She picked up her coffee and looked around her bakery and smiled. She said, “If something is too cheap that means someone is paying the cost somewhere. Maybe it is the environment or maybe it is someone else down the line.”

Great minds think alike … this is my theory as well. I was enthralled by the article in which it was stated. Lead there by the inimitable, Brother Maynard, the article is actually the transcript of a Canadian radio show. But this bakery may just be incentive to travel to Winnipeg sometime soon.

This prayer from the Northumbrian Community speaks to me.

Lord, You have always given
bread for the coming day;
and though I am poor,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always given
strength for the coming day;
and though we are weak,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always given
peace for the coming day;
and though of anxious heart,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always kept
me safe in trials;
and now, tried as we are,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always marked
the road for the coming day;
and though it may be hidden,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always lightened
this darkness of mine;
and though the night is here,
today I believe.

Lord, You have always spoken
when time was ripe;
and though you be silent now,
today I believe.

A prosperous and peaceful 2007 to you … may your trials be surmountable and your joys innumerable.

The LightHusband’s parents are visiting. Very often these visits are fraught with tension and ill-will. This visit has been quite pleasant thus far … filled with laughter and camaraderie. Perhaps it is because I no longer care what they think of me that I am now free to think of them.

In any case, with their visit comes additional television viewing. We rarely watch television. Mostly in the evening after the LightChildren have gone to bed. We watch during the day on very rare occasions … when someone in the house is too sick to do anything else. Or when GrandpaLightHusband is visiting. He loves to watch tv. Correction. He loves to walk into a room. Turn on the television. Watch it for a few seconds. Then leave the room … with the television still on. He may or may not return to the room. So when they visit the television is on … all. the. time. He also likes to watch sports. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you may have come to some conclusions about me. I’ll bet it will come as little surprise to anyone that sports is quite low on my list of television watching priorities. I especially do not care to watch it or have it on in the house at very loud decibels. This is usually a trial for me. I very quickly reach a place of sensory overload when there are a lot of people in the house and a lot of noise. So … yeah.

This morning GrandpaLightHusband came in from their RV and promptly … turned on the television.  Well, Sunday morning programming is not so terrible.  We watched CBS’s Sunday Morning program.  They gave us the trifecta of funerals; President Ford’s, James Brown’s and Sadaam Hussein’s.  There was a portion of the program devoted to all the famous people who died in 2006.  I could hear echos of the morbid scene from “The Holy Grail” …. “Bring out your dead… bring out your dead ….” There are many different perspectives to give a year just finished.  This seemed odd to me.

Apparently it was fitting to LightGirl.  We went walking in the Battlefield with the grandparents and a friend.  Later on as I was putting dinner together she came in and said, “Well, 2006 wasn’t a really great year, was it Mom?”  I asked her why she felt that way.  She responded, “It was the year Will died.”  My first response (which I never got to make) was that it was also the year that he was born too.  But GrandmaLightHusband wanted to know who he was and why he was so important to LightGirl.  So we explained his story to her.  She responded by telling us a story of a little boy in her church who is 11 with hypo-plastic left heart, “and he’s doing quite well.”  And suddenly I was so overcome with rage, I felt my knees buckle.  I felt myself step outside of me and observe what was happening.  I knew better than to speak, so I just nodded and listened.  I wasn’t angry with my mother-in-law.  I’m still not sure why or who I was angry with.

I’m just so god-damn sick of useless, pointless death.

I have been struggling for quite some time to organize my thoughts about what it means to me to have a “consistent ethic of life.” How do I honor life amongst the death that regularly occurs in this mortal plane? How do I go about redeeming life and creating holy space for it in the here and now, while all the while understanding that it is terribly impermanent and, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, “… nasty, brutish, and short.”

On one end of the spectrum, there is life at the very beginning and the debate concerning not only abortion and abortion rights versus the right to life, but also the rights of the infertile and what does one think about the ethics of infertility treatments versus the thousands upon millions of children needing food and water and good homes world-wide. How do those issues impact the way I live? Should they? I haven’t even begun to think about cloning, but now I think I should. Apparently, products from cloned animals are going to be in grocery stores soon. I need to begin to follow this more closely.

In the middle there are all sorts of issues. One we, in the LightFamily, have taken on this year is what to do with guns. LightBoy has become fiercely enamoured with WWII because of a video game given to him by friend P3T3. I don’t want him to think that weapons are whizz, bang fun on a video game. I want him to understand the full awesome, terrible horrible might of a bullet. I don’t think one can get that impact without ever firing a weapon … or several. One must endure the pangs of hunter safety courses and weapons safety drills and then perhaps even kill an animal before understanding that horrid cliche …”Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” So we gave LightBoy a teeny-tiny .22 for Christmas to begin the process of understanding his place on the planet.

