Brutally Honest

Might Brian McLaren and company look to help these oppressed people?

For the uninitiated, Mr. McLaren is a Religious Leftist leading the effort in righting the alleged wrongs committed by Israel against Palestinians.  He and his like-minded cohorts are of the mind that Israel, and Israel's supporters, are propagating a big lie as to the danger posed by the Palestinian people. 

Listen carefully.

I applaud a heartfelt and sincere desire by anyone to seek peace and justice.  There's a part of me that sees that attempt as honorable and necessary... but reason, prudence and knowledge, especially of history and of ideology, must form the basis for that attempt, not naivete based on wishful thinking.

Yesterday, I covered the BBC story detailing the experiences of a 13 year old girl named Meena whose father and brother were members of the Taliban. 

Today I bring you the story of Medine:

A 16-year-old girl was buried alive by relatives in southeast Turkey in a gruesome honour killing just because she reportedly befriended boys, the Anatolia news agency reported Thursday.

Acting on a tip-off, police discovered Medine Memi's body in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre-deep hole in a chicken pen outside her house in Kahta town, Adiyaman province, 40 days after she went missing, the agency said.

A subsequent post mortem revealed that she had a significant amount of soil in her lungs and stomach, meaning that she was buried alive, foresic experts told the agency.

"The autopsy result is blood-curdling. According to our findings, the girl -- who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood -- was alive and fully conscious when she was buried," one anonymous expert said.

Medine's father and grandfather have been formally arrested and jailed pending trial over her killing, the agency said.

The father is reported to have said in his testimony that the family was unhappy she had male friends.

In honour killings, most prevalent in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, a so-called family council names a member to murder a female relative considered to have sullied the family honour, usually by engaging in an extra-marital affair.

I find myself seriously struggling with a mindset that finds Israel to be such a danger when she is surrounded by those who embrace an ideology subjecting young girls like Meena and Medine to what they've been subjected to on a daily basis.  And I think we all know that there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Meenas and Medines out there in the Islamic world.

If you were able to ask Mr. McLaren and those who think as he does one question, what would that question be?

Please leave that question in the comments.  I may actually have an opportunity to pose it to him later this week.

Stay tuned.

Crossposted(*).

Snow!

We're expected to get a good dose of the white stuff here in the mid-atlantic region and it's sure to wreak some havoc later as we Virginians tend to panic somewhat in snowstorms... and if you're listening to the local news stations, with their non-stop coverage, you'd be thinking the worst... nevertheless, it's pretty now...

The two pics are quick shots this morning, the one on the left taken through our screened in porch into the backyard and the one on the right from our front porch toward the street.  Clicking on either one will take you to the full sized image.

2 million page views

Brutally Honest has hit yet another milestone tonight... her second millionth page view.  It took us 4 years to get the first, and two years to get the next, here's hoping we're getting our third next year at this time.

I'm simply glad to know that a hobby can draw so many folks who want to stick around and check things out.

A hearty thank you to each of you... especially you regulars.  You're all appreciated, every one.

Pride

It's official... Mrs. BH and I are now the proud parents of two, count 'em, two college graduates...

We're beamin' with pride.

Congrats Richard... we love you son... sky's the limit, go now and fly!

Emerging Church is “the old mainline liberal movement with ripped jeans and guitars”

Darryl at DashHouse explains what's taking place in Canada:

I started pastoring in the early 1990s when church growth principles and the seeker-sensitive movement were big. A decade later, beginning soon after 2000, the emerging church seemed to take off. We’re now beginning a new decade. What does the future hold for the Church in Canada?

According to John Neufeld, senior pastor of Willingdon Church in Burnaby, B.C., it won’t be another fad. “People are hungry for a Christianity that is real, lasting, and historic,” he says. Neufeld believes that many, especially younger people, have grown tired of a methodologically driven church-growth movement, and that the emerging church will not last because it doesn’t offer people enough certainty. “It’s the old mainline liberal movement with ripped jeans and guitars,” he says. But he’s noticing that younger people, as well as new immigrants to Canada, are hungry for a deep understanding of classic, orthodox Christianity. “My real hope is in the next generation,” he says.

Real, lasting, historic,classic, orthodox Christianity.

Yes... I'm hungry for it too.

"The state of the U.S. doesn’t really matter, after all, when the state of us is in disarray."

