NO DANCING!

That's the rule!  They told us that when we were kids in church in the South.  Good grief.

Rules have been the source of cultural distress for thousands of years, of course.  Who gets to rule, and what rules are imposed on us regular folks. 

There are good rules, we all agree. No killing, no stealing, don't lie, don't hurt other people. The reasonable next steps are things like respect your parents and take care of them when they're old. Heal the sick, feed the hungry, make a place for everyone. Love others like you love yourself.

Then there are the odd rules that persist and make little sense.  Honor killings, kidnapping students, forbidding girls to study in school, bikinis and burkas, insisting that porn is the same as free speech, and ... no dancing. Someone thought that was a good idea, I suppose.

A broadly understood concept, commonly shared
among religions and philosophies ...

While the rule of law is indeed a recognized necessity, no one suggests that it addresses the root of the problem.  It's the individual heart, right?

A good heart rules well, especially if it is refined over years by good counsel and experience.

Law has been shown to define the boundary against which we press, struggling for the best advantage, looking for the loophole.  A good heart, on the other hand, is pushing in the opposite direction, struggling to do right, looking for the opportunity to serve well.

It's funny ... funny strange, not humorous ... how little time we spend pursuing the goal of a good heart.  Little is said of it in the public arena, and perhaps little in our daily conversations as well.  In the business world, it's a little odd or even uncomfortable when 'doing the right thing' comes up in a meeting.  Why is that, I wonder.  In today's world where it seems that those who have the gold make the rules, is there a good path, a better way that an individual can follow?

Zombie Prejudice

'Canada will never be a safe haven for zombies,' according to Foreign Minister John Baird. 

During parliamentary discussions on crisis response, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird stood up and, with a straight face, assured the nation that zombies would not be welcome in Canada should the U.S. devolve into a zombie wasteland. "I want to assure this member and all Canadians that I am dedicated to ensuring this never happens. I want to say categorically to this member, and through him to all Canadians, that under the leadership of this Prime Minister, Canada will never become a safe haven for zombies.  Ever." The room burst into applause.

We all laughed, of course.  It was a joke.

Interestingly, similar thinking has been popular in the past, and it wasn't humorous. Depending on who and where you are, your history includes a vicious unwillingness to make a place for Africans or Jews or local natives or members of some other class than your own.

The Irish weren't welcome in America in the 19th century; the prejudice against them was old by then, though.  In the 12th century, the Irish resistance to invasion and domination gives us our first look at their "barbarous nation" with "filthy practices".  The Gaelic Irish lived under the weight of such characterizations for centuries, and in some regions they still do even now, in the 21st century.

Black Africans, Asians, Latinos, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews; the list of those unfairly judged is long and persists in cultural thinking.

None of us are free of prejudice.  We're generally unaware of its extent in us.

... according to social science and psychology.  Do the research yourself if you're curious.

It's deeply pervasive.  Beyond the obvious prejudice about race or skin color, we find similar discrimination against people on the basis of body type, employment area, education, dialect, gender, tribe, hair style, religion, and their social class, wealth, and home size.  Every culture has their own version of these or others.  Destructive, in every case; from anorexia to ... zombies?

Prejudice - defined

A hostile opinion about some person or class of persons; prejudice is socially learned and commonly grounded in misconception, misunderstanding, and inflexible generalizations.  

Most often rooted in personal fear or insecurity, we perhaps fear loss of what we have or how we live.  It's as though we fear a dilution of the 'good' we deserve if these new players join.  Prejudice feeds on our perceived need to be better or superior in some way.

There is a way out, of course; and toward what we hope for in ourselves ... clear thinking, compassion, kindness, graciousness to others, and patience.

Both our culture and we ourselves can change. Though neither quick nor simple in either case, such cannot be ignored by a good conscience.  True?

Some resources ... here and here and here.  I couldn't find anything to help with the zombie problem, though.

Life in Memories

“People wait all week for Friday, all year for summer, all life for happiness.”

Life is surprisingly empty if not accompanied by moments worth remembering.  It might not be uncommon for a day or a month to pass in a blur, just marking time.  Can we choose otherwise?

Friends near and far, they shape our understanding,
our purpose, our view of life, of ourselves,
and the world.

