God help us.

Back after a long delay...

This drives me crazy.... Really really crazy, crazy as in " I can't even process this"- head exploding. I think they do not understand what it means to be a Christian. I can't understand it, sometimes I feel like I have more world-view in common with atheists.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/index.html

" WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small. See results of the survey »
The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The survey asked: "Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?"
Roughly half of all respondents -- 49 percent -- said it is often or sometimes justified. A quarter said it never is.
The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations -- such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians -- categorized as "mainline" Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals. "

So I'm supposed to feel better that 30% of "mainline" Lutherans think that torture is NEVER justified, as opposed to "Evangelicals"....

voters choices: Generational, vocational, or racial?

Andrew Sullivan,

But doesn't that "white anger" feel very 1980s to you? Are white voters still motivated in large part by grievances about affirmative action (which, for the record, I strongly oppose)? You'd think that
our cultural politics had remained untouched and unmoved since the Reagan era. You'd think that political demography was frozen at exactly the moment boomers came of age. The truth is: the boomer media class is fighting the last war and misreading the current one.

As Ambinder reminds us:
It doesn't really matter if Barack Obama isn't doing as well among white working class Dems as Hillary Clinton is. He doesn't need their votes to win.

This election will be decided by white independents, African-Americans, new Hispanic voters, and a vast influx of younger Americans. Those are the people Obama has brought into the process; and they are the people who will change the face of American politics.

I agree completely (well maybe not totally on the affirmative action part). After the PA primary, on Wednesday I was just talking to my neighbor B and his colleague about this topic. They are both Labor professors at Univ of IL. They both hail from Youngstown OH, and study the true working class/ union voters extensively. They were talking about a theory (both of them hailing from Youngstown OH, and studying the true working class extensively) they had that really the white working class agree that they ARE bitter and more of them actually voted the way they did ( for Hillary) because they do want to have a fight (with the Republicans) over all the crap they have been through economically. The theory is that she's a "scrapper" and can dish it out back to the Republicans as well as she can take it (VRWC). I replied that I think the results are mostly generational, and that PA has a very high proportion of over 60 voters relative to other states ( 2nd only to FL). I seriously doubt that the vast majority of Democrats and Independents who oppose the war, are going to let themselves vote for McCain in the fall general election, no matter what doubts they have about Obama.

I'm kinda nervous now that Andrew thinks this will go all the way to the convention. I have too
much hope that the PTB (powersthatBE) will not let that happen.

Easter Blues

Ditto - I've been feeling this way lately to0

"Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right. You know the self-righteous -- I've been one myself -- the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully modulated and cool and correct when others are falling apart. Jesus was rougher on those people than He was on the adulterers and prostitutes.

So I will sit in the doubter's chair for a while and see what is to be learned back there. "

Unlike Garrison Keillor, I'm not a bass though...alto. Sometimes its the music that keeps me connected when nothing else is getting through the "skepticism/the world-is-going-to-hell-in -a-handbasket" filter...

Even though its STILL grey and cold, I was really cheered up by The Speech today though. Hopefully my prayers will be answered in November....

Obama's speech

I must admit I left my office upstairs to go downstairs to watch THE SPEECH on race by Barack Obama. As usual, Andrew Sullivan says everything I feel (and more!) with much more eloquence then I'll ever be able to muster in a 1000 years. Please watch the whole speech. I am absolutely convinced Senator Obama is going to be our next President. He is the Right man at the Right time. No politician has EVER been this candid! It was emotional for me and I can only imagine what significance it has for the African-American audience.

Sullivan: " But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

And it was a reflection of faith - deep, hopeful, transcending faith in the promises of the Gospels. And it was about America - its unique promise, its historic purpose, and our duty to take up the burden to perfect this union - today, in our time, in our way."

