Eating Jesus Again for the First Time

My kids just asked me whether I was ready to put a treat into the pocket of the #1 on their Advent Calendar which starts tomorrow as the Countdown to Christmas. As you know, today was the first day of Advent.

Here's something that would surprise them! I wonder whether the manufactorer sells only the adult chocolate Jesus--or also the baby Jesus too? I'd think that baby Jesus would be more popular at Christmas and the adult version at Easter. Move over Santa and the Easter Bunny and make room for Jesus--again!

All About Naps

Some people have a day off today and with the aid of the L-tryptophan that is in the meat of turkeys, they may find themselves napping. (Or perhaps they spent a full day catching up with family and friends and or cooking yesterday and could benefit from a nap today.) Here's an article from About.com on how naps work and suggestions on how to make the most of your naptime.

Guilt or Inspiration?

One person's inspiration is another person's guilt.

Recently I have heard people from my spiritual community complain that they feel they are being "guilted" into doing certain things. Personally, I think it is all a matter of attitude. Is perhaps the guilt they are feeling just an uncomfortable nudge from their inner consciousness of a recognition that they could do more, or better, with their lives? Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, here's a news story I just viewed that will challenge you to make this decision for yourself. Does this story shame you or make you feel guilty? Or does it inspire you?

The Power of Music

Almost everyone is familiar with John Lennon's line about the Beatles, "We are more popular than Jesus". This article in the International Herald Tribune explains the backstory on this quote and also the effects of it over time up to the present.

What Lennon knew, and everyone with an open heart knows, is that music is powerful and spiritual. However music need not be seen as in competition with religion. Music and religion can "be as one" -- to borrow a phrase from Lennon himself. Imagine that!

Richard Rodriguez on Prop 8

Author Richard Rodriguez is a regular contributor on NPR. Rodriguez is Hispanic, Catholic, and gay. He talks to Salon about what is behind the pro-Prop 8 movement:

American families are under a great deal of stress. The divorce rate isn't declining, it's increasing. And the majority of American women are now living alone. We are raising children in America without fathers. I think of Michael Phelps at the Olympics with his mother in the stands. His father was completely absent. He was negligible; no one refers to him, no one noticed his absence.

The possibility that a whole new generation of American males is being raised by women without men is very challenging for the churches. I think they want to reassert some sort of male authority over the order of things. I think the pro-Proposition 8 movement was really galvanized by an insecurity that churches are feeling now with the rise of women.

Monotheistic religions feel threatened by the rise of feminism and the insistence, in many communities, that women take a bigger role in the church. At the same time that women are claiming more responsibility for their religious life, they are also moving out of traditional roles as wife and mother. This is why abortion is so threatening to many religious people -- it represents some rejection of the traditional role of mother.

In such a world, we need to identify the relationship between feminism and homosexuality. These movements began, in some sense, to achieve visibility alongside one another. I know a lot of black churches take offense when gay activists say that the gay movement is somehow analogous to the black civil rights movement. And while there is some relationship between the persecution of gays and the anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, I think the true analogy is to the women's movement. What we represent as gays in America is an alternative to the traditional male-structured society. The possibility that we can form ourselves sexually -- even form our sense of what a sex is -- sets us apart from the traditional roles we were given by our fathers.

Rodriquez on how his only family reacted to his sexual orientation:

In my own my family, and my parents were not well educated, it would have been impossible for them to have dealt with the words "gay" or "homosexual" in my relationship with them. But there was no way for them to reject me either. I was a member of the family and I couldn't sin my way out of it.

Once my partner became part of my life, he became part of their life too. They didn't want it said, they didn't want it named or defined, but they assumed it and accepted it. At family events, when my partner wasn't there, my mother would get on the phone and call him and insist he come over.

These communities have very intricate ways of dealing with these things and they are not necessarily the highly politicized tactics that you see in traditional middle-class society in America.

I have not been to a Mexican family without some suspicion of homosexuality in children or grandchildren. But people deal with it within the larger context of family. That's why I suspect the revolution will come not from the male church but from how women treat their children, and whether or not women are willing to reject their children. I don't think they are. I saw too many times during the AIDS epidemic that when death came and the disease took its toll, if one parent was there, it was almost always the mother and not the father. That bond is so powerful.

