciation quiz: Which figure is over 300 years old, and which was placed on the hillside within the last week or two? Which is likely to be there 300 years from now?

From Spiegel Online:

D'Oh! A painting of Homer Simpson next to the 17th century giant carved into the hillside at Cerne Abbas, Dorset, in the United Kingdom has angered Pagans who regard the giant as a spiritual icon. The Simpson painting, showing Homer in his y-front underwear wielding a donut, was cooked up by the publicity team for the new film "The Simpsons," which opens in European theaters next week. Created using water-soluble paint, its creators said it would dissolve with the next rain. "It's very disrespectful and not at all aesthetically pleasing," Ann Bryn-Evans of the Pagan Federation told London's Independent newspaper. "I'm amazed they got permission to do something so ridiculous. We were hoping for some dry weather, but I think I have changed my mind. We'll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away."

You can read more about the Cerne Abbas Giant here.

In Europe, God is (Not) Dead

So says the Wall Street Journal, July 14-15, 2007. Check it out, and as you do, notice, among other things, the benefit of the separation of church and state, and the value of competition (even in the church world):

Late last year, a Swedish hotel guest named Stefan Jansson grew upset when he found a Bible in his room. He fired off an email to the hotel chain, saying the presence of the Christian scriptures was “boring and stupefying.” This spring, the Scandic chain, Scandinavia’s biggest, ordered the New Testaments removed.

In a country where barely 3% of the population goes to church each week, the affair seemed just another step in Christian Europe’s long march toward secularism. Then something odd happened: A national furor erupted. A conservative bishop announced a boycott. A leftist radical who became a devout Christian and talk-show host denounced the biblical purge in newspaper columns and on television. A young evangelical Christian organized an electronic letter-writing campaign, asking Scandic: Why are you removing Bibles but not pay-porn on your TVs?

Scandic, which had started keeping its Bibles behind the front desk, put the New Testament back in guest rooms.

“Sweden is not as secular as we thought,” says Christer Sturmark, head of Sweden’s Humanist Association, a noisy assembly of nonbelievers to which the Bible-protesting hotel guest belongs.

After decades of secularization, religion in Europe has slowed its slide toward what had seemed inevitable oblivion. There are even nascent signs of a modest comeback. Most church pews are still empty. But belief in heaven, hell and concepts such as the soul has risen in parts of Europe, especially among the young, according to surveys. Religion, once a dead issue, now figures prominently in public discourse.

God’s tentative return to Europe has scholars and theologians debating a hot question: Why?

...Some scholars and Christian activists, however, are pushing a more controversial explanation: the laws of economics. As centuries-old churches long favored by the state lose their monopoly grip, Europe’s highly regulated market for religion is opening up to leaner, more-aggressive religious “firms.” The result, they say, is a supply-side stimulus to faith.

“Monopoly churches get lazy,” says Eva Hamberg, a professor at Lund University’s Centre for Theology and Religious Studies and co-author of academic articles that, based on Swedish data, suggest a correlation between an increase in religious competition and a rise in church-going. Europeans are deserting established churches, she says, “but this does not mean they are not religious.”

...Most scholars used to believe that modernization would extinguish religion in the long run. But that view always had trouble explaining why America, a nation in the vanguard of modernity, is so religious.

...Now even Europe, the heartland of secularization, is raising questions about whether God really is dead. The enemy of faith, say the supply-siders, is not modernity but state-regulated markets that shield big, established churches from competition. In America, where church and state stand apart, more than 50% of the population worships at least once a month. In Europe, where the state has often supported — but also controlled — the church with money and favors, the rate in many countries is 20% or less. “The state undermined the church from within,” says Stefan Swärd, a leader of Sweden’s small but growing evangelical movement.

...Just a few blocks away, Passion Church, an eight-month-old evangelical outfit, fizzed with fervor. Nearly 100 young Swedes rocked to a high-decibel band: “It’s like adrenaline running through my blood,” they sang in English. “We’re talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

Passion, set up by Andreas Nielsen, a 32-year-old Swede who found God in Florida, gets no money from the state. It holds its service in a small, low-ceilinged hall rented from Stockholm’s Casino Theatre, a drama company. Church, says Mr. Nielson, should be “the most kick-ass place in the world.”

There's more where that came from. To read
the entire article, you can go here.

Reasons to Believe, or Reason vs. Belief?

My friend the Friendly Atheist has posted a (liberal) pastor's critique of presidential candidate John Edwards, who says that his opposition to gay marriage is "influenced" by his Southern Baptist background. The pastor says in response:

Sen. Edwards said his opposition to gay marriage has [been] influenced by his Southern Baptist background. Most Americans agree it was wrong and unconstitutional to use religion to justify slavery, segregation and denying women the right to vote. So why is it still acceptable to use religion to deny gay Americans their full and equal rights?

