Tungsten Fluff

Reboot in Progress

After three years, I'm surprised the blog is still here. I guess typepad keeps them around in the 'free' format - that green grass template is just unforgivable.

A lot has gone on in the mean time and I look forward to sharing that in due course.

The blog is rebooting and will be up soon.

 

 

Emergent Kid?

Sixth grade has been emotionally tough for my 12-year-old daughter.  Friendships that seemed bulletproof just a year ago have morphed into simple acquaintances; the only evidence of their existence being the wacky photos in her scrapbook.  She’s made new friends – I’d say better ones – over the last couple of months but she’s a gentle soul and prone to drama.  I’ve spent many nights talking with her about it as I tuck her in, trying to give her some perspective and balance.

Last night we talked about a boy friend of hers who is moving from yet another foster home to boot camp.  He’s an angry kid who’s been passed around since he was little and taken from his drug-abusing parents.  My little girl is an empathizer and when she asked about his recent change of dress and negative demeanor, he told her about his situation.  She responded with, “Wow…that’s really sad.  I’ll be praying for you.  God loves you, you know.”  To which he said, “Yeah, that’s what all you crazy Christians say.”  And stormed off.  The other kids kind of blew off the exchange and didn’t say much more about it.

So I told her I was proud of her for stepping out like that but she was bewildered by his response.  Like she thought the mere mention of God’s love would turn his life around on the spot.  I asked her to think about the idea of God loving him through her and suggested that she simply ask him to talk then listen.  Be his friend.  Care.  Don’t even mention God unless he brings Him up.

Her eyes lit up for a second then dimmed just as abruptly.

“If I do that, then everyone will think I like him…and I don’t…at least not like that.  They’ll start talking about me and him.”

Then I quoted Jesus.  “Jesus said if we followed him we would be persecuted.  That doesn’t just mean that people will make fun of us for carrying a bible or praying over our meals.  It will probably happen when we care enough about hurting people to do something to help them, too.”

I asked her, “Think about what happened yesterday.  You did the Christian thing: told him God loves him and that you’d pray for him.  Was he very receptive to that?”

“No,” she said.

“And did any of your friends make fun of you for saying that?”

“Well, no.”

“But if you just offered to talk and listen…” trying to get her to see.

“He’d probably be OK with that.  But everyone might talk about us…but I think I get it.”

I’m really looking forward to tonight’s debrief.

Rocket Launch

Cool video of a Saturn V model rocket launch.

Story here. 

Random thoughts

I’m learning to choose NOT to do certain things and be OK with the decision – I don’t have to place equal importance on every task or fix every problem.  That’s why the blog has sat and collected dust for a while.  I’m still paying for it because I want to log my thoughts periodically but other people and things take precedence.

School is pretty intense right now.  I’m half-way through a course in business law and two things jump out at me: 1) every stupid corporate policy or government law is due to a lawsuit and 2) it scares the crap out of me that people conduct business for corporations without a basic understanding of the things I’ve learned in the past 6 weeks.  It’s a wonder businesses don’t get sued MORE.

Segue: I’ve been following the disclosure of the CIA torture memos via RSS feeds from Andrew Sullivan.  I have to admit, I delete every other torture-related post because it’s just too much to take in.  He posted a link to this gem by Philip Zelikow that outlines the legal connection between the Geneva Conventions and our own constitutional protections.  The bottom line seems to be if someone in law enforcement – CIA or county sheriff – thinks you're planning an attack, they can legally suspend your constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure (4th amendment), rights of due process and protection against self-incrimination (5th amendment), cruel and unusual punishment (8th amendment) and civil rights guarantees (14th amendment).  His closing comment:

So the Office of Legal Council must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail.  In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest -- if the alleged national security justification was compelling.

Speaking of Sullivan, he’s been running an interesting series of posts called The Cannabis Closet in which readers send in their personal experiences with cannabis, good or bad, past or present.  A couple of posts were keepers including this from a widower who bought it for his dying wife.  My favorite line in the series came from this one:

Drug addiction is never about the drug, it’s about people coming to grips with the pain of existence.

The original entry is here.  Radley Balko has a keeper on the lethality of current marijuana laws here.

