Values

There’s a popular bumper sticker that says: “He who dies with the most toys wins!”

This slogan speaks to what many, many people have come to believe either consciously or unconsciously. Materialism is the dominant value of our culture these days. Think of the people that will spend millions on some artifact or piece of art just to be able to say they own it. Then weigh that against how much money they spend giving back to the world, feeding the poor, curing a disease, housing the homeless... Too many of us live our lives completely devoid of any greater meaning than acquiring more stuff…as if life were some kind of competition to ‘die with the most toys’. How empty our lives have become…how devoid of any real meaning.

Our culture is set up to value only one thing…the ‘so-called’ bottom line. Profit is the ultimate goal. Profit has become the very definition of success. It’s become more important than our quality of life. It’s become more important than the health of our planet and even the health of our children to some. Just witness the recalls of various products found to have been made with cheaper, less safe, ingredients all for the sake of profit.

There are old, beautiful neighborhoods all across America that are being destroyed because investors are buying properties in them, tearing the old homes down, and putting up duplexes and other monstrosities to wrench out every possible penny in profit. The air we breathe and the water we drink are being polluted to produce more and more products that we have become convinced we need. We crave more and more energy to produce more stuff…and that means greater dependence on fossil fuels and more nuclear power plants, both of which have their own set of problems and both of which harm our home...the planet earth.

We can’t turn on a TV, drive down a highway, or flip through a magazine without being bombarded with ads trying to sell us the latest gadgets or services. They want to convince us that to be happy we must have what they are selling! We are drowning in our own greed and lust for more stuff! What we are losing in the process is beyond any monetary value. As a culture, we’ve forgotten that there are things far more important than money and the stuff it can buy. The quality of our lives isn’t improved one bit by having the latest fads. We have begun to use stuff to fill the voids in our lives.

Materialism has replaced spirituality as the defining character of the American people and it is destroying us. People, at one time, came to these shores to better their lives. They believed in the principles that America was founded on. Now they come here only to get rich…and many couldn’t care less about the principles this nation was built on.

America used to stand for something deeper and more meaningful than gross materialism. This nation was founded, not only on free enterprise, but on freedom of religion. It was so important to our ancestors that they be able to freely express their religious beliefs that they left their homelands and came here to build a nation on that principle. Their religious beliefs were in the forefront of their minds and at the center of their lives. That was the foundational value that built the greatest country in the history of the world. It wasn’t about who has the most stuff. Think about that…

Labels

Nigger, Kike, Spic, Cracker, Faggot, Bitch…these are all words that people have used, and in some cases still use, to demean and dehumanize other people. They’re labels that people have attached to others to categorize and pigeonhole them into some preconceived notion of what those others are supposed to be like. Most of these words have largely fallen out of use because of the negative, and even hateful, connotations that they are associated with.

Not everyone who has used such words has meant them to have hateful connotations. I remember when I was a child my grandmother used the word ‘nigger’ to refer to black people. Though she was a product of her generation, having some of the preconceived notions about race that were common in that era, she had no hatred of any black people. She treated everyone with simple respect…because “that was what Jesus would do”. The label didn't mean to her what it came to mean to so many others. We give our labels their power.

It's politically incorrect to use such words these days…even if the underlying feelings are still around. It is the underlying feelings that are so hard to eradicate. That's where the power of our labels comes from. I believe there is just as much, if not more, hatred in the hearts of people now as there ever was. Just mention that you are a Conservative Christian in some circles and you’re automatically reduced to the labels: racist, sexist, homophobic and narrow-minded bigot. The labels, Christian, Conservative and Republican evoke contempt and even hatred from many “enlightened” people. The same can be said of the terms: Liberal, Democrat, Feminist, and Gay among other people. None of them tell us who the individual is...

The funny thing about labels is that, once you pin one on someone, you no longer feel any need to get to know them personally. With the act of labeling someone, the other person is summed up and nothing else need be known about them. It is a peculiar power of human language that naming something gives us a sense of power over it. We all do that to some degree.

The truth is that human beings are more complex than any label. Most people are much more multifaceted. We only tend to see the sides of them that we want to see, or are conditioned to see. Kids tend to see their parents in only one way. Parents tend to see their kids in only one way. Men sometimes see women in only one way. Women sometimes see men in only one way too. We can even become socially conditioned to see, whatever race we're a member of in some preconceived ways. We can also learn to see other races in preconceived ways. When we limit ourselves to see others so, we tend to see only those things that reinforce our preconceived notions and ignore everything else.

