"Father tried to sell 'Slumdog Millionaire' girl"

so sad.

What Does War Have to Teach Us?

For a while, I've been searching for a good single volume history of what was known as The Great War. I'm mostly through Barbara Tuchman's celebrated The Guns of August (1962) and am finding it helpful, detailed, and insightful. The book was so influential in its day in its description of how one decision leading to another leading to another can result in a conflagration such as that of WWI, that JFK had his staff read it during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But it only focuses on the year 1914 and I have been looking for something more comprehensive. I believe that I have found that volume in GJ Meyer's A World Undone - The Story of the Great War, 1914 - 1918.

The drama that was the Second World War has eclipsed the memory of WWI in the modern mind. This is too bad as we have much to learn from this first great European outbreak. The results of that first war were staggering. Death estimates of military and civilian deaths in the WWI range from 9 to 16 million. The percentage of European populations lost was devastating. 3 out of every 4 Russion soldiers, for example, were killed, wounded, captured, or went missing. 10% of the Britain Expeditionary Force was killed. Nearly 45% of the Rumanian force died during the war.

At the same time I'm reading these 2 books on WWI, I'm also working my way through Shelby Foote's very engaging three volume The Civil War: A Narrative.

This is a new kind of reading to me as long-time readers of this blog know that I've focused my reading on historical biography, which I read for lessons of leadership. But studying these wars is giving me a better context to evaluate individual performance in these crises.

More to come.

Thank you God!

Skye does not have reflux!

Thanks to those of you who prayed!!!

prayer request for skye-baby

At 2 PM today, Skye's going to take the rather uncomfortable VCUG test which will let us know if her October 2008 surgery was successful. Please pray that the test will reveal no outstanding problems in her remaining kidney (or the nonfunctioning one that she still has). Please also pray our dear one will be as comfortable as possible. Thanks.

Background:

• 7 Oct 2008 update
  
  
• 27 Sept 2008 update
  
  
• 13 Aug 2008 update
  
  
• Big Picture History Update posted on 4 Apr 2008
  

I guarantee that this...

...will make you smile.

A Wonderful Easter Morning Surprise

Our alarm clock went off at 4:45 AM. A couple of years ago we discovered a sunrise service at nearby Sugarloaf Mountain and I figured we'd leave 75 mins before the 6:15 AM start just to play it safe. But the announcer on our alarm clock informed us that the temperature would be in the 30's so Beth said, "Forget it; that's too cold" and in a very un-spiritual manner, I happily rolled over to continue my slumber.

But Beth couldn't go back to sleep and immediately started wondering if she would regret her decision. She loves Easter Sunrise Services and we always go. So at 5:15 she says,

"Let's get up and go."

"But honey, none of us [5 of us] have gotten up and to get there right on time we'd have to leave immediately."

"Oh, we'll be little late; let's go!"

[with some sullenness] "Ok."

We didn't get out the door until 5:45 AM and I figured we'd get to the service about the time it was wrapping up. Beth asked for my opinion as to our timeliness and I revealed my thinking. She asked for my Blackberry and started struggling through pages not optimized for mobile viewing looking for a closer alternative sunrise service. We exited Interstate 70 to head to Damascas, MD where we had seen an incomplete page indicating that there might be a sunrise service there.

Then we saw a little sign on a country road advertising a nearby sunrise service. We couldn't believe our "luck."

It's about 6:10 AM. We drive a couple of miles and notice that to our left is a beautiful vista of rolling hills where the Sun was scheduled to crack the eastern horizon at 6:36 AM. We come upon a small group of mostly elderly folks standing right by the road immediately in front of a small and quite lovely United Methodist Church. Happily, we had stumbled upon Howard Chapel, a 149 years old church community in Mt. Airy, MD.

The congregants were quite dressed up; we're not. Nevertheless, I whip our van into their parking lot and we quietly make our way to join the gathering of maybe 30 or 35 folks. After a few remarks, the Sun beautifully rose and, after pausing to observe this, we step into the building, which was built in 1880 and hear a rousing brief meditation from the woman who apparently was their pastor.

Beth and I attend a megachurch in the Baltimore suburbs. I think they had 7 Easter services today. The production values are high. But there was something refreshing about walking back into a church culture I stopped experiencing on a weekly basis thirty years ago. And I don't mean to imply that high production makes a worship service insincere. But our experience this AM was raw, relatively unprocessed, and felt real. I was struck by how the fact of Jesus' rising from the dead transcends culture.

He is risen!

It was a marveolous and serendipitous Easter Morning surprise that we will not soon forget.

Ten Books

from Jesus Outside the Box:

"This can be a quick one! Don't take too long to think about it! Ten books you've read that will always stick with you! First ten you can recall in no more than 15 minutes! Then tag ten others!"

My 10 Books

Fallen Angel

This new film about Larry Norman, who passed away about a year ago, looks very interesting.

Jon Reid reviews the new movie here.

Michael Newnham has an interview with the Canadian documentary filmmaker David Di Sabatino behind the film here.

Related: Metapost - Larry Norman Goes Home

ht: Andrew Jones

Taylor Redux

Kenny Sheppard has posted some more helpful links on Charles Taylor.

On Charles Taylor

For a couple of years now, Kenny has been encouraging me to read Charles Taylor. At his suggestion some time ago I purchased Taylor's A Secular Age. Publisher's Weekly summarizes Taylor's philosophical tome in this manner:

In his characteristically erudite yet engaging fashion, Taylor, winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize, takes up where he left off in his magnificent Sources of the Self (1989) as he brilliantly traces the emergence of secularity and the processes of secularization in the modern age.

In the first paragraph of A Secular Age's first chapter, Taylor himself asks,

One way to put the question that I want to answer here is this: why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?

