Peanuts, Power and Policy

Below is an essay I just sent off to Bethany Seminary for an essay contest: What Story Will a Peace Church Tell the World?

There's not much new content here from my other musings on power, but I thought I'd wrap it up in a fresh package and see what the Church of the Brethren thinks. :)

Peanuts, Power, and Policy for a Peace Church

While traveling with my wife and young children a few years ago, we reached that point in our journey where rising agitation from the back of the van needed to be swiftly quelled by a snack of some kind. My resourceful wife opened a jar of peanuts that she had ready for just this situation, and we each took a handful and passed the jar back. There was a short moment of relative peace, followed by sharp outcries of injustice and suffering. Our eldest daughter had dumped the entire jar into her lap, out of reach from her siblings (who were now sobbing and gnashing their teeth). We confronted said eldest child and demanded to know what in the world she was doing.

Without missing a beat, she replied “I just wanted the peanuts so I could share them with my brother and sister.” She then proceeded to give small handfuls of her enormous pile to each of her siblings.

History teaches us that it is common for people to gather all peanuts unto themselves, and that it can almost always be explained as simple greed or desire. It is trickier when peanut gathering is done in the name of providing for others. It is admirable to want to be God’s hands, but we run the risk of mistaking our own desires for God’s. Whether we gather peanuts for good or ill, one thing is certain: peanut distributors are the ones in charge. They will eat far better than others and will become all too acquainted with places of honor at banquet tables. To their eventual sorrow, they will discover that peanuts are loaded with hidden saturated fat, and that they will suffer from heart failure if they continue to eat more than their share of them.

Whether it be peanuts or armies, the fundamental problem we all must face when attempting to do good is the double-edged nature of power in this world. We need power to do good, yet power tends to corrupt even the best intentions. That corruption may not fully blossom into depravity, exploitation, or an invade-other-countries-for-the-glorious-benefit-of-God kind of arrogance. But even reconciling a comfortable life with all the suffering that exists in the world is a small corruption, a turning away from Shalom. We all have blind spots, and power without accountability often ends up being a greater opportunity for sin than for good. Whether we are children, kings, nations or peace churches, we should be wary of gathering power in too few places, and we should encourage social policies that ensure power is properly distributed among many.

- - - - - -

The natural course of the world is to collect power into mighty kingdoms that demand allegiance above even God, but which eventually and inevitably crumble as corruption eats at them from within. History affirms this sad reality century after century. But must that reality apply to the Church as well? At its worst, the Church has been a shadow of the State, seeking power and control over others to increase its influence. In post-Christendom times, these impulses have reduced the Church to blessing the violence of the State in exchange for whatever shreds of power the State decides to trickle down to it.

However, at its best, the Church is a counter-weight to the reality of power. It is a voice crying out from the sideline, urging the rich and powerful to share their wealth and privilege and calls them to account when their corruption becomes too enormous for others to bear. What makes the ancient books of Israel remain so unique and relevant for our time is not that God spoke to a tribe in the desert, but that one’s very loyalty to God is put to the test by one’s care and concern for the oppressed in society. The victimized share space in the same sacred text as the stately kings and priests, and to remain faithful to their calls for justice is no easier today than it ever was.

The source of the difficulty is that power presents us with a paradox: We can gain power to do good but also gain hidden corruptions along with it. Or we can avoid power altogether and lack much influence with which to do God’s work. Historic peace churches have struggled mightily with this paradox over the centuries. Choosing variously between engagement and withdrawal at different times, we keep circling around, hoping to find a faithful balance. We often find ourselves between the rock of faithfulness and the hard place of effectiveness.

Part of the problem is Jesus’ ambivalence towards power. He rejected political and ecclesiological power offered by Satan, and in so doing revealed that his kingdom was something quite different. But in the Parable of the Talents, he demanded that those with money and power use it to good benefit or risk losing faithfulness. Is he recognizing that power is something humans can get addicted to, yet is a necessary temptation to accomplish kingdom work?

The answer may lie in what Jesus was unmistakably clear about: advocating for the least among us. Instead of concentrating solely on individual salvation through forgiveness of sins, perhaps we should focus more on community salvation, through the practical results of children clothed, bellies fed, and power equalized. This is the story Jesus told, through his unwavering insistence to care for the poor and the suffering, through his message of an upside-down-kingdom, and through his proclamation of the year of Jubilee. If we view the arc of Jesus’ message as a call to distribute power to minimize human corruption, we are given not just a story but a guiding principle of social organization towards our work in the larger world.

