Pachyderm Underground

For all of you who read my blog, I thought I'd tell you that I've just launched my newest blog, The Pachyderm Underground. In an effort to separate the political things I discuss on my personal blog, I've banded together with a few others to create a blog that is all politics and all conservative. Now, that's not to say all Republicans or Conservatives will agree with every author all the time, but I think you're all in for a good treat!!!

Passing the Buck

Somewhere almost too far away to sense winds are tearing trees out of the ground as fifty-foot waves drown barrier walls. From the safety of my house, only a scant 50 miles inland, a strange feeling rushes over me: are those in danger paying the price for my relative safety?

As hurricane Ike was forming in the Gulf only a few short days ago, I was going about my business...working on a brief, an article for a symposium, filling in missing album artwork on iTunes and religiously updating my facebook status, when I stumbled across the first projection for Ike's path...right through my front door. Less then pleased, I called my dad at work and let him know we ought to consider re-stocking our pantry. We have hurricane stuffs, but Dolly kinda cleaned us out and then we got to lazy to the store and buy water to drink when there was a perfectly good stash righ there in our house.

We bought more tuna than any platoon of men should eat...I'm looking at it now in the family room as it makes its own preparations to sit and wait for the next diaster.

Since hurrican Dolly, my hometown and surrounding cities have been suffering - badly. Over 1/3 of the Valley is impoverished [as compared to the 1/10th of the population national average] so natural diasters hit us hard. The wealth and abundance in places like McAllen must try to outshine the unappealing qualities of shacks and shanties inhabited by the immigrant workers and illegal alliens who probably picked, packed, or shipped whatever you're eating as you read this. These areas of poverty are prone to flooding, and since Dolly, our grounds have remained saturated. You may not believe it, but the post-storm mosquito infestation has gotten so bad, we now have confirmed cases of Malaria and West Nile Virus here...as if left Africa only b/c I missed watching House on Tuesdays.

With all this in mind, I was speaking to a dear friend of mine in Houston early in the Ike saga, and the thought suddenly occured to us - how do you pray in this situation???

If he prayed for my safety and my home's protection...what would be the best case scenario in the back of his mind?? In other words, what was it he REALLY wanted? If my friend asked for the hurricane to be otherwise diverted, someone else's life would be in the balance. Just because that life isn't mine doesn't make it less valuable...or does it? Say I prayed for the hurricane to change direction...where would it go? Houston? What if the hurricane shifted North? What if shifted South? What if what if what if...the fact of the matter is prayer, now matter how effective...couldn't make the hurricane go away. It has to go somewhere...

And somewhere it did. I spoke to this same friend yesterday and he was on his way over to his parents' house after work to help his father ready their house - their home - for Ike. He says he's thankful the hurricane was redirected because Houston at least would be less saturated and more capable, in his mind, of handling Ike...we'll see.

As Ike's potential for devestation became more evident, the lesson this teaches about life becomes more evident. I remarked to my father that watching Ike over this past week is like watching an army of the world's most powerful soldiers slowly desend upon your castle - it's like watching your death. And as momentarily scary as that may seem, the inevitability of it all takes some of the edge off. What I mean is, once the hurricane's path was set, you could only do so much to prepare yourself, and then you just had to wait. It will come when it comes, and it's the waiting that's the most difficult. As Dr. Wilson says, "Dying's easy. It's living that's hard."

I've never seen a tornado disappear into thin air. I've never heard of a tsunami disentigrating in air; never known a monsoon to stop in mid pour while still leaving the eco-system balanced. Hail storms do not turn into lemondrop and fruit roll-up parades. Weather patterns dissapate, not vanish. It's one of Newton's laws of motion - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - forces come in pairs.

Even Jesus, when he ordered the demon[s] Legion out of the man, ordered them into the pig. He didn't smite them into nothingness...when bills come due...they will be paid...by SOMEONE.

I have my tuna, my passport, my bottled water, a truck full of gas, a knife, a first-aid kit, two months supply of medicine...and the weather channel...now I just have to wait...maybe I'll watch something else instead.

Blessings of the Burdened II - Guilt is a Disease

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

To preface this, with a disclaimer/warning - I have been reading Atlas Shrugged. I have read it before, but it has been a while. If you know of Atlas Shrugged, you probably are also aware as to its author's political and phillisophical persuasions - so when I say "I love it" you may now make a decision as to whether or not you'd like to continue reading. I'll give you a moment to decide.

