Unbelievable.  I scarcely know where to begin.  I should be glad, you see, that a woman is running for Vice President.  I want to support you.  You are, after all, a woman.  You are my age.  You have children the age of my children.  We even share the same moniker … Hockey Mom.  We are both Hockey Moms.  I’ll bet you even managed your kid’s team, the way I do.  Well, then again, maybe not the way I do, but we’ll get to that later.

Here’s the deal.  I can’t support you.  You don’t even know me, so this won’t matter at all to you.  But that’s okay.  I’m just using this letter format as a cute form within which to express my ideas.

There was very little chance that I would have ever voted for your ticket in the first place because of your running mate’s slavish adherence to the disastrous war in Iraq.  But I was hoping that Senator McCain would choose someone with experience, strength, wisdom and stability to bring to the ticket that I could give serious consideration to.  Instead, we are presented with … um … well … you.  You represent none of those things.  You may have that facade, but you  are like the movie set of a fictitious western Gold Rush town … all fizz and no bang.

Your candidacy is offensive to me and many other women.  It is patently obvious that it is an attempt to manipulate us into voting for someone we may not otherwise vote for, simply because you have breasts and ovaries.  I did not vote for Hillary Clinton on that basis and I won’t vote for you on that basis either.  I don’t know who is making the decisions in the Republican party, but it is insulting and offensive that they think so little of women voters.  Most of us would rather see a person in office who is carrying out decisions that we are interested in, than someone who looks like us.  As a woman, I am offended.

Your candidacy is offensive to me as a historian.  You seem to have no sense of the office or of your place in history.  Several months ago you candidly admitted you do not know what the Vice President does.  Yet, here you are putting your family on the line and in the spotlight for what can only be seen as personal gain, if you have no understanding of the office.  The office of president and vice president should never be sought for personal gain … read what George Washington had to say on this matter.  Or John Adams.  Or Abraham Lincoln.  Or John Kennedy.  Or even Ronald Reagan.  I would suggest, dear Sarah, that you take some time to study the difference between being smart and being wise.  It takes very little to be smart, most anyone can do it; especially if one has a good speech writer and the chutzpah to deliver as you seem to.  But it takes some time and study and dedication to become wise.  This is what we need in the Vice Presidency, wisdom.  You are smart, and you proved at the convention that you can be a smartass, but you are not wise.  As a historian, I am offended.

Your candidacy is offensive to me as a citizen and as a political watchwoman.  From looking at your history in government, you seem to have little sense that the primary role of a mayor, or a governor or a Vice President is to be a civil servant; with emphasis on the word servant.  This hearkens back to your lack of understanding of history, Sarah.  My guess is that you eschewed history classes as an undergraduate and just partied.  Here is a very short course.  What seems ubiquitous and unremarkable in 2008, was radical and unorthodox in 1776.  It was this … that the nature of government is to serve the needs of the people rather than the reverse.  It was this unlikely sentiment that got Thomas Paine, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Washington, and all of our other founding fathers into such hot water with England.  You seem to have forgotten that ideal and believe that being in government is to serve the needs of those in government.  Hence, you left your tiny town of Wasilla in state of outlandish debt, you clearly have no idea how to run the state of Alaska (evidenced by the line item vetos which make little sense) and I shudder to think what would happen if you were given the keys to office of the Vice Presidency.  As a citizen, I am offended.

Your candidacy is offensive to me as a Christian.   You understand so little of what our government is intended to be that I scarcely know where to begin.  But I’ll begin with scripture, Sarah.  With the Gospel of John and your acceptance speech.  In the Gospel of John chapter 13, we find Jesus saying this, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  My dear Sarah, as a Christian and disciple of Jesus Christ, would you please point me to the place in Scripture where Jesus is shown making fun of people for their choice of citizen action?  Where He makes jests at the expense of another person for any reason?  I’ve studied the Scriptures fairly intently and I can’t find it anywhere.  But I will acknowledge that I may have missed something.  I would also like to bring the following to your attention:  the two Great Commandments as Jesus spoke of them in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 22 ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  In what fashion may it be considered loving of your neighbor, to call him a racial epithet?  How is it loving the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your  mind, to stand before a convention hall filled people and lead them chants the way you did the other night?  In many ways that you might not have forseen you have become an icon for the Christian way in this country.  You must bear that mantle with wisdom and respect.  Or we will see more articles written like this:

Democrats are not the enemy of course, but even if they are, I saw no expressions of Christian love for them.  I saw plenty of sarcasm, put-downs, mocking, and bitterness.  Palin mocked Obama’s decision to serve others as a community organizer.  Giuliani, a very wealthy and cosmopolitan man himself, made fun of Democratic elites.  I heard misleading statements and flat-out lies.  Palin falsely suggested that Obama wants to read a captured Bin Laden his rights–of course, this is preposterous and Obama has never said this, but it didn’t stop Palin from spreading misinformation.  On a more mundane level, she also suggested she had sold an expensive government plane on eBay–it didn’t actually sell on eBay, but McCain is now falsely claiming that it did sell on eBay–at a profit (also not true).  Of course, McCain is no stickler when it comes to the facts–he falsely claimed in his own speech that Obama will raise your taxes, leaving out the important caveat that 95% of Americans get tax cuts under Obama’s plan.  Mike Huckabee fired off a zinger about Palin winning more votes in her mayoral election than Biden garnered as a presidential candidate.  Sounds great–unfortunately, it’s a lie.  I am no theologian, but I vaguely remember there being a commandment inveighing against this kind of thing.