Indeed, what progress has been made towards human dignity in the course of history has come through this basic but effective strategy. Democracy, the rule of law, and institutional checks and balances are all strategies to distribute power, and while they do not succeed in eliminating corruption, they do dampen its effects. We’ve also experienced (all too recently) the tragic effects of subverting those checks and balances by those in power. The church need not compete with secular energy in these areas - at its best it has been the conscience and forerunner of social causes like slavery, poverty, and civil rights, all of which righteously distribute power.


As a guiding principle, distribution of power is quite useful in unpacking the social issues of our time. Instead of asking whether a particular social policy is conservative vs liberal or secular vs religious, we need merely ask: Whom does it benefit? If the answer is that it will give more power and privilege to those who already have it, then we should be highly suspicious of whatever benefits it claims. If one of our jobs, as Christians, is to work towards increasing the power of those who don’t have it, then we need not be embarrassed to pursue social policy that attempts to achieve it. We may be fearful of being labeled unpatriotic or socialist, but we must claim our motivations as properly Christian - a natural result of following Jesus’ social ethic.

Here are some ideas for applying the principle of power distribution to a few current social problems:

Wealth: To rely on optional charity to distribute wealth is to rely on those with the peanuts to share them at their pleasure. Tax policy that distributes money also distributes power. Progressive tax policies need not be apologized for when the money is being used for social services and wealth redistribution strategies, be it education or basic welfare. It is when taxes are used to militarily control the resources of other countries that we should be concerned about what taxation is accomplishing.

Health Care: Current American allocation of health care resources goes to those with jobs at companies that provide health care benefits. This is just another way of distributing privileges only to those who already have some power. A universal health care system would ensure that the power of health is more evenly distributed.

Media Conglomeration: The media is an extremely powerful tool to shape social perception. When all the major media outlets are owned by a small number of global corporations, the voices of those without power are usually shut out. Social policy that prevents media monopolies or encourages alternative media outlets should be supported.

Policing: Corruption is common in police forces because the power of legally sanctioned violence is so strong. Without being accountable to a truly independent investigative body, police abuse is inevitable. Citizen reviews boards with real authority to sanction officers should be a check within our system of policing.

Voting. One of the many ways our democracy is broken is how lawmakers get elected, via large donations from moneyed interests. Public financing of elections would reduce the likelihood of representatives who are beholden to special interests. Alternatively, entirely changing the system to representational government or instant run-off voting would allow more than two parties to have practical access to office, which would help distribute power electorally.

The examples above are but a sample, and certainly open to argument as to whether they would actually achieve the goals of distributing power. But using distribution of power as a goal at least provides a proper framework for the discussion of social policy. For too long we have had to endure the loud complaints of the most privileged and their certainty that they still don’t have enough. They believe that the least among us deserve their poverty, and should be provided with nothing more than spare peanuts, and that only at the whim of those with power. If we hold to distribution of power as a worthy goal, we undercut selfishness as policy, and turn the discussion instead toward the direction of Jesus’ social ethic.

Is distribution of power really such an all-encompassing solution? Can’t people still commit terrible evils even when they have limited power in balance with others? Don’t high school movies teach us that geeks immediately start ignoring their friends when they gain the power of popularity?

Possibly - it is a very blunt tool, after all. It is not an ethic, but a strategy to reduce the likelihood of sin. In fact, sometimes, it is necessary to temporarily centralize power to address local injustice, such as civil rights. In this post-modern world, choosing a path isn’t usually a way to eliminate all problems, but a way to choose which set of problems we prefer to have.

Distributing power is like storing old newspapers, oily rags and matches in different places to avoid unnecessary fires. It is keeping bullets away from guns, and guns away from children, and even preventing guns from being in the house in the first place. It is a structural way to avoid problems and temptations. It does not stop those who want fires and gunshots in their lives, but it does limit their damage.

Unequal distribution of power harms everyone. Left unchecked, it eventually puts massive numbers of people under the yoke of injustice and oppression. But it also encourages those in power, who might behave better otherwise, to be in opposition to God’s will for themselves and for humanity. Resisting the temptations of power may start with peanuts, but if we are to be serious about reflecting God’s desire for us here on earth, it must end in practical, power-distributing social policy.

My Ensemble Experience

At my wife’s urging, I joined a choral ensemble this year at AMBS. I did not join because I have any singing talent - quite the opposite - I joined because I thought I might be able to improve myself without being too big of an anchor tied around the necks of the other choir members. Or at least my wife thought so. I was not convinced.

