Saving Valentina
Michael Fishbach narrates his encounter with a humpback whale entangled in a fishing net.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
God, Rocks, and Souls
The address that follows is an introduction to John McLarty’s book in progress, GOD, ROCKS, AND SOULS, a memoir of an “old, white, liberal Adventist pastor”.
What follows is a “chapter…not in its final form” from that book in progress. http://godrocksandsouls.blogspot.com/
Chapter 57 John Benedetto
Early in 1979, John Benedetto wandered into a Bible study I conducted every Wednesday evening at the New York Center, the Adventist Church’s evangelistic center on West 46th Street in Times Square. After coming just a few times, he indicated he would like personal Bible studies.
I was ecstatic. In our community, the typical path for someone who wishes to join our church is to take a course of Bible studies covering the doctrines of the church. At the conclusion of those studies, presuming the student has found the studies persuasive, he or she is baptized and becomes an official member of the church. I was sure John’s intense questions and his wish for private studies was evidence of a serious interest in our church. I was in New York to do evangelism and here was the first validation of my ministry. John wanted to be baptized. John was punctual to our appointments, but I had a hard time covering much ground. I had this whole list of Bible doctrines to cover and had a plan to work our way through them. But every time we met, he'd launch into a long recital of the problems in his life. He seemed far more interested in discussing his personal problems than in having a focused conversation on the authority of Scripture, the details of the Second Coming or Bible guidance on how to pray.
He was having trouble sleeping at night because of acid reflux. He had dandruff and was troubled by his body’s weird odor. He hated his job, but he was too old to quit and get a job anywhere else that would provide him any retirement. He wasn’t getting along with his boy and didn’t really like his son-in-law.
I began to despair of ever covering sufficient formal religious content for me to be able to present John for baptism. Besides he didn’t even really believe in God. He was constantly browsing book stores. When I asked him directly about whether he believed in God, he answered, “I know a lot of smart people do.” He knew the arguments of the critics. He felt them in his soul. And he found belief enormously problematic, but at least he could affirm that he knew a lot of smart people believed in God. So while, he personally found belief problematic, he was not being completely hypocritical to hang around and have conversations about life with religious people. Believers were not crazy. Some of them were really smart.
Over time, I heard more of John’s story.
He'd grown up in the Bronx where in addition to his regular day job, his father served as the sexton for a Baptist church. (In New York most of the churches I knew about had live-in caretakers. It was not prudent to leave a building empty for days at a time.) John liked to tell me, “I grew up in the church.” Sometimes he said that as a declaration of the depth of his acquaintance with Christianity but usually it was a preference to explaining why belief was so difficult.
Over and over John told me of being out in the street playing with the other kids in the neighborhood. About five thirty they’d hear the train pulling into the elevated station. He'd watch the other kids run toward the station to see if their dad had come in on that train. John and his brother would run hide somewhere so they could see if their dad was coming or whether they had a few more minutes to play. If they spotted Dad they stayed hidden until called for supper.
John’s fear of his dad was still palpable forty years later.
“I never knew what my dad would do.” He said. “Once, Frank and I built a club house in the yard behind the church. I don’t remember where we scrounged the wood, but it was a great club house. The other kids loved it. One day Dad came home angry and took and ax and demolished our club house . . . and I was in it!
“One evening we had come in for supper. Frank said something that got Dad mad. Frank was on the other side of the table and Dad couldn’t reach him, so Dad grabbed a kettle of hot spaghetti and dumped in on my head. I could never understand it. I hadn’t done anything. Maybe that’s why have some much trouble with my scalp now, all that hot spaghetti.
“The worst was the time he gave away my dog. I don’t see how he could have done that. That dog was my friend. Dad didn’t like him, though. He didn’t think we should be wasting money on food for a lousy dog.
“One day I came home from school and Buddy wasn’t in the yard. I went around the neighborhood looking and calling. Then my mom told me. ‘Your dad took him to the pound this morning after you left for school. He said he was tired of him.’