Memories are made in brief moments or perhaps in a long struggle.  Joy or horror, memories are where we look back and see our self and others, the things that mattered, maybe the purpose for which we've lived.  Our happiness is in there.


Magnificent moments and the best of memories arise from doing well, do they not? And they often include people about whom we care deeply.

Our family, and particularly our children exemplify our hope to do well by others.  And our grandchildren.  Them, especially.

In that circle and beyond, a life invested in serving for the benefit of others appears to provide the deepest and most meaningful bedrock of happiness.  Not surprisingly, social science and psychology studies suggest a life focused on self, wealth, and pleasure is the least likely to satisfy more than fleetingly.  

Do the research yourself, if you're curious. Here's a good place to start.  It's a quick summary of 40 years of research.

Despite free will, we have few choices.  We have no choice at all about where or when we were born, how we were raised or the things we experienced along the way.  We have little choice about the culture or the economy in which we live.  That which we can choose is perhaps limited to how, and to what end, we serve.  True?  

If you didn't stop to see the video, you should.  It's useful understanding about what to do next.

Not Mentioned in History Class - Pt. I

The Nazi campaign against the Jews was a German idea, true?  Not exactly.

In the decades before the holocaust, distrust of Jews and attacks against them increased ... in America and elsewhere in the world.

The International Jew is a four volume set of booklets published and distributed in the early 1920s by Henry Ford, the American industrialist and automobile manufacturer.

In 1920, Ford had his personal newspaper The Dearborn Independent report on what he considered to be the "Jewish menace". Every week for 91 issues, the paper published some supposedly Jewish-inspired evil in a headline. The most popular and aggressive stories were reprinted in four volumes called The International Jew.  

The first volume of the series is titled The International Jew, The World's Foremost Problem.  Hitler had a copy in his personal library. 

At a ceremony in Dearborn, Michigan, Henry Ford was presented with the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle, an honor created in 1937 by Adolf Hitler. This high honor represented Adolf Hitler’s personal admiration and indebtedness to Henry Ford. 

After the war at the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi youth leader Baldur von Schirach tells how The International Jew had made a deep impression on him and his friends in their youth and influenced them in becoming antisemitic. He said: "... we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success, also the exponent of a progressive social policy. In the poverty-stricken and wretched Germany of the time, youth looked toward America, and apart from the great benefactor, Herbert Hoover, it was Henry Ford who to us represented America." 

Marianne Clemens in her Hitler Youth
uniform; she was automatically enrolled
in the Hitler Youth at the age of 10, and
drafted to work in munitions factories at
age 16.  She was told that concentration
camps were just prisons, and had no idea
of the truth. "We heard nothing from
the outside." Marianne says her eyes
were opened when the allied forces
arrived. "The Americans showed it
on their newsreels... and then we
saw … it was unbelievable."

Disappointing. The problem of prejudice is more broadly evident than in just one fanatical leader.  Wrong thinking, quickly stuffing others into a category, grouping all of them together and attributing the worst of traits and motives to all of them.

Among the surviving victims of such wickedness are those who were led down the pathway.  A moment's reflection unveils the horror of the Hitler Youth, the Hitlerjugend, the youth organization of the Nazi party in Germany.  

Beginning in Munich in 1922, children were recruited and taught the Nazi ideology. They were told it was true, right, and noble in every way. As young children are wont to do, they believed it all.  They didn't know.

Membership was compulsory nationwide after 1936, even if parents objected.  Parents were told their children would be taken away if they weren't allowed to join.  There were 8,000,000 members by 1940, perhaps 80-90% of the nation's youth. There were a few who privately disagreed with the Nazi ideology; some even managed to resist.  

Hitler Youth - precious
children, they didn't
understand what had
been done to them.

For those responsible, it would be better for them to have a millstone tied to their neck and be dropped overboard than to lead a little one astray.  They were just children.

So then, Henry Ford and antisemitism in America were at least part of the problem, and the 8,000,000+ Hitler Youth were among the victims. I doubt we will hear much about such things in our history classes.

Ford, a great man in so many ways, is reported to have been shown newsreel footage of the Nazi concentration camps; when he "was confronted with the atrocities which finally and unanswerably laid bare the bestiality of the prejudice to which he contributed, he collapsed with a stroke – his last and most serious."*

(Such shallow thinking as Henry Ford's view of Jews continues to be seen among us today.  Whether we're pointing out a political party, a philosophical ideology, or some subcultural group, we tend to dismiss all of  'them' as immoral and destructively motivated.  It is stunningly rare today to hear anyone suggest that those who disagree with them have any thoughtful rationale for doing so.)

