How to get hold of a person

Among the many vital life skills I'm going to have to convey to my poor children before sending them off to live on their own, one that I have had to hammer out for myself (it not having been necessary when I was twenty years old) is this: How do you get past the determination of government agencies and big companies not to let you speak to a real human being?

It's getting ridiculous. I'm going to a conference next summer which requires a passport. I picked up the form at the post office, looked it over, and had a bunch of questions. Like, "When it says 'mother's place of birth,' is state enough, or do I have to know the city?" These are not going to be found in a pre-recorded message. So I call my local post office and get a recorded message saying, "If you need information on passports, hang up and dial ________." So I hang up and dial the number, where I get a recorded phone tree, one branch of which is "information on passports." I (stupidly--I should know better by this time) press that button and get recorded information which is obviously not going to answer my seventeen detailed questions about the application form. So I hang up and try again. This time I refuse to press any of the phone tree options. The phone tree, by the way, is run by a perky-voiced computer. The only way, I discover, to get it to give you a human being is to say something the perky lady computer can't understand. When I say, "Other information," the computer says, "Okay, state briefly what you are calling about." When I say, "I have some questions about how to fill out a passport application form," the computer says, "You want passport information, is that right?" I say, "Not if you're just going to send me back to that pre-recorded message." "I'm sorry," says the computer, "I couldn't tell if you answered yes or no." I yell, "I want to speak to a human being!" The computer says, "I'm sorry, I couldn't understand you." After a little while of this back and forth, it transfers me to a human being. I state my purpose in calling. The human representative says, in a bored voice, "If you want information about passports, you have to call the National Passport Information service." After expressing a little outrage, I ask for that phone number, hang up, and dial it.

At the Passport Information Service I encounter another phone tree. But this time I'm canny. I resist the temptation to press 3 for information on applying for a passport, because I know it will be a recorded message rather than anything that will answer my questions. I sit on my hands and grit my teeth, even when we get to the end of all the options and none is given for speaking to a representative. (The National Passport Information Service doesn't have a chatty computer.) But magically, when I just sit there for about five full, long, seconds, it says, "Hold on while I transfer you to a customer service representative." It worked! This final person has a very heavy Asian accent and is barely understandable, and she has trouble understanding some of my questions, but she answers most of them. Phew! Mission accomplished.

It's getting ridiculous. And more seriously, if I weren't already used to this problem, it could sometimes be scary. I cannot count the number of times that I have wondered if it would ever be possible to get hold of a person to answer a specific question and what I would do if it turned out to be impossible to reach anyone. Companies and government bureaus have stopped even offering you the human representative option. It's a game: Can you figure out how to get to talk to a human? So here are my tips, when "speak to a customer service representative" is not a given option.

1) Say something the talking computer can't understand. I've used this successfully with JC Penney now as well as the Post Office.

2) Press zero. This has worked many times even when the computer didn't list zero as an option in the phone tree. It usually doesn't do any harm to try it, but wait until after all the options in the phone tree have been listed. I seem to recall using it successfully with banks.

(Either 1 or 2 is necessary for sending a package from your house using Federal Express, but I can't remember now which it is.)

3) Wait until all options have been given and then sit tight. Count to ten, at least, to see if it rings you over to a human representative.

4) Hang up, call back, and see if you responded to the phone tree too early. There may have been an earlier point in the process where one of the above options would have worked if you hadn't chosen a numbered option.

5) Most importantly, if you have a specific question, never fall for the invitation to press a number for "information," even if the description of the information corresponds to the area you want to ask about. It's almost always a long-winded recorded message that won't answer your question. And such messages are a dead-end road on the phone tree. There is never an option given to speak to a representative after you patiently listen to the recorded information. It's just a waste of time.

There is something mildly alarming about the fact that we even have to talk about this stuff. But I'm quite serious about telling my kids how to do it. With humor, but I'll certainly tell them. I can imagine some young person newly out of the nest and trying desperately to get his electrical service connected, unable to get hold of a human being.

The world shouldn't be like this.

The liberal refusal to face implacable evil

On What's Wrong with the World I have a very brief post connecting part of the quotation below to Britain's refusal to admit Geert Wilders to the UK. The quotation fits very well in that context, but here I am giving it in full. It is a short capsule review by Lawrence Auster of a book by Ruth Wisse called If I am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews. Here is Auster's summary:

In this lucidly written, devastating anatomy of the liberal mind, Ruth Wisse shows how Jewish liberalism has weakened Jewish resolve in the face of Arab rejectionism and has unwittingly given anti-Semitism a new lease on life. Liberals cannot admit the existence of real evil, of an enemy beyond the reach of reason, of an unappeasable Other. The result is a fatal collusion "between the aggressor, who wants to conceal his intention in order to execute it effectively, and the liberal fundamentalist, who has to deny aggression so that he can continue to believe that humans were created in his image." Thus liberals, grown weary of opposing an unrelenting and unreasoning Arab rejectionism, have concluded that the cause of anti-Semitism must be Israel's own behavior. Beyond its immediate focus on the Jews, the larger interest of this book lies in what it has to say about liberalism--namely about the inability of liberals to oppose the forces of evil that would destroy the nations of the West.

I've not read the Wisse book, but it makes me want to go right out and do so. What I do not say in the W4 post (because I was making a different connection) is that this same problem bedevils Israel itself. The reason Israel is so infuriating for her hawkish supporters, like me, is because there are all too many Israelis who have this very problem: Despite the overwhelming evidence of the existence of an "unappeasable Other" in the form of the "Palestinians," not enough Israelis are willing to give up the sham of the "peace process." Partly this is America's fault, as President after President, including (shamefully) President Bush, insists on the continued pretense that there is some point to "negotiations" and that the former PLO (of all things) is a "peace partner" for Israel. This dangerous and suicidal rubbish never ends, and because Israel is too dependent on the good will of the U.S., they never tell us to go jump in the lake. But make no mistake: They have their own internal liberals who meet the above description to a T and who hate the truth-speaking Right in their own country.

And Western nations do something similar with respect to their immigrant Muslim population.

Milton Friedman on Capitalism: Donahue gets more than he bargained for

This is great. Friedman makes some excellent points. Donahue's loaded questions are posed as if there is some actual alternative polity under consideration that directly encourages virtue and is based on high-minded ideals. Friedman exposes Donahue's assumptions by going on the attack rather than playing defense. And he never misses a beat. Even the audience, likely inclined to favor Donahue, cannot help laughing.

And now for some shmaltz

Or is that "schmaltz"? I'm too lazy to go look it up. The one and only Julie Andrews and "Our Love is Here To Stay."

Audio of me on the radio

The audio is now up of my interview last night (Feb. 1) on the James Allen Show in Phoenix. Go here and choose the top item in the audio archives. I come in at about 4 minutes, I'm told. The commercials are still in there, so you can try to slide through those.

Bill Luse points out to me that I should have mentioned that my writing on the subject of religion in the public square is best exemplified by my article in The Christendom Review. That was in fact why I suggested the topic to James Allen when he made contact with me about being on. He's quite right. I should have put it into my notes for the interview.

Editor of What's Wrong with the World Paul Cella has absolved me for mispronouncing his name. The C is soft rather than Italianate.

James Allen did an excellent job as an interviewer. I had a lot of fun doing the interview, and if you have some time, you may enjoy listening to it.

Songs to Die For--"If Heaven"

I know nothing about country music, but I just heard this song for the first time at Stony Creek Digest, the blog of my cyber-friend Jeff Culbreath. "If Heaven," by Andy Griggs.



I note the allusion to "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes"--"If heaven was a tear, it'd be my last one."

My "Songs to Die For" series started here, with "Poor, Wayfarin' Stranger," almost a year and a half ago now. They don't have their own label. I probably should give them one, but for now they are scattered among the "hymns" and "songs that are not hymns" label. They are (almost) all songs related to death or heaven.

