What is church anyway?

    It's a safe place.

It's full of folks; each arrives with baggage and none are perfect yet.

  It's where you go, knowing you'll be received lovingly.
It's a place to dump all the weight and get refreshed and refocused.
     It's a classroom for practical stuff.
  It's a library of accumulated wisdom.
 It's a connection point for good-hearted folks.
It's a good place to find folks who've been through what you're facing.
  It's a pep rally to pump us up when we need it.
It's a place of solace when we need it, and a refuge.



It's the launch point for our lives in a tumultuous world; maybe that, most of all.


It's not perfect, but it's learning and changing.

If it's not, it's not church.  It's something else.

If it's speaking an antique language, it's an antique.
If it's polarized and polarizing, it's political.
If it's rule based, it's a court for judgement.
If it's exclusive, it's a country club.
If it's ethnically narrow, it's just broken.
If it's the center of member's lives, it's a cloister of irrelevance.

The church is not the gospel, by the way.

The real purpose of church?  Making a place for all of us to know our Father and for equipping us all to be the light on every hill, in every office and marketplace, every neighborhood and classroom.  We are the light that the world sees every day; we are the message He sends.

~ there's more of course, but this stuff always comes up ~

You're nuts if ...

If you're off the main path that normal people take, you're nuts.

Obviously.

Most people, at least the normal ones, will make the same choices in the same circumstances.  That's why they call it 'normal'; it's the norm.  It's predictable, low risk,  expected.  It's the way things are, the normal process, the only option.  There's tremendous pressure to keep to the path.

The pressure to conform assaults us early on.  As teens labor to emerge into adulthood, peer pressure constricts and directs so much of the process.  Later as adults, the expectation of others weighs heavily on us, erodes our confidence, and clouds our thinking.

The normal pathway is fine for most folks most of the time, but it's predictable.  Little personal progress will be made; don't expect change or anything new along the way.

Same-o, same-o, nothing in the brain-o.

OK you've chosen, your bridges are in flames, and now you're officially off the path.  You're nuts, but you've picked your path.  How do you work through the questions?

I'm off the main track.  True?
I've chosen this way.  Do I know why?
    Is it logic?  Is it a passion?  Is it a dream I've had since ....?

Either I'm really nuts ...
  ... or I see this point of focus;  it's important to me because ...
    I want to understand.
      I think I can make a difference.  I think I can help.
        I think I can see a way through.
           I'd be willing to spend myself if it will make a difference.
    I'd like to try.  I'd honestly like to do more than just what's expected, and I can face not being like everyone else.

It's all high-risk, unpredictable, and everybody thinks you're out in left field.

People you may have heard of and who were also nuts.  Gates, Jobs, Mother Theresa, Edison, Rockefeller, Roosevelt, Martin Luther, Issac Newton, Lottie Moon.  All off the main pathway, each with a motivation, an opportunity, an impact.  How'd they do?

So, you change the context of your life.  Change your worldview until it includes humanity.  See behind the headlines.  Skip the mainstream answers, and ask harder questions.  Push hard at the boundaries, at the cultural norms, at the expectations of others.  Courage is non-conformity.

Scared?  You bet. But you'll have more fun than the normal folks.

UPDATE:  DEC '13.  My African pastor friend decided with his wife to take in a bunch of orphans and help them stay healthy and get through school and have a home and family.  Sixteen of them; it's a mob scene!  He's off the beaten path, of course, but he says the smiles on the children's faces makes it worth the effort.  Let me know if you'd like to lend a hand; I'll introduce you to the family.

Marketing Violence

Curious why children might become violent?

The media, whose influence can exceed that of parents, was the subject of an FTC study a few years ago.  The results are not comforting.  The report made the following key findings about the marketing of violent entertainment material by industry:

Movies: Of the 44 movies rated R for violence the Commission selected for its study, the Commission found that 35, or 80 percent, were targeted to children under 17. Marketing plans for 28 of those 44, or 64 percent, contained express statements that the film's target audience included children under 17. Plans for the other seven movies were either extremely similar to the plans of the films that did identify an under-17 target audience, or they detailed plans indicating they were targeting that age group, such as promoting the film in high schools or publications with majority under-17 audiences.