     ____________________

... and Herbert Hoover was their great benefactor?
That will perhaps be our inquiry for Not Mentioned in History Class - Pt. II


*Robert Lacey,  Ford: The Men and the Machines

Child Abuse

Perhaps the greatest challenge every little girl will face ... self-acceptance.
Perhaps the greatest impediment every little girl will face ... the opinion of others.

Abuse by cultural norms, more
common than the sun rising.

In western culture particularly, a woman's hyper-awareness of appearance is imposed on her and persists for a lifetime.  It stems from her earliest years when she was introduced to pretty, cute, style, fashion, and a comparison of herself to others on that scale.

In middle-school and later, she will live in a world where the top percentage of girls, generally based on physical appearance and dress, will receive the most attention, the most encouragement, the most approval, and the best support for their self-image and acceptance.  The farther down the percentage-ladder a girl finds herself, the greater her difficulty in accepting herself, and the greater the likelihood of her struggling to find a place of acceptance in her social surroundings.

Her position on that ladder will tend to shape her entire life along a narrow pathway with only a few exits available through the years. Surprisingly, the cultural shaping adversely affects them all, regardless of their position on the ladder.  Insecurities and coping difficulties are likely to persist throughout their lives.

Young men face a similar battle, but are less encumbered by the same appearance issues.

For today's westernized woman, her natural face is rarely seen in public. Her natural hair is rarely good enough on its own.  She will spend innumerable hours attending to such things as a function of being accepted in her world, equating appearance with worth.

The alternative?

The key piece that appears to make the most difference is a strong, healthy family coupled with education and broad opportunity.  The farther she goes along the path of personal development, built on healthy support by mom and dad and extended family, the healthier her self-image will be.  It gives her the freedom to be a person of substance.  True?

Children have no choice of where they are born.  No choice about the family in which they are raised, the community in which they live, or the things they experience in the early years.

The universally available choices fall to mom and dad; they shape the world in which their children are formed.  A father who loves and enjoys her for the person she is; a mom who does the same and doesn't make a big deal about cutesy fashion or perfect hair ... it's the opportunity of a lifetime, literally.

There are many variables within a culture and more across cultural lines, of course, and all can be significant.  Too, the struggle might become an occasion of strengthening and personal growth.

Curious how your culture thinks?  Google images for 'magnificent women' and  'magnificent men', or just 'man' and 'woman'.

A Woman's Unbiblical Place

You're supposed to stay home and

cook in high-heels, apparently.

  A woman's place is in the home?

That was the narrative offered us when I was a kid in the 50's.  It was the man's job to provide and the woman's job to be a housewife, taking care of  kids and meals and such.  They said things like that in our church.  She's supposed to stay home.

The Victorian Era: 1837 to 1901

Also known as the industrial age, the years saw great
advancements in technology. Queen Victoria
 ruled at the time. It was the age when the
'housewife' was born. It only worked
 if you were wealthy.

As a teen, I sometimes wondered how come my mom and dad both had regular jobs.  Were they doing it wrong?

Years later, my young wife and I grew past the narrow description we'd been offered and enjoyed the opportunities we had for work and education and raising a family much like mom and dad had.

A reality check shows a woman's role through all of history.

In a West African village, everybody pitches in.  Friends interrupted our conversation to go
do their part.  The kids help, too, and they're skilled.  Click on the pic for a detailed look at
families and community in action.  And notice where the babies are.
This is the real world, the way most folks live.

Women have always been workers much like the men beginning in early cultures. Everyone turns out to plant or harvest.  Men often take the more physically demanding tasks, but women don't ever just stay at home ... unless they are wealthy.  Normal families are extended, tasks are shared, and there is a lot of work to do for everyone, all day, every day.  That's always been and is still the case for more than 80% of the world's folks; carrying water, collecting firewood, tending crops, landing the fishing boats and hauling in the nets like in the picture here ...

In some ancient writings, a king tells of the advice his mother gave him, "A good wife is hard to find," his mom says, "and worth far more than diamonds.  Her husband trusts her and has no reason to regret it."