Throughout my life, I have been an atrocious singer and an even worse musician. After 18 years of living with my music-major wife, she has only been able to patch over some of my most glaring deficiencies. I no longer mistake the rhythm of the melody for the beat, and am now aware that picking any handy, semi-matching note is not how to sing a 4-part harmony. In exchange for these wondrous gifts, my wife is now able (after 18 long years) to hit, catch and throw a softball.

My two doomed attempts at playing instruments (piano and cello) have left me a kindergarten-like ability to “read” music. While others around me translate in real-time the circles and squigglies on a page into actual music, it is mostly accidental when any sounds coming from my mouth resemble the pitch, tempo, or volume of what is written.

In the midst of this functional musical illiteracy, choir also requires me to look up every so often at the director to receive arm movement instructions. I can roughly understand the intent, even though I am mostly unable to comply, as I struggle not to lose my place while also still desperately trying to match pitch. There are also a lot verbal instructions in foreign languages, like “mezzo-forte” and “adagio”, plus secret-coded English phrases, like “articulation of rhythms.” Everyone else nods in agreement and makes appropriate notes in their music. I also nod intently, and use the time to mark little arrows next to what I hope is the tenor line, so I don’t lose my place from page to page.

But there is still more. I am asked to sing louder here or softer there or lightly or with enunciation or crescendo-y. Breathe here, but not with your chest and root yourself to the ground and round your Os and pronounce that hard G. There are apparently notations for each of these as well, as everyone continues to scribble in their music. I’ve already finished marking the tenor line, which is the only marking I’ve found to be useful.

My job in the choir, as I have defined it, is to surround myself with as many tenors as I can and attempt to amplify whatever it is they are doing. So, my singing often resembles an annoying person trying to mimic a storyteller in real-time. This role became evident in our spring performance. We apparently started one of the movements out of sync with each other, so much so that the organist simply stopped playing for a page or two until we got back in sync, which we eventually did. I say apparently, because I didn’t notice. I was standing between two outstanding tenors, and they were in agreement as to which notes we were supposed to be singing, so I just followed happily along. Ignorance is bliss, indeed.

I’ve been trying to come up with a metaphor that describes my contribution to the ensemble. My standard image for failing at something is that of the slow gazelle being eyed by a hungry lion as the herd passes. But that doesn’t quite work here, since it isn’t clear who the lion is. It would need to be the Slow Gazelle of Skill being run down by the Hungry Lion of Humiliation.

I’m the weak link in the chain. The faint black line drawn across a fine painting. The trivia partner who knows only what all his team members already know, but is slower to answer.

But it’s all OK. Too much of my life is spent avoiding situations that might reveal my weaknesses. My self-identity requires that I always be the one who is competent and talented. I want to be one who provides grace and mercy to others when they mess up instead of needing it myself. Choir is the exact opposite of this, and an opportunity to provide some perspective from the other side. I know I need help and must trust others to provide it.

And provide it they do. These are Mennonites, after all. You can randomly yank 20 Mennonites out of any potluck and you’ll have enough vocal talent to match the choir of any Catholic church I’ve attended. Plus, they love nothing more than to provide grace and mercy to others. Especially those slow gazelles.

This ensemble (and its infinitely patient director) was particularly strong, and easily able to accommodate an outlier like myself. But if it was all just confusion and compassion, I’m not sure I would have survived.

What kept me coming back were those transcendent moments at the end of a movement where everyone sings at their peak capacity – full throated and without inhibition. When they do, the sound is so strong and so powerful that my music sheet literally vibrates in my hand, and I feel it deeply within my chest and body and soul. It is here, and only here, that I am finally able to let go. The note is mercifully long enough that I am able to confidently find the right pitch. After withholding my voice for so long for fear of messing up, I can just let it rip, and sing as long and as strong as my voice will allow, joining with the rushing tide.

We’ve reached a destination that I can take no credit in achieving, and yet it gives me a profound appreciation for the gifts and talents of others in taking me there. There is a surrender of self in simply putting my elbows out and being carried away by a rushing crowd of those who are stronger, faster, and greater.

Finally, in these moments, I am fully a part of something greater, not only than me, but greater even than the sum of all of us in the ensemble. Our voices resonate together and fill the space between us all. For just a moment, we seem connected, somehow the collective embodiment of God that our spirits yearn for. And it is good.

Unless I forget and move before the sound dissipates.

Salvation Candy

The June issue of Sojourners reported on this gem, under the heading of “Real Product”: Salvation Candy Tubes. You can buy sugar for your children, and have them match the color with the message on the tube. Jesus' Blood is red, sin is of course some kind of dark, unpleasant color, and heaven is apparently yellow. Who knew?