Other issues in the middle concern how to eat without cruelty to the fellow creatures that abide on the earth with us. We are given the right to rule over them. With that comes responsibility to care for and honor them as creatures with dignity and worth in their own right. Animals are not a product to be farmed and industrialized and manufactured as if they were cars. It might make them cheaper, but then that also makes us cheaper as well. I don’t believe we’ve thought through the end results of industrialization thoroughly enough to understand it’s full impact on us, the animals, or the environment. Cheaper and faster, we are finding is not always best or even better.

Then we come to the end of life. Modern medicine has invoked miracle after miracle prolonging life. In the end, though, we must all die. How long must we live and under what circumstances have become the questions we need to answer, usually long before we are ready to consider them. Dying has become not a question of when our time is up, but when are our loved ones ready to “pull a plug.” Medicine has become able to prolong the ability of our physical shells to breath and contain the symptoms of life, but are we living at that point?

What about capital punishment? This is one question in the midst of the myriad of others that I have found rather easy to answer. I believe that capital punishment is wrong. I don’t believe there is any justification for capital punishment other than revenge. It is not a deterrent; there have been a multitude of studies that prove that it does not deter crime. It is not rehabilitative. One can not be rehabilitated once one is dead. Therefore it’s only purpose is revenge. I am, in particular, having a difficult time dealing with this particular sentence. Sadaam Hussein was a really bad guy. One of the worst. I’ll grant that. If anyone deserved a death sentence, he would (except, yes, I don’t believe anyone does). Here’s why I’m particularly having a hard time with this one, though. Part of the reason that Sadaam Hussein was such a horrible, bad guy is because we (the U.S. … well, our government/C.I.A.) encouraged him. We told him it would be okay if he did his bad horrible deeds, we’d look the other way. We actually put him in power and then turned a blind eye while we knew exactly what he was doing and when and how. Now, after 20 years of encouraging his badness, we captured him, put him on trial and are executing him.

I especially have a problem with that. That is NOT a consistent ethic of life.

JJ the Smu (as he is coming to be known in the blog-o-sphere) posted a thought-provoking piece a couple of days ago asking us to think about how we’d like to be known as Christians. He listed several things he’d really rather people thought of and then he asked others to add to the list. A late comer to the comments added “unity” with very little context.

There, my friends, is a loaded term. More loaded than LightBoy’s new potato cannon. And more combustible. This term is used to brow beat more people than Constantine. I don’t even think that’s an exaggeration (if we’re talking straight numbers, percentages and I’m out of line). It’s used to keep people in line with the party line. Keep them from asking too many unsightly, uncomfortable, unnerving questions. Keep them in their place. Keep them in fear. Keep them. The body of Christ is SUPPOSED to live in unity is wielded liked a battle axe.

Lately, I’ve heard more and more people discussing the distinction between unity and conformity. Then they say, with an arched brow, “There **is** a difference, you know.” Many churches use the word unity to enforce conformity of thinking. Several of us called it the uni-mind at our CLB; enforcing like thinking amongst everyone.

I was thinking this morning tho, that what we really might be after in the church is really harmony. Think about that metaphor for a minute. Even unity (without conformity) can be be a straitjacket for something as big and bold as the Body of Christ. Think about many voices together singing a song as one voice … for a really long time. Now think about all those voices singing the song in harmony. Think of the texture and depth and musicality that song now has. Everyone is still singing the same song, they are all singing together, but they are singing the notes that they were born to sing. The basses are singing bass, not soprano and vice versa. Now, let’s add an orchestra to the voices. Now we have people playing instruments in harmony with the people singing in harmony. Rich, textural, beautiful and all working together for the good of one overarching song. But if everyone played or sang the same note for two hours, who would want to listen to that? It would become strident and unpleasant.

Will Samson has an interesting post today about politicians speaking about their faith. I agree with him, sorta. With reservations. I want to extend grace to the Democrats. I think he wants them stumping on their faith. Okay, perhaps I’m not giving him the benefit of the doubt here. But I’m linking to his post here for a reason. It is this, I’ve begun to think that speaking of religion and faith in the public square has become very narrow. It has become controlled by a narrow set of people with a narrow vocabulary. People who, if you will, want to listen to one note. They have asked us to listen for only one note. They have defined that note and caused the atmosphere in which we live to be such that now we can only hear that one note.