Abortion & Torture

I think this is an interesting post (h/t Andrew Sullivan) . Read all the comments too -some smart people over there... will have to go back and visit this site, very philosophical... I've thought a lot about this recently, wondering to myself "why" am I so obsessed with this torture issue? I had a feeling like "I bet this is how pro-life protesters feel about their cause... like, WHY aren't more people UPSET about this??!! "

" Yet--have I missed something? I did, after all, attempt to separate the "monstrousness" of an act from its ultimate evil. I believe, after all, that wrong-doing requires intention. Killing someone accidentally is a fault, but not the same wrong as killing someone intentionally. Is it different, then, for a woman who does not believe she is killing a human being to abort a nascent child than for a soldier to torture someone? I think it is. Dramatically so. Many women believe they are acting out of compassion (however mistakenly); is it possible for a torturer to hold similar beliefs? To put it poetically: how blackened are the souls of all involved in torture? How blackened are the souls of all involved in abortion?

I think torture is the most manifestly destructive to all human goodness, because it is less possible to commit the crime through simple error. It requires significant subversion of a person's humanity to make him into a torturer (even if it is frighteningly easy to do), whereas it requires significant attention to specific arguments to convince someone of the evil of abortion. As such, I think we need to pay greater attention to obliterating all instances of torture than to obliterating instances of abortion."

RTWT! This also reminds me about a book I finished a couple of weeks ago..."Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq". The author Tony Lagouranis details the devolution of torture and how easily it spreads... how it doesn't WORK to get good information and mainly how it had such a horrible effect on his psyche knowing that he was capable of evil in these circumstances. The soldiers have to deal with this there and when they come back.... Good summary story from the Chicago Reader

Protestant decline in US

Interesting (USN&WR)

" But now Protestants are on the verge of becoming a statistical minority in the U.S., according a study released today. Whereas nearly two thirds of Americans identified themselves as Protestant as recently as the 1980s, only 51 percent identify as Protestant today, the study found."

That's a big change in less than 30 years. I think the revulsion to the tactics of the Religious Right may be why more people are defining themselves as "unaffliliated". I'm pretty sure Lutherans are considered "mainline" even though we have E- for Evangelical in our name (ELCA).

I saw this quote as the intro to a book I picked up at the library ( Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq):

" Remeber those who are in prison,
as though you were in prison with them;
those who are being tortured,
as though you yourselves were being tortured". (Hebrews 13:3 ,NRSV)


Update: A follow up in the 2/26 Trib with a graphic

The New Abolitionists

So last night my neighbor Bob and I went to hear a speech at Wheaton College by Jim Wallis- he is promoting his new book, "The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America" . I really enjoyed it, and I just ordered the book on Amazon today. I had never heard of this man before, because I haven't really been reading religious blogs all that often. Anyway, I was really impressed -although I'll admit that I'm easily impressible. The room was packed, young and old. I believe this is the voice I've been looking for when I made this comment on an earlier post " this is what every pastor should be preaching". Here's a taste from a recent interview with my favorite TV interviewer, John Stewart on the Daily SHow:


oh here's another one I found from 3 years ago!




I'll update later after I've had a chance to read the book. Here are some notes/references I jotted down during the speech:

-referencing other great movements such as abolition, women's sufferage, child labor, civil rights-- we will be the new abolitionists against poverty and inequality, it will take time!
- flourishing churches (high growth) in failing cities -->concept of parish neighborhood where inner-city churches accept responsibility for what happens in their 12 blk radius
- politics of the common good, challenges selective moralities of Left vs Right
- politicians do not change history, social movements change politics
- "evangel" --> root word for Good News, Luke 4:18- Jesus' first public speech/ mission statement: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor"
- hob nobbing & working with Bono and Bishop Desmond Tutu
- Big Choice: Hope vs Cynicsm - Hope is a decision " believing in spite of evidence --> then watching the evidence change". Christians -prisoners of Hope
- Justice Revivals this summer, sojo.net

PADS

My church supports DuPage Public Action to Deliver Shelter (PADS). Every 3rd Monday we provide food for the homeless. It was really cold outside last night. I got there late ~ 6:45 and most of the guests were inside already. I wish there was a more permanent solution to homelessness that we could wave a magic wand and everyone would have a place to stay....

