why America? why?

Hiliary Clinton and Mike Huckabee…..

if thats the ballot for 2008 I am not sure what I will do.  Banging my head against the wall is an excellent plan.  Yes. I rarely comment on politics but come on America, please have the last 8 years taught you nothing? Can we please have just one candidate of any party who is quasi sane and won’t push an extreme agenda? Huckabee is more of a fundamentalist than Bush and he is proud of it. And Hilliary is too liberal for my moderate tendacies and a bit tooo sleezy…the whole moving to NY thing, the changing around on immigration to fit her audience…please just have one opinion that isn’t entirely set on gaining power? I mean a woman president would be cool but please  not her.

ugh. so disappointed.

Homeless-Refugee Baby is Coming to Town…. aka my winter holiday of choice…

I would like to thank B. Z and the Advent Conspiracy for their inspiration for this entry.

Once upon a time there was a church in a village somewhere in the middle of no where. The church was a wonderful community and every Dec they came together and they celebrated the coming of the God as a homeless refugee. They worshiped and they cared for those who like their savior had needs. But one year the church was short on funds. Tithing was down, morale was low, the roof was leaking, maybe there were lots of homeless people due to a bad storm or refugees from a war torn country or widows or orphans and the church had to make do somehow. It had lots of programs to run, lots of mouths to feed, lots of bibles to print, lots of missionaries to send and not enough money to do it all.

A nice well dressed man came into the pastor’s office and said I have the solution to your funds problem. I give you a X large sum of money in that little village and you sell me the rights to Christmas. Its a small thing really, I mean we don’t even celebrate it on the right day. The pastor and the elders of the church gathered together and pondered this proposition, I mean there were mouths to feed, a roof to fix and missionaries to send and with X sum they could do it all. It was just Christmas, a single day, not a particularly holy one, just a day set aside for the celebration of a God becoming a baby.They could celebrate it any old time.

So the pastor went to the nice dressed man and said, we’ll do it. We’ll sell you the rights. The nice dressed man with a twinkle in his eye smiled and said I knew we would come to an agreement. And the pastor signed the papers. The nice dressed man disappeared and the church fixed their roof, fed the homeless and bought some new bibles. The years passed and slowly, very slowly the little church started to notice a increasing number of signs with blinking lights that reminded them of the light of the world! And pictures of a man in a red suit whose jolly, giving nature surely reminded them of God’s love and the service of saint or two. Surely these things were good the little church said.

The years went on and before they knew it the lights got brighter and the jolly man got fatter and then the Ads began….Make this Christmas count, GIVE ME! And then the sales, oh the sales, they got bigger and earlier and more popular till people were camping out for the SALES and signs that said BUY ME. Then the gadgets OH THE GADGETS: toys, big people toys, games, puzzles, things that fly, things that float, things that go underwater, things that sing, things that dance, things that light up and things that do ALL OF THE ABOVE. There were signs that said ITS NOT CHRISTMAS TILL YOU HAVE ME!

And before the church knew it the day that they had known was no longer about anticipating the homeless-refugee baby that was born in a barn to a 14 yr old mom who got pregnant out of wedlock by all appearances. Nor were the paying attention to the homeless, the refugees, the teenage mothers or others in need. They were too busy buying gifts for themselves to give gifts to the birthday boy. In fact there were too busy to even celebrate CHRISTmas…it was simply X-mas. The sales, the gadgets, the gimmicks, the lights, the jolly man in the red suit with a small fleet of caribou had taken over without a single protest.

