Learning to Do with Less: “I Will Arise and Go Now,” by Ogden Nash
Post a comment telling me what you are doing in this present economic crisis to save costs and do with less. Continue reading »
Posts in December, 2008
Iraqi Hurls Shoes at President Bush
Yesterday, during a news conference in Iraq, a man threw his shoes at the President of the United States of America (watch the BBC video). President Bush certainly knows how to duck. His comments are appropriate coming from an American cultural perspective and perhaps the most effective deflection of what is in Iraqi culture an insult. The other Iraqi journalists present who were quick to tell the President that this one man’s insult does not speak for the Iraqi people, disagree with President Bush on one matter: Bush said that the throwing of the shoes is no big deal; Every Iraqi in the room knew and felt that it was a big deal. Recently I preached through the Book of Ruth at Evergreen Presbyterian Church in Beaverton, Oregon, and what one does with his shoe/sandal in semitic cultures is a big deal. Does President Bush know the significance of the shoe insult? I don’t know (we have been accustomed to thinking that he doesn’t know much). But what is certain is that our President knows how to rise above personal conflict to serve the greater purposes thrust upon all of us in this world.
Welcome to the USA Zoo - Which Side of the Fence are We on? “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”
As you know from this morning’s news, Homeland Security is racing to complete a 670 mile fence along the Mexican border. In my lifetime the Berlin Wall came tumbling down - one of the finest moments in modern world history! (It was erected in August 1961, three months before I was born - all 96 miles of it.) The iron curtain evaporated - a freedom few of us hoped to witness in our lifetime! There is something wholesome and heartening about walls coming down. Our Poet Laureate, Robert Frost, gave to us “Mending Wall,” preserving the American adage, “Good fences make good neighbors.” It sounds prudent but Frost rightly questions the need for walls, opening his poem, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” He repeats the line again later in the poem, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall/ That wants it down….” There is something within me that wants it down. I wonder what the source of that longing could be? Continue reading »