J & her friend S helped me carry in the stuff I voluteered to bring this month:

-a big pan of baked mac & cheese
- a cocunut bundt cake w lime/yogurt/confectioner's sugar glaze and toasted coconut on top -very tropical I thought for a night below 10 degrees! (next time I'll take a picture!)

- 3 liters of Diet pop

I love to bake so its actually fun to make desserts and then not have to gain the calories by having it around the house to tempt me!

HR 2082 Torture veto?

I just sent this out to my friends, family and some people from my church:

Hi All :

In addition to prayers, I believe some phone calls and emails are needed to influence President Bush's position on maintaining his current policy on torture. He plans to veto this bill which in part would require that CIA interrogators follow the rules the Army already has against torture.

http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=16703&can_id=6382
" Mandates that no person in the custody or within the control of an element of the intelligence community, regardless of that individual’s physical location or nationality, shall be “subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations” (Sec. 327)."

More background:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/february/23.32.html?start=1
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002305

I pray, we pray, for forgiveness for what we have done - but also for what we have LEFT UNDONE. We are blessed to live in a country where we still have input into its decisions. This may be small input but whatever - - individually or together we must say what we believe!! I believe torture is morally wrong and the people in government who represent me (Senators, Congressman, President) have heard my small plea.

Sincerely,

L

Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:05:02 -0500
From: nrcatlist@nrcat.org
To: ___
Subject: Major victory and please contact the White House

TORTURE IS A MORAL ISSUE

To Supporters of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture

Dear Friends:

We have good news. Earlier this week, on a 51-46 vote, the Senate passed important anti-torture legislation that would prohibit all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, from engaging in torture or other so-called "harsh" interrogation techniques. This bill has already passed the House of Representatives and now it only needs the President's signature to become law.

This is an enormous victory, and it is in part due to your efforts and the efforts of NRCAT. By emailing and calling your Senators, you made it clear to them that the American people expect Congress to take a clear stand against torture.

Unfortunately, however, the President has already said that he plans to veto the bill rather than sign it into law. If he does so, he will repudiate the will of both houses of Congress and of the American people. Worse, he will keep us an immoral and destructive path.

We ask you to call the White House at 202-456-1111, or to email the President at comments@whitehouse.gov to express your support for H.R. 2082 (the Intelligence Authorization bill). Tell the President that we cannot win the war on terror by abandoning the values that made us great, and that he can help return us to those values by signing H.R. 2082.

Sincerely,

Linda Gustitus, President, NRCAT
Richard Killmer, Executive Director, NRCAT

Mitt "Rudy G" Romney drops out

Romney just dropped out....

....and if he fought on all the way to the Republican convention, " I forestall the launch of a national campaign and frankly I'd be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

He's saying voting democratic is a Surrender to Terror... Surrender to Terror!!??? OMG!! WTF? That takes the cake.

This race is getting clearer and clearer by the day. McCain wants to stay in for a 100 years. Frankly I'm starting to worry about my 11 year-old nephew being drafted in 6 or 7 years. God help us.

Surrender to Hope - - - -

Scott Horton at Harper's is brilliant. This is what every pastor should be preaching. How these politicians can look themselves in the mirror is truly beyond me!

The accounts that remain of Paul’s life are of course fragmentary, and in particular we have no more detail on the legal proceedings against him. Clearly from the perspective of the Romans he was viewed as an instigator connected with a radical and dangerous religious organization. But this story offers some astonishing parallels to the dilemma America faces today. Only today the great empire struggling to maintain order and wielding torture as a tool is America, and the radical religious movement that is caught in the crosshairs and that it seeks to suppress is Islamic. Of course we are linked to that community which formerly suffered persecution and torture at the hands of the Romans, we are their successors. And it behooves us to recall the cord that links us over time.