On the feminization of God:

Well, I'm working right now in the Middle East on monotheistic religions because I'm very worried about the direction of religion. Ever since Sept. 11, when I heard that prayer being spoken at the moment the planes hit the World Trade Centers, I realized how much darkness there is in religion compared to how much light there is. I am very much concerned with whether or not these religions can be feminized.

The desert religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- are male religions. Their perception is that God is a male god and Allah is a male god. If the male is allowed to hold onto the power of God, then I think we are in terrible shape. I think what's coming out of Colorado Springs right now, with people like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, is either the last or continuing gasp of a male hierarchy in religion. That's what's at stake. And women have a determining role to play. Are they going to go along with this, or are they going to challenge the order?

Happy Thanksgiving, sort of...

Here's one of Jib Jab's versions of Thanksgiving internet video greetings that you can send to your relatives and friends to mark tomorrow's holiday. I recommend that you check out the other ones too for a few laughs. I'm thankful that there are people who read LiberalPastor's blog! Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Grace at the H.L. Mencken Club

John Derbyshire writes at The Corner, but he has started a new blog, Secular Right, for secular conservatives. Writing there as Bradlaugh, for his home town, he tells the story of being at the H.L. Mencken Club as a guest speaker. Mencken, in case you don't know was a 20th century writer and critic of American culture. He was also an atheist; he famously covered the Scopes Trial where he was very critical of creationists. Here is Derb on sitting down to eat his meal at the Mencken event:

Well, so there I was sitting down to dinner on the first evening of this Menckenfest. Seeing a plate of salad in front of me, I applied some condiments and started eating. In between the second and third mouthfuls I heard an amplified voice coming from the speakers’ tables: “All right, everybody, we shall now say Grace. Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts …” I felt as if I’d been caught picking my nose on live TV.

Somewhat later I got into conversation with the lady who had given out the Grace. She was very charming and friendly, and had been instrumental in getting the conference organized, so is obviously very capable. It emerged, however, in the course of our conversation, that she is a Young Earth Creationist!

What Mencken would have made of this, I don’t know. What I make of it is, that the prospects for a godless American conservatism are not very bright.

I think there are some interesting times ahead for conservatives.

A School Breakfast for Every Child

Hilzoy passes along a snapshot of what the recession is beginning to look like for low income Americans:

Already there are signs that the recession is hitting low-income Americans hard. Between September 2006 and October 2008, the unemployment rate for workers age 25 and over who lack a high school diploma -- a heavily low-income group -- increased from 6.3 percent to 10.3 percent. Yet low-income workers who lose their jobs are less likely to qualify for unemployment benefits than higher-income workers, due to eligibility rules in place in many states that deny benefits to individuals who worked part time or did not earn enough over a "base period" that often excludes workers' most recent employment.

As another sign that poverty is now climbing rapidly, food stamp caseloads have increased dramatically in recent months, rising by 2.6 million people or 9.6 percent between August 2007 and August 2008, the latest month for which data are available. In 25 states, at least one in every five children is receiving food stamps. Because monthly food stamp caseload data are available long before the official Census poverty data for the prior calendar year, rising food stamp caseloads are the best early warning sign of growing poverty.

He suggests that one simple way to ameliorate the effects of childhood poverty is to feed every child in school:

I'd like to suggest one further measure aimed at the kids: universal school breakfasts. (Why universal? It saves paperwork, removes stigma, and makes the program much easier to administer.) Besides protecting kids from hunger, school breakfasts also make them more likely to learn and less likely to have behavioral problems. They seem to increase school attendance. We spend lots of time and energy trying to figure out ways to improve our schools; if what we're interested in is kids actually learning, making sure that they have eaten recently is a pretty good way to start.

I think this is a great idea. I could imagine that there are cereal makers who would be willing to step up to the plate to provide healthy breakfasts for free promotion. It would make mornings easier on parents, and most importantly every child begins the day well-fed.

The Squirrel Board

Several days ago I noticed a squirrel acting strangely under one of my bird feeders. It was unable to stand up without falling over and when it walked on all fours it also rolled repeatedly. It also had a heck of a time climbing around the tree near the feeder. For the last few days I have seen it early in the morning exhibiting the same odd behavior.