A single elder in the church came to the pastor and said, What has happened to Christmas? And the pastor said I don’t know. The elder asked whatever happened to the nice young man who gave that donation those years back. The pastor opened his address book and found the number and called the man. The phone rung and a recording was heard, press 1 for more sales, press 2 for more gadgets you have to have, we do not take calls if your gadget has broken but all other calls press 0. The pastor pressed 0 and after a long paper trail of secetaries and customer assistants he was put through to his old business partner. And he said, What has happened to Christmas? Christmas, the well dressed man said “We don’t celebrate that holiday any more.” “I know!” said the pastor, “its awful.” The well dressed man, said “Tough luck, I own the rights.” And the pastor said “but you have it all wrong, where is the child that this day is all about?” And the man said, “OH him…we phased him out years ago… he is not very marketable.” “What???!” said the pastor…”NOT MARKETABLE…its the greatest story ever told.” The man said, “well maybe. But I can’t make money off the coming of a homeless-refugee, I mean no one wants to dwell on that sort of unhappiness or depersation. No one wants to buy 45 different CD rendentions of Homeless-Refugee Baby is coming to town, that would just be depressing. No one wants to buy candied refugee babies or donkey poop, that would be gross. In fact when people think about a homeless-refugee baby they don’t want to buy at all, they want to give what they have to spend away” “YES!! said the pastor, “That’s precisely the point.” “Yeah, see that never really worked for us.” said the man. “So we decided to simply X all that out. The whole homeless refugee baby part. It also broadens our customer base without the whole religion thing we can now promote the GIVE! BUY! MUST HAVE! campaign to everyone. Profits have skyrocketed like you wouldn’t believe. And we are currently negotiating the rights to Hanukkah, thinking about hitting up Ramadan because its closer to X-mas next year! ” The pastor asked, “We want to buy it back! We want to buy back the rights to Christmas.” :Sorry!” said the man, “but thats one thing we aren’t selling.”

Its that time of year again where all celebrate our Winter Holiday of Choice. There are a myriad of options of holidays to choose from. There are usual players: Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa. And this year Eid happens this week so thats another option. Then there is New Year’s and the Winter Soliastice. Lots of options and lots of people willing to sell you whichever one you want as long as you buy, buy, buy stuff you and your loved ones don’t need.

We interviewed the children of my church this past week on video and asked them what the winter holidays are about. We got a variety of answers with the honesty and truth that only children have. We open presents, Jesus was born, Santa comes, we get new stuff, we buy a lot of stuff. I read recently in the Advent Conspiracy of a similar practice in a church in OR one child said this: “It’s Jesus’ birthday but we get presents…I’m not sure why we get his presents.”

From the mouths of babes, from the mouths of babes. Because the more I look at my typical winter holiday of choice the more confused I become.The more I am thinking about just wanting to give up Christmas all together and invent a new holiday. I can’t buy it back but I can start telling the story again, the story hasn’t changed, we just stopped listening. Incarnation Day. That’s my winter holiday of choice.

so Happy Incarnation Day. Its like your unbirthday it happens every day anew and its amazing and remarkable. And as I sleep tonight I am anxiously awaiting again for a homeless-refugee baby to be born to a teenage mother. A most compelling, most radical plan to take over the world for love.

Romania te iusbec putine…

I have been having one of those weeks where I can’t get Eastern Europe out of my brain…I know I am the only person who has this problem but deal with it.

There was fresh parsley in my soup the other day and I stopped mid conversation as I tasted the familiar taste.

I nearly ran into another car because there was a homeless woman on the side of the road and she was wearing a kerchief and a red dress and I thought for sure she was Romany (gypsy).

I went Christmas caroling the other day and I was reminded of Cristana and her siblings singing on the Metro in Bucharest.

As I hugged and swung one of the kids at church last night I nearly dropped her thinking that the last kid I swung (it takes a lot of spoons) was Aurel. And I suddenly missed him terribly.

Every once in a while, a corner of a building or a distinctive windows will make me long to go for a long walk in Hisatro Park or wander around Lipsicombi. I miss city life. I miss riding buses, reading on the trams and taking the subway and getting some chocolate Flornetti.

And I keep dreaming about babies. Not the having of them but the holding of them and I wake up so disappointed.

And I swear I have no idea what brought this on…we are studying renal and its miserable and I study all the time.

It makes me wonder though if I have it in me to do a 5 year combined residency. I am starting to consider Global health residencies programs for peds or family as an alternative to Peds/PMR.
I am not sure I can take 9 more years here preparing….

the crap hit the fan…

My mother called the school insurance this company without my knowledge and they claim to have no knowledge of any changes in Wake’s policy that would lead to me being covered under their policy. then she called the school. Praise God, the Dean was not in is office with my mother in her battle mode state.

I walked into the office of student services in attempts to do some damage control.  The secetary smiled at me, “Your Mom called.” “I know” I said. My cheeks a flaming color of red. One of the school officials who not the Dean who has e-mailed me 50 times to say he is working on it and I will be covered (he is out of town comes out to meet me) “Yeah we are thinking about changing our policy in light of all you and several others who have issues with the policy but nothing will happen until at least Jan.” She smiles and continues. “Students don’t understand insurance companies and how hard it is for the school. You would think” she said, “It would be easy to insure healthy 20 year olds.”

