"When a Man is Needed"

And now for something completely different...

the Short Story now makes it's debut on the pages of my blog. Forgive any sophomoric tendencies of the author.

It was raining and a sad, dejected little boy sat down at the table to a breakfast he did not want to eat. He had been waiting for his father to return home from yet another business trip and the news from Mother this damp morning was that his father would not be home until Monday. A weekend wasted. All he wanted was to feel the stubble of his father's unshaven face scrape across his cheek as he embraced him and for he and Father to spend the day roughhousing together.

His father was not an exceptionally strong man, not exceptionally anything to speak of, but the boy indeed cherished every moment spent with his father. Father, equally disappointed, longed to be home with his family. He needed rest. He needed the beauty and comfort of his wife and the life that his son inspired in him. Too often he was away while his family arrived at new milestones. Last year, he missed his son's birthday so that his company might increase their bottom line. He was growing weary.

The morning dragged by and the child pondered Mother's offer: a jaunt into town for a matinee with dinner at his favorite youth centered restaurant. This prospect was not too desirable in the boy's eye, but better, he supposed, than watching the rain beat down upon a yard too sodden to play in. He conceded to Mother's offer and the two went off into the garage, keys jingling in Mother's hand.

As the pair drove down the country lane toward the town the boy thought of his hopes for this weekend. Of course he fancied it sunny and warm and in his dream he and Mother were in the back yard enjoying the Father's regal return to his throne. How appropriate the rain was. It was as if all heaven was weeping at the boy's misfortune.

The boy was now began to fight a feeling of anger, not towards his father, but at his absence. "Surely there were other boys whose father's were away sometimes," he thought. "Perhaps he likes to be away." The boy winced at that thought for he knew it to be a lie. Every time Father was away he came back hungry for time with his son and Mother. Bedtime was always extended with ample grace on those blessed evenings when his father returned home.

As the boy pondered this his mind wandered to Father's display of delight with Mother. He would lift her in his arms and spin her around the kitchen floor. There was, of course, the obligatory kiss and the lengthy embrace that accompanied it. He would then sit down at the table and patiently let her fill him in on all the preceding days' notables. The boy would lose his patience and crawl up in Father's lap just to be close to him. The scent of his father mingling with that morning's dose of cologne, the feel of the rough chin occasionally scraping across his youthful, tender forehead, and the firmness of Father's shoulders and chest are all things that the boy sensed. In addition to this his perception of time would go completely haywire. It would be as if he had only just crawled up into Father's lap when drowsiness would overtake him and he would fall asleep there supported gently by the man who loved him most.

He saw that Mother was as sad as he. She spent the better part of the morning in the same gloom that he was in. Mother dabbed at her eye with a handkerchief and on several occasions and looked into the mirror to regain her composure. She pulled her shoulders back, smiled, and, on at least two occasions, said, "Only two more days," to the reflection looking back at her in the mirror. In a moment of forced elation, she made her proposal to the boy in the hope that the trip into town would elevate their spirits, even if just a bit.

Mother's sad face belied her smile on a particular stretch of their journey and, as he noticed her sorrowful expression, it took the boy rather by surprise at his accompanying thought. He had always been sensitive to other people's emotions, but this time he felt compelled to act. Before he even realized the depth of his thought, he spoke to his mother.

"Mother," he boldly stated, "I don't want to go to the matinee." Before she could protest he continued, "Can we go to the University," he hesitated, "to the library?" He had often heard Mother and Father mention this place when they talked to each other in hushed tones.

Mother, a bit shocked at her son's question, paused for a slim moment before returning an answer. "What do we need to do at the University library?" she asked instead of the more obvious questions that passed into her mind.

The boy, not quite sure what to say, once again referred to those hushed words Father spoke to Mother. "To get to know each other?" he asked more than stated. He was now in new territory. His mother, sensing something out of the ordinary, did not seek to retire the boy's subject. "I just want to be somewhere that makes you think of Father," he said finally.

Her eyes moistened once again, though this time for an altogether different reason. She guided the car onto the street that led them to the University. There was no difficulty in finding a parking space this drizzly Saturday afternoon. Before the car had stopped completely the boy had unfastened his seat belt and was racing around the car to open Mother's door. He had seen his father do this all of his life. The smile on his mother's face told him why. Mother was quickly in sync with her son. Delight spread across her face, washing away all of the disappointment and gloom in an instant.

They folded their hands together and directed themselves to the path that led to the library. By the time they arrived at the grand doors they were practically skipping! Mother smiled as she took her son to the fiction study nooks- the very place she and Father met not all that long ago. She explained a few details of her attraction to the boy's father and the boy, who was bursting with excitement reached up to Mother's hands. He knew no dance steps, but did his best to improvise Father's routine there on the carpet of the University's library.

These two went on to enjoy a splendid afternoon together. The boy, aware that something inside of him had changed, was enjoying the charm he had on his mother, yet he missed his father all the more. The smile on his face never revealed it, though. He took Mother on a date. They danced in the library, they went to eat at a grownups' restaurant, and had hot tea (with lots of honey and milk) together afterward. The sun was very low in the sky when they made their way back home. Both were beginning to feel that familiar loneliness of Father's absence.

It was nearly dark by the time their car settled in their drive. Mother noticed that several lights were on in the house. "Son," she said, "why are all of those lights on? Didn't we turn everything off when we left?" The boy was sure they had and bravely suggested that they call on the neighbor to open the house with them. But before Mother could get the car into reverse the front door opened. The cause of the door's action stepped into the faint light. Excitement burst through the air as Mother and child exited the car each racing to Father.

By: Moshe E. Weisman

The World is Too Much With Us; Late and Soon!

