Good News All Around

Jill Carroll has been released in Baghdad; she is well and was not mistreated.

Randal McCoy, the sole survivor of the Sago mine disaster, has gone home; his recovery is well ahead of schedule.

Charles “Pappy” Taylor, the former Liberian president, has been recaptured and will stand trial for crimes against humanity.

The Afghan government released Abdul Rahman; he has moved to Italy, where Muslims and Christians are allowed to live side by side, and to switch sides without fear of capital punishment.

My daughter-in-law has started a blog that will focus on two of my grandsons; it looks promising, as do they.

George Mason University is in the Final Four; there are only 148 people in the country who don’t want them to go all the way – 147 of them live in Baton Rouge; the other one is John Wooden.

I survived the UTI; it’s finally gone, and I’m still drinking a lot of water every day.

Baseball is going to officially investigate Barry Bonds and the other sorry-ass Roid Warriors who have seriously undermined the credibility of the game; long live Hank and the Babe.

George Clooney won an Oscar; even other guys like him.

A new two-drug cocktail appears to be very effective in preventing HIV infection and the companies that make the two drugs involved are selling them at cost in poor countries.

Bob Dylan will roll his stone into Bakersfield next week; we’ve also had some rain.

The threat to shut down my BlackBerry has passed.

My wife and I have survived another March; April brings spring and daylight savings time.

Michael Jackson has boarded up Neverland and appears intent on remaining in Bahrain.

There were no bills in the mail yesterday.

Jack Abramoff is going to the slammer for almost six years, and the Senate passed a bill that imposes at least a few more limitations on lobbyist activity; something is better than nothing when it comes to regulating these shadowy relationships.

The NFL is clamping down on some of the ridiculous end-zone “celebrations”.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution demanding that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment activity.

The Dodgers enter the MLB season with reason for hope, and with new seats in Dodger Stadium.

500,000 Latinos, mostly students, are marching in the streets of Los Angeles and most of them are wearing white as a symbol of peace; there is no violence.

McDonalds is now selling premium coffee; and Starbucks is going to sell premium sandwiches.

People are no longer getting shot at Denny’s.

On April 14th there will be a new guy whispering in George Bush’s ear when trouble hits.

Who says there’s never any good news? Each of these events is a bit of miracle; each of them, in their own way, gives us some reason for hope. I love springtime.

Let's Do Something!

My stepson turns 21 today – the last one of our kids to cross the Long Line of Legality. I will alert my liability insurance carrier immediately.

My stepson is a good son. He will have dinner with his mom and me this evening and then he’s spending the weekend with his dad in Las Vegas. I’m confident that, given a free drop, he’d be hanging exclusively with his friends for the next few days, testing out his newly valid picture ID. He is taking a friend with him to dinner tonight and they intend to “do something” after dinner. Ah, I remember what it was like to “do something” after dinner. And, he’s taking a friend with him to Vegas and I’m sure they’ll find some time to slip away from dad and “do something” there, too. Ah, I remember what it was like to go to Vegas and “do something”.

I had not crossed the Long Line of Legality at the time of those remembrances, because they occurred before I turned 21, which occurred after September 1968 when I was immersed in a baptismal font under the famous Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Until that event Mormonized my life I was a standard-issue college kid who would go out and “do something” with my friends at any and every opportunity. In those days, I operated under the pseudonym of Claude Wilson Grant, Jr. The real Claude was a fraternity brother who looked a lot like me. His ID worked like a charm – 100% effective; never a question; not so much as a raised eyebrow. That ID allowed me to buy a commemorative six-pack the day before I was baptized, which was a serious violation of the Mormon rule book. But, hey, it was just one of the many violations getting washed away in that font the next day. I thank Claude for helping me salvage some of my youth. I thank God for the many wash jobs I’ve received over the years.

Needless to say, my 21st birthday was subdued. While I didn’t toe the line perfectly after emerging from the Tabernacle into my new life, I was fairly true to the faith. My “slips” were not random; they were always tied to some commemorative event, like hanging with a frat bro who was turning 21 and wanted to go “do something” after dinner. After all, at the beginning of every fraternity meeting we held we would recite Psalms 133:

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard….It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life evermore.”

Now, I ask you – how can anyone pass up such a clear shot at life evermore? I can’t count the number of times that my brothers and I would pour precious “oil” on our heads or allow it to run down on our beards. There was a lot of “dew” on Mount Zion in those days! Plentiful blessings were bestowed on our brotherhood. We believed in life evermore.

There was one other little damper on my 21st birthday celebration – I was in the “receiving center” at Fort Ord, California, awaiting a bus ride to my basic training company “up on the hill”. My 8’4”, 315-pound drill sergeant at the receiving center was not receptive to requests for permission to go “do something” with my Army bros. The only drink I would have gotten at his hands was a drink from the puddle of water under my face when I collapsed after doing 750 pushups for daring to ask, “Yo, Sarge, where can a guy a cold one around here.”

I envy my stepson, and all his bros. The early 20s are good years. Responsibility is beginning to rear its ugly head, but there’s still a lot of freedom to just “do something” because you feel like it; because you can. Exploration is the order of the day. Mistakes can still be made and washed away. The cost of learning is usually borne only by the learner. This is the time of life when we pass from dependence into independence on our way to interdependence. All such passages are noteworthy.

Transitions bring awareness and awareness brings the opportunity for awakening – awakening to potential, to possibilities. At these times in life we raise our line of sight and begin to focus a little farther down the road ahead. We actually realize there is a road ahead!

It’s a good time to be alive. It’s a good time to “do something” with life.

Act Naturally

Two surprises came my way yesterday. First, I was surprised to hear that Buck Owens died at his Bakersfield home early in the morning. Then I was surprised that I felt such a loss. I’m not a Buck Owens fan, never have been. So the loss I felt was about something other than his music.

I grew up listening to country music, but not by choice. My dad liked it; it was always the music of choice on his car radio. When Buck became popular in the early 60s we were living in Phoenix. Because Buck spent more than 10 years growing up in Phoenix and the city loved to claim him as one of its own, there was never a large gap between Buck Owens songs on that damnable car radio. But, listening to Buck sing “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” when I was a rock loving junior in high school in 1965 was like listening to a cat claw its way up a blackboard. There was way too much treble and twang; it was painful.

The loss felt here yesterday stems from one simple fact – Buck Owens put the streets of Bakersfield on the map. He moved here in 1951and stayed loyal to his hometown. Sometimes those of us in this city who aren’t died-in-the-wool country music fans have bristled at the idea that our city is immediately identified with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, who also lived here for a while. It’s not that we were ever embarrassed by that notoriety, we just wanted Bakersfield to stand for some other things as well. Otherwise we weren’t sure if we’d ever get out of Johnny Carson’s and Jay Leno’s crosshairs. Bakersfield has been the butt of more late-night jokes than Peoria, Illinois, and countless movie references have focused on the hick town image that came with being crowned the country music capitol of the West.

But that’s also where the brand Buck Owens put on Bakersfield’s flank starts to become a source of pride. He was a rebel. He didn’t like Nashville, country music’s holy city. He didn’t like what they did to singers and he really didn’t like their cookie-cutter sound. So Buck set up his own recording studio in Bakersfield and created an alternative known as “the Bakersfield sound”. He like to call it “American music”. Whatever the name, it was treble and twang galore and it came accompanied by his trademark Fender Telecaster solid-body electric guitar. This was a country music star who loved rock music, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard and the Beatles. The only country music song ever covered by the Beatles is Buck’s 1963 hit, “Act Naturally”.

Buck Owens never gave in to the siren song from Tennessee. He stayed here; he made his music his way; and others gravitated to the country music capitol of the West. It may have produced its share of jokes and caricatures, but it was authentic and it endured. This man who grew up as a sharecropper’s kid, who never had a toothbrush until he was 11 and who used twine for shoe laces, had put an indelible mark on an industry and a city in the central valley of California.

In 1996 Buck opened the Crystal Palace, which became a showcase for his life and his music. He performed there every Friday and Saturday evening, doing a 90-minute set each night. Buck was a multi-millionaire who didn’t need any more money. He just loved making his music. My wife and I went there once, at the request of her parents who were visiting from Texas. They didn’t know much about Bakersfield, but they knew about the Crystal Palace, the city’s number one tourist attraction. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t being forced to listen in my dad’s car, but I enjoyed the man and his music that night.

Buck Owens performed on that stage just six hours before he died. He hadn’t been feeling well on Friday and had decided that he couldn’t perform. But, just before show time he met a couple from Bend, Oregon, who had come to the Crystal Palace for only one reason, to hear Buck Owens. That was all it took to put him on the stage for the last time. At that point in his life, he sang because he wanted to and because others wanted to listen.

Perhaps the enduring lesson from the life of Buck Owens was captured in the closing lyric in the song that finally put him on the top of the charts in 1963. He sang, “I'll play the part but I won't need rehearsing; all I have to do is act naturally.”

That’s the way he sang and played guitar; that’s the way he lived; and that’s why there’s a loss being felt on the streets of Bakersfield.

Techno-Crack

I’m sick, and probably tired, too, because those two things so often go hand in hand. I just came into my room at home carrying not one, not two, but three phones. That would be my BlackBerry cell phone, my wife’s cell phone, and the portable home phone. God forbid that I should miss a call. I am sick; and tired.