Read the whole thing!

Ethical seriousness without self-absorption

Remember this!

What I’ve always liked about the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith is that it leads, or ought to lead, to a kind of self-forgetfulness. D.M. Baillie identifies the distinctive teaching of Christianity as the “paradox of grace.” This paradox is that we are most free when God’s grace is acting in and through us, and that, though we are responsible beings, we can’t take credit for our good actions. “Not I…but the grace of God in me” is the proper attitude of the Christian. Luther, in his Freedom of a Christian, points out how justification by faith frees us from concern with our own standing before God and frees us for service to our neighbor.

That’s the key I think. Service to our neighbor (and I would include all of creation there), not self-betterment, is the test for our ethics. There have been movements within Christianity which have been at times morbidly introspective. But it’s hard to think of something more pointless than constantly taking your spiritual and moral temperature. Not that we should avoid self-examination, confession, and repentance, but that we should sit a bit lightly to our quest for “sanctification.”

RTWT! I have to remember to come back to this blog... very interesting.

SERVE. Lent is upon us tomorrow.

Obama MLK speech

This is why Obama will be President next year....

Martin Luther King Day - 2008 - Where is the Love?

I heard MLK's great speech on WBEZ on the way back from my chiropractor appointment this morning: Beyond Vietnam speech . Absolutely mesmerizing. (text here) .... I'd never heard it before. I want to hear it again! It was a political speech he gave exactly one year before his death. It focused on Vietnam, but it was so so relevant for today. His predictions seem to have come true:

The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

.....
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just."

Listen to the WHOLE thing!

It was definitely one of those driveway times when you just can't pull yourself out of the car because you don't want to miss one single word. Where are our leaders? Who could do this today? Why do only politicians have a soapbox to stand on, ....

With my sister, we do a 15 minute music session for the 2nd -5th graders before their Sunday school classes. Yesterday we decided to have them listen to Springsteen's version of "We Shall Overcome" and sing it together. I also had downloaded a 3-min snippet .mp3 of Dr. King explaining the significance of this song in civil rights history. So I think it was surprising to some of them to actually hear his voice. I wish we had had more time to do more,.. it was a little out of the ordinary lesson for them. But whatever! That's the teacher's prerogative!

I wanted to play this Black Eyed Peas video too, but we didn't have time!

6 years of Guantanamo

6 years on ... This sucks!
6 years of Guantanamo.... Scott Horton@ Harpers:

Around the world, Guantánamo is viewed as a stain on the honor and reputation of the United States. It stands as visual evidence of a decision by the United States to repudiate its human rights commitments and the human rights standards that every modern American administration up to the arrival of George W. Bush had championed. Britain’s Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, the senior law officer in the English-speaking world, called the existence of Guantánamo a “shocking affront to the principles of democracy.” And he and others have pointed to the opinions handed down in American courts that sustain and nurture Guantánamo as evidence of the corruption and collapse of the integrity and independence of American courts. This criticism is painful for American lawyers. Doubly painful because of its certain truth.

And clear evidence of the putrefaction that has set in came on Friday. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which has emerged as a bastion of Republican movement conservative jurisprudence, picked the anniversary of the opening of the Gitmo camps as the day to celebrate them and the abuses perpetrated there.

Christmas Hope

TNR: The Radical Meaning of Christmas by E.J. Dionne Jr.
This is the kind of thing that I would LOVE to be able to write when I grow up (!) or even to hear in a sermon at Church, but doubt I ever will...

Snippets:

The Christian message is frequently drained of this larger meaning and interpreted, often by Christians themselves, as being solely or primarily about personal salvation. But this sells the tradition short.