I don't do resolutions... never have... perhaps because I know inevitably I'll break them, perhaps because I find that too many of them are meaningless.  Neither do I do much reflecting on the past, perhaps because some of that pondering can be painful, perhaps because I'm simply not diciplined enough to do so.

Tony Woodlief, who's been on quite the roll of late, is writing about resolutions and reflections and doing so in a manner that should shake us to the core:

... somewhere, in our remembrance of months past and our resolutions for the year and decade ahead, we should each of us ponder not just economic strength, but the strength of our relationships with one another, not just national diplomacy, but the presence or absence of peace in our own homes and souls, not just the comings and goings of kings and potentates, but the coming of a King we are mostly embarrassed to mention outside our churches, and half the time even within them.

The state of the U.S. doesn’t really matter, after all, when the state of us is in disarray. All these broad measures of our success — our wealth, our military power, the ease with which we churn out beauty and vulgarity in equal measures — depend, in fact, on the things that go largely unmeasured — man’s civility toward man, man’s willingness to sacrifice for family, man’s trustworthiness, man’s capacity to think generationally, man’s sense, however ill-formed and half-wrong, that he is not the measure and end of creation. Strip away community and family and Church, in other words, and see how long you can make pretty little widgets.

It’s not just a matter of national greatness, of course, which Conservatives would do well to remember. A nation is truly great when its people live in peace with one another, and themselves, and God. You and I, while we may never be great, are only really happy when we have people we love more than ourselves, and are likewise loved.

That, I think, is a reflection and a resolution, though it will be forever unknown to The New York Times and NPR and the people who know more about the intimate lives of celebrities than they do about their own neighbors. Have you loved sacrificially, which is to ask: have you laid down your life for another this past year, this past decade, ever? More important still: will you?

I mostly have not. But it’s the first day of a new year, and I am still breathing, and you are too, which means there’s still time. There’s all the time we have left. So let’s make this resolution, you and I: that we will learn how to love others more than ourselves. That we will start in our own homes and workplaces, and set aside our precious lists of wrongs and debts and grievances, and simply — love, which is not feeling, but action regardless of feeling, often in spite of feeling.

It’s a frightening thing, isn’t it? But we have to give it a try, in the year 2010. We have to re-learn it, or learn it for the first time. I know I do. That’s the state of me. How’s the state of you?

I'm approaching the age of 50 like a speeding train.  The state of me is what it is... not something I rest comfortably with yet not something I wrestle obsessively about. 

I do find myself wishing more these days for broken relationships to be mended.  I do find myself pondering more these days whether my life's purpose is being met.  I do long to be the someone God desires that I be.  And yes Tony, it is all frightening.

2009 was a year that in too many ways I'd rather simply not think about... and no, despite my focus on this blog, that mindset has nothing to do with Obama, his co-ideologues or his supporters. 

It has everything to do with the notion that I'm reeling toward my twilight years and that times incessant drumbeat is getting louder in my head.  It has everything to do with my wondering whether I've been the kind of husband, father, son, brother, uncle or cousin I'm supposed to be and diffidently knowing the answer.

Have I loved sacrificially?  In the end, I can't make the judgment... only those whom I've loved can but I shamefully suspect I know the answer.

Have I laid down my life for others?  No.  I have not.  I'm still here and breathing.

Will I?  Only God knows but I hope the answer is yes.

I also hope that as I continue to seek God's will for my life, as I continue to weekly attend Mass, as I continue to pray I'll recognize and obey God's guiding hand, that I'll be able to answer some of Tony's frightening questions a little more assuredly and a lot less fearfully.

And I sincerely hope the same for all who read these words.

"Only when a family focuses on God can that family become whole" (UPDATED)

That brilliant, and most logical, statement coming from Father Mike Joly this morning during Mass in a sermon focused on Christmas get togethers and more particularly the attempt by so many to have the picture perfect family holiday gathering.

I've not touched on this since my last post on the matter but the missus and I believe we've found our church home and have been faithfully attending each week ever since.  In fact, I've been faithfully attending Mass each week since early August and I can tell you that it's made a difference.