When did it happen – when did we become such important people that we have the need for instant and continuous communication? Many of us easily remember having one phone at home. It wasn’t portable and it didn’t have an answering machine. If we weren’t home, the person trying to reach us simply had to try again later. No big deal. Life went on. If we were on the phone, the person trying to reach us got a “busy signal”. What was wrong with that? Nothing was wrong with that.

Until we became VIPs, each and every one of us.

First, we all got an answering machine, in analog format. That wouldn’t do, because it would only store about five minutes worth of messages. We needed a machine that would store 316 messages, each of which might be five minutes long. And we needed a message box for each person in the family. Who can tolerate commingled messages? No one can. Along came the digital answering machine; and we were saved.

But, we’re no longer satisfied with an answering machine. Our messages can’t wait that long; each of them is too important to wait. We’re too important to wait. We now rely on voice mail on our cell phones and voice mail at the office. I’m so important that I have my office voice mail forwarded to my cell phone voice mail. Not only am I important, but all the people I work with are important, too; almost as important as me. A crisis in my job, if left unattended for a few hours, could alter the axis of the earth.

We can’t go anywhere without our cell phones? Exhibit A – my boss’ executive assistant takes hers with her into the bathroom, in case an axis-altering call comes in for the CEO. We can’t keep anyone waiting any longer – which brings me to “call waiting”. We won’t even allow ourselves the luxury of finishing one call before moving on to another. After all, the person calling next might be more important than the person on the line now. We wouldn’t want to miss the important people. Heaven knows we don’t want them to miss us.

I use the blessed BlackBerry; it’s not just my cell phone, it’s my personal digital assistant, which is a pretty pretentious description if you say it slowly. This electric umbilical cord is referred to on the streets as a CrackBerry because it’s a friggin’ addiction. It brings me all my work and personal email, my pages, my text messages, my walkie-talkie calls, my internet access and, of course, my old-fashioned phone calls. I’m an all-star on the BlackBerry. I can bang out four-page responses at the rate of 40 words a minute on that thing, typing with only my thumbs. It keeps me current; up-to-the-minute as they say. Hell, I’m not just up-to-the-minute, I’m ahead of myself. I’m ahead of everyone. I’m ahead of my time – which, of course, makes me a legend in my own time!

But the techno-crack to which we’re addicted goes far beyond the simple little cell phones and PDAs. We have to have a still camera, a video camera, and a GPS unit in those things. If we don’t, then that’s an indication that we’re not very important, because very important people need to know where they are every second and be prepared to film whatever they see whenever they are where they are.

We have a digital video recorder at home. It’s 92% full. We have 46 recorded must-see TV shows, or parts thereof, waiting for us to watch whenever we get a little three-day opening in our schedules.

My wife has 7,468,319 digital photos stored on her home PC (I, of course, have my own home PC). I have 3.76 terabytes of email stored on my office PC. Those are only slight exaggerations.

My wife and I each have an iPod, on which we’ve stored enough music to allow us to listen to our 107,000 most favorite tunes while traveling non-stop around the world with Steve Fossett.

By the way, if you Google “iPod”, you get 480,000,000 hits in 0.19 seconds. Hopefully, when Microsoft releases their new Vista operating system, we’ll get that information a little faster.

At this point, I could list electronic gadget after electronic gadget; programmed appliance after programmed appliance; entertainment device after entertainment device; high-tech thingamabob after high-tech thingamabob. But I won’t. I’m an important person, and two of my three phones are ringing.

We’re all sick; and I have to believe that we’re all tired, too. In fact, I’m going to bed. Thank God my side of the bed is separately programmed from my wife’s side of the bed, so whenever we’re both sick and tired we can individually choose from 83 different bed contours. We’re even important when we sleep.

The Lamb and the Lynx

There may be nothing more distressing than the abuse of children. It’s particularly insidious when the abuse is at the hands a child’s parent because that constitutes a betrayal of trust at the deepest level. Parental abuse is usually something that occurs behind closed doors and shuttered windows. But it occasionally happens in plain view where everyone can see it. When this kind of brazen abuse happens in the public eye, ironically, the public is paralyzed. The police aren’t on the scene investigating. No one from Child Protective Services comes to the aid of the children. No one goes to court to file charges or seek protective orders. Nothing really happens. We’re left to write letters to the editor or make blog entries like this one.

Why? Because the children and the parents involved in this kind of abuse are all smiling. They’re happy with their state of affairs, almost giddy with the attention they get. All is well, all is right, in their twisted minds. The rest of us can all go to hell as far as they’re concerned. Indeed, most of us are well on the way to hell, in their opinion.

A case of brazen parental abuse of this nature is unfolding in my hometown. It’s a case that has drawn national attention. It involves 13-year old twin girls named Lamb and Lynx. Yes, that’s an oh-so-clever reference to the lamb and the lion of Christian lore. Yes, this is one of those cases in which the child abuse is being carried out in the name of the Great White God. Unfortunately, this lamb and lynx are not likely to lie down together in peace.

This Lamb and Lynx are being raised by a mother who is an avowed white supremacist of the highest order. This woman is a frequent stain on the editorial pages of our local newspaper. Each letter to the editor from her gnarled mind addresses the subject of race relations in America; each one is filled with sickness, hate and bigotry. She thumps the Bible on a regular basis.

Her twin daughters are beautiful young women; they’re classic California blondes who undoubtedly already turn the heads of teenage boys around them. Sadly, they also turn the stomachs of those around them. You see, these girls are talented – they sing; they play several instruments. They’ve been performing in public since they were nine. They have a CD out, and another one is coming; they have a music video and a cadre of loyal fans. They call themselves Prussian Blue, a nod to their Germanic heritage.

Their music is blatantly racist, filled with lyrics that bring heart-felt tears to the eyes of white supremacists everywhere. They’re fond of Heir Adolph and are often pictured wearing their “Happy Hitler” t-shirts. They’re fond of other Nazis like Rudolph Hess, whom they praise in song as “a man of peace who wouldn’t give up”.

These girls have been brainwashed by a sick woman who they call “mommy”. They’re home-schooled. They also live with a grandfather who has registered the Nazi swastika as his official cattle brand. The girls have swallowed their poison as instructed. "We're proud of being white; we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white … we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race." I’d like someone to try to preserve their sanity.

These girls made national news when the board that oversees the Kern County Fair removed this duet from the lineup of performers scheduled to appear on stage at the County Fair last year. Several people had lodged protests against their scheduled appearance and the board suddenly realized it had a problem. These girls had performed at the fair previously, without any apparent reaction, which is troubling on another level.

Like many other kids, Lamb and Lynx decided to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Unlike others, they only wanted to help the white victims. Their donations were handed out by a White Nationalist organization along with a pamphlet promoting their beliefs. There were few takers; so their donations were left behind at a store that sells Confederate memorabilia.

Now these girls are the subject of a custody battle. Their uber-mom wants to move them to an all-white town in Montana because “Bakersfield isn’t white enough”. I’d bet their destination in Big Sky Country involves the word “compound”, or some other cloister of likeminded ignorant idiots. Their dad, who lives elsewhere in California, wants to have full custody in order to protect them. He might be undertaking that effort a little too late. I suspect Montana is about to become a little more white.

Cases like this make me sick. It’s like seeing a child in some rural location in the South wearing a white sheet and pointed hat at a cross burning; or seeing a young Muslim boy shouting and jumping for joy at the scene of a suicide car bombing in Baghdad. These are kids who’ve been robbed of their innocence as surely as if they’d been repeatedly raped. When I think about the contrast between a mother like my wife, who gave every ounce of energy she had to try to protect her son from cancer, and another mother like this woman in Bakersfield, who gives every ounce of energy she has to injecting a racist, hateful cancer into her daughters, I get enraged. But I don’t know what to do with that rage.

These are kids who came into this life created in the image of God and were then recast, day after day, in the image of one or both of their parents. I think that enrages God, and I trust that s/he knows what to do with that rage. If there is a day of judgment before the bar of God, then I hope these people find that they’re invited to the head of the judgment line. It would not surprise me to hear God say, “Adolph, step aside for a minute. I want to deal with this so-called mother from Bakersfield first.”

The word “evil” fits a woman like her as snuggly as it fits the leader of the Third Reich.

The Biltmore

Tuesday’s town hall meeting with the Saudi ambassador was held at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA. I never get tired of returning to that classic and beautiful hotel. It’s the site of some wonderful childhood memories. My dad would frequently travel to LA for business and my mom and my brother and I would often accompany him. On several occasions, I went alone with him. We always stayed at the Biltmore – it was “our hotel”.

It was on these trips that my dad taught me some important lessons, like how to check bags with the skycap; check in at an airline counter; hail a taxi; and how to tell the cabbie your destination in a way that made it clear that you knew where it was and, more importantly, that you knew how to get there.

It was at the Biltmore that I learned how to check into a hotel and discuss room and bed selection; how to get important information from the Bell Captain and the other bellman and then how to tip them accordingly. I not only learned how to order room service in that hotel but how to assess the bill, add a tip, and sign for it. I suspect my dad was giving the room service delivery person some visual sign that it was OK for a 10- or 12-year old to be signing for a room charge.

But it was downstairs in the Biltmore restaurants where I learned lessons that became more memorable and more applicable to daily life. Dad helped me peruse the details of the menu, explaining the various choices and why certain combinations were good and others weren’t. When my mom was present, I learned to let the ladies order first. I also learned to say “please” and “thank you” to every person who provided a service to me. Dad taught me to never take any of those people for granted. He made it clear to me that there was dignity in providing any service to another person, and that there should be graciousness in receiving that service.