2nd Timothy 2:4 Reads:
"No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier." (NASB)

William Wordsworth wrote:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

We have given our hearts away? Really? To whom and for whom? I would propose that noise is a possible answer to this question. Noise is cacophony, discord, unrest, business, work, leisure, new toys, achievement, passivity, and loneliness. It is a lot of other things, too. In fact, it can be nearly anything you want it to be. Noise, in the auditory sense, is what distracts our attention from something or makes it hard to hear clearly. In terms of oral communications (i.e. Speech Class) it is anything that is going on that takes your attention off of the speaker. This can be literal noise like microphone feedback, crying babies, or a neighbor's sneezing attack, or it can be non-auditory things like how (good, bad, poorly, splendidly) someone is dressed, the temperature in the room, the stature of the speaker, etc. The end result of noise is that it can cause a person to lose focus on what is important. The good news is that it doesn't have to.

Humans have to be taught nearly everything. We are taught to be distracted. Yes, on the desk of our enemy is this mandate, inlaid in gold under a sheet of glass, "Endeavor to lead the chaotic life, attend to everyone's business, and give up the work or your hands." "How?" you ask. Look around you. Look at yourself. Spend more time looking at yourself. How do I get myself going in the morning? How many hours a day is my TV on? How many hours do I spend online? What do I do to wind down? Does any of this involve silence or meditation? When I ask myself these questions, I find the answers troubling. My students are amazed when I tell them I don't watch TV. I always clarify that we have a TV, we just don't pay for or receive any broadcast transmissions. But, I would be kidding myself to think that I don't waste too much time on the internet, or reading, or listening to music. I seldom, if at all enjoy good, quite, alone time.

I have been taught that it is a bad thing to be without something to occupy my time. When did it start? Early in life. There was the TV and those Saturday morning cartoons. Then there was sports and practice during the week with games on Saturdays. There was music with hit after hit pouring out of the speakers of my Magnavox ghetto-blaster. There was the endless pile of FourWheeler magazines that littered my floor, worn out and covers long ago lost. There was the computer with its access to all manner of knowledge siphoning off countless hours of my life. From the time I was a little boy to now I have been trained to occupy my time and waste away. Ouch! This is damning. I was missing the point the whole time and was too busy to notice it.

I suppose it needs be said that these things I'm enumerating are not bad things. Playing competitive sports, watching some TV, listening to music, surfing the internet, or reading magazines can be very appropriate ways we can relax or enjoy ourselves. Temperance, however,is the key concept in not allowing these things to become a burden in our lives. These things become problematic when they take a foremost priority in our daily lives. When I can't foresee anything other than sitting down in the recliner after supper to watch __________ like I do every night or turning the radio on in the car before I pull out of the drive-way I am placing this thing between God and me. John Eldredge said that worship is whatever you dedicate your heart and time too. I believe he is right.

So I turn on the noise without even thinking about it. I check myself out. I drift off into the realm of the impotent. I am neutralized.

Paul tells Timothy that this should not be so. Timothy has his hands full and Paul, speaking with analogies, tells Timothy that soldiers are trained to ignore those everyday things that tend to distract us civilians. Think back to any good war movie of your choosing. I'm thinking about Saving Private Ryan. Omaha beach is bathed in blood and Tom Hanks' character is leading a group of men around a bunker. A machine-gun nest is raining down fire upon them. Let's think about what these men had running through their minds. "Keep the sand out of the action," "Keep covered," "Watch my buddy's back," "Objective- take out machine-gun nest." There probably wasn't too much contemplation going on about the fact that they were wet, or their boots were a tad to big or small, or that what-his-name has a prettier girlfriend waiting on him back in the states.

Paul does not use this analogy by accident, and its intent is not to be taken lightly. When we get weighed down by earthly crap we are guilty of gross dereliction of duty. We have lost sight of our number-one goal as Christians: to exalt Christ, evangelize the lost, and edify the saints. When we are preoccupied with distractions of our own making or lost in the drama of others we cannot possible perform our orders with any authentic sense of allegiance to Christ. Our lives become a shell game. As Shakespeare wrote in MacBeth, "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing." We put on our Christian suit and go to church. We scurry around one-hundred and sixty-six hours a week with our own agenda on our minds and expect a two hour church service get our senses and sensibilities restored.

We know that God has our hearts in mind. We know that He won't ask us to do what we can't. But how will we ever know if we never give Him time to speak to us?

Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote in "The Charge of the Light Brigade",

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them

Volley'd and thunder'd;

This is us. We are surrounded (whether we know it or not) by an enemy that is in full war against us and our families.

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:

We have orders, simple orders to follow. Take Tennyson's plea to heart along with me, knowing that in God's economy "do" is backed with the full authority of heaven and our "die" is the consummation of our commitment to the covenant He made with us (We get to go to heaven!).

Fathered by God

A few weeks back I got the chance to go to Ransomed Heart Ministries Wild At Heart Boot Camp in lovely Fraser, Colorado. I had been trying to go to this for several years and it would seem like one thing or another would keep me from going- we were short on money, I couldn't take off from work, you name it and it kept me from going. This year was looking no different than the past few years. With the help of my wife's cousin, Jonathan, I got accepted into the camp. I got out my planner and marked off the days in question and worked a little extra this summer to pay for the trip. For some reason, the email notifying me that I needed to send payment didn't show up and at three weeks before the camp I was making frantic email and telephone requests to Ransomed Heart hoping to get my spot back. God intervened on my side (yet again). With my reservation in the bag the only thing left to do was pack. And then...