I met her eyes again and smiled the biggest fake smile I could muster. I fought with everything I had not to scream at the top of my voice that not all 20 year olds are perfectly healthy! And despite what the insurance industry seems to think not all of those imperfect 20 year olds are going to sit at home incapacitated. Some of them go to medical school. Jan would be too late, my insurance would lapse. Too little too late, did they hope that I would just go away and not be their problem? I realize that I put the school in an uncomfortable position between discriminating against a minority student and raising the premiums for all the others. At the same time  Did she ever think of how hard this was for me? Had she ever tried to pay out of pocket for her medical care on a student budget? She should  try it some time. and then whine about how little students know about insurance. a little cheap sympathy would be nice and you know what would be even nicer, the TRUTH, its obvious that everyone in that office has known that this wasn’t going to work out by the Dec 31st deadline for at least a week or two yet I have gotten encouraging e-mails saying it would . But I didn’t say any of this to her, I smiled and told her thank you for her time and left.

I called my mother back and told her that the expensive cobra was only option. We admitted defeat on all fronts.

I am so angry at Wake Forest right now i can’t even see straight. But I don’t really think there is much I can do considering the people I would be writing letters about or such will write my Dean’s letter.  They have me cornered and they know it.

I saw the Golden Compass…

I am running off to join an atheist anarchy commune in Wales.

….not exactly….

Grab a candle and start the prayer vigil! I went to see the movie this evening. Don’t freak, I am not financing any atheist plots to take over the world I can get in free due to the gimp factor.

The movie is rated PG-13 (as was LofR) due to violence. There were no families to be seen at the showing I went, the audience was mostly young adults. The BEE movie and the Toystore movie got all the families I saw. So I think the hoopla about it corrupting children is a little over the top considering that kids can’t even go without an adult.

As far as what you really want to know…is this movie going to make me an atheist (or anyone else)? The villains of the movie are not really religious at all and there is only one scene that does subtly imply that they may be associated with religion in which one of the building that houses some of the villains has a painting of a Russian Orthodox-esque icon of a random saint. And I was looking for this and am very familiar with Orthodox style art considering my passion for all things Eastern European, I think your average movie goer might not have noticed.

As I sat there and waited to be smited and/or asked to join a anti-religion protest, I pondered the familiar story (yep that’s right I read as a kid…) in light what I now know about Phillip Pullman. And I was stuck by how right he is about our hypocrisy in many ways and how sad it is that is the only Christianity he has seen. I am not half as concerned about what he got WRONG as what he got RIGHT becuase people will pick up on the RIGHT stuff. In the story a child is orphaned because she was born out of wedlock and her mother abandoned her in fear of persecution from the church. Does this not happen in our churches today? Do scared young women who are so afraid of condemnation make choices they regret?

In the story the villains try to poison a professor who is doing research they disagree with. Pretty extreme, yet there is a plenty of tension between religion and science in our world. If we believe we have the truth, what are we so afraid of? What if we stopped attacking science long enough to see the evidence for God?

No where is there a Christ figure that is attacked or belittled in the film and no where is there a single villain who represents the gospel or portrays grace in any way. The villains are obsessed with obedience from the children in their world to the point where they will use any means (including kidnapping, brainwashing and mutilation to get it). Its a extreme legalistic society.

I wish in all the articles that are circulating about this people would stop freaking about the atheist plot to take over the world and start to take apart what Pullman is saying. Because there is a message for Christians in the film, its a warning against corruption, against legalism and its an illustration of our complete reliance on Grace. Because a works base faith imprisons people both in spirit and in mind, a grace based faith sets people free and its biblical. What if instead of writing about boycotting this movie we showed how different the movie church is from true Christianity? What if we admitted to being imperfect? What if we talked about the Christianity of the Bible? What if we lived it?

What kind of church are we? What kind of example are we setting? Do we look more like Christ or more like the church in this movie?

….I fear how the average movie go-er will answer that question far more than I fear that the seeds of atheism will be planted in the hearts of children.

also I am sure Mr. Pullman would be horrified to know that the there was a 3 minute preview of the upcoming Narnia movie…Mr. Pullman has previous stated that he despises the Narnia books and think they corrupt and brainwash children (oddly the same thing that all theChristian magazines and preachers are saying about his books). I enjoyed the irony.

I can’t get the picture of CS Lewis and Phillip Pullman Jello wrestling for control of the imaginations of children worldwide out of my head.