"If Heaven" has several unexpectedly profound things in it. For example, there is the verse that begins, "If Heaven was a pie it would be cherry," which hardly seems like a promising beginning. But then there is this line: "And just one bite would satisfy your hunger/And there'd always be enough for everyone." Which reminded Eldest Daughter, when she heard it, of the following section of Dante:

"It is because your desires are fixed where the part is lessened by sharing that envy blows the bellows to your sighs; but if the love of the highest sphere bent upward your longing, that fear would not be in your breast. For there, the more they are who say ours, the more of good does each possess and the more of charity burns in that cloister....That infinite and unspeakable good which is there above speeds to love as a sunbeam comes to a bright body; so much it gives of itself as it finds of ardour, so that the more charity extends the more does the eternal goodness increase upon it, and the more souls that are enamoured there above the more there are to be rightly loved and the more love there is and like a mirror the one returns it to the other." (Purgatorio, XV, 49ff, Virgil to Dante when they leave the terrace of the purgation of envy)

Or as Augustine says, "Truth ravishes all her lovers, yet is faithful to each."

I've just finished reading The Last Battle to Youngest Daughter, so heaven has been on my mind a good deal. When "If Heaven" connects heaven with earthly joys--finding the people you love alive, your home town, the best memories of childhood--I am reminded of this passage in The Last Battle. Professor Digory is speaking first:

"You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream."...It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and neighed and then cried: "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this."

Like, and yet unlike, the joys of this earth. As Lewis says in The Great Divorce, everything good that dies will be resurrected, but it must die first.

Oh, and while we're at it, when I put up my post last year on B. J. Thomas's "Home Where I Belong," it was not available on Youtube (or I didn't know how to find it). But it is now. And so as a bonus, here it is, too.



I wish they could play that one at my funeral.

Hebrews 11:13-16, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off...and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country...But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city."

Here's something really funny

I want to announce that next week, February 1, I will be interviewed on the James Allen Show, a talk radio show out of Phoenix, AZ, on religion in the public square and, to some extent, reason and faith. The show goes from 8-9 p.m. Phoenix time. The "What time is it" web site tells me that this should be 10-11 p.m. Michigan time. I'm supposed to be on starting at about 8:15 Phoenix time. Readers, please tell me if I'm missing something here about the time, as I want to be sure to call in at the right time. I've never done anything like this before and am rather nervous about it, but I think Mr. Allen has some good questions planned.

He sent me, for fun, some mock commercials his show had produced, and he kindly gave me permission to put up a link to this one. It hasn't been aired yet, as far as I know, and it is very funny. It spoofs the campaign of a Republican Presidential primary candidate whose initials are R. P. and whose name rhymes with "Don Ball." If any of you are wondering about my precautions in naming this person, they arise from the fact that during the primary this candidate's rather creepy followers (who are his worst enemies, in my opinion), had Google set to notify them whenever his name appeared anywhere, however obscurely, on the web. They would then descend upon any such post like the proverbial wolf on the fold. And I don't want that to happen here.

I'm also posting this because, as Zippy will know from our economic debates, I'm somewhat sympathetic to criticisms of fiat money, and I wouldn't want it to be thought that I've lost my sense of humor. We've had a good laugh here at my house about the paper money bills with Paulian slogans hand written all over them, referred to in this commercial. Maybe you've seen the notes on the money, too.

So click on the link above and enjoy the commercial. And remember--resistance to the New World Order is futile...

Uneasy nights post on W4

I have few readers here who do not also read What's Wrong with the World, but for those few, I want to highlight my new post there called "For Uneasy Nights." It is my recommendation about how we should pray for Barack Obama.

I Am Excited

...about something this week. But it certainly isn't the inauguration of Barack Obama, that's for sure.

It's the commutation of the sentences of former border agents Ramos and Compean, which they received for shooting a drug dealer in the rear end. This commutation, after two years in federal prison, isn't justice for them, but it's better than their being left in prison for eight more years. News reports say that they will be in prison for a couple more months. I hope they stay safe.

Looking up legal docs

Update: Document found. Thanks to Jonathan Prejean, who directed me to LEXIS/NEXIS. Yeah, I know: Why didn't I check that myself first. Well, see, I've never done it before, and... It took a bit of searching even there, but I now have the entire text. An interesting document. It looks to me like the 2DCA was very reluctant to say that her death was not "imminent," and that this was why they referred it to the Supreme Court as a question. There is even an urgent little bit at the end where they ask the Supreme Court to hurry up and hear the case lest (heaven forbid) the person in question should die with feeding and hydration in place while waiting for the courts to "assert her right of privacy." In fact, that's exactly what did happen in this case. But it does contain the "err on the side of life" direction, for what it is worth.

**************************************************************
(Original post)

Not being a lawyer, I refer the following question to my sage readership. How can I get a copy of the actual text of the following appellate court opinion from Florida?

In re Guardianship of Browning, 543 So.2d 258 (Fla. 2d DCA 1989)

I rather fancy myself a rad Googler, but I've googled 'n' googled, and what I've come up with is the Florida Supreme Court opinion by the same name from 1990, here, and a summary of the 2DCA appellate court's opinion, here. It's at least mildly interesting that the summary of the 2DCA opinion says that it held that "a guardian of a patient who is incompetent but not in a permanent vegetative state, and who suffers from an incurable but not necessarily terminal condition, cannot terminate life-sustaining treatment and feeding by tube." The Supreme Court decision by the same name holds just the opposite. In fact, it concludes that a person's death is "imminent" if that person's death will be imminent if food and hydration are removed. Cute, huh? So all of us are "imminently" dying. One would normally conclude that the Florida Supreme Court had simply overturned the 2DCA on this point, yet the Supreme Court's decision is worded rather as an answer to a "question" which the 2DCA has referred to it. In fact, there's no reference in the Supreme Court's opinion at all to the fact (if the summary article is right) that it is coming to the opposite conclusion to that of the appellate court on a fairly important point. Just to make things a little more interesting, the appellate opinion is often quoted as stating that a proxy must "err on the side of life" when trying to decide what a ward's wishes would be regarding treatment (where "treatment" includes, perversely, food and water), but the Supreme Court decision neither affirms nor rejects this instruction. It doesn't mention it at all.

All of this makes me curious to see the full text of the appellate court's decision. Since Google has failed me, I'd like to know what to try next. Esteemed husband has a pretty good interlibrary loan service here at Big State University, but there is (as far as I'm aware) not an actual law library. Does one simply take the reference for the opinion to ILL and say, "Here, find me a copy of this, please"? Or is there some other database one can sign into to see it if one's university subscribes?

This is all for an article I'm working on that will be a restrospective of some of the legal issues surrounding the murder of Terri Schiavo.

Thanks to all you legal eagles in my readership for info.

"Little Jazz Bird" by Glad

And a big HT to reader Stuart for suggesting imeem as a source of Glad clips. I'd been looking all over Youtube for a good recording of "Little Jazz Bird," but with no luck. (I didn't like the ones that were there, and of course they didn't have Glad.) Here is Glad's. I hope Gershwin won't be turning in his grave if I say that this song is absolutely adorable. It would be a lot of fun if some professional child singer had recorded it long ago--like Shirley Temple or somebody. The imeem clip is only missing a little bit at the end.

Little Jazz Bird - GLAD

Break out the world's smallest violin

Okay, I know I'm blogging more often here than usual, but can you believe this garbage???

An AP news story headlined "5 Pirates Drown With Ransom Share," and it tries to drum up sympathy for the pirates. For crying out loud! I say, thank God there is poetic justice in the world after all. But here are some bits from the story:

Piracy is one of the few ways to make money in Somalia. Half the population is dependent on aid and a whole generation has grown up knowing nothing but war. A recent report by London's Chatham House think-tank said pirates raked in more than $30 million in ransoms last year.