Last week, The Anchoress linked to a liberal who sheepishly admits the same and uses words that ring true:

Inside the church, it's cool and quiet. I read the Collect of the day in the Book of Common Prayer, which urges us: "While we are placed among 
things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall
 endure." My recent layoff no longer seems like the end of the world. I take Communion and exchange the peace and listen to the sermon. As I'm walking back up the aisle, I feel reoriented and calmer, the indignities of the week shift into perspective.

We're all faced with indignities... some of them thrust upon us by the uncaring, others the result of our own actions, still others merely the outcome of life events... and those indignities can become weights that stoop the shoulders, lower our heads and burden our souls... if we let them... and too many of us do.

I've come to look forward to weekly Mass because it does indeed put things in their proper perspective and more importantly, because it lightens the load.  Whether it be a thoughtful sermon like the one I listened to this morning, or a moving hymn, the reading of God's Word or simply the look of reverance and awe on a nearby worshipper's face, it's something that I long for and need and quite frankly, I suspect you do too.

As someone who's been away from the Church for too long, I encourage anyone who's in that current state to do something about it.  Your soul needs rest and there's no better rest than in a Church community that takes Christ seriously, whose leaders are passionate about Him and whose parishioners are committed to becoming whole.

If you're feeling less than whole there might just be a reason and it might just have to do with where your focus is.

UPDATE: Only moments after publishing my post, I'm turned on to this video by Terresa I believe to be related to what I'm attempting to say:

A medical plea - part 2

Part 1 to this story is here... I hope you'll read it, if only to join us in prayer for my cousin. 

We've heard back from Cheguy and I'm deciding to post it here in full.  It appears that he's used a Spanish to English translator of sorts so please keep that in mind as you read through it:

Dear Rick, I am sending this letter to let you see firsthand what is my personal situació, your mother told me that your blok was wearing something on my situation. I think this letter is a potted history of my life. And I would like the hang on your blok, maybe someone else in one way or another interested, many thanks to all, god bless you.

I'm waiting to go into hospital again for further testing me a kiss
------------------------------

I am José Luis Merino, the purpose of this letter very simple, I tell you what my current situation first hand.

First I want to wholeheartedly thank my family in the U.S., which from the first minute they hear of my situation turned in seeking a solution to my problem. Thank you.

My birth date is April 20, 1969 in Barcelona, a few days of life, I found a very serious congenital heart disease and complex. The truth no one thought they could never get ahead, well actually only my mother. God bless.

In 1969, children like me who were born with a different heart practically settlement and we were often the testing ground for techniques that are practiced today in congenital heart disease. Thanks to a group of medical pioneers, innovative surgical techniques, and why not, ahead of their time, plus the new pharmacopoeia. People like me keep going. About 90% of cardiac go ahead after the first interventions in ten years we will be an epidemic.

To understand my situation need to know how I am, who I am as a person as a human being. Since my birth, I have struggled to move forward, grow, build and be a human being who I am today, despite all the situations and obstacles that life had prepared me.

A restless, feisty, hardworking, perfectionist, with a touch particularly positive, pragmatic and sarcastic toward life, "Life is now, I write these letters, within fifteen minutes an uncertain future. Survivor of a thousand battles and war, but not a victim, my illness is only an accident in my life and my family. Where normal for it takes nothing more than hollow for me to leave, and that lately she occupies my whole being. It is not easy to fight when mind and body go together.

Since my main aim has always been to stay alive stay alive in order to appreciate and enjoy the different situations that life has offered me, my childhood, my youth, my youth, my relationships, my friends, my marriage and as not more important and wonderful could happen to me my two children. "Just because these two moments in my whole life has been worthwhile, so much struggle, so much effort, so many tears, night in the ER, ICU, hospital nights, loneliness, grief and tears." On behalf of my family and my wife, who always have been unqualified and will be in the worst moments of my life, thanks to them all.

I grew up with many other shortcomings. After my experiences and experiences, there were many wounds, not only physical but also emotional. Are the traces of a life marked by limitations, loneliness, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, lack of information, uncertainty of death or a life expectancy cut a decent quality of life, rejection of a society that sees me and does not understand us. Everything is not absent.

That I am part of the living history of medicine and the first survivors of congenital heart diseases intercepted in Spain, some 50 years ago. I have come to adulthood thanks to the expertise of a professional who once held a Bandig to the lung.