With follow on comments such as this:

 Try to make a list of 5 great things that religion has done to significantly increase the happiness and well-being of humanity. Now make a list of 10 terrible atrocities that have been committed in the name of religion. Which list was easier to make? The Republicans suddenly make a lot more sense if you stop assuming Christianity has anything to do with love. Christianity is nothing more than the sum of the actions of all Christians. (emphasis mine)

Dear Sarah, remember that little bit I dragged out of the gospel of John … they will know us by our love.  I don’t care what you want, or what you think, or what you love.  You are vastly unimportant to me, because I do not know you at all.  Except for this.  I do know that for millions of people now, you represent Jesus.  What kind of Jesus will you be?   Getting laughs, applause, and/or votes by telling lies (no matter how small), and belittling others is unacceptable for those who claim Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.   Thus far, as a Christian, I am offended.

So, we come to the end of this small exercise.  To say I am disappointed in your selection as the Republican vice presidential candidate would be a gross understatement.  I am offended by the misogyny and manipulation that the Republican National Committee is attempting with your selection.  I am terrified by the betrayal of our historic national values that is at stake.   We are indeed at a turning point in the history of our country; I wonder how many people really understand this.  How many will look back and say, “I wish I had …?”

Respectfully yours, Sonja

I haven’t written in a while and I apologize.  Things have have been bubbling here in the LightHouse, some good, some … eh.  So I’ll fill in the gaps for you.

Back in July LightGirl was visiting a friend and they went walking in the woods chattering away as girls are wont to do.  A few days later, she found a tick in her bellybutton (of all places).  She had a rash and some other odd symptoms so I took her to the doctor … who chastised her for not wearing insect repellent and did some blood work.  And off we went on our trip to Vermont.  Some days later I received a phone call from the doctor’s office saying that the test for Lyme Disease was positive and they were calling in a script for antibiotics.  Okay.  She didn’t do well on those particular antibiotics, so we changed to a type called Ceftin.

She finished that round last Thursday (a week ago today).  But she wasn’t doing well.  She was lethargic and achy.  Her head hurt and she didn’t have a very good appetite.  I had to beg her to go to hockey practice (which is very unlike her).  So we went back to the doctor, who put her on another round of antibiotics and got us an appointment with an infectious disease specialist if she did not improve by the end of this round (mid-September).  By Tuesday morning, something was seriously wrong with my girl.  She couldn’t stand up longer than a minute or two and was complaining that her knees hurt.  She would not go up or down the stairs more than once a day.  So I called the doctor to get in to see the infectious doctor earlier.  It took two days, but we finally got an appointment to see a specialist in Charlottesville today.  Our doctor faxed her records to him.  Imagine my surprise, when he called yesterday afternoon to tell us that her Lyme blood test results from July were NEGATIVE!  They had never been positive at all.

LightHusband looked up her antibiotic on the internet and it seems that the symptoms we had attributed to Lyme Disease are also less common side effects of the Ceftin.  She has not taken any of the antibiotic since that phone call (she’s missed two doses) and she is steadily improving.  She has no joint pain and her soul is back there in her eyes.  She’s laughing with us and eating normally again.  She has a lot of her sass back … which I may regret, but I will enjoy.

So there have been quite a few ups and downs over the past few days.  I’ve been reading the political news fairly avidly and will probably be sharing some of my thoughts on that soon.  I have a few more book reviews to post in the next couple of weeks.   I’ve been trying to get school organized and begun … but of course, with LightGirl sick, no school has happened.  However, LightBoy has begun making SockMonsters from all of our singletons this week.  He is also using LightHusband’s old ties as accoutrements.  He is busy dreaming up an internet kingdom selling these recycled toys.  So, this is an education of a different sort.

Sigh … onward and upward.

UPDATE:  And now the rest of the story …

We had an appointment with our primary care physician this afternoon and an education at the same time.  So … it turns out that there are “strict constructionist” doctors, just as there are strict constructionist judges.  Who knew?  When testing for Lyme Disease there are these things called bands.  I have no idea what those are … but they … um … are.  In any case, there are five of them.  For a strict constructionist doctor, you must have five of five positives to get a diagnosis of Lyme Disease.  Now, our primary care doc, saw LightGirl … saw that she was presenting with a tick bite and a rash AND three out of five positive bands and decided to be conservative.  She does this all the time.  She said that only one of her Lyme Disease cases presented with all five bands positive this summer.  It’s a gray area, as she freely admitted.

LightGirl is doing better and better the longer she is off the meds so all is well and we are all breathing a little easier now.

Feel:  The Power Of Listening To Your Heart by Matthew Elliott

This book was a breath of fresh air for me.  Sort of.  Matthew Elliott wants very badly to believe what he’s writing.  But I never quite got the feeling that he really did.  And I want to believe it too.  Whenever there’s been a dust up in my life, I’ve heard this: “You’re too emotional.  Why can’t you ________?” Fill in the blank with one of the following:

• get a thicker skin
• blow it off
• ignore them/him/her; they’ll get bored and quit
• just calm down
• stop being so irrational/emotional/unreasonable

So it was a huge relief to read a book that was devoted to the idea that emotions are not scary.  Emotions are not bad.  Indeed, emotions are a necessary barometer that help us navigate and negotiate through life.