The night before I was to leave, Natasha's dear Uncle "Doc" Torsten Seubold passed away. I was torn, but at the same time I knew that Uncle Doc would rather I go to receive something from God (that I badly needed) than to stay here. Natasha refused my pleas to stay and do what I could for the family. Grass needed to be cut, houses cleaned, and, of course, I wanted to be there to weep at the loss of our family's patriarch. I was weak, feeling compelled to stay and compelled to go. I got up at 4:00 AM and started driving to Tulsa. At the airport I called Natasha and pleaded again with her that I would come home in a heartbeat if she would say the word. She batted away my complaint and urged me to go. So, at 8:00 I boarded my flight and left the rest to God.
The Boot Camp was invigorating and I came home refreshed and filled with revelation about who I am and what I am meant to be. This feeling was so much in this direction that I haven't really talked about it with anyone yet. I wanted what I received to soak in and become part of me, and that had not happened in the few days after the camp. I'm now getting to that point.
With this in mind, it was tonight as I was mowing Uncle Doc's office lawn that I think the import of one of those lessons began to hit home. In fact, the lesson began before the camp. It was the night that Uncle Doc passed away. Like I said earlier, I felt both compelled to go and compelled to stay. Natasha and I talked about what I should do and she wanted me to go. "We'll be fine," she said. Alright. OK. This is what my wife was telling me. I believed her. Kind of.
For the last 6 years of our marriage I had been a whole lot closer to being an LPN than a husband. And for a good deal of that time, this is in fact what Natasha needed. But once a guy, and a hard headed guy at that, gets into some sort of role, like "nurse", he might find it difficult to let go of. I did. And to be perfectly honest, I've not completely relinquished that role of nurse just yet, but I am getting better.
Natasha tells me to go and trust that everything would be OK. So I boarded my flight in Tulsa with the suspicion that the my little bunch wouldn't fall apart without me there. Not a belief, just a suspicion or maybe it would be better to say a dread.
The dread is not that I wouldn't be missed, but that I'm not needed. Someone else will be there to hold my wife while she is crying. My kids will shuffled between the grandparents as needed and they will be fed and loved on. Someone will cook dinner and clean the kitchen and haul the trash out to the curb.
There comes a point where we fathers need to realize that we can't be there for every situation that arises for our family. There are areas where my knowledge and skills will have played out and my son will have to go to someone else for help. For fathering. I am not a one-stop never ending resource fatherly wisdom on all subject areas. If my son comes to me ten years from now needing to know how to wire a light with two switches, I'll have to send him to my neighbor down the street. I'm not an electrician.
So what happens when a father is gone? Or when you had no father or a very bad one? You find fathering in other men, and if one of those men is wise, he will teach you that God is your father. He will point you to Ephesians 1:4,5 to show you that you (all mankind) were chosen before the Earth was formed to be adopted as sons by God, and teach you the full import of this idea.
I have been very fortunate in my walk in this earth-suit to have had some very good fathering done by many different men. Doc Seubold, the man whose bedside I had just been weeping beside a few days ago, was in so many ways one of those men who I considered a father to me. Whatever sonship I feel pales in comparison to what his children feel at this moment, and the loss I feel is infinitely minuscule to the loss Josh, Jonathan, and Jordana feel in these days, as well. But in his going on to be with the Father, I have lost a father as well.
The lesson I have learned, with the help of Morgan Snyder of the Ransomed Heart team, is that I need fathering from other men, but mostly, I need it from God. When I get in a bind on some project that I am not qualified to do, I need to ask my Father for wisdom and assistance.
Morgan said, speaking to his son, "Son, I've tried for three years to be your father." He realized that he was grossly unqualified for the task of fathering a son. At my church, Cornerstone, we have an axiom, part of which says, "If it's all about me, then it's all up to me." I, like Morgan, am grossly unqualified for the position of father to my two children. What I should be teaching them is something I learned some time back but didn't have the term to express the concept. What I need to be teaching them is to let God be your Father. Let God be our Father. Morgan's son said to him that he (Morgan) was his brother really, if God was his father. It is an idea that is so simple that a child can latch right on to it. In my fatherhood to my kids, I need to be showing them my reliance on the Father. Because, if it really is all about me, then it really is all up to me. And I am becoming more cognizant everyday that I am in as much need of fathering as my kids are.

Things That Work: Fenix Flashlights

Flashlights have come a long, long way since my childhood. It seemed the coolest TV sleuths (Simon and Simon, Magnum P.I., and others) had a super bright and small flashlight to use on their nightly investigations. So the Mini Mag-Lite was obviously the solution for compact portable illumination. Well, maybe it was 15 years ago, but I would hardly call them state of the art today. The LED is king of the flashlight world today.
I appreciate fine tools that do a job and do it well, like a watch or a camera. For most people the watch and camera has been replaced by their phone and that is fine. I've yet to find a flashlight that was anything but a flashlight that was worth talking about and I still (for the moment anyway) prefer for my phone to be a phone.
Back to flashlights. Good LED flashlights are expensive. Some of them are really expensive. So the desire to have a powerful flashlight that was compact and didn't burn through expensive batteries in minutes rather than hours was being suppressed by the fact that I was not going to spend $150 or more dollars on a flashlight.
One piece of good news was that Coleman came out with their Maxx series of LED lights about a year ago. I selected their 115 lumen 2AA model ($26 Wal-Mart) and haven't regretted it. It is a fine flashlight, bright enough to render someone blind at night for several seconds which is a useful feature if the need should ever arise. What did I not like about it? It didn't offer a low power setting that could maximize the battery life. Who needs all 115 lumens all the time? I don't but for $26, I couldn't complain. Besides, the AAs seem to have a fairly long life in this light anyway.