A big part of human history can be summed up as people rebelling against being seen by others in only one way. Minorities in every age and nation have fought to be seen as the equals of those in the majority, just as varied, just as complex and just as worthy. It’s an old story that has replayed over and over in our history and literature.

When someone does something we disapprove of, we typically see only how they’re different from us and ignore how they’re the same. That’s the root of prejudice…seeing only the differences and ignoring the similarities, then labeling “them” as “all the same”. They’re just not like us after all!! Among human beings, things will always be this way until our human nature is changed. It is a strange irony of life that the thing that makes us all the same is the very thing that makes us focus on our differences? The good news is that individuals can change…if they make the choice and the effort.

It takes energy to do so, but each us of has it in our power to learn to see the world differently. We all have it in our power to see each other as individuals that could never truly be labeled and should never be dismissed out of hand. The results of learning to see the world in such a way makes it a far more interesting place. Seeing people as individuals instead of numbers in some category makes them more real…and harder to hate. Not a bad goal if you ask me…

Have YOU seen this little girl?

The beautiful little girl in this photo is four year-old Madeleine McCann. Madeleine is a British citizen who was vacationing at a resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal with her parents. On May 3, 2007 Madeleine was kidnapped out of the room she was staying in and hasn't been seen since. Police have been doing their jobs to the best of their abilities but they need the publics help. If you think you might have seen Maddie, especially if you live in Portugal or Spain, please contact your local law enforcement agency.

Maddie's abduction is a Crime Against Humanity…and she’s just one of many, many children that go missing every year. You can just imagine the nightmare that Maddies parents are enduring. It's a horror that no parent should ever have to endure. Maddies parents have the means and the financial support of many of their countrymen to try and help find her. Most abducted children don’t have parents with the money to engage the national media…but we bloggers can put our two cents in.

There are around 100 child abductions and murders every year in the USA. About 74% of these children will be dead within three hours. The statistics are similiar around the world. The kidnapping and murder of the most innocent among us should bring an outcry from all of us! The perverted animals that perpetrate such crimes hide and scurry in the dark like the cockroaches they are. Governments need to pass legislation to deal quickly and harshly with such animals. They are guilty of stealing our future; of destroying our innocence. These truly are crimes against humanity! We cannot allow them to perpetuate this perversion generation after generation! We cannot allow them to continue to harm our children!

Pay attention to the children around you and how the adults they're with treat them. Be alert to their cries for help and call the authorities if you suspect neglect or abuse. Don't just throw away the milk cartons or fliers with pictures of missing children on them. Look at them. Remember their faces. One day a child you know may go missing.

Mine is a voice that may only reach a few people, but I believe this is what a public voice is for. I can’t, in good conscience, pass up the opportunity to add my voice to those who have done likewise. If you're a blogger, a web page owner or have some other kind of public forum, imagine that you put up a photo and some information on a child who has been abducted - and that your site is visited by someone who has just seen them. You could have saved a life...

This, and my fervent prayers for little Maddies safe return, are what I have to offer...

Symbols versus Substance

There is an, often overlooked (or ingnored) , scripture in Matthew 25 verses 34-40. In it Christ likens religious people to sheep and goats. He says to the sheep, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you took me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (NIV)

When the righteous asked ‘Lord, when did we do these things for you?’ His answer was: “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

This is ‘Nuts and bolts’ Christianity. This is Love in action. This is loving our fellow man like we love ourselves. It is the heart of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ. To be sure, there are truths that it is important to have, and live by, to be a true Christian. One can’t believe just anything and be considered Christian. But for those who claim ‘The Way’ these words of Christ are more important than which church one attends. These words are more important than having the nicest clothes and sitting in the front row of a church every week. They are more important than any ceremonial worship of God. This is the Spirit of God in action.

It’s often overlooked because it’s easier to appear to be righteous than to actually ‘be’ righteous. Too many Christians want to appear to be decent, upstanding people without actually ‘doing’ the things Christ said to do. That was the attitude of the Pharisees. Those folks are addressed in the next verses when He speaks to the goats. Their reward isn’t quite so appealing. The reader can see those verses for him or herself. My point here is simply to go straight to the heart of the matter of what it is to be Christian. I say go ‘to the heart’ because that is where it all starts. The heart is where true faith and hope and love come from.

