Apocalyptic Beliefs Go Back A Long Ways

"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted some of America’s most prominent evangelical leaders to raise a provocative question — asking if the world is now in the biblically prophesied “end of days” that might culminate with the apocalypse and the second coming of Christ."  (The Times of Israel)

Christianity.com tells us:

"Ever since Jesus predicted the end, even before Revelation was written, Christians have worried and/or believed that the apocalypse was upon them. Several events were widely thought to herald the end of the world and were offered supposed biblical backing, but ultimately did not result in the apocalypse."

They they go on to list various times that many people expected the Apocalypse to happen.  But it didn't.  But they aren't debunking that it will happen.  Only that we can't predict it.

"We can’t control when the end comes. We can’t even predict it. However, there is one thing we can do: Be faithful followers of Christ regardless of the situation. And that is what we have been called to do."

These ideas were in my mind when I read   "Reindeer at the End of the World"  by Bathsheba Demuth.  How did I find that article?

My book club book this month is The Best American Travel Writing 2021.    The title didn't excite me. How could they already have a book out (back in January)?  2021 was only just over.  How did they evaluate stuff published in December?  (I think, now, it is the date the book is published, not when the original articles were published.)

Besides, I wanted a book that would take me to another world, to new ideas, with words that would excite me and make me smile.  A great novel of inspired biography maybe.  Not some travel industry hype.

Well, an advantage of a book club is that you read things you never would have picked on your own.  

Despite the fact that B picked this book as a substitute for the cancelled cruises he missed over the last couple of pandemic years, the book is much better than I expected.  I am way behind - but I've only got about 150 pages to read by Monday night, so I could make it.  

So far, my favorite chapter was "Good Bread" about a guy who takes his family to Lyon, France so he can learn to cook at a great restaurant there.  He ends up working in a bakery that only uses fresh local flour from small family farms.  As the bread baker in our household, I found lots to appreciate in the chapter.  

But this is about the Apocalypse and also Russia.   

 In "Reindeer at the End of the World"  Bathsheba Demuth writes about a trip that takes place on the Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian far east.  

While looking for reindeer, the author stumbles across Karl Yanovich Luks in the archives in Vladivostok.   He came to the far east in the 1920s to revolutionize the lives of the local folks and modernize the fox hunting and reindeer herding enterprises.  (It didn't turn out well.)

Karl was born in 1888 and grew up very poor and became a deckhand as a teen.  It was the last decades of the Czar Nicholas II, who 

"heir to four centuries of autocratic rule, sheltered in his palaces, spent lavishly , and hired more police.  The people Karl met outside these aristocratic walls found their present so unjust, so sickly, so impossible, their question was not would it end, but how.  Karl heard the Baptists preaching hellfire, Orthodox priests involving the salvation of saints, and a dozen other sects calling down the final judgment.  

As the historian Yuri Slezkine explains, these visions all shared a plot:  first the apocalypse, then a reign of harmony and perfection.  An old story, passed from the Middle East to Europe, from Jewish cosmologies into Christin traditions, going back almost 3,000 years to the prophecies of Zoroaster, who foretold a cataclysmic battle between light and dark.  The triumph of light would give the righteous a new life, one without suffering or toil, one where time is meted out in cycles of birth and death ended in a linear, immortal world."

As she tells the story of her visits with the indigenous reindeer herders, she keeps coming back to this theme.  

"Karl did not become a Baptist or worship saints.  He joined a socialist reading circle.  In Slezkine's masterful reading of the Russian socialist condition, the plot Karl learned also came from Zoroaster's lineage.  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels foretold how the darkness of capitalist exploitation would become the light of communist utopia.  Between these poles was a kind of earthly revelation:  what socialists called revolution.  A word, Slezkine reminds us, promising 'the end of the old world and the beginning of a new, just one."

 "Another appeal of the apocalypse:  proclaiming it is not an act of supplication, but of certainty."

"The core of apocalyptic thinking is nihilism:  this world is too despoiled to continue.  The seduction of such stories is how certain they make the tellers feel.  An apocalyptic narrative is like looking at a horizon with no clouds or hills:  the way forward is terribly assured.  To walk it, there is no need to mind the lives of others, rendered invisible by the power of imagining they are already gone.  

"Apocalyptic prophecy is also an escape from contemplating- catstrophe."

The apocalypse was not a part of my upbringing.  It scares me that so many people accept it so easily.  My upbringing says we should do everything we can to make the world a better place.  Accepting the apocalypse as inevitable says, the world is a terrible place and there is nothing you can do about it, but not to worry, God will fix it for you if you follow his commandments.   

Even though the end of times has been predicted so many times in the past and yet failed to appear.  This may not be the most enlightening discussion of it, but getting bits and pieces from here and there helps me think about such things.  Gives me questions to raise when I meet people who truly believe.  

What's The Big Deal About 2022? It's An Arbitrary Number. Think Bigger

A goal of this blog is to get people to break out of patterns of thinking so they can see the world or some portion of the world differently.  To step back and recognize '"truths" they believe as actually just one way of knowing the world.  

So New Years Day seems a good time to meddle with our concept of being in 2022.  Because for Jews New Years happened several months ago and it is 5782.  For Chinese, New Year is a month off and it will be 4730.  For Thais the New Year will begin in Aril and they will usher in the year  2565.

It's good to have rituals around time.  They help us step back and think about what we've done over a period of time. Teaching is a great profession because you get to start fresh with each semester - it's not just one continuous long slog.  Birthdays help us reflect as do anniversaries.  Or the changing seasons.  

But it's also important to remember how arbitrary the numbers can be.  There is some connection to the natural world.  365 days is close to how long it takes the earth to revolve around the sun.  But other cultures pin their years to the moon.  But much about time is a human decision about how things should be.  

Calendars Through The Ages tells us:

Before today’s Gregorian calendar was adopted, the older Julian calendar was used. It was admirably close to the actual length of the year, as it turns out, but the Julian calendar was not so perfect that it didn’t slowly shift off track over the following centuries. But, hundreds of years later, monks were the only ones with any free time for scholarly pursuits – and they were discouraged from thinking about the matter of "secular time" for any reason beyond figuring out when to observe Easter. In the Middle Ages, the study of the measure of time was first viewed as prying too deeply into God’s own affairs – and later thought of as a lowly, mechanical study, unworthy of serious contemplation.

As a result, it wasn’t until 1582, by which time Caesar’s calendar had drifted a full 10 days off course, that Pope Gregory XIII (1502 - 1585) finally reformed the Julian calendar. Ironically, by the time the Catholic church buckled under the weight of the scientific reasoning that pointed out the error, it had lost much of its power to implement the fix. Protestant tract writers responded to Gregory’s calendar by calling him the "Roman Antichrist" and claiming that its real purpose was to keep true Christians from worshiping on the correct days. The "new" calendar, as we know it today, was not adopted uniformly across Europe until well into the 18th century.