Music: Of the 55 music recordings with explicit content labels the Commission selected for its review, the Commission found that all were targeted to children under 17. Marketing plans for 15, or 27 percent, expressly identified children under 17 as part of their target audience. The documents for the remaining 40 explicit-content labeled recordings did not expressly state the age of the target audience, but detailed plans indicating they were targeting that age group, including placing advertising in media that would reach a majority or substantial percentage of children under 17.

Games: Of the 118 electronic games with a Mature rating for violence, the Commission selected for its study, 83, or 70 percent, targeted children under 17. The marketing plans for 60 of these, or 51 percent, expressly included children under 17 in the target audience.

By themselves, these movies, music, and games would not guarantee a violent child.  Taken in the context of a harsh home environment or a tense school culture, the probability increases.

Now you can understand why so many consider homeschooling and managed exposure to the world, especially for the early years.  Children are educated and their character is shaped by what they experience, by their play, by what they see.

Update 2018:  investigation into school shooting incidents uncovered a number of the perpetrators had studied the Columbine event and planned similarly.  The two Columbine shooters were spectacularized in the media around the world, influencing an entire generation.

The hug-an-orphan approach to charity ...

Do I just want to make the kids happy, or do I want to change their world? Do I just enjoy the embrace, or do I think it through to what's going to make a difference?

Voluntourism, a setback for South Africa Aids Orphans

Studies suggest that spending a couple of weeks working in an orphanage overseas will make you feel better, but it may contribute to the sense of abandonment those precious children already suffer.  Wonderful intentions and a tender heart perhaps aren't enough by themselves to finish what's needed.

Generally volunteers will only stay at the orphanage [or school] for a few days, weeks, or at best months. While at the orphanage most volunteers seek to build emotional bonds with the children so they can feel they made a difference. Unfortunately, although well intended, this leads to a never ending round of abandonment for the orphans.

An open-door, unrestricted policy on filming, photography, and volunteering to anyone who shows up is often not in the best interest of children and is more about making the volunteer feel good about themselves.

Unless ...

The UN guidelines for the alternative care of children points out the need for reliable long-term relationships.  It suggests to me that if you want to love such a child, either adopt them and take them home, or establish a long-term relationship with them that has regular, dependable expressions of love and, most importantly, practical help.

The director of the NGO I work with in Africa sat me down rather insistently one day to talk about the 'save the children' approach to helping.  It's a great focus point, sponsoring a child, but taken too literally, it's nonsense.  Sponsoring just one child isn't what's needed.   

World Vision and others, fortunately, know better and use the child sponsorship focus to do family and community-based work that really does help.


So, then, here's the tough question of the week for us all:  do I respond so I'll feel better?  Or because I want to have a genuinely good heart toward my brothers and sisters.  Why am I so deeply stirred by the little faces? Why have I committed resources?  What am I hoping to make different?

What am I going to do with what I know?

The precious little girl is such an attention getter. Bright, cheerful, and in a difficult world. It's her family that could use the help, though. Dad lost his arm and his job. Friends in the US have helped out a bit, so for now, they don't go hungry.  They're getting help starting a family garden and some pigs. The kids are in school; they walk 2 miles to Guadalupe for class.

Every one of us would want to embrace this child.  Do better; embrace her family.  Want to lend a hand?  They could certainly use it.  I'll be glad to send your contribution along with ours to the NGO that we're working with there.  They're tax deductible, if that helps.

When I set up the sponsorship for our first two kids and their families, our teacher friends came and told us there were five more at the school, orphans in real hardship, that needed help too.  It hurt badly to say I couldn't afford more.  We have six families now; my daughter helped one of them buy their home.  

Update on the family mentioned above: with a little help, they've come a long way from when we first met.  Dad has recovered his health and is working again, and the kids are doing well in school.  It's encouraging to know the difference you can make.

Update 2015: With the help of friends, we now have eight families and their children plus another 90 kids or so on education assistance projects, single moms on developmental education projects, and point-of-need projects as they've occurred.  What a joy to be part of such things.  Oh, and two college grads, so far; pretty impressive considering few kids get to go beyond the sixth grade.

Update 2016:  ... and three of our girls are at the very top of their high school classes.  This is in a culture where girls don't usually go to high school.  More to come.