Then he lists some character and behavior traits his mother offered to make her point.

 

• She’s like a trading ship that sails to faraway places and brings back exotic surprises.
• She’s up before dawn, preparing breakfast for her family and organizing her day.
• She looks over a field and buys it, then, with money she’s put aside, plants a garden.
• First thing in the morning, she dresses for work, rolls up her sleeves, eager to get started.
• She senses the worth of her work, is in no hurry to call it quits for the day.
• She’s skilled in the crafts of home and hearth, diligent in homemaking.
• She’s quick to assist anyone in need, reaches out to help the poor.
• She doesn't worry about her family when it snows; their winter clothes are all mended and ready to wear.
• She makes her own clothing, and dresses in colorful linens and silks.
• Her husband is greatly respected when he deliberates with the city fathers.
• She designs gowns and sells them, brings the sweaters she knits to the dress shops.
• Her clothes are well-made and elegant, and she always faces tomorrow with a smile.
• When she speaks she has something worthwhile to say, and she always says it kindly.
• She keeps an eye on everyone in her household, and keeps them all busy and productive.

This doesn't sound anything like 'a woman's place is in the home', does it.  It doesn't sound like long skirts and no sports either.  It doesn't sound like weak or unskilled or uneducated or unproductive.  It sounds like a good business woman well fitted to her culture, a person engaged in meaningful work across a broad spectrum.

The king's mother goes on to say, "Her children respect and bless her; her husband joins in with words of praise: 'Many women have done wonderful things, but you've outclassed them all!'”

And she closes with, "Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades.  The woman to be admired and praised is the woman who lives with a whole heart for God.  Give her everything she deserves, and fill her life with praise."


This particular account was written around 2,700 years ago; Proverbs 31.  It wasn't new, just laying out wisdom like parents do for their children.  They were biblically correct in their understanding even before the Bible was written, and the record remains for our instruction.




A great woman  will be fully engaged in family and culture, focused on living life and serving well with a good heart.  At least that's the way it looks to me if you read it in the Bible in the context in which it was written.

Then, of course, what is a man's place?  Same problematic phrasing; there's no place, per se, only purpose.

More on the subject for the Biblically curious ...

Nothing says, "I love you" like ...

Nothing says "I love you" like cheap crap made in China by slave labor, sold by a company owned by billionaires benefitting from corporate welfare, paying slave wages to employees ...

Welcome to Walmart,
 
   the stored owned by six mega-billionaires,
     the store that pays the worst wages,
        and costs taxpayers the most.

Wait, wait; stores aren't supposed to cost taxpayers anything!
 

A formal study noted, "...Walmart’s low wages and benefits, which often force workers to rely on various public assistance programs,” have a pricetag that communities pay.  The report concluded that, “... a single Walmart Supercenter cost taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year, or between $3,015 and $5,815 on average for each of 300 workers.”  Americans for Tax Fairness made this estimate using data from a 2013 study by Democratic Staff of the U.S. Committee on Education and the Workforce.

To be fair, Walmart isn't the only low-wage payer, and wages aren't the only problem.  Recent decades (3) have seen stagnation in wages and upward-employment opportunities.  Progressively more adults/parents are stuck in low or minimum wage traps without real opportunity for advancement.  Corporate profitability has soared, but the gains have paid owners, not workers.  The economic inequality inherent in today's business practices has ended what we once counted on; economic mobility.  We expected to start at the bottom of the ladder, but we didn't expect to stay there.  More and more workers find themselves in that position.

This year, about 15 percent of Americans (about 47 million people) fall below the poverty threshold.  The numbers are worse for women and minorities, of course.  And children.

Farther below, there are about 1.5 million Americans in 'extreme poverty' or effectively living on nothing at all.  The numbers have perhaps doubled since '96 following welfare reforms and stagnation in the jobs market.  There are perhaps 1 billion people in the world in such circumstances.

Imagine if you will, not a day of distress but a lifetime.  Not enough for heat or food or water, for clothing or transportation or healthcare, not enough to give your own children a hand up.  Persistent poverty, passed on from generation to generation, all in a time when there still plenty for everyone.  There's no actual food shortage; there's still enough for everyone, at least for now.  The difficulties are social and political, not availability.  