Well, cry me a river. See, they can't do anything but take innocent hostages and demand ransom, because that's one of the few ways of making money in their country! Piracy: Main source of income in Somalia. I feel so sad for them.

Or how about this...

Abukar Haji, uncle of one of the dead pirates, blamed the naval surveillance for the accident that killed his pirate nephew Saturday.

"The boat the pirates were traveling in capsized because it was running at high speed because the pirates were afraid of an attack from the warships patrolling around," he said.

"There has been human and monetary loss but what makes us feel sad is that we don't still have the dead bodies of our relatives. Four are still missing and one washed up on the shore."

Pirate Daud Nure said three of the eight passengers had managed to swim to shore after the boat overturned in rough seas. He was not part of the pirate operation but knew those involved.

"Here in Haradhere the news is grim, relatives are looking for their dead," he said.

I just love that quote from "Pirate Daud Nure." As if "pirate" were just some normal appellation. But I suppose we should be glad that the AP is revealing its source. And we're supposed to feel so bad that those nasty, nasty warships caused the death of the poor pirates because they might be (shiff) chasing them. And this is "grim news." God forbid we should have a sense of justice. Maybe they should have interviewed the relatives of some of the hostages and asked them if they think this news is grim.

I'm pretty nearly speechless. This is outrageous. I know that if I read more AP news stories I'd see more outrageous stuff than this, but this is the one that I happened to see today.

A Cappella Gershwin

My old college friend Rich recommended this album to me when I had an earlier post about Glad. I only wish I could find a link that had more samples. Amazon appears to have no audio clips at all.

I got it for Eldest Daughter for a Christmas present, and in her jargon, "it's the bomb." (For all you old fogies like me out there, that's a compliment. I understand that "you are a total beast" is also a compliment.)

Anyway, it's excellent. Glad's top-notch musicianship is on display, as is what I read someone somewhere describing as "Ed Nalle's uncanny high tenor." Some of the pieces have words, some don't. Their vocal renditions of "American in Paris" and "Summertime" in the Gershwin medley are fantastic.

But my favorite was "Little Jazz Bird." I'd never heard it before and can't find a good Youtube or other on-line recording of it. Frankly, I can't stand these female jazz singers I find sort of simpering it out. Ick. But Glad does it straight up. If you should get the CD and hear the song, you'll have it going through your head and cheering you up for weeks. I recommend it.

A word on life in Sderot

I've been restraining myself from writing much here or elsewhere on the situation in Israel. Those who read me here with religious regularity know that my opinions on Israel are somewhere to the right of Likud.

I thought this post was good on what life is like in Sderot. (HT View from the Right)

Few things make me angrier when I read people talking about Israel's response in Gaza than the nonsense about how few people have actually died from the continual and direct rocket attacks from Gaza over the years. They will also mention that those attacks do not by themselves threaten Israel's very existence. (And these are people who claim not to be anti-Israel, yet.) That's absolutely absurd. Think about this: The U.S. could move all of its citizens back fifty kilometers from its borders if rockets started coming over into, say, Laredo, Texas, and showed no sign of stopping. We could just tell the Laredans to live with it or leave, to let Laredo turn back into a ghost town. And the U.S. would survive as a country. We're a lot bigger than Israel, after all. But that would be a shocking abdication of our government's responsibility to protect its citizens, including those in border towns, from unprovoked attack by our neighbors.

No, an attack doesn't have to constitute a threat to a country's existence before there is a just cause of war in responding to it.

The Porpoise-Driven Life

HT: Esteemed husband

Back to the mundane--got any advice on Charter telephone?

From the intellectual to the mundane:

AT & T has gotten increasingly aggressive in their marketing, sending pairs of salesmen (one older woman and one young man each time) to thunder on my door repeatedly. They want to sell me a package in which I have to sign up for cable TV, which I do not want, have my house wired for it, and then cancel it. I really do not want to do this.

However, I am indeed paying too much for Charter internet service. Having internet with one company and phone with a different company does get you a poor price for each. So I'm thinking of switching my phone to Charter. Somehow I feel less nervous about making a change in my phone technology than making a change in my internet technology. This may not be rational, however.

Do any of my esteemed readers have experience with either AT & T internet (I hear it's DSL rather than cable modem) or Charter telephone? On Facebook I have so far one very negative review of AT & T internet service. In December, my Charter internet has had a few connectivity problems, but I will say that they have resolved them. More importantly, when I called tech support and talked to a person, I got a nice American guy with a charming southern accent who knew what he was talking about. This was a big improvement over someone with an Indian accent you could cut with a knife who patronized the customer and was clearly working from a flip chart. So I'm cautiously still satisfied with Charter internet. But they are charging me too much, which they will stop doing (they say) if I switch my phone to them.

Hmmm. One doesn't want one's phone suddenly not to be working right, either.

It would be ironic if A T & T's pushiness lost them a phone customer, though. The devil in me would sort of like to make that happen.

All advice taken in the spirit in which it is intended.

Fighting the leftist nominalists every step of the way

Kudos and more kudos to my cyber-friend Jeff Culbreath for taking a firm stand against the evil attack on marriage from homosexual activists. Jeff has asked a homosexual commentator never again to refer to another man as his "husband" in Jeff's comboxes. Says Jeff, "That's one piece of fiction I'll not be a party to."

In this post, my co-blogger Zippy Catholic suggested that the re-definition of "parent" by the U.S. Census Bureau (to make illegitimacy rates in the black community appear lower than they really are) is an example of nominalism. One commentator questioned this diagnosis, arguing that someone could believe that there really is an essence to being a parent but that traditional definitions don't cut it. Naturally, this led directly to a discussion of homosexual pretend "marriage."

I'm more than a bit worried about what is going to happen to all of my good Christian friends if and when homosexual "marriage" is put into place (with or without the will of the people) in their parts of the country. It seems to me not implausible that some of them will simply start referring to same-sex couples as "married," to the partners in such so-called "marriages" as each others' "husbands" or "spouses" or "wives" and excuse doing so by saying, "Well, no matter what you think, it really is the law that they are married." They might even think in some confused way that they, even in private conversation, are obligated to "obey the law" by using this terminology. In fact, I suspect that any employer in such a state or any businessman who sells any goods or services to the public and refuses to go along in conversation with the "marital" status of a homosexual employee or customer will face lawsuit. And the comments of this hard-core leftist commentator suggest that conservatives will be told exactly this: "Shut up. Homosexual marriage is now a legal fact. That is what you are being asked to acknowledge. Whatever you may think about the matter, you cannot deny the legal facts now in place. Just refer to those and keep the rest of your opinions to yourself." (Notice, among other things, his reference to "refusing to accept a plain legal fact.") (See also this story about the ostensibly Christian Condoleeza Rice, though some might well question whether Rice is a conservative in any sense worth mentioning. The homosexual pair did not even have any pretense of legal "marriage," but Rice went out of her way to call the one man's mother the other man's "mother-in-law" nonetheless.)

Whether or not arguments about the homosexual agenda usually involve nominalism, that argument (about our using the word in this way because "now that's true legally") is nominalism pure and simple. The idea is that a positive law can simply create a legal reality regarding marriage--however crazy that new "reality" is--and that we can and should now refer to this new reality in our own usage, regardless of "what we think," as though the fact that a man literally cannot be married to another man is a mere matter of opinion. This is all very bad indeed.

I say that all conservatives, Christian and otherwise, who know perfectly well that two men or two women literally cannot be married must resist this usage to their last gasp. Fight it every step of the way. Do not give in to this specious argument about a legal reality. In using this terminology without some qualifier such as "so-called" or scare quotes, you are, whether you like it or not, both caving in to and furthering the homosexual agenda and the erosion of marriage. Just say no.