So I began searching the internet for answers about what might be wrong with this poor squirrel. Lo and behold I came upon The Squirrel Board, a resource for those who keep them as pets and for those who enjoy watching and/or feeding them.

After I registered and logged into their bulletin board, I found a post about a squirrel exhibiting behavior similar to my furry friend. It was suggested there that the strange behavior might be caused by a head trauma, worms, or poison. I wouldn't be surprised if my squirrel ingested poison as I have a neighbor who puts out rat poison to control chipmunks. Last summer that neighbor's poison nearly took out another neighbor's dog who ate some of it. The dog lived and the owners put up an invisible fence.

In any case I posted a message saying that I had a listing squirrel. And I got several immediate replies. It was suggested that I trap the squirrel and bring it inside, and then once I had it inside let them know and they would tell me how to care for it. When I responded that I didn't think it wise to bring the squirrel inside to join two cats, a cockatiel, and a chinchilla, I was told that there were many animal rescuers in my area who would love to take in and tend to the needs of the squirrel. I was then sent a list of these people, and I called the one who lives not too far from me. I left a message and we will see if she calls back.

I was also strongly encouraged to not call Animal Control, as they would simply destroy the animal. I won't, if I can find someone to help him out. I hate to see him suffering.

The Face of Jesus

I received an email inquiry asking me what Jesus looked like. I remembered that several years ago a magazine had done an article about this and posted a picture. I couldn't remember off-hand what magazine it was, but a Google search took me to Popular Mechanics, of all places, and there it was. The article is here.

Where is the blond hair and blue eyes?

10 Lessons from a Cancer Survivor

New York Times Editor Dana Jennings shares his lessons. Among them:

2) Doctors forget to share the gory details. After my prostate was removed, my testicles swelled to the size of shot-puts — bright, red shot-puts — and stayed that way for days. Nobody told me to expect this condition, and only ice brought relief. (Conversely, now that I’m undergoing hormonal therapy, my testicles are shrinking.)

3) Insurance can cause more stress than cancer. The goal of your insurer — no matter how singular or complex your case is — is to try to turn you into a statistical cliché, a cipher, in the face of your very human flesh-and-blood disease. In the months after my diagnosis, as my wife and I struggled to find the right pair of highly-skilled hands to perform my potentially difficult surgery, wrestling with my insurer caused me more grief, stress and depression than my cancer did. In our modern health-care-industrial-complex — and I’m talking about the bureaucrats who try to herd you into the cheapest cattle car available, not the nurses and doctors who are on the front lines — the emphasis is neither on health nor care, but on the bottom line. It’s our job, as patients, to resist with all our strength.

7) Cancer can be a punch line. I learned pretty quickly, with my wife and sons, that the phrase, “I’ve got cancer,” wasn’t a bad punch line — as in: “You take out the dog. I’ve got cancer” or “You answer the phone. I’ve got cancer” or “I ‘call’ the TV to watch ‘Monday Night Football.’ I’ve got cancer.” They’d all roll their eyes, laugh … then go do what I asked.

8) Home remedies are essential to cancer recovery. There is no better post-op therapy on a sweltering July day than a cold glass of lemonade, a transcendent oldie on the CD player — say, “Doggin’ Around” by Jackie Wilson — a stack of comic books at hand (“The Incredible Hulk,” “The Mighty Thor”) and the grace of a funny and compassionate visitor.

How Well Do You Know Your Civics?

You can take your civics test here and see if you are more knowledgeable than the average citizen. The test was administered to 2500 citizens by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute over the phone. 71% of those tested scored less than 60% on the test. I missed one, but it would have been more challenging to take the test over the phone and not have the multiple choice answers to look at.

Those Christians, 'at it' again!

I see that the congregational sex challenge is back. This time a church in a Texas is "taking the marriage cure" according to this article in the New York Times.

Last year we all read about the 30 day sex challenge another congregation. This new one in Texas was for one week only. The shorter time frame presents so many possibilities for punch lines I won't even bother to go there and let you make up your own!

