This is potential good news for impoverished nations. Probably not so good for the American farmer in the short run, but good news for everyone in the long run, and way overdue in terms of social equality and fair trade.

WTO Trade Talks

"I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was feed my sheep; not try experiments on my rats, or even, teach my performing dogs new tricks."

-----C.S. Lewis, "Letters to Malcolm: Cheifly On Prayer"

I was riding around with John this afternoon helping him compile food for David and Carianne's wedding on Sunday. He was telling me about this new restaurant supply shop he found. He and the owner apparently hit it off while talking about various different types of truffle oil. When John explained that he knew the difference between white and black truffles, the owner's face lit up. He immediately reached under the counter and pulled out a special vile saying, "I'm not supposed to sell this to you, but this is the extract that we use to make the best truffle oil. Take some for your wedding and mix it with some other innocuous form of oil like grape seed oil."

John paused at this point in the conversation, looked out the window and then he said, with all the emphasis of a priest handing you a communion wafer, "Some day, I'm gonna buy duck from that guy."

It was hilarious.

Bill Mallonee from Vigilantes of Love is probably one of the top three Christian lyricists I've ever come across. . .


Parting Shot, VOL

words of wisdom quotable quotes
reader's digest sayings for those losing hope
why do i feel so mocked by the hands of the clock
well anchor me down to the solid rock
i want to leave you with something but i almost forgot
was it a closing statement or a parting shot

well you lie on the flowers here in the wind
i've twisted it all with original sin
there's a knowledge i traded a long time ago
well i bartered it off for these rags i call clothes
i learned how to fake it and remake it on cue
but i swear i never stopped needing you

there's a question forming out here in the dark
in the heavy air all around my heart
now laden with consequence chain link fence
and shot through with all manner of lies
i've been trapped in and caught

and the world like a tempest in your ears doth roar
and the flesh wants to dress up and play your whore
and the devil wants to cast all manner of doubt
on the real lover with the key dying to let you out
from the bars that you fashioned with your stolen clout
well i may be confused but i'll play my hunch
did it feel like a kiss or a counter-punch

evening is closing and the kid drones on and on and on
well get out your car keys i hope this is his last song
wait it's bigger than life it is gracious and grand
something a child readily understands

hey you know i sure could use a new suit of clothes
see i'm gone all threadbare and my shoes are worn
now the flowers are growing right out of these bones
and i hear the trumpet sounding like louis armstrong
when the great divorce happens hide me in your song
though i don't deserve it and i don't belong
i want to leave you with something will you take it to heart
are you a closing statement or a parting shot

"The difference between an admirer [of Christ] and a follower [of Christ] still remains, no matter where you are. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, gives up nothing, will not reconstruct his life, will not be what he admires, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires. Not so with the follower. No, no. The follower aspires with all his strength, with all his will to be what he admires."

-----Soren Kierkegaard

"Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel."

-----C.S. Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters"

I think this movie and its soundtrack are going to be great.

I like the teaser trailer best. That's what I linked to above. If you just want the movie site go here

The film is written, directed and acted in by Zach Braff, the star of Scrubs.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention Natalie Portman is in it?

Back by popular demand. . .here is the impromptu salad dressing recipe. Thanks Karen!

In a sauce pan on high heat combine. . .

1/8 stick of butter
tsp lime juice
1/8 red onion chopped/carmelized
"splash" of red wine
tbsp brown sugar
salt
pepper

Pour over chilled salad. Let me know if you have success with it or if it's just a fluke.

THREE KINDS OF [PEOPLE]

There are three kinds of people in the world. The first class is of those who live simply for their own sake and pleasure, regarding Man and nature as so much raw material to be cut up into whatever shape may serve them. In the second class are those who acknowledge some other claim upon them--the will of God, the categorical imperative, or the good of society--and honestly try to pursue their own interests no further than this claim will allow. They try to surrender to the higher claim as much as it demands, like men paying a tax, but hope, like other taxpayers, that what is left over will be enough for them to live on. Their life is divided, like a soldier's or a schollboy's life, into time "on parade" and "off parade", "in school" and "out of school". But the third class is of those who can say like St. Paul that for them "to live is Christ". These people have got rid of the tiresome business of adjusting the rival claims of Self altogether. The old egoistic will has been turned round, reconditioned, and made into a new thing. The will of Christ no longer limits theirs; it is theirs. All their time, in belonging to him, belongs also to them, for they are His.