I don’t know what it is that cracks me up about entwining Jesus with consumer products. It has something to do with the sacrilege of it all, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. But I do make a point of sending a semi-sacrilegious product to my brother every year for his birthday. He has received a Buddy Christ, a statuette of a Jesus playing basketball with young boys (inappropriately, it seems to me), a Moses action figure, and a "wash away your sins" soap bar with a small nun statuette entrapped within it (presumably with nail marks on the inside of the soap where the statuette has desperately tried to claw its way out before suffocating).

I suppose one way to look at Salvation Candy is that the company owners love Jesus so much that they want to spread his message of love and compassion via the sacred act of candy consumption. Another way to look at it is that they are using Jesus as bait to sell sugar to schoolchildren. Either way, it seems cruel to get children all hopped up on sugar and then make them feel guilty that they are suddenly physically unable to act like Jesus would want them to.

This particular product is the perfect metaphor for what I’ve long believed: that religious experience often resembles a manic sugar high. Churches pass out the spiritual equivalent of chocolate bunnies and peeps and everyone gets high on God for the morning. It’s all about being saved and feeling good about yourself. But there isn’t much connection between that and ethical choices for the rest of the week.

Many go the opposite way, and eat spiritual barley all day long and are healthy enough, but lack any kind of joy at all. That is one-sided too, and reduces spiritual life to rote ethical duties, devoid of any kind of spirit at all. Our spiritual lives need to be a nutrient-filled, healthy balance between joy and obligation, binding and loosing, spirit and flesh, sugar and vegetables.

How can we tell the difference between deep joy and communion and merely a sugar high? Can we even do God’s work when we are all sugared up?

Biblecandy.com says, of course you can – just load up on Salvation Sugar and Candy Pebbles Crunch Art of Sin, and be on your way!

EbertFest Beckons

The weather is finally gorgeous and spring is in full bloom. So, what better time to spend 5 straight days in a dark building with 1200 other people watching underappreciated movies?

Yes, it is EbertFest time again, and I'll be huddled in the Virginia Theater tomorrow night through Sunday, enjoying the festival. I'm also going to guest blog again at http://ebertfest.blogspot.com/ with some friends. However, this year I'm not going to try to post reviews for most of the festival movies like I did last year, which was simply too much work, and frankly, cut into my enjoyment of the movies. This year, I'll only post when the inspiration hits. That's probably good practice anyway.

I'll add links to this post (below) as I post them over at the ebertfest blog.

• EbertFest 9 Wrap Up
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
• Beyond the Valley of EbertFest
• Bust of a Day
• Come Early Morning
  
• La Dolce Vita
  
• Allan Rickman Interview
  
• Roger Ebert Fulfills Life-Long Dream
  
• Gattaca and Meritocracy
  
• The Quintessential EbertFest Film
  
• Overlooked No More
• 70mm Blues
  
  
  

Supporting the Troops

Last Friday, NPR reported that injured soldiers are being taken advantage of by the military with injury ratings. Soldiers who are injured and cannot perform their duties get a disability rating when they leave. If the rating is less than 30%, the military doesn’t have to pay them a monthly stipend (they get a small one-time severance instead), and they don't get to be part of the military health care system (they go into the VA system instead). One guy had a serious head injury in Iraq where they had to cut out part of his skull. He received a 10% disabled rating. In order to get health care, he has to fight long delays at VA hospitals. Sadly, this isn’t an isolated case. Vets are continuing to have troubles getting the health care they legitimately need.

This hits home for me because a very good friend of mine is in this exact position. He wasn’t in combat, but has debilitating back pain from an injury he sustained while in the Air Force. He had 16 years in towards a 20 year full retirement, but had trouble standing for much of the day (he was a teacher), so he was forced out of the Air Force with a 20% disability rating. He got a severance, but no monthly stipend, and because his back pain is so bad, it is hard for him to work and support himself.

The Mennonite part of me has nothing but compassion for the injuries soldiers sustain, regardless of whether they are physical or not. They are the ones bearing the cost of lessons not learned a generation ago by those running this war, and deserve to be taken care of. Actually, the Mennonite part of me thinks everyone should be entitled to quality health care, even if one’s health issues are not the result of arrogance or greed on the administration’s part. But that is probably a Minor Mennonite position.

The Liberal part of me wonders how in the world Conservatives can accuse us of not supporting the troops. They are the ones who put soldiers in harms way for no good reason, underfund their body armor and medical care, and whose contempt for government makes them seemingly unable to run any part of it. The idea that we are not supporting the troops by attempting to put a time-limit on the amount of blood they must spill is ludicrous.