As I was reading the article about this newest sex challenge, I wondered how this all meshes with The Love Dare premise from the current box office movie Fireproof. I drug my S.O. to see this movie on our date night a couple weeks ago. While the movie's heavy doses of "hellfire and brimstone" theology made it hard to watch sometimes, the underlying premise was a very good one--sometimes you've got to dig very deep to forgive and it almost always requires you to get beyond your own selfishness to look at things from the perspective of the other person in the relationship.

To me, taking The Sex Challenge with your S.O. without first going through The Love Dare, seems a whole lot like church-sanctioned prostitution.

The Bible, Racism, and Homosexuality

GetReligion takes note of the changes underway in some conservative religious institutions in regards to their understanding of reading cultural mores into the Bible. At Bob Jones University:

The private fundamentalist Christian school that was founded in 1927 said its rules on race were shaped by culture instead of the Bible, according to a statement posted Thursday on the university’s Web site.

The university in northwestern South Carolina, with about 5,000 students, didn’t begin admitting black students until nearly 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling found public segregated schools were unconstitutional.

“We failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry. Though no known antagonism toward minorities or expressions of racism on a personal level have ever been tolerated on our campus, we allowed institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful,” the statement said.

From Furnam University:

Vaughn CroweTipton, Furman University chaplain, said there has been a long debate about whether the Bible condones slavery or discrimination. Most communities, he said, have decided biblical references to slavery were a reflection of contemporary culture.

“We can say ‘No, that was for them and not for us,’” CroweTipton said. Scholars and the faithful, CroweTipton said, are having a similar debate about the role of women in society. “We struggle to understand which of the texts we read are culturally bound.”

The school had used the Bible to justify discrimination in the past, such as in a 1998 letter to a writer who questioned the school’s ban on interracial dating. Then, school officials noted that God had created oceans to keep men apart, as well as ethnic, cultural and language barriers.

Little by little the circle of God's love becomes more open. For this we can be grateful. Is it not painfully obvious that the biblical passages that talk about homosexuality need to be seen in the same light? There is more biblical justification for slavery in the Bible than there is condemnation of homosexuality. Both views reflected cultural understandings of the day.

Conservative Christians can admit cultural biases regarding slavery and racism today. Thankfully. Let's pray for the day when they "get it" about homosexuality. Sometimes it just amazes me that they don't see the connection.

An Ordinary Christian Speaks

To the Onion:

I'm here to tell you there are lots of Christians who aren't anything like the preconceived notions you may have. We're not all into "turning the other cheek." We don't spend our days committing random acts of kindness for no credit. And although we believe that the moral precepts in the Book of Leviticus are the infallible word of God, it doesn't mean we're all obsessed with extremist notions like "righteousness" and "justice."

My faith in the Lord is about the pure, simple values: raising children right, saying grace at the table, strictly forbidding those who are Methodists or Presbyterians from receiving communion because their beliefs are heresies, and curing homosexuals. That's all. Just the core beliefs. You won't see me going on some frothy-mouthed tirade about being a comfort to the downtrodden.

I'm a normal Midwestern housewife. I believe in the basic teachings of the Bible and the church. Divorce is forbidden. A woman is to be an obedient subordinate to the male head of the household. If a man lieth down with another man, they shall be taken out and killed. Things everybody can agree on, like the miracle of glossolalia that occurred during Pentecost, when the Apostles were visited by the Holy Spirit, who took the form of cloven tongues of fire hovering just above their heads. You know, basic common sense stuff.

But that doesn't mean I think people should, like, forgive the sins of those who trespass against them or anything weird like that.

We're not all "Jesus Freaks" who run around screaming about how everyone should "Judge not lest ye be judged," whine "Blessed are the meek" all the time, or drone on and on about how we're all equal in the eyes of God! Some of us are just trying to be good, honest folks who believe the unbaptized will roam the Earth for ages without the comfort of God's love when Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior returns on Judgment Day to whisk the righteous off to heaven.

Now, granted, there are some Christians on the lunatic fringe who take their beliefs a little too far. Take my coworker Karen, for example. She's way off the deep end when it comes to religion: going down to the homeless shelter to volunteer once a month, donating money to the poor, visiting elderly shut-ins with the Meals on Wheels program—you name it!