The same site tells us about the beginning of counting the years.  

"Was Jesus born in the year 0?

No.

There are two reasons for this:

There is no year 0.

Jesus was born before 4 B.C.E.

The concept of a year "zero" is a modern myth (but a very popular one). In our calendar, C.E. 1 follows immediately after 1 B.C.E. with no intervening year zero. So a person who was born in 10 B.C.E. and died in C.E. 10, would have died at the age of 19, not 20.

Furthermore, as described in section 2.14, our year reckoning was established by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century. Dionysius let the year C.E. 1 start one week after what he believed to be Jesus’ birthday. But Dionysius’ calculations were wrong. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus was born under the reign of king Herod the Great, who died in 4 B.C.E.. It is likely that Jesus was actually born around 7 B.C.E.. The date of his birth is unknown; it may or may not be 25 December."

 I'd note for those Christians who feel they are discriminated against, most of the world uses the Western calendar that is roughly based on the birth of Christ.  Even if they also have calendars based on other events.  

Let's look at some other New Years from different cultures.

Indian New Year Diwali

"One of the most celebrated Indian New Year is 'Diwali' ', which means 'the celebration of lights'. Deepavali symbolize the starting of the Hindu New Year which is generally the main holiday of India. This festival is celebrated in the month of Kartika, which generally falls in the October. Diwali is an holiday in India, Nepal, Guyana, Malaysia and Singapore. Even though, it is a Hindu festival and has deep Hindu mythology connected with its origin, people from different religions also celebrate Diwali. As the name implies, Diwali is celebrated with lights, lamps and fireworks. The main reason behind Diwali celebration is to get away of the evil, which is symbolized as darkness, and to follow the paths of virtue."

From The Heart of Hinduism:

"Various eras are used for numbering the years; the most common are the Vikrami Era, beginning with the coronation of King Vikram-aditya in 57 BCE and the Shaka Era, counting from 78 CE. In rituals the priest often announces the dates according to KaliYuga, (see Kala: Time). For these three systems, the year 2000 corresponds to 2057, 1922, and 5102 respectively, though the last figure is subject to some debate."

Telugu New Year

"is known as Ugadi, which is derived from "Yuga Aadi" means New Age. According to the Hindu mythology Lord Brahma has created universe on Chaitra Shuddha Prathpade thus Telugu New Year is celebrated on Chaitra Shuddha Prathipade which is also first day of the lunar calendar. Telugu New Year is bright full moon day of the first month of spring."

Enkutatash – Ethiopian New Year!

"Every year on September 11, Ethiopians celebrate their New Year. The holiday is called “Enkutatash,” which literary means the “gift of jewels.” This naming came from the legendary visit of the Ethiopian Queen Sheba to that of King Solomon of Jerusalem back in 98 BC. During her visit, this famous queen of Ethiopia brought the king a collection of “jewels.” Upon her return home, the queen was restocked with a new supply of “enku” (jewels) for her treasury.

Ethiopians called the New Year “Enkutatash” because the period the queen arrived back to Ethiopia coincided with the New Year’s celebration in September. Celebrating the New Year in September, however, is originally connected to the Bible as it is the period that God created the Heavens and the Earth and so this period should be the beginning of a New Year."

Songkran - Thailand  From a post I did in 2008 when we were living in Chiangmai.

Chiang Mai.com gives an overview of the holiday of Songkran (the link is no longer any good)

"The family sprinkling scented water from silver bowls on a Buddha image is a ritual practiced by all Thais in on the third day of Songkran, known as Wan Payawan. This is the first official day of the New Year and on this day people cleanse the Buddha images in their homes as well as in the temples with scented water. The family is dressed in traditional Thai costume and wearing leis of jasmine flower buds. The water is scented with the petals of this flower."

I'd recommend visiting the post this comes from to see how it goes from a reverend washing of Buddhas to a free for all water fight in the streets.  

She knows I have a camera, so she's offering to douse me just a little bit.  It ended up down my back.  There are over three posts on our Songkran in Chiangmai.

And there's a Part 2 and Part 3 as well that go into different aspects of Songkran.

This year in Thailand the new year will be 2565

The Burmese New Year is related to the Thai New Year.

"Burma’s most important festival

Taking place from April 13 to 16 each year, the Buddhist festival of Thingyan is celebrated over four to five days, culminating on the Lunar New Year Day.

Water throwing is the distinguishing feature of this festival, and you’ll find people splashing water at each other almost everywhere in the country.

Thingyan traces its roots back to a Hindu myth. The King of Brahmas called Arsi, lost a wager to the King of Devas, Thagya Min, who decapitated Arsi. Miraculously, the head of an elephant was placed onto Arsi’s body, and he then became Ganesha.

The Hindu god was so powerful that if his head was thrown into the sea it would dry up immediately. If it were thrown onto land it would be scorched. If it were thrown up into the air the sky would burst into flames.

Thagya Min therefore ordained that Ganesha’s head be carried by one princess after another who took turns for a year each. The new year thus has come to signify the this annual change of hands."

Chinese New Year:  (This is a great site, with almost everything you could want to know about Chinese New Year)

"Chinese New Year is celebrated by more than 20% of the world. It’s the most important holiday in China and to Chinese people all over. Here are 21 interesting facts that you probably didn’t know about Chinese New Year.

1. Chinese New Year is also known as the Spring Festival

In China, you’ll hear it being called chunjie (春节), or the Spring Festival. It’s still very wintry, but the holiday marks the end of the coldest days. People welcome spring and what it brings along: planting and harvests, new beginnings and fresh starts."

This year it begins on February 1, 2022 and it will be the Year of the Tiger.  It will be the year 4720.

Jewish New Year - The ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are very holy days - time to reflect on one's failings and to ask for forgiveness from God and from those you have wronged.  It's also a time to forgive those who have wronged you.  It's currently the year 5782.

You can see more here.

So let's not get so hung up on 2022.  Today is just another day, following yesterday.  Let's be sensible in dealing with COVID. 

1.   Let's work hard to preserve the US democracy - with time and with money. Write your members of Congress.  Help those organizations fighting voter suppression.  And figure out who is doing Stacy Abrams work in your state.  And if nobody is, find some partners and do it yourself.   

2.  And let's also do everything we can to take national and world action to minimize the impacts of climate change.  For that, I'd suggest connecting with Citizens Climate Lobby, the most focused and efficient organization I know of.  