“Dad never said a word about it. And we lived in the church!”
Several times John told me the story of his marriage, the way he remembered it. He was nineteen. He could never quite figure out why he'd gotten married, except that he didn't know how not to once he started dating. And the dating hadn't really been his idea. He was set up by his friend. They were both going into the army. His friend had a steady girlfriend and they wanted another couple to do things with so the friend set John up with his wife-to-be. And when his friend got married, so did John.
After he got out of the army he and his wife tried farming in the south near where her folks lived, but they could never quite make ends meet. Finally they had to give it up and move back to New York. J.B. hated leaving the country.
“You know, John,” he told me. “That little farm in Arkansas was the most perfect place on earth. It was quiet. We had a yard and chickens. You’d see the sunset in the summer and see the fireflies and hear the cicadas. But I couldn’t make a living. I couldn’t pay the bills.”
Back in New York, over the next twenty-five years he earned a living working for the subway system, raised a couple of kids and tried to answer the questions of why.
Before I met him, he studied at least a couple years respectively with the Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics and Mormons. As we continued our “Bible studies” he was still searching, trying to make sense of the pain. Trying to figure how, when you grow in the church, life could turn out so bad. He wanted to believe in God, but could never quite make the leap.
Over the next six months, I talked about Bible doctrines and John talked about life. His cat died. His son-in-law drowned. His hiatus hernia grew worse. He took to sleeping on the couch propped up with pillows because he couldn’t bear to lie flat for very long. He described in great detail all of his stratagems for quitting smoking. He had been trying for several years. He was determined that this was one battle he was going to win. Even though he had been defeated dozens of times.
“I take the cigarettes and soak them in cleaning fluid. Then I dry them out. They taste so foul I can’t stand to inhale, at least not very much.”
Another time he described putting the pack at the bottom of the kitchen garbage can so that when he wanted a cigarette he would have to dig through the trash to get them. And they would smell of garbage as an added inducement to leave them alone. He tried cutting cigarettes in half. He lit them, let them burn a bit then put them out and put them back in the pack because, he said, prelit cigarettes tasted nasty.
He went through the Adventist Five-day Plan to Stop Smoking, the American Cancer Society program, a program offered by the Red Cross. I got a blow-by-blow descriptions of every new effort, every creative strategy.
John was still battling when I was asked to leave Manhattan to become a pastor on Long Island. John still wasn’t baptized. He wasn’t a member of the church. He still had dandruff, body odor and aching questions.
* * *
About three years later, I began coming into Manhattan on Sabbath afternoons to lead an English language Bible study group in the German SDA Church. Within just a few weeks John showed up! I couldn’t believe it!
He was proud to inform me he had quit smoking. It had been over two years since his last cigarette. I was pleased. John was making progress.
Visiting after Bible study a couple of weeks later, John told me he was having trouble sleeping. “No, it’s not because of my hernia. Yea, I still have to sleep on the couch, but it’s my son. He’s AWOL from the Navy. Andy says he isn’t worried. He says they’ll just forget about him. I’ve tried to get him to turn himself in, to try make things right but he won’t hear of it. He says he can’t go back now because they’ll bust him. He’s afraid the Navy might come looking for him at our house. So I never see him. I don’t know what to do.”
What could I say? What did I know about having a son on the lam?
John was being cheated at his job. He worked as a clerk selling tokens for the subway system. At the beginning and end of each shift, the clerks had to reconcile their money and token inventory. Because he was slow at it, his relief would always insist on helping him with the tally at the end of the shift. And he was sure she was ripping him off.
“Why don’t you talk to someone about it, John?”
“It won’t do any good.” He said. “The supervisor is an old friend of hers. In fact, I think she’s maybe his girlfriend. Complaining will only make it worse.”
“Can’t you try doing at least part of the tally before she gets there? Isn’t there someway to get it done so that she doesn’t get her hands on the stuff?”