Waste of Time

If I speak eloquently, no matter how impressively, but if I don't do so from a loving heart, I'm just wasting time.

If I lecture with power, revealing amazing mysteries, and if I say to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm wasting everybody's time.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even pour out my last breath for them, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, without love I'm bankrupt.

Love is strong and never gives up.
   Love cares more for others than for self.
    Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
 Love doesn't strut, or have a swelled head,
   Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always “me first,”
      Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of other's imperfections,
      Doesn't revel when others grovel,
   Takes pleasure in truth and clarity,
 Puts up with pretty much anything,
    Trusts God always, and looks for the best,
Never looks back, but keeps going to the end.

   Love lives on. Impressive speaking will be over some day; our understanding will struggle and reach its limits. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say is always incomplete. But clarity arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

 When I was a baby, I gurgled and mumbled like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways behind.

    Perhaps like an infant's understanding, we don't see things clearly yet. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, knowing just as we are known!

   But for now, until that clarity comes, we have three things to do to lead us toward that goal: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

      Anything less is just wasting time.

Gulf Oil Spill

Equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster fifty times over, the oil pollution in the Gulf is causing damage, some of which is irreversible and some that will be decades in correcting.  Millions have lost their livelihood, their communities, and their water.  Those still in the area are often hopelessly lost in poverty; some are rising up in revolt.  It's been going on, year after year, the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez, every year for FIFTY years.

Wonder where?  Nigeria, the Niger Delta, and the Gulf of Guinea.

The company at fault is not BP.  It's Royal Dutch Shell and the corrupt local government.  Folks have been jailed, beaten, tortured, and some just murdered, for protesting the destruction of the region.  No longer fit for farming or fishing, polluted beyond usability, the land and surrounding waters are their home and life, stolen from them by greed and big oil.  The warm Delta waters are a key spawning ground for tuna and other important species in the Gulf of Guinea.  The region's pollution exacerbates an already dramatic decline in those fish populations.

So here in the U.S., the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has caused extraordinary damage and expense.

Folks in the Niger Delta sympathize with our Gulf residents and the oil spill problems, but they shrug and wonder why the world-wide media attention.  The same thing has been happening to them for fifty years and no one cares, no one helps, no outcry, no global interest, nothing. 

From the The Guardian, "We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air."

"The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months."  See the LINK here to The Guardian's article.

Down these mean streets a man must go ...

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.  ...   He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor - by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it.  He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. ...   If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in."        Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888 – 1959)

You're missed, Dad.  Every day, especially the difficult ones.

Difficult times, conflicts of ethics, of clarity, of trying to understand and reach for the right goals; I remember well your grace and perseverance, your willingness to learn and change, but especially your tender heart toward others, all the way to the very end.  The world was a better place where you touched it.

A composer, conductor, a college professor with hundreds of students who loved him as an interim father; later a federal program administrator, a church elder ... and in his last few years, he taught piano lessons.  He had thirty or so students, children mostly.  After he passed away, an elementary school teacher told us how one of dad's students had said he wanted to be like Mr. Dickerson when he grew up.  The kid had minimal musical talent, but he knew he'd met a good man.   

Father's Day - 2010

Volatile Voltaire

Revered and sometimes ridiculed, he was a writer and philosopher who helped shape the world. He's commonly referred to as the father of the Enlightenment.

Voltaire wrote poetry and prose, history and philosophy, about civil rights and fair governance.  Too, he spoke out emphatically about Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as well.

Voltaire was a self-professed theist; his anti-church writings were focused on the practices of the church in his day and over the years. In his "The Philosophical Dictionary", he recounts the  bloody centuries of religious intolerance and the millions who died from it.  At the end of the writing, though, he declares to the spirit that has explained it all to him, "Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master."

Neale Donald Walsch is author of the
series Conversations with God.

Today's culture shares Voltaire's disdain for the narrow-mindedness that can rule a religion and the exclusivist mindset that typically persists there.  Public discussions equate such judgmental thinking with bigotry and suggest that bringing up a child in that context is abusive.  That same religious thought-path we tolerate in the west is carried a step further to violence and slaughter elsewhere in the world.  Both Voltaire's and today's observations are relevant; you'll note they are unrelated to the legitimacy of one's faith or an honest pursuit of knowing God.

