One wind

I was driving home from my first real job during a blizzard a couple of decades ago. At the time, my favorite thing about the job might have been my commute. While short, it took me past a state park and I enjoyed seeing the lake, the trees and the wildlife for a few minutes. On this particular day, I mostly saw snow. In a fine Iowa fashion, it wasn't so much falling as flying horizontally on gusting winds.

As I passed the park, I saw an unusual combination. A red tailed hawk was perched on the chain link fence not ten feet from a crow. Competitive carrion eaters usually give each other wide berth unless they are squabbling over a kill. They didn't look like competitors in that storm, though.

The hawk was perched on the top of one of the posts. He stood straight and tall. Only the tiniest of his feathers were out of place. His bright eyes were scanning the landscape, looking for prey like it was just another afternoon.

The crow, on the other hand, was clutching the chain link with both feet and his beak. His wings were flapping for balance. His feathers were puffed out for warmth and some of the tiny ones were actually being blown away. He was too busy trying to hold on to do anything else.

At the time, it struck me how two similar creatures could respond so differently to the same event. I thought of how rarely we would stop and think that someone who seems cool and collected might be going through the same storm as someone who seems like they are just barely holding things together. What's inside of us - our strength, grit, wisdom - might have more   to do with our situation than what's going on outside us. One wind. Two very different responses.

Recently, I was sharing this with a counselor. That feeling I had that I was just not as well equipped as others to deal with the storms of life. And even as I said it, I realized I might have been wrong. You see, I was caught up in appearances. The important thing wasn't that the hawk looked better than the crow. The important thing was that they both held on.

Lessons of the first Christmas

No offense to the Who's down in Whoville or George Bailey, but the real meaning of Christmas is something far more complex than family and community gathering with love. In fact, there wasn't much of that involved in the Nativity at all. Mary and Joseph were far from home and family and the community shuffled them off to a stable. Yet the lessons we learn from that humble birth are more precious than anything you can put in a pretty box tied up with ribbons and bows.

1. Be humble -  Our Lord, who is better than any of us, was not born in a palace. He didn't have servants to wait on him. He was born in a stable and laid in the hay they put out for the donkeys or horses in the Capitol of a once great empire that had fallen under foreign rule. His birth was announced, not to Kings, but to shepherds. The son of God was willing to give up all Glory and comfort for us. We should never think, "I am too good to wear this or live there."

2. Obedience to God - The story of Christ's birth begins with the Father telling an unmarried teenager that she will carry the Messiah. Her response was, "let it be as you have said." Joseph, likewise, accepted the word of the angel and embrace God's will. And together they welcomed Jesus, who sacrificed his place in heaven at the Father's order.

3. Service - Nothing Christ did here on Earth was for his own betterment. Likewise, Mary might be honored among women, but at the time she was agreeing to a difficult road that included her watching her son suffer horribly. Joseph raised someone else's child. And they did all these things for others. Do not be hesitant to do for your neighbor, even if it means being uncomfortable. Do not overlook the service of parenting! A child raised well and in the faith is the labor of many years, but one of the best things any of us can give the world.

4: The answer to your prayers might not be what you expect - The people of Israel were expecting a Messiah who would come leading am army to overthrow the Romans and restore Israel to it's political glory. They got a man who lead through words and service and personal miracles  (he healed individuals, not towns). He not only didn't go to war with their enemies, he taught that we should love them and bring them into God's grace. But he was the solution that the Father knew we needed.

5. You can't judge a person's impact by the circumstances of their birth - His mother was a teenager. His father was not her fiance. His country was under foreign rule. He was born in a barn. Yet he was one of the most important figures in human history. The teenager mother next to you at the grocery store might be carrying the next Beethoven. The doctor who cures cancer might have been the tenth child of a welfare queen. Beginnings don't define a person.

6. Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of faith - "And on Earth, peace, good will to men," the angels declared to the shepherds. The peace they were talking about probably wasn't the one most of us think of. The absence of war, conflict, distraction. The birth of Christ did not herald the end of Kings and armies clashing. It did not stop husbands and wives disagreeing. That's not the kind of peace we get from God. He gives us the peace of knowing that we will, someday, be in a world without conflict. The peace of knowing someone greater than us is in charge. The peace of knowing that no matter how dark out world gets, we will always have light and love. That no matter how badly we fail, we will be lifted up in the end.

7 . God loves us even at our worst - The Messiah wasn't sent when the Israelites were on their best behavior. In fact, they were in the middle of a divine "time out" for following other religions and ignoring the warnings of God's prophets. Their leaders were corrupt and power hungry. They didn't deserve redemption. But like us, they needed it. I think we've all done things that left us feeling unforgivable. Fortunately, forgiveness doesn't depend on the worth of the offender, but on the mercy of the offended. Praise the Lord, for His Mercy endures forever.