“I’ve tried everything I can think of. The problem is that my shift is the busiest. And it gets crazy just about the end of my shift. I’ve put in for a different shift, but I don’t have enough seniority yet to get a better shift. I could transfer to a different station maybe, but all the best stations have long waiting lists of people trying to get in who have more seniority.”
I prayed for John. What else could I do? It was hard not to get mad at God, listening to John talk. Where was God while all this was going on.
No wonder the closest John could get to a statement of faith was, “I know a lot of smart people believe in God.”
I became the full time pastor of the German Church and it became The Church of Advent Hope. John was there nearly every Sabbath, leaving immediately after potluck to make his shift selling tokens. I was doing the job I had dreamed of for years, working with people who were wonderfully congenial and supportive. (The former pastor had not yet begun his attacks.) I had healthy, happy kids. And John was slowly being squeezed to death.
His daughter had remarried and bought a house. To buy the house she had borrowed money from John, twenty-six thousand dollars from his retirement fund. Then when he talked to her about repaying it, she just laughed. He was a grandpa, but things had gotten so tense between him and his daughter that he wasn’t really welcome at her house. So his wife spend her time at their daughter’s house, enjoying the grandkids while John wandered the aisles of bookstores and went on shopping sprees for stuff he didn’t need. He had thousands of books in his house. Not that he was planning to read them, but he couldn’t resist a bargain. He bought inexpensive electronics–radios, tape players, clocks, gadgets and gizmos. If it was a bargain he couldn’t resist.
I had visited him several years earlier before I had gone to Long Island. His apartment was unremarkable except for the overpowering smell of the cat box. Now he was too embarrassed to have me come to his house. It was so filled with stuff that there was hardly any floor space left. Just aisles among piles of books, outdated food, electronics and clothes. John tried to describe it to me, but I couldn’t believe it was that bad. When I finally went, it was.
The lady who had been ripping him off at work moved to another position. Before long, her replacement was doing the same thing. Only ten more years to retirement. John didn’t know if he could hold on, but he didn’t see that he had any choice.
At church, John was a stand out. Especially as the English service continued to develop. The older Germans became a smaller and smaller minority; young adults, newly arrived in the city to chase careers and futures became the dominant demographic in the church. People came to church dressed. And “dressed” reflected the standards of the work place. These were not Bohemian artists, they were employees in mid-town offices. They worked for American Express and Chase Manhattan. A couple of the regulars were fashion designers.
Everyone looked good on Sabbath morning except Alex and John. On warm summer Sabbaths, John would show up in a white tank top with a red bandana rolled and tied around his head to keep sweat out of his eyes, dandruff evident in his thin hair.
He looked out of place, but the young adults treated him kindly. He was even invited to read Scripture occasionally. But as far as I could tell his faith had not grown at all. We occasionally talked of God and faith and salvation. But mostly we talked about trouble.
He came to church one Sabbath with some superficial scabs on his face and forehead and casts on both wrists.
“John, what happened?”
“A couple of muggers threw me down the stairs as I was emptying the turnstiles of their tokens. I don’t know why they did that. They had already grabbed the bag from me. They had what they wanted. Why did they have to throw me down the stairs.”
“Are your arms broken?”
“The doctor said one bone is broken in my left arm. My right wrist is sprained. The doctor said it may be worse than the break. I just don’t understand why they had to do it. I didn’t do anything to them.”
I helped John empty some of the stuff from his apartment. We filled my big Plymouth station wagon from behind the front seat to the tailgate window high with books to give away. We went through some of the food and began putting some of the most seriously out-dated items in garbage bags. It didn’t make much of a dent, but it made the aisles in his house a little wider.
Then eighteen months later, John showed up at church again injured. No casts this time, but both hands were wrapped in white gauze. His face looked strange. It wasn’t cut, but it was, how can I put this, messed up. John told me the story.
“Early this week I yelled at a couple of fare-beaters when they jumped the turnstile. I hate those guys. They’ll look right at you, know that you are watching, then wait until the train pulls in and jump over the stiles and run to the train.