And because there are three classes, any merely twofold division of the world into good and bad is disastrous. It overlooks the fact that the members of the second class (to which most of us belong) are always and necessarily unhappy. The tax which moral conscience levies on our desires does not in fact leave us enough to live on. As long as we are in this class we must either feel guilt because we have not paid the tax or penury because we have. The Christian doctrine that there is no "salvation" by works done according to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. Back or on we must go. But there is no going on simply by our own efforts. If the new Self, the new Will, does not come at His own good pleasure to be born in us, we cannot produce Him synthetically.

The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort--it is to want Him. It is true that the wanting itself would be beyond our power but for one fact. The world is so built that, to help us desert our own satisfactions, they desert us. War and trouble and finally old age take from us one by one all those things that the natural Self hoped for at its setting out. Begging is our only wisdom, and want in the end makes it easier for us to be beggars. Even on those terms the Mercy will receive us.

-----C.S. Lewis, essay from "The Sunday Times" March 21, 1943

"Any time not spent in love is wasted."

-----Goethe, "Torquato Tasso" (1790)

"To think carbs make you fat is wrong. You're fat because you're not exercising. There are some nine million people in this country swimming, running, biking, regurlarly going to the gym, or doing whaever, and no one's been talking to them about their diet. Low-carb diets are exactly what you should NOT do if you're active. Carbs are the fuel that drives your life; suddenly everyone's forgotten this. If you're working out five days a week, you need a minimum 60 percent (daily caloric intake) of carbs a day. You can't just cut carbs--or cut protein or fat, for that matter---like every trendy diet has for the last 20 years. That's dysfunctional. You need them all. To simply blame a food type for us being fat is bullshit."

Amen.

-----Chris Carmichael, coach to Lance Armstrong, from his new book "Food for Fitness"

"It is because we cleave to our opinions rather than to the living God, because self and pride interest themselves for their own vile sakes with that which belongs only to the truth, that we become such fools of logic and temper that we lie in the prison-houses of our own fancies, ideas, and experiences, shut the doors and windows against the entrance of the free spirit, and will not inherit the love of the Father."

"The truth can never be even beheld but by the man who accepts it: the thing, therefore, which you reject, is not that which it seems to you, but a thing good, and altogether beautiful, altogether fit for your gladsome embrace---a thing from which you would not turn away, did you see it as it is, but rush to it, as Dante says, like the wild beast to his den---so eager for the refuge of home."

". . .we are bound by loftiest duty to spread the truth; for that is the saving of men. Do you ask, How spread it, if we are not to talk about it? Friends, I never said, Do not talk about that truth, although I insist upon a better and the only indispensable way: let your light shine. What I said before, and say again, is, Do not talk about the lantern that holds the lamp, but make haste, uncover the light, and let it shine.. . .It is not, Let your good works shine, but, Let your light shine. Let it be the genuine love of your hearts, taking form in true deeds; not the doing of good deeds to prove that your opinions are right. If ye are thus true, your very talk about the truth will be a good work, a shining of the light that is in you. A true smile is a good work, and may do much to reveal the Father who is in heaven; but the smile that is put on for the sake of looking right, or even for the sake of being right, will hardly reveal Him. . .

....understand Him, obey Him, then your light will shine, and your warmth will warm. There is an infection, as in evil, so in good. The better we are, the more men will glorify God."

-----George MacDonald, excerpts from a Sermon preached in the Unitarian Chapel, Essex Street, London, 1879

This, I think, more than anything else, is what gives Lewis a powerful Christian voice:

"It took me as long to acquire inhibitions as others (they say) have taken to get rid of them. That is why I often find myself at such cross-purposes with the modern world: I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans."