To which I ask the following questions. This is just off the top of my head, and doubtless there are still more (and better) questions that could be asked in response to this pastor's sloppy thinking:

1. So are we saying that opposition to gay marriage is only OK if it's NOT motivated by religious reasons?
2. Why should religion be excluded as a reason for having a political view? What makes it less valid than any other reason? Says who?
3. If we're going to exlude religious conviction from the public square, then what if the reason given for a political position is 30% religious and 70% "secular" - is that OK? If not, then what if it's 5% religious and 95% secular? What if we disagree on how religiously motivated my position is? Then who gets to be umpire?
4. What good is a religion that doesn't have any effect ("influence") on how I think about life issues?

And finally, if it was wrong for some to use religion to justify slavery, was it also wrong for Wilberforce to use "religion" as a reason to fight for its end?

Lewis On: Does Christianity Matter?

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

-- C.S. Lewis

You're Going Deaf

All you iPod wearers and show-goers out there will be deaf before you're 40. Maybe not actually deaf, but hearing impaired.

Somebody has now figured that out and is marketing hearing aids to 20/30-somethings. Interestingly, they never use the term "hearing aid" on their website or in their direct mail pieces. Instead, they say they sell "personal communication assistants." Takes the stigma out of wearing the same kind of device grandpa does.

What's more, this new device can be something to be proud of and maybe even show off, because it comes in 15 designer colors to fit your active lifestyle.

If you want to see what your friends will be wearing within the next decade, check out the Audeo. A clever example of niche marketing to a resistant but growing segment.

Albums That Didn't Go Platinum (#6 in a Series)

No thanks.

Who Says The Episcopal Church Doesn't Share the Gospel?

With the introduction of Episcopal flip-flops and dog collars, man and his (oops, I mean "humans and their") best friend can share the good news of whatever it is Episcopalians believe in these days.

Leaving no stone unturned, the denomination is assiduously seeking the "next big thing," as can be shown by this poll:

Kind of adds new meaning to that old saying, "Preach the Gospel. When necessary, use words." Once again, "necessary" has been successfully averted.

This is not a joke. You can go to Episcopal OnLine's One Stop Shop here for the full selection of merchandise. Go here if you want to spike the results of the poll (buy why would you, when all the choices are equally silly?).

Noted and Quoted: Can't Stamp Out Religion

Michael Novak, writing in the June/July 2007 edition of First Things (emphasis added):

Atheism is back—or so you might imagine from so many writers in recent months, one after another declaring a proud and militant rejection of God and all His works.

So, for instance, to his new book, God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens appends the insidious subtitle How Religion Poisons Everything. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins asserts that teaching children religion is “child abuse” and ought to be outlawed. In Breaking the Spell, Daniel C. Dennett, in the guise of studying religion objectively, dismisses religion. Sam Harris follows up his bestselling but dyspeptic The End of Faith with a slim but insulting Letter to a Christian Nation.

And yet, there’s an odd defensiveness about all these books—as though they were a sign not of victory but of desperation. Everywhere on earth except Western Europe, religion is surging. Each of the authors admits that most people, especially in America, do not agree with him. Each pictures himself as a man who spits against the wind. Each rehearses his arguments for atheism, mostly, it seems, to convince himself.

Certainly these authors are not convincing many others. According to a 2007 Princeton Survey poll for Newsweek, 91 percent of Americans believe in God. Only 3 percent say they are atheists. The whole group of nonbelievers—adding in persons who say they are of no religion and agnostics—account for 10 percent, at best, of all Americans. Worse for the new atheists, a full 87 percent of Americans identify with a specific religion: 82 percent Christian, 2 percent Jewish, and 1 percent each Muslim, Buddhist, and other.

Godless Georgia

Even though based on seven-year-old data, the above map is enlightening. Among other things, it tells me that the Bible Belt runs north and south through the middle of the country, not (as we commonly think) east and west through the southern/southeastern reaches.

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The state where I now live, Georgia, is not as religious as it's reputed to be, though my home state of Oregon lives up to its billing as the least-churched part of the country.

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All the Mormons make it pretty easy to figure out where Utah is. And notice that Southern California is more churchgoing than Northern - thanks to the Catholic Hispanics?

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I'd love to see similar maps done separately just for Catholics, Jews, mainline Protestants, and Evangelicals. (Atheists would be good, too, Hemant, but until you start your own "churches," you're too hard to count.) - Update: there are some additional maps available here.

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Anyone like to add any sage observations?