[crickets chirp]

Here's something that's really fascinating to me - Christian guilt. To expand on my last entry, I'm not sure I ought to be so paternalistic as to say one way or the other whether or not "poor" people are happy. I'm sure they have just as much right to be unhappy or happy as Bill Gates does. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's none of my business whether they are happy or not. Because people ought not be what makes other people happy. If someone can make you "happy" then they can also, [insert appropriate obnoxious latin phrase to demonstrate I went to law school], make you unhappy.

In the traditional American Christian, we find a particularly interesting breeding. Here is a capitalist - the more successful the better. This person has a sense of individuality not to be found in inhabitants of other countries, especially if he were raised here. He is moved to joy by the fruits of his own labor - who among us is not proud when we finish something that doesn't turn out shotty? The American Christian is self-motivated - he succeeds at work because he doesn't make decisions based on irrational motives, but on fact. That which will yield the better result, will make the bottom line fatter, that is the one he chooses. And when he makes the wrong decision from time to time, we are ok with that. But what if he is always right? What if he makes TONS of money? Then, suddenly, we villify him. His name is synonamous with greed and evil: he is selfish. He only wants to make money, he seeks to make a profit. As we ride on his airplanes and talk to our friends on his iPhones, we make sure to point out what a horrible person he is - he has no social conscious. I mean, what has he ever done for society? [Never you mind that competition breeds innovation, and that the all-mighty dollar as a motivator probably pushed the development of the vaccines that kept you alive so far to read this on your wonderful machine that I suppose appeared out of thin air without the aid of any entrepreneurial intervention.] How has his money grubbing done anything for a single human being on earth [besides of course keep him in business - but who ever needed pasturized milk anyway]? Selfish, selfish, selfish: disgusting.

When we approach this American Christian at church or in a religious setting, we remind him that he has much and others have little. We inform him that he has no right to be joyful in what he has created, invented, improved, because others don't even have that which he has improved upon. We tell him that he is responsible for the weak - that he owes to them all that he has because to he whom much is given, much is expected. And if the guilt works, the American will allow himself to live a dual life - one in which he believes in self-motivation and self-reliance as virtue, and one in which his guilt at others' failures and lack of opportunity enable them to live off of him. Our ability to control his giving depends not on the quality of his conviction in the value of life, but in his acceptance of guilt. Now, unable to remain consistent, he begins to be afraid of himself. He fears what his instincts tell him - that he should pursue the right decisions in business -those that make him profit. He is now unwilling to act on what he believes in. Supposing that were the definition of virtue, what sort of stumbling block is our social conscious?

Can this really be the way in which God wanted Christians to tend to the hurting world? Consider this excerpt taken from Atlas Shrugged, that would demonstrate the absurdity in this line of thinking:

"I mean, we're only human beings - and what's a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones - so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence. When a man thinks he's good - that's when he's rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he's done."
"But if a man knows that what he's done is good?"
"Then he ought to apologize for it."
"To whom?"

"To those who haven't done it."


When we apologize, as a nation for having more money than [insert country here], we allow them to live off our system, and our government, our people, they just hand over the money. What does that do? It eventually will destroy the American Christian's ability to make a living and live comfortably, and his apology to those who do not live comfortably will be his joining them on a lower socio-economic level, standing in solidarity with the poor he can no longer afford to assist. This would be the consequence of the ever expanding social conscious, would it not?

But what if we were selfish? Would that help anyone? Next installment - same bat time, same bat channel.

Out of Africa - How Would Jesus Vote?

Just in case your curious, there are people who mistakenly find me intelligent from time to time, despite my inability to spell anything without spell check. Above please find the link to my latest article. It's been up for some time and I'm sorry to say I was too lazy to put this link up...
sue me

Acholi Beads

The Blessings of the Burdened

It's difficult for any left-leaning Christian, much less a right-leaning or middle-ground walking Christian in today's world to feel happy for more than the 30 seconds it might take him or her to realize that she has no right to be happy in today's world. How can one be happy, when others most certainly are not? How can I laugh at Boston Legal knowing there are those without food, much less televisions? How can we be happy when we beat Rainbow Six on medium, with the knowledge that somewhere someone's REAL life is much more gruesome than the grenade launching death "REAPER" [my brother's Playstation 3 handle] just rained down on all the animated terrorists?