Returning to the subject at hand ... nothing says 'I love you' like lending a hand, helping out, making a difference, helping things change for the better.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Eaten by a shark?

"I haven’t been eaten by a shark yet which I am pretty happy about as that seems to happen quite often here. According to all the signs that we have encountered on the way everything in Australia is quite dangerous. We came across signs such as ‘’Rock risk area’’ while climbing in a cave, ‘’Tree climbing risk area’’ in the forests and a whole bunch of ‘’Coast risk area’s’’ in coastal areas on the way as well.  It’s kind of sad to realize that we live in a world where people can’t think for themselves anymore, where these signs are actually necessary because if anything happens to them they blame others… But we had heaps of fun anyway."

Her story ... 
She set out at age 14 to circumnavigate the world ... solo.

 Far from cultural norms one might expect for a teenager making her way into adulthood, she chose her path early on and, with her parents support, pursued it to this first goal and beyond.

Thoughtcrime

In Orwell's '1984', holding an opinion that opposed or doubted the ruling party is a criminal act, a 'thoughtcrime'.  The narrative portrays the fear-filled lives of folks trying to color only inside the lines.  With life or death in the balance, freedom is a distant dream.

Thinking must conform.

Orwell explains how folks in his fictional world learned to cope, to manage their own thoughts.  "Crimestop," he tells us, "is the (learned) faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments .... Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."

It's commonly clothed in Doublespeak/Doublethink (veiling disingenuous thinking from ourselves)
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it...."  ~ Winston Smith

So folks spend their energies, struggling to explain away distinctions between right and wrong, freedom and oppression, choice and constraint.

We'd never personally accept such self-negation in western culture, of course.

Turn a blind eye, keep your distance, don't dig deeper or think it through ....  a Pavlovian response of adapt, adjust, acquiesce, survive, succeed. 

Is there a time and place to take a stand, or should we, as is common, just acquiesce?  On what issues?  Is there a threshold beyond which we must change our response?


Concessions begin small, usually.  We easily adapt to the norms of our own culture.  I recall being asked in another country by a couple of young Christian men what I thought about a husband beating his wife.  They were struggling with the question; one held that she should be beaten routinely to keep her in line while the other insisted that it was only appropriate if she was disrespectful.  These were fine, honorable young men, mind you.

Like cultural norms, the economic circumstances in which we find ourselves are persuasive.  We're inclined (biased) to accept ways that ensure our survival.  Wall Street, for one example, insists that pumping wealth out of the world is acceptable regardless of the harm done, and they continue unchallenged.  Despite clear connection between unethical practices in the financial industry and the death of hundreds of thousands in the developing world, there is little being done to address the cause. Acquiescence is a narrow pathway, and treacherous.

Laura at 14

Laura set off to sail solo around the world when she was 14 years old. Growing up in Holland, she'd had a look at normal life in the modern world and didn't much care for it.

"... they are thinking only about money.  Money is most important thing.  Raising a family, getting a car, getting a house, getting kids and then die.”  ~ Laura Dekker

"I grew up with my dad, building boats," she tells us.  Born on the far side of the world in the middle of an extended sailing trip by her parents, she'd been sailing since the beginning.  Laura sailed by herself from Holland to England when she was 13.  She'd done it without permission and got in trouble for it.  She has a broader view of the world than most, perhaps.

Prior to her circumnavigation attempt, she and her parents spent ten months battling the Dutch Child Protective Services in court.  "They tried to take me away from my mom and dad, and put me in a home for crazy kids."  She won the battle.

"I don't like people to tell me what to do."

“I asked myself, can you do this? And I answered, I’m going to try. So I’m curious if I can, and if I make it, then I know I can. Then I've crossed a boundary. That is my only goal.”  She visited the Canary Islands on her trip, and the Eastern Caribbean before transiting the Panama Canal.  Once in the canal, she realized she was really going to circle the world; no more turning back.

“Nobody said life was easy. But that’s a pretty annoying fact.”

The Galapagos Islands, then west across the Pacific; Fiji, Vanuatu, through the treacherous Torres Strait, and north around Australia to Darwin.

“I had been awake for almost three days by the time I came into Australia and all my sails were just ripped and broken down and my steering wheel had fallen off.  I felt like I was just on the bottom.” 