The world today doesn’t want to deal with Christians. It asks us to leave our flaky, religious views outside when we come in to deal with them. They’re tired of the theme parks and the bumper stickers and the hypocrisy. If more of us simply lived our faith instead of talking about it, if more of us practiced ‘nuts and bolts’ Christianity, we would be invited in much more often. The impression we make would be much more positive and much more lasting. We would find people coming to us and asking what is it that causes us to behave so. We should then be ready to give an answer… Until our lives reflect something of Christ, He would be better served if we remained silent. That’s the real meaning of ‘Taking God’s name in vain’. When we advertise our religion the world scrutinizes everything we do.

In the meantime, a life lived like Christ would speak much more loudly than any Sunday morning TV show, bumper sticker or pamphlet. A life lived like Christ is a light to the world. It is an announcement that there is a better way. People that live Christ-like lives are the salt of the earth; they preserve it. They're the kind of salt that there can't be too much of. Unfortunately, the world is running out of salt...and it's beginning to rot for the lack of it.

Boys and Girls...Men and Women

I like women, but not just in the way one might think. I like they way they look, the way they smell, they way they move, and I like the way they are with each other. Women will freely open their hearts to each other in ways few men would ever think of. A wise man can learn a lot from women. Women can also learn some things from men.

I’ve given it some thought and I think the genetic make up of women drives them to behave completely differently than men. I don’t believe it's all in how we’re are raised. Contrary to what some PhDs’ would have us think…men and women really are different. Luckily, there are enough people still endowed with common sense to see that. That’s a perspective I believe one has to start with if one ever hopes to understand how men and women interact.

Men and women are only whole when they’re together. When we remain separate and only spend time with our own sex we tend to get a skewed perspective on life. Children, especially, need mothers and fathers to get a complete picture of how separate parts make up the whole.

When I was a little boy, if I were to fall and skin my knee, my father would tell me to pick my chin up and take it like a man! If one of my sisters were to do the same, he would speak softly to her, hug her and kiss her bruise to make her feel better. I don’t resent that in any way…it’s what I would do myself if I had children. I think boys need to be strong and that’s the proper way to teach them. Only the shortsighted among us apologize for that.

In a related way little girls are encouraged to show love and affection. They can do with it their dolls, with their pets, with other little girls and no one thinks anything of it. Boys are just expected to be more…‘manly’...than that. To develop that strength, boys are not encouraged to show all their feelings. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes that can go too far, but on the whole I think it’s a good way to raise young men. The world is tough and it takes tough men and women to deal with it.

When men learn to let their guards down it’s usually with a woman. She’s the more experienced in showing love and, while that can be a problem, if he’s open to it, she can teach him how to love. Men and women can learn from each other. Again, I think that’s a good way to do it. When boys are raised to be men this way they don’t open their hearts often. When they do love though…it can be a strong love. Call me a sexist, but I think women are the best at teaching men how to love. Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, girlfriends even neighbors are all teachers for boys.

I don’t think women are as good at raising boys as men are. Women, in general, don’t understand what it takes to raise a little boy to become a man. Women want to nurture and keep all harm away from their children and that’s a great thing…but it isn’t always the best thing for little boys trying to become men. Sometimes they need to experience pain to prepare them for a tough world.

There is a concerted effort in the US today to eradicate all the traits from little boys that feminists feel are ‘undesirable’. What that amounts to is the emasculation of young men and it won’t work. It has the opposite effect in fact…it makes boys meaner and more violent in the end.

Boys need the guidance and influence of good men to become good men themselves. Unfortunately, good men are in short supply these days. Frustrated single mothers have had to step to the plate and try to take the place of good men. That’s a shame on men everywhere. While I admire and applaud single mothers, they just aren’t equipped to teach boys some of the things young men need to know. Women can teach men and boys how to love. That’s one of the many strengths of women. But, only a real man can teach a boy to become a man.

Women need to stop trying to be men and stop trying to change men. Instead of trying to emasculate them…women should encourage them to step up to the plate and be real men! That isn’t the same as being a woman with different plumbing… Men and women are different! Women need to realize that, and be grateful for it instead of trying to remake men into what they ‘think’ men should be.