The Snarky part of me (which often undermines the Mennonite and Liberal parts of me) wonders why NPR wants military health care to fail. After all, if reporting bad news from Iraq undermines the war, then reporting bad news about health care must threaten health care. Why didn’t they choose to interview people with serious head injuries who do get monthly stipends and reasonable health care? I would even bet that some hospitals have been freshly painted. No wonder NPR is constantly being threatened with its funding. What's a government-run organization useful for if it isn't to trumpet the success of those in power?

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

I’m in Florida this week for spring break, and am pleased to report that I’ve found a sign that now qualifies as my all-time favorite:


The other side of the sign contains the exact same message, and the exact same scene of countless sunbathers enjoying a nice sunny day on the beach. There is no indication as to what is designated about this area, why this particular spot has reached its limit. It is quite literally a useless sign plopped down in the middle of a beach, saying essentially nothing, and yet saying it in an awkward way.

This sign now replaces my previous favorite, which has lasted 20 years and dates back to my time living in Maryland, where on the side of the road near some paint stripes they warn motorists:

Paint Test
Drive Normally

That sign leads to all kinds of easy jokes about what constitutes normal driving in Maryland, and why the people of Maryland need to be reminded every day to drive that way. But, it does meet the minimal qualification that a sign convey intelligble information of some kind, even if it is just say that you should be acting normally. The Limits sign conveys information, but it is known only to the committee that designed and placed it.

For an even easier joke, here is my favorite made-up sign:

Corruption as Policy

Every time the Bush administration abuses their power or wreaks a bit of havoc on the country, I struggle to respond appropriately. The problem is that it is just such old news that these people are morally bankrupt. Continuing to point out their follies is just continuing to beat the proverbially dead horse.

The predicament is that this horse is still in power, which makes it not dead at all, but one that continues to charge around the barn, whacking other people, objects and barnyard animals. Plus, there is still a mysterious 30-some percent of people who still approve of the job Bush is doing. I suppose at some point, facts and logic simply don’t matter.

For instance, in the latest flair up concerning the fired federal prosecutors, it seems obvious that they were fired for political reasons. Their sins were to follow up on real corruption by Republicans and not follow up on fake corruption charges in order to smear Democrats right before an election. The justice department didn’t even bother to check on the actual performance of many of them before letting them go.

The administration response? Prosecutors are political appointees, and serve at the president’s pleasure, so he can fire them for any reason. Right. That’s like saying you can beat your wife because you believe yourself to be the head of the family. She serves at your pleasure and if you decide she needs to be more loyal, you will beat her if you need to.

I suppose the administration has forced itself down this route, since enough info has already come out that they can’t plausibly deny they were fired for political reasons. They are just trying to define “political” as “carry out generic policy” rather than “protect Republicans from the law and smear political opponents by any means.” This isn’t carrying out policy. It is simple corruption. Or rather, it is corruption AS policy, the kind of thing I used to expect from third world dictatorships, but now have to soul-search on whether to even complain about, for fear of sounding like broken record.

Perhaps the problem isn’t with the Bush Administration itself, since any administration will lie or spin when caught in an obvious misdeed. The problem is with the Limbaughs and Hannitys and Fox news folks who perpetuate these claims with straight faces and even indignation. It allows 30 percent or so of the people to continue to live in a bubble where it is only the one bomb a day that ruins people’s perceptions of how well things are going in Iraq, or that any and all accountability directed at Bush is liberal media bias.

But, here I go again, getting all unattractively huffy. Probably the right approach with Bush and Limbaugh and Fox news is to simply expect the craziness, point it out with a dash of ridicule, but try not to get too self-righteous or angry about it. I will constantly fail at this, but it is a nonetheless a worthy goal.

W Can't Get No Respect

It must be hard work to be George W. Bush. Most everywhere he goes in the world, people hold mass demonstrations against him, dress him up like Hitler, and burn him in effigy. Guatemalan Mayans even felt the need to spiritually cleanse a sacred holy site after his visit. Unlike a common tourist, his mere presence was deemed enough to defile the place.

I wonder if this registers with him at all. I’m pretty sure it would affect me if every place I visited acted out the same basic metaphorical burning of the sheets after I left, differing only in local, culturally appropriate ways. Eventually I would start to wonder why people think so poorly of me. Of course, I suppose it depends on who it was. If a crazed lunatic like Pat Robertson were doing the post-visit purifications, I would probably wear it as a badge of honor.