-----C.S. Lewis, "Surprised By Joy: The Shape of My Early Life"

"...it's like you take for granted the guys you're hanging out with, your buddies. And then all of a sudden one of them comes up with something that just makes you re-evaluate everything you ever thought about them."

-----Brian Henneman on Jeff Tweedy's songwriting. Taken from "Learning How To Die" by Greg Kot

I just went to the store to get some bacon. When I pulled into the lot, there was a guy a couple spaces down, sitting in his mangled Datsun, putting on gardening gloves. I thought to myself, here we go, the guy's gonna knock off Ralph's while no one's looking with a pair of gardening gloves. No, no. . . .he was getting ready to drive his Z. Too funny.

Secondly, I love my dog. How do I know this? Because I was reading a book the other day where a little girl was narrating, talking about how her Dad always let the water run out of the tap for at least 10 seconds before he would fill the glass for her. This way she would get the best tasting cleanest water possible. She said this was one of the little ways she knew that her Dad loved her. I do this for my dog every day. He may look like a fish, but I love the little crack monkey.

God can no more than an earthly parent be content to have only children: he must have sons and daughters — children of his soul, of his spirit, of his love — not merely in the sense that he loves them, or even that they love him, but in the sense that they love like he loves. For this he does not adopt them; he dies to give them himself, thereby to his own to his heart; he gives them a birth from above; they are born again out of himself and into himself — for he is the one and the all. His children are not his real, true sons and daughters until they think like him, feel with him, judge as he judges, are at home with him, and without fear before him because he and they mean the same thing, love the same things, seek the same ends. For this we are created; it is the one end of our being, and includes all other ends whatever.

-----George MacDonald, Commenting upon Galatians 4:1-7

A little food for thought during this war on terror, as we debate Presidential power and its potential infringement on our civil liberties.

"The Constitution is not, in its application, in all respects the same, in case of rebellion or invasion involving the public safety, as it is in time of profound peace and public security. The constitution itself makes the distinction; and I can no more be persuaded that the Government can take no strong measure in time of rebellion, because it can be shown that the same could not be lawfully taken in time of peace, than I can be persuaded that a particular drug is not good medicine for a sick man, because it can be shown not to be good food for a well one. Nor am I able to appreciate the danger apprehended by the meeting that the American people will, by means of military arrests during the Rebellion, lose the right of Public Discussion, the Liberty of Speech and the Press, the Law of Evidence, Trial by jury and Habeas Corpus, throughout the indefinite peaceful future, which I trust lies before them, any more than I am able to believe that a man could contract so strange an appetite for emetics during temporary illness as to persist in feeding upon them during the remainder of his healthful life."

-----Abraham Lincoln, on his claimed right to suspend Habeas Corpus during the Civil War


"No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of the Constitution's provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false, for the government, within the constitution, has all the powers granted to it which are necessary to preserve its existence."

-----The Supreme Court in response to Lincoln


"Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself to go to pieces, lest that one be violated?"

-----Lincoln's response to the Supreme Court

"In the last scene, between death and ourselves, there is no more pretending; we must talk plain French. . . "
-----Montaigne

I don't think I ever really understood, at a gut level, what Christianity was about. In fact, for most of my life I've had it horribly wrong. What I've learned over the last couple years, via the help of counseling and with the love of good family and friends, is that it's a much more freeing state of affairs than I was brought up to believe.

You see, the bottom line is, we're broken. And I don't mean broken in that candy-ass Sunday school way of speaking, as if brokenness were some humiliated inclination of the affections that you kept trying to foster in your mind. I mean broken like an engine that's blown a rod. I mean broken as part of the definition of who we are, in all the Augustinian sense of the word. Irreparable.