Men need to realize that being a real man has nothing to do with sexual exploits or what you drive or what sports you play. Being a Real man is about having integrity; having the strength of character to stand up for what's right. Being a real man is being honorable and doing the right thing. It means giving the women and children in your life someone to look up to and respect.
Real men don’t walk out on their responsibilities. Real men don’t walk out on their families. They take care of the women they love and the children they bring into the world.

We need to dump the idea of unisex that pervades and infects our society. Men and women are different…and we need each other to be whole. We need to be glad we’re different and take pride in it!

It Ain't Over...till It's Over!

No one hates war more than a military man. They’re the ones that have to do the killing and the dieing. Most of the men who have served in Iraq in the last couple of years will tell you that they believe doing so was the right thing. They believe in bringing the freedoms of a democratic system to a people that have never known them. No one involved ever believed it was going to be quick or easy.

We went into Iraq because of the intelligence reports that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. All sides agreed on that until none were found. Then, for political reasons, Democratic politicians started playing to the most liberal elements of their party and started calling the president of the United States a liar and worse. He was called a “liar” for actually acting on what they all believed!

President Bush never lied to the American people about Iraq. He has steadfastly held to a course of action that he decided was the right one. The majority of American people elected him to do just that. George Bush Jr. believes in Democracy and believes it will bring stability to the Middle East. Whatever else can be said of the man, he has been true to his principles. They are American principles.

The fact is that we are now in Iraq. The Iraqi government is too new and unstable to effectively control their country. For us to pull out before they are able to do so would be a disaster that would reverberate far and wide. Iran would become the major power in that part of the world. The very existence of Israel would be threatened, as would the flow of oil to a power hungry world. We cannot let that happen. To do so would be condemning us to a much more widespread war in the future. And, if you don’t like gas prices now…just think about what they would be with even more instability in the Middle East.

Most of the people that are demanding that we end the Iraq war now may mean well…but they are letting their feelings cloud their common sense. The politicians that are playing on those feelings are doing so for their own ambitions. America finds itself, once again, embroiled in a conflict that is setting our own people against one another. We need to remember the American principles that President George Bush hasn’t forgotten. We need to remember that freedom demands a price.

We are in a war against a sworn enemy. Radical Islamists want to destroy us and they won't stop. To pull out of Iraq now would give them a breeding ground where they would multiply like rats! To leave a stable democracy in Iraq would be to stop a good deal of that at its source. We can fight them there...or we can fight them here.

As for those in Hollywood and the media spewing hatred for our president and sympathizing with dictators in lands where the people don’t enjoy our freedoms…there was a time when what they are doing would be considered treason. It is a slap in the face to the troops they claim they support!

Just so I’m clear here…I hate this war. I hate the fact that innocent people on both sides are dieing every day. I was against going into Iraq in the first place…but we’re there now. To support our troops means to support their victory…anything less would be to make the lives of all of those that have given them meaningless. And it would leave the world a much more dangerous place. We have to see this through. We have to see this through!

The Darkness and The Light

In a movie I saw recently, one character was an Apache witch. He had a line that struck me as very insightful about human nature. He asked the question, ‘You have two dogs fighting inside of you, one good the other evil…which one wins?’ The protagonist answered: 'The one you feed the most'.

I don't believe there's a battle between good and evil in the universe. That presumes goodness and evil are equal but opposite. Good and evil are not equal. God allows evil to exist as it suits His purpose. In the human heart it’s a different story. We are at ground zero for our own battle between good and evil. We can understand those that do evil because we know the evil in ourselves. We all draw from the same nature. We take that nature with us where ever we go. For that reason there can never be a Shangri La or a Utopia. We would take our nature, who and what we are, with us there and it would eventually destroy what we hoped to find. We can pass laws to try and reign in our nature. We can look to our heroes for their examples of how they have overcome. The battle still belongs to every human being and the fight is still a personal one. The battle between good and evil in the human heart is a battle that must be fought in every human heart. Those that win in conquering their own evil can’t conquer it for anyone else. Every newborn child is a new battleground.