Mr. Elliott’s premise is that, contrary to popular psychology, ancient Greek philosophy and most modern thought, emotions were and are to be trusted.  They are an inner compass to the dance of the Holy Spirit.  It is when we cease to listen to our emotions that we are most at risk for not hearing from God.   He even laid to rest the horrible train visual that has scourged so many of us for so long:

The promise of God’s Word, the Bible — not our feelings — is our authority. The Christian lives by faith (trust) in the trustworthiness of God Himself and His Word. This train diagram illustrates the relationship among fact (God and His Word), faith (our trust in God and His Word), and feeling (the result of our faith and obedience) (John 14:21).

The train will run with or without a caboose. However, it would be useless to attempt to pull the train by the caboose. In the same way, as Christians we do not depend on feelings or emotions, but we place our faith (trust) in the trustworthiness of God and the promises of His Word.

Thus have thousands been coerced into distrusting their innermost compass.  There is a grain of truth to these statements, but there is also a pound is dishonesty.  Sorting it out takes finesse and maturity.  Neither of which seem to be encouraged in the church of today.

Matthew Elliott takes great pains to prove his premise … but he does so in a very rational, logical manner.  I found this both comforting and paradoxical at the same time.  He makes the fine point that the notion that emotions cannot be trusted dates back to Plato and thus may be traced through Augustine in our church history.  He then traces its path through modern psychology and Darwinian thought to the present.  But the reality in the Bible is that God, His people and our relationship with Her are all rooted in emotion from the very beginning.

For those breaking free of any kind of emotional straight-jacket this is a must read.  Mr. Elliott also has a blog and throughout the book encourages participation on it.   There is also a website with study guide resources for individual and small group study (this book would be fine for both).

Hokey Pokey: Curious People Finding What Life’s All About by Matthew Paul Turner

I remember being small and pestering my mother with “what if” questions til she’d finally cry “Uncle.”  “We’re not playing the ‘what if’ game today.”  I was a curious child and have continued to be a curious adult.

It was that curiosity that lead me to chase down God; only to find He hadn’t exactly been hiding.  I simply hadn’t been looking very effectively.   No matter, we met up.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the many of God’s messengers here in earth have done their level best to squelch my inborn curiosity about life, living and all things to with the here and the hereafter.  I tried to contain it for a long time.  Then I tried to channel it into respectable outlets, but I’m a woman so there aren’t really any for me.  I taught youth group, I taught women’s classes, but they all got too deep and I continued to ask too many questions.  Silly me.

So I liked this book and I didn’t like this book.  And for the same reason.  It challenged me to get off my duff once more and dance.  Life’s been sorta painful these last couple of years.  The last few times I’ve “put my left arm in and shook it all about …” I got it ripped off and clubbed with the wet end (as my grandfather was fond of saying).  I’m not so anxious to try again.  I’m not even certain I want to listen to the music at this point, but let me finish telling you about the book.

I do highly recommend Hokey Pokey (although I really wish for a better title) for those seeking validation of their curious nature and for those beginning to ask questions but wonder if it’s okay (yes, it is).

Honestly, when I first cracked this book open I wondered how much there could be to write on the subject of curiosity.  Mr. Turner takes the subject far more seriously than his title suggests.  Along the way he manages to deal with calling, the silence of God, mentors, negative relationships, community, waiting on God, our image in God as well as several other fairly deep topics (these are what struck me).  Far from being a light read, I found this to be challenging on a level that I wasn’t anticipating.  Hokey Pokey would make a good book for a small group study for a group that has been together for some time and knows one another well.  It would also make a good book to read and journal through with a friend or on one’s own (as I plan to do later this fall).  It also made for enjoyable reading on it’s own and I found a lot that I simply relished; not the least of which was that many places were familiar as Mr. Turner lived and worked in the DC area and he managed the coffee house where I used to go to church.

Yesterday I wrote the story about the nexus of my political perspective and my faith.  It has been a place that’s been filled with tension for a very long time.  After all, I live in a state where tobacco is king.  And football is a prince.  It’s the Bible Belt, sweetie and I shouldn’t expect anything different.

And yet perhaps I should.  For all the sermons, from the literal pulpit and the bully pulpit, that I’ve heard about how Christians are to be in the world but not of the world, it would seem that we ought to be somehow different.  Yet we are not.  We look just like everyone else.  We fight our neighbors, sue our co-workers and friends, we marry and get divorced at the same rates, according to some studies abortion rates are actually higher among evangelicals and fundamentalists (p. 160-161, We The Purple … I tried to find the original article that Ms. Ford quoted, but the magazine website is no longer available).  We look for ways out of the Sermon on the Mount, rather than how to live in it.  In short, according to all available data, we are just like everybody else except that “we’re also busy for a few hours on Sunday morning.” (I can’t remember where I heard that, but it stuck and it’s sorta funny.)  For many of us we also have a more than annoying habit of being supercilious, hard headed, and power hungry.  The reputation that Christians have is unsightly and unworthy.  What we’re doing is not working.  So perhaps we ought to try something else.

So take a step back from all of this with me and let’s look at this from another perspective.  For the past week or so The Church of England has gathered some of it’s top leaders and thinkers together at the Lambeth Conference.  They did something new this year and invited a rabbi to speak at their gathering.  I’m indebted to Mike Todd at Waving or Drowning for linking to the full text of Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks remarks.  Reb Sacks spoke on the nature of covenant and the context it gives to our lives.  Here’s the link to the full text, I highly recommend you download them for yourself and read them.  I’m going to wrestle with a couple of quotes below.

