155 God had a plan

There is an interesting study in JAMA (that's the journal of the American Medical Association--official title) that shows fetal cells remain in a woman's blood stream after pregnancy and help her body repair injured tissues even decades later. Dr. Diana Bianchi, chief of the division of Medical Genetics at Tufts New England Medical Center in Boston, is the lead scientist behind this revolutionary development. Read more about this at Book of Joe, which explains medical events in layman's language. JAMA abstract is here.

154 NCC Smears Cuban Americans' Heritage

I was in the Cokesbury Bookstore today and picked up a colorful folded map of Cuba. The verso (text) presented quite a surprise, with nary a mention of Communism, only a Revolution and an oppressor country (USA). Yes, published by the National Council of Churches and promoted by the United Methodist Church.

"Map & Facts: CUBA
Beautiful four color map, 23" x 35" , shows topography, provinces, major cities, and the island of Cuba in relation to other Caribbean countries and the USA. Eight panels on the reverse side provide a ready reference to Cuban history, blacks in Cuba, religion in Cuba, relations with the USA and USSR, and basic geographic facts. The map may be used in conjunction with the adult study book and video or as a valuable resource on its own. Oxford Cartographers; text by Joseph A. Perez (retired) who served as secretary, Latin America and the Caribbean, for the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries World Division. He was professor of sociology at Adrian College, Adrian, Michigan. FP 73028 / $8.95"

If it hadn't been so outrageously expensive ($9 for one sheet of paper with ridiculously slanted information), I would have purchased it and quoted a few of the paragraphs. Fifty cents is a fair price for Communist propaganda. The above quote is from the Friendship Press web site. I wonder what is in the video and study book?

I remember when I was working in the Agriculture Library about 25 years ago browsing a World Council of Churches detailed budget (It had numerous agricultural projects). One thing caught my eye: WCC was supporting a "consciousness raising" group for Muslims in the Philippines. I wonder what that group is doing today?

153 How long does it take to die of dehydration?

That depends. If your adult daughters sneak past the staff and into your room at hospice, you might have a few more days. You may be alert enough to ask for food and water, and if they are successful in obtaining a little pudding or apple juice, you'll have a few last stolen moments together.

Depending upon the state of health prior to stopping fluids, three to ten days. The average lean individual has enough energy stored in muscle and fat tissue to last 40 days without food. If you are already elderly and sick, probably less.

If your wife, bone tired from your care at home these many years (and really ready for you to go this time), has her way and forbids your children to see you, it could be a long slow, painful process. Here's how it works according to the website Life cycles: Withholding foods and fluids

Effects of dehydration and starvation:

· Dry mucous membranes (mouth, nose throat and genital organs)
· Constipation
· Impaction (buildup of stool in the body), severe abdominal cramping and bloating, nausea and vomiting
· Electrolyte imbalances (salt and water problems in the blood and tissues)
· Arrhythmias (heart problems); myalgias and malaise (muscle pain and marked fatigue)
· Cough and shortness of breath
· Severe depression and confusion, severe agitation and fear, delusions
· Dry, cracked skin
· Urinary, vaginal and bowel infection
· Bronchitis and pneumonia
· Blood in the bowel, stomach, kidney and lungs, kidney failure
· General systemic collapse and death

If you were an farm animal, there would probably be an animal rights organization to prevent this painful death, but because you are a human being created in the image of a holy God . . .[insert text here].

152 Let's Sing the Old Hymns Again

On August 2 I blogged about the perfect day at Lakeside. We had houseguests we love; the weather was gorgeous; there was an ice cream social and a band in front of the hotel; there was a book sale at the Ladies Club. I wandered over to the booksale and went through the freebie box, picking out a 1964 Methodist Hymnal to keep at the cottage.

After joining our guests seated back at the pavilion overlooking the lake, I opened the hymnbook and selected a familiar tune and began to sing softly. Sweak. Squawk. Squeal. That's all that came out. I used to be a first soprano and loved to sing. Now I have a range of 5 or 6 notes--all around middle C. I sang in high school choirs, and when the children were young, we'd put on records and sing together. Where did my voice go? When did it leave me? It isn't just age--even my Great aunt Ada (90) still has a lovely voice.