Dad taught me the art of tipping at those tables, explaining what mattered and what didn’t matter. More importantly, he taught me generosity in the process. Dad always tipped more than others did – 15% when the norm was 10%; then 20% when the norm began to rise. He explained that tipping wasn’t just a reward for good food and good service – it was a recognition that another person was waiting on you, doing things for you that you were perfectly capable of doing for yourself. Again I heard, “Never take anyone for granted, son.”

It didn’t take long for me to notice that everyone in the Biltmore knew my dad by name, and seemed to like him. I also noticed that he knew them by name, and they seemed to like that. Of course, he was Mr. Reid to one and all, and they were Robert, Nancy, James and Ann to him. My dad’s conduct there over the years had transformed this place from a hotel to something closer to a home away from home, a place where friends and neighbors could be found close by.

Without a word of explanation from him, I also saw that it didn’t matter in the least to my dad whether the person in front of him was white, black, Hispanic, Asian, man, woman, old, young, whatever. He treated everyone with respect.

Lest I make him out to be a saint, I saw that he could get impatient with bad service, which let me know that having expectations of those who provide us service is okay, too.

On several occasions we would walk to Mike Lyman’s, on Sixth Street, I believe. On our first visit, Dad whispered that this famous LA restaurant was reputedly a major hangout for mafia kingpins in the 40s. In addition to that intrigue, I discovered the most incredible seafood salad there; it was a bowl the size of a catcher’s mitt filled with shrimp, crab and scallops. To this day, I’ve never found a better salad. I always ordered a Roy Rogers, which was my first mixed drink of choice (a boy never ordered a Shirley Temple!). It was not unusual for me to wear a tie and sometimes a sport jacket for these outings.

In my sophomore year in high school my parents were confident enough in my training to put me and my good friend, Rob, on a plane from Phoenix to LA. They were going to take a later flight and join us there in the evening. As we were boarding, Mom came running out on the tarmac because she’d forgotten to give me any money. She handed me a $100 bill, which was a big deal in the early 60s. Rob and I landed at LAX, hailed a taxi, checked in at the Biltmore, and took a taxi to Dodger Stadium where we watched a game and ate Dodger dogs, peanuts and frozen chocolate malts. We took a taxi back to the hotel. Rob had to pay for everything we did that day because no one would take a $100 bill – no one; anywhere. I’d forgotten to have the hotel cashier break it into 20s, as I’d been taught to do. As we walked in the hotel lobby we saw my parents coming down a staircase from the floor above. I handed Mom the $100 bill and said, “Here, this thing isn’t worth a dime in this city.”

By the way, the cabbie who drove us from the stadium back to the hotel took “the scenic route”. He thought he was hauling around a couple of young rubes. When we finally pulled up at the Biltmore, I handed him roughly half the fare on the meter and told him that I’d made that trip several times and knew what the fare should be. He immediately protested, of course. I asked him if he’d like to speak with the Bell Captain in the hotel. He declined, took the money, and went his way. Not bad for a 15-year old; Rob was impressed.

When I shared that story with my dad, he smiled. Thanks, Dad.

Lunch with a Prince

I attended a Town Hall luncheon yesterday in LA with His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States. It was an interesting experience that provided a couple of reasons to be hopeful, and a couple of reasons to remain deeply concerned about the extent to which there will ever be peace in the Middle East.

The prince was impressive. He delivered some opening comments that were positive and forward looking, then he fielded questions from those in attendance and answered them in a forthright manner, never sidestepping the difficult ones.

The hope came from his discussion about the extent to which the Saudis are focusing their attention and resources on the education of their people with an obvious emphasis on their children. He went out of his way to make it clear these educational opportunities were being extended equally to young women as well as young men. There is always some measure of hope in education because it brings some added light and awareness to topics that can otherwise remain deeply buried in ignorance and unenlightened tradition. An additional ray of hope came from his comments about the extent to which the Saudis are involved in counterterrorism efforts, both in their Kingdom and on the international stage. It’s easy to get hoodwinked with propaganda on a subject like this, and I know there are sharp criticisms of the extent to which the Saudi government is actually doing anything to meaningfully combat this scourge in the Muslim world, but there were enough specifics in the ambassador’s comments to allow for hope.

The causes for concern arose in the consistently intransigent areas of women’s rights, religious freedom and, most importantly, the Arab relationship with Israel. On women’s rights he began with a quip about how long it took for women to get the right to vote in America, ignoring the fact that it occurred more than 85 years ago. He then glibly predicted that Saudi women would certainly “take” the right to vote in the future. It was unconvincing. He didn’t address the fact that Saudi women don’t have the right to drive a car, which might be a precursor to getting to the polls on some distant day. Given the level of patriarchy in Saudi culture, not to mention the omnipresence of Islamic law, it’s hard to envision the Saudi equivalent of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the National Woman Suffrage Association operating in Riyadh.

As for religious freedom in the Kingdom – no chance. The prince offered the explanation that Saudi Arabia is the home to the most sacred of Islamic sites and that the Saudis hold these sites in trust for Muslims throughout the world. From this he drew the conclusion that Muslims everywhere had to be involved in how the subject of religious freedom is handled in the Kingdom. He likened the building of Christian churches or Jewish synagogues in his land to the building of a mosque in the Vatican. That analogy ignored the thrust of the question. No one would propose building a synagogue next to the Masjid al Haram or anywhere else in the city of Mecca for that matter. But, the ambassador did not address the fact that there are mosques in Italy, without regard to Vatican City being the holy center of Catholicism.

When the discussion turned to Israel, the ambassador’s tone changed. He took on an almost cold, matter-of-fact demeanor and his comments became pointed and cutting. He began with a declaration that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal, which drew boos and catcalls from a number of Jews present, which in turn caused the Muslims present to begin applauding. The enmity between these groups became immediately palpable and a tension settled over the room in a matter of seconds. A number of people walked out in protest. This Saudi diplomat made no attempt to be even slightly diplomatic on this subject – he basically said the Saudis had made multiple attempts to resolve the problems attendant to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict but that Israel had done nothing in return. That was it – we’re good; they’re bad. We’re right; they’re wrong. We’re trying; they’re not. If the Saudi ambassador to the United States cannot be more diplomatic when addressing the subject of Israel before a diverse audience in the U.S., then I’m left wondering how much hope there is for any diplomatic resolution.

The ambassador also addressed Iraq. Referring to the war on Iraq, he covered both sides. He said that the world, the Middle East and Iraq were better off with the removal of Saddam Hussein, and indicated that all the countries around Iraq recognize this. But, he said resolving threats of this nature must be handled globally as opposed to “one-on-one” or “two-on-one” attempts to impose a resolution. The Americans and Brits in attendance got the message.

In an aside to the CEO of my company, who sat next to the ambassador during lunch, he said the Middle East regarded the new Iraqi government as legitimate and that this government had stepped to the edge of the civil war abyss, looked into that gaping hole, and decided that they must do everything possible to avoid it. The ambassador did not mention the fact that the newly elected Iraqi parliament has met only once since its election several months ago and that this single meeting adjourned indefinitely after only 30 minutes. A legitimate government and a functioning government are not one and the same.

On balance, I came away troubled. The concerns outweighed the hope. The depth and expanse of the problems in the Middle East are daunting and they call for greater wisdom, humility, honesty, and compromise than I saw exhibited yesterday.

Who Knitted this Afghan?

Freedom is on the march in Afghanistan! We kicked out the Taliban; we sent al Qaeda fleeing to dark and dank caves in Pakistan; and we sowed the seeds of our democratic values across the land where they can now compete with opium-bearing poppies for the soil, sun and water each spring. Liberty should be blooming in a full array of beautiful colors all around this born-again country any time now! It’s a great time to be an Afghan – with one, little, teensy-weensy exception.

If you’ve made the mistake of stepping in the proverbial jackal dung by converting to Christianity at any time in the past, then the brand spanking new, U.S.-backed Afghan government will cut your head off – literally. Ah, I love the smell of freedom in the morning. It’s the smell of victory!

Abdul Rahman is a 41-year old Afghan who converted to Christianity 16 years ago while working in Pakistan as a medical aid for Afghan refugees. That kind of thing may be okay in liberal Pakistan, but not in any other country with a last name of Stan. Alas, Abdul apparently overlooked the fact that Afghanistan’s liberty-laden constitution is based on Islamic Shariah law, which provides that any Muslim who rejects Islam should be put to death. Oops.

Abdul was arrested last month when his family accused him of having become a Christian. Did no one in the Rahman clan know about this before? Did Abdul make the mistake of bringing a Bible to family show-and-tell, thinking things had changed with regard to homeland security? Or did he just piss off some in-law at a family gathering who decided to rat him out after 16 years of silence?

Abdul’s trial started last week and the prosecutor, who is dressed in drag as the Queen of Hearts, is seeking the death penalty. It appears that there’s no opportunity to cut a plea bargain that could reduce Abdul’s punishment to only having his hands cut off or his tongue yanked out, or maybe just being blinded in one eye. The prosecution did offer to drop the charges if Brother Abdul would slam his sweet chariot into reverse, yell “do over” five times, and immediately renew his Islamic passport to heaven. He declined the offer, being the silly believer he is. Well, as they say – do it to me once, shame on you; do it to me twice, shame on you, again.

This is the modern version of Afghanistan, folks. This drama is unfolding in Kabul, the capitol city, not in some backwater oasis that lacks electricity and indoor plumbing. Before we liberated these people from the Taliban, I suppose Abdul would have had his throat slit by his father or brother without any judicial complications delaying the execution. Democracy changes stuff.

