Tough Times

Dieing

to leave the church.  Or not.

Kingsley's Crossing

In my life I've had an interest in many things.  And if I examine the things I like to do they always seem to include lots of stuff--hardware stuff that is--like airplanes and ham radios and telescopes and cameras and woodworking tools and, well I guess the list is pretty long.  I love gadgets, always have and always will.  Maybe that's why I've been employed as an engineer for most of my life.

Lately I've been re-bitten by the photography bug.  Small wonder.  Digital cameras are a combination of everything I love:  electronics, lenses, little strobe thingys for making mini-lightning, compact flash cards, batteries.  They're a regular composite of most of the hardware things I hold dear in my life. 

Of course, when one is smitten with something the first place one turns is to the undisputed source of indisputably correct information, the Internet.  In toto there's probably a million websites devoted to photography in some form or another.  Actually there's a few more than that, 263,000,000 more to be exact.

One of the ways hack photographers like me learn is to peruse photos made by others.  You try to figure out how they shoot their images, what lighting techniques they use, what was the time of day, etc., assuming they don't tell you all this stuff as part of their site.

I have always admired photo journalists.  I don't think I could have ever have been one but, over time, their work has brought many difficult subjects to light in the world.  And they've been around a long time.  The beginning of photojournalism was probably around the middle of the 19th century when photo engravings from the Crimean War appeared in the Illustrated London News.  Advances in newsprinting techniques furthered the art until it reached what some say was the zenith of photojournalism in the 1930-1950s when greats like Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, and Alfred Eisenstaedt were in their prime.  But I believe the zenith is yet to come. Internet publishing is literally at the fingertips of every photographer and a lot of them have a story to tell.  Which leads me to the crux of this post.

A great deal of the illegal aliens who enter our country every year come by way of smugglers and sometimes they are at risk of losing their lives.  They might drown attempting a midnight swim across the Rio Grande.  Others have died in the desert from dehydration.  And some of them are just plain murdered. 

A lot of us in the US don't exactly cotton to the thought of illegals coming in and taking over all the high paying jobs like lawn care but I doubt that any of us are glad when other humans die trying to improve their way of life.  I think we're pretty much all the same in front of God.  And I suppose a lot of illegals believe they had a real hard time getting here what with having to snag their pants on a barbed wire fence while making the border crossing.  So maybe we (the collective we--natural born citizens and alien folks sneaking over from Mexico) need to take a look at how things go in another part of the world, a part where leaving home for another country and entering illegally is a ghastly ordeal, not just a scamper down the bank and a wade across the river. 

And so I present to you a piece of photojournalism that is the cutting edge of what it will be in this century.  I will comment no further other than to say the photographer and the subject made one of the most amazing journeys.  You will think so too when you see it here at Kingsley's Crossing.

Theocracy vs. Eugenics

In his National Review article, Theocracy via Eugenics, John Derbyshire argues that "religiosity" is inherited and that religious peoples could, through the selective breeding process commonly called eugenics, produce future societies that are "more religious".

According to multiple sources I've read, eugenics is a method for improving the human race, either mentally or physically.  There seems to be many ways to accomplish this daunting task.  Some early ones involved straightforward, non-scientific methods:  kill everybody that doesn't look like you and segregate the weak and mentally deficient even if they look like you (or maybe just kill them, too).  Some may remember that this practice was in effect in Nazi Germany for a while.

But nowadays killing off whole races or religious groups isn't necessary.  (Not that it isn't still in practice.  Witness Darfur or the insane statements of Iranian madman and all around buffoon, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)  All we need do now is tweak some DNA, stir up a few embryos, and voila, a designer baby.

Derbyshire proposes that this is a good thing and "religious" people could do an end around on society by breeding in religious traits.  Then, generations down the road, more people will become religious.

So maybe it's time for us to get into the act.  Let's get busy creating more Methodists like us.  Who knows, maybe in a couple more generations we might produce somebody really important...like a Methodist president.

Is Baptism A Big Deal?