Incidents like the recent slaughter of 31 innocent people at Virginia Tech make it clear that some people give themselves wholly over to evil. The most ironic thing in our modern American culture is that the very things that serve to constrain the evil in our hearts are being slowly eliminated from our national consciousness. Our sacred writings declare that there is a Creator and it is He who endows us with our human rights. Dark forces, in the name of the separation between church and state, are attempting to erase all mention of that Creator from our national consciousness. They are promoting the concept of cultural relativism, the idea that there isn’t one standard of right and wrong but many depending on the time and place they are conceived. The same forces deny even the existence of evil. These dark notions are destroying the strongest safeguards we have against the evil that is among us. Those behind the ideas know that when light shines into your life, it doesn't just make the road ahead more clear, it reveals your own dark places too. And, it is in our nature to want to hide our own darkness. That's the very reason we need the light so badly. That light can only come from God.

It isn’t so important that every individual in our society believes in God so much as it is a cultural value. We need to have something to look up to. We need someone to answer to. We need a common value to give us purpose. Without that we are finding ourselves in a moral free fall. We need to recognize that there are some things that are right and some that are wrong and they always will be. We need to recognize that evil exists. It is among us. It is in us. To erase those very ideas from our national consciousness is to cloak ourselves in darkness. To deny those truths is ultimately to commit suicide.

As a Christian, I have a firm faith that God is; that He is watching and that He cares about His children. My faith gives me hope for a better future. God gives me a clearly defined moral value system. He defines what is right and wrong. God is my light in the darkness...even my own darkness. God gives my life purpose. I believe that God will prevent us from destroying ourselves one day. He will change our very nature one day so that our utopian ideals will be realized…in His Kingdom. If I didn’t have my faith, and the hope that comes with it, I sometimes think I would succumb to a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness. I look around our culture and see that many, many others have done so.

Knowing that I will stand before God one day scares me a little. It makes me feel the need to change; to work on being better than I am now. That makes me uncomfortable but it also makes me a better person. I don’t insist that anyone believe what I believe. I don’t ever try to convert anyone. I don’t use my faith to judge others. I am guided by my faith to see my fellow man as the children of God, made in the image of the living God. I am guided by my faith to love them as I love myself, to forgive them when they wrong me, and to serve them wherever I can. Without that, I honestly don’t know where I would be or what kind of person I would be. That’s a part of what knowing God has done for me.

It is the dog we feed the most that wins out. Character is built, brick by brick, by what thoughts we give power to. Every time we do the right thing we strengthen that part of ourselves. Every time we give in to our darkness we fall a little deeper into the pit. The darkness is closing in to be sure. But in the darkness I see the light. It is the desire of my heart to share that with my fellow man. All I can do is try, to the best of my ability, to be a conduit of the light in a dark world. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that the light will prevail!

God Spoke and...

We live in an amazing time in human history. We make strides in knowledge and understanding about our world and the universe in which we live almost daily. We're beginning to understand things about our universe that would have sounded like science fiction a few years ago. Like Einstein, I think the most amazing thing about our universe is that we are capable of understanding it. We are a part of the universe. We are a microcosmic reflection of the greater whole. To come to understand it is to come to understand something about ourselves…and vice versa.

I’ve always had an interest in the sciences and in Physics in particular. Physics gives us insight into how the universe works; it uses the tool of mathematics to do so. There have been many noted scientists that have believed knowing the natural laws that govern the universe give us an insight into the very mind of God. They are the framework upon which God has designed and now sustains His creation. To be able to utilize mathematical formulae to predict the orbit of a planet around its sun or to calculate the distance to another star are amazing feats but, they’re only the beginning of what we're learning.

One of the most simple, yet profound, mathematical formula that predicts and directs some of the natural order around us was discovered by an Italian mathematician named Fibonacci centuries ago. I imagine that he was just playing with numbers one day and found that if you add consecutive numbers together, then add the last two numbers used, the series of numbers they produce predicts a specific relationship in many natural phenomenon. 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8, 5+8=13, 8+13=21 and so on. The numbers this produces are: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc. These are now known as the Fibonacci sequence. The relationship between 3 and 5 is almost the same as that between 13 and 21 and so on. That relationship is about 1:1.618. We now call it the Golden Mean. It’s a very simple proportional relationship found many places in nature. From the design of the human body the curl of a nautilus shell this relationship is found over and over.

On a related front, fractal geometry is teaching us something about the formation of non-Euclidian geometrical forms. It seems that nature doesn’t so much give every detail of how things like clouds and shorelines are formed so much as it follows mathematical formulae that dictate such things. One such formula produces the ‘Mandelbrot set’, the most famous series in fractal geometry. From a simple mathematical formula repeated over and over one can find complex forms that trail off into infinity.