3.  Be kind, but not a sucker.  Know your power - don't underestimate it or overestimate it - and stand up to bullies when that's feasible and protect others who are targeted.  Take a self defense class if you feel threatened.  Our former president has given his followers to act on their worst impulses.  But don't give up.  The super power I wish on everyone is the power to make everyone around you feel loved.  

 

How Do Supreme Court Justices Determine Someone's Sincerity?

The Supreme Court justices were asking questions in a  case where a condemned man wants to have his pastor pray for him and touch him while he's dying.  The lower court sided with Texas, so if the Supreme Court had done nothing, he wouldn't have been allowed to have these last contacts with his pastor. 

 The AP story reported by Jessica Gresko said they're asking questions like:

“What’s going to happen when the next prisoner says that I have a religious belief that he should touch my knee. He should hold my hand. He should put his hand over my heart. He should be able to put his hand on my head. We’re going to have to go through the whole human anatomy with a series of cases,” Justice Samuel Alito said.

Yeah, this claiming religious privilege could get out of hand. This claiming religious privilege could get out of hand.  Why, a baker might refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because it goes against his strongly held religious beliefs.  What's the difference between a religious belief and a personal prejudice?  After all, Southerners claimed the Bible supported slavery.  What if people believe that Jews killed Jesus (something I've been told on more than one occasion), do they have the right to impose the death penalty?

"Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh also expressed concerns about what a ruling for the inmate would mean for requests in the future, with Kavanaugh asking whether all states would have to offer equivalent accommodations.

What if, he asked, one state “allows bread and wine in the execution room right before the execution” or allows the minister to “hug the inmate.” Do other states have to do the same?"

I get that this question deals with setting precedents. Why are they so worried about some decency for a dying man? But maybe they should look at all claims to do or not do something based on a religious right. 

"Arguing for Texas, state Solicitor General Judd Stone II also told the justices that Ramirez’s request is just an attempt to delay his execution. Justice Clarence Thomas seemed to agree, asking what the justices should do if they believe Ramirez has “changed his requests a number of times” and “filed last minute complaints” and “if we assume that’s some indication of gaming the system.'”

'He [the prosecutor] also said it’s hard to know how a spiritual adviser might react during that time. That person could faint or stumble and jostle the IV lines, he said. “Anything going wrong here would be catastrophic,” he said.'

Really?  More catastrophic to whom?  Certainly not the person being put to death. 

Think about this.  Five of the Supreme Court Justices are Catholics and one more was raised Catholic.  All but one is strongly anti-abortion, but they have much less problem with the death penalty. It's good they are not bound to the Pope's position on everything.  The AP article says they've been less interested lately in staying executions, except when there's a religious aspect. 

The Court has already defined 'religion' pretty broadly.  From the Free Dictionary Legal Dictionary

"To determine whether an action of the federal or state government infringes upon a person's right to freedom of religion, the court must decide what qualifies as religion or religious activities for purposes of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has interpreted religion to mean a sincere and meaningful belief that occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to the place held by God in the lives of other persons. The religion or religious concept need not include belief in the existence of God or a supreme being to be within the scope of the First Amendment."

This puts a burden on the Justices to determine if a belief is sincere.  That's hard to do in any event, but the Justices never see or hear the actual person whose case is before them.  This is, in fact, moving from interpreting the law to discerning a person's sincerity.   How do you interpret someone's deeply held beliefs in the first place.

? And  for those who belong to established religions how do you determine if someone actually believes the institution's doctrines or not?  Surely we have seen examples of, say, anti-abortion voting politicians who arranged abortions for their pregnant mistresses.  For a dying man, I say, risk being wrong and let him have his last request.  So what if he turns out to be gaming the system?  He's going to die.  

Most Western,  actually most,  countries have abolished the death penalty.  But our conservative Supreme Court justices seem to have no heart.  They're hung up on the myth of all people can be rich if they just put their minds and backs into working hard.  And punishment takes precedence over empathy and kindness.  So, they have to ascertain the difference between a legitimate religious belief or being gamed by a condemned man.  

"For her, the head scarf did not just stand for God's love, it also proclaimed her faith and preserved her honor."

Nobel Prize winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk's Snow takes place in a northeastern Turkish town (Kars) during a long snowstorm.  Ka (yes, Kars and Ka was confusing to me at first) is a journalist/poet from Istanbul who's recently returned to Turkey from years in Germany.  He's ostensibly gone to Kars to report on high school girls who have been committing suicide rather than stop
wearing head coverings. It appears, though, that rekindling an old love with a woman who now lives in Kars was the underlying real reason.  [I'd note here that the author tells us that suicide is a sin in Islam.]

I call this to your attention because the book, and the passage below, seems like an examination of intense human belief and behavior that offers insight into people with strong ideological attachments to fighting masks and vaccines.  In the excerpt here, a group of high school girls have been discussing the suicide of a classmate.  

It reminds me that people's behavior can't be attributed to one simple cause.  While people have a tendency to do that, things are more complex (like why Ka went to Kars.)  There are lots of factors that play a contributing role. 

"Why don't you tell the story, Hande?' said Kadife.  'There's nothing to be ashamed of.'

'No, that's not true.  There's a great deal to be ashamed of, and that's why I want to talk about it,' Hande said.  Her large eyes flashed with a strange joy.  She smiled as if recalling a happy memory and said, 'It's forty days exactly since our friend Teslime's suicide.  Of all the girls in our group, Teslime was the one most dedicated to the struggle for her religion and the word of God.  For her, the head scarf did not just stand for God's love, it also proclaimed her faith and preserved her honor.  None of us could have ever imagined she would kill herself.  Despite pressure both at school and at home to take off the scarf - her father and her teachers were relentless - Teslime held her ground.  She was about to be expelled from school in her third year of study, just on the verge of graduating.  Then one day her father had some visitors from police headquarters;  they told him that if he didn't send his daughter to school scafrless, they would close down his grocery stored run him out of Kars.

'The father threatened to throw Teslime out of the house, and when this tactic failed he entered into negotiations to marry her off to a forty-five-year-old policeman who had lost his wife.  Things had gone so far that the policeman was coming to the store with flowers.  So revolted was Teslime by this gray-eyed widower, she told us, she was thinking of taking off her head scarf if it would save her from this marriage, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it.  