How then shall people of faith go forward?
Curious what comes next?

Voltaire died today in 1778 after a long life in an extraordinarily corrupt world. The revolution in France came a decade later, perhaps precipitated to some degree by Voltaire's writings. The revolution spread across Europe and portions of Latin America.  I wonder what Voltaire would think now of how things have progressed; or more appropriately, how many things remain unchanged.

Memorial Day

There are no words to describe the sacrifice so many have made.

In our hearts, we know their offering was not lightly given.

Most went, not because they were told to, but for deeply personal reasons; perhaps because they chose to do their part, to do what needed to be done for the sake of others.

We who made it home remember all too clearly, all of it.

The loss of their presence among us is greater still, and we remember each one.

The memorial is fifty miles from here;

it's been there for thirty years.

Someday, I'll go.

Freedom of speech, of faith, of assembly, freedom of press, of tweet, of blog ...

Blog record, first half of 2015

I was surprised to find that this blog/journal might reach farther than just my friends.

Times have changed, issues have changed; now perhaps more than ever, we share ideas and concerns on a grand scale.  Our community is larger than it once was, and our perspective can be broadened by sharing our lives.  Such opportunity can be good in so many ways.

We are extraordinarily fortunate to share in such freedom.

Children Learn

Children learn from what they see, don't they. Today, they see perhaps the most divisive era yet in American history. They see anger and judgement, accusation and slander, and vicious separation. They see nothing of nobility or virtue. Nothing at all anywhere in the public arena.

When, by rhetoric and example and media exposure, we teach our children to fear and hate their fellow man, when we teach them that he is a lesser human because of his origin or beliefs, when we teach that those who differ from us are a threat to our freedom or our job or family, then we sow the seeds of a lifetime's conflict.  They will see not through the eyes of consideration but of conquest and with a goal of competition and mastery. 

At the end of it all, we look at our brothers and sisters as aliens, those with whom we share a world, but not a life, those bound to us in common place, but not in common purpose. We learn to share just our common fear - our common desire to retreat from each other - a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. In all of this, there is neither virtue nor justification.  It's the heart of fear.

We've got to see that our own children's good future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We have to grasp that this short life can neither be ennobled nor enriched by class or conquest.

Learn.  Change.  Share the lessons learned with your children. What a load will be lifted from both generations.

It's perhaps the most difficult of tasks to see our own bent thinking, our unreasoned bias, our preferential filtering of information.  Impossible.  Until it's done, of course.  Then, at least, we can see clearly.

Personal note: we both grew up in Texas; it was the whole world to us.  It was the width and breadth of our understanding, and it never occurred to us that there was more.  Working outside the country shattered our worldview, our personal philosophy and theology, and required us to thoughtfully rebuild it all, for which we're thankful.  We needed it.   
Ro.12.2 Don't conform.  Instead, by the rebuilding of your mind, be changed so that by inquiry you may recognize the will of God along with all that is good and just and magnificent in this life.

And thanks, of course, to Nelson Mandela whose life and words were more noble than most, and to RFK who challenged us to think about such things. 

Non-Stop Flight

If you've ever jumped out of an airplane, you'll appreciate this.  The little swift takes off from its nest and spends months in the air ... without landing anywhere.  Months!  Some spend nine or ten months continuously airborne in their migration, living off bugs in the air.  At night, they'll rise up to perhaps ten thousand feet on terrain-provoked air currents.  They probably nap while gliding, scientists suspect.

Swifts arrive in South Africa from Europe in October and November.  They'll head for home between January and March, all without having landed anywhere.

Nesting, when it happens, is always tucked away above the ground; chimneys are popular.  Swifts rarely land at ground level, although they will occasionally skim along the surface of water for a drink or a bath on-the-fly.

The common swift is beautifully designed with a torpedo-shaped body around six inches long, or about sparrow-size.  Its wingspan is wide in proportion at around sixteen inches, about twice that of a sparrow.  An impressively efficient metabolism and refined physiology make being continuously airborne possible.  They can top 100 mph in level flight.

So just for fun, imagine launching out your front door and into the air on a beautiful morning.  You notice the days are getting shorter, so you head south.  You cruise comfortably down to the Mediterranean and far beyond into southern Africa.  Meals are available along the way.  After a warm few months, lazing along in the warm southern air, you turn for home.  You'll spend a couple of months there relaxing and maybe raising some little swifts.  And next year, you'll bring the kids along to enjoy the view.  And the bugs.