I always thought that my heart made me special, a different child, a freak of nature or accident, cardiac unique in its complexity. And it is well confirmed by the doctors themselves, may live in the world 30 people around the world like me, like little special and make us worthy to know or inquire about us. In Spain I am informed that the ministry of health there are two or three people (transposition of great vessels, single ventricle, inter-atrial communication and pulmonary stenosis).

For the first time I feel physically and mentally helpless, many doctors who say they do not know how I'm alive, my heart is incompatible with life, others say they do not know how to deal with this heart disease, and the most cruel are those say that when the time comes, they know they will do, but I'll be your guinea pig. . I think I deserve all medical, surgical, psychological, you may receive, deserve my case is unique, "the team of inborn and transplantation of our country knows.

It seems that day comes, are increasingly congenital cardiologists, pointing to a heart transplant.

And I need all the help you can give me god, people, hospitals, doctors, organizations, media. For I am ordinary people, anonymous calls as little advice and help. And a second chance to proceed. If anything the American people is reflected in the rest of the world, is proud of their generosity for their sensitivity and support in social and personal worst.

My philosophy of life has always been the day to day, without casualties, or complexes. As I say, or knees, or behind, above all, to anyone. I'm a survivor, a fighter who tries to move forward. And I need all the help and luck in the world. Thank you all for reading these letters.

Note. Help Help Please call me thanks for your time.
 
José Luis Merino Mendez aka Cheguy

I wrote him back with the following:

Cheguy,

I am going to put this on the blog tonight... only now have I had the time to read it fully...

I continue to pray for you... and to hope that in some way, someone will be able to help.

May God's presence be made real to you, even as I type these words...

Hugs to you cousin.

-Rick

Again, if anyone's able to help in some tangible way, I'm hoping you'll contact me at my email address.

I'm also hoping however that you'll pray.

Thanks much.

"Death is always uncomfortably near"

Around lunch-time yesterday, I began to feel some serious discomfort in my calf.  A charley-horse type deep stabbing that was surprisingly and particularly sharp as I stood up.  Oddly enough, my leg was tingling from the knee downward and as I checked things out, I noticed that the area was swollen, nearly twice the size of my left leg, from the calf down to my ankles.

After some consultation with Mrs. BH, we decided to go and have it looked at.  She was concerned that perhaps I was suffering from Deep Vein Thrombosis, a condition that could be serious if a blood clot were to break loose and end up in your lungs.  Neither of us are prone to dramatics but the concern in her face and the pain and swelling in my right leg made us both decide it was wise to have it checked out.

I'll confess, as I waited to have it looked at by the sonogram expert, that I had some unpleasant, but thankfully fleeting, thoughts.  Interestingly enough, these are thoughts that seem to occur more frequently as I get older.  Thoughts of life and death and beginnings and endings. 

Charley at AnotherThink expounds similarly:

In the summer and fall of 2002, leading up to October's terrifying DC rampage, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo took turns lying prone and hidden in the trunk of a Chevy, silently peering through the scope of a rifle, choosing whom they would let live and who would die. By the time they were caught, they had executed at least fourteen people and wounded seven.

Malvo received life in prison for his cooperation against his partner. His own life was apparently quite precious, as he used his knowledge of their crimes to save himself from death. Muhammad made no such deal and was executed by the state of Virginia this week. He died in silence, without acknowledging his crimes or his guilt.

We live in a cruel and chaotic world. Life thrives abundantly, and yet is surprisingly fragile.

The thwop-thwop-thwop of rotor blades clawing the pre-dawn air woke me this morning as a medevac chopper flew north over my home, no doubt responding to an urgent call from the scene of some life and death situation.

For a matter of just a few moments... Death is always uncomfortably near.

At such times, we are forced to open our eyes to the fragility of our lives, and the fact of our own mortality. We are slapped in the face with those discomfiting questions about God, eternity and the ultimate fate of our souls. Gazing into an open casket, it is painfully obvious that the person lying there has lost his personhood. Where did it go? Has it vanished forever, or merely been transported elsewhere?

The casket descends into the hard ground and the living are forever cut off from someone who breathed and spoke and laughed and loved. Something inside of us is repulsed at the finality of that loss. We want there to be more. There ought to be more.