'Some of us agreed that she should uncover her head to avoid marrying the gray-eyed widower and some of us said, 'Why don't you threaten your father with suicide?'  I was the one who urged this most strongly.  I really didn't want Teslime to give up her head scarf.  I don't know how many times I said, 'Teslime, it's far better to kill yourself than to uncover your head.'  But I was just saying it for the sake of conversation.  We believed what the papers said - that the suicide girls had killed themselves because they had no faith, because they were slaves to materialism, because they had been unlucky in love;  all I was trying to do was give Teslime's father a fright.  Teslime was a devout girl so I assumed she would never seriously consider suicide.  But when we heard that she had hanged herself, I was the first to believe it.  And what's more, I knew that, had I been in her shoes, I would have done the same thing.  

'After Teslime's suicide, Hande decided to take off her head scarf and go back to school;  she didn't want to cause her parents any more distress,' Kadfe explained.  "They'd made so many sacrifices, gone without so much, to giver her the right sort of upbringing;  the things most parents do for an only son, they did for her.  Her parents have always assumed that Hande would be able to support them one day, because Hande is very clever.'

She was speaking in a soft voice, almost whispering, but still loud enough for Hande to hear her, and like everyone else in the room, Hande was listening, even with her tear-filled eyes still fixed to the television screen.

'At first the rest of us tried to talk her out of removing her scarf, but when we realized that her going uncovered was better than her committing suicide, we supported her decision.  When a girl has accepted the head scarf as the word of God and the symbol of faith, it's very difficult for her t take it off.  Hande spent days locked up insider her house trying to concentrate' (pp. 119-120)

While Islam has a much longer and widespread tradition than Trumpism, we can see the same strong ideological link between the symbols (wearing head scarves and not wearing masks).   More important, it would seem,  there is a basic human tendency to take strong symbolic action in defiance of the authorities, in alliance with other rebels - sometimes with good reasons, often on a false path.

Here, for both the girls in Kars and the anti-maskers today, the face/head coverings touch a deep aspect of their identity that triggers an extreme bond among fellow believers.  Both are confronted with conflicts with other loyalties they have - the girls to their parents and school, anti-maskers to their own health and that of their family members and close friends.  And there are other factors intertwined - Teslime's possible marriage to a much older man, and anti-maskers', as one example, the impact on their small businesses .  And then there are the influences of friends as they discuss how to handle all these conflicts. 

 It would be helpful to those supporting masks to hear the private discussions among anti-maskers. how similar are they to this passage from Pamuk?

That's the basic post.  You can stop here if you like.  But a few other things have popped up while I wrote.

As I was seeking a link to Pamuk's background, I found this passage.  The highlighted part of this excerpt from Pamuk's Nobel Prize biography seems to also involve relevant themes:

"Pamuk’s international breakthrough came with his third novel, Beyaz Kale (1985; The White Castle, 1992). It is structured as an historical novel set in 17th-century Istanbul, but its content is primarily a story about how our ego builds on stories and fictions of different sorts. Personality is shown to be a variable construction. The story’s main character, a Venetian sold as a slave to the young scholar Hodja, finds in Hodja his own reflection. As the two men recount their life stories to each other, there occurs an exchange of identities. It is perhaps, on a symbolic level, the European novel captured then allied with an alien culture."

 I'd note, finally, that great fiction tells the inherent stories of humankind.  It reveals the basic human condition and reactions to that condition across cultures and times.  It gets past the cultural facades to find those human emotions and struggles that we recognize everywhere and anytime that humans live.  

This way of understanding isn't anti-science, but rather it demonstrates truths that science is (not yet?) capable of confirming.  But it takes time for these great works to be sifted from lesser ones.  There are many competitors in any present time that may attract followers to short term cultural truths that eventually will be uncovered as the stories that uphold the current power structure.  

Made It To Kamphaengphet Saturday In My Summer Anchorage Biking Trek

Back in May I described my itinerary - Chiangmai to Bangkok - 745 kilometers.  I'm doing this on the bike trails of Anchorage.  The original post gives a bit of background to this  way of giving me a reason  - beyond the sheer joy of being on a bike whizzing through the woods - for this technique.  Knowing how many kilometers I have to cover gets me out on days my body would rather not.  But once my feet are pushing pedals, I'm glad I'm out riding.  There's also a map showing the distances between key points.  

Kamphaengphet is kilometer 445, so I'm over half way.  That's good, because biking season  is also half over.   ( I have an old bike with studded tires for winter, but I don't do long bike rides when there is snow and ice)

This stop is particularly special because I spent two years in Kamphaengphet teaching English as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s.  Below are some pictures from that time - a world much more closely connected to the past than it's connected to the present.  

These are from an album I put together while I was there.  Black and white photos I could get developed at the local photographer shop. The place where people could get portraits done.  But Kodak and Fuji slides had to be sent to Hong Kong or Australia to be developed.  That was minimally a two week process.  I think of my grandkids who probably don't even know about film and are used to seeing the picture the instant it's taken.  (I checked with my oldest and she did not know.)

This picture seems appropriate - me on a bike on the road in front of the school with the temple ruins and the water buffaloes in the background.  My house was on the school grounds, up on stilts, with two other 'apartments'  for teachers in the same building. The soccer field was between my house and this road.  So I had a view of the old temple chedis.  Here's a great link that explains the names of the different parts of Thai temples. My bike was my main form of transportation, though my colleagues had motorcycles too.  Peace Corps didn't let us have motorcycles but at that time the current ban on even riding on the back of a cycle didn't exist.  Peace Corps says the ban came after they figured out that most Peace Corps deaths came from motorcycle accidents.  My experience would have been significantly different had I not been able to ride on the back of motorcycles.  (Sorry for the blur, I didn't take this picture.)

This was one of my students.  Soccer was a big part of school life and since the best soccer field was directly in front of my house, a big part of my life.  It was out on this field that I set up the portable record player/radio that I'd bought when we stopped in Hong Kong on the way and played records in the moonlight when my trunk finally arrived.  I also played soccer there and started my love of jogging running around the field.  And the chedi was always there in the background.  At that time you could walk over and climb up on it and sit and contemplate the world.  Now it's part of a National Historic Park and has a fence and admission fee.

A short distance from the school in the forest were several more impressive temples.  I used to walk or bike over to be alone with these ancient structures - about 600 or 700 years old.  The Buddha on the left was part of a temple called The Temple of the Four Positions.  This was the sitting position.  There was a standing Buddha, a reclining Buddha, and a less common walking Buddha.

The elephants surrounded to top of another temple more in the hidden in the woods, up on a bluff overlooking the River Bing. [Mae Nam literally means mother water, or river and usually proceeds the name of the river.  So sometimes you see names like Mae Nam Bing River.  Which is sort of redundant.]  I'm not sure how many elephants there were all around the temple (It was called something like Temple With Elephant Around it) but there were a lot.  The English book we used had stories in every lesson - stories from British history, US history, and Thai history, so I learned about Thai heroes of various wars against Burma, Laos, and Cambodia.  This temple looked out toward the mountains over which the Burmese army would have had to come.  