Kenny's about to finish his course work at Johns Hopkins here in Charm City and if I don't finish the book soon, I'll lose my most valued interlocutor.

Towards the end of completing Secular Age, I've begun reading through this helpful overview that Kenny suggested.

The current nearly monolithic secular culture, when viewed from at least a prima facie perspective, is fascinating to me and I'm looking forward to learning Taylor's perspective on how this has come about.

In Search of the Quinessential Baltimore Diner, Continued

I believe that this is Year 3 in which I have partnered with Kenny Sheppard (Prolegomena) in search of the Perfect Baltimore Diner. Since our first breakfast we've visited:

• The Double T,
  
• The Paper Moon,
  
• Overlea Diner,
  
• Golden West Cafe,
  
• Two Sisters Grill,
  
• Pete's Diner,
  
• & Frank's Diner

(Kenny, is this list complete?)

On Saturday, Kenny, who's working on his Ph.D at Johns Hopkins on atheism and the intellectual history of 17th century England, and I visited the Silver Moon Diner. It was great! The food was fantastic; Kenny's even become a Scrapple aficionado. But best of all was the great conversation with my good friend.

Kenny took the picture above and a few others which can be found here. (For reasons beyond my capacity to imagine, we have not taken pictures on every single visit).

Is the Recent Resurgence of Calvinism Changing the World?

It is according to Time Magazine.

ht: justin taylor

if you want to understand what happened to our economy...

....just click here.

Economic Recovery, Media Coverage, and Hope

Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize in economics a few years back for his work in Prospect Theory. One of Dr. Kahneman's revolutionary findings was that when individuals make economic decisions, those decisions are 70% emotional. Previous to Kahneman's discovery, economists would theorize that people make their decisions based on their best rational analysis as to what course of action will result in their keeping or acquiring the most money. But that's not the way it works most of the time.

I thought about Dr. Kahneman on Friday when I was having an interesting discussion with an economist about the troubled United States economy and media coverage. She agreed with me that negative media coverage does inhibit economic recovery. When I thought about Dr. Kahneman, I realized why.

We spend because we have a hope that our spending is a good decision. We invest on hope. If media coverage underlines the doom and gloom, then spending and investing will be suppressed.

This line of thinking reminded me of FDR and how optimism and hope was such a crucial aspect of his leadership. Through both the Depression and World War II, FDR always communicated that America would eventually triumph over all obstacles. Obama was communicating a similar optimism this past Saturday when he said, "We will get through this."

Colin Powell has said that optimism is a force multiplier. This is true for the economy and for many - if not all - areas of human endeavor. Dr. Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania, details the positive results of optimism in his book Learned Optimism. Malcolm Gladwell, in his most recent book Outliers, similarly explains how individuals work longer and harder through difficulties when they believe that the result of their extra effort will be positive. Their hope then drives them to superior accomplishment.

Jesus followers have a firm basis for optimism in a God who loves us and has all power. He alone can give us a peace which "transcends all understanding" (Phil. 4:4-7). In the midst of financial tsunamies, health crises, relational heartbreak, etc., sometimes our only psychological basement - at times the only foundation for our peace - is our knowledge of the character of God.

ESV Study Bible Online Now Available to All

until the end of this month:

link

This is a very valuable resource that's worth checking out!

Three Questions

A few days ago, a dear friend of mine shared with me three questions that a mutual friend used to center herself. I was talking to Beth about this, but couldn't remember two of the three questions. I did recall that one dealt with being present. Beth and I formulated three questions of our own that I've been using the last several days. They've been helpful. They are:

• Am I At Peace? Do I trust God with all my worries and with my soul (Matthew 6:25-34, Philippians 4:6-7). Beth shared with me the image of a pebble being dropped into a calm pond. The pond responds perfectly to the pebble - or the boulder - and then returns to its previous calm. When we are at peace with God, our responses to trouble can be measured and appropriate. If we do not have that peace, then we are absorbed with self and our precarious situation. If we do not have that peace, then the best that we can come up with another is either a deceived calm or an act.
  
  
• Am I Present? Having peace from and with God, I am then in a position of strength. With that strength, I can afford to focus wholly on either the person in front of me or on the task that is serving the person who is not present. The vertical must enable the horizontal. The past is gone or is covered by Christ's cross. The future I can trust to God, for I cannot control it now. But I have been given the gift of being able to focus on the right now.
  
  
• Am I Purposed? Since we are both at peace and present for the other or for the task, we can be intentional in the moment. We are able to move most fully out of our love for God and for the other (Matthew 22:37-39). God's love purifies and focuses us.

More Great Sportsmanship

"I never in my life thought I'd hear people cheering for us to hit their kids," recalls Gainesville's QB and middle linebacker, Isaiah. "I wouldn't expect another parent to tell somebody to hit their kids. But they wanted us to!""

- and Stacey Sublett points us to this gem.

a beautiful story of sportsmanship

"He went alone to the free throw line, dribbled the ball a couple of times, and looked at the rim.

His first attempt went about two feet, bouncing a couple of times as it rolled toward the end line. The second barely left his hand."

read the whole story

Todd Hunter...

...has a new website! Check it out.

Our New Dog: Raider Sport Shields

We took a dog break for a couple of years. But with my traveling a lot, Beth and the girls really wanted to get another dog for protection and so we rescued Raider, a boxer (?)/lab (?) mutt who is one of the sweetest dogs we've ever met. She's a puppy but her large paws indicate that she won't stay small.

We lost our last dog because we had to have her put down as she was so vicious. So this time we wanted to be more intentional about raising up our dog and so we hired Tecla Walton with Angel K-9 who has been super helpful. We have learned a lot.

I've posted more pictures of Raider here. We are very much enjoying this magnificent beast!