And let’s begin our journey at the place we passed on our march last Thursday, in Westminster. It was such a lovely day that I imagine meeting up with my granddaughter on the way back and taking her to see some of the sights of London. We’d begin where we were, outside Parliament, and I imagine her asking what happens there, and I’d say, politics. And she’d ask, what’s politics about, and I’d say: it’s about the creation and distribution of power.

And then we’d go to the city, and see the Bank of England, and she’d ask what happens there and I’d say: economics. And she’d say: what’s economics about, and I’d say: it’s about the creation and distribution of wealth.

And then on our way back we’d pass St Paul’s Cathedral, and she’d ask, what happens there, and I’d say: worship. And she’d ask: what’s worship about? What does it create and distribute? And that’s a good question, because for the past 50 years, our lives have been dominated by the other two institutions: politics and economics, the state and the market, the logic of power and the logic of wealth. The state is us in our collective capacity.  The market is us as individuals.  And the debate has been: which is more effective? The left tends to favour the state.  The right tends to favour the market.  And there are endless shadings in between.

But what this leaves out of the equation is a third phenomenon of the utmost importance, and I want to explain why. The state is about power.  The market is about wealth.  And they are two ways of getting people to act in the way we want.  Either we force them to – the way of power.  Or we pay them to – the way of wealth.

But there is a third way, and to see this let’s perform a simple thought experiment. Imagine you have total power, and then you decide to share it with nine others.  How much do you have left?  1/10 of what you had when you began. Suppose you have a thousand pounds, and you decide to share it with nine others.  How much do you have left?  1/10 of what you had when you began.  But now suppose that you decide to share, not power or wealth, but love, or friendship, or influence, or even knowledge, with nine others.  How much do I have left?  Do I have less?  No, I have more; perhaps even 10 times as much.

The Chief Rabbi is on to something here. The state is about the distribution and manipulation of power. The market is about the distribution and manipulation of wealth/money.  Where does the church fit into this equation?

So that’s what I want to write about today.  For the last 20 or 30 years, evangelicals have posited that they could play the political power game and play it well.  We’ve seen organizations such as the Moral Majority (headed by Jerry Falwell) and the Christian Coalition (headed by Ralph Reed) come and go.  Up until very recently, (as in the campaign cycle of 2006) it was a foregone conclusion that the evangelical voting block would vote Republican.  That is slowly starting to change.  Those thinly veiled voter information guides produced by Concerned Women for America and Christian Coalition are (hopefully) a thing of the past.

So, the question still remains, who would Jesus vote for?  Or would He even vote?  It’s my belief that He probably would not participate in the political process.  The state is about the creation, distribution and manipulation of power.  It works hand in glove with the market.  The market exists to create, distribute and manipulate wealth.  Both of those operations are/were an anathema to Jesus:

The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert, so that the devil could test him. After Jesus had gone without eating for forty days and nights, he was very hungry. Then the devil came to him and said, “If you are God’s Son, tell these stones to turn into bread.” Jesus answered, “The Scriptures say:

`No one can live only on food. People need every word that God has spoken.’ ”

Next, the devil took Jesus to the holy city and had him stand on the highest part of the temple. The devil said, “If you are God’s Son, jump off. The Scriptures say:

`God will give his angels orders about you. They will catch you in their arms, and you won’t hurt your feet on the stones.’ ”

Jesus answered, “The Scriptures also say, `Don’t try to test the Lord your God!’ ”

Finally, the devil took Jesus up on a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms on earth and their power. The devil said to him, “I will give all this to you, if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus answered, “Go away Satan! The Scriptures say: `Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’ ”

Then the devil left Jesus, and angels came to help him. (Matthew 4:1-10)

Every place in the gospels where Jesus was offered the chance to have power and/or wealth he passed it by.  Even when that power would serve a so-called higher purpose.  He knew that in the end, the power would end up serving itself rather than the purpose.  It always does.  Power consumes itself.  Power becomes it’s own end and requires more and more fuel for its engine.  Jesus knew that.

He could have come as a political king.  In fact, the Jews of the day fully expected that.  That’s what they were looking for and why so many missed out on their Messiah.  He wasn’t what they were looking for.  They were looking for their savior to come and overthrow the Romans, give them back their Promised Land, their Holy City, their Tabernacle, their Temple, their status before G-d.  They’d been looking, watching, waiting for hundreds of years, tens of generations … waiting.

But it didn’t happen the way everyone expected.  And here’s the thing.  We can’t fully comprehend how things went down in those first century days when Jesus walked the earth.  Because everything changes once you know the end of the story.

Have you ever read a book and gotten about 4 chapters in, then read the last chapter?  I have.  Sometimes I’ll just read the last page.  I just need to know who’s still alive at the end of the book.  Once in a while I’ll read the whole last chapter.  It completely changes the way you read the book.  The whole plot of the book comes into play in a different way.  You understand different nuances of character and see things differently.  You begin to understand how things work together differently.  It all makes more sense when you know the outcome.

In the same way, we know the end of Jesus’ story from the beginning.  We know  that He came born as a baby in a stable, heralded by shepherds, spent part of his childhood in Egypt, got separated from his parents at the Temple as a boy, etc, etc., etc.  We know all of his story now.  But at the time, it all came out piecemeal.  One little bit at a time and must have been quite bewildering.  Even down to His death and resurrection.  Which were one more bit of evidence of Jesus laying aside power in place of relationship.

Now, it’s fairly easy to rationalize and say that, “Well … He’s God.  I’m not.  I need to keep some power for myself and for others … how else will we get along in this fallen world?”  Well, that’s a fair question.  How else will you or get along in this world?

