Libya: the fear wall broke (CNN)

27 Feb: from CNN...

LIBYA: 'The fear wall broke'
Born and raised in Libya, the man in his 40s says this is the first protest he's ever seen in his native land. With no freedom of speech, no one ever dared to utter an ill word about the government or its powerful leader, Moammar Gadhafi, lest they risk jail time, he said.

But with Friday's protests, violent clashes and dozens of deaths, something changed.  "We can speak now," he marveled from a noisy street near the protest's epicenter. "The fear wall broke. Even after the killing, nobody is getting scared. Their numbers are increasing."

 What a wonderful phrase, "the fear wall broke!" 

Freedom; for all?

Our African friends, out to play at sunrise, home by dark.

Freedom: and Democracy.
 
   "Children and dogs run free!"  It makes you long for childhood again.  Kids are safe, loved, and watched over by adults who shape their world.  Adults make the rules, make the schedule, supply the things that are needed as best they can.  And who watches over the adults?  Communities do, I suppose, and government watches over it all.

Thus we arrive at a question of personal freedom.  There are individuals and cultures that want to be closer to the childlike life where they are watched over and cared for.  Then there are countries like my own that are pretty emphatic about freedom to live as we please.  We sometimes presume that our version of freedom is universally desired, but the truth is otherwise.  Many have come to America and been overwhelmed by the number of choices and decisions required to make it through any given day.  They've been stunned, overloaded, and gone back where they started where rules and choices are more narrowly shaped.

Now we watch as the Arab Spring blooms across Africa and the middle east.  At issue - freedom?  Yes.  Justice?  Yes!  And the 'American Way'?  No!  It will be many years before the body of law to support an emerging democracy will look familiar to us, and every institution must be restructured.  As we observe the eruption, it's worth listening and noting the differences. 

I'd prefer a safer, more stable and predictable world perhaps, but until mercy and justice reign, I'll stick with democracy and government by the people.  As a form of government, it sucks big-time; it's just better than the alternatives.

Western style freedom, then, isn't a truly universal value, as a friend pointed out the other day.  But fairness, justice, mercy, compassion; such things call to us so insistently.

Africa's February may be a landmark month ...

Bahrain's streets flooded with protesters 

Egypt's revolution, still tenuous, still dangerous, appears to not be the only such hot spot in Africa and the Middle East. Yemen and Iran, Libya and Algeria, Bahrain and beyond. Twenty protesters killed in Libya, others last night in Bahrain.

In Yemen, pro and anti-government protesters liven the debate.

The spillover from such unrest is likely to be global and significant. Bahrain looks to be troublesome as protesters demonstrate peacefully and riot police attack them. Deaths and injuries, lying government, haves and haven'ts, privileged and the voiceless.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Hardline Iranian lawmakers called on Tuesday (15 FEB) for the country's opposition leaders to face trial and be put to death, a day after clashes between opposition protesters and security forces left one person dead and dozens injured.

Iran protests continue to grow as thousands

of Iranians gathered in several Tehran

locations to participate in a

solidarity rally with Egypt and

Tunisia, officials said.

Speculations over what it all means floods the news. The collapse of stable circumstance, we're warned by some means the rise of radical Islamic regimes. The turmoil in Bahrain perhaps threatens the security of the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet based there. The Islamic brotherhood in Egypt will perhaps undo years of progress. Dire warnings abound. Few mention that people who've been deprived a voice in their own country's destiny are being given a chance. People who have been robbed by their governments are given a chance to change things. People who have been unfairly imprisoned will be able to breath freely, at least for now.

Notice in the photo, in Iran, protesters participate in solidarity rally with Egypt and Tunisia. Against Mubarak!

Friday morning, Feb 18, thousands in the square in Cairo, strikes continue, and the death count in Bahrain is up to six.

Such upheaval never goes smoothly or quickly.  Recovery will take decades, at least.

Regardless of the outcome, at least for now, some are achieving a little freedom, a little justice, and perhaps most important, a little hope.

To all the girls ...

To all the girls 
who are in a hurry 
to have a boyfriend or 
get married, a piece of 
biblical advice: "Ruth patiently waited for her mate Boaz."  

While you are waiting on YOUR Boaz, 
don't settle for any of his relatives; 
   Lyin-az,     Cheatin-az, 
    Dumb-az,   Drunk-az, 
     Cheap-az,  Crazy-az,
      Lazy-az, and especially his third 
          cousin Beatinyo-az.  
     Wait on your Boaz and make sure he respects Yoaz.

Volumes can and have been written on making this decision wisely. I think the brief instruction above summarizes it rather well.  

Today's households in the U.S. with the traditional married mom and dad plus kids, they have dropped below 50% recently. There are a number of reasons we might suggest.  The most compelling among the reasons; marriage isn't all that appealing in our culture any more.  Having had a good look, why would a person want to marry?

Marriage has changed and become progressively less relevant over the last few decades; the word 'marriage' has lost it's earliest meaning. Long before the issues of divorce and remarriage, of same-sex marriage, and of shotgun weddings, it was unique and more simply understood.

Marriage isn't:  the solution to your problems, the way out of a difficult family, the answer to an empty life, or the fulfillment of your dreams and desires.  And it isn't a ceremony; that has but little to do with your success.

Marriage is:  two becoming one, whatever that means.

Love and romance may flood us with feelings, but marriage is much more.
  Marriage is a choice.  Or more accurately, it's many choices, thoughtfully made over years, perhaps.  Learning to share joy, values, priorities, problems and solutions.  Choosing to care about the other.
       The choices mark the path you've chosen, and if you extend that line forward, you'll see your destination.
             In order to be wisely made, the choices cannot rest on feelings alone.

Happy Valentines Day.

Blacker than a Hundred Midnights ...

"I will not allow one prejudiced person or one million or one hundred million to blight my life. I will not let prejudice or any of its attendant humiliations and injustices bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I shall defend and maintain its integrity against all the powers of hell." James Weldon Johnson, ed. (1871–1938).  The Book of American Negro Poetry.  1922.

The Creation

AND God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
“I’m lonely—
I’ll make me a world.”
And far as the eye of God could see	5
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,	10
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said, “That’s good!”
Then God reached out and took the light in His hands,
And God rolled the light around in His hands	15
Until He made the sun;
And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,	20
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said, “That’s good!”	25
Then God himself stepped down—
And the sun was on His right hand,
And the moon was on His left;
The stars were clustered about His head,
And the earth was under His feet.	30
And God walked, and where He trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.
Then He stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.	35
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And He spat out the seven seas;
He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;
He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
And the waters above the earth came down,	40
The cooling waters came down.
Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,	45
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around His shoulder.	50
Then God raised His arm and He waved His hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And He said, “Bring forth! Bring forth!”
And quicker than God could drop His hand.
Fishes and fowls	55
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said, “That’s good!”	60
Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that He had made.
He looked at His sun,
And He looked at His moon,	65
And He looked at His little stars;
He looked on His world
With all its living things,
And God said, “I’m lonely still.”
Then God sat down	70
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought, “I’ll make me a man!”	75
Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty	80
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,	85
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;
Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul. Amen. Amen.	90
James Weldon Johnson was an early leader of the NAACP serving as field secretary beginning in 1916 where he helped organize the “Silent March” in New York City in 1917 following the white mob murders and destruction in East St. Louis, Illinois.

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 ~