Planes...and Automobiles

This quote was awarded it's own shadow box on the 16 March issue of AW&ST Letters page.  Lew Creedon writes:

The aircraft industry, which uses probably a miniscule percentage of the US’s energy, is spending billions of dollars on reducing that number by less than a percentage point.  The automobile industry, originator of the present storm, has spent the last 20 years of more promoting monster vehicles in defiance of the spirit and intention of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy legislation, wasting more fuel in a day than the aviation industry can save in a year.  The matching arrogance that led to the use of private jets to beg for government help indicates that for once it would be a good idea to kill the messenger and not necessarily his vehicle.

Can I get an Amen?

Cool Tunes

Our laptop died a couple of weeks ago so my wife has been using the oldest's iPod for tunes during the day. She came across If Everyone Cared from Nickelback the other day and I"ve been diggin' it.

Someday, guys...

Epic Conversations, Part 1 of Many

So here’s another weighty matter that’s been rattling around in my head lately. It’s my side of an email dialogue I’ve been having with a Christ follower and long-time friend in Texas. I thought it might make for interesting reading.

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I’ve written about what went on last year with my wife; the thyroid thing, bipolar characteristics, etc. You know me, I consume information and I especially read a lot about this behavioral stuff. Now that she is on the right medication – synthroid, and only synthroid – she and I have talked a lot about how her mental state is affected by the thyroid hormone. Guys like to joke about our wives being ‘hormonal’ but this is an extreme case; she actually is hormonal because her body no longer makes T4. She’s described the ‘brain fog’ that creeps in on the days she is supposed to skip her pill. Her brain literally loses the ability to process information. Conversations beyond one phrase, or questions requiring more than a simple 'yes' or 'no' become strained and dismissive. Thankfully, we both know this now and understand how to manage it. She takes the hormone, her brain turns back on and I have my wife back. Amazing.

Leaving the personal situation and heading down the mental rabbit trail I followed over the summer: I learned a bit about personality development and behavioral characteristics; how one’s upbringing can result in a certain disposition or view towards people. At the risk of sounding like and appeal to the masses, I know many people who went through difficult, abusive childhood and teen years and ended up suspicious of people. It’s a coping mechanism developed to help defend against real or perceived threats. These things get deeply engrained in the personality centers of the brain.

I read up on other extreme situations in personality development. It was during this time that Austrian police discovered Josef Fritzl holding his own daughter in captivity for 20 years, siring multiple children by her. And I have to ask: What does that do to a person? What expectation does God put on that daughter and her kids? Does He take into account the fact their idea of “Father” has been irreparably damaged?

If so, can we take a step back from that case to one where abuse only occurs a few times? How about once? What if the victim has a genetic or environmental pre-disposition to emotional over-reaction and is “only” verbally abused? What about the children of Darfur, Nepal, Iraq or Chechnya who grow up in a constant life-or-death environment. God created their physical bodies with a ‘fight or flight’ system that can be over-stimulated to the point it stays on all the time. Witness the returning soldier who hears every household bump and creak as a bomb or gunshot.

Environmental conditioning. Trauma. Brain/body chemistry. Neglect. Abuse. All of these things affect us in ways we don’t even realize. We act today out of our past without thought – in large part because we are designed to. Google ‘amygdala’ or ‘limbic system’ sometime and you’ll see how the brain matches sensory inputs to emotional and physical responses – largely outside our ability to control.

Strangely, I think I’ve started to understand Calvinism a bit. He understood that people were broken which lead to his total depravity doctrinal plank. I think I agree with him that we are all broken and incapable of receiving the salvation God offers without His help. However, since studying all of this, I’ve wondered if some people are too broken to realize they need God. If that’s the case, where do you draw the ‘brokenness line?’ Throw in the many NT verses that seem to indicate that God wants all men to be saved – and the textual gyrations many people go through to describe why “all men” doesn’t really mean “all men,” and think I've figured out why the idea of Christian Universalism has some appeal.

And this is where it gets weird for me. I’m trying to figure out exactly what difference that soteriological viewpoint makes in my day-to-day interactions with people, non-believers especially. It’s not really up to me to decide whether someone goes to heaven when they die or not. I don’t see Jesus explicitly talking about it a lot in the gospels – no sinners' prayers or alter calls - he focuses on what God’s dominion is like (and you and I talk about that a lot) and how to live a kingdom life here. So the ‘weirdness’ for me is reflected in this thought: if God is going to decide people’s eternity (or they are expected to choose themselves if you are an Armenian) and people are largely broken anyway, the best thing I can do is love them today. And I think you know I mean engage in real, caring friendships with people without the salvation issue hanging over the proverbial head of the relationship. I can still pray for people, read the word, ask God to use me to meet people’s needs, listen, help, feed, clothe, hug, cry, laugh, etc. Right? Am I totally off the wall here?