There was no television reception in my town.  So 'commercials' were live.  Here's the medicine salesman gathering a crowd with his microphone and cobra.  When enough people showed up, he'd get the mongoose out of the box and have a battle between the leashed mongoose and the well drugged cobra. And then he'd sell all sorts of medicine.  

And this is why I was here.  To teach English to MS 3 students at the boys' school.  MS 3 translates to about 8th grade.  They were fantastic students and we generally had a great time.  Our teacher training back in DeKalb, Illinois had been excellent.  We had 50 minute lessons for each chapter.  Each class would start with about five minutes of pronunciation drills.  There are lots of sounds in English that don't exist in Thai.  There are only about nine final consonant sounds in Thai.  Most English consonant clusters are real challenges for Thais because they don't exist in Thai.   Steve became Sateeb. (There's no v sound in Thai, let alone a final v.  The closest Thai has is a final b.  Other v's become w.)  Then ten minutes of vocabulary - lots of creative activities to get across the meanings without using Thai.  Then we had grammar drills, ideally using the sounds from the pronunciation drills and the vocabulary from that drill.  Then we'd read from the story and ask questions about the story.  Everything in English.  Thai not allowed.  Some of the things they learned best were classroom instructions that got used every day.  Stand up.  Sit down.  Louder please.  Stop talking.  Who wants to read first?   Open your books.  Repeat after me. 

About the kid with the bare feet.  No, it wasn't that he didn't have shoes.  Thais just take their shoes off before they go inside.  So outside the classroom would be lots of shoes.  

This is the old Burmese stupa and temple across the river.  On Buddha's birthday everyone went there and in the full moon, carried candles around the stupa.  It was a connection they had to their ancestors who had done the same thing for hundreds of years.  

So it was exciting Saturday knowing that I'd made it to Kamphaengphet on my summer biking adventure.  While I rode through cool birch and spruce forests in Anchorage, I was imagining the dusty roads, the wonderful people and their smiles, the delicious food, and the temples as they were back in 1967-69.  

This is just the tiniest peeks at my three years living with Thais.  Three years that dramatically rewired my brain.  The temple pictures are here because Buddhism wasn't really a religion, it was a way of life and permeated everything.  A good Buddhist doesn't even kill a mosquito.  And there was a tolerance for everyone.  There were, of course, economic differences among people, but even the king prostrated himself before the great Buddha statues.  I'm using the past tense here because I'm writing about that Thailand back then.  I've been able to spend time in Thailand since then and while the basics are still the same, the gap between the US and Thailand technologically has gotten very small.  Back in the 60s, Thailand was a different world, a different time, from the US.  No longer.  

Today I did another 16.5 km so I'm on my way to Nakorn Sawan.  This is the longer between stops and I remember the dusty red dirt road in the last three hours of my trips back from Bangkok.  Lots of rice and mountains that looked like growths on the mostly flat landscape.  I'd note that all these roads have long since been paved.  

Southern Baptist Convention In Nashville Next Week - Tension Over Exec Committee Handling Sexual Abuse Issues

[NOTE: This started with a Tweet I read.  As I wrote this post I kept looking for more background.  And things got out of hand.  But for those readers like me who don't pay close attention to the workings of the Southern Baptist Convention, this should be of interest, because it reminds us that like all labels, the Baptists are not all the same and do disagree on things.  I thought was something that would get little attention, but I suspect by tomorrow or Monday it will be more widely covered.]

Twitter calls my attention to events and issues I'd otherwise miss.  There's tension on the Southern Baptist Executive Board over how to handle sexual abuse issues within the church. 

The issue of sexual abuse was addressed at the 2019 Convention with SBC President J.D. Greear proclaiming:

“Victims have told us, words without follow-up actions are worse than no words at all,” Greear said in what is his latest update on the Sexual Abuse Advisory Study he and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission initiated in 2018. Victims “want to see … that we care enough about this issue to do whatever it takes to make our churches safe for survivors and safe from abuse.”

Apparently the follow-up actions have fallen short.   

This Tweet from Philip Behancourt, the former Executive Vice President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, contradicts the current president's statements.  The link offers a summary of the contradictions with links to audio.  

Southern Baptists deserve to know the truth by hearing leaders talk about sexual abuse in their own words.https://t.co/DBVdtvlY3J pic.twitter.com/Myoa1mdoFU

— Phillip Bethancourt (@pbethancourt) June 10, 2021

This is not especially surprising. Other religious organizations have grappled over the dilemma of airing dirty laundry or hiding it in fear of a financial hit. So have universities, especially in sports. Just the other day the son of a prominent coach said his father dismissed his own complaint about sexual abuse from the team doctor.  And even if it's not about sex, the urge to cover things up and protect the name and income of the organizations almost always makes it hard to acknowledge big problems.  

This is coming to light right before the SBC's annual meeting.

  The Tennessean offers this preview of next week's meeting in Nashville::

"...The largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., which is headquartered in Nashville, is grappling with how to handle sexual abuse, critical race theory and the role of women in ministry. 

All, along with the election of a new president, could come up as thousands of Southern Baptists gather in Music City.

Calls for a third-party investigation into the executive committee emerged after the two letters signed by Moore, the former head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, were recently leaked to news organizations and a Baptist blog. 

In them, Moore leveled allegations related to sexual abuse against the executive committee, which acts on behalf of the convention when it is not in session. The letters detail the mistreatment of sexual abuse victims, the mishandling of abuse claims, intimidation and more. Moore's letters also mention racism expressed behind closed doors. . ."

Here's another view from Maina Mwaura and David Phillips published in the Southern Baptist Global yesterday (June 11, 2021)

"Russell Moore, former head of the SBC Ethics and Religion Liberty Commission, wrote in a recently publicized letter that SBC Executive Committee staff and others referred in his presence to victims of sexual abuse as “crazy” and as “worse than the sexual predators themselves.”

Stone issued a 15-minute video response to Moore’s leaked letter and declared, “I find the latest attack from Russell Moore to be absolutely slanderous, and it is as inflammatory as it is inaccurate.

Yet on June 10, Pastor Phillip Bethancourt released audio clips of meetings he attended with Ronnie Floyd, chairman of the SBC Executive Committee, and Stone. Those recordings verify what Moore stated in a second leaked letter that had more recently been written to SBC President J.D. Greear.