Is this what American men and women are dying for over there? Is this what we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars to establish? This is the freedom that we’re proud to have marching from Kabul to Zaranj, Meymaneh and Feyzabad? Is this the same freedom that is destined to blossom in Iraq? We obviously don’t need to do anything further in Iran because they already have this kind of freedom.

Let this be a lesson to us – as long as Islamic fundamentalism forms the basis for society in any country in the world, there will be no freedom in that country, at least not as we define it. If the hard-line clerics are in charge, then freedom is just another word for tyranny.

If this ridiculous trial is representative of the end game in any place where the lives of coalition forces are being lost, then it’s beyond the time for all freedom-loving men and women in uniform to come home. And, they should bring Brother Abdul with them.

Heaven on Earth

Danny was buried on March 20, 2002. In the course of the memorial and graveside services held for him that day person after person offered us the oldest spiritual bromide in the comforter’s medicine cabinet, “He’s in a better place,” they said. I knew that each of them meant well; but the thought I had, but didn’t express, was, “No, he’s not.”

We were certain then, and we’re certain now, that the best place for a child to be is in their home with their family. Anyone suggesting something to the contrary has never buried a child. With all due respect, the people who offer this well-intended “comfort” often don’t realize what they’re saying. They should think a little more carefully before using a bromide on an ailment that’s the emotional equivalent of a massive, debilitating stroke.

Not long before Danny relapsed, the wife of the senior pastor at the church we were attending at the time made a critical observation about a grieving mother who was “falling apart” after her child died from leukemia. This upstanding Christian woman said, “If she really knew where her son was, she would be joyful.” This observation was made at the child’s memorial service. The dead child’s joyless mother had not been “dipped in the blood”, a fact that appeared to serve as the basis for the wife of the pastor to form her joyful judgment. That comment ranks near the top of the list of the most ignorant comments I've ever heard. It was insensitive and mean spirited. I don’t believe for a second that if this woman were burying her son that she would stand at the gravesite rejoicing in his death and departure to the “better place”.

After Danny died, another pastor’s wife told my wife that she was “almost envious” of my wife because my wife was able to be present when her child went into the presence of the glory of God. That comment wasn’t mean spirited; it was simply unbelievable.

Commenting on the “better place” theory, a friend of ours in Washington, DC who lost her beautiful five-year old daughter to a brain stem glioma said, “One part of Molly's truth was she didn't want to die. There was no peace for her in death. She was little and she was scared, and she didn't want to leave her family. There's no way I can change that fact. Even if there is a ‘better place,’ she didn't want to go there and she was adamant about it.”

Out of the mouths of babes. She didn’t want to go there. Danny didn’t want to go there, either. Molly and Danny would have rejoiced in staying right here in this place, because they regarded it as the better place, by far. These children were joyful in their room, in their home, in their family, in their neighborhood, in their school, in their interests, in the presence of their friends. They were joyful in their life. These kids, unlike most adults, knew intuitively that rejoicing is something done in the here and now, not in the there and after.

I’m sure the oft-cited “better place” is grand and glorious. But so is a living room filled with the singing of a carefree child; so is a dining room table splattered with the spaghetti sauce that also runs down a kid’s chin; so is a backyard where a little boy runs and laughs with his dog until they collapse in exhaustion; so is a little girl’s tea party with an assortment of imaginary friends; so is a school playground filled with a cacophony of youthful joy; so is a warm bedroom where a favorite blanket and an essential stuffed companion are pulled snug against a sleeping face; so is a swimming pool filled with a gang of 10-year olds at a birthday party; so is a zoo where a five-year old sees a certain animal for the first time; so is a couch in the den where a mom reads a story to a wide-eyed child who sees wonder in everything – so are an infinite number of other scenarios where children are seen growing up and enjoying life as it was meant to be enjoyed. Those are the joyful places that constitute the so-called heaven on earth.

You see, there’s the pain – the lost child was already in the better place; they were already in the embrace of a divine love; they were already in the presence of God. They just happened to also be in our presence, and that makes all the difference.

Obviously, no one wants to see a child suffer. So in that regard, any place where they aren’t suffering is a better place than where they were. But, frankly, that’s not what most people mean when they make their declarations about the “better place”, because they repeatedly invoke that phrase without regard to whether there has been any suffering.

Here’s the test, which can be put to any parent who has had a child die. Ask them, “If you could bring your child back here with you right now, would you?” “Yes!” would be the instantaneous answer, unless it meant returning that child to interminable suffering, which no parent would want to do. Absent that, any parent, including the pastors' wives, would reel their son or daughter in from the glory of God as fast as the reel would spin.

This test is applicable to a host of people, not just the parents of dead children. Ask the same question to someone who has lost a spouse, a sibling, a parent, or a close friend “before their time”. Again, if prolonged suffering is removed from the equation, these grieving people would regard a federal penitentiary as a better place than heaven for one simple reason – their loved one would be “here”, now. There’s no question in my mind about what any one of them would say about having their loved one back in their daily embrace. Forget the unseen “better place”.

There’s something we can all agree on whenever we’re talking about one of our loved ones, as opposed to when we’re talking about someone else’s loved one. We all agree that the “better place”, as joyful and glorious as it may be, can wait. If we just put the bromide back in the medicine cabinet and stop to think about it a little longer, then we realize that heaven on earth is the better place.

And all God's children said, "Amen."

Nine Trillion Dollars!

That’s the newly minted debt limit for the United States - $9,000,000,000,000.00. America hasn’t seen that many zeros since early on the morning of December 7, 1941. Only this time, Admiral Yamamoto’s pilots are flying off the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan while moored at the Anacostia Naval Station in Washington, DC.

When I was a card-carrying Young Reb, our Articles of Faith included a balanced budget and the elimination of the national debt. Then along came the Great Communicator and the debt went all “win one for the Gipper” on us. The last three Rebs who have bedded down on the upper floors of the East Wing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have amassed greater budget deficits and more national debt than the other 40 presidents combined. No. 43 has recorded the four highest annual deficits in history; his father has the next three highest. Reagan increased the national debt by 188.2% in his eight years, compared to 13.7% during Clinton’s two terms.

Until 1981, war was the primary cause of national debt, with large spikes following the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and again after WWI and WWII. Even so, the debt was only $260 billion in 1946. From 1946 to 1981 the debt increased consistent with the rate of inflation. As a percentage of the GDP, the debt fell continuously from 1946 to 1981. So what happened in 1981? “Well,” that’s when the president’s Council of Economic Advisers began miming Bedtime for Bonzo and the debt began to skyrocket under the voodoo (nee supply-side) economics of Presidents Reagan and Bush I. It fell again under Clinton, but resumed its upward spiral under Bush II. The Rebs appear to be fascinated with the sideshow sleight of hand in which you use deficit spending to try to increase the GDP faster than the deficit spending – and then claim that the debt is actually decreasing relative to the rising GDP. I think the pea is under the shell on the right in this game.

Simply put, the staggering national debt that we’re carrying is a Reb creation. That would be the same Rebs who’ve spent decades calling the Dims the “tax and spend” party. It’s true, the Dims do like to tax and spend; they just haven’t mastered the art of cutting taxes and then continuing to spend like drunken sailors. This turn of events has left a number of us looking back at the Rebs and asking the question posed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – “Who are those guys?”

Whether right or wrong, my simplistic vision for America is that it should be run a little more consistent with the common wisdom that most parents try to pass on to their children – don’t spend more money than you make. Everyone knows that debt can eat up a household budget and, with the exception of temporary or carefully structured debt for a college education and the purchase of a home, and maybe one car, it should be tightly managed if not avoided altogether. The Rebs appear to favor a vision in which America is run like a growth business – leverage its assets with whatever debt can be handled without driving the cost of capital too high to be competitive. Of course, unlike a family and a country, a business can run the risk of failure, and many of them do fail as a result of mounting debt. Can you spell Chapter 7-11?

I will grant the Rebs that there is some historical correlation between a budget surplus and the onset of recession and between a budget deficit and recovery from recession. But, the question is, how far down this road do we go before we come to the curve we can’t negotiate? How much more of this load can we carry before we topple over? In 2005, we spent $352 billion just paying the interest on a debt that now amounts to $27,400 for every person in the country; $81,000 for every working person. The interest burden today is about the same as the entire debt when I graduated from high school in 1966.

The idea of needing to elect a Dim in order to achieve greater fiscal responsibility, at least in terms of a more balanced budget, is a bit of a trip down the rabbit hole. It’s as though our two political parties have worked so hard at being the opposite of each other that they have somehow switched sides in some strange reverse undulation that can only be seen if the videotape is played back in ultra-slow motion.

Of course the elephant and the jackass in the room is a mutual inability to cut government spending in a responsible manner. In that regard, the Dims can only see the Department of Defense and the Rebs can only see the Department of Health and Human Services. Neither of them can see the pig in the room. But, that’s another subject.

Once again I feel the swelling desire to declare myself a political independent so that I’m no longer identified with any of these animals. That would leave me identified with the disaffected, disillusioned and dismayed, which is a group that, try as they will, doesn’t seem to know how to throw much of a party.