I guess you could say, that since I've been a Methodist for a only few years, my opinion isn't worth much.  But baptism is the one thing I found that didn't seem to carry much water in the church...until now.

A couple of days ago I ran across Guy Williams posts here and here on baptism.  In Guy's first post, he explains some of the meanings of baptism:  forgiveness and cleansing of sin, a new life in Christ, unification with others in Christ, and initiation into Christian life, attributes that, in fact, all Christians should possess.  But there remains a bigger question.  Must you be baptized in order to be forgiven, have a new life, unified, etc.?  In other words, is baptism a requirement to be a Christian? 

In Guy's first post he references JD's blog post which seems to have started the whole conversation.  So I grazed on over there hoping I might find something pertinent either in the post or comments.  No luck, though.  Lots of discussion about re-baptizing, who would and who wouldn't but no answer to my question.

So, as Guy recommended, I read the Methodist liturgy on baptism.  And it seems pretty straight forward.  It speaks of initiation, salvation, belief in God, profession of faith, repentance, and asks a host of questions.  All of this comes, of course, before actual baptism and I seriously doubt that a candidate would answer any of those in the negative. 

But could someone also just say yes to all those questions, stopping short of aspersion or immersion and receive salvation.  In other words, if I'm a good person and I believe in Jesus, I'm a Christian.  Or would that fall in the "I can worship God in a deer stand just as good as in church" category?

One of the complaints I've expressed in the past, to pastors and others in the hierarchy, is the lack of adults being baptized in the Methodist church.  Which sort of kinda, sorta leads back to the original premise of JD's post:  infant baptism.  Although he's not debating it, I understand that many in our denomination were baptized as children.  And that's the answer I get when I ask the question about adults.  But if I understand John Wesley's description of prevenient grace then baptism is not required, either as an infant or adult.  In other words, prevenient grace offers us a way to use our free will to accept salvation. 

Did I answer my own question.  I have no idea.  I don't think anybody's going to hell because they're not baptized.  But somehow it just seems right, almost like the strongest link in the tie that binds us to Christ.

And so today, as we celebrated our "Renewal of Baptism" in church, as I held my wife's hand and we simultaneously touched the cool, clear water in the baptismal font, I could feel that link strengthen and be renewed.  The first time was special.  Today was even better.

Return to Reynosa

In slightly over a month, I and a band of dentists, doctors, pharmacists, nurses, interpreters, and other social outcasts will return to Mexico on another medical mission.  I, of course, am none of the preceding, I am only a lowly gopher and dental assistant in training who will spend most of his time washing blood off the instruments of torture that dentists use on unsuspecting patients.  I'm praying for success and, since the streets are mostly dirt and dirt turns to mud when it rains, dry weather.

Amen.

Killing Us Softly

Ten years ago plus a few days this month, I found myself on a table in the St. Luke's Hospital cath lab watching, on a video monitor, the progress of a tiny plastic tube worming it's way from my groin into my heart.  Attached to the end of that tube was a little metal gadget, a stent, that the doctor would implant in one of my arteries, opening blockage that had formed from too many years on the road eating three meals a day at McDonald's, Burger King, and Taco Bell.

Today when I think back on that event it's funny how unafraid I was.  Maybe it was the Versed they shot me up with.  I like to think it was my faith that God was watching out for me and things would be OK.

And they were.  I easily recovered from my heart problem and I'm celebrating the fact that, ten years later, I'm still around.  But, no matter how good things go with these procedures, you can't just forget it happened.  Annual checkups and a treadmill test become part of your life and that's where I found myself yesterday morning.

When I first stepped into my cardiologist's office, the stench of cigarettes almost knocked me down.  As I was filling out my paperwork, I considered asking the nurse why they allowed smoking in the office.  When I finished and walked into the waiting room the stench grew stronger.  Then I realized no one was smoking, it was the smell from one of the patients waiting to be seen.  I don't think smokers realize how bad they smell to other people but the human nose can adapt to most any odor so after a while I didn't notice that he smelled bad either.