8. God's timing is perfect - The Jews waited a long time for their Messiah. But looking at history, it's hard to imagine a better time for Christ to arrive. Not only did the Roman empire provide the travel routes that allowed the good news to travel quickly around Europe, Asia and Africa, but they also introduced the idea that you could join a tribe or nation you weren't born into. We take it for granted today, but the Roman empire was the first to allow conquered peoples to be full citizens. It was the perfect place for the idea that we could be part of a religion that wasn't the faith of our parents or tribe, but one that supercedes nations.

An unequal transaction

Sex is in the news again. Hollywood's dark "secret" of pedophilia, sexual assault and abuse of power has been pulled into the light. I've been reading a lot of blogs about this or that celebrity who abused their position to take advantage of someone or another. It's tragic, but the real eye-opening part for me came when reading the comments.
Most of them condemn the offender, promising to boycott his work or never let their own loved ones hear the film industry. There was also a significant minority who suspect it's all a case of "he-said-she-said" (or "he-said-he-said"). A whole community of primarily men exist who are clearly distrustful of sexual relationships because of experiences with "morning after regret" that turned into an accusation of rape or awkward sexual advances being called harassment. Men who thought they understood the rules of modern sexuality but have become aware of an element no one can explain to their satisfaction.
Almost everyone in modern American society views sex as a transaction. That's what our schools teach. That having sex with someone is like trading baseball cards or shaking hands. If both parties consent and birth control is used, the transaction is complete and it doesn't have to mean anything more than scratching each other's backs.
So why is there so much "buyer's remorse"? To abuse the baseball card metaphor, it's because women are giving up a Babe Ruth rookie card and getting a nobody from the local farm team. It's not an equal trade. And it never will be.
Physically, women are so much more vulnerable in the sex act, both to immediate violence and long term consequences. Yes, diseases go both ways, but only women get pregnant (no matter what the Trans community claims). Even if you view abortion as a solution to that problem, it's not a painless procedure. And no form of birth control is 100% effective. If a woman chooses to have the baby, she will spend the rest of her life trying to compensate for her child's lack of a father. That may be her choice, but it's still part of the package she has to bear when she has sex.
And it has nothing on the emotional damage that casual sex does to women. Our language doesn't really have words for it, but a little bit of history may help. Our idea that two people get to know each other, fall in love, and then decide to get married is very modern. Historically, woman were far more likely to be in marriage arranged by their families or to be captured (either by a local man who was attracted to her or as a spoil of war). At best her new husband was a casual acquaintance. And yet, most of these marriages worked. Some of it was a difference in expectations, but a lot of it is female chemistry. Women are designed to love the men they have sex with. No matter what their brains might tell them, their bodies flood with chemicals telling them to cling to this man like a barnacle. They make it nearly impossible not to be with him. Women who watched their village burned by their husbands who then dragged them off to some strange place and married them without consent still manage to love these men. That's a powerful force. And you don't have to read a lot of Harlequin romance novels or watch many romantic comedies to realize it's still alive and well.
No matter what her brain and her culture tell her, women's chemistry wants the one night stand to be the start of something. For women who have thoroughly convinced themselves that's not what they want, it's a cognitive dissonance that sometimes leads to mental health issues and substance abuse. Or at least a nagging sense that something is wrong, even if she can't quite figure out what.
The nameless morning after feeling is not something a woman can choose. There's no device or drug to prevent it.
The physical and emotional costs are high, and so are the social costs. We can insist that judging women differently than men is sexist and call it slut shaming, but that doesn't fix the reality that middle class morals are more the source of the middle class than the creation of the middle class. Sexual liberation has come at the cost of the number one wealth builder that an individual can create: the nuclear family. Men who can choose casual sex are less likely to invest the time and effort it takes to build a real relationship. You don't have to read many comments to find them. The result is a normalizing of single parenting, a system that hurts both sexes, but once again is a burden born unequally by women.
Most human cultures throughout history have agreed that the fair trade value of sexual access to a good women is a lifetime commitment of partnership, monogamy and shared parenting. No one should be shocked when women feel cheated by today's transactions, even if they have convinced themselves they will be getting a fair deal. No one likes to realize they paid top dollar for a lemon even if the dealer didn't realize it.
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I know this is going to come up, so I need to say this doesn't excuse women for making false rape accusations or sexual harassment claims. But it does explain why our system of viewing sex as a one-to-one transaction leads to so much anger and misunderstanding. Knowing they have agreed to be cheated doesn't make it any less painful or confusing and if you start with someone who is unstable or vindictive, you're playing with fire. Do yourself a favor and stop.