Being a librarian (emeritus), I immediately began to analyze my loss. 1) I'm retired now and may go for many hours during the day and not use my voice. 2) For about 15 years the only place I've had an opportunity to sing is church services. 3) Church congregational singing has deteriorated badly during that time--choruses and camp songs, the easier the better. Lots of swing and sway, but not much of a challenge if you can read music.

I'm going to start singing in the car. Just some scales and fa-la-la's for now. Then I'll work up to that Methodist hymnal with all those wonderful Watts and Wesley hymns waiting for me at the lakehouse.

151 Why Marriage?

Stop over at Family Scholars Blog for some interesting insights on marriage and family, and a long list of reviewed books and films. It will probably only confirm what you already know--divorce is hard on children, children from homes with married parents are less likely to become involved in crime, drugs or poverty, married people are healthier, etc. But the links to the writers who try to make it otherwise is quite fascinating.

150 Respectable Britain?

The most discouraging thing about reading this article in The New Criterion, The death of religion and the fall of respectable Britain, is my feeling that the United States is on the same path. Read some of the articles at Barna Research about the faith professions and behaviors of Americans, and you‘ll see what I mean.

149 Presbyterians and Israel

"The Presbyterian Church (USA) has committed a grievous sin. The General Assembly of that church has voted to divest from only one country in the world. No, it was not China, which has occupied Tibet for half a century and continues to deny basic human rights to its own citizens. No, it was not Iran, which threatens nuclear holocaust, executes dissenters and denies religious freedom to Christians and Jews. No, it was not North Korea, Libya, Russia, Sudan, Cuba or Belarus. It was -- you guessed it -- Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and America's most reliable ally in a troubled part of the world. " Alan Dershowitz

Any Presbyterians out there who can comment? OK. How about Lutherans? Methodists? Congregationalists? How many think Israel is a bigger threat than North Korea? Violates more human rights than China. Silence.

148 Religion in Wired

At my blog on first issues of magazines "In The Beginning," I've written about the premiere issue of Wired. It isn't religious, but sometimes I am awed by what I see about God and creation in "secular" sources. For instance, this from the August 2004 issue, p. 108:

What we think of as life on this planet is only the surface layer of a vast undiscovered world. The great majority of Earth's species are bacteria and other microorganisms. They form the bottom of the food chain and orchestrate the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients through the ecosystem. They are the dark matter of life. They may also hold the key to generating a near-infinite amount of energy, developing powerful pharmaceuticals, and cleaning up the ecological messes our species has made.

Long before I was a Christian I had given up on "evolution" as totally implausible. And if I weren't a believer in a Creator, this kind of a paragraph would send me searching for Truth.

147 Dunker Journal

I was surprised to come across a blog titled, Dunker Journal. It is sponsored by the Brethren Revival Fellowship (BRF), a renewal movement in the Church of the Brethren. "Dunker" was the slang for the German Baptists, who were also called Dunkards, Tunkers and Taufers. It comes from the three times, face-forward, in the water baptism, which remains the tradition today in the Church of the Brethren.

146 About our freedoms

Shots Across the Bow has an interesting comment on Michael Moore's film flim flam:

"I'm proud to live in a country where a man can make a movie like this and not wind up in a gulag, or live in fear of a midnight knock on the door, followed by torture and murder. I'm proud that, all protests from liberal democrats aside, freedom of speech still rules in America, that Michael Moore, can stand up and spout his lies and distortions, and not only remian a free man, but make a very nice living doing so. It's almost oxymoronic; the very fact that Moore could make Farenheit 911 discredits one of Moore's central theses, that we no longer live in a free society."

However, he wonders about those of you who swallowed that nonsense. To read the rest, go here.

145 No easy transitions

Pastor Barbara said this morning during her transition from the sermon to communion, as the microphone wouldn't unclip and then the clips fell on the deck, as the wind whipped her notes and hair, "Each week I prepare a smooth transition from sermon to communion. . ." and the wind took the rest of her words. But informal church on the lakefront singing camp songs is wonderful. Today we sang "Hallelu, Hallelujah!," "Down in my Heart," and "This is the Day." Gwen at the electric keyboard is always joyful and led us in rounds. And it was a glorious day, overcast perhaps, but the mighty Erie was singing God's glory with white caps and a bit of spray baptizing our efforts to outsing her.