About the same time I bought this flashlight my best friend began working for Fenix. Fenix is relatively new to the flashlight industry and they build high quality flashlights for consumer, military, and law enforcement. He introduced me to their products and I was thoroughly impressed with what I read about and wished that I had saved my money for one a Fenix light. Beside that fact that the Fenix lights were loaded with features, they were considerably cheaper than light from other manufacturers . So much cheaper that I ruled them out from consideration.
The light that I have ended up with is their PD30 model. Its highest setting is 215 lumens! Yes, that is bright. This is not a setting that you want to leave it on for it can damage the light if it is used on this setting for more than 10 minutes. Fair enough. The high setting is 115 lumens and is more than bright enough for most any situation. Fenix, I suppose, was showing off because they included two more lower settings and an S.O.S function and a strobe function as well. Cool. Very cool.
In fair disclosure I did not buy this light. It was a gift to me by my friend. However, comparing price to features with other popular lights it is easy to see that the Fenix lights are a bargain. This particular light's MSRP is $99. Another brand's comparable light is $150. Yes, I will be laying down my money for other Fenix products as need and generosity arises. I can't think of a better gift anyone could have given me and I can't wait to give one to some deserving guy-or gal.

Business is Good! or The World Belongs To Those Who Hustle

How many times in the last two years have we heard how bad the economy is? Every day there is a report in the news about some company needing help, going under, or laying off workers. But is this really the truth? In some ways it is. I, myself lost my job this spring as a result economic conditions in rural Crawford County. There are tens of thousands of workers who have been laid off all over the country. Things are bad or are they?
For some folks the answer to that question is going to be yes. But, my friend, it doesn't have to be. Solomon wrote in the Proverbs that we are supposed to pay attention to the ants. A good friend of mine watched the ants one time and he got a unique insight to their resourcefulness and a really cool story to boot. Solomon said that the ants have no king to lord over them and tell them what to do. They just know. They know that to survive the winter, they need to store food while the food is available in the summer. In my buddy's story, the ants were caught in flood water. Thousands of ants linked their legs so that they became a buoyant ball of ants. Naturally some of the ants were under water, so they crawled to the top of the ball and let other "dry" ants take their place. The ants were working hard to survive in adverse conditions. They were doing what they knew to do to make things turn out for the best.
So what is really going on and what do ants have to do with it? I'm glad I asked. What is really going on is a carefully thought out marketing campaign by the media to ensure they have something to write and talk about. Other than that, it beats me. What I do know is that during the Great Depression there were people who retained their fortunes and people who made fortunes.
All we hear about are those who lost fortunes. Let me ask you a question, when you hear about a major sports event, for instance the recent World Cup of football, do you hear stories about the team that finished second? No, you don't. You hear about the victor, in this case Spain. The sports media will be interviewing the Spanish team, their coaches, and their fans, but you won't see to much about, who was it again? Hmm. I forgot. So why do we see news headlines about losers and sports headlines about winners? News "winners"don't sell newspapers. Winners are doing OK, their business is good, and their employees are happy. Sports winners have conquered a great obstacle; they've beaten the man! And more Americans are much more concerned over their sports teams than they are with what is actually going on. We are a perplexing herd who will believe almost anything the media will tell us.
So, who was it that made fortunes during the Great Depression? People who behaved like the ants in the flood. If they didn't make changes to accommodate the changing environment, they would drown like every other creature who couldn't get out of the way. These are people who are resilient and are ready to adapt to the market's changing conditions. By the way, this very thing is going on right now in the midst of our own economic meltdown.
Solomon goes on to admonish the seeker that if he should choose the path of comfort, the Lay-Z-Boy or Serta Perfect Sleeper, poverty and want would come upon his house like labor comes on the expecting mother. Fast and when she least expects it.
When we choose comfort over the things that give us life, things that exercise our faculties, we choose to fail. The failure often does not come right away but rather when we are good and asleep. The alarm is sounded in our depth of sleep and we are jolted out of bed with the house ablaze and no water in sight.
Was I caught off-guard? Not really. Now I do have certain advantages that a lot of folks do not have. I've actually had to depend on God to supply my needs a time or two in the last six years. So when my superintendent came to me and said I was the low man on the totem pole, I knew things would be OK. I would be where I needed to be at the time I needed to be there. Guess what? I still don't have the surety of a "main gig" and I'm not worried about it in the least. I've taken a lesson from the ants and have been more than willing to expand my horizons and exercise my talents. Who knows, I may come out of 2010 without the need for a "main gig" and that would be alright with me.

Seasons

It was not all that long ago I chided my friend for not updating her blog. It's been well over a month now for me. Not that I have anything all that interesting to say, I have just been lazy. My mind has been going a thousand different directions at once while my fingers have left the keypad alone. Sound and fury signifying nothing.
What have I been thinking about? I've had questions- more than I care to answer, not that I can answer them to begin with. Yet not knowing what lies ahead and walking there by faith is one of those things that is easy to tell others to do. So, be it declared to all and singular, I am waking up tomorrow to do what needs to be done for that day and for all the days to come.
Artistically a statement by Jack White (of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather) has been floating around in my head and I can't get rid of it. What's more- I think he's right! His statement was that when we have all the colors of the rainbow to work with, our creativity is stifled. Of course his application of this statement comes in his own medium, the guitar. His typical guitar is less than perfect, hard to keep in tune, bent neck, or some other defect. He doesn't toss it in the dumpster and pick up a made to order Whatever Ltd. brand guitar, he just picks up his old favorite and wails on it. This idea has caused me to question how I pursue my hobby/profession of photography. What parameters am I going to limit myself to so that the creativity will turn on instead of stagnate?
So that is what I've been thinking about. Well, not all of it. Nearly a year ago I found out that the University of Arkansas, Fort Smith was bring both Jesus Christ, Superstar and Garrison Keillor to town as part of their twenty-ninth Season of Entertainment. Without a great deal of consideration I picked up the phone and orded two pairs of ticket for each event. Finally the time has come for those events. In fact, Jesus Christ, Superstar played on April 15th to a packed house. We are awaiting An Afternoon with Garrison Keillor. We won't have to wait too long- it is this Sunday!
Superstar was and is an amazing story. For those who want to see blasphemy and heresy and decry its production and lambaste those who enjoy it as unsanctified godless heathens- knock yourself out! Savor every moment of your bundage to your grave. Rice and Webber simultainiously had their fingers on the pulse of modern day religion, present time angst and interpretations of the times, and history without the benefit of hindsight.
Modern day religion wants to see the show and know "when do we ride to Jerusalem" without taking into account the price that was paid for our ticket. Is the world troubled now? Oh, is it ever. Just like it was when Jesus ate, drank, sweated, and defecated with humanity. Some folks then and now are listening to the voice of the Shepherd. Most are blissfully unaware that we are really sheep and indeed we do need a shepherd. And some of us get so caught up in living for heaven that we forget that we are here on earth. Let us all not forget that Christian living is a direction, not a destination! Jesus in his time on earth did not have the luxury of two-thousand years in which man could contemplate his divinity and create doctrines by which He would be interpreted through. No, he walked and talked with people just like you and me, especially like you and me. Remember, the organized church kicked his butt out! With this in mind, is it really heretical to think that people didn't quite have a grasp on who He was? Hind sight is 20/20. We really do dumb things when we don't know how they will turn out. (So Peter told Jesus the one about the two rabbis and the priest that went into the bar...) Count yourself fortunate to seek and find beauty and art.