Not good enough

Are you good enough? I recently attended a celebration of life for a young mother who died never feeling like she was good enough. I read about a local high school student who took the word of some classmates that he wasn't good enough - and their suggestion that he should take his own life. A friend posted that she felt like she was a failure as a parent. No matter what she did, it wasn't good enough.

So, it's a serious question. A life or death question sometimes.

How do we figure out if we're good enough? From what do we derive our self-worth. And how do we help the people we love to discover that they are not merely good enough, but immeasurably valuable.

The world's answer is to insist that we are all special and to give kids trophies just for showing up. Humanism tells us there is no right or wrong, only actions with different consequences. Judging others is the only sin. As the song says, "We are all innocent."

It's a utopian ideal that just doesn't hold much water in the real world. To begin with, almost no one lives to adulthood without being the victim of some action that seems decidedly wrong. You develop the logic tools to realize that judging people for judging people is still judging people. You do something that keeps you up nights with guilt. Eventually all but the most air headed know that we are not all innocent.

There must be a bar, then. Does being human give us a value? Not according to popular culture. In the womb, anyway, your moral status depends entirely on whether other people want you. You don't deserve to be wanted because you are human. You are human only if someone wants you. By this standard, the dead high school student did the right thing. That cannot be okay.

Public opinion also says that Christianity holds us to a much higher standard. To quote one of my favorite un-Christmas movies, the point of Christmas is that either you're good and you get presents or you're bad and you go to hell.

Public opinion is wrong. In so many ways. To start with, it makes no distinction between moral failure and the natural mistakes of life and learning. We beat ourselves up for not making the shot as much as we do for having stolen the neighbor's ball. We feel more stress over being late than cursing the driver in front of us who didn't run the light. Jesus, in his perfection, did not sin, but he did fall when learning to walk. He did not walk into his father's workshop and build a full dining set on his first try. He probably missed the nail the first time he swung the hammer.

That's one of the many things that makes Christianity unique of all the world's religions. Our Lord knows what it feels like to not live up to people's expectations. He knows what it was like to try something and fail. Not just in an abstract, omniscient way, but in an experienced personal way. Nowhere in the Bible does it say God's people will never trip on their own two feet or will win at every contest. God's concept of perfection is very different from our own.

Also unique to the Christian faith is the understanding that nobody is perfect apart from God. Not the preacher, or the supermom, or the superstar. None. Nobody is good enough to enter heaven. Everyone is bad enough to deserve hell. Without God's mercy and grace we all condemn ourselves every single day.

Faced with this reality, God didn't draw an arbitrary line and say, "if they are right 70% of the time, I'll let them in anyway." He doesn't accept the top 15%. Instead He personally paid the price of admission for all of us. It was a steep price.

And all He asks in return is that we trust Him to make good on the promise. Now, that is both as simple as it sounds and too complex to put into a single blog.

The main thing is, He paid your price. He looked at you, with all your failings and said, "I will die for this person." You are enough for God to humble himself to be born in a barn, suffer through a human life, endure betrayal and mocking and finally die in a slow, painful fashion for you.

He didn't do it for some other, nicer, more productive people who always keep their cool, show up on time, and only feed their kids organic. He did it for you. He planned for you. There are lots of good reasons for you to try harder and do better. But as you are, right now, you are enough for Christ to die for.

That's good enough for me.

You can't turn back time

I have to start by admitting a weakness to period dramas. I am still mad at Julian Fellowes for killing Matthew on Downton Abbey. I'm inspired by the nuns and nurses of Call the Midwife. Looking at the world of before my parents were born gives me a real respect for my foremothers. They were strong, intelligent creatures who worked so much harder than I've ever had to under societal constraints I can barely imagine. 

In all but the poorest levels of society, an out of wedlock pregnancy really could ruin a woman's life a hundred years ago. Even if the child was placed for adoption, the damage to reputation might close the doors to marriage or even work opportunities. Single mothers were often forced into begging or prostitution. Their children were at the highest risk for disease, abuse and starvation. 

I have never been without sympathy for women who feel forced into abortion by family, lovers or circumstance, but it's not hard to see how a woman in 1900 would have felt that abortion really was her only choice. In a world without anesthesia or antibiotics, who would have considered surgery if they felt they had other options. I'm guessing that most of them knew pretty much exactly what they were doing. Society put them in a corner and there was little or no help for fallen women. So they made a horrible choice and lived with the guilt and pain.