No easy transitions. A staff member died on the same high-way I was driving last Sunday. We prayed for his widow, children and grandchildren. It was a shock to all our little community, but not to Jesus, who was waiting with open arms for his child who had served him many years. It will be a difficult transition for his family, but it was effortless for him.

Jesus has done it all, as the hymn says. He has lived the perfect life and paid for our sins on the cross so we can confidently make that transition as though we had lived without sin. And make an effortless, smooth transition when our time here is over.

144 Two with no mayo

This has been all over blogdom, but started in The New York Times Magazine. I heard it read on the radio, and almost couldn't believe my ears, considering the people I know who are flying to the Ukraine, India and China to adopt babies (usually girls since boys are more valued).

After deciding with her boyfriend that it was time to start a family, she was surprised by the diagnosis of triplets. So she aborted the twin boys and kept the single. Her boyfriend started to balk when he saw the 3 heartbeats on the sonogram, but wimped out. If he's smart he'll walk out on the woman who killed his sons.

Her income would take a significant hit. "There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that," she allowed. "But it was a matter of, Do I want to?"

Her answer was no. There were health risks. Moreover, "I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise." So it was off to the specialist who would shoot potassium chloride into the hearts of two of the babies.

One version here, but it is all over the place.

We believe that every human life (born and unborn) is precious, being created in the image of God. Because Jesus Christ chose to die for us, every person is loved by God. Since life is sacred, abortion is not pleasing to God and Christians are called to value life as God does. Our worth is determined by God’s view of us which is demonstrated in Jesus, not by our own self-estimation. (Genesis 1:27; John 3:16; Psalm 136; Psalm 139:13-16) Statement “What we believe” [about] Human Worth, Upper Arlington Lutheran Church, Columbus, OH.

143 Don't preach outside the YMCA

A Christian had his family’s membership revoked at the East Cobb, GA, YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) for witnessing to two high school seniors outside the building. Did the Y own the sidewalk? The air? The right to speak? Can it tell members what to say and to whom?

Story here, and it certainly sounds odd. No one claims that the YM or YW are Christian organizations anymore, but they are supposed to reflect “Christian principles.” Well, chalk that up for one more reason not to contribute to United Way type organizations and send your money where you know what people stand for.

142 Christians and the Internet, a code of ethics

The code of ethics I drafted for Upper Arlington Lutheran Church on use of computers and the Internet, is now available for viewing and comment at the church's web site, http://www.ualc.org. The references to parents is to make it inclusive for our members who are young people and children. You can comment here or at the church web site. Linked references were checked in May, 2004.

141 Maybe it's their strength

Donald Cranksahw at "Back of the Envelope" blog writes:

I believe that the Democratic party is on the verge of collapse. The reason I think this is that the party doesn't have any sort of unified vision, but is instead cobbled together from dozens of special interest groups who have no fundamental common ground. The gay rights' lobby, the working class, the unions, the ethnic minorities, the abortion rights' lobby, the transnationalists, etc. The core of the Democratic party used to be the working class and the unions, which formed a natural alliance with the ethnic minorities, since most of them were working class. This is what led to the big Democratic initiatives of the past, such as The New Deal and The Great Society. It wasn't a perfect fit, but it worked for a time. However, these groups have no natural affinity for the likes of the gay rights' lobby, the abortion rights' lobby, the anti-war transnationalists, etc. More and more, the Democratic party seems under the power of these latter groups, whose values are not only alien, but oftentimes anti-thetical to the old core of the party.

They could still elect a president even if they wouldn't go to dinner with each other.

140 This can't be real!

"This has got to be the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. I’m doing this on the day I gave birth to my first child, so it will always be a day I’ll never forget. I love you even though I know in my heart I can’t keep you, but the memory of you will make me strong. I know your spirit is in a better place. Each tear I cry will help me erase the memory of this day, but not of you. You will always be a part of me even though you are not here with me. All my love, the mom you’ll never meet, but I’m sure you know who I am."