Last month, Pope Benedict XVI issued a fascinating encyclical on the idea of Christian hope in which he explicitly disputed the idea of "the Christian project as a selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others." Drawing on the theologian Henri de Lubac, Benedict argued that "salvation has always been considered a 'social' reality." The tradition of hope, he says, asserts both the obligation and the ability of "every generation" to engage "anew in the arduous search for the right way to order human affairs" and to discover "the proper use of human freedom." Seen this way, hope is a promise but also a challenge. It does not guarantee success in human affairs. It only insists that success is possible.
.....
But there is the religious interest in the incarnation and the natural interest in birth. "The kingdom of peace comes through a child," writes the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, "and liberation is bestowed on the people who become as children: disarmingly defenseless, disarming through their defenselessness, and making others defenseless because they themselves are so disarming."

A naive view, perhaps, but surprisingly realistic since the best defense often requires us to drop our own defensiveness. This act of trust is made possible by hope, which in turn is the precondition for reform, renewal and redemption. Without hope, none of it is even worth trying.

Faith in Politics

( No I don't mean by the title I have confidence or hope in politics, which I suppose I must if I wish not to fall completely into the mire of cynicsm.... What I mean is how should the topic of Faith be involved in Politics. Romney just gave his speech today and, as usual, my favorite blogger sums up a good reaction:

"By insisting on faith - any faith - as the proper criterion for public office, Romney draws the line, oh-so-conveniently, so as to include Mormonism but exclude atheism and agnosticism. And so he side-steps the critical issue in the debates over religion in public life: what if there is no unifying faith for a nation? What if faith itself cannot unify a nation - and, in fact, can divide it more deeply than any other subject? That is our reality. An intelligent and wise conservative would try to find a path to a common discourse that does not rest on religious foundations."

Every politician does this, yes even the democrats.

Emerging Adulthood & Religion

This is a really good essay.
Getting a Life -The challenge of emerging adulthood, by Christian Smith -Christianity Today
I forwarded it in an email along with my comments to a few friends at church. When I was on church council we did spend time discussing a 5-year plan and how to help the church grow. So I definitely thought this was relevant to our smallest (!) demographic at our medium-sized church.

My email:
Hi All : I just had a chance to run across this article online http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/006/2.10.html (RTWT)and it really raised some very good "food for thought" so (even though I'm not on council anymore!) I thought I would pass it along....

" How does or should American Christianity speak to emerging adults as people and emerging adulthood as a cultural fact? How can the church faithfully speak the gospel to 18- to 30-year-olds? The answer is surely not for the church to fall all over itself to quickly reconstruct its message and practices to somehow become more "relevant" to emerging adults. But oblivious disregard for emerging adulthood and the larger meanings and challenges it raises for church and culture surely won't do either. For starters, American Christians—parents, pastors, seminary professors, counselors, educators, and more—can simply become better informed about the emerging adulthood phenomenon. Most people probably have at least a vague sense that something has changed on the road to full adulthood. But more clearly grasping the social forces generating emerging adulthood, its typical characteristics and concerns, and their implications for a faithful church will require sustained effort"
....

" Finally, in considering the challenge of emerging adulthood, another approach that will not do is to project sole blame onto emerging adults themselves or "the culture" as some amorphous Other. If anything, the challenge of emerging adulthood raises hard questions about the extent to which American Christians have bought into the values and commitments of the larger world. How different, really, are American Christians when it comes to assumptions and practices around personal autonomy, money, lifestyle consumerism, self-gratification, and relational commitments? I am not suggesting there are clear and easy answers here. But it is worth remembering that a church that is not much different from the larger culture is going to have little distinctive or helpful to offer that culture when it comes to issues such as those posed by emerging adulthood. By grappling with emerging adulthood, then, we face the opportunity not so much for criticizing and lamenting others as for some good, hard, self-critical reflection and discussion. "