“So I yelled at them through the intercom. You know I have one of those new self-contained booths they’re putting in.
“Well, those same guys came back on Thursday. I know it was the same guys. I recognized them. They tried to pour gasoline through the vent on the door, but they couldn’t so they poured the gas through the token slot and set it on fire.”
“How did you escape?”
“Fortunately, they ran off and I managed to get out the door. The booth was completely destroyed.”
John’s burns, that is the wounds on his skin, were relatively minor. The doctor promised his hands would heal with only minor scarring. But I wondered what it did to his soul?
* * *
About six months later during a sermon, I invited anyone who felt called by God to be baptized to talk with me after the service. As I was visiting with people at the rear of the church, John approached me and in his trademark stutter told me he wanted to be baptized.
You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had heard about John’s unbelief for eight years. And here he was asking for baptism.
“John, that’s fantastic. Can we meet here at the church on Wednesday to talk about it?”
“I-I-I’d like that.”
On Wednesday, John came by the church.
"John, I am thrilled you want to be baptized. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Tell me, what made you finally decide?"
"Well," he began, "you know I have a lot of problems. My father abused me when I was just a kid. I grew up in a church but our home . . ."
I interrupted him. "John, I know life has been difficult. I wish it had been different. But what I want to know is how you finally came to decide to be baptized.”
“Well, you remember that for a little while I had a farm in Arkansas, and that I only came back to New York because we couldn’t make a living farming. I really wanted to stay on the farm. . . .”
“John, yes, I remember that and your son being AWOL from the Navy and about your daughter and the money.
“But I want to know, what made you finally decide to be baptized. You’ve been coming to church all these years and I know that faith has been hard for you. Do you believe in God now?”
"W-W-Well, I know that many very intelligent people believe he exists. Even many scientists believe in him."
I was flabbergasted. John was in exactly the same spot he had been eight years ago when we first met and talked about God.
"But John,” I interrupted again, "Do you believe in God yourself?"
"I'm not too sure. It seems reasonable that he ought to exist. And since all those smart people believe in him, I don’t think God is an impossibility.”
I was getting exasperated. I changed the conversation. “John, have you accepted Jesus as your Savior? Has Jesus forgiven your sins?"
"It would be nice to think so."
“You mean you don’t know if Jesus has forgiven you?”
“It would be very nice to think that.”
Now what? Here was someone asking for baptism who did not know if he believed in God and did not know if Jesus had forgiven his sins.
I picked up my Bible and opened it to 1 John 1:9. I handed it to John and asked him to read it. He didn’t stutter when he read.
If we confess our sins,
he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness
He looked up.
“John, have you confessed your sins?” Silly question. I knew he had. He had confessed them to me a hundred times.
"Yes." he answered.
“According to what you have just read, does God promise to forgive our sins if we confess them?"
"Yes."
Good, I thought, he’s getting it.
"So, John, you've confessed your sins, and God has promised that if you confess he will forgive. So tell me, has God forgiven you your sins?"
He hesitated, then answered in a timid, plaintive voice, "It would sure be nice to think so."
I was dumbfounded. He was in exactly the same place spiritually he had been in our first visit back in the New York Center. What to say?
It was my job to say something. John was asking for baptism. I should be able to offer some kind of guidance for dealing with his doubts. I should be able to help him come to faith. I rambled on about theories and ideas and church history and science a bit. John was patient. He listened. He answered direct questions. But he could not make any clear affirmation beyond his awareness of the testimony of smart people who were believers and his scant hope that God (if there was one) would be merciful.
How could I blame him. Given his personal history I couldn’t question the sincerity of his search. But after half an hour of searching for some way to lead him to voice a personal affirmation of faith I was exasperated.
"J. B." I protested, "You don't believe in God. You can't bring yourself to say you believe Jesus has forgiven your sins. So why do you want to be baptized?"