Voices from the Field

When my son was in Fallujah he would share some observations from the field of action. He made many sorties into the plentiful hot zones around that beleaguered city; and, as a corpsman he was in a unique position that brought him in contact with a lot of other troops who were in those hot zones day after day. He would share their opinions about what was working and what wasn’t; about which Iraqi leaders were reliable and which weren’t; about what would have happened or would not have happened if they had or had not done this or that. As an E-5 corpsman, he obviously wasn’t privy to the strategic planning around a particular military evolution, but he and the others around him were able to assess the tactical application of that planning and could see the results firsthand, good or bad. There are a lot of bright people in those uniforms and flak jackets.

The interesting thing is how often the observations of the troops would become the fodder of discussion by military and political analysts in the coming days, weeks or months. It’s not that the troops are necessarily insightful in ways that others aren’t – it’s that they serve as a kind of early warning device about what’s coming and an overnight accounting of what succeeded or failed the day before. In other words, they know stuff. These voices from the field are a valuable contribution to the national awareness. That doesn’t mean they have all the answers from a policy perspective or even from an overall strategic perspective. But, we should listen to them nonetheless.

A recent Zogby International poll brings us a message from the troops on the ground in Iraq. A whopping 72% of the troops polled in a statistically valid poll said that the U.S. should leave Iraq within the coming year. Surprisingly, almost 30% of them said we should leave immediately. Only 23% supported the administration's position that we should stay as long as necessary. Why? It appears that these men and women have concluded that the war in Iraq is not winnable. Two-thirds of the troops said that, in order to win the war there, the U.S. would have to double its troop strength and bombing missions – something they and the rest of us know isn’t going to happen. In other words, if we keep doing what we’re doing right now, we can’t win this thing. And if we can’t win it, then it’s time to come home.

In the past, anyone calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq has been accused of wanting to “cut and run” and, in more damning terms, accused of undermining the morale of the troops in the field. I appreciate that latter comment, because I believe that there can be a connection between the debate and dissent at home and the morale of the military in the field. However, at some point in time the balance in that argument shifts in the other direction, meaning that we will eventually have to confront the distinct possibility that the insistence that we “stay the course”, no matter how long, no matter the cost in American lives, will become the source of damaged troop morale. If these brave and dutiful men and women are asked to stay, and return again and again into a conflict that they believe cannot be won and should no longer be pursued, what will be the impact on them? At what point do they begin to feel like expendable pawns in a politically-charged game of Middle East chess?

We must avoid the partisan penchant for reductionism in which this issue is summarily reduced to the binary choice of “cut and run” or “stay the course”. Bishop Thomas Wenski, speaking for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said it this way:

"Our nation cannot afford a shrill and shallow debate that distorts reality and reduces the options to 'cut and run' versus 'stay the course.' Instead we need a forthright discussion that begins with an honest assessment of the situation in Iraq and acknowledges both the mistakes that have been made and the signs of hope that have appeared.... Our nation's military forces should remain in Iraq only as long as it takes for a responsible transition, leaving sooner rather than later."

The answer is almost certainly to pursue neither of the polar extremes. Rather, as Bishop Wenski suggests, we should begin to form and articulate a reasoned and responsible withdrawal plan with measurable milestones along the way to a targeted end date. While no one desires to send the wrong message to the leaders of the insurgency (i.e., “we’re leaving soon; so just hang on”), we must also make sure that we send the right message to the leaders of the new Iraqi government (i.e., “we’re not staying indefinitely; so get your act together now”).

The troops in the field can see farther down certain roads in Iraq than the politicians in Washington, DC, and they can see certain outcomes with greater clarity than the military brass in the Pentagon. So, when they speak, we should listen. One poll does not a hallelujah chorus make; but we should continue asking our troops for their opinion, because they may be the only ones singing in harmony with reality on any given page in this hymnbook.

Powerful Prayer

Having railed about powerless prayer yesterday, I want to make it clear that I believe in the counterpoint – powerful prayer. I also want to make it clear that I am very grateful for everyone who prayed for Danny, without regard to their beliefs about prayer and without regard to the outcome. The power of prayer lies in praying, not in its outcome. In my prayers for Danny for 4½ years, and in knowing that countless others were praying for him as well, I experienced each of the following powerful aspects of prayer.

§ Prayer connects us with God, the Creator, the Source of all life and energy in the world. Prayer affords us the opportunity to align ourselves with that Source and to come to a place of harmonic resonance with God, in whatever way we may experience God in our life. In that resonating alignment we are empowered to receive wisdom and make decisions in a brighter light.

§ Prayer is recognition that all things are not under our control, that purposes other than our own are unfolding in our lives. This recognition helps to lead us away from a self-centered view of life; it elevates us to higher vista where a new perspective allows us to see our lives in a bigger context.

§ Prayer is a means to help others through a heartfelt expression of our love and compassion for them. As such, it can be one of the most selfless activities in our day.

§ Prayer is a sacrifice of time, energy and attention.

§ Prayer is an expression of our feelings of need and a confirmation that we don’t believe that we have the power to meet those needs. But, at the same time it is a statement that we believe sufficient power is available to us in the universe without regard to whether those needs are met.

§ Prayer is a humble acknowledgement that many of the events of life are bigger than us. It is a means to achieve a peaceful acceptance of whatever may come our way; it is a means to discover and then tap into strength and endurance that we aren’t certain are within us.

§ Prayer creates a sense of community, both among those with whom we pray and those for whom we pray. It not only brings people together in a common cause that lies outside their own lives, but it brings us a realization that we are all much more alike than we are different.

§ Prayer is a means to express gratitude for an abundance of things that bring purpose, meaning or joy into our lives; and, it is a means to express gratitude for the absence of things that can drain purpose, meaning or joy from our lives.

Each of the above makes prayer more than worthwhile. All of the above make prayer a potentially invaluable element of a healthy life. While prayer doesn’t result in our personal Genie granting us “three wishes”, it can empower us and bring us an overarching awareness that alters how we view and approach almost everything that comes our way in life. As such, we are wise to pray often in whatever form prayer may take in our life.

Powerless Prayer

When my stepson was fighting leukemia there were countless people around the world praying for him – Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and others. In the Christian world, there were Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, and others. In the Protestant world, there were fundamentalists, evangelicals, mainstream moderates, liberals, and others. Outside of religion there was another mass of people sending positive thoughts and healing energy his way.

He died, nonetheless.

What happened to all those thoughts and prayers, our heart-rending, tear-filled pleas for God to bring healing and health to a 14-year old boy? Was his faith lacking; was ours? Did we fail to pray the right way? After all, we see and read about numerous instances every year in which someone is healed from this or that illness or injury, at times against all odds, and the patient and their family are quick to proclaim a miracle and to “give all honor and glory to God” for the divine intercession in response to their faith. They extol the power of faith and prayer. But, all around these people there are innumerable others who remain sick, who do not respond to treatment, and who die, sometimes painful and protracted deaths – in spite of unquestioned faith and countless prayers being offered in their behalf.

What did the healed do that the unhealed failed to do? Why did God pick one, but not another? Believers proclaim that it’s a matter of faith – if we have faith, and we pray with believing hearts, then God will answer those prayers. In this they have no doubt. Well, those who get what they pray for have no doubt. The implication for those of us who don’t get what we pray for is that we were less than faithful, less than believing, less than worthy of God’s approbation. We were doubtful, or something. If only we had prayed harder, more often, or something. If only we had believed, then our loved ones would have been saved like those of the faithful. Well … let’s see, what’s the word I’m searching for? Oh, yeah … bullshit.

When my wife and I hear of a child who recovers or is healed, we rejoice without hesitation. But, the “Praise God” chorus that is often in attendance is like a shiv in our gut. It makes us scream, “What in God’s name do you people think we did wrong!? If God answered your prayers, then explain why he didn’t answer ours!?” Cue the sound the silence.

We recently watched family and friends gathered in prayer for the miners trapped by an explosion in a West Virginia mine. When they briefly thought their miners were alive, there was jubilation in the little church where the families and friends were gathered. They quickly praised God and gave him all the credit for the miraculous rescue. Everyone there extolled the power of prayer. Less than an hour later, after learning their loved ones were dead, they weren’t praising or extolling anything or anyone. I don’t recall a more graphic depiction of the fickle finger of faith. Cue the sound of silence.

Even the most faithful believers fail to get their prayers answered. When heaven is non-responsive, rather than reconsider their beliefs about prayer, these folks reverse field and proclaim, “It’s the will of God.” I don’t think so. It’s a cop out of the highest order to profess an adamant belief in the power of prayer and then when a prayer request is not granted to profess that it’s just God’s will. If that were the case then there’s no reason to pray – just sit back and await the will of God whatever it may be. But, these people must have it both ways; they must be “right with [and about] God” at all times. So, if s/he grants their wish, God is awesome and they were faithful. If s/he doesn’t grant their wish, God is sovereign and they were still faithful. Isn’t that convenient. Either way, their God is picking and choosing based on criteria that are either arbitrary or indecipherable.

The proposition that God saves certain children and lets others die is repugnant. These some die-some don’t experiences make it clear that God is not the Big Vending Machine in the Sky; s/he is not the Name It and Claim It God of evangelical lore. God is not sitting in heaven weighing our personal worthiness for divine attention or intervention. God is not assessing the relative merits of one prayer or person vs. another. God is not waiting for us to cross some unidentified threshold of faith or belief or whatever before s/he deigns to act in our behalf.

Some prayer is powerless because it, in effect, asks the Creator of the natural order to stop the rotation of the earth, to alter the processes of the natural order decreed by the Creator of the natural order. What very few prayer warriors seem willing to consider is the distinct possibility that God does not intervene. They can’t accept a God who has set the natural order in place and then allows that order to play itself out. They need a God who tends to their needs and insecurities just like their mommy and daddy did. The need a God who shows love by giving them things they want. They need a God they can control with their faith and good deeds. They need a God who is bigger and more powerful than all other gods.