Breeding grounds for the common swift (apus apus) include Europe, Asia, China, and Northern Africa. Their migration habitat includes all of sub-Saharan Africa. They have a stable population of perhaps 25 million which is enough, I guess.

Sometimes the world seems filled with interesting things I hadn't known.





Thanks and a hat-tip to Science Friday on NPR.

Life Hurdles

Poverty is perhaps the greatest impediment to a good life.  The second greatest is wealth.

Poverty inhibits life, health, education, family, relationships, and every meaningful thing.
Wealth does the same, and more.

These are key elements.  The absence of any detracts from
our lives.  Notice those affected by poverty and wealth.
At the social foundation:
Rights
Health
Safety
Structure
Resources
In the course of life:
Personal control
Healthy relationships
A voice in the community
Work and place options
Leisure

Wealth gives you fast food and packaged foods and soft drinks and desserts.  It gives you entertainment and distractions from life and relationships.  It gives you a flood of meaningless information to occupy your mind and emotions.  It can fill your life with work, and few find themselves doing something that is deeply satisfying.

For the wealthy, there's perhaps little time sitting on the porch, talking with dad after working together on some task.  There's probably few weekends spent with extended family in the sunshine, and little time for neighbors.  It's perhaps too easy to plug the kids into the television while you do your own things.  Wealth means a life full of busyness and distractions, and there's perhaps a measure of loss.

When we measure quality of life, we think about comfort and security, health and well-being.  We think about how happy we are with our lives.  Some find themselves with plenty of everything and remain somehow strangely incomplete.  Why might that be?

We understand that extreme poverty is deadly and that quality of life improves with increased income.  What is hard to grasp is that increasing income only improves our lives up to a point, beyond which it can ruin everything that was important to us.

Some interesting folks are pursuing the question.  What are the things that make life good?  Their work suggests there's much more than just economics.  Not surprising.

Depending on place and culture, economy and politics, needs can differ, and there are things that wealth cannot provide.  Of course.

Then there's that part about a camel passing through the eye of a needle.  There's probably a wealth of truth behind that comment, about how wealth can be an impediment to a good life.  Ever sat down with a friend to talk about it?  👪

Thank you

"Thank you, Lord, for all the gifts you've given to me today.

Thank you for all I’ve seen, heard, and received.

Thank you for the shower that woke me up, for the soap that smells so good, for the toothpaste that refreshes. Thank you for the clothes that protect us, for their color and their style. Thank you for the newspaper so faithfully there, for the comics, for my morning smile, for useful meetings, for justice done, for big games won. Thank you, Lord for the street cleaning truck and the men who run it. Thank you for their morning shouts and all the early noises.

Thank you for my work, the tools, my efforts; thank you for the metal in my hands, for the whine of the steel biting into it. Thank you for the satisfied look of the foreman for the load of finished pieces. Thank you for Jim who lent me his file, for Danny who shared his lunch with me, for Charley who held a door open for me.

Thank you for the welcoming street that led me here, for the shop windows, for the cars, for the passersby, for all the life that flowed swiftly between the windowed walls of the houses.

Thank you for the food that sustained me, for the glass of water that refreshed me. Thank you for the car that meekly took me where I wanted to go, thank you for the fuel that made it go, and for the wind that caressed my face. Thank you for the trees that nodded to me on the way. Thank you for the boy I watched playing on the footpath opposite. Thank you for his roller skates, thank you for his comical face when he fell.

Thank you for the morning greetings I received and for all the smiles. Thank you for my mother who welcomes me at home; for her tactful affection, for her silent presence. Thank you for the roof that shelters me, for the lamps that light me, for the radio that plays and for the news and for music and for singing. Thank you for the bunch of flowers so pretty on my table. Thank you for the tranquil night, for the stars, and thank you, Lord, for silence….

Thank you for the time you've given to me, Lord. Thank you for life, thank you for grace, thank you for just being there and listening to me and for taking me seriously. Thank you for gathering my gifts in your hands to offer them to your father. Thank you, Lord, thank you."

Source unknown, far away, many years ago.