"Well, as you know, I studied with several church groups and at work I’ve been ripped off and mugged and nearly burned alive, and . . ."
"John, John, I know.” I interrupted, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. “But just tell me, why do you want to be baptized?"
"Because," he said, "this is the one place in the world where I am safe."
***
Regarding some teachings of the church, all that I can say with confidence is that some very smart people believe them. However, I cannot say like John, “This is the one place where I have been safe.” Unlike John, I’ve been blessed with kindness and faithfulness from many people and in many places. But the Adventist Church has been wonderfully gracious to me.
Awhile back I was visiting with an importance personage in the church who joined the Adventist Church as a young adult. He said he had given up everything for the church. I think he imagined a career he might have had outside the church given his drive and abilities. He would have been an acclaimed writer enjoying a good income. But he had given up all that to serve the church. Instead of being listed on the masthead of The Atlantic or Harper’s and writing for America’s elite, he was the editor of church publications read by lowly believers. It was a magnificent sacrifice . . . in his eyes.
Listening to him talk about his sacrifice for the church, I realized my experience is something else. My greatest treasures are gifts from the church–a global circle of friends, confidence in the goodness of God, a retirement plan for this world and an attractive vision of the next world, a reasonably wholesome pattern of life, ideas worth several lifetimes of exploration, the privilege of writing books, a decent education. Certainly God might have found other ways to supply these gifts, but for me they have been the gifts of Adventism.
Like John, the most I can say about some church dogma is “I know a lot of smart people believe it.” And like John, I have found this church to be a safe place. Why would I leave?
200 countries
Statistics come to life when Swedish academic superstar Hans Rosling graphically illustrates global development over the last 200 years.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tornado in Joplin, Missouri
On May 22, a three-quarter-mile-wide tornado carved a six-mile-long path through Joplin, Missouri, killing 160. Unable to escape, two dozen strangers sought shelter in a gas station's walk-in cooler while the funnel ripped apart every building, car, and living thing around. This is their story.
Check out John Shelby Spong
John Shelby Spong, whose books have sold more than a million copies, was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement in 2001. A committed Christian who has spent a lifetime studying the Bible and whose life has been deeply shaped by it, Bishop Spong says he was not interested in Bible bashing. “I come to this interpretive task not as an enemy of Christianity,” he says. “I am not even a disillusioned former Christian, as some of my scholar-friends identify themselves. I am a believer who knows and loves the Bible deeply. But I also recognize that parts of it have been used to undergird prejudices and to mask violence.”
The following paragraphs are adapted from: The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Discover the God of Love
RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY:
“No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6)
This text has helped to create a world where adherents of one religion feel compelled to kill adherents of another. A veritable renaissance of religious terror now confronts us and is making against us the claims we have long made against religious traditions different from our own.
ANTI-SEMITISM:
And the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children’” (Matt. 27:25)
No other verse of Holy Scripture has been responsible for so much violence and so much bloodshed. People convinced that these words conferred legitimacy and even holiness on their hostility have killed millions of Jewish people over history. Far more than Christians today seem to understand, to call the Bible “Word of God” in any sense is to legitimize this hatred reflected in its pages.
SEXISM:
For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” (1Cor. 8-9)
The message of the Christian church was once that women are evil to their core and it was built on the story of Eve. She was taken out of man and was not his equal, but his helpmeet. Evil entered human history through the weakness of the woman. She was made to bear the blame and the guilt. She was the source of death.
HOMOPHOBIA:
“…the men of Sodom…to the last man, surrounded the house; and they called to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.’” (Lev. 18:22)
This story that portrays all of the men of Sodom as eager to gang-rape two heavenly visitors has been used to condemn faithful and loving homosexual relationships. A story in which a father, in order to protect the Middle Eastern code of hospitality, can offer his virgin daughters to be gang-raped, and still be regarded by both God and the author of this story as righteous, has been turned by the prejudices of later interpreters into an anti-homosexual text that feeds the basest side of our humanity. How is that possible unless prejudice overwhelms rationality and moral judgment?