"I hate sponsors," she explains as she handles everything herself.  No team to meet her, she does repairs, customs paperwork, and her own shopping ....

She met wonderful folks and other travelers along the way, mostly old people.  When you're just fourteen, everybody is old, I suppose.

Repairs, then 48 days at sea across the southern Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope at the very southern tip of Africa.  She made the passage in difficult weather, the sort of wind and waves that professional seamen try to avoid.  She did well and impressed the maritime community with her skills.

And she learned things about herself along the way.  "I love sailing.  I love the ocean."  "I love being alone.  I feel like freedom is not being attached to anything."  "I just love being out there." "Now I know what sailing around the world means." "It was the end of a dream I'd had as a kid, and it was the beginning of my life as a sailor."

Upon completing her voyage, she was met by crowds and the media, which she would have gladly done without, and by her family.  “The best part was definitely seeing my mom, my sister and my dad all at the same time. It was a perfect welcome.”

And what comes next?  “I feel like New Zealand's going to be a good place for me. And if it turns out not to be, I’ll just travel further.”

Laura chose not to return to the Netherlands where she and her family had been treated so harshly. New Zealand offered a chance at life in a new way.  "I don't really have a home," she says.  "Home to me is Guppy," her 40 ft. sailboat.

Interesting, to say the least.  She challenges virtually all the norms about life that we hold so dear.  There's a movie about her trip called 'Maiden Voyage'.  She took all the video at sea herself.

In 2012, Laura Dekker became the youngest person ever to sail around the world single-handed.  She had sailed 27,000 miles over 519 days.

Not every girl makes headlines like Laura Dekker did, but she provides an extraordinarily motivating illustration of how any girl (or guy) can choose the shape of their own life.

Lizard's Tail

“Do you know that the lizard breaks off its tail when it is being pursued or feels threatened?” Our teacher quizzed. “HUH??!!” was the general response. Nothing else he said that day sunk in. Can a lizard actually break off its tail? How does it do it? Our young minds questioned. That day, immediately the bell rang for break, we decided to go find out for ourselves if it was true. We went behind our classroom block, where we knew for sure we will find lizards on the walls. We started chasing a particular one. As the chase got intense, the lizard actually did break its tail off; and the broken bit started wriggling so fast, we didn't see where the lizard passed again.


"I only found out recently that Caudal Autotomy is the name for this tendency among lizards to break their tails to distract predators. The other thing I have found out is that most politicians are just like lizards. They won’t sacrifice an arm or a leg. They won’t sacrifice their money or their lives; just their tails - because they can easily grow a new one."

~Nana Kofi Acquah, Ghana

For more about lizards and such ...

Washing the hog ...

The quantity of meaningless speech (Hogwash!) is stunning.

At the end of any given business day, we sit down to relax, and perhaps shed the pile of pointless words that accompanied our hours.  

The next morning we begin again, straining to understand or to express ourselves clearly, consuming great amounts of time and energy, trying to construct an agreement about what we will do next in yet one more meeting.

Stymied is a good description, perhaps; at least it's not profanity.  Aaaaand .....  life goes on.

It's worth remembering that the joy of life is inside, not outside.  We can choose what affects us and how much.  An evening laughing with my wife outweighs a business trip through the desert on a horse with no name. An afternoon with my granddaughter is priceless.

Memory-worthy moments usually include smiles and understanding.  Personal victories usually include wise focus on good things and breezing past the foul stuff.  Family successes usually include comforting heart connections and understanding.

Just for comparison, moments that deserve to be seen and dropped include argumentative attacks pointed at us, misunderstandings and disappointments, hard work that just passed the time with little progress.

Walter befriended me when I was a stranger in his country

and taught me the necessary things about crooks and scams.

He came to visit me when I was bedridden with broken

ribs.  He's a good friend.

I was reminded by friends in Africa, joy in life is a choice for now rather than some distant horizon.

Walter, my friend in Mombasa, had polio as a child and has lived his life in a wheelchair.  His smile works well, but the rest of his body is generally uncooperative.  He's a surprisingly gracious fellow.  We spent hours together, telling stories and laughing and talking about politics or faith or life in the street.

"You pray for me, I pray for you, my friend," he says as he concludes our frequent phone calls.  What a joy.