Well, we often don’t get what we need. Cue the sound of silence.

An Audacious Act of Alchemy

Four years ago at this hour in this room my stepson, Danny, died after his long fight against leukemia. The sports bottle from which he drank water for the last time that morning, and the Starbuck’s container from which he sipped the hot chocolate he requested that morning, remain on the window sill where they were when he left. Now unused but always present, they’re among the many reminders of the change that occurred in this room on that day.

Each year on this date I come into this room from 6:50 to 7:10 in the morning. It was in that window of time that Danny peacefully slipped away, surrounded by his mom, brother and stepdad. There was no struggle; no pain; no distress. It was so quiet that we don’t know the precise moment. But we know that life changed for all of us in that moment. The change is so profound that I cannot capture it in words. I can write about it; but I cannot write it.

This change settled over us almost immediately. We were altered at the cellular level as if exposed to nuclear radiation. In that intense heat and light, some things were burned out of us; other things were forever softened; other things became tempered steel. It was as though a revised guide to the universe had been handed to us by Dan’s departing spirit.

For example, later that day, out of a new-found clarity, my wife said, “There is no hell.” She explained that if God is a father, as so much of the world proclaims him to be, then no parent could or would, under any circumstance, send their child to hell after death, no matter their age at death, no matter the content of their life. The idea became instantaneously inconceivable to this woman who had been raised a Catholic and spent most of her adult life as an evangelical Christian. Hell had been part of the teleology and theology of her life. In an instant it became dust under her feet, rendered meaningless by the rending of a veil that allowed her to reach through, from here to there, and touch truth firsthand.

An example for me is that every day I wear a white wristband from The One Campaign, an organization dedicated to fighting extreme poverty and AIDS. Extreme poverty means living on less than $1 a day. The campaign focuses on the almost 30,000 children who die every day, one every three seconds, from AIDS and the effects of extreme poverty. That is ten times the number of deaths on 9/11; ten times the number of children who die from cancer in the U.S. each year. Every three seconds, minute after minute, hour after hour, a mother, father, brother or sister experiences what we experienced in this room four years ago. But, for so many of them there is nothing even remotely peaceful about it; the moment is filled with horrific struggle, pain and distress.

The death of a child is the greatest loss the world can suffer. It’s the loss of innocence; the loss of virtue; the loss of unrealized potential; the loss of magic; the loss of inventiveness and creativity; the loss of hope for a better world; and the loss of following generations who would have carried the imprints of that child. We mourned all 168 who died in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, but we remember first and foremost the 19 children who died in the Murrah Federal Building daycare center. Appropriately, the National Memorial on that site refers to “those changed forever”. Indeed they were.

The death of child has the power to unite people because it is a shared suffering. Those who experience it, see it and feel it in almost identical ways. Look into the face of a grieving mother in New York City, Oklahoma City, Baghdad, Kabul, London, Hiroshima, Beijing, Moscow, Sydney, Guatemala City, Caracas, Calcutta, Kigali, and any village in Darfur and you will see the same pain. We may not be able to agree on countless other matters of geopolitics, economics, religion, ethics and morality, but we can all agree that children should not die from causes that can be prevented.

Children should not die.

But, when they do, the wake left behind them is unlike any other for it not only rolls across the surface of our lives, it rolls to the depths and it swells in power. No matter how powerless we may have felt at that moment, we are suddenly empowered to move, to leap as it were, to a new place in time and space. We are altered beings in an altered state. For a while, we can feel trapped somewhere along a line that runs from utter immobilization, through frantic memorializing, to an aimless wandering. But deep under the surface, a new energy waits to be realized.

It is the realization that children do not die.

They remain, in some mysterious way, as powerful in our lives as we were powerless in theirs. It is some kind of cosmic compensation in the core of our being. These so-called “kids” seemingly call us to come to a better place, not in some version of heaven, but in an altered version of ourselves. They who were taught have become the teacher. They who were led have become the leader. They who suffered have become the healer. In an audacious act of alchemy, they have become us and we have become them, and perhaps for the first time we are introduced to our real selves. We are called to return to who we were on day one – a child.

And he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven…Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

And all God’s children said, Amen.

Lead on, Dan.

The Face of Peace

Early on the morning of March 14, 2002, I was privileged to look peace in the face, eye to eye, no blinking allowed. I had no inkling the moment was coming; I have no certainty it will come again. I will never forget what I saw.

The sun had just filled Danny’s room. It was his custom to do one of two things in his room – get up or sleep. Getting up had become increasingly difficult so it was not unusual to see him in his bed, curled up on one side or the other. But I’d never seen him clearly wide awake in his bed, propped up on his back, and just contemplating the world around him. Dan was not a contemplative.

He remained that way for a couple of hours. Not a sound came from him. I could see his eyes moving around his room and then looking up and down the hallway that stretched from his door to the other side of the home. It’s the only vantage point in our home that has that kind of view, which reflected the fact that Danny had come to a point where his perspective on life was unlike that of anyone else in his home.

What struck me was the look on his face. It was peace. There was an unusual brightness in his countenance and color in his face that morning. It was as though he’d recovered overnight to some remarkable extent. His eyes were completely at ease, and they were not the eyes of a young man approaching his 15th birthday. They were older eyes, deeper eyes, and wiser eyes. There was a knowing awareness on his face.

Danny had reached a point where he rarely verbalized his discomfort or complaints, but they would register on his face. His expressions had become stage cues for his family; they told us when something needed to be done. That morning, in spite of his severely deteriorated physical condition, there was no indication on his face that so much as suggested he was suffering from the almost numberless impacts attendant to his relapse and the “treatment” he’d just been through.

As the time passed I continued to watch him survey his kingdom. He loved his room and it reflected his unique personality and interests. It was filled with anime posters and his replications of them; with memorabilia from our trip to Japan just eight months before; with Japanese language tutorials. On a small wall just to the left of his door, directly in his line of sight in bed, hung two needlepoint pieces that had been done by my mom. One is a shogun in elaborate dress and the other a Japanese woman in a kimono of many colors. My mom had done them a number of years before she met Danny and I got them after she died in 1999. As soon as Danny saw them he asked if he could hang them in his room. My mom would have been very pleased. It was as though they had been made for him.

I walked past his bedroom door a number of times. The first time by I said, “Good morning, Sir Dan.” “Good morning, Jon,” he gently replied. A couple of times I walked by and just smiled. He mirrored those smiles. Finally, unaccustomed to the absence of some cue that would signal some need, I stopped and asked, “Do you need anything, Danny; can I get you something?” His quiet response was, “No, I’m fine.” I knew that he meant it, that it wasn’t just an automatic response to an automatic question. After 4½ years of battling day after day, after all the severe pummeling of his body that came with that intense fight, after all that had been taken from him, and now in the face of death – he was fine. He was at peace. I saw it on his face. It filled his room and spilled down the hallway.

I believe that a meaningful part of that peace emanated from a sacred reconciliation that he’d been through with his mom the night before – a reconciliation with life and its unfairness and uncertainty and ambiguity. In that late-night conversation the two of them covered the big points – why; why me; what did I do to deserve this; how come so many bad people don’t go through things like this? Then they went on to talk about dying and heaven and God. Then Danny bequeathed his room to his mom and his computer to his brother. He knew the books and Japan travels guides would be mine. Then, almost unbelievably, he told his mom which picture to use in his obituary. With his affairs in order, he made the transition outside concern for himself and the material things in his life. Danny began to express his genuine concern for us and how we would handle his death. The sacred whispering between mom and son covered all this and more. And with that, the reconciliation was complete.

Early on the morning of March 14, 2002, I was privileged to look peace in the face, eye to eye, no blinking allowed. The face of peace did not blink, nor did I. I will never forget what I saw and what it said to me. In retrospect, I believe that moment will come again, as soon as I have reconciled myself to life, with all its unfairness, uncertainty and ambiguity; as soon as I pull myself out of the fears of the past and future and choose to simply enjoy what surrounds me in the moment at hand.

That’s the only moment Danny had that morning. It’s the only moment I have this morning. It’s the only moment there is.

Peace be with you.

The Grip of Grips

I oppose the death penalty. Other than vengeance, I see no purpose being served by the state sanctioning a killing as a response to another killing. “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” said the Lord, in both the Old and New Testament versions of himself. Just in case he means what he says, I think it’s ill advised for us to horn in on his territory.

I don’t think there’s a shred of evidence to support the theory that the threat of the death penalty serves to deter crime. The criminal mind doesn’t work that way, at least not in my mind. There’s too much need, greed, pain, sickness, anger or rage at work in those minds to weigh out the risk vs. benefit equation. I know that I’m much more likely to be deterred by the thought of spending a few decades dancing a role in the prison ballet, Bedtime with Bubba. And when the holidays come around, I don’t want to be anybody’s Sugar Plum Fairy.

The other obvious problem with state sanctioned killing is that we’re are not smart enough to get it right all the time, and this is an area that pretty much requires a perfect scorecard. Our judicial system is human through and through and that makes it susceptible to error through and through, error that can range from simple negligence to gross negligence to intentional misconduct on the part of defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges and juries. Just one fact is sufficient to make this case – since 1973 there have been more than 120 death row inmates not just reprieved from execution but freed from prison altogether as a result of evidence establishing their innocence, particularly DNA evidence. I’m confident that another 120 “dead man walking” candidates will walk out of prison in the future. What stops me dead in my tracks is the realization that it’s possible, if not probable, that 120 innocent men may have been executed in the past.