The church has sought to portray Jesus as sharing an anti-female bias that includes a commitment to celibacy. But there is a repressed tradition that counters this teaching, in the story of Mary, the sister of Martha, anointing Jesus’ feet (John 12:1-8). The only thing that would have made such an act acceptable in that day is the knowledge she was his wife.
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT:
“Do not withhold discipline from a child….If you beat him with a rod, you will save his life from Sheol” (Prov. 23:13, 14)
It validates our own violence, since when we abuse others we are only acting after the example which God has set for us. God even required the crucifixion of the Son. The punishing God is thus replicated in the punishing parent, the punishing authority figure and the punishing nation. Violence is redemptive. War is justified. Bloodshed is the way of salvation. It all fits together so tightly, so neatly, and it justifies the most destructive and demeaning of human emotions.
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGREDATION:
“Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth” (Gen. 1:28)
We human beings are not some alien visitors who happen to be on the planet earth. Our human life is part of this planet. Heaven is not our home. The earth is. Once this supposed divine command was seen as necessary to enable the human race to survive. Now it must be seen as nothing less than a prescription for human genocide. If followed literally, this “Word of God” all but guarantees our annihilation.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
ARITITA: The story continues
The first installment of her story first appeared on the Wheel on April 20, 2011.
Andrew:
An update for you and the Adventist Wheel. There is more to come—as the details unfold. Aratita is presently in Los Angeles, and we are waiting on the presentations from the Docs as what is next.
Roger
Let me, Roger Lutz, introduce you to Aratita Taramarawa. I first met her in 2009 when she was 5. She was born in Rabi, a remote Island in the North of the Fiji Group. When I met her I felt like Elisha in 2 Kings 8:11-12 who was looking into the future and weeping over what he saw. I knew the projected future for this small girl. The pain caused by the curve in her spine would increase with astounding speed as she grew and matured. The alternative—a surgery consisting of rods and screws to line her spine from top to bottom, surgery that requires months and months of rehabilitation, a surgery full of pain, yet filled with hope of a straightened spine that will allow her to live a pain free normal life.
Presentations were made on behalf of Aritita to various medical facilities and doctors—all to no avail. Yet I know we have a great God—nothing is too hard for Him Gen 18:14, Luke 1:37; Jer 32:17. Then while in Vietnam while working with Project Vietnam I met a very special and caring pediatrician “Dr Steve Feig”. I showed Steve Aratita’s med file and pictures. Steve contacted the Orthopedic Hospital in Los Angeles, and I was able to connect Patricia Torres, the Medical Coordinator. A letter of invitation was presented to Aritita, passports and visas were obtained for Aratita and her mother, and necessary documentation was secured for the two of them to enter the United States!
Travel arrangements were made, dates set, sponsors located, and travel plans acted upon. The outcome—Aratita and her mother are in the USA staying with a very special Fijian family in Riverside, California, with an appointment to see the orthopedic docs on October 12.
I cannot adequately relate the thrill it was for me personally to escort Aratita and her mother from Fiji to Los Angeles! My mind was overwhelmed with thankfulness for a Great God full of compassion and care. As I looked at the two of them, my mind visualized a caring God with outstretched hands holding guard duty as we passed through each checkpoint in ticketing, security, passports, air travel, and the entry process into the United States.
This is not the end of the story. The next chapter will be every bit as intriguing, even if painful. The Supreme Physician has entrusted His medical miracle to the staff at the Los Angeles Orthopedic Hospital. Remember them in your prayers and stay tuned!