No sooner do we begin to live... than we begin to move ceaselessly towards death. ...our whole life is nothing but a race towards death, in which no one is allowed to stand still... — St. Augustine, The City of God, Book XIII

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned in Nazi Germany during WWII, and often lay flat on the floor of his cell as Allied bombers pounded the city so intensely that he felt certain he would not survive. Rather than turning fatalistic or morose, Bonhoeffer's faith transformed the nearness of death into a realization that "every new day is a miracle." Elsewhere, he contrasted Socrates' view of death with that of Jesus:

Socrates mastered the art of dying; Jesus Christ overcame death as "the last enemy" (I Corinthians 15:26). There is a real difference between the two things; the one is within the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrection. It is not from the art of dying, but from the resurrection of Christ, that a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

If Christ rose from the dead, all who put their faith in him have a reasonable hope that death will not have the final word. It means that this present life is only a prelude to something grander and more miraculous than we have ever experienced.

Jesus died. His life ebbed away over painful hours and his heart gave out. He was laid in a cold tomb where his friends wept as they said their goodbyes.

On the third day, he wiped away their tears and gave them, and us, a glimpse of eternity. That's the claim of Christianity, the most important claim in all of human history.

Each of us is racing towards death. Someday, for a matter of just a few moments, you and I will not be saved. Before that day comes, for the sake of your eternal soul, take the time to examine the claims of Jesus and decide for yourself whether death is the end, or merely a new beginning.

Turned out that my leg problem was the result of a Baker's Cyst... and I'll likely need some follow-up to determine what the cause might be... but for moments, as I wondered whether a blood clot was heading toward my lungs, the race toward death became clearer for me, and it was a clarity that was disturbing but necessary.

Life as we know it does come to an end at some point.  I pray that when that moment arrives, I'll have the faith necessary to carry me beyond it.

We all need baggage handlers

I know I do.

Let's let The Anchoress explain, as only she can:

In our church, the number of villains has been relatively small, but the relative hurt is incalculable, affecting untold millions in mind, body and spirit. Where there is great good, there is also great evil. Our good pope has made a beginning in seeking forgiveness, and in America there has been sound policies put in place for villain-detection and hurt-prevention.

Some forgiveness will come, and help has been sought, grace has been requested, because without it the baggage would be immovable; we would not be crushed under it, but dispirited-unto-abandonment. Having sought grace, we can move a little. We may be reduced in size -our forgiveness will not come without a hefty price- and we may be despised but we will never be dissolved, nor crushed.

What does this have to do with Dom Augustin? Well, he wrote a very simple line about grace:

In all that we do, and at every moment, God has ordained an exact balance between what we have to do and the necessary strength to do it; and this we call grace. Our part is to bring ourselves into line with grace. God uses all the horrors of this world for an infinitely perfect end, and always with an infinite calm.

This is important. If God uses all the horrors of the world, then He is taking us at our best, and at our worst, in our victimhood and in our villainy. If we can “bring ourselves into line with grace” (and He has given us the tools, sacraments, instructions and the mercies to do that) then we can bring some balance to our baggage. We need not destroy ourselves in our guilts or our grievances. We need not allow ourselves to be crushed under the weight.

We can actually check those bags, along with the bigger bags, those “collective” bags that we are allowing unseen “others” to handle. God Himself carries them for us with infinite calm, to a perfect end.

We are engaged in great battles, each of us. Interior battles, and exterior. Personal and national, material and spiritual. But if we can bring ourselves into line with grace, if we can allow ourselves to believe in “the perfect end,” we can move forward, upright and with a measure of surety and optimism, sharing “in his calm, and in the highest part of our being.”

That is not as easy as it sounds.

In fact, to surrender to grace, to believe in grace, to hold on to the long-view and be the saint who knows “how to find God in everything, in spite of human appearances,” is the most difficult thing in the world, because it takes a daily fiat. An hourly fiat. Sometimes a minute-by-minute whispering of “yes.” Assents in nano-seconds.

The life of a believer is not for wimps.

If you're one who carries around the baggage of being hurt by others or alternatively, if you're one who's hurt others, then this piece, in its entirety, is one that should be read... probably a couple of times. 

It might just be the first step toward lightening your load.

²⁸ "Come to me, all of you who are tired and have heavy loads, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Accept my teachings and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your lives. ³⁰ The burden that I ask you to accept is easy; the load I give you to carry is light."

-Matt 11:28-30