When I was growing up, I internalized the Christian faith as something that made me better, or said differently, as a key to making myself better. I thought you accepted Jesus and all the tumblers just fell into place. I thought that by accepting Jesus one was magically given the ability to have actual victory over one's brokenness. That "you" could in essence make yourself perfect. I honestly thought this is what it meant to be a Christian. This is no doubt due in part to my own narcissistic tendencies, my own desires to master myself and others and to be in control. But I think it's also fair to say that the church instilled a great deal of this bogus thinking in me (because I still hear it preached). I'm not here to point fingers though. You take what you've been given and you learn as you go. What I want to say is this: Pascal was right. The beauty of Christianity is that it at once shows man's greatness and his depravity. In doing so it answers the riddle of the world. We are broken, and our prime worthiness comes in that we are looked upon favorably by God.

The thing that I didn't understand when I was younger was that sin is a part of us. I can no more remove it or make myself better than a frog can fashion wings for flight. I sin like I breathe air. The mystery of faith in Christ is not that you accept Christ and then work harder to be holy. The mystery is that Christ's love is given for you in spite of your constant failure. It is this acceptance, and only this accecptance, that motivates and moves us to love one another, to do as He said (however lamely), and to be at peace. It is our humility in accepting this that makes us perfect. Anything else is just background noise of our own making.

"[People] are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, 'If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it."

Mere Christianity

Brando Is Dead

"I am myself," he once declared, "and if I have to hit my head against a brick wall to remain true to myself, I will do it."

I think he did that quite a lot.

Jon Krakauer's book, "Under the Banner of Heaven," appears straightforward enough. On the surface it's the story of two men who commit a gruesome murder of a mother and child in the name of Fundamentalist Mormonism. Why? Because "God told them to." (Fundamentalist Mormonism {henceforth FM}; that wacky religious aberration that condones polygamy and relies on the seemingly contradictory staples of "personal revelation" and cult-like ecclesiastical hierarchy).

But this is not nearly the whole story. As you start to delve deeper into the book you begin to realize that this is about much more than FM's; it's about you and I. It's about the religious mindset and how we often have the tendency to confuse "our" voices for the voice of God. The fact that this book is about Mormons is, in the end, inconsequential because it could very well apply to some Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Make no mistake; this book is troubling. Troubling because I know people who believe in God like the FM's do, and troubling because I was once one of those people. This is what makes it a good book. Reading it is like clapping dried-mud boots together. It clears away the debris of human religious hubris and forces you to look again at some things long since left behind, and some things you may still desperately cling to.

The book traces the Mormon religion from its early days to the present. From the discovery of the tablets by Joseph Smith, to the defining moments of the religion where it almost sank into oblivion but didn't. It looks at the charisma of Smith and his successors, the fights with the US government, the eventual settling of the church in Utah, and the fundamentalist schisms of the 19th/20th centuries.

I don’t want to go into why I think Mormonism is a seriously flawed religion. You can find that out for yourself. What I want to talk about is how this book made me think about Fundamentalist Christianity and the religious mindset in general. This book didn’t give me answers. All it gave me were questions. Questions like. . ..if Mormons feel the same way about their religious experience as I do, could I possibly be wrong? I think we all take some creative license in religion don't we? To a greater or lesser degree all of us make ourselves into little gods in one way or another. We confuse ourselves with God. Let me give you some examples. Someone might say the following: “If I'm depressed, it's the devil who's tempting me.” When who knows if the devil has anything to do with it or not? Or “If I don't feel happy while singing praise songs it's because I don't love God enough, or I'm not good enough.” Or “If I keep sinning, God must not exist.” Or “If I can't be perfect, God can't accept me.” Or “If I hear voices in my head telling me to kill my wife, God must be telling me to kill my wife.” How do we distinguish our voice from the voice of God, especially when that voice is mediated through other people? How do we ever get one inch outside our proper skin? How do we adjudicate between various religious revelations?

As I sat back and thought about the problems this book raised, I came to only one conclusion. We are on our own in our search for truth and God, and many of us are deceiving ourselves. This is not a comforting thought.