I could, however, find myself making one exception to my opposition – for heads of state who commit large-scale barbaric crimes against humanity. This is where I tee up Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Serbia and the Republic of Yugoslavia. His gruesome role in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, culminating in the war in Kosovo in 1999, has been well documented. He brought the phrase “ethnic cleansing” into the English lexicon. It can easily be said that we need to be cleansed of anyone who engages in ethnic cleansing.

But this brings us back to where we started, with the word of God in biblical form. The above quote from Deuteronomy 32:35, along with its repetition in Hebrews 10:30 – 31, has more to say. Deuteronomy advises, “In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.” Hebrews concludes, “The Lord will judge his people. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Two days ago, Slobodan Milosevic fell into the hands of God, who executed judgment in his due time. God didn’t need our help in exacting vengeance in the form of a shortened life. If God elects to exact his vengeance in some form other than a shortened life, who are we to say, “That’s not right.”

We know that our lives are in God’s hands at all times; that’s where they should stay. So let it be written; so let it be done.

The Blueprint

Most parents have a blueprint for their children. This blueprint captures their parental hopes and aspirations and depicts what they hope their children will become. Parents are guided by this desired outcome. Family activities and priorities; family rules and discipline; the extent of parental oversight and intervention; the scope of educational emphasis; the nature of employment aspirations; the degree of competitive focus; etc; all emanate from this blueprint. In some families this blueprint is an actual, hold-it-in-your-hand plan, consciously referenced and implemented. In other families, this blueprint is more a matter of subconscious tendencies or just a contextual environment in which the family functions.

In the perfect American family, with its average 1.86 children, the building captured in the blueprint rises and unfolds like a Frank Gehry work of art. The kids play well with others; are active in sports; learn to play a musical instrument; actively attend their church youth group; engage in a little community service; garner a few modest awards; graduate from high school with solid grades and without a disciplinary blemish; enter and graduate from college in 4 – 5 years; establish gainful employment; meet the love of their life; marry; buy a home; and have 1.86 children. The family enjoys its traditions and vacations; participates in its extended family and neighborhood structures; and functions comfortably within its socio-economic stratum. It’s the cycle of life. For the first 10 – 15 years of my family’s life, I felt like we were respectably “on plan”.

In most American families, the blueprint eventually gets filed away in the “Interesting Historical Documents of Near-Zero Value” file; one of those files stuck away in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet because no one goes there very often. Somewhere along the highway to family heaven some of the lug nuts get loose and a couple of the “training wheels” come off the vehicle the family is driving to perfection. Hey, stuff happens. Sometime in the late 80s, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a couple of the wheels on our family vehicle rolling around in the road. Said another way, we had become pretty normal. By the early 90s, however, we had run off the normal road and entered a time when our family was beset with several very serious challenges, not the least of which was my first wife and I separating and divorcing. Perfection was no longer something that needed to concern us. The blueprint was filed away.

From that point I began to desire only one thing for me, my family and my children – that each of us would be at peace with ourselves, our family and God. Peace became the only objective and the sole indicator of success in life. There are still some challenges in the Revised Plan, but we’re doing much better, thank you.

Against this background I opened an email from my daughter yesterday morning, after having started this blog entry. It was a prayer chain, most of which I hardly pay attention to. But this one referenced St. Theresa so it caught my eye. I’m a sucker for the saints. The email asked us to make a wish before we read her prayer. I wished for peace – for me, for my wife and me, and for our children. Then I scrolled down to see her prayer for the first time. It read:

St. Theresa’s Prayer

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

May there be peace within anyone who reads this blueprint. I, too, believe that it is there for every one of us to have today. Those who journey into yesterday or tomorrow may or may not find peace there. I, too, believe that having it lies in knowing who and what we are – that we are created in the image of God and forever contain that infinite source of peace. I, too, believe that our lives are receptacles of gifts and possibilities, and that those gifts are seen and those possibilities are realized to the degree that we serve as conduits of love and peace.

And, I believe that if we truly want freedom to be on the march in the world then this presence must indeed settle into our bones.

The Unwinding Road

On the evening of March 11, 2002, my wife got a phone call from Danny’s oncologist in Los Angeles. He confirmed that not only had Dan not achieved a remission following his second relapse chemo protocol, his bone marrow was filled with leukemic cells. I sat beside her and listened to her ask questions that seemed to bear their own answers, and watched her make a few disheveled notes that would capture what had become an unavoidable conclusion.

Danny was going to die, in spite of 4½ years of courageous struggle through three rounds of intense chemotherapy, one round of moderate radiation, a final 39-day hospital stay that included unexpected kidney dialysis, and preparation for an awaiting bone marrow transplant. Her head was in her hand, and I could feel her heart break. It was the single most powerless moment of my life.

Finally she asked the inevitable question – how long? Three to four weeks she was told. She left the room to join Dan and his dad, who were in our living room. I left them alone for this most intimate of discussions, one that needed only the three of them. Most adults have experienced the wonder that attends the birth of a child. Far fewer, thankfully, have experienced the different form of wonder (and, yes, that word is appropriate) that attends the death of a child. My wife and Danny’s dad know what it means to have seen a child’s entire lifetime. There is a horrifying privilege embedded in that most unnatural fact.

As had been the case from day one in November 1997, Danny handled the discussion that night better than anyone else in the room. Unlike the rest of us, he probably needed no confirmation from a doctor or a batch of lab results. After all, it was just the day before this when he had extended an invaluable gift of profound comfort to his mom by assuring her with a single sentence. “I will be with you in your art,” he said. It was as if God had spoken from heaven.

Dan’s road from life to death taught me a lifetime of lessons about that road, lessons that continue to inform my life every day. I doubt whether I’ve even begun to grasp the extent to which they will inform my approach to death at some time in the future. As I write this I feel an urge to tell the whole story from day one to the end of days. But I can’t. It was an overwhelming experience that was lived out over more than four years, and that doesn’t include the grieving process that began as soon as Danny’s body was taken from our home. It seems like it would take that long to tell it. I will settle for dropping a few sentences, a few words, an allusion or two along the way, as if I were Hansel marking the path for my return from deep in the dark forest.

Today, I’ll focus on the one thing that returns to my mind time and time again with the mere mention of his name. For me, Dan elevated the word “resilient” to the pantheon of superior character traits. He was like a strand of that mysterious memory metal, the stuff you can twist, turn, bend and crumple, but when you let it go it returns to its original shape. In doing so, that metal reminds us that it knows its natural shape and it can regain that shape the second the rest of us let go of it. It’s only removed from that natural condition by others who twist, turn, bend and crumple it.

Leukemia did all that and more to Dan. But even that frightening disease could not hold him constantly. It might crumple him in its grasp for the few minutes of a bone marrow aspiration, or the few hours of a chemo infusion, which ironically left the taste of metal in his mouth. It might twist him during a wave of nausea or bend him in midst of a day filled with fatigue. It might turn his head as he passed a mirror and momentarily grappled with the bald head or the moon face. But this beast always had to let Danny go – and when it did, he returned to his natural state so fast that those around him would wonder if we had imagined what he’d just been through. How could he transition from gut-wrenching screams in the midst an excruciating bone marrow aspiration to laughing uproariously at The Simpsons – in 10 minutes time?

In moments like that my wife and I would look at each other and say, simultaneously and silently, “Who is this kid?” The answer is that in those moments he was all of us in our natural state – courageous; wonderfully resilient; filled with endurance and boundless capacity; and, most importantly, content to live in the present moment where freedom from fear resides. In those moments, Danny simply refused to let his mind take him to the past or the future, the twin domains of fear. Unlike him, most of us hardly ever leave those domains. Most of us never sense the moment when the beast in our life lets us go. Dan sensed and seized those moments like they were the air, water and food that sustained his life. Indeed, they were; and, indeed, they did.

As for the predicted three to four weeks – it was 3½ days. It’s rarely as long as we want; it’s never as long as we need.

Always Faithful

Semper fidelis – always faithful. That’s the motto of the United States Marine Corp, not to mention the Royal Navy ship HMS Exeter and the Plymouth Argyle Football Club. But today I want to appropriate that motto and apply it to a very special group of people in our country – the spouses of the members of our Armed Forces. They are the epitome of what it means to be always faithful.

Since the shot heard round the world, American women have been running homes, raising families, supplementing incomes, supporting war-related fundraising, conducting blood drives, staying involved in morale boosting activities, and providing emotional support to their husbands when deployed away from home. In the modern military, husbands have stepped into that role as their wives serve the country with honor, courage and commitment. The sacrifice these military spouses make is never more apparent and significant that when their soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen are in combat or any other form of harm’s way. Now is such a time.

I watched my daughter-in-law assume this role of honor when she married my son while he was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. She was born and raised in North Carolina, but before long she left her home and family of origin and followed her husband first to Charleston and then across the country to San Diego and Camp Pendleton. Then, on February 19, 2004, she watched him get onboard a bus at Camp Pendleton for the first leg of his deployment to Fallujah. Watching the two of them at that moment is one of the most poignant scenes I've ever witnessed.