In the field of Physics, scientists have believed for decades that they can find a Unified Field Theory or ‘Theory of Everything’. Such a theory will unite the various other theories into a single, harmonious ‘One’. Newtonian physics were considered the be-all, end-all word on the subject until about four hundred years later when Einstein came along and demonstrated that Newtonian physics only explained one element of the way the universe works. Quantum physics then came along and Einstein’s theories were found lacking in explaining the physics on the sub-atomic level of reality. The ‘Theory of Everything’ will have to harmoniously unite all of these.

The most promising candidate for a Theory of Everything, at the moment, is Super String Theory or ‘M-Theory’. In a nutshell M-theory explains the workings of the various levels of reality by postulating super small strings that vibrate at different frequencies to produce different physical phenomenon. One string vibrates at a frequency that creates an electron; another vibrates at a frequency that produces a proton etc. The theory dictates that there are multiple dimensions in which the strings vibrate. They exist in our universe and outside of it at the same time. It's really quite a fascinating explanation. It is, at one time, very simple and immensely complex. The mathematics to flesh out the theory are still being worked out .

From a Christian perspective M-theory is especially captivating. Scriptures teach us that God spoke and the universe existed. That is somewhat akin to the Hindu creation story wherein it is believed that sound was the first energy in the universe. It was Gods use of sound, or more precisely, standing vibrations that created everything. If M-theory proves to be ‘The’ theory of everything it would fit in nicely with Biblical theology.

All of these things point to mathematical formulae that dictate the shape and functioning of our universe. Mathematics seems to be the language of God 'The Architect'. We, ourselves, are a product of it. The Word of God is written into the very fabric of the universe. And we are capable of understanding it! Just think about that for a moment...we can know the Mind of God!

The Artists' Eye

The process of becoming an artist is really quite fascinating to me. Psychology has trained me to observe people closely to find what motivates them. Martial arts have trained me to observe what’s going in myself to gain some measure of control over it. The artist observes things only with an eye towards recording, or interpreting, them. Other than that, there seems to be very little judgment about them. When studying someone’s face to paint or sculpt, for example, you forget about whether they are beautiful or not, the goal is simply to examine the lines and color and so on. That information is then filtered through the artists’ lens and the moment recorded in whatever medium they employ. It seems a very Zen-like process to me because it prompts one to live in the moment.

I used to wonder what a painter or photographer was thinking by producing a picture of say, a pair of sneakers or a simple window. Such things have begun to make sense to me. There is a profound beauty in the most simple, everyday things if we can only learn to look at them with new eyes. This brings to mind The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius , one of my favorite books of all time. The emperor says:

“Make for yourself a definition or description of every object presented to you, so as to see distinctly what it is in it’s own naked substance, complete and entire, and tell yourself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it is compounded and into which it will be dissolved. For nothing so elevates the mind as to be able to examine methodically and truly every object which comes before you in life, and always to look at things so as to see at once what kind of universe this is, and what kind of service each performs in it, and what value each has in relation to the whole, and what it has for man, who is a citizen of that loftiest city, to which all other cities are families.”

“Look beneath the surface. Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape you.”

I have found that it does indeed elevate the mind to see things for what they are and where they fit into the big picture. It's helped me to grow as an individual to learn to see things the way some artists see them.

I don’t mean those 'works of art' that are supposed to make some kind of statement and are devoid of any beauty. I have often thought that people who pretend to see deep political or social ‘statements’ in a work of art are also the kind that see the emperors' new clothes. To be sure, many people who call themselves ‘artists’ produce pure garbage. I'm not talking about beginners here, or those who haven't yet found their own style. The 'artists' I mean seem to have somehow secretly agreed with other ‘artists’ (who also have no talent) to esteem each others' work. The rest of us are told we ‘just don’t get it’ when we don’t see the emperors new clothes too. I don’t buy into the delusions of such folks.

I do find that others have a unique way of perceiving the world around them, and in their quiet ways, try to share a glimpse of that with the rest of us. Rembrandt has made me see people a little more thoughtfully. Monet has made me see beauty in simple forms. Picasso has taught me that forms and my feelings about them can be separated. Mark Rothko has shown me what deep emotion there can be in color without form.