I'm very grateful and proud that between then and now women stood up and demanded to be treated differently by society and the law. We claimed full citizenship and the rights that came with it to vote, own property, pursue careers and reject double standards that allowed men to father children without consequence but condemned women for the same act.  The majority of early feminists were staunchly anti-abortion and most of them didn't​ live to see the vision realized. They started a movement so that their daughters and granddaughters could live in a world where a woman should never feel like she has to choose between her own life and her child's life.

It saddens me so much to see how that dream has been manipulated. Instead of celebrating the power of women to be mothers no matter what the circumstance, today's feminists celebrate the abortion industry and encourage women to kill their offspring for any reason. They point at men and say, "you are horrible because some of you didn't take responsibility for your sons and daughters," and then insist that women have the right to be even more callous towards new life. They write "choice" on their t-shirts and still something like 80% of women who have abortions don't feel like they have any other choice. They shout, "Don't let men tell you what you can do with your body," but when a man threatens to leave his pregnant girlfriend unless she aborts, they are silent.

I hear the women of the millennial generation are starting to wake up to the hypocrisy of their mothers. They were born liberated from the shame of unwed motherhood. They don't let men tell them what to do. They don't see any reason why they can't be mothers and CEO's. I just pray that they can finish the fight for a world where no one tells a woman she has to choose between her own life and the life of her child.

Big Brother Is Watching You

If you haven't read or viewed George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the title of this blog probably doesn't mean anything to you. In fact, if you're much younger than 40, you're likely wondering why, if he's watching, he doesn't like more of your posts or subscribe to your channel.
For the rest of us, this is just another bit of evidence that Orwell was an excellent futurist.
I know I'm not the only one who is seeing more of this dystopian masterpiece in modern life every day. There are dozens of 1984 memes and quotes in my Facebook feed right now. Big brother works at Google and moonlights at Facebook. Statues are being pulled down. Textbooks are rewritten without important historical events. The word facist it's being thrown around like it means conservative by people who are acting just like real facists against people who are acting like real Democrats.
For those of you don't know why this makes us think of an old book, do yourself a favor and read it. It's probably still at your local library and there are versions on Kindle unlimited.
Or don't. Maybe it wouldn't really help.
George Orwell may have been too smart for his own good.
Today's young people would probably find his dystopia unrelatable. They see the world headed towards a socialist Utopia filled with hyper individuality. Everyone is taken care of. You have a general obligation to the world, but none of those pesky personal or moral obligations that require you to be uncomfortable, like caring for the sick. You define your gender/species/reality. Everyone can be a gender studies major. The restrooms clean themselves.
They lack any understanding of how socialism actually works in practice. They haven't really looked closely at North Korea. There are a few iron clad rules of socialism and communism that their education glossed over. The one that will probably terrify them the most is that there will be no single source African coffee with steamed soy milk and fair trade chocolate. There will be a constant shortage of coffee and no chocolate at all. If they survive that, here are a few things that can look forward to:
1. Forced Conformity. Socialism has no room for diversity of anything. North Korea has a short list of allowable HAIRCUTS. It struggles to deal with two genders. Forget having forty. And it has a simple solution.
2. Reeducation. You will be made to believe and behave in acceptable ways. Not by your neighbors saying crazy things like, "two men can't really get married," but by concentration camps where extreme brainwashing takes place. According to escapees from NoKo, these techniques have been incorporated into everyday television broadcasts. And since some people just won't change.
3. Mass murder. Utopia is always just a few thousand deaths away. Communist and socialist leaders were responsible for over 130 million deaths in the twentieth century. One girl who escaped from North Korea described her friend's mother being publicly executed for watching a Western television program. Remember conformity? Ethnic minorities, such as Jews and Armenians, have been among the more popular groups targeted for extinction.
Orwell's world looks quite conservative to today's young people with the chastity brigades and war mongering. But it's not a right wing reality. For all our desire to pass on our moral standards, one of the biggest is that you don't have any legal right to stop people from being unique and weird. You hope that natural consequences will encourage good behavior. You try to teach your kids self discipline. But if an adult wants to sit on their lawn in pajamas trying to charm June bugs in their spare time, you can't have them arrested for it. If someone says they belong to a superior race, you are welcome to stop inviting them to garden club, but you can't beat them up. No one is killed for saying the government is wrong.
They are in socialist countries. No matter how warm and fuzzy the promises of Utopia may be, history has never shown us a version that doesn't include the above. It's the guy with a plain white van he claims is full of puppies and candy. No matter how many children he kidnaps, rapes and murderers, there is a seemingly endless supply of naive kids who believe in the puppies and sweets. Orwell tried to tell us not to get in. He told us it was a lie. But his truth doesn't look enough like their expectations, so they ignore him until it's too late.