It's hard to know what arguments would convince a conservative friend who says he's "just referring to the legal facts." Perhaps you could try a few reductios: If the courts or the legislature were to declare that Barack Obama is a god, would we then be merely referring to a legal reality and doing nothing objectionable and contrary to our Christian faith if we went about saying, "Our god, Barack Obama"? If the courts declared that a man could be legally married to a dog, would we not be promoting insanity if we went about referring to his dog as his husband? If the courts declared that a gorilla is a person, would we then merely be referring to a legal reality and doing nothing to further an anti-human agenda if we spoke of "gorillas and other people"?

But I don't know. People get scared. And people adapt with frightening swiftness. I predict, but hope I'm wrong, that when homosexual "marriage" comes to your town, you will find a solid majority of your conservative, Christian friends going about referring to the people involved as "spouses" or "husbands" or "wives" and telling you, "There is nothing I can do about it. Whatever we may think, it's the law now. I'm just telling the truth about their legal status."

But I stand with Jeff. And I hope some others do, too, and never, never, never give in.

P.S. I am not interested in debating "same-sex marriage" here. This is my personal blog, and I'm more draconian here than elsewhere. I welcome comments on the specific issue raised in this post but have no intention of debating the larger issues with homosexual or homosexual-sympathizing commentators. I would love to hear from my conservative readers as to what they think, predict, and intend to do about the terminological matter I raise here.

December 26--Pray for the persecuted church

Today happens to be the Feast of Stephen, immortalized in "Good King Wenceslas."

Stephen was the first martyr, and it seems appropriate for us to remember the persecuted church today. Especially on my mind are the members of a Christian family who are victims of Islamic persecution in Egypt. According to the story, they have been stopped from leaving the country and are all in prison, including the two little boys, ages 2 and 4, who are being starved (partially starved?) to pressure their Christian mother, Martha Samuel, to re-convert to Islam. The story states that she has also been raped and tortured to try to secure the same result. The father is in prison, too. Their crimes are simply that Martha converted to Christianity five years ago and that the family recently tried to leave the country to escape persecution. I never knew Egypt was a Soviet-style prison country. Perhaps only to people who have had the temerity to leave Islam. Ironically, they were trying to go to Russia to get away from Egypt.

We should pray for them.

Crossposted at What's Wrong with the World

Merry Christmas!

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jeuss Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

Unabashedly, I say that Christmas is a holy day and a holy festival. I have some Christian friends who, most unfortunately, refuse to celebrate Christmas, because they don't want to recognize any day as "holy." But what was meant by the term "holy" in both the Old Testament and New? It was that a thing, person, or day was set aside for a special, divine purpose. And Christmas is, and should be, a day (twelve days, actually) set aside to remember and to celebrate the glory of the Incarnation. God came down among us.

We as Christians do most surely believe and avow that God the Son was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the virgin Mary and was made man. He came down from heaven. Without that great event, no salvation. Without that great event, no peace with God through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Without that, no remission of sins. God did not, and could not, sit in His heaven and forgive the sins of man "just because." No, He had to come down here and reveal Himself to us in the person of a man, a man who took upon himself our human nature, a man who could suffer and die and thus take upon Himself, in his death, our sins.

Thanks be to God.

And so to all my readers I wish a most hearty Merry Christmas. May Our Lord richly bless you during this, the feast of His Incarnation!

P.S. Image credit to Frank Ordaz, the illustrator of this beautiful and really neat Christmas book, which I heartily recommend. The text is by historian Paul Maier. (The "look inside" function at Amazon is incorrect. It is linked to an entirely different book by Dr. Maier with a similar title.)

Thanks also to Frank for stopping by "Extra Thoughts."

Less well-known Christmas things

I'll probably have only a couple of posts directly related to Christmas. I'm enjoying everybody else's Christmas stuff so much. But here are a couple of things that may be a little less familiar to people for Christmas.

First, Charles Dickens's novella "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain." Here is a Google books edition in the public domain. This story deserves, in my opinion, to be made into at least one really good movie, just like "A Christmas Carol" (which I also love). I won't give away too much of the plot, but it concerns a chemistry professor who comes to believe, in his pride and bitterness, that people would all be happier if they could lose their memories of sorrow, wrong, and trouble. He is offered the opportunity to give up his own such memories, and he accepts the bargain. But he is given yet further the power of spreading this forgetfulness to other people by his presence. Eventually, as you can well imagine, he comes to regret his decision and still more to regret horribly his ability to bestow this "gift" on other people without their knowledge or consent. The entire story takes place at Christmas time, and the hero of the story is a young married woman named Milly who has been saddened by the death of her only child in infancy.

I tried to find a youtube or other recording of the unfamiliar but lovely Christmas carol "Here Betwixt Ass and Oxen Mild," but unfortunately I can't even find a cyberhymnal midi version. If you have a copy of the Episcopal 1940 hymnal, be sure to look it up. It's well worth it.

Here are the words and music to "Sing, O Sing, This Blessed Morn," a Christmas carol I'd never heard before becoming familiar with Anglican hymns. (The tune is also sometimes sung with the words to "For the Beauty of the Earth.") These words are truly great. Verse 4 is especially excellent:

God comes down that man may rise
Lifted by him to the skies.
Christ is Son of Man that we
Sons of God in him may be.
Sing, O sing, this blessed morn,
Jesus Christ today is born.

And finally, here is a high school choir singing Bach's "Break Forth, O Beauteous, Heavenly Light." Great parts.

Slightly dark humor

This is amusing, in a grim sort of way. (By putting up this grim post now, I am committing myself to posting something else before Christmas, come what may. I can't have this up at the top of the page on Christmas!)

Lawrence Auster has been talking about a gruesome story out of the UK that no one else seems to want to talk much about: A 63-year-old man named Patrick McGee was murdered and beheaded outside his home, his head thrown in a trash bin. The news stories (such as we have) have said bizarre things to the effect that he was "decapitated after a dispute about noise" by a neighbor "said to be suffering from mental illness." Say, what? You know, you've gotta watch this business of asking your neighbors to turn down the radio (or playing yours too loudly). If you're not careful, you might just enrage the poor fellows to the point where they cut off your head. I swear, it is impossible to satirize the UK anymore. Every story out of there is self-satire.

But here's the darkly amusing part. In his search for more information about this (as in, what is the name of the suspect whom police have arrested?), Auster turned up a story from the Scotsman that had as the headline "Tribute to 'Gentle' Victim." Not, mind you, "Elderly Man Decapitated: Nation in Shock." (I also note that people, including people in the media, simply do not know how to use scare quotes. The headline would give the impression that maybe he wasn't really gentle, even though that obviously isn't what the author intended. But that's a hobbyhorse for a different day.) Says Auster:

The fact that the man was murdered and beheaded is placed in a subordinate clause, while the "real" news, the news in the main clause, is that the man was kind and gentle. Wow. A man was kind and gentle. These people really have an instinct for news, don't they? If they were reporting the news on the day in 1453 when Constaninople fell to the Moslems and the city's population was slaughtered, their headline and lead would have been something like this:

Lovely City Remembered
May 29--Constantinople, which was conquered and sacked by the Ottomans yesterday, with many thousands of its Christian inhabitants slaughtered and others sold into slavery, was described by survivors as a place of many wonderful memories.

I have to admit, that made me laugh out loud.

Secret Agent Penguin

Alas, what with one thing and another I've had no time this week for liturgical blogging on this site, or even clever blogging or funny blogging. I do have a post up at W4 on teaching children about evil and a follow-up on teaching ourselves about evil and the custody of the mind.

On a much, much lighter note (before I go off to do other stuff) here is a new Christmas song (new to me). Eldest Daughter just introduced me to it this week: Brad Paisley's "Penguin, James Penguin." It's about a little black-and-white guy with satellite uplinks in his cuff links who helps Santa out by telling him when you've been good or bad. He also outfitted the sleigh with GPS. Enjoy.