But believe me, we're not all that way. The people in my church, for the most part, are perfectly ordinary Americans like you and me. They believe in the simple old-fashioned traditions—Christmas, Easter, the slow and deliberate takeover of more and more county school boards to get the political power necessary to ban evolution from textbooks statewide. That sort of thing.

We oppose gay marriage as an abomination against the laws of God and America, we're against gun control, and we fervently and unwaveringly believe that the Jews, Muslims, and all on earth who are not born-again Pentecostalists are possessed by Satan and should be treated as such.

When it comes down to it, all we want is to see every single member of the human race convert to our religion or else be condemned by a jealous and wrathful God to suffer an eternity of agony and torture in the Lake of Fire!

Brew Story

The New Yorker explores the rise and fall and resurrection of the craft brew business. First a great opening:

Elephants, like many of us, enjoy a good malted beverage when they can get it. At least twice in the past ten years, herds in India have stumbled upon barrels of rice beer, drained them with their trunks, and gone on drunken rampages. (The first time, they trampled four villagers; the second time they uprooted a pylon and electrocuted themselves.)

Then the brew story:

America used to be full of odd beers. In 1873, the country had some four thousand breweries, working in dozens of regional and ethnic styles. Brooklyn alone had nearly fifty. Beer was not only refreshing but nutritious, it was said—a “valuable substitute for vegetables,” as a member of the United States Sanitary Commission put it during the Civil War. The lagers brewed by Adolphus Busch and Frederick Pabst were among the best. In 1878, Maureen Ogle notes in her recent book “Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer,” Busch’s St. Louis Lager took on more than a hundred European beers at a competition in Paris. The lager came home with the gold, causing an “immense sensation,” in the words of a reporter from the Times.

Then came Prohibition, followed hard by industrialization. Beer went from barrel to bottle and from saloon to home refrigerator, and only the largest companies could afford to manufacture and distribute it. A generation raised on Coca-Cola had a hard time readjusting to beer’s bitterness, and brewers diluted their recipes accordingly. In 1953, Miller High Life was dismissed by one competitor as a beer for “women and beginners.” Within a decade, most other beers were just as flavorless.

Beer has lagged well behind wine and organic produce in the ongoing reinvention of American cuisine. Yet the change over the past twenty years has been startling. In 1965, the United States had a single craft brewery: Anchor Brewing, in San Francisco. Today, there are nearly fifteen hundred. In liquor stores and upscale supermarkets, pumpkin ales and chocolate stouts compete for cooler space with wit beers, weiss beers, and imperial Pilsners. The King of Beers, once served in splendid isolation at many bars, is now surrounded by motley bottles with ridiculous names, like jesters at a Renaissance fair: SkullSplitter, Old Leghumper, Slam Dunkel, Troll Porter, Moose Drool, Power Tool, He’brew, and Ale Mary Full of Taste.

Still true about Miller High Life. Then there is the odd ball angle:

He made a stout with roasted chicory and St.-John’s-wort (“The world’s only antidepressant depressant,” he called it). While other brewers were dyeing their beer green for St. Patrick’s Day, Calagione brewed his with blue-green algae. “It tasted like appetizing pond scum,” he says. “The first sip, you were like, ‘Wow, that tasted like pond scum. But you know what? I kind of want a second sip.’ ”

And the spiritual angle:

The grain had been cooked to mash by now, and a thick, lacy foam had bubbled to the surface. It was here that A. E. Housman’s famous lines—“Malt does more than Milton can / To justify God’s ways to man”—were borne out.

I'm ready for Sunday. But first, today, there is the Penn State/Michigan State game, which will be enhanced by a Sprecher Black Bavarian Lager. It's sublime.

How do Cells Crawl?

From Scienceblogs:

There are so many great stories waiting to be discovered when you approach biology from the view point of the cell. Remember a cell is the smallest unit of life. You cannot divide it further and obtain an entity capable of reproduction and self-renewal. The cell is when chemistry meets biology. Look at every major research institution and there are loads of people working on problems involving cells, in fact there are probably more people studying cells then there are people studying physics and chemistry combined. And the problems addressed by cell biology are the very essence of basic research.