Someone is not telling the truth. But the audio makes it clear who was attempting to block effective denominational responses to the convention’s sexual abuse problems. In fact, in one clip, Stone even puts forward the idea that the SBC Executive Committee felt they were the victims. "

The two writers are described this way at the end of the article:

"Maina Mwaura is a freelance writer and communications consultant who lives in the metro Atlanta area. A native of Orlando, Fla., he earned a bachelor of science degree in communications from Liberty University and a master of divinity degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. David Phillips lives in Georgia and previously was a pastor in Delaware. He earned a bachelor of science degree from Athens State College in Athens, Ala, a master of divinity degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and a doctor of ministry degree from George Fox Seminary and now works with an educational software company." 

I did find this podcast in which Russell Moore (who wrote the original letter) and Bethancourt (who posted the Tweet and the links to audio) talk about college ministry which touchier issues such as online pornography. They talk about issues that have come up through their ethics work - same sex marriage, race, sexual abuse crises and our denomination's failure to address it. Death of a loved one, when college student learns his parents are getting a divorce. This sexual abuse discussion comes after about ten minutes of chit chat that shows the close relationship between these two.

https://signposts-with-russell-moore.simplecast.com/episodes/a-conversation-with-phillip-bethancourt 

Toward the end Bethancourt mentions his father who was an executive at Chevron, which suggests he comes from a financially very comfortable background, which may give him some self-confidence in taking on the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Bethancourt's Tweets also includes a link to this article below which he says helped him when responding to questions from his kids about Pride month.  (Approval of homosexuality doesn't seem to be a topic open for discussion with SBC.  I learned doing a previous post that there were only two reasons for a church to be summarily dropped from the Convention - accepting homosexuality and not paying dues.)  

"Third, we need to remember the priority and uniqueness of Christian love. Christian love is not one of pure reciprocity, where I affirm you if you affirm me. The mushy “you do you” and “live your truth” ethic is the product of expressive individualism, a weaponized form of relativism that rejects all forms of moral duty outside the person’s own felt needs. Christian love, in contrast, is ordered to the truth, rejoices in the truth, and is the very essence of truth itself (1 Corinthians 13:6). When Christians proclaim the truth and beauty of God’s design, we do it out of love for our neighbor and this world, knowing that sexual sin never leads to flourishing, and abandoning God’s design for the family only further compromises society’s foundation. It is for redeeming love of sexual sinners, both you and me, that Christ came to die for us (John 3:16)."

The bolded part of the quote above seems relevant to how the Convention deals with sexual abuse - truth.  But the truth about sex seems difficult for religions that make such a big deal about chastity except in marriage.  

You can look at the Southern Baptists Convention meeting website yourself.  The program is heavy on meetings of groups - Koreans, Hispanics, Native Americans, students, women, pastor's wives, Liberty University alumni, etc.  Don't see anything in the program about sexual abuse. There are no substantive policy papers that I can find.  

 

AIFF2020: Opening, Crescendo, Mazel Tov Cocktail, and Green Screens Of The Future

This is the second day of the Anchorage International Film Festival.  Last night we saw the opening ceremony, the opening shorts program, and then we watched Crescendo - a German feature about putting together a peace concert with young Jewish and Palestinian musicians.  I definitely recommend it.  It's a well made movie and the story line is both optimistic and realistic.  This movie was sponsored by the Anchorage Jewish Museum.  

Another German film - Mazel Tov Cocktail - is in the narrative shorts category.  I thought it was great!  As white folks in the US are learning, seems like we've been working on this forever, that each person of color is a unique individual and shouldn't be assumed to behave in some characteristic way, Mazel Too Cocktail looks at the world through the eyes of a Russian Jewish immigrant high school student in Germany as he confronts the many different stereotypes the people around him have of him.  This includes, positive ones, negative ones, from classmates, teachers, people on the street, and even his own parents and grandfather.  But what makes this short stand out is, well, everything.  It's a snappy, irreverent, well acted, well filmed, funny movie with a kick.  I highly recommend it.  

For as much as I've gotten used to Zoom and Jitsi and Skype and Netflix, watching the film festival movies with my wife at home in the living room, just felt wrong.  None of the familiar AIFF faces walking the aisles and lobbies to greet and compare notes with.  None of the audience reactions to the movies. None of the passing exchanges of tips about good movies.  I even miss getting into the cold car and driving from one venue to the other.  (Well, not that much.)

And if people do see great movies, please leave recommendations in the comments.

On the other hand - all the movies are available all the time.  You can watch what you want when you want to.  As many times as you want.  I hope that means I don't miss those hidden gems I went to because there was nothing else in that time slot.  

And we're supposed to get lots of film maker interviews and Q&A's though I'm not quite sure how we're going to figure out when these will happen.  But figuring out new habits keeps us young (or drives us crazy.)

And I thought I'd add the YouTube video I accidentally found the other day on the future (demise) of green screens.  A little behind the scenes of movie making.  

Now that people are using Zoom, more people know about green screens - the green background that allows you to supply the people and objects in front, with a totally different background.  It's called "The Volume" and consists of a wrap around background.  Just watch the video.  It's cool.

When Our Sphere Gets Shrunk, There's More Time To See What's Still There - The Sun And The Moon And Merton

 Last night, when I went outside, the moon was already big.  And a little googling helped me set my camera so it wasn't washed out.  

And today the sun streamed through the windows to highlight parts of this bouquet KS dropped off the other day.  

I love how flowers go from youth to old age in a week or so, revealing wonders before returning their atoms to the earth for other flowers to use.

I didn't mention flowers in the post title, mostly because what struck me was how the sunlight changed them.  I think of these pictures more about light than the flowers.  But, yes, the light spotlights details of the flowers.  

And tonight I watched the moon through the bare branches of a birch in the back yard.

And let me slip in this last picture - from one of the Olé classes I'm taking this month - Thomas Merton.  I first learned about Merton on an early Talk of the Nation show.  I was stunned by all the people who called in to talk with host Ray Suarez about this modern monk/philosopher, people who were moved and inspired by his words in his many books.    I learned that I had a couple of 'connections' too Merton.  (We can connect with people in odd ways because our paths have crossed, sort of.)  Merton died in Bangkok in 1968, electrocuted in a shower.  At least that was the story I heard.  I was in Thailand teaching English as a Peace Corps volunteer.  If I read about his death at the time, I don't remember at all.  I didn't know who he was and probably would have passed over it quickly.

Image from Kathleen Tarr's Olé presentation

Merton also spend some time that year at a monastery in Eagle River, Alaska, a community that is part of the Municipality of Anchorage.  

I got a chance to talk to Ray Suarez some time after the Merton show when he was visiting Anchorage and told him how remarkable I thought the Merton show was.  He said that was an early show, but when the Merton call-in was so wildly successful, he knew that Talk of the Nation would be a success.  It turns out that Kathleen Tarr, who's teaching the class is a serious Merton scholar and that has added to the richness of that first class.  Three to go.  