Later, after I had been shot with radioactivity and was on the table under the machine, the same guy was in the next room taking his stress test.  There's only a curtain separating the two areas and I could plainly hear what he and the nurse practitioner were discussing:  his cigarette habit.  And I could not believe my ears.  He admitted that he and his wife spend $500 per month on cigarettes.  How tragic to hear that.  Just think what $6000 a year could do in their lives if they would only give up a life threatening habit.  The state of Texas raised the tax on cigarettes by $1 per pack effective January 1, 2007.  But the only difference it will make is in the treasury i.e. more money for the politicians to waste.  I doubt if it will stop anyone who is addicted and that's an additional tragedy. 

Why do people willingly kill themselves?  I know a psychologist could explain it better than I but I also know how it feels to be addicted.  I too was once a smoker but, after 10 years of addiction, I quit cold turkey. 

Nicotine is a powerful drug with very soothing qualities.  When I smoked, there was nothing better to me than a cigarette with a cup of coffee or a cigarette after a meal.  Somehow things just tasted better.  It almost seemed like the highlight of the day.  If I could not smoke for very long, say 3 hours or so, I would begin to have a metallic taste in my mouth, that even today when I think about it enough, I can still feel.  And I didn't want to quit even though I knew how unhealthy it was.  But, call it what ever you want--divine intervention or just plain luck--one day I put them down and never smoked again.  I'd like to say it was easy but it wasn't.  Quitting was the easy part because I had contracted a rip snorting cold and didn't want to smoke for 3 days.  I figured that if I could go 3 days I could go forever.  But staying quit is another animal.  For a time drinking coffee or having a meal became torture and I longed for a cigarette.  But 3 days became 3 weeks, 3 weeks became 3 months, 3 months became 3 years and I had not touched another one.  In all that time the longing never completely went away.  There was always a subtle undertone of want for another drag.

It's been a long time now since I put them down.  I quit in 1970.  And there's no one more adamantly against smoking than a reformed smoker.  Now it disgusts me.  If I get within 100 feet of a cigarette I can smell it.  I have friends with whom I will not go to eat because they insist on sitting in the smoking section at restaurants.  I was almost assaulted by someone in a restaurant because I insisted that the manager move him and his friend out of a non-smoking area when he lit up.

There's an old Aretha Franklin song, Killing Me Softly, that, with some changes in the lyrics, pretty much describes what tobacco and it's purveyors are doing to many in our society today:

Causing my pain with its addiction
Ruining my life with its lies
killing me softy with its smoke
killing me softly with its smoke
ruining my whole life
with its lies
killing me softly with its smoke

On average somewhat over twenty percent of Americans smoke and spend billions on cigarettes each year.  What waste, what tragedy, and what good that ill spent money could do in our society.

Theirs was the Age of Myth;

a world where night was not clad in the web of lights that now obscures the stars. It was a world lit by flaring torches, dim oil lamps, guttering candles, the phases of the moon and the broad shimmering river of the Milky Way. When the sun went down and night ascended, life withdrew into homes. Only the very rich or the very poor were abroad.

It's all here written only as Gerard can write it.

Stay Out Of The Woods

If one of our brain-dead state representatives has his way, hunting in Texas will become more dangerous.  Edmund Kuempel, representative from Seguin, is sponsoring a bill that will allow blind people to hunt.  Not to be outdone in the department of stupidity and dimwittedness, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is going along for the ride. Glad I gave it up a long time ago.

Put 'Em Up, Take 'Em Down

Moonbat airport officials in Seattle have decided that rather than install a Menorah along with Christmas decorations, they'll just throw the whole thing out.  Seems they don't want to play "cultural anthropologists".  Guess they want to play Grinch instead.

Update:  Airline employees are not letting the Grinch take over.

Another One Bites The Dust

Our Christmas concert is over and we had a packed house.  Or should I say a packed church.  But in a way I'm kind of sad.  Sometimes events in life are like Thanksgiving dinner.  Days of preparation, hours of cooking and it's all done in 30 minutes.  It's always good while it lasts, though.