Power is a zero-sum game.  That is, in order to keep some for yourself, someone else has to lose some.  Wealth is also a zero-sum game.  In our capitalist culture we excel in zero-sum games.  We love them.  We begin teaching them as soon as our children have consciousness.  Here are the things that are not zero-sum games … that is if you want to get some for yourself, you have to share it with others (which is counter-intuitive in our capitalist culture):  knowledge, influence, love, kindness.  Or maybe you don’t necessarily “have” to share with others, but the sharing with others will not in any way diminish the amount that you have and it will likely increase what you have.

The problem is that the church, from the time of Constantine, has engaged in the affairs of the state and rationalized it by saying that it’s for a greater good.  Sometimes waxing, sometimes waning, the church has made greater and lesser grabs at power in the state.  Remember, the state is concerned with the creation, distribution and manipulation of power.  What did Jesus do with power?  Every single time it was offered to him?  He turned his back on it.  Now there’s a good reason for that.  Which can summed up in one word … possibly two.  But for now the one word is, covenant.  No, two.  Covenantal relationship.  Jesus has a covenantal relationship with us, individually and as a group (His Bride).

Once again, I’ll let Chief Rabbi Sacks explain this:

One way of seeing what’s at stake is to understand the difference between two things that look and sound alike but actually are not, namely contracts and covenants.

In a contract, two or more individuals, each pursuing their own interest, come together to make an exchange for mutual benefit.  So there is the commercial contract that creates the market, and the social contract that creates the state.

A covenant is something different.  In a covenant, two or more individuals, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, come together in a bond of love and trust, to share their interests, sometimes even to share their lives, by pledging their faithfulness to one another, to do together what neither can achieve alone.

A contract is a transaction.  A covenant is a relationship.  Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests.  A covenant is about identity.  It is about you and me coming together to form an ‘us’. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.

So economics and politics, the market and the state, are about the logic of competition.  Covenant is about the logic of co-operation.

For the last 20 to 30 years the church has busied itself with the logic of competition rather than the logic of co-operation. We are to be in the business (as it were) of transformation. Go back to the beginning of Reb Sacks speech, where he said that “The state is about power.  The market is about wealth.  And they are two ways of getting people to act in the way we want.  Either we force them to – the way of power.  Or we pay them to – the way of wealth.”  The liberal end of the spectrum in our country tends to favor the state, the conservative the market.  And in the church (on both sides) we’ve bought into this.  We’ve agreed with the rest of the world that there are only two ways to get people to do things.  And it may just be time to admit we’ve been wrong.  We’ve been trying the way of the world in different forms and fashions for 2000 years.  And we’ve tried especially dogmatically in this country for the past 30 years.  It has not been a crashing success.

So I’m suggesting that perhaps Jesus wouldn’t even vote.  He eschewed all power in favor of relationship.  He worked the logic of co-operation in order to transform.  I’m beginning to wonder what it might look like if we, his followers, started to do that as well.  If we stopped worrying so much about being right (as in correct, no matter what sort of correct you might be talking about), and started worrying about our relationships with our families and our friends and just made that enough for each day.   If we engaged in the logic of cooperation and love.  If we became truly people of covenant and understand what that means, both the responsibility and the privileges, I just can’t imagine the supernatural “Power” that it would unleash.  None of us would gain anything by it.  We’d all individually likely lose.  But until we’re willing to look past what’s immediately in front of us and see what Jesus was talking about we will remain concerned with the small things of this world.   We have to come together, be able to look at a larger horizon, and be known finally for our love for each other as He said in order for any of this to come true.

Way back when …

In the depths of my personal history, I lived next door to Pete Mondale and his wife. It was back in the day. Back when I had just gained my own personal freedom and earned my own apartment in Washington DC. It was a studio in a renovated brownstone in a neighborhood on the precipice of regentrification. I paid $280 a month for a room the size of my current diningroom, a kitchen, two large closets and a bathroom which was not so large. There were five apartments in the building and one in the basement in which lived an Hispanic family of unknown quantity. An intense guy named Mike lived on the third floor; he rode a motorcycle and took me for rides every now and again. The second apartment on the third floor seemed to rotate a lot. On the second floor next door to me lived a forty-ish woman and her little boy. She was on welfare and never turned the lights on … just the television. The little boy visited me a lot. After the mother died of a heart attack and the little boy went to live with older siblings, a young woman named Amy lived in that apartment. On the first floor lived an older African-American couple. For security there was a deadbolt on the front door to the building. If I stood in the middle of my kitchen and stretched out my arms I could touch the opposite walls with my fingertips … on all four walls. But it also had beautiful high ceilings and huge windows (three of them!). And I could afford a place of my own. All by myself. Nothing matched, except one set of coffee mugs, until my brother broke three of them in the porcelain sink and I slept on a mattress on the floor. But it was all mine. That, and my bicycle and my 13″ black & white television set.

The bonus was that it was next door to Pete Mondale and his wife. They, being middle aged, owned their whole house. They had regentrified it. It was beautiful. They took good care of their house. And, without being parental, kept half an eye on me. Just half. Just enough. We were not close at all, but I knew that if there was an emergency, I could knock on their door for help. There never was an emergency, but their door was always there.

Pete Mondale is the brother of Walter Mondale, who at the time was campaigning for president on the Democratic ticket. He was the first nominee in history to select a woman as a running mate, Geraldine Ferraro. They ran a exquisitely executed campaign that everyone knew was doomed from the start. They were running against the incumbent Ronald Reagan. It was gloriously hopeless from the beginning.

