Shacked Up

    I'm not one of those people to run out and buy a best seller. I'm cheap. So I didn't read "The Shack" when it was a best seller, I read it when I found it at a garage sale for 50 cents.  I found the book delightful for many reasons, one of which being that I like allegories:  "Pilgrim's Progress", "Chronicles of Mansoul", "Hind's Feet in High Places", and especially children's allegories like "Riddle of the Outlaw Bear".  Allegories, like parables, present truth in a simple, understandable form. One of the reasons I liked "The Shack" is that it shook up my stereotypes by presenting God, the Father, in the first part of the book as a black woman.  This was for the benefit of the main character Mack, who had been abused by his father and did not relate well to the fatherhood of God until he had forgiven his own.  That idea forced me to remember that, although God is always represented as He in the Bible, God is a spirit.  He is as much an anthropomorphism as saying God has arms or eyes.  This is God's way of helping material man relate to an immaterial, spirit being.  I found the idea comforting because, though I knew I would feel no disappointment in heaven, I thought my need for a mother might go forever unfulfilled.  Releasing God from the limitation of masculinity gives me hope that He will fulfill that role in my life.
     "The Shack" presents the trinity in relateable, human form. Those who are offended by that should remember that "The Shack" is not a theology book and that presenting Himself in terms we can relate to was God's idea in the first place. The book made me realize my high view of God was making Him so distant from me that I was not devoting much time to thinking about Him, much less like Him. What Christians often settle for is a grand concept of God but a small reality, "The Shack" turns that around. I was faithfully performing according to my preconceptions of Christian devotion, but I wasn't seeking more intimacy with God and that is the devotion He wants. I have been a Christian for decades and somewhere along the way began to canonize my preconceptions--to write holy on the lid and put God in a box. The book contains a lot of deep understanding, simply presented. I happen to be fluent in Simple. I was especially convicted by the chapter about judging. However lofty our theology, judging God by human standards, even to justify Him, demeans Him. I got shook up in "The Shack" and I plan to come back.        

Musical Phan

     Call me a romantic, but I am a fan of musicals.  I wish life was a musical.  But I also understand the literal, logical, boring people who complain that nobody would sing like that in real life.  For those people, I have written my own anti-musical words, but they are to the tune of "Phantom of the Opera" so you have to have heard that musical to fit the lyrics with the melody.  This way I can gratify and irritate the anti-musical at the same time.

     Why do we sing our words, instead of talk?

Why should we dance our way, when we could walk?

Wouldn't it save us time if we could say

a homicidal madman's after us

let's run away?

How often do you see in real life

songs burst spontaneously

from man and wife?

What dire emergency would not get worse

by s-t-o-p-p-i-n-g to compose a melody

or write a verse?

   Now for the big finish:

I t-h-i-n-k that death itself would be more fun

if it was sung.

Oh no, I'm singing much too high now.

No, I'm singing much too high now.

O-o-h, n-o-o

 too high.

Raising the Roof

     It is not uncommon in our family to celebrate Labor Day by doing actual labor.  That was certainly the case this year as we gathered at our daughter's house in Butte to help her and Luke shingle their roof. Reed and I arrived Thursday night, Will and his girlfriend Emily on Friday, and Tracy, Friday evening after work. Friday's project was tearing off the assorted layers of old shingles and was assisted by pastor-shanghaied students  from the mining college.  Although the day was a long, ab workout of shoveling crumbling shingles, there is nothing like real wind to give an outdoor project a second wind, especially when the wind is accompanied by thunder, lightening and RAIN.  There are enough projects to do on that house without adding leaking ceilings, so the roofers were highly motivated to get the protective sheeting on the roofee, especially over the unpatched holes. 
     The holes were taken care of the next morning and the roofing was completed by Sunday afternoon, ahead of schedule.  Enough ahead of schedule to allow time for the weight lifting challenge of replacing the heavy four by eight foot picture window with its newer, much lighter, replacement.  Since I am both naturally and deliberately lacking in construction skills, I removed the roofing detritus, which any moron could do, and cooked, at which I am skilled.  It is always a blessing to be with, and help, our children, but the joy of seeing them helping each other was like winning the Nobel prize for parenting. As I've stated before, we had modest goals when we were raising our children--we wanted to survive them and tried to help them suvive each other.
     The reward for the hard labor of canning is the sound of the tiny pop of the lid.  The reward for the hard work of parenting is the sound of your children working and laughing together as the good friends you always hoped they would become. I don't know how often we will spend Labor Day raising the roof, but I hope to continue the tradition of labors of love.

Reaching August

     This is a poem I posted on Facebook and forgot to post here. I especially like this one because it is the most concise expression I have written about the feelings I have experienced every August we have lived here. My main criteria for my poetry is that it be accurate, this expresses my thoughts accurately.

Reaching August

In northwest Montana

August will sometimes

reach thin, cool fingers

to the burning brow of summer,

with wind whispered promises

of autumn rest.

Ten Reasons Why I Love Democrats

1.  I love Democrats because they can take an idea that hasn't worked in any country in which it has been tried and still think it will work here. You've got to admire that kind of optimism.