The Stoning of Soraya M.

It seems I have immersed myself in all things Islamic this last two weeks. I have been reading my Koran, reading Is Fanatic Islam a Global Threat by Victor Mordecai, going to lectures on the subject, and watching films dealing with the general agenda of Islam- one specifically set to tell the human drama, the other to tell the bloody and troubling realities Sharia Law. The Stoning of Soraya M. is the true story of a beautiful Iranian woman stoned to death on the testimony of two men. That is all it takes. It doesn't matter who the men are; the fact that they are men is sufficient justification for any allegation they make. It's good to be a man, if you are a Muslim!
This story- and I hate to call it a story for it is certainly not fiction- takes place about twenty years ago, about 10 years after the Shah of Iran was ousted from power and the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime had forced its way into power. For Islam government and religion are the same thing, and the cards are stacked overwhelmingly in favor of the male members of society who have the authority to tell the masses what their religion demands, which is justice in its purist and most barbaric form.
Why was Soraya stoned? She was caught in the sin of adultery. Yeah, right. She was married to a sack of pig excrement who had eyes for a fourteen year-old hottie, the daughter of a man who was in Mr. Excrement's care in the local jail. Mr. Excrement was to delay the man's execution in exchange for a young piece of you-know-what. Obviously Mr. Excrement needed to get rid of his wife. Like many Western men who want to trade in a used woman for a new model, he didn't like the idea of using his money to prop up his ex and their two daughters (they had four kids, two boys,two girls). So the best solution for the muslim in a fix was to call AC/DC and have their "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" man give Soraya a jingle. No. Better than that, he calls on the local clergy to assist in his time of need. Brother Ne'er-do-well sees a way to help Mr. Exrement out of his tight spot. He must simply catch his wife in a compromising situation with another male. That is vague enough, right? Well, that is all it takes, and we aren't talking about Western male-female interactions here, either. All it takes for Soraya is a simple touch of the hand, a little pressure on the man whose hand she touched and viola, one Soraya M. is guilty of adultery.
I watched in a sickened frozen stupor as the kids of her village tapped rocks together in rhythm while her procession made its way to the designated place of her state and Allah sanctioned murder. She was led, wearing what appeared to be her pure white and intricately beautiful wedding gown down into a pit that had been dug especially for this holy occasion, placed on her knees, and buried up to her waist-- no need in leaving any room for error. With dramatic diliberation, each man who, were his god not the sword, should have known that this whole event was a sham, threw baseball sized (plus or minus) rocks at the beautiful, wronged, and holy Soraya.
Having caught an elbow or two about the face while playing basketball as a youth, I should not have been shocked by the amount of blood that issued forth from her blameless forehead. I was though. You can imagine what this girl, whose dress bespoke of blessed union and now, as blood both running and splattered down upon it, told of the satanic, neurotic need to control, even to death the one thing in society that should be cherished as the creative evidence of God on earth, looked like as the spark of life had nearly been completely extinguished from her eyes. With one more triumphant barrage of stones the unholy work was finished.
The story of Soraya's murder was taken by a brave French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, played in the film by Jim Caviezel. He wrote a book that chronicled Soraya's ordeal. and it was published in 1995.
I was initially mad at myself for not knowing about this movie, let alone the book until about three months ago. I do not want to deminish the significance of this film in its role of letting the world know about the kind of atrocities that are going on in the name of Allah in Islamic countries, but I feel that the lesson for those of us in the West is that Sharia law is not as far away as we would like to believe. Cultural Jihad is and has been underway in Western Civilization for 1400 years now. There has been an ebb and flow over time as power has shifted east to west and west to east. However, an incredible amount of wealth has flowed to the East during the last 80 years. Politicians have been telling us for years that we are running out of oil. That may or may not be true now, but the Islamists who have the money and the power to control the market for oil have an enormous advantage over the whole globe, the globe they want to see ruled under the flag of Sharia law. One decision to stop the oil flow or raise the price precipitously and the world's economy falters. Who has the real power now? We can bow to their wishes, wage war, or try to ride it out. In any case we will pay a tremendous price in terms of quality of life, lives lost in warfare, and the wealth of our nations. Jihad is upon us. The only question is whether or not it will be the sword or the law that cuts our feet out from under us.

If They are Good Enough for our Soldiers...