Bible Sunday

The collect for Advent II

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The collect for this week alludes to Paul's words in Romans 15: "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope." I've never realized before just how many biblical words the collect contains. (It was written by Cranmer himself, not translated.) Cranmer is a genius at working biblical phrases into his collects.

It's hard to tell in the context in Romans exactly what comforting aspects of Scripture Paul has in mind, especially since he doesn't, as one might expect, begin talking about heaven. Instead, he emphasizes the fact that Jesus Christ was sent to confirm the promises of God that the Gentiles also would be invited to be part of the people of God.

One of today's hymns did, however, remind me also of the hope we have in Jesus' coming. The best line is "And for the everlasting right/The silent stars are strong." The hymn reminds me that it is not some new thing for Christians in 2008 to need some encouragement and to feel that we are in the middle of the slow watches of the night.

Thy kingdom come! on bended knee
The passing ages pray;
And faithful souls have yearned to see
On earth that kingdom’s day.

But the slow watches of the night
Not less to God belong;
And for the everlasting right
The silent stars are strong.

And lo, already on the hills
The flags of dawn appear;
Gird up your loins, ye prophet souls,
Proclaim the day is near.

The day in whose clear shining light
All wrong shall stand revealed,
When justice shall be throned in might,
And every hurt be healed.

When knowledge, hand in hand with peace,
Shall walk the earth abroad;
The day of perfect righteousness,
The promised day of God.

We sing it at my church to the tune given here for a different song. The tune is called "St. Flavian."

Christendom Review

There's a new e-journal launched: The Christendom Review. I have an article in it on the naked public square thesis--the idea, basically, that we shouldn't allow our religious beliefs to influence our political actions. (I'm agin' it.) There is also a wonderful memoir by my friend and former (and hopefully future) W4 colleague Bill Luse of his old writing teacher, Smith Kirkpatrick, and a poem about his daughter that I won't even try to describe. Go read it.

Anglican insights on Advent

The collect for Advent Sunday

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

Today begins the liturgical season of Advent. I love Advent. I think it's one of those seasons in which Anglicans can give gifts to the rest of the Body of Christ. Cranmer's collects for the Sundays are particularly wonderful, the emphasis of each Sunday in the season (from the collects and designated Scripture readings) is slightly different, and the season as a whole has a special meaning that even non-liturgical Protestants could really profit from, without in the process compromising any of their theological views.

But first I need to clear out of the way a certain rather unfortunate high church tendency, which I encountered just a bit when first being introduced to Anglicanism. This is the tendency to overemphasize the statement, "Advent is a penitential season." I have to say that to those new to Anglicanism, and even to old hands like me, such an overemphasis has all the winsomeness of the Grinch. And it's theologically misguided, too. Joy in the anticipation of Christmas isn't some sort of frivolous modern invention. There is no Good Friday at the end of Advent. However awed and hence, in a sense, solemn we may feel when thinking of meeting our Lord face to face (on which see more below), it simply is in the nature of the case a happy and exciting thing to look forward both to the festival of his first coming and to the reality of his second coming. I hate the fact that all the stores start playing Christmas carols--sometimes really awful ones--before Thanksgiving as much as anybody does. But one can hardly imagine Scrooge's nephew waiting to wish his uncle a Merry Christmas until he was sure the sun had gone down on Christmas Eve!

Now that I have that off my chest, I want to talk about the distinctive nature of Advent. Before I was familiar with the Book of Common Prayer and with the Advent hymns in the 1940 hymnal, I would have assumed that the word "Advent" was just another word for "the time before Christmas." I had no idea that it had a distinctive character as a liturgical season. Certainly, one major part of Advent is meditating on the mystery of the Incarnation. "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." It's a good idea to get a head start on that during these four weeks--what all Christians call "remembering the real meaning of Christmas."

The second emphasis of Advent, and I think part of the truer (and gentler) meaning of "Advent is a penitential season" is simply that we want to go into the celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord with, as the Prayer Book says, "a conscience void of offense toward God and man." When you are going to have a party, you clean your house. The Apostle Paul tells us to let no root of bitterness spring up among us, and the Lord Jesus Christ tells us to forgive if we would be forgiven. Advent is a good time to get all our ducks in a row as far as our relationship with God and men. If we have been nurturing a sin, we should root it out. If we have grudges, we should toss them. That way, Christmas can come to us with great joy, without our having reservations. As the carol says, "Let every heart prepare him room."

The third emphasis of Advent, and the one that takes non-liturgical Christians the most by surprise, is the emphasis on Jesus' second coming. That's why the season is called what it's called--"Advent," meaning "coming," referring to both comings of Christ. You can see the emphasis in the wonderful collect given above. The Apostle John explicitly says that we should abide in Jesus so that when he appears we will not be ashamed before him at his coming. I've encountered a surprising amount of resistance to the plain sense of this verse among some evangelicals. But you really can't get away from it. It says in so many words that it is possible for us to be ashamed when Jesus comes. What exactly is going to happen then, Scripture doesn't tell us. But it's pretty clear that John is saying we don't want to be in that position. Here, I really think that there can be a rapprochement between Anglicans and "lower" Protestants. The Baptist tradition in which I was raised placed tremendous emphasis upon the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. And Jesus himself did the same, constantly telling his disciples to be ready. Parable after parable makes the point. Now, here is a season of twenty-four days or so in which we are supposed to meditate on that. I found this rather exciting when I first became an Anglican--a sort of point of intersection between one tradition and another.

The last thing I want to discuss is not a separate significance of Advent but just simply the existence of Advent hymns. I never had any idea before I became an Anglican that there were Advent hymns as opposed to Christmas carols. Very few of the hymns for Advent in the Anglican hymnal occur in Baptist hymnals, though some of them do. But one that everyone knows (though it has a different rhythm as Baptists sing it) is "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." But everyone thinks it is a Christmas carol. If you think about it, though, you realize that it is very different from, say, "Joy to the World." A Christmas carol is saying that Jesus has come. An Advent carol is saying "Maranatha"--Even so come, Lord Jesus! And that is, of course, part of what "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is doing. It's also mingling the first and second comings by mentally putting us in the place of people before Jesus' first coming--"Make straight the way that leads on high/And close the path to misery." It mentally recreates that longing for deliverance and redemption which is the very spirit of Advent.

There are many other absolutely wonderful Advent hymns that should be more widely known and sung in all churches, hymns that all "mere Christians" can sing without reservation. Here's one: "The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns." (This page has multiple tunes. I like the seond of them, an American tune known as "Morning Song.") Note the repeated contrast between the first and second comings and the emphasis on light and the rising of the sun.

The King shall come when morning dawns
and light triumphant breaks;
when beauty gilds the eastern hills
and life to joy awakes.

Not, as of old, a little child,
to bear and fight and die,
but crowned with glory like the sun
that lights the morning sky.

The King shall come when morning dawns
and earth's dark night is past;
O haste the rising of that morn,
the day that e'er shall last;

And let the endless bliss begin,
by weary saints foretold,
when right shall triumph over wrong,
and truth shall be extolled.

The King shall come when morning dawns
and light and beauty brings:
Hail, Christ the Lord! Thy people pray,
come quickly, King of kings.

And then there is one of my personal favorites, the glorious hymn "O Very God of Very God," about which I have written here.

I hope to keep up blogging about the liturgical season each week during Advent. That's a hope, not a promise. But I encourage anyone who is not familiar with either the Prayer Book collects or the hymns to consider using them and consider celebrating Advent in a special way as distinct from Christmas. It will enrich your Christian walk.

Happy Thanksgiving

ALMIGHTY God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us, and to all men; We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all, for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.