2.  Republicans need Democrats for the same reason wives need husbands, in any given argument somebody has to be wrong.

3.  I love Democrats because without their ideology to oppose, Republicans would wind up just like them.

4.  Democrats want Americans to have "a chicken in every pot" and, sometimes, just pot.

5.  Democrats want every American, regardless of income, to have equal access to lousy healthcare.

6.  If there were no Democrats, the news media would not know whom to be biased towards.

7.  The Democratic party is the party of the common man--if the common man is a movie star, liberal university professor, lawyer and/or wealthy.

8.  Jesus said, "the poor you will always have with you", Democratic entitlement programs help fulfill that scripture.

9.  If Democrats were really the voice of the poor, they wouldn't have enough money to tell us that.

10. I love Democrats because they have beautiful ideals. It isn't their fault that the ideals don't work with actual humans.

Cutting U.S. in Thirds

     I read an interesting article on Facebook last week stating that Barak Obama's perspective is that of the third world.  That could explain the infamous "You didn't build this" gaffe.  My only personal experience with a third world country was last year's visit to Guatemala, but I was unable to get in touch with the man-on-the-street mentality because I didn't want to be robbed or killed by the man on the street.  Most of my knowledge of third, or possibly fourth, world perspective comes from time spent with my college friend Chuku.  He was from Nigeria, a country whose economy is based entirely on check cashing scams.  Chuku was from the Ibo tribe whose scam-impaired people owned and ran many business.  From time to time another tribe or Muslim group would decide "Hey, you built this, but I want it", so they would kill or drive out the owners and take it over.  Within a short time the businesses were no longer profitable and the buildings in bad repair.  What the occupiers did not realize is that the wealth did not come from the business, and certainly not the building, it came from the enterprise of the workers.
     The third world perspective was further explained to me by a missionary to the primitive Bantu people of Africa.  The Bantu believe the world has a finite amount of goods.  If I have more than you do, I have stolen your share.  From that perspective I can see why other nations would resent American wealth.  We are hoarding the money.  In other beliefs they are just like us--they believe in vampires.  Okay, except for a resurgence in the entertainment industry, most of us don't believe in vampires, but the Bantu do.  Not the blood sucking kind, but the life force suckers.  Not only are foreigners stealing their wealth, but their fellow countrymen are stealing the energy that might bring them wealth and influence.
    They also believe nothing happens by chance, if something bad, like sickness, happens someone must be punished for it.  That makes Africa a very dangerous place to have a car accident, because it was obviously a car intentional and the car, driver, or both must pay.  I would laugh at this primitive, superstitious view of the world if we didn't do the same thing here.  The difference here is that we have more lawyers, so instead of beating on people, we sue them.  In America there are no accidents, it is someone's fault that there was no warning label telling you not to eat your toothbrush, or that coffee is hot, or not to sleep in the refrigerator.  Of course we are not motivated by primitive superstition, we are motivated by greed. Even before court tv and "American Idol", our nation was full of people willing to admit they were morons if it might get them money.
     But I digress.  One of the reasons people from all nations have been willing to die to get here is to pursue the American dream--that by hard work you can achieve anything.  The wealth that we can't share with the third world is that vision.  I hope election 2012 doesn't change that.

The Reason Why

     When bad things happen to us, we seek desperately to understand why in the, probably futile, hope that knowing the reason will make the trial easier to bear. I call this a rush to judgment. The phrase rush to judgment usually refers to finding someone guilty before any evidence has been produced. Legally and morally this is wrong, but the media are not burdened by such minutiae. In American culture we frequently have the opposite also, a rush to acquit, where some individuals are quick to publicly forgive a criminal whose offense was not against them.  Being soft hearted is not illegal, but the only ones entitled to forgive a school shooter, for instance, are those directly affected by their crime. But I use the term rush to judgment to mean Christians who start proclaiming the reason for their suffering when it has barely begun.
    Tracy had a grade school friend whose family had moved from Denver to Kalispell where the father took over an insurance agency.  Months later the expected clients had not materialized and the home they had bought at the peak of the housing market was worth less than they paid for it.  I talked to the mother shortly after they realized they would need to return to Colorado and she had already come up with THE REASON this trial was happening.  Such rush to judgment is our nature but it is like thinking you are seeing from the top of the mountain when you have barely begun the hike.
     Job had plenty of reasons to complain about his suffering and friends who rushed to judgement with their own faulty theology, but it was still not a good idea to demand that God explain himself.  It's too bad Job couldn't read the prologue to his own book because that is where the plot is explained.  God did not explain his reasons to Job. What He did explain was why Job had no right to ask. God is pretty understanding about our weaknesses, but one of those is that we probably couldn't comprehend THE REASON if He gave it to us. And probably there are many REASONS because God is not in the business of wasting things--especially our suffering.
    I can now look back on things that happened to me years ago and find some purpose in them. For instance, my mom's schizophrenic delusions were one of the things God used to get me out of the Mormon church so I could hear the gospel, but there were a thousand other things he used to bring me to the point of accepting Christ.  I have as much understanding of what God is doing in my life as an ant on a chessboard understands chess.  I have been a Christian long enough to know we may never know the reason for our suffering.  Besides, I have never once demanded an explanation for why God is blessing me. Ours is not to reason why, and probably, we should not try.