Roger Lutz
The Class of 9/11: How a School Prank Helped Change My Life
by Rajiv Srinivasan
On a Tuesday morning during my sophomore year of high school, a few friends and I stumbled into our morning math class in a raucous but musical mood. There was some running joke about us forming a boy band; my dark skin meant I was no doubt going to be the cool minority from the hood. I silently enjoyed how my Indian skin tone allowed me to emulate a range of stereotypes. Our laughter was stifled by the call to order by our instructor, Mr. Phil Sanders
A Word of Grace
by Kent E. Hanson
Dear Friends,
The noise leading up to the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks puts me in mind of Solomon's caution in Ecclesiastes 5:2: "Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. For a dream comes with much business, and a fool's voice with many words."
The tragedy and evil of that day is undeniable, though some have done their best to do that. The politicians, philosophers, theologians, journalists, evangelists and pundits of every persuasion who have tried to explain it to us have done little more than graffiti our memories.
My Word of Grace for Your Monday, September 10, 2001, was the third in a four-part series devoted to what it means to know that you are unconditionally, irrevocably loved by God. Tuesday morning, September 11, I was dressed and ready to leave for work when Patricia came in the door and told me that she'd heard on the radio that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. We turned on the TV and watched in stunned silence as reports came in about the attack on the Pentagon and the crash of United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.
Later on that morning, at the Medical Center, the Department Heads gathered for prayer and a security briefing. We were told that more attacks were expected. Large centers and gathering places needed to go on alert. As the Level One Trauma Center for our region, we needed to activate our plans for mass casualty emergencies. The son of one woman present was working in the World Trade Center when the planes crashed into it. He'd made it out and called his mom. We cheered at the news. It was a brief respite of gratitude before the cloud of confused anxiety closed in again around us.
That night, I went in and looked at my sleeping fourteen-year-old Andrew and prayed with tears. "Lord, why has this violence come to us? What does it mean for my son? Protect him, please. Be merciful to all the orphans, widows, and childless parents from this day. Deliver us from evil. Be very near because I know nothing but you."
The next week I interrupted the series on the love of God for us and wrote, what is in my estimation, one of the worst messages that I have written in the 13 years I have been sending out the Word of Grace for Your Monday. I lacked perspective and without that my words carried no authenticity. "Let your words be few," said wise Solomon. "No one should read about suffering when they are suffering," says Patricia.
It is my mission with these messages to say something true, real and positive about God each week. I studiously try to avoid political commentary in doing so.
Christ transcends politics and human affairs. He does not reorder our priorities, improve our aesthetics, or burnish our virtues, although all of those things will happen if we worship him with unreserved hearts. No, Christ is our Savior and we'd best think about why we need one and, if we have a Savior, how then do we live with each other? Those questions are my spiritual reaction to 9/11 ten years after.
Of all the things that I have read or heard about that terrible day, none have touched me as much as a simple essay, "Leap," by the wonderful Christian writer, Brian Doyle, first published in Portland Magazine, the official publication of the University of Portland.
Doyle has the honesty not to try to make sense out of the incomprehensible. Instead, he sifts through the horror to find where love comes shining through. I hope that happens for you as you read "Leap."
LEAP
Brian Doyle, God is Love: Essays from Portland Magazine (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 2003), pp 16-17.
A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped.
Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.
The mayor reported the mist.
A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire. She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes.
Jennifer Brickhouse of New Jersey and Stuart DeHann of New York City saw this from far below.
I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead, and the harrowed families of the dead, and the screaming souls of the murderers, but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.
It is the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil evidence hourly that love is why we are here.
He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, wrote John the Apostle. (1 Jn 2:10)
No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, colleagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip of hell. Maybe they didn't even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.
I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face, John also wrote. (3 Jn 14)
Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that.
"O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him" Ps 34:8
Under the mercy of Christ,
Kent
5 Scientists (and Dr. Oz): Make Clean Air Sense
by Ronnie Citron-Fink, Moms Clean Air Force
Scientists are not political big shots or the rock stars of the environmental movement. They are concerned citizens like you and I who set out to systematically discover and document answers to pressing scientific queries. Doctors, nurses, researchers and professors devote their lives to making the world a better place for our families.