(Photo credit: Eldest Daughter)

Pseudo-capitalism and pseudo-hunting

Over on What's Wrong with the World, we've had another thread about the bailout. I've come out firmly on the side of government's not bailing companies out and not insuring everybody and his uncle. My basic position is that we only think that government can fix these things, whereas in fact the attempt to have the government make wealth out of nothing to save people from the consequences of their actions only makes the bubbles bigger and the falls harder in the long run. I suppose occasionally we might get away with doing stupid things, but you keep doing stupid things long enough, expecting Uncle Midas Sam to create gold out of lead and save you every time, and eventually it catches up with you. Basic Austrian economics stuff, which I gather appears totally crazy to most people. (And which I realize, if applied, would cause a lot of pain to innocent people as well as careless ones, simply because our present economy has been built on a bubble of national debt and empty government promises, and it would be highly unpleasant to admit that to ourselves now rather than pushing it off onto future generations, forcing them to admit it after the illusion is bigger still.)

Anyway, among other things, some of our commentators (and at least one of my fellow contributors) at W4 want to blame the financial crisis on "unregulated capitalism"--that is, the risky derivatives market that is crashing down. Scorn is heaped on what seems to me the perfectly reasonable point about the push to lend to those who are not credit-worthy and the way this spread into the mortgage market and the economy as a whole. But beyond that, no attempt is made on the part of those who say this is the fault of capitalism to factor in the perverse incentive of the expectation of bailout. Sure, people are greedy. And they may do unsustainable and economically foolish things, hoping to get personally rich, if they think they can get away with them because the government will catch them when they fall if their shenanigans get so big and complicated that their fall would harm lots of innocent people. Basically, it's holding the nation hostage for a bailout. Nice. Very human. But not capitalism, by a long shot. In this context, I typed the following comment, with which I'm very pleased, but for which I haven't quite gotten the standing ovation I was hoping. So here it is, for my small and discerning reading audience here at the ol' personal blog:

It hardly seems reasonable to call it "capitalism" when financiers do crazy, unsustainable things having the "too big to fail" idea in the back of their minds. One of the whole points of capitalism as I have always understood it is precisely that it takes advantage of the hard facts of cause and effect rather than trying to make consequences go away. Bailouts negate the entire real-world, reality-check idea that is absolutely fundamental to capitalism. Calling speculative, unsound money transactions undertaken with the assumption that the government will borrow money and get you out of the soup if things go wrong "capitalism" sounds to me like saying that Junior is "hunting" if he goes out, shoots wildly at trees, shoots himself in the foot, Dad pays the medical bills, and finally a dead 10-point buck that somebody else shot is delivered to the front door with "Junior's deer" on a tag attached to its antlers.

Biblical arguments against suicide

Suppose you were confronted with a Christian, a self-styled fundamentalist, who told you that he does not think suicide is wrong or that he thinks suicide may not be wrong. You know that this person will not accept any pure natural law arguments but only arguments directly from the Bible. What argument could you make?

Soul-losing risk-taking

Over at W4 I've put up a post on the subject of how kids lose their Christian faith in college. Actually, I'm looking for information more than giving it. One theme that comes up again and again in the responses is the theme of the entire atmosphere of a secular college and how the Christian student feels immersed in it, feels lonely as a Christian, perhaps wants to try out some of the hedonistic experimenting his peers are trying, and is therefore almost looking for excuses to throw out his Christianity.

This leads me to wonder seriously about parents who deliberately send their children to live on the campus of a secular university. Nowadays, we have all heard the horror stories about the brain-washing PC residence hall sessions. But even aside from that, as one commentator put it,

It takes a lot of personal fortitude to hold onto what you believe in when everyone around you operates entirely on the presumption that it doesn't even exist. You have to be able to go home at night and think about it, you have to be able to drag yourself out early in the morning and go to church, you have to be able to say "eh, not this time" when good clean fun goes bad.

Right. So surely living in the dorms must make this effect particularly strong. Or so it would seem to me. I mean, what if there is no "home" to go to in order to get away from the atmosphere and think about it?

So I was thinking over reasons why parents and children agree to do this. These seem to me to include things like this: 1) The assumption that going away and living in dorms at college is a necessary part of growing up, an absolute rite of passage that it would be cruel to have your kids miss out on. 2) The worry that sending your child to a Christian college will not get him a good enough education and/or will not allow him to get a job. 3) The worry that sending your child to a local college, so that he can live at home, will not get him a good enough name on his transcript to allow him to get a job. 4) (Related to 3.) The assumption that, despite post-modernism and the death of the academy, there is enough objective difference in quality across disciplines between a more "elite" secular school and a secular school that no one has ever heard of that your child really will get a good education at the former and not at the latter and that you therefore have a duty to send your child away from home to go to the former.

I certainly understand that parents agonize over such decisions, and I don't want to sound harsh. But there is that whole thing in the Gospels about gaining the whole world and losing your own soul. This is not meant as an advertisement for Christian colleges. Christian colleges often have their unique problems, some of which arise from the fact that young people and parents go in trusting them and are therefore particularly vulnerable to faith-attacking professors and trendy movements (like the Emergent Church movement, for example). But I would say this: Question all of 1-4 if you have a decision of this kind to make. And try to do something other than sending your children away to be immersed in the "college experience" of a secular college. For what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

A little pick-me-up to make you feel Glad

I don't know what it's like where you are, but around here there's a scurry of snow. It's cold, gloomy, and getting dark early in the evenings. I, for one, find it hard to keep the happy feelings that the eye-hurting blue skies of last week brought with them.

I found this video when I watched "Just As I Am," which you'll find in the post below. I'm told it was one of Keith Green's greatest hits, but now I've seen both versions and like Glad's better. This should make you smile, if you don't dislike Christian contemporary music circa 1980 on principal. It's upbeat, high quality musically, and fun. Enjoy.



And the Imeem version:

You Put This Love In My Heart - Glad

A couple of great songs

As I am still working on the proofs (though I see the light at the end of the tunnel), I give you a couple of wonderful musical clips in place of anything more profound. First, "Just As I Am" by Glad, courtesy of Eldest Daughter. Does anyone know if Glad writes its own tunes? This has a sound of an Irish folk tune to me, very much, but I think it is probably original with them. We sing this at Communion at my church. (Not like Glad does it, though!)



Then, via Dawn Eden, here is "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet." See Dawn's post for the story behind this one.



Update: The video I have embedded of "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" appears to have been taken down from Youtube. Unfortunately, the only other Youtube I've been able to find that gives that same version of the song has a fairly weird artsy video to go with it, and I don't want to link it. But the story at Dawn's blog is interesting nonetheless.

Punishments for copy editors

I am correcting page proofs for our 69-page resurrection article (cum additional pages for the bibliography). I am seeking reader input on the following question: What punishment should be reserved in Dante's hades for copy editors who...

--occasionally add commas that make one's sentences mean something different (and silly)?

--don't know that the proper possessive meaning "belonging to Jesus" is "Jesus'"?

--replace the written number "three" in the phrase "after three days" (referring to Jesus' resurrection) with the numeral 3, making it look ridiculous ("after 3 days")?

--replace, uniformly, all one's uses of the word "though" with "although," throughout a 69-page article, apparently using a robotic find and replace function, and without one's knowledge or consent?

--take out the word "to" in the phrase "stands in a relation to," which changes the meaning of the sentence so that it does not make sense?

...

Okay, that's enough. I can't bear to keep listing them. And I'm going to have to induce the publishers to change all this stuff back. I've gotten this far in life with relatively few grey hairs. I expect to have a few more after the next couple of weeks.

I believe in the communion of saints

I was teaching Youngest Daughter the Apostles' Creed a couple of weeks ago. No, not making her memorize it (though she probably could) but just going through it. I always stick a bit at "he descended into hell," because frankly, I don't know what it means. Wish I had ol' Peter here (who is to blame for the phrase) to tell me what it was all about. But by the time I got to "I believe in the communion of saints," I had picked up speed.