On a more somber note, something I'd hoped this post would stay away from, I learned, as I was looking up Merton's death just to confirm the details, that a book was published in 2018 saying that his death was murder, not an accident.   The story of his death by electrocution in a shower in Thailand was very plausible to me.  Someone I knew had been knocked unconscious in a shower when the light went off and he tried to turn it back on.  Fortunately, he got up shortly and was fine.  

And enjoy the sun, the moon, and even think about reading a book by or about Thomas Merton.  It's something I look forward to myself.  

Happy New Year

The Jewish New Year begins at sunset this evening.  The passing or Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes it bitter sweet as we mourn her, and ask forgiveness from those we have done wrong.  The next ten days, according to Jewish tradition, is when people's fates for the next year are written.  

Unlike most years, it's a small intimate table for two, though we'll do the initial blessings via zoom with friends and then join services via zoom a little later. Shana Tova.  Happy New Year to all.  May we be able to come together again sometime in the next year.  While it will be 2021 on the Western calendar, we move into 5781 on the Jewish calendar tonight.  

Why DNC Rightfully Warned Us About Four More Years

And it seems the RNC is trying to turn it around and scare the Trump base into thinking Biden will be even worse.  Here are two examples.

1.  Truly scary Trump nomination.  The guy is a Harvard Law professor who believe the US should be a Catholic based authoritarian theocracy:

Trump Nominates Adrian Vermeule to ACUS

" . . .in an essay for The Atlantic, Vermeule proposed a new legal ideology that would disregard the Constitution altogether. According to Vermeule:

Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being…. The Court’s jurisprudence on free speech, abortion, sexual liberties, and related matters will prove vulnerable under a regime of common-good constitutionalism…. So too should the libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology—that government is forbidden to judge the quality and moral worth of public speech, that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,”  and so on—fall under the ax. Libertarian conceptions of property rights and economic rights will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources."

 Vermeule's Wikipedia page gives more details about his very unAmerican philosophy.  If you're wonder ing about his connections with William Barr, you're asking the right questions.  Here's a piece linking Barr's ideas with Vermeule's.

The ACUS, by the way,  is the Administrative Council for the United States.  What does the ACUS do?  Here's what their webpage says:

"ACUS is an independent federal agency charged with convening expert representatives from the public and private sectors to recommend improvements to administrative process and procedure. ACUS initiatives promote efficiency, participation, and fairness in the promulgation of federal regulations and in the administration of federal programs."

2. Who is Miles Taylor and why did he resign from the Trump administration?  

First, who he is courtesy of Wikipedia:

"Miles Taylor is an American former government official who specialises in security and international relations. He was formerly a Trump administration appointee who served in the United States Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, including as Chief of Staff to former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Acting Secretary Chad Wolf."

Second, why he resigned.  This high level Trump official resigned when Trump told him and others to keep all immigrants out of the US.  When Trump was told it was illegal, Miles Taylor says that Trump replied, "I don't care.  I'll pardon you all."

💣s away https://t.co/Tdb7LOnp6Z

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) August 25, 2020

Before you get too depressed, here's the Economist's forecast for the election as of yesterday.  

They give Biden a 90% chance of winning the electoral college vote and 98% chance of winning the popular vote.  We're still over two months from the election.  But these kind of numbers mean that if Trump wins it will be like the vote in Belarus.  And it make me think the pollsters in the election in 2016 were only wrong because they didn't consider voter suppression and tampering with voting machines.  

Pause For A Prayer

From A Concord Pastor Comments

Sometimes when I pray, Lord,
I imagine sitting next to you
on a park bench, on a warm day,
a grassy carpet at my feet...

Sometimes we just sit there,
you and I, just the two of us,
in a moment made holy
by the silence we share...

Or I pour out my heart to you
and share my cares and worries
while you listen
and gently wipe away my tears...

(It goes on, but that's the relevant part.)

My regular readers are probably scratching their heads by now.

Someone in Mountain View, California got to this old post ( What Do I Know?: Little India, The Arab Quarter, and Peranakan) of mine from a blog called A Concord Pastor Comments.  Nowadays, most of the browsers don't leave behind the search terms people use to get to your website.  When they did, I sometimes did a post looking at what people searched for and what they got.  (For example:  "Where Can I Ride A Trained Polar Bear?")  That's interesting for a blogger because you can see what people were looking for to get to your blog.  Sometimes it's a great match, other times it leaves you wondering.

But I rarely get to see the search terms these days.  Most often from Bing.  But this one had a link so I went to the Pastor's blog to see why my post got linked.

I wandered around the site not finding any links to my blog and then I saw the picture of the two people on the bench in the park.  I took that while I was visiting my son in Singapore where he was studying for his Masters degree and I was on my way home after volunteering three months in Chiengmai, Thailand.

It really is a perfect picture for the poem.  Few people seeing the picture and poem would imagine the two on the bench are Chinese and the park is in Singapore.   And I appreciate the Pastor linking to the source of the picture.  Not everyone who uses someone else's photo acknowledges where they got it.


It turns out there were about 12 other hits on the Singapore post all clustered together around the same time from around the country, but none of the others showed how they got to my blog.

George Washington: "Individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest."

Screenshot of FB Live Coverage of Michigan Protest

I watched the Michigan protests live last Wednesday and heard people complaining about losing their income and losing their businesses.

I understand those folks whose businesses are going under, whose jobs are gone and whose bills threaten to ruin them financially.  I understand those people who don't know how they'll pay for food. I understand their frustration with the closing off of much of the economy.  (No, I'm lucky that I don't feel it, but I understand it.)  It's rational to want your life to continue on normally, and even not care if some people die because of it.  After all, we allow people to drive cars knowing that some 30,000 or so people will die in car crashes every year.

But we've had 39,000 deaths in the last seven weeks or so and without the self-isolation that's been imposed, that number would be a lot higher.  And the people out protesting without social distancing and without masks are going to make the numbers higher than they should be.

But they have a point - there's a balance between individual freedom and the good of all.  As I believe

Screenshot of FB Live Coverage of Michigan Protest

that there is great deal of difference among Americans in how well they understand how much we all affected - for good and bad - by what others do.

For those who are loudly and self-righteously declaring their personal rights to do whatever they want, I'd like to direct them to the letter of transmittal of the draft US Constitution to the Congress, signed by George Washington, in which he wrote:

"Individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. The magnitude of the sacrifice must depend as well on situation and circumstance, as on the object to be obtained. It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and those which may be preserved;"

There are options available that include helping out those with small businesses and those who have lost their jobs without jeopardizing the health and lives of other Americans.  Congress has already passed legislation to give out cash to people below a certain level of income.  To help out small businesses.  To postpone the payment of rent and other debts.  If the protestors are concerned that so much of that went to friends and donors of members of Congress and the President, their protests are directed at the wrong targets.