Earlier this year, more than 2,500 U.S. scientists sent a letter to members of Congress urging them to reject legislation that would gut the EPA of its protective safeguards and ignore the human toll that inaction would take on their citizens. Here is an excerpt from the Scientists’ Statement:
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Lauren Zalaznick: The conscience of television
TV executive Lauren Zalaznick thinks deeply about pop television. Sharing results of a bold study that tracks attitudes against TV ratings over five decades, she makes a case that television reflects who we truly are -- in ways we might not have expected.
A Word of Grace
by Kent A. Hansen
Dear Friends,
It was breathtaking in June to descend off of the freeway and plunge like a diving submarine into the royal purple sea of jacaranda trees that cover my downtown neighborhood. They are messy trees, carpeting sidewalks and lawns with petals and spraying sticky sap that glazes our vehicles like cheap doughnuts.
Now in early September, the crepe myrtle trees are blooming--human-like, gray, sinewy limbs lifting crimson flowers like a sacrifice of praise up to the deep blue heavens of late summer. Once again our cars are misted with a syrup that makes driving into the afternoon sun a blinding adventure.
Colorful beauty like this is especially welcome in Southern California where we only have two seasons -- dry and kind-of-dry -- and the land is drab brown and granite gray much of the year.
In my childhood, I would sit for hours at the piano, musing my way through the hymnbook. The venerable hymn, "There Is A Green Hill Far Away," caught my attention. I imagined a softly-rounded knoll in a park with a lush green lawn and shady trees where Jesus laid down his life for us nailed on a cross silhouetted against the sunset.
Mrs. Cecil Alexander, who wrote the lyric, lived in the Irish countryside near Derry. She passed a small grassy mound outside of the town wall on her shopping trips. It put her in mind of Calvary as described in Hebrews 13:12. She wrote the poem one night while sitting up with her sick daughter. Her lyric is a simple but compelling telling of the Gospel:
There is a green hill far away,
Outside a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all.
.
We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains He had to bear;
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.
.
He died that we might be forgiv‚n,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to Heav‚n,
Saved by His precious blood.
.
There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin;
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven and let us in.
.
Refrain
.
O dearly, dearly has He loved,
And we must love Him, too,
And trust in His redeeming blood,
And try His works to do.
-- Cecil F. Alexander, 1847
Under the mercy of Christ,
Kent
P.S. My book, Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God's Love Through Prayer is available at Amazon.com or Adventistbookcenter.com. My book, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places can now be purchased by sending a check or money order for 10.00 USD, inclusive of price and shipping, to Kent Hansen, 601 South Main Street, Corona, California, 92882.
Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity
Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves. Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture -- call them the 6 killer apps -- that promote wealth, stability and innovation. And in this new century, he says, these apps are all shareable.
Sunday, October 02, 2011
The Ten Virgins
This is a book first posted on Grace Connection, the Magazine. There is no printed edition. All 30 chapters will appear on the Wheel in the following weeks.
CHAPTER 29
Matthew 25:1-13
A modern version of this story would go something like this. A man offered to guide two of his friends to his new cabin in a forested area outside the city. The friends arranged to meet him as he walked home, each at a different place in the forest. Darkness set in. The friends realized that their rendezvous could only occur after dark, and that their guide could only locate them using the light from their flashlights. They also know that they could not find the cabin alone. As they waited, the lights from their flashlights grew dimmer and dimmer.
When their guide was delayed, they both realized that they needed new batteries. The first friend replaced his depleted batteries with new ones, and the guide saw his light and joined him. Meanwhile, the second friend who had forgotten to bring extra batteries had to return to his car to get new ones. When he returned to his meeting place, the guide and his friend had gone ahead without him. Since he did not know where the new cabin was located, he was forced to return home.
Read more at Adventist Perspective.
The Solar System: A Scale Model
This page shows a scale model of the solar system, shrunken down to the point where the Sun, normally more than eight hundred thousand miles across, is the size you see it here. The planets are shown in corresponding scale.
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