I can only say from my experience that this 18-30 phase of life was an "epoch" of time for me personally (compared to the last 10 years) and it certainly felt that much longer because it was the FARTHEST distance I ever felt away from my faith ( It certainly didn't help that I was away from Holy Cross, away from my family, living in CA, financially strapped, starting a career, and dating & then married to a 'non-believer'... but that's another long story for a rainy day ;~) and boy am I glad that phase of my life is O-V-E-R. Yeah! thank you God!) But this article really rings true to me that this can be THE most challenging time of one's life as a Christian. And it raises the point I think that we can't really consider our evangelism/discipleship ministries "well-rounded" if we measure this by having a well-attended "successful" sunday school, high-school, or "adult-ed" program, when very often its the after-college transition time that falls through the cracks when the challenges of living as a Christian are absolutely the most challenging of all! Although a solid background in Sunday school/confirmation and friends in Youth Group will certainly help, THIS "emerging adulthood" era can make-or-break whether or not one EVER returns to church or a relationship with God ( and ergo.. instill those values and faith in your future kids and generations to come!). Anyway I just wanted to put this forward as something we should raise up and pray and think about in our growth plans/strategy. I know we can't be every church to every body, but I don't think that means either that we should focus on appealing mostly to married couples in their 30's with 2.3 kids and a minivan either ;~) My two cents...(and two more from experience!)

"Silent Reflection" update

Oh this is encouraging news today regarding a previous post ... maybe this will blow over sooner than later... Too bad District 41 didn't wait to start this on Monday, cause now it appears that officially they do not have to, and shouldn't have in the first place!!

From the Chicago Tribune today: By the action, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman essentially froze the controversy over the moment of silence as he considers a lawsuit brought against Township High School District 214 in the northwest suburbs.On Wednesday Gettleman issued a preliminary injunction barring the district -- but that district only -- from holding the moment of silence while the lawsuit progresses through court.Gettleman has called the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act vague and "likely unconstitutional" but said he would not yet issue a statewide injunction. That could change in the coming weeks if the judge grants an expected motion to include all of the state's 680 districts as defendants.

Yeah!

Torture

So I was reading my favorite blog this morning and again he is keeping up the news on the Bush torture doctrine. This is my biggest issue by far of all the things that are bugging me, paining me in fact, about the state of our union. In a future post I will put together a bunch of my saved links about this. Anyway, last week I sent an email to my pastor thanking her for a very interesting video that was presented on All Saint's Sunday. It was ~20 minutes and there were 3 young adult speakers talking / and rhyming about the historical timeline of the saints throughout history and it really got me thinking about how I am a link in that chain... so that's one of the reasons I started blogging again to remind myself of that ... and that its ok to be a rabble-rouser. I'm getting ornery in my old age and I guess that is one of its major blessings. So anyway, this morning I decided to see if I could find any info about this topic on the elca website. Not much unfortunately. So I sent an email to Robert Francis asking what they're doing about it and how really the silence from the church on this topic is deafening! Aargh.

new start

I just realized I need to start keeping track again of some things happening in my life. Normal things and weird things I think I will like to read back on a few years from now to remember what I was doing and thinking. I spend way too much time on the computer. But I'm becoming more activist in my readings and opinions and I think this will be a good place to keep track of my thoughts for myself.

Today was one of those times I described to CS yesterday as when the "rubber meets the road". I went to J's middle school with my neighbor RB & his daughter to talk to the principal about how they are going to implement the "Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act" that stealthily passed the IL State Legislature in October.
J and I had already talked about this when the news first came out but nothing was announced at school so I was hoping the school board would just "do nothing" until after the dust had settled with other lawsuits or school districts deciding not to do it.
I was worrying/pre-occupied about it most of the day yesterday after RB brought it to my attention that the school was going to start it today.
So after much encouragement from Bob we went in talked to Dr. D and he was really cool about it and agreed to speak with the 1st period teacher that the girls could stand out in the hall during the stupid "10 seconds" before the pledge starts. I just left a voicemail to follow up with my state Rep Sandra Pihos. The Evanston school district is not doing this. Its so stupid its not enforceable.

To do: Now I need to call the school district and talk to the Superintendent.