When my son was wounded he was flown first to the Army medical center in Landstuhl, Germany, and then to Bethesda Naval Hospital for a brief two-day stay before the decision was made to send him home to be treated at the Naval Hospital in San Diego. By this time, my daughter-in-law’s need to see my son was so great that she drove (accompanied by my son's mom) from San Diego to Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco where he was making a one-night stop. She was determined that her husband was not going to land in the state of California without her being there to greet him, and she was. They visited for a few hours and then she got in the car and without sleep headed back home while my son was being flown there a short time later. They arrived in San Diego at roughly the same time.

A lot of spouses, military or otherwise, would have done something similar. But a military spouse in wartime lives with a constant reality that spans between a ceremonial welcome home parade on Main Street and a solemn burial with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. Furthermore, when a military spouse enters a hospital room to see her returning husband or wife for the first time, s/he has to be prepared to see, and then live with, another reality – combat wounds that can range from those that can be suffered in any vehicle or industrial accident to the horrific wounds that can only be suffered in modern warfare. Sometimes these brave men and women who wait are called upon to exhibit far greater courage when their loved ones return than they were asked to exhibit while their warriors were in combat.

I believe it would be altogether fitting and proper that we select a small, somewhat secluded plot of land on the National Mall in Washington, DC and build a modest monument to the sacrifice of military spouses and their unique form of service to country. I say modest and secluded not because they don’t merit something large and in the center of things, but because it would represent the quiet, almost secluded modesty with which they offer their service and sacrifice. This monument could be similar to the modest and somewhat secluded memorial erected near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to honor the women who served as combat nurses in Vietnam.

I know of no group of Americans who are more deserving of honor and have been more constant in their devotion to duty for 230 years than these women and men. I salute them.

Semper Fi

Sifting the Gitmo Sand

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, which is probably more important to our freedom than the Patriot Act, we're now learning about the prisoner potpourri we've accumulated in Gitmo Bay, a broad band of international warriors that Donald Rumsfeld called "the worst of the worst". First, and perhaps foremost, it seems beyond dispute that we have indeed captured some seriously bad banditos and they are where they should be - in an equally serious slammer. Second, and perhaps foremost, it also appears that we may have captured some people who pose less threat to freedom in America than the ganglion cyst known as Fox News.

No, I'm not being snide. Did you catch the clip of Bill O'Reilly doing his best impersonation of the Taliban Director of Information last week? A guy named Mike, from Orlando, called Bill's Fox News radio show and, as posted on O'Reilly's website on March 2, said: "Hey, Bill; I appreciate you taking my call. I like listening to you during the day. I think Keith Olbermann's show (the host of Countdown on MSNBC)...." That's it. O'Reilly interrupted, hit the "dump" button, and said, "There you go Mike. He's a gone guy."

Then we hear a clearly unbalanced Bill go berserk. Bill tells Mike, who is now back in the listener-only mode, that he has Mike's phone number; that it will be turned over to Fox security; that Mike will be "getting a little visit"; and that Mike is likely to "get in big trouble". O'Reilly then advises all his listeners that if any caller says anything "untoward, obscene or anything like that" the caller's phone number will be referred to Fox security, who will contact "your local authorities" and the caller will be "held accountable". This nut job must mourn the demise of the Soviet KGB. Can we get Bill a special suite in Gitmo Bay, because if extremists like him were to take over America we'd be a full-blown police state with Truth Squads roaming the streets looking to "hold accountable" anyone who says something the commissars consider untoward, or "anything like that".

But, I digress; back to Gitmo and its lower-level captives. It appears that we may have locked up a Pakistani chicken farmer named Abdur Sayed Rahman because we think he is Abdur Zahid Rahman, the former deputy foreign minister for the Taliban. Hey, to us, all Abdurs and Rahmans look the same; and who could ever figure out the difference between a Sayed and a Zahid? Another guy was told he earned his free pass to Gitmo because he was wearing a green army jacket at the wrong time in the wrong place. I guess that guy's mom never told him that clothing is often the first impression we make on people during an interview - especially an interview for a position as a 25-to-life prisoner. Then there's the prisoner detained for wearing a Casio watch, because Casio watches are the preferred detonating devices for IEDs. Under that arrest protocol, if the insurgents prefer whitey-tighty Jockey shorts then there's a boat load of bad guys yet to be locked up. We're going to need a bigger Gitmo!

The released documents also introduce us to an Afghan named Muhibullah who got arrested for being either a former Taliban provincial governor or for having worked for that governor. The "either/or" approach to law enforcement is a new twist. That's like saying you're either George Bush or Karl Rove; either way, you're screwed. Muhibullah, apparently still in possession of his good sense, suggested to the panel of American officers reviewing his case that they should contact the governor in question and ask him. The panel, apparently no longer in possession of their good sense, responded by saying: "It's up to the detainee to do that, and you have a year to do so." Cue the scary music, folks. That's either the "guilty until proven innocent" ruse or the "try to prove a negative" trap. Muhibullah, sensing that falling on the floor laughing was not his best next move, calmly asked how he might do as the panel suggested. "Write him," was the reply. "We know that it is difficult but you need to do your best," they added. Ah, yes, always do your best. After all, I'm confident that the mail service between the prisoners in Gitmo Bay and any former Taliban provincial governor will sail through and Muhibullah will be home before Christmas. Heck, if he uses FedEx he could be back in time for the annual Fourth of July parade and picnic in Kabul. I understand the fireworks there can be pretty impressive.

Next, we face the question of how long we're going to hold these people - the really bad; the regular bad; the not-so-bad; and the forlorn souls who've been dumped in the we're-pretty-sure-you're-at-least-a-little-bad bucket. I have no problem with holding enemy combatants for an indefinite period during a war; it's the time-honored POW tradition. War on - POWs locked up. War over - POWs go home. But - when will the war on terror be over? Won't it last for ... uh ... ever? At least we know that the war in Iraq was completed on May 1, 2003, when the commander-in-chief descended from the sky and declared "Mission Accomplished" onboard the USS Lincoln. In keeping with POW tradition, shouldn't someone have gotten their get-out-of-Gitmo card at that time?

I'm certain there are some prisoners in Gitmo who deserve a long-to-life sentence. But I suspect there are others who deserve something less, maybe much less. I hope we can sift the Gitmo sand with a finer granularity and start to separate these people into reasonable categories, like we do with everyone else imprisoned under our jurisdiction. Once again, we should open the windows, if not the doors, let in some more light and fresh air, and conduct this business with a little more oversight from the American public. Long live the Freedom of Information Act.

And, can we get a picture ID for the two Abdurs in question; and how about a courier to hand deliver the mail for Muhibullah?

Misery Abounds

The misery continues. I’m feeling like Paul Sheldon, the James Caan character in the 1990 movie version of Stephen King’s novel, Misery – with one very big difference. Annie Wilkes is not taking a sledge hammer to my legs; oh, lord, if only that were the case. She’s hammering me elsewhere. One more day of this and I’ll be seeing the face of Kathy Bates standing over me in my sleep for a month.

Our distant and uncaring God, to whom I’ve now made many promises that I cannot keep, has decided that s/he will not intervene in my behalf. Either that or this is another version of the old story, “Hey, I tried to help you on Saturday and Sunday by urging you to go to urgent care, but you knew better wise guy. Well, let me introduce you to my friend, Annie.”

I have a new strategy, which, I confess, may have been sent by God: I’m going “down the hall” every six minutes today. This is based on the theory that the build up of pain is cumulative and not much can accumulate in six minutes. An ungodly amount can build up in an hour or two; so I’m breaking this trek into baby steps.

Sorry for the tortured segue, but I actually got some help from Dick Cheney yesterday. He often fills in for God. He altered my perspective and put my pain on a relative scale by suggesting that the pain we might inflict on Iran is real pain. He threatened “meaningful consequences” and said that “all options” remain on the table if Iran continues its uranium enrichment program. In return, Iran threatened us with, you guessed it, “harm and pain”. So, we’re talking about pain on a global scale here, which dramatically reduces my hopefully transitory pain to a mere nuisance. I mean, after all, I don’t fear meaningful consequences, nor do I fear the double hammer blow of harm and pain.

This development also makes me feel better about God not making a house call in my neighborhood. S/he is attending to these bad-ass threats and consequences. In fact, s/he is working double time because it appears pretty clear that s/he is on both sides of this gang fight. Both sides seem to know with certainty that God is in their camp; that they are each engaged in a holy endeavor to free the world of the unholy idiots on the other side. What if they’re both right – maybe there are idiots on both sides and God would like the world to be free of them all. Like I said, that pretty much explains the absence of God in my silly little problem.

All of this has an eerily familiar ring to it. As Yogi would say, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” America and a Mideast country foaming at the mouth and trading threats of harm; the international community being called upon to intervene in a matter that involves the potential development of weapons of mass destruction; denials abound; sanctions are being discussed; inspections and full disclosure may be required. All we’re waiting on are the intelligence reports and the preparation of a really snappy PowerPoint presentation for the U.N. Security Council. Well, I’ve seen another movie just like this one and it’s filled with real pain and misery. I, for one, am not ready for a sequel.

Everyone needs to go down the hall every six minutes and pass some of the necrotic waste in their system. Everyone needs an antibiotic that combats their specific infection. Everyone needs to consume more water and less firewater. Everyone needs to take some baby steps for a while. Everyone needs to stop thinking that their pain is the most important thing in the world. Everyone needs to stop assuming that God is ready to intervene to make life work the way they think it should work.

If this doesn’t happen, everyone is going to hear God say, loud and clear, “Let me introduce you to my friend, Annie.” And, let me assure you that none of us wants to wake up and find her looking down on us.