But gentle Mayans? Generating hate from them is akin to having the Dalai Lama spit on you while Mother Teresa knees you in the groin. Sure, they got a little bit militant-y when the Guatemalan government tried to commit genocide against them for 30 odd years. But they’ve completely kicked that human sacrifice habit they had a few centuries ago, and are one of the most spiritually in-tune cultures in the world.

I know this because I am now an expert on Mayans, having read almost an entire book about them (“I, Rigoberta Manchu, An Indian Woman in Guatemala”, highly recommended, especially the parts I read). Plus, I have seen some actual live Mayans, and they definitely seemed gentle to me. And short. They were all short and gentle, and not once did I see them publicly purify sacred sites that gringos were defiling. This should definitely be a sign to W, like a flock of canaries dropping dead as they pass over one of his stripped-mined coal fields.

To be fair, most presidents get a lot of mud thrown at them, and are hated by great numbers of people. After all, Clinton was despised by conservatives almost as much as Bush is despised by the vast majority of the world. I suppose we’d have to get into a long, boring comparison of whether the centrist Clinton should be more vilified for lying about sex than Bush should be for misleading the country into war, ballooning the deficit, doing everything he can to make the rich and powerful more rich and powerful, denying the reality of global warming, illegally wiretapping US citizens and lying about it, firing federal prosecutors for political reasons, gutting the government so it has a hard time responding to natural disasters, and generally destroying the good name of Americans the world over.

But, I don’t have the energy for it today. Having gentle Mayans scorn him is punishment enough.

Evidence That Gas Prices Are Too Low

Today was one of those sunny and fresh spring days, where it finally reached 60 degrees, giving one the slim hope that, just perhaps, we are not doomed after all.

That is, until I picked up my daughter from swimming practice at school. I parked in the lot, to avoid the 15 or so enormous SUVs and minivans waiting in line next to the gym doors. As I walked in, I noted that there were about 20 or so additional enormous SUVs and minivans in the parking lot, many with people in them, with their engines running while they waited. As I passed the enormous SUVs in line, I then noticed that every last of them had their engines running as well.

I understand that there will always be one or two knuckleheads who seem to enjoy unnecessarily pumping CO in the atmosphere for no good reason. But how is it possible that everyone can just sit there with their windows rolled up, presumably running both the heat and A/C together, in an attempt to match the inside of the car with the perfect conditions outside? It is no wonder the planet is dying, with people pooping in their own soup like this. Except that it isn't just their soup, it is mine too, and yours.

I'm wondering what thought processes take place in these kinds of situations. Perhaps it is thought to be too much time and energy to turn the ignition off, only to have to turn it on again 10 minutes later when it is time to go. Perhaps there was concern that the battery would go dead from playing the radio too loud. Perhaps they are making sure that our effort in Iraq will not be in vain, that our right to burn gasoline for no good reason not be impeded, and there is no better time to make this statement than on a fine spring day.

Gas is obviously not nearly expensive enough. That, or perhaps we need new controls in cars that simply dumps all the gasoline in the tank on the ground when it has been idling in park for more than 5 seconds. Sure, it would waste gas the first few times, but I think people would learn pretty quickly. Hopefully.

Spelling Motivation

The problem with most educational tools that are designed to help your spelling is that that they simply don’t have enough violence in them. We recently bought the spelling game Bookworm Adventures, and I am happy to report that they have addressed this glaring deficiency. In Bookworm, you are given 16 random letters, and when you correctly spell a word, the nerdy hero bookworm gets to whack some nasty monster into submission. If that isn’t motivation to spell a really long, cool word, I don’t know what is.

In all seriousness, I was initially appalled that spelling was being reduced to violence in this way. Why can’t they give flowers to the monster, and have his malicious facade melt into a nice butterfly or a happy smiley guy? I suppose no one would buy the game if it were that wussy.

Worse yet, this game is addictive, and even, dare I say it, family friendly. Our nice Mennonite family often gathers around the computer in the evening, shouting out helpful suggestions for the longest possible word we can spell, to inflict the maximum amount of firepower on the evil monster. And worse yet, our kids are becoming pretty good spellers because of it.

The thing is, it is perfectly fine to slay specters or seven headed hydras that will kill you (or your little alter ego of a computer nerd bookworm). Seven headed hydras are, as far as I know, completely evil, and that of God does not shine within them. The problem, though, is that there are no seven headed hydras in the real world. Just messy, complicated human beings, all of whom are flawed and yet retain some redeemable quality somewhere, a place in their soul where God can shine a light and start healing. All too often, and especially since 9/11, I’ve seen too many people unable to differentiate between evil hydras and, say, Muslims, or Immigrants, or Americans.