I've only mentioned the visual arts here but, sculptors, dancers, writers and actors can all do the same kind of things. They have the power to uplift and transform, the power to help us be carried away in the everyday. They can add richness and texture to our lives. I’m of the school of thought that art should be beautiful. I believe artists are here to make the world more beautiful. There is enough ugliness in life. We don’t need to see it reflected in works of art too. Art, at it’s best I think, uplifts the daily and mundane and helps us to see the beauty in it. It helps us to see the same old things with new eyes.

Life is renewed each moment when one sees it with such eyes. What a gift that is…

Love and Only Love

I am endlessly fascinated by the subject of love. It warms something in me to see the love of a father or mother for their child; the love of a man and wife; the love of grandparents for their offspring…and all the other variations of love that open and bind the hearts of human beings.

When we open our hearts to allow something or someone in, it changes us. I have observed that love changes with people as they mature and grow older. It can deepen and mature along with them. It can communicate what no words could ever say. It is no wonder that more songs and poems have been written about love than any other subject.

I’ve heard love defined in many ways: an emotional need for someone; an outgoing concern for others etc. I’ve decided that the best working definition I can come up with is: Love is building a sense of connection between us and someone else, it is the expanding of our sense of ourselves to include others. When we love things or plants and animals, we come to include them in our sense of ourselves. We identify with them as a part of what makes us whole.

When two people marry they ‘become one’. We get a glimpse of love in the act of sexual union. For a brief moment we can drop the barriers that separate us from another and we can experience the joy of at-one-ment. In the union of two spirits, when one experiences joy or pain, the other feels it too. There is no longer a sense of you or me, it becomes ‘we’…ideally. When children come from such a union the sense of ‘I’ or ‘we’ is expanded further to include them. If ones sense of self is not expanded in marriage and having children then something is amiss. One has not learned the lessons from these experiences.

When we love someone their needs and desires become important to us, ideally as important as our own. We have expanded our sense of our-self to include them. I have come to believe that expanding our sense of ourselves is one of our primary purposes for existing here on earth, if not THE primary purpose. Whatever one believes, one has only to look around to see that life is about growth. Acorns push up sidewalks to become oak trees. Love is growth. Love can be painful because it breaks through the barriers we erect for ourselves to separate us from others.

We can expand our sense of ourselves to include our clubs, our sporting teams, our villages and towns, our states, our countries and even our planet and beyond. When one of the things we identify with experiences something good or bad we can experience it too, depending on how much we identify with it. Most of these forms of love are only glimpses of the real thing. The real sense of being ‘one’ with another is beyond the power of words to describe.

Most religions teach some form of love, however imperfect. Faith invites us to become ‘at-one’ with God. That is the ultimate love. He feels the connection with us because we came from Him. It is we who have broken the connection and need to learn to re-connect. On some level we all know this and feel the need for that ultimate connection. We rebel against it at the same time because we want to keep the barriers that separate us. That’s the conundrum of our existence.

Just think of the admonitions in the scriptures:

Love God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength and
Love your neighbor as you love yourself...
Love one another as Christ loves you...
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you...
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love...
God is love...

It's never been said better.

Love comes from God through us, but we have to make the way clear for it to come out of us. We have to reach out to express it; to grow and to connect with each other. That's why we're here...

To Save Our Children

Christian churches are losing the children that grow up in them to a world of smoke of mirrors. What our children see is a world filled with pleasures but so many of those pleasures turn out to be traps. Ours is a world filled with violence, pornography and meaningless lives. There are forces capable of saving our children from the world but many are failing for lack of knowledge. Churches have failed for the most part, but churches are built on the foundation of solid familes. The greatest influence in a childs life are are his or her parents. Below are recommendations dedicated to those whose job is to raise the children of God....the parents who love their children.

1. Set them the right example of a man or woman of faith. Don't tell them one thing and do something else. Even at a very young age they will be watching you as parents. They will be learning how to be a man or woman and how men and women interact from you. Let them see how the Holy Spirit works in your life to change who you are...

2. Be honest and straight with them. Let them know what you believe and why. Don't try to hide the realities of life from them. This is especially important in matters of money, sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco...etc. Don't put your own head in the sand! If they don't learn them from you...they will from someone else.