And here is approximately what I told her: When Christian people die and go to heaven, we can't see them anymore, and they can't talk to us. But they are still worshipping Jesus Christ. In fact, they are worshipping Him better when they see Him face to face in heaven than they were able to do here on earth. And we are worshipping Jesus Christ, too. So even though we can't be with one another anymore like we are here on earth, we are connected by the fact that we are all followers of Christ, loving Christ, and with Jesus Christ loving and knowing about all of us, whether we are here on earth or in heaven. That is the Church--the Church Militant here on earth and the Church Triumphant in heaven. I reminded her of the part in the liturgy where it says, "And we also bless thy holy name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear." And finally, I reminded her of that great verse of the hymn "For All the Saints":

O blest communion, fellowship divine.
We feebly struggle; they in glory shine.
Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia!

I should add, what might (or might not) seem at first blush irrelevant, that my husband has a wonderful annotated bibliography of apologetics works from centuries ago. It's located here. He tells me that he often thinks of those old divines fighting the good fight in their own time when we come to that part on Sundays that says, "And we also bless Thy holy name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear." And I should add that it goes on, "And give us grace so to follow their good example."

Cranmer's collect for All Saints captures perfectly what I regard as a sort of essence of the Anglican via media. It emphasizes the example of the saints and our union with them as servants of the Lord. I cannot forbear noting that neither the collect nor the preface contains any reference to invoking the prayers of nor venerating the saints nor to anything at all distinctively "high church." They are the kinds of bits of liturgy that I would like to offer to evangelicals as an example of what the Prayer Book contains that might enrich their own worship, if only their private worship.

The collect for All Saints:

O Almighty God, who has knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord; Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys which thou has prepared for those who unfeignedly love thee; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The proper preface, with the Sanctus:

Who, in the multitude of thy Saints, hast compassed us about with so great a cloud of witnesses, that we, rejoicing in their fellowship, may run with patience the race that is set before us, and, together with them, may receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away.

Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying,

HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, Lord God of hosts, Heaven and earth are full of thy glory: Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High.

Calling all Michiganders--No on Proposal 2

Calling any pro-life Michiganders who happen to be in my reading audience: Next Tuesday, be sure to go to the polls to vote no on Proposal 2. You can get the low-down on Proposal 2 here. The short version is, it would amend the Michigan state constitution so that early embryo-destroying research and experimentation must be allowed to take place in the state unhindered. In other words, if this were put in place, no state or local laws could be passed and enforced at a later time (apparently no laws presently exist) prohibiting, restricting, or even "discouraging" such research.

I was surprised to find one pro-life e-mail correspondent a few weeks ago, a Michigander from the Detroit area, who knew nothing about Proposal 2. So I flatter myself that I got two more votes (assuming I can count his wife as well) against it.

As a side note, there is also a ballot proposal (#1) on this year to legalize "medical marijuana" in Michigan. Vote no on that one, too. My own guess (though I've seen no poll numbers) is that it is slated to go down in flames, but I fear Proposal 2 may be a closer call, though I have there only the general statement that "the polls are close" received in an e-mail, not any hard data.

A Must-See Video

Kleenex alert. You will want to have some on-hand. This is very moving. I do not know where the satellite missionary TV station "Life TV" is based. It broadcasts programs in Arabic all over the world comparing Islam and Christianity with the clear intent to convert Muslims to Christianity. This clip is from a call-in show called "Daring Question." The hosts take a call from a woman named Sana, calling from the UK, who wants to become a Christian but is terrified of her husband. She believes that if he discovers her faith in Jesus Christ, he will divorce her and take her children away. The hosts pray for her and with her.



It is sometimes hard to know what we can do about the Islamic threat to the West. Our leaders seem suicidally bent upon capitulating to the gradual warping of our laws and culture by the introduction of Islamic law (sharia) and culture. In the UK, sharia courts have even been given some sort of quasi-official status, though supposedly both parties have to "agree" to abide by the decisions of the sharia courts. (Wanna bet?) Conservatives propose that we refuse to accommodate Islam in our laws and customs and even that we limit or stop Muslim immigration, but pigs will fly before these suggestions are heeded.

But these men know that they are not helpless. They know that here we have no continuing city, and they are attacking the ultimate "root cause" of the problem--Islam itself--by direct missions efforts. I'm afraid our President really doesn't know what he's talking about when he talks about "winning hearts and minds." But these guys do. They are inviting people to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Prince of Peace. May God bless and protect them.

HT: Jihad Watch

Crossposted at What's Wrong with the World

Bob Hope on Zombies

Just in case anyone reads this blog and doesn't read What's Wrong with the World, I just posted this to give us a little comic relief in a tense election season:

Collect of the week--In the morning

I'm sure I've said it before, but the section at the back of the 1928 Prayer Book called "Family Prayer" is unjustly neglected. I would love to see some of the collects from it incorporated into Anglican worship services. The collects have a different feel from those by Cranmer and those translated from the Latin. I have read that this section was published free-standing before it was incorporated into the American 1928 BCP and that its prayers have been attributed to the late 17th century divine Archbishop Tillotson.

The particular one I have in mind here is designated to be prayed in the morning, though it makes just as much sense to pray it at night or at any other time.

Almighty God, who alone gavest us the breath of life, and alone canst keep alive in us the holy desires thou dost impart; We beseech thee, for thy compassion's sake, to sanctify all our thoughts and endeavours; that we may neither begin an action without a pure intention nor continue it without thy blessing. And grant that, having the eyes of the mind opened to behold things invisible and unseen, we may in heart be inspired by thy wisdom, and in work be upheld by thy strength, and in the end be accepted of thee as thy faithful servants; through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

This collect has that quality that all good collects have: It says it for you. I have not the slightest bit of trouble praying this collect as a real prayer. It never tempts me to regard it as an empty form of words, because it says so well and so exactly what I truly wish to ask of God.

How many times to I begin an action without a pure intention? Lots. But even if I do begin it with a pure intention, sometimes I continue it when I should backtrack or rethink. I certainly would like the Holy Spirit to nudge me at those times. And then, it's very easy to be weary in well-doing, so when I'm doing what I ought to be doing, what I most need is to be inspired by God's wisdom and upheld by His strength, most particularly by "beholding things invisible and unseen"--being reminded what it's all about.

Great collects, by the way, always pack in biblical allusions. This one is alluding to Paul's prayer for the Ephesians in Ephesians 1, "The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe..."

And all of that--the opening of the understanding, the strength of God, the intention of the act, and the continual guidance of God in continuing the action--is the path to follow in order to hear that "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

Recipe--Mama Mia's Pork Chops Italiano

This is the first recipe I have ever published on "Extra Thoughts." I shall have to add a new label. It's me own. I hope the vagueness will not bother readers too much, but I don't, for this particular recipe, measure the spices. I'm publishing it because it is not only easy and tasty but also cheap, which is hard to beat, these days.

Mama Mia's Pork Chops Italiano

*1 1/2 to 2 pounds pork chops (These can be the kind they call "assorted pork chops" in the store--hence, not very expensive.)
*1 can tomatoes, undrained, cut up
*1 medium onion, sliced
*Several tablespoons of vegetable oil (for browning)

Fairly generous amounts (as desired) of...
*salt
*pepper
*garlic powder
*basil
*oregano

Season chops on both sides with all spices. Heat oil. Brown chops on both sides. Arrange in a 9 x 13 pan. Pour tomatoes with liquid over chops. Place onions on top. Cover and bake 30-35 minutes (depending on the thickness of the chops) at 325 degrees.

Serving suggestion: Serve with garlic rolls or garlic bread.

Mark Pickup on the Christian meaning of suffering

I have mentioned Mark Pickup before. (See also here.) He is a Canadian Catholic blogger with multiple sclerosis who writes on issues such as disabilities, suffering, and Christianity. Here he has the notes for a talk he gave on the Christian meaning of suffering.