I had just begun dating LightHusband and his earliest memories of me are that I yell at the television during political debates. I still do, when I can stomach them. He was completely dumbfounded. Why would anyone yell at an inanimate object? But I was yelling at the foolishness of Reagan’s policies … remember trickle-down economics? … he was intrigued. Now he yells too on rare occasion.

In my family, we talk back to the television and radio and express disagreement. Especially when we think something is wrong or ill-founded (read: stupid) and we might even throw our hands up in the air as well. In fact, one time during a particularly good rant, someone asked me if I am Italian. Not one little bit, I replied. All British. Just none of the hangups. And I’m cheeky too.

All of that is to say, while I’ve been an independent for a long time, I’ve viewed life primarily through the lens of a Democrat.  I worked for my senator when I was in college. Senator Stafford was a life-long Republican and I thoroughly admired him and supported his work. I believe that the government’s job is to protect it’s citizens, to provide a safety net for them should they need it, and several other things that I haven’t yet verbalized enough to write.  I still don’t know who I’ll be voting for in the upcoming presidential election.  There was a time when I certain it would be Obama … but recently I’ve been thinking about Nader.  I know … throwing my vote away again.

In 1989 and 1990 LightHusband and I had been married a few years and we had our “conversion experience” and joined an Evangelical Free Church here in town. We took all the classes. Learned all the ropes. Joined all the clubs. Did all the right things. Learned how to fake it til we were makin’ it.  Began teaching 5th&6th grade Sunday School.  Sometimes the kids knew more than we did, sometimes we knew more than the kids … everyone learned in that class.  I still keep in touch with a couple of those kids … who are now grown ups!!  Somewhere in this time period one of the larger radio stations in the area became “Christian” so I began listening to it going to and from work each day.  Thoroughly indoctrinated I was.

In 1992, Bill Clinton ran for President.  And the whole world went to hell in a handbasket.  You may not have not noticed it at the time, but it did according to all the naysayers in the Christian world.  Particularly in the pulpit of many churches.  I remember going to visit our pastor at some point during the election.  He and his family had recently moved out of their townhouse right next to ours and were transitioning to a single family home.  In the interim, they were house sitting across town.  I want to take some time to set the stage for this visit because it’s important.  This pastor and his wife were the people who had lead LightHusband and I to Christ.  We were very close to them.  Our houses had shared a wall for several years and we had shared life with them.

When we got to the house, I noticed that their two girls (homeschooled and in first-ish grade) were watching “Ren & Stimpy” that precursor to South Park without any supervision at all.  It was an episode in which one character was farting on the head of the other in the bathtub.  While we spent a lot of time quoting and laughing about Monty Python together as adults, I knew that this was not something either of them would condone for their very young daughters if they really knew about it.  But they weren’t really paying attention.  In any case, I was there to try to talk to our pastor about political discussions from the pulpit and why I didn’t believe they were appropriate.  The whole “Ren & Stimpy” thing threw me off guard temporarily and of course, I was a young Christian arguing without much back up.

What I didn’t realize was that he didn’t think he had to listen to a woman about much of anything in any case so I might as well have been talking to a wall.  At the time, I had no idea about the whole complementarian/hierarchical debate and the damage it could do a relationship.  I also did not have a good enough command of the scriptures or the faith to be able to stand against his belief that politics and faith do mix in the pulpit.  Oh, how I wish now for a Richard Land (head of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission) to counter-act the prevailing wisdom of the time.  “Pastors are called to serve all their parishioners, he says, and to endorse a candidate even privately is needlessly partisan and divisive.  “I have an obligation to minister to all Southern Baptists, and it’s true, four out of five of them voted for George W. Bush, but I have an obligation  to that other fifth as well,” he says.” [We The Purple p. 144]

While Bill Clinton weathered some moral crises during his presidency, hundreds of thousands of people did not die at his command or because of his lies.  He has his flaws, but despite the claims made about him during the election cycles of 1992 and 1996, he did not turn out to be the anti-Christ.  Neither did Al Gore, nor did John Kerry.  It’s interesting to me that in every election cycle there are Christians who make the claim that the Democratic candidate is actually the anti-Christ.  It’s no surprise to me now that there are those out there making the same claim (and more stridently than ever) about Obama.

The point is that by the time George W. Bush was handed the presidency in 2000, I had come to the decision that it was safer in Christian circles for a person to acknowledge being a homosexual than to acknowledge being a political independent or Democrat.  Not that either acknowledgment would be particularly safe, mind you … just that one would lead to slightly less ostracizing than the other.

That’s wrong.  On both counts, but I’m not writing about homosexuals today.  Jesus is not a Republican and I’m not certain He’d vote for one.  But He’s not a Democrat either, and I’m not certain He’d vote for Obama.   No matter how much I like him.  I began to think more seriously about how would Jesus interact with the political system that we have constructed here.  It’s fairly different from the political system that he encountered in first century Jerusalem.  It’s not an autocratic police state.  We have a lot more freedom.  Trying to take the gospels and epistles and make a one for one comparison is fairly disengenuous.

I’m not certain Jesus would vote.  Although it’s hard to know.  He didn’t participate in the power structures of the day, but then hardly anyone did.  The idea that an average citizen could participate at any level in a system of government was as foreign to them as flying to the moon.  Who would do such a thing?  If he did vote, I think Jesus would put relationship first over rules.  I think he’d take that into consideration when looking at candidates and their platforms.  He’d think about Love, Grace, and Mercy and how that all fits together.