In the latter days of this past summer I found a good set of boots at a super cheap price. They were the Desert Tan Hot Weather boots. The same ones our soldiers who are deployed in less than hospitable regions of the earth wear. At first I was just glad to have a good set of boots. I knew they would come in handy while working around the house and for hikes into the woods, too. When I was a young teenager I had a pair of Vietnam era Jungle boots. I hated them. They were uncomfortable and.... well, just plain uncomfortable.
Since these boots were new, they required a break in period. I started to become frustrated when the break in period extended past a week of "light" duty wear. Were these boots going to be just like my Jungle boots of old? Thankfully, they weren't. After a few more days of wear, the boots were broken in. Over a few months time, I began to prefer wearing them. The more I wore them, however, the more I thought about the men and women who pull the laces taunt everyday and walk out into the sands of hostile lands to face the enemy of the civilized world.
Over time, the boots began to become an extension of me. Chances are that nowadays if you run into me on the street, in the woods, at the park, in my classroom, I will be wearing my boots. And, in the same manner, the boots have come to represent more than just "trendy" footwear, more than an article of comfort. They have become a way that I can say, "Thank you!" to all those men and women who have to wear them. I'm letting my accoutrements make a statement- a statement that I'm not at all ashamed to make. Merle Haggard sang in "Okie from Muskogee" that it was a place where leather boots were "still in style for manly footwear" and I'll have to agree. These are timeless boots, ones that any man (or woman) should be proud have on their feet. I'll have these on for quite some time.

Taking the sails down before the wind is taken from the sails

Once in a while we receive news that takes the wind from our sails. It knocks us back on our heels, shocks us, drives us off course. Some surprises are certainly better than other, but really, as a Christian, one should never be truly surprised. It is all a matter of training.
Training prepares us for adverse situations, prevents failures in procedure, and refreshes our faculties. It is needed as we learn a skill, as we continue in that skill, and as we become professional in that skill.
Ask any figure skater about training and they will tell you that from the time they were pre-school age they have been on skates. “What about now? You are a professional, surely you don't train now?”
“Oh, yes indeed! I train more now than I ever have.”
So we train, we study, we hone our skills. Good. But what if we never rest from our daily labors and our training? How effective are we in doing our job? Whom do we depend upon? Can we listen to what our Boss is saying?
A close friend told me of a weight training program that has proven very effective for bodybuilders and athletes of all sorts. Without thinking about it, one might assume that working out everyday would bring about maximum benefit in both strength and muscle growth. While it makes sense, it is physiologically wrong. Working out certain muscle groups once, twice, or three times per week gives the muscles time to repair and grow while you are resting. Some people see maximum muscle and strength growth by working out just once a week.
Spiritually and intellectually we are just like the bodybuilder. We can immerse ourselves in doing the work of the church and have it become church work in a short time. What is the difference? The work of the church is done without regret for mutual eternal gain. Church work, on the other hand, is done at a loss and for selfish gain. Intellectually, we gain consummate knowledge and esoteric detail only to lose sight of the greater picture and become a slave to the wit of man. We fuss over the gnat in our brother's eye while ignoring the rhinoceros beetle that is lodged in our own eye. More importantly, we let our intellect take credit for the work of the Almighty.
Jonathan Edwards, while doctrinally unsound in his sermon “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God”, said that “you find that you are kept out of hell and yet don't see the hand of God in it.” We are blessed with peace and prosperity and we say, “Man did this.” We are favored among men in all manner of ways and we say, “I'm the best man for the job.” We take credit for creation, for health, for prosperity- and never see the hand of God in it.
Thankfully, we are provided with a reprieve, a chance to let our muscles repair and grow. This chance lets us reflect upon the lessons we have been taught. It lets us see the beauty around us. It lets us realize how we fit into the greater picture without missing the forest for all of the trees. It is the Shabbat, or as we like to say in Christianity, the Sabbath. The word Sabbatical comes from this root. Most people hear the term and think that it is a time to work on something else, take a pause from your real job and get more education or pursue a new venture. In its truest sense, it means to cease work and acknowledge the one whose work you are a product of.
The world we live in is so much opposed to this idea that its true meaning is all but lost in our western society. This is no surprise. We have a great enemy whose main intention is to guide God's children (everyone on the planet) to distraction. When we are distracted, we have no time to think on the big picture or the artist who painted the picture. Americans in particular are lost in a sea of stuff. We have distraction upon distraction and we crave more distractions to insure our escape from the reality that we are not our own. We run and hide. We lose ourselves in whatever distraction that suits our fancy. We never stop and rest. We die early, in poverty and in a state of unrest.
The Jewish Shabbat requires no work to be done on from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. We, as a rule, would be driven crazy, with “nothing to do.” Yet, that doesn't mean that we can not benefit from installing in our life the practice of honoring a Shabbat. Folks we have to have it. It is not an option. Without it we will work ourselves to death and drive off the very people we love so much. We will lose sight of what God really wants for his children. And we will never maximize our growth spiritually or intellectually. Neglecting the principle of Shabbat ensures our works become church work which will be consumed with fire. Not the person, the works will be consumed. God wants the best for his children, not a second rate version of something that is good. That is why He required the Israelites to practice the Shabbat. He knows that with less us, there is more evidence of Him on earth.