3. Get involved with your children's lives. Go to their sporting events and school shows. Show them you care. Know who their friends are...(That is very important!) Eat dinner with your children and talk about your day.

4. Let your children know you believe in them. Let them know their ideas and opinions are important to you...that they matter. If they don't know you believe in them...they will find someone who does, and that will make them susceptible to being manipulated.

5. As they grow older, let them make more and more decisions for themselves. They need the experience of making their own decisions to become responsible adults. You'll show them you respect them as responsible and you'll build a bond of trust with them.

6. When you have to correct them, make the punishment fit the crime. First, make sure they know what you expect of them. Only then will you be justified in any punishment. Ask them how they should be punished. Many times they will be harder on themselves than you would have been. (Only an openly rebellious spirit should merit corporal punishment.)

7. Pick your battles with them...don't fight over every little point.

8. Establish a merit system for them. Don't just punish bad behavior, reward good behavior and encourage it. Let them know when they've done something that makes you proud or happy.

9. Be as concerned with what goes into your children's minds as what goes into their bodies. The Internet is an ocean filled with reefs of pornographic and violent images. Television is little better. Know what is going into their minds from these sources and from their school.

10. Limit their use of video games and other modern electronic devices. There is an element of addiction that is only beginning to be understood about using new technologies. There is also a link between Attention Deficit Disorder and computer use that is only beginning to be explored.

11. Pray with your children. Let them see you are honest with God during your prayers

12. Institute a family night once a week. Turn off the TV and the video games. Play board games. Talk to each other. Make it a fun time that they look forward to...not a burden to bear.

13. Get the men and women, and their families, in the local churches involved with preaching the Gospel and carrying it on. Set up a system for older members to visit newer families once a month to teach and discuss church doctrines. (This will be the equivalent of a family night for your spiritual family.)

14. Get them involved with the church. Youth programs are great but unfeasible in every church. Institute a kind of mini-missionary program where the children are involved with carrying out the great commission. Use your imagination!!

15. Always...ask for Gods guidance.

The Language of Numbers

I’m a writer; a wordsmith; a sculptor of English. I love words. They can be used to paint pictures or evoke images in the minds of others. Words can be used to tell stories. Words can be used to construct ideas and convey them to others. Words can be both precise and imprecise. That’s their beauty.

It’s been my good fortune to learn a little more about another language of late…mathematics, the language of numbers. Unlike say, English, numbers relate to each other in very precise ways. Numbers strip away everything but the essential qualities of things, their units of measure.

When you are only concerned with units of measure you can ignore all other qualities. Color, texture, sound, smell, and taste are no longer considered…unless they are the subjects broken down into units of measure.

Units of measure involve individual things and groups of them; they involve length, width, depth, height, weight and so on. When one designates a standard for the units of measure involved one can begin to speak in the language of numbers. Coming to understand their relationships is coming to understand precision itself.

There is a beauty in the language of numbers that can’t be denied. There is a certainty that’s very appealing. There is an austerity in the language of numbers because they strip away everything but that which they address. Its relationships are clear and pristine. Knowing those relationships allows one who speaks the language to start with the known and find the unknown.

The language of numbers is rigidly logical; it’s rules unwavering. The universe is run by it and we can, quite literally, set our watches by it. Like any other language though, it is lost on those not conversant in it.

Admittedly, I’ve only scratched the surface of the language of numbers. I stand on the outside looking in, quite enviously, at those who are fluent in it. I can sense its beauty like that of any exotic language. It's musical to my ears but only a few of its utterances mean anything to me. It’s quite appropriate that the universe was written in the language of numbers. I am awed by the beauty of the universe. Its complexity eludes me, but on some level I sense that it's rules are really quite simple. I can say the same about the language of numbers. There is an old saying that chemists only talk to physicists and physicists only talk to God. They do so in the language of numbers. There have been quiet nights when the thought has crossed my mind that the language of numbers is the real Word of God.

Like the cabbalist, on a deep level I sense that the answers to the biggest questions begin with the language of numbers. In the beginning is emptiness, zero…and then there is one. From one comes two, and from the interaction of the two comes the myriad of all things. Simple as it seems, even this only floats on the edge of my understanding.

From nothingness…one. From one…two. From two…all. Hmmm. Sounds almost like A, B, C…
And to think there's a vast library out there waiting to be revealed!