Bah Bye Chief

They are finally going to retire Chief Illiniwek. The long dark nightmare is finally over, pending a ridiculous lawsuit from students who portray the Chief who claim their first amendment rights are being violated. If they win, I look forward to donning a Pope costume so I can dance around at football games too, as would be my constitutional right.

It looks like there will be a lot less honoring of American Indians in this town in the future, which I'm pretty sure most American Indians will be quite relieved about.

Valentine's Day Quote

Here's a Valentine's Day present to my loyal reader(s): A quote from Butch Hancock of the country band The Flatliners:

"In Lubbock we grew up with two main things. God loves you and he's gonna send you to hell, and that sex is bad and dirty and nasty and awful and you should save it for the one you love."

Have a Happy Valentines Day, all you sinners.

Moral Strength vs Material Strength

Normally I don’t agree with people who poison their political opponents, but I may have to make a temporary exception for Vladimir Putin.

He blasted the US over the weekend for, well, acting the way we have over the last six years. Some quotes include:

"The United States has overstepped its national borders in every way. Nobody feels secure anymore, because nobody can take safety behind the stone wall of international law. This is nourishing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons”



“Unilateral, illegitimate actions have not managed to resolve any problems, but made them worse. The wars, local and regional conflicts, have only grown in number. We are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of military force in international relations,"



“Until we get rid of unilateralism in international affairs, until we exclude the possibility of imposing one country's views on others, we will not have stability”

I also remember Bush criticizing Putin awhile back for lack of democractic reforms in Russia. Putin shot back that they didn’t want the kind of democracy that we’ve brought to Iraq. Ouch.

I have no illusions about Putin. He would be an old Soviet-style dictator if they let him and seems to be doing everything he can to drag Russia back to pre-democratic autocracy. He’s probably just mad that Russia lacks the power to create unholy, biblically-sized messes like we can. But that doesn’t make his criticism invalid.

It just shows how far we’ve fallen that someone like Putin can criticize our actions, and be so justified in doing so. It also demonstrates why attacking Iraq (and our subsequent behavior there) was not merely a tactical error in the war on terrorism. It was a generational mistake, one that will cost us moral leadership for decades to come. Suffering through lectures on how to behave responsibly from the likes of Putins will be our penance for not having the stomach, strength or willingness to stand up to the Bush administration when it mattered.

Peter Dauo’s The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength is one of the best essays I’ve read about the moral implications of the Iraq war, and it is as relevant today as it was when it was written a year and a half ago. He compares the left’s focus on moral strength to the right’s focus on material strength, and it goes a long way towards explaining why we so often talk past each other and are so angry with each other. I think of it whenever something happens that is an inevitable consequence of squandering our moral leadership. The first three paragraphs are below:

The unbridgeable divide between the left and right’s approach to Iraq and the WoT is, among other things, a disagreement over the value of moral and material strength, with the left placing a premium on the former and the right on the latter. The right (broadly speaking) can’t fathom why the left is driven into fits of rage over every Abu Ghraib, every Gitmo, every secret rendition, every breach of civil liberties, every shifting rationale for war, every soldier and civilian killed in that war, every Bush platitude in support of it, every attempt to squelch dissent. They see the left's protestations as appeasement of a ruthless enemy. For the left (broadly speaking), America’s moral strength is of paramount importance; without it, all the brute force in the world won’t keep us safe, defeat our enemies, and preserve our role as the world’s moral leader.



War hawks squeal about America-haters and traitors, heaping scorn on the so-called “blame America first" crowd, but they fail to comprehend that the left reserves the deepest disdain for those who squander our moral authority. The scars of a terrorist attack heal and we are sadder but stronger for having lived through it. When our moral leadership is compromised by people draped in the American flag, America is weakened. The loss of our moral compass leaves us rudderless, open to attacks on our character and our basic decency. And nothing makes our enemies prouder. They can't kill us all, but if they permanently stain our dignity, they've done irreparable harm to America.



The antiwar critique of Iraq is that it is an immoral war and every resulting death is a wrongful one. Opponents of the war view the invasion and occupation as a dangerous and shameful violation of international law. Iraq saps our moral strength and the sooner we leave the better. Opposing the invasion on the grounds that the administration lied its way into it, they see every subsequent death, American or foreign, as an ethical travesty and a stain on America's good name.

Read the rest here.

Two Hauerwas Quotes

I’m back to my old, lazy ways of barely getting in a post a week, and even then, just quoting someone else and commenting on it. Since being reactive is so natural for me, I often question why it is considered a bad thing.