Things That Work: Victorinox Swiss Army Knives

Since I was a kid I have had an appreciation for the Swiss Army knife. I have memories of my fourth grade teacher, who was a giant of a man in my eyes, pulling out a gargantuan red handled knife with a gozillion blades on it for some trivial matter. Being a boy, it was natural for me to be fascinated by knives and this one was no different. How cool was a knife was a virtual toolbox? For some reason or another, I didn't get an actual Victorinox until I was 22 when my wife and then fiance brought one back from trip to Europe. It was one of the smaller knives but it did have the scissors and a few other essential tools. Unfortunately, it fell into the small knife category. Small knives have a way of working their way out of a pocket when seated. A larger knife has enough mass and heft that it will tend to fall to the backside of your leg instead of up your leg and out of your pocket.
As you have already guessed, this is what happened to my small knife. Not having a pocket knife is a hard thing to get used too, especially when you find yourself pulling it out of your pocket 4-5 times a day. That was exactly what I was doing with my little Victorinox. So I told my wife my tale of woe, and began looking for a replacement. And I found one, too. In the most unlikely of places, Casino Pawn in Van Buren. The knife they had was fairly close to a "Champ", the top of the line model. I lost the box and paper that came with it, but I do remember at the time looking up the retail value for the and seeing that it was in the $60 range. So I asked the guy behind the counter what he wanted for it and he said $15. I said I'll take it.


That was 5 years ago. I have seldom left my house without it in my pocket since then. I consider it as an extension of my hand; nearly always possessing the correct tool for the job in a pinch. Honestly, I hardly ever use either of the knife blades. The most used feature is most certainly the scissors. I am constantly trimming a kids fingernails, cutting a tag off of a shirt, opening a stubborn bag of candy, or an errant strand of hair with this device. Unfortunately, the little spring that returns the scissors to ready position often comes off track. A small grip to the greater usefulness of an otherwise very useful tool.
If I ever need to quickly amputate a limb, the saw blade should make quick work of it. I can cut through an 1 1/2" diameter bamboo trunk in about 30 seconds with the sharp teeth on this implement. Not that I'm chomping at the bit to cut my or anyone else's arm off- just knowing that I can if I need to is reassuring.
I'm always flipping out one blade or the other to fix something. The screwdriver blades, the can opener, the corkscrew (yes, no wine bottle is safe around me!), the bottle opener (nor is any bottle of beer!). All in all it is the best $15 I have ever spent on anything.

Escape from Flatland

Escape from Flatland

Six of one, Five of another

In the not too distant past I had the opportunity to shoot a revolver that I have been very curious about for some time. It is the Ruger SP101. A close friend of mine has one that is chambered in .357 Magnum with a 2 1/4 inch barrel and he was kind enough to let me shoot about 50 or so rounds through it.
I already own the SPs big brother, the GP100, and I am thoroughly impressed with it. It is simply a shooter's gun, able to take the hottest magnum loads all day long. My GP has a 3 inch barrel. I have carried it before, but at 36oz, it does weigh the hip down after a while. I have been eying the svelt SP to use as a CC gun because it is considerably lighter at 25oz and it's slimmer profile would make concealment easier. A side benefit that the Ruger SP101 has over similar small frame revolvers is that it, like it's big brother, can shoot the hottest .357 Magnum loads all day long, too.

Now, I'm not sadist. Other manufactures make light .357s, but the thought of shooting .357s or even hot .38 +Ps out of something that weighs close to nothing doesn't sound like fun to me. That being said, I don't plan on shoving Buffalo Bore 185gr Magnums in the chamber as a matter of course, but the piece of mind of knowing that I can is a comforting thought.
Both my buddy and I had plenty of Magnum ammo and we fired them all through the gun. Recoil on the small Ruger was not at all uncomfortable with any of the ammo we had. I still wouldn't want to spend all day shooting magnums in it, but for a short session it is just fine. I did shoot some .38 Special +P loads through it too. These had considerably less umph and I tended to place them on target a little better.

This brings me to my personal preference for revolvers. I've alluded already that the .357 is a versatile chambering. It is, in effect, 3 guns in one. Not only can it shoot .357 magnum, .38 Special +P, and .38 Special, it is not picky about what the type of projectile the powder is launching. I could grab 5 rounds with ranging in bullet weight from 110gr to 185gr and as much difference in the powder launching them and have no trouble whatsoever. Some automatics aren't so fortunate. I don't like to deal with uncertainties when it comes to firearms. When I pull the trigger, I expect to hear a boom no matter what ammo I happen to grab (not withstanding Remington UMC, I won't be grabbing that junk any time soon!)

The Ugly: I did have a little trouble with pulling the trigger all the way through the action. This was alleviated by adjusting my grip. No big surprise to me as the revolver is a smaller version of my own. I think a new set of Eagle grips would be good medicine for this problem. Awe, heck. A new set of grips are always in order!

Thoughts on Thermal Bottles

A couple of years ago I pickup up a cheapie Ozark Trail thermos bottle a my local Wal-Mart. I wasn't too impressed with it then, and for that matter, I'm still not all that fond of it. It has a push button lid that is prone to leaking, the occasional burn, and it leaks its heat off fairly quickly.
Fast forward to the last week of 2009. I'm at Academy Sports and they have the Stanley Classic Thermos (1.1qt) on sale for $17. Cheap enough, I thought, so I bought it. The "Classic" designation hearkens back to Grandpa's or Dad's old thermos bottle. My Dad had one once upon a time. I used to go coon hunting with him when I was a kid. It gets cold out in the woods at night, and if a boy wants to warm up, he had better learn to like coffee. I did. As I got bigger, I understood what hot really was. Camp coffee is almost exclusively percolated. My Dad's Stanley was really good at keeping its contents scalding hot for hours out in the cold.
I had high expectations for my new copy. Unfortunately, expectations are sometimes more of pipe dream than reality. I had a nostalgic remembrance of scalding my tongue on a cold winter night on coffee that was brewed several hours earlier. To be honest, the first use of this thermos was on an extremely cold day. The high was in the neighborhood of 25 degrees. At night the temperature fell down to the high teens. I used a pot and Maxwell House Filter Packs to brew the coffee. I am careful not to boil the coffee. Boiling it just ruins the flavor. I still like it as hot as I can get it, though. When it was sufficiently brewed I poured the coffee into the new Stanley and tested the results a short time later. This day I had to settle for warm coffee. It was probably around 140-150 degrees. I had no way of knowing for sure, I just knew that it was turning to ice crystals before I got to the bottom of my cup. Suspicions were raised.
Well, to satisfy my curiosity I tested the thermos this morning. The thermos itself had sat inside overnight, so it was at room temperature. The coffee coming out of my French Press was a toasty 190 degrees. I poured the coffee in and waited for an hour. After one hour the Stanley Classic had bled off 25 degrees of heat . My house was 68 degrees hardly cold enough to be a test for a thermos. Twenty-five degrees is a considerable heat loss, especially in just one hour. Stanley bills this thermos as being able to keep liquids hot for 24 hours. I'm not exactly sure what their definition of hot is, but I speculate that after 24 hours my coffee would be closer to iced coffee than hot coffee. I plan on taking the thermos back to Academy and trying another. If that one deliver similar results, I'll know that the first example was faulty and I'll modify the review at that point.