Whether you are Protestant or Catholic, there is much in what Mark has to say that will have value for you. Here are a few quotations:

If there is no God, then there is no purpose to suffering. The logical response to suffering is suicide. If there is a bad God, then the response of Job’s wife is reasonable: “Curse God, and die.” If, however, there is a good God then there must be is a redeeming value to human suffering, for no good God could possibly permit it were there not.

...

People who advocate or participate in assisted suicide act with the logic of darkness … they are brutes prowling and sniffing over the waiting graves of the defeated. Any civilized society must always condemn assisted suicide in the strongest terms and never legalize or permit it.

...

An atheist once told me that Christianity is a crutch for weak people. He sneered and referred to Jesus as my imaginary friend. Having aggressive multiple sclerosis I know a thing or two about weakness, crutches and wheelchairs too. Jesus is not my imaginary friend – his presence has come into clearer focus the sicker I become. He is truer and more faithful to me than I have ever been to him.

...

The reason for Christ’s Passion and death on the Cross was to settle with God the problem of human sin and evil. Sin and evil kill goodness. We must not overlook or discount this truth. People suffer whenever they experience evil; the ultimate suffering is the loss of eternal life.

Hide Me Behind the Cross (II)

Here are the lyrics.

Verse 1

Lord as I seek to serve You,
May You find in me what's pleasing to Your heart.
I leave my will at Calvary,
Taking on a nature humbled by Your scars.

For I know it's only through Your love,
That who I am is hidden by Your grace.
Let my desires be overshadowed,
As I recall the purpose of that place.


(Chorus)

Hide me behind the cross,
Where my gains become as loss.
And only Your glory is in view.

Your power will be revealed
The more that I am concealed.
Hide me behind the cross
So the world sees only You.

Verse 2

If I rely on my strength
To be a source of hope for those in need,
The only profit I would gain
Would be the empty honor of my deeds.
But with all of self behind Your cross,
The splendor of Your love stands free to shine.
Illuminating with Your power,
Reaching souls so You alone are glorified.

Now, I would be the last to claim that this is high poetry. But when I heard the song for the first time in the car the other day (from this station), it really struck me.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has repeatedly felt a desire to be of value to other people coupled with a sense of gloom about the probable outcome. "I'll probably annoy so-and-so, or not put it right, or something." And a parent feels this in spades. I don't know about other parents in my wide reading audience, but it happens an uncountable number of times a week that I feel it my duty to tell one of my girls to do things differently, or I have to explain something that they don't understand, and they are annoyed. Mom is the nit-picker. Mom explains about everything from table manners to moral views. Mom has to decide exactly what punishment to mete out to Youngest Daughter (age 5) for, say, lying about whether she did or whether she did not spit on the piano bench and scratch the softened finish off with her fingernails. This is not a popular position to be in. And often the time comes when one just wants to say, "I'm doing more harm than good. I don't know how to do this right."

Now, the Bible, especially in the Pauline epistles, contains plenty of talk about this very odd idea that we do not do things ourselves, that in some sense Christ lives through us. This would no doubt creep out the New Atheist crowd very seriously. "So you mean you're, like, possessed by your imaginary friend?" One can just hear them. Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Wouldn't it be a tremendous relief to be hidden behind the cross? Okay, so we can't literally get out of that human stuff. One still has to tell the kids what to do, to try to be wise about guiding them and reproving them. One still has to try to find the right words to say in a blog thread, or to make the right decision about when and how to give the other guy the last word. We still have to try to get it right, and we still have the fear of failure. But if, somehow, all that could be given to Our Lord, and he could be invited truly to live his life out through me, it seems like it ought to make a difference.

It comes back, I suppose, to that uncomfortable stuff about the practice of the presence of Christ. Would I say this, would I do that, would I refuse to do this other thing, if I were truly conscious that Jesus is here, with me, within me, and that I am supposed to be his hands and feet, not to mention mouth, in the world?

Yikes. So maybe this idea about being hidden behind the cross isn't such a relief after all. Maybe it just raises the stakes.

I think, myself, it's both a relief and a challenge. And that's why I like the song.

Hide Me Behind the Cross (I)

This is just to get this recording out there. I hope to have more to say later. Heard this song for the first time on Rejoice Radio the other day in the car and have been looking for a good link to it. I never heard of Hyles Anderson College before, but their men's gospel team sure can sing.
[Update: January 30, 2010]--Well, imeem has disappeared, and with it, the embedded song. I have found the song on Grooveshark with Gold City, which did it first. Heretically, I like the tiny Christian college men's group's version a bit better than the pros, but this is a very nice recording of a good song, and I'd hate for this post to be without the song. So here's the new embed:

Positive words about Facebook

Last week my former college roommate (and maid of honor for my wedding) tracked me down after twenty years or so, which pleased me very much. She invited me to join Facebook to see more pictures of her and her family. Being the paranoid person I am, I asked around about how much personal info. I'd have to give and who could see it. Reassured, I joined, and I've been very glad that I did.

I won't name any names, because I wouldn't want people getting my info. from Facebook and publishing about me on their personal blogs, but I've been touched and surprised by the number of old college friends who have noticed that I am on Facebook and have sent me friend requests. These are people, in several cases, about whom I've thought often over the years and wondered, but after the manner of lazy human beings, have done nothing about locating.

I realize now that one reason I have left my college years behind me is because I am not entirely proud of my own behavior in college. I went to Baptist Bible College in Clarks Summit, PA, at the age of 16. And a half. Don't blame my parents. They didn't know what to do with me at home, I had knocked myself out finishing high school early for the express purpose of going to college early, and I would have given them no peace if they had tried fairly pointlessly to keep me in Chicago. Plus, I was more or less unemployable. They probably hoped that this would change if I got a bachelor's degree. So, at considerable expense to them (a point I did not appreciate nearly enough at the time), I went the 900 miles to a small Christian college.

It really wasn't nearly as rough for such a young student as it might have been. The atmosphere was carefully monitored and quite wholesome; the entire student body came from conservative Baptist churches and was expected to behave accordingly, which they more or less did. So there were no shocks, just the general feeling of defensiveness at being at least two years and more younger than everyone around me, looking younger still, and being something of a nuisance.

My solution was to glom onto anyone who was nice to me and pour my largely imaginary woes and largely indefensible prejudices and opinions into the ears of such patient people as fulfilled that description. And to the credit of human nature and Christian charity, several did. I had friends, almost all of them juniors and seniors when I arrived (hence, something on the order of four years older than me, and therefore perhaps even more mature and kindly than the freshmen).

Now, yea, these years later, a surprising number of these generous people have made contact with me voluntarily, and I've been able to find out what they've been up to. In several places, that information has been especially humbling: One family has adopted a son with many special needs, another family has nine children, and another former college mate travels abroad every year to make films of the poorest of the poor for the hunger relief organization he works for.

So I've just added a link to this blog to my rather spare Facebook profile, and if any of y'all come over here, this is just to say--Thanks, guys! And I'm glad to be back in touch. Feel free to comment, if you want. (Hint, hint.)

I should add that, as advertised, Facebook is a very low-key site and appears to be very safe. I have received no spam from them, and I've seen only one inappropriate ad in the margin. You don't even have to give your address, etc., when you sign up, because there is a "skip this page" option for all of that info. that you might not want to pass around too much. The only thing they definitely require, besides an e-mail address, is date of birth, presumably for legal reasons. So I recommend it.

P.S. I am in the far bottom right corner of the above picture, which a Facebook friend found and uploaded. This was our drama team. All names have been omitted to protect the innocent.

Blog housekeeping--starting to label

I was just at a friend's blog and realized how useful his post labels are when I'm coming new to a blog. So I've decided gradually to start going back through my posts and labeling them. Should have done that to begin with, of course. What this means is that for the time being, the labels won't show you complete lists. So if you go to "hymns," you'll probably be thinking, "I know she has way more posts than that on hymns." Hopefully I'll get them all in there eventually, unless this fiddly project falls by the wayside.