Sort of sounds like something you might write to a child placed for adoption, but no, it is to an aborted baby from "mom." I think I liked it better when women pretended a fetus was just a blob of tissue and not a human being. Seen at Letters from Babylon. I'm hoping this is as phoney as MM's F 9/11, because I really don't want to believe a woman could feel this and then destroy the baby.

139 The travel writing genre

Lakeside, from which I’m writing, is a Chautauqua community and offers classes and programming on many topics--and there was a travel writer on the program list this week. I didn’t go for two reasons, I don’t travel much, and I’m not interested in publication (usually a topic within writing classes). Actually, three reasons; I don’t read travel literature. But I thought this observation about Evelyn Waugh’s newly reissued travel writing was interesting at First Things. Waugh Abroad: Collected Travel Writing

“For the most part, Waugh’s books are not really about travel at all. True travel writers work upon the assumption that their task is, primarily, to see and to describe, and where possible to enter into as profound a sympathy for their subjects as they can; Waugh proceeds upon the (subversive) assumption that his business is to evaluate and to comment, and to avoid sympathy as assiduously as circumstances and good taste permit. For all his considerable prowess as a stylist, in these books he rarely troubles to convey any image or experience with appreciable vividness or pungency (except where an opportunity for mockery presents itself). Any reader of his novels knows that he was quite capable of painting pictures with words when necessary; but his genius lay elsewhere. His prose is urbane, unsentimental, and economical, hospitable to moments of purple abandon but at its best when its controlled and even flow allows him to pass from delicacy to savagery and back again without any visible effort. It is, in short, a prose of personality, not of scenery; of irony, not of anecdotes. And so it is in these books.”

The author did list some travel writers he enjoys and did cite the redeeming qualities in Waugh’s books--always about the author, not the travel. For example:

“[British Guiana] If there is any more unprepossessing expanse of earth upon the globe, one cannot imagine where. This book is an unremitting account of misery, privation, and pointlessness in a world of dun landscapes, tormenting insects, malnutrition, and cultural stagnancy. What makes it fascinating, though, is the almost demented composure of the author; it demonstrates with remarkable poignancy how, in its way, British equanimity can constitute a kind of emotional extremism.”

138 The high cost of FDA approval

I took a beta blocker for about 6 years. Somewhere I read that 100,000 people had died who could have been saved by that class of drugs waiting for it to make its way through FDA approval. From drug discovery to approval for distribution and sale, here is a handy chart. This process typically takes seven to ten years and can cost upwards of $900 million dollars per drug.

Alexander Coombs explains why we will tolerate the death of thousands rather than risk the death of someone from an unsafe drug. It's in our brain function, according to MRIs.

When television programs such as 60 Minutes show people suffering from unintended effects of a drug, we feel enraged and disgusted. We wonder how such tragedies are permitted. Those who suffer and die because of drugs that will never be available to them receive no television coverage; no headlines decry the injustice. They simply pass away untreated, unrecognized victims of an irrational policy.

See his article, "Two Track Mind: How Irrational Policy Endures" June 7, 2004.

137 The Politics of Partisan Neutrality

"Americans who want to understand conflicts between Democrats and Republicans during the election season have received precious little help from the media. While reporters usually recognize that there is some sort of problem about “values” and about “faith-based” principles, and that the Democrats and Republicans are often on opposite sides, writers and editors tend to publish news and analysis as if the situation were as follows: The Christian right, having infiltrated the Republican Party, is importing its divisive religious ideas into our public life, whereas the Democratic Party is the neutral camp of tolerant and pluralistic Americans.

This way of framing the matter predominates, not only because it reflects the personal beliefs of many journalists, but also because it draws upon a long American tradition of suspicion and fear of committed Catholics and evangelical Protestants. (In the elite newspapers and magazines, the number of journalists in either of those groups is tiny.) It is thus comfortable for journalists to conceive of religiously based political conflict in terms of an aggressive Christian right advancing upon a beleaguered neutral and pluralistic center and left.

What the journalists leave out of their accounts is the fact that the nonreligious have also become aggressive actors on the political stage and that they possess and promote, in fact, an overarching religious worldview of their own—one that can fairly be called secularism."

Complete article at First Things, May 2004

136 Making church members feel good about themselves

The blog Ecumentical Insanity questions some of the marketing techniques being used by churches. See Latest Panacea, July 11, 2004