The Bible tells us about Jubilee years where all debts are forgiven and people begin again.  This might be a good time for that.

If that's too extreme for some, we could simply freeze the economy for several months.  Turn it off and then start it up when it's safer.  No new debts would be accrued.  We'd start over again as if April through July (or whenever it's safe) never happened.

Do It Yourself Matzahs For Pandemic Pesach

The shopper texted that there were no matzahs the other day.

So, we just had to make our own.  Google helped with a couple of recipes and this one looked easiest.

After mixing the flour and water and kneading, it said to cut the ball in half, and again, and again, until there were eight pieces of dough.

Then flatten them with a rolling pin - thinner and thinner and bigger and bigger.













Then into the oven quickly.  Two minutes per side.






We baked several times to get all eight done.

They don't look anything like what comes out of the box.  Much more exotic looking.



[UPDATED April 8, 2020 8:15pm:  We ended up with a clean table cloth, the old candelabras, the kiddush cup from our wedding, and an abbreviated Seder.  It was a great break from our self-isolation to observe an ancient ritual during this time of pandemic.  And to remember the ten plagues in Egypt as the Jews fled the Pharaoh.  It broke the routine and put today into a much larger perspective. Even if it was just the two of us this year.]

Senate Republicans Choose Trump Over God

Let's be clear.  I tend to see God, at best, as a metaphor.  One of many ways for people to keep faith that things will be better.  I think there are better metaphors that do the same thing.  But when evangelists for different religions come to my door, I tend to ask them why they think they 'know' the truth and everyone else is wrong.  I ask them "Do you think if you'd been born in, say, Pakistan, don't you think you'd be just as fervent about Mohammad as you are now about Jesus?"

So, when yesterday's Impeachment Trial began with an invocation, I scratched my head - why, in a country founded by people fleeing religious persecution and with a constitutional mandate for freedom of religion, do we have a religious leader open a session of the Senate?

So I was a little surprised by Chaplain Barry Black's invocation.



“Eternal lord god, you have summarized ethical behavior in a single sentence: Do for others what you would like them to do for you,” Black continued. “Remind our senators that they alone are accountable to you for their conduct. Lord help them to remember that they can’t ignore you and get away with it, for we always reap what we sow. Have your way, mighty God. You are the potter our senators … are the clay. Mold and make us after your will. Stand up, omnipotent God. Stretch yourself and let this nation and world know that you alone are sovereign. I pray in the name of Jesus, Amen.”  (transcript from Newsone.)

I tweeted at the time:

"While I don't know why God should be included in government meetings, the invocation  appropriately asked the Senators [to] do the right thing.  Unfortunately, the Republican President seems to hold more sway than the Christian god.  #ImpeachmentTrial"

And now that witnesses have been excluded from the trial, it seems I was right.  The Chaplains words had less sway than whatever it is that Trump's minions are telling Republican Senators.


I'd note that while I think that Chaplain Black's words are noteworthy, especially when read in front of Republican Senators who tend to claim the Christian god as the basis of their life values, I'm posting this because it's relatively simple and easy to post.  I'm wrestling with lots of other issues that I'm trying to tie into coherent posts:

• How to verify troll/bots on Twitter  - I found a site that lets you do this and I'm working on a post about it.
• What are Twitter's rules?  - The bot detector uses Twitter's rules in its algorithm, but the rules aren't easily found on one page, so I'm trying to make them a little simpler to figure out
• How to post about Twitter for people who never use Twitter
• Responding to Murkowski critics - Tweeters are attacking her on a Tweet where she says she's working to get the ERA Amendment into the Constitution.  Not because they oppose that, but because they oppose her vote against witnesses.  Why attack her when there are 50 more Republican Senators who are much worse?
• My granddaughter's love for strawberries, but without any trace of the stem

But in the meantime, let's take solace in the notion that "you reap what you sow."

"I thought that they, like myself, simply wanted to 'save the lives of unborn babies.' I have come to the conclusion that I was a dupe."

I was going to have a couple of short links to interesting sites, but it's hard.  I know brief is good, but life is complicated and brief means simplifying the complications.  I do strive for clear, but not simple.  So I'm just going to do this one link on abortion.


How I Lost Faith In The Pro-Life Movement  - This post is several years old, and the basics are well known to anyone who has any awareness of the facts of abortion.  Basically:

• Promoting contraceptives decreases abortion more than anything else.
• Banning abortion doesn't decrease number of abortions, but increases deaths of mothers getting illegal and unsafe abortions.
• Much of the anti-abortion movement is men trying to control women

There's also an interesting discussion about when life begins and how the body sloughs off many fertilized cells naturally - more in women not taking birth control than in those using birth control pills.  Here's a sample of what it sounds like:

"I have to be honest, this blog post totally shocked me. I wondered about the numbers Sarah used, so I went looking for verification. As I did this I opted to use the pro-life movement’s own numbers on the rate of fertilized eggs that fail to implant for women on the pill. Remember, once again, that scientific studies have found again and again that the pill does not result in fertilized eggs failing to implant. However, I felt that if I used the pro-life movement’s own numbers I could not be accused of simply using studies with a liberal bias. And so I explored the numbers."

There's lots of numbers to back all this up, numbers most people don't have when discussing abortion.  And numbers I need to check up on (the link right above goes to another of her own posts that goes into more detailed numbers.  The author of all this this is listed as Libby Anne on the website Patheos which describes itself as:

"Patheos.com is the premier online destination to engage in the global dialogue about religion and spirituality, and to explore and experience the world's beliefs. Patheos is the website of choice for the millions of people looking for credible and balanced information about religion. Patheos brings together faith communities, academics, and the broader public into a single environment, and is the place where many people turn on a regular basis for insight, inspiration, and stimulating discussion."

Libby Anne's brief bio is:

"Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. College turned her world upside down, and she is today an atheist, a feminist, and a progressive. She blogs about leaving religion, her experience with the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements, the detrimental effects of the "purity culture," the contradictions of conservative politics, and the importance of feminism."

For now, I'm going to trust Patheos to have checked up on Libby Anne's background.  But I'll also email them and find out how they vet authors.  I'll let you know when or if I hear back.


Meanwhile, when the anti-abortion group pickets in front of Planned Parenthood, nearby, I'm going to give them all copies.  But I realize that for some people out their picketing, being anti-abortion is their self identity.  If they aren't anti-abortion, who will they become?  It's hard changing.