I absolutely believe that a life dedicated to, and empowered by Christ yields the best possible life for everyone it touches. But, in a way, a life lived free of complex soteriology can lead to deeper relationships with people God loves because there’s no pressure to convert anyone or fear of losing one’s own salvation through tainted contact.

I’m still fleshing this out and am working my way through the Gospels again to look for answers. But I’m at a place where I’m far enough along that I’d like some feedback from someone who really thinks and doesn’t have a personal agenda with me. Let me know if I’m wandering too far off the path here. And yes, I may post this later.

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And so I did. Is there a stake in my future?

All of this has happened before...

My current read is War of the World by historian and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson.

I know, some people get toys and clothes for Christmas, I get malt extract kits and books on war.  To each his own, I suppose.

The book opens with John Maynard Keynes' description of Britain in 1901: one could read a morning paper containing dispatches from around the world, could invest in any number of commodities or securities on any number of world exchanges, could travel with relative ease to any country on earth in a matter of days, could mail-order luxuries and necessities from numerous suppliers the world over, etc.  Keynes’ introductory words in his Economic Consequences sound a lot like the world today.  The eerie thing was that it was all shattered by the short-minded thinking of a few hundred well-connected politicians and bankers in key countries – resulting, of course, in World War I in 1914.  It wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 that the world began to recover fully.  Now, twenty years later (has it really been that long?) I note with increasing frustration how little is understood about the history and context of this latest international unraveling.  Even though a world war is unlikely, it looks like the decisions of a few hundred powerful idiots in Washington and New York will sink the global economy for the sake of their own short-term gain.  I’m genuinely upset about the scope of our country’s financial problems and the apparent lack of capable and willing leadership.

I came across this rant last week that summed up my feelings pretty well:

“I am tired of being told that I, and my daughter when she grows up, should pay taxes so that bankers can get $70 billion in bonuses, so banks can use my tax money to buy other banks up like vultures feasting on road kill and so that the guy down the street from me who took out an exotic mortgage to buy a house he couldn't afford can extract $200,000 or more from me and the rest of us in this nation - and keep his house.”

And when you see an investor of Jim Rogers’ experience telling reporters that he’s completely out of the stock market – and staying out – and liquidating his position in the dollar in return for investing in “agricultural commodities,” you know it could get bad. 

 

Agricultural commodities…that’s food folks.  Guys like Rogers, Schiff, Denninger, Paul are all talking on a different, more fundamental level than anyone in media.  I would bet those two capable Asian reporters have never seen anything but economic boom-times in their lives.  The idea of a subsistence society in the West is foreign to them.

No pun intended.

Big head alert: Maybe I’m experiencing a small taste of what Jeremiah felt while watching ancient Israel head down their chosen course.  Seriously, I’ve felt a weight on my conscience over the last couple of weeks and it’s become more of a burden than I can reasonably explain.  I went to a movie with Julie the other weekend (Taken with Liam Neeson – really good, BTW) and I remember leaving the theatre and realizing for a split-second I had not thought about any of this for two hours.  I felt mentally relieved.  Of course, once I realized the hard questions had been gone, they immediately rushed back in to fill the void.

Something about Heisenberg at work there.  Really now, does anyone know how to shut down the brain and stay conscious?

Chinese Bluegrass

What a cool merging of cultures this is:

Best Links

The best analysis and proposed solutions to the current economic mess - with lots of posts - from Karl Denninger over at The Market Ticker.

I've learned a lot about our current energy situation by reading The Oil Drum lately.  A post by Gail the Actuary contains THE chart that summarizes our economic problems.  Gotta mop up, liquidate and reallocate all that debt - not create more!

Interesting and sad: the best commentary I've seen in a while about unChristian behavior by Christians from Josh over on De-Conversion.

I've been concerned for a long time about the state of our military.  The analysts at CDI issued America's Defense Meltdown late last year.  Download the .pdf - it's worth it.  Bottom line:  We're spending "more for less:" more defense spending buys fewer combat divisions, ships and less aircraft than at the end of WW II.  Wonderful.

Oh...and Facebook is addictive.  And Facebook mobile is worse.