But when push comes to shove … I don’t think Jesus would vote.  Tomorrow I’ll tell you why.

Sally Coleman writes – “I have to admit that I am chuckling to myself a little; how strange it seems for me a Brit to be posting the Friday Five on 4th July! I realise that most of our revgals will be celebrating in some way today, but I hope that you can make a little room for Friday Five! From my short stay in Texas my memories of the celebrations are of fireworks and picnics, one year we went in to central Houston to watch the fireworks and hear the Symphony Orchestra play, we were welcomed and included, and that meant a lot!”

So lets have a bit of fun:

1. Barbeque’s or picnics ( or are they essentially the same thing?) – My definition? Picnics are never at someone’s home.  You take your (cold) food somewhere else.  It’s usually sandwiches and/or finger foods.  Fruit and cookies.  Wine or beer for grown ups.  Simple fun stuff to eat.  Barbeque’s mean grills and sloppy food and potato salad and coleslaw.    The latter two are must haves for barbeques.  Must.  Haves.  Oh.  and brownies.

2. The park/ the lake/ the beach or staying at home simply being?  It depends … I’ve done all.  This year we are staying at home simply being.  It helps that we can watch a great fireworks display from our front yard.  Friends are coming for dessert.  But that’s it.  My favorite years were back when we were allowed to camp out on the lawn in front of General’s Row at Fort Myer in Arlington to watch the DC fireworks.  This is no longer allowed because of all the security measures.  It’s sad to me.

3. Fireworks- love ’em or hate ’em?  I absolutely adore fireworks.  I could watch them for hours and hours.  We need to go back next year and see the DC fireworks now that our kids are older and can appreciate them.  DC has spectacular fireworks.  Absolutely spectacular.

4. Parades- have you ever taken part- share a memory… I have been in so many parades.  I spent almost every fourth of July from the time I was 15 until I was 33 marching in a parade.  Except two or three when I was in college.  They’ve kinda blurred together.  It was always, always, always HOT and sweaty.  I hated marching in parades on the fourth.  We have an ugly national anthem … it’s a beer drinking song.  I hate Yankee Doodle; because I’ve played it 9,438,527 too many times.  I’m not the most patriotic person, so all the flag-waving and histrionics made/make me sort of nauseous.  Besides … it wasn’t July 4 that was important at all.  It was more like July 2 or something.  I still love the fireworks.

5. Time for a musical interlude– if you could sum up holidays in a piece of music what would it be? Well … of course the 1812 Overture with real live cannons.

Happy Father’s Day.

It’s one that will surely survive in our collective memory as a family.

It began early; as in 5:30 a.m. One last early rink time for the season. We all went. LightBoy’s game was on one sheet at 7:20; LightGirl’s on the other at 7:30. I ran through the golden arches for a delicious, nutritious breakfast. Yum. LightBoy lost. LightGirl tied. But none of that is memorable.

LightGirl has had a crush on a teammate for a while now. About a week ago she got some intel which suggested that he was more LightBoy’s age. This was completely embarassing. Humiliating. Horrifying. In her words, she felt like a pedophile. Ewweth. This morning before the game I discovered she had bad intel. Her crush was her age. I passed this information along after the game.

So what do you think she did? Well, what would you do? Given that you definitely wouldn’t be seeing the guy again til September and maybe not very much even then.

Has she ever been on a date? No.

Has she ever had a boyfriend? No.

Has she ever been in any kind of relationship of any sort other than friends with a boy? No.

Has she ever spoken more than say fifteen words in a row to this kid? Uhhh … no.

So, of course, it goes without saying … ask him out. Ask him, where? Just … you know … out. On a date. Sometimes the mom is stoo-pid.

It’s helpful too, to have a friend by your side who will act as your voice when you and the guy stand there staring at each other. So, her friend did the actual, you know, asking. She said, “So … LightGirl wants to know if you’d go to the movies or something?” He said, “Sure.” and they both stood there and looked at each other … stunned. So GirlFriend spoke up again and said, “Now it would be good if you exchanged phone numbers.” So they did that too.

Then she came flying around the corner to tell me all about it. Grinning from ear to ear.

She spent the next half an hour texting him. Now she is firmly, giddily ensconced on the phone and computer with her peeps giggling and reliving the event. Imagining what will come next. And ad finitum. It is quintessential adolescence.

And just like that LightHusband and I have crossed a rubicon. It came upon us and we were across it before we even realized that it was there. I never even heard the echo of my feet on wood as the footsteps bounced back from water.

We are lucky, I suppose. She’s very confident. The young man in question is kind, upright, and a decent hockey player. We now have decisions of heavy consequence to make. Where should they go? What should they do? Now that the question has been asked and answered, will the “date” actually even take place?

On another hand, our fortunes run much deeper than that. Our definition of what is quintessentially adolescent is light and air. It involves words like, “giddy” and “peeps.” She will (Lord willin’ an’ the creek don’t rise) complete her secondary education and go on to get a college level education of some sort. There are many, many parents in the 2/3’s world who never even begin to think these words, never mind associate them with children in their family. Yet most families in our world … our 1/3 world, that is the industrialized, civilized, mechanized, and importantly educated, world do have the opportunity to associate words like, “giddy” and “adolescence” and “grin” and “date” and “secondary education” and “college education” with our daughters. Not only do we have that opportunity, we make the assumption that it is the right and natural course of things.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs being secure in our bodily needs allows us to become more secure with our friendships, family and relational intimacy. This in turn builds self-esteem, confidence, etc. It makes sense in a way. One cannot build relational intimacy, when one is deeply hungry for days and months on end. Or living in a place where the water is not reliable. It is simply not feasible. So most Westerner’s (we of the 1/3’s world) would tend to think of education as necessary yet expendable. After all, an education will not build security. It will not fill stomachs or healthily hydrate starving bodies. It will not keep peace among warring neighbors.