I don't know how we CANNOT be happy...because all those people we so pity with our fake guilt, they are happy. Well, maybe they aren't, but they have joy.

Why is it that old negro spirituals fill our songbooks, with each one on a dog-eared and well-worn page; but the songs of happy well-fed rich slave owners are on the pages still white as the day they hit the presses? Why is my church full of people who still insist on worshiping Sunday morning as if the Lord has given them nothing to sing and be happy about? Why moreover, is a church in Uganda or Zaire or those underground in China full of such happy people in the face of our Lord? We eat each day, many Christians do not. We have water, clean water, and many of our brothers and sisters in Christ do not. We have much and we are unhappy - perhaps even ungrateful. They may need our help but they do not need our guilt or pity.

And frankly, it does us no good either.

Look at the eyes of a child who lives in BelAire and has everything he could ever want or need...but has never had to fight to keep it...never had to risk to defend it...then look in the eyes of a child beaten for his faith...starving for food and water...hungry for death as a relief...who's eyes make you sadder? That's always the question we ask...because we would complain to live that way so it must be intolerable...but somehow...the promise is enough for them...

why not for me?

more on this later...but it seems that those burdened always manage to bless me more than I am able to save them

Scrap Blanket

Most of you who know me, know that I like to knit. I love it - blankets, potholders, scarves, afghans (different than blankets, just so you know), dishcloths, doileys, whatever. I have amassed quite the yarn collection too. You see, whenever you make something, unless it's a really thin scarf, it takes more than one skein [thing] of yarn. And you have to make sure you buy enough for each project the first time around. Yarn is dyed in lots. So if you are making a blanket out of terra cotta brown, all 20 of the terra cotta brown skeins at Hobby Lobby or Michaels or whatever, are not exactly alike. They were dyed 15 or so at a time. Each skein has a dye lot number written on the label. If you need about 8 or 9 skeins to get the job done, you better buy 9 NOW...because you have to make sure you get 9 with the same lot number, so your project has consistency...it would be awful to come back and end up with the last foot of your blanket lookin' a little off...

If you buy yarn like this for years, you end up with a little bit left of all kinds of colors...then of course there's the yarn you can't pass up...you know, the yarn that's usually 4 dollars a skein but's on sale for 99 cents...it would be just perfect for this scarf pattern...that you never get to. So every couple of years or so, I make something out of the scrap yarn. But since law school started for me three years ago this August, I've slown down a little on the knitting, and haven't had the chance to get to a scrap ANYTHING.

Well, today I started on a scrap Afghan. Knitting with two skeins at a time, I'm making a blanket with black as the constant color, and the other will be all the scraps of all the colors I have left. When I finish, the blanket will be black with many colors. There will be some of the orange chennille left over from the UT scarf I made my best friend for his birthday two years ago; frilly pink and purple mixed yarn left from the scarf I made my cousin Erika when she went skiing; red, white & blue yarn from the Obama scarf I made this year, and a different tinted red white & blue mixed yarn from the Bush scarf I made in college. There's green from the blanket I made my mother; UN blue from the blanket I'm making John; purple and white from the ACU blanket I made, and red from the GATA diamond scarf I made Kat. There's various shades of purple left from the blanket I made Shirley, and a small ball of blue mixed from the blanket I made Jay for his 24th birthday. Somehow, somewhere, I bought all this yarn...across the country and across the years, hauling it with me everywhere I go. And even though it's been sitting, stored and sorted by color and kind, for a while - some for years - now I need it. Now I'll use it.

Everytime I make one of these projects - these scrap projects - I'm always amazed at how beautiful they turn out. You'd think that all these mismatched colors, all these undertones and seemingly clashing hues would look absolutely terrible together. But they don't. Somehow, the undertone color makes it all fit...makes it look like somehow I knew I'd need enough Boston-Celtics-In-The-Finals-Again-Green for seven rows of this blanket, but only enough I-Dated-Too-Many-FRATS-And-Not-Enough-Kinsman-Blue for one row. All it takes is that black undercurrent. All it takes is one underlying consistent thought to string it all together. I guess not all that is random is aimless.

Not all who wander are without purpose.