How do cells talk to each other? How do they divide, how do they KNOW when to divide? How do cells commit suicide? How do cells monitor their size, levels of energy, amount of metabolites? What do all of these processes have to do with cancer?

Perhaps one of the most fascinating stories that would be excellent fodder for an article aimed at the lay reader would be how do cells crawl. There is something primal about motion, this process is central to life and it is incredible that a bag of molecules can manage to crawl around towards and away from cues found in the environment that surrounds them. Think of it, a cell is nothing but a bag, densely packed with all sorts of bizarre machines and filaments that act together in concert to propel a cell forward. The writer countered that such an article would describe how protein A binds to protein B that then adds a phosphate to protein C ... and reading the primary literature you would think hat that is all there is. But I have to say that this type of analysis is comparable to describing how a car operates by analyzing every nut and bolt. Biology after all is the study of minutia, and there are so many details that the only way to study cell biological processes is to dissect it down. Very rarely do you have one paper describing a novel finding in cell biology that encapsulates the whole process. You need to immerse yourself in the literature, talk to people doing the work, and all of a sudden a larger picture develops. At that point you realize that there is a better way of describing a motile cell, just like there is a better way of describing how a car works by using broader concepts.

It involves broader concepts such as the flow of actin filaments, the power of myosin motors, and the cellular clutch which involves these huge structures called focal adhesions that mediate interactions between the actin and the solids that are found on the exterior of the cell. To really describe the interior of a cell, we need to temporarily ditch the car metaphor and switch to something much more dynamic the activity inside of a motile cell is comparable to a ocean tide of actin meshwork. Actin filaments are assembled right underneath the leading edge of the motile membrane and are swept back to the rear of the cell by myosin motors. This tidal wave pushes everything including the nucleus towards the back of the cell. The actin meshork then collapses and is contracted together into long filaments called stress fibers. To generate traction the actin is hooked upto these large focal adhesions that line the sides of the membrane and help the cell cling to solids from the outside. The attachment transforms the rearward motion of actin into a forward push on the leading edge. Yes I've just described a clutch - and with that w move back to the car analogy.

At this point you can end the piece. But there is much more. It turns out that this actin flow and the molecular machine that generates it can be found in almost any cell that is responding to some extracellular stimulus The core components of this biological process are used by almost every single eukaryotic cell that wants to change its shape, whether it be a crawling amoeba, a migrating neuron, a budding yeast or even a plasmodium invading a red blood cell. In fact these components accomplish a much more basic task than allowing for cell to move or simply to change shape, this ancient machinery allows cells to reorganize their inner structure in response to a cue coming from one discrete point on its periphery. This process is called cell polarization.

I didn't know that cells crawl. It is really humbling - and scary sometimes - to realize how little I know.

Let Go, Let God

Here's the offering from The First 30 Days newsletter today. I love it! It's worth sharing. I will quickly add as a caveat that you must care that the result doesn't turn out too wrong or you will not be putting any bread on the table, or raising self-sufficient children, etc..! I know so many people (and sometimes myself) who just need to "let go" and get out of their own way. Wasn't there a cute catch phrase back in the 80s or 90s...Let Go, Let God?

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Who Cares If It Turns Out Right?

"It is what it is" feels like the most overused phrase of the past couple years, but it's also the most apropos for this idea. When we adopt that kind of attitude in the right circumstance, great things can happen.

Take work, for instance. Much as we try and manage every little detail of every little project, things just don't always go according to plan. Whether you work for someone else or have started your own business, it helps to take the pressure off by remembering that you can't force things to go exactly as you want them to.

It also helps to step away. Many good and even great ideas come from the times when we allow our minds to unconsciously work around a problem. Think about it—how many "A-ha!" moments have come on a long run, in the shower or while you were otherwise engaged?

Letting go is one of those things you can apply to business and daily life in general. Sometimes, the process is much more exciting and worthwhile than the end result. It's where the real learning is! So worry less about whether something turns out right, and try to focus more on what you're experiencing as you get there.

Winter Has Arrived in Minnesota

Just back from a run at Ritter Farm Park and saw people out on the ice at Lake Marion and Buck Hill Ski Resort open for business. Winter is here.

Friday with Sampson and Sadie

Watching a feline intruder in the backyard and lounging in the sun.