Or … will it?

What we are coming to find now is that the key to world peace might just be …

… our daughters. Our collective daughters. The brown ones, and tan ones and yellow ones and pink ones. It’s not that they need to rule the world. Far from it. They just need an education. It is having an education that gives them self-esteem and self-esteem begets relational intimacy which then allows for safety and security and then they can help their families fill their stomachs and hydrate their bodies. It seems that Maslow works for us, but it may just be upside down in other parts of the world.

Give these girls some time … time to be giddy and grow up. Time to learn. Time to be girls, then time to be women. Time to read. Time to calculate. Time to have a date or maybe two. Time to giggle. Time to achieve. Time to gain confidence in their righteous state as children of the Creator. Time to earn respect. Time to bestow respect. They need our time, so that they may have a little more time. And in so doing it is our collective daughters who may just change the world … one village at a time.

Today marked a milestone of sorts.

One day about 14 years ago I signed up to take a meal to a woman who’d just had some sort of surgery. She had two small children and her husband worked alot of hours. The family were members of our church and it was the beneficent thing to do. The children were about 4 and 1 (at the time) and LightGirl was around 6 months old. I figured I’d drop the meal off, say a few words and leave. It was around LightGirl’s naptime afterall. I think I left about 3 hours later.

The way I figure it I think we’ve spent the equivalent of a year of our lives on the phone together. Most of that laughing. I spent the wee hours of the morning with her oldest two when child number three joined them, and then child four and then finally, child number five (who is now five).

Child number 2 and number 3 are LightGirl and LightBoy’s ages … they have grown up together.

The oldest, a girl, graduated from highschool yesterday. A milestone of sorts. My first friend to have a child graduating from highschool. More than that though … I’ve known this girl virtually her whole life. I remember more about the funny things these children said when they were little, than my blood nieces and nephews. We hid out together during tornado watches and cooked chicken feet one day. We’ve watched each other’s children for overnights and for vacations.

We fell away from each other for a few years for no particular reason. We staying in sporadic contact, but falling off of a cliff in the middle of the mines of Moria made me a little difficult to reach for a while. So when we received the invitation to her graduation party, our whole family was delighted. Even better was LaughingEye’s reaction when she opened the door this afternoon. Her whole body radiated joy.

I made her an album quilt … a quilt with space for her friends and family to sign. She was thrilled. I am thrilled. And I sat, absorbed back into my friend’s family and realized that friends really are the family you choose.

I’ve been tagged again in a couple of meme’s and very lax about responding. These meme’s, however, have taken some thoughtful response, so I’m giving myself that out.

First, Grace tagged me to tell you all about my favorite book of the Bible. That’s hard … I think I have to say, Ruth. I love the story of Ruth. If you read it thoroughly it is a complete story of God … He’s all in there, but you have to look in all the nooks and crannies for Him. That’s why I love the story so much, it’s a beautiful love story and it’s multi-layered; keep pushing through and you find more and more and more. After that, I’d say Romans. And Esther.

Who to tag? Pistol Pete, Nick Gray, Maria

Second, Erika tagged me in a meme begun by Jamie Arpin-Ricci in which he quotes:

“The life of the Christian should be burning with such a light of holiness that by their very example and conduct, their life will be a rebuke to the wicked.” (St. Francis)

In an era where Christians are largely known for the sin they oppose, this wisdom could not be more timely. Francis calls us to face the compromises of our culture by becoming living alternatives with how we live.

Jamie set up the following rules (I think of them as more like guidelines 😉 )

1. Consider aspects of our culture where we have too easily compromised, issues that you passionately oppose.

2. Then, ask yourself what it would mean for you, both as and individual and as a part of a community, to be a living alternative. Write about it.

3. Link back here to this post.

4. Tag others to participate.

It’s too easy to be morally upright about the things that matter least in God’s economy … things like sex and alcohol. Yet it seems as though those are the things that Christians are known for caring most about. We don’t seem to spend a lot of time worrying about the seven deadly sins from the classical era … pride, greed, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy and lust. Some may say (and correctly) that these are not mentioned by name in the Bible. True. And yet … we must look at the results of these sins. They serve to devour others and their needs, rights, desires in the service of mine. They build up me at the expense of another. This is counter to the love of God and love of other that is woven like a golden thread throughout all of the Scriptures.

To be a living alternative is to understand root causes and behaviors. It is to live in the meniscus of grace, dancing with the Holy Spirit where She may take me. Living with open hands. I have a house for purposes of hospitality. I have stuff for the purposes of giving it away to those in need. I am home during the day so my young neighbor can get a ride to school when he’s missed his bus. I can give water to those who are thirsty and share my food with those who are hungry. I can live with my hands and heart open, giving away … and not storing up for myself. Do not live to devour others, but live to serve God and dance in Her Grace.

And I’ll tag: Bill, Jeremy, Peggy, Lyn , and now Doug (who I’d been thinking of all along, but got distracted!)