Also, I'm currently trapped in a house with 3 to 6 cabin-fever-infected children, as school has been closed due to the extremely cold weather here. I'm posting this while children are running around me in circles spraying each other with fire extinguishers and wiping our remaining food supplies on the walls.

Posting Hauerwas quotes is not only easy and entertaining, but also something I am able to do with children running amok. I would hope this would be a source of pride for Stanely, rather than shame. For those unaware of Stanley Hauerwas, he is a Methodist theologian at Duke, and worked a lot with John Howard Yoder, who is the St. Augustine of Mennonite Pacifism. Or perhaps the Thomas Aquinas? Mennonites should weigh in here. For that matter, who would Hauerwas be in this metaphor?

Anway, here are the quotes, which I'm not even going to comment on now.

Quote 1 (My favorite Hauerwas quote):

“Why say carefully what you can say offensively?”

Quote 2: Where he relates his contribution to ecumenism (religious unity) and how he became a pacifist, when he presented a paper that defended John Howard Yoder’s work at a Notre Dame/Valpraiso meeting:

I began my presentation by noting that what I was going to do before these Lutherans and Catholics was a genuine ecumenical effort. It featured a Methodist with a doubtful theological background (if you are Methodist you have a doubtful theological background) representing a most Catholic department of theology, reading a paper to a group of Missouri Synod Lutherans and saying that the Anabaptists had been right all along. I said that it was an ecumenical gesture because, by the time I finished, the Catholics and Lutherans would discover how much they had in common – namely, thinking it a very good thing to kill the Anabaptists. And, of course, that is exactly what happened, as the Catholics and Lutherans joined forces to try to show me why we should not take Yoder seriously. Serious people understand that sometimes you do need to kill somebody. I was not convinced, and the rest, so to speak, is history.

Goodbye Guatemala

I’m home from Guatemala now, happy to see my family, but sad that our fine group of sojourners is now dissipating into our individual lives again. I already miss our morning comparisons of sleep and bowel movement patterns and meals just aren’t the same without a stack of tortillas and some kind of interesting and tasty (but unrecognizable) fruit juice. On the other hand, even though it is cold here, the forecast calls for much less oppression and injustice.

But it wasn’t all oppression and injustice while we were there. I will end the "Dan's Blog Gets Hijacked by Guatemala" series with some pictures from a soccer game we attended during our stay. The Municipal Rojos (Guatemala City’s team, the Reds) played some other team that they trounced 4-0.

Here’s our happy group at the game:



Here’s a goal that was scored:



Well, to be strictly correct (and honest), a goal was not scored on this play. It is very hard to get a picture of goal in soccer. This play probably ended the way most plays do, with some player flopping on the ground in agony until a foul is called, wherein he quickly gets up and starts running again.

I must say I was a bit disappointed that there were no riots or hooliganism. As a Mennonite, I must get my violence vicariously through others. My Irish friend Ken Humphrey had entertained me all last semester with stories about the danger and excitement of attending an Irish league game, and I assumed Latin American soccer was similar. I’m told that in general it is, but this particular game featured about 10 fans for the away team and they were cordoned off in their own section, where they had nothing to cheer about for 90 minutes.

The crowd in the cheap seats across the way was trying to rile things up, though:



They were singing a song in Spanish that I couldn't quite catch the words of:

Something! Some, Something!
Some Something Something (vous?) Madre!

Enrique, a Spanish language instructor at the seminary who came with us to the game, pretended he didn’t know what they were chanting, and wouldn’t translate it for us. It seemed directed at the mothers of opposing players. I imagine it was some kind of lullaby or love song, singing the praises of all mothers of soccer players, unifying women and men in a spiritual and universal bond of motherhood and brotherhood. The tune wasn’t much of a lullaby, but remember that this is a very machismo culture, and they may have been overcompensating for their overly tender lyrics. That’s probably why Enrique was so embarrassed.

Enrique was a lot of fun though. At one point, two of the younger women in our group got up to go the bathroom and chose one that was halfway across the stadium. The suggestion came up that perhaps they wanted a better look at some of many fine looking machismos attending the game. I happened to use the phrase “on the prowl,” merely as an educational opportunity for teaching colloquialisms. Sure enough, Enrique was confused by this phrase, so I added, in Spanish, “como un Tigre.” The lights suddenly came on, and he understood how the phrase worked. In fact, he was quite enthusiastic and liberal in his use of it for the next week or so. If I accomplished nothing else in Guatemala, I was at least able to teach an extremely cool Spanish language instructor a new and apparently useful phrase, thus bridging some small part of the gap of understanding between our vastly different cultures. My work here is done.