Stanley Classic 1.1qt Thermos Bottle: Junk.

Seubold Camp Out Report

To be sure, I could not give a proper report on this event. I was only one person there and saw things, of course, from my own angle. The short answer to the question, "What was it like?" is we had fun. The Man type of fun. We sat around a hobo fire, ate food that was really bad for you, shot clay pigeons, soda cans, and each other, slept in the back of cars, on the ground, or wherever, and simply rebelled from behaviors and mannerisms that are acceptable in mixed company.

I arrived in the late afternoon with my Grand Cherokee full of mischief. I had enough ammunition to hold off a fairly strong advance, a pistol, .22 rifle, and a shotgun. Arrgh! My plan was to fold the back seats down and sleep in the back of the car if it was going to get really cold. It did. I unfurled my extreme cold military sleeping bag and had just enough room to stretch out my 6'2" frame. Foodwise, I planned with simplicity and manliness in mind. Drinks- water or coffee, food- deer chili, Fritoes, summer sausage, Ritz crackers, and a pair of apples.
That evening we rustled up some grub; Mr. Mike Scherer laid down some potatoes and ham, I made my chili, someone had a pan of cornbread, and that was all that was needed. With supper finished it was time to get down to the nitty-gritty. Time for a little Airsoft! The guys broke off into two teams and spent several hours pegging each other with hard plastic BBs. Jonathan probably took the hardest fall of anyone that night. The good news is that no one was seriously maimed and they all appeared to have a great time.
As the night wore on we turned our attention to stoking the hobo fire and telling jokes and anecdotes. Folks started turning in around 11:00PM. I held out until 11:30. I have no idea what the temperature actually was but I did recognize that it was "colder than the proverbial well digger's arse". No sleeping on the ground for me. I forgot any reading material so I turned on the radio and let Bob Wills, U2, Marty Robbins, and a few others sing me sleepy.
In the morning we slowly made some breakfast. I had trouble with my stove. Apparently small propane bottles don't work all that well in sub-freezing temps. We finally got a little coffee made and inhaled all the biscuits and bacon and whatever else hit the pan. From here we made our way down to the big pond for a little clay busting. I had never shot clay before so I was anxious to give it a shot. What a blast it was! I shot through a little more than a box of shells and let my father and brother-in-laws share another box. Unfortunately we ran out of clay, but everyone got a chance to bust some.



From here we moved back to the pistol range to spank some aluminum cans and old CPUs. We shot the guns that made lots of noise and had lots of fun doing it. When it was all said and done I walked away holding about 5lbs of brass.


All in all it was just what I needed. Guys need a chance to be guys once in a while. Like Brad Paisley says, "With all of these guys linin' up to get neutered, its hip now to be feminized. Well, what can I say, at the end of the day, Honey, I'm still a guy!"

Munich, Germany, 1972

Munich, 1972. This was the year that Islamic terrorism was brought front and center to the world's attention. Then, it faded away from Western world for a time. During the '80s and '90s Islamic terrorist activity was strictly a Middle Eastern problem. Now it is not Israel who is the sole target of Islamic hatred. We in the West share their wounds and their frustrations.
Steven Spielberg's film, Munich, tells the story of Israel's handling of the the Munich massacre. Their secret service, Mossad, was activated employing a super secret band of agents who risked their lives to extract revenge from the PLO. Spielberg is careful to point out the ramifications of their retaliation: whenever one of the PLO planners was killed, the PLO found a way to strike back. It was a perpetual slaughter machine.
The point was made that after each PLO henchman was killed, six more would be standing in line to take his place. The Mossad director, Ephraim, noted that since his fingernails continually grow he continually cuts them off.

Avner-This is a dream. You can't take back a country you never had.
PLO-A-You sound like a Jew.
Avner- F*** you. I'm the voice inside your head telling you what you already know. You people have nothing to bargain with. You'll never get the land back. You'll all die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine.
PLO-A- We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So can wait forever. And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews.
Avner- You kill Jews and the world feels bad for them and thinks you are animals.

So we are here, in the twenty-first century with a hungry and neglected Islamic population, who wants to kills Jews, who wants to kill Christians: a population that has grow unchecked for too long. This film ignores 99% of the reasons why the Islamic terrorists are doing what they are doing and planning to do. One might draw the conclusion that it is unnecessary to do so for their arguments are so patently weak and/or irrational. OK. I do. Spielberg is trying to show the human side of all the parties involved. That is fine. The Muslims are God's creation to. He sent his Son to atone for their sin as well as our own. Spielberg does propose the question of dealing with these people. Is the bullet and knife the only reason that they understand? I wonder.