The problem is that we’re all singing and playing a harmony. We are living and speaking out of many notes. It’s all the same song but no one can hear that song any more. Sometimes a miracle occurs and someone can hear that one special note. But if you don’t play that note for the right amount of time, in the right place, wearing the right clothes … well then, no one will credit you with a proper faith. But you might have one … you might be singing or playing harmony. Who are we to judge? How can we know anymore? I know some might read this and throw the wide path/narrow road scripture at me. I agree with that, but don’t take it out of context. God is a great, big wide, creative God. He didn’t make us all to make one note. We need to learn how to listen to the whole song again, how to hear the melody as well as the harmony or harmonies, how to hear not just the voices but the orchestra too. How to put it all together and say with God of His Creation, it is good.

Behold, the lamb of God …

From the LightHouse to your house … Merry Christmas. I hope you have a lovely day with people who care about you and make you smile. Give some laughter away and push back the darkness a little.

As in, five in spanish. I’m trying to be clever so just work with me here.  Update … why o why did none of you (my so called friends) not gently correctly my 30 year old spanish.  Bleh … some days it does not pay to try and count to five. 😉
I should have known that pay-backs are h3ll … and my friend, John Smulo (or J.J. as I’ve discovered) as since paid me back for the lovely orverm I blessed him with. 😉 . He blessed tagged me in the “5 Things No One Knows About Me” Meme that is going around.

So, here are 5 things that very few people know about me … which is going to be difficult because I tend to live my life as an open book.

1. I grew up in Vermont and I can’t ski. Downhill (alpine) that is. I can ski cross-country. But we couldn’t afford the lift tickets, etc. So I never learned how to downhill ski.

2. I can count the number of rock concerts I’ve been to on both hands (2 concerts were in the last 24 months — U2’s Vertigo tour) and still have fingers left over. One was the famed Simon & Garfunkle reunion concert in Central Park.

3. I say I grew up in Vermont and that’s mostly true. But I was born in Massachusetts and I lived in Kansas til I was 6 years old (and my mother’s name is Dorothy).

4. I spent some time in college learning how to shoplift. This was not a sanctioned class, but I had a friend who was a mentor. I stopped when I got caught at a grocery store and very nearly arrested. That was when I discovered that tears go a long way toward swaying the mind and heart of a police officer. Not that I’ve ever had to use it since then. 😉

5. I am of 100% British descent. Literally all of my ancestors are from Great Britain. Well, one came from Wales and there is a Scottish last name in the mix. But as far back as we can trace (8 to 10 generations) I am British. Which is sort of weird given that some of my ancestors have been here since the Mayflower … it just seems that there would be something else.

Sooo … now the fun part … who to tag?? Hmmmm …

Brother Maynard, Mick, Patrick, Phreaq77, and CityGirl

Okay, folks, I recognize that this is a holiday weekend and you might not get to this right away … but sometime next week would be good. Like before 2007. Right?

As I began constructing this post in my head, the following lyrics sprang to mind:

sung to BINGO:

“My friend Johnny has a blog

And Smulo is his name-o

S M U LO

S M U LO

S M U LO

And Smulo is his name-o”

I hope from the bottom of my pea-pickin’ little heart that he will forgive me that travesty. 😉

He does have a blog and a fine one it is … fine enough that I read it and comment on it regularly. John has the singular pleasure of having served in ministry for more than several years in Australia and is now in California. So he is fortunate that his perspective on the church has some broader horizons than many of us. One of the very best things about his blog is that he focusses on nurturing conversations with and among the commenters on his posts. He manages on his blog to engage in community in a manner that I’ve yet to experience anywhere else in the blog-o-sphere.

He has a recent post entitled Emerging Liberals? and in it he asks questions about the labels “emerging” and “Emergent.” They are good questions. I began answering them in the comments. Some of my answers opened old wounds from my CLB. Strange that.I realized as I attempted to answer some of his questions that I am not comfortable wearing the “emerging” hat. While it is the tent of Christianity to which I most closely belong these days, I do not exactly feel as though I belong there. With the exception of age, I fit all the distinctives. But … really … I want to be an evangelical. I liked that. To be sure there is plenty wrong with the evangelical arm of Christ’s body (I’d make a list, but that would be uncharitable), but there is a lot that is right about it too. It’s where I grew up. It’s like saying that I’m no longer a “Naylor” because I’m married.

There are certain distinctives about being an evangelical Christian that are important to me. I’d like to still live in that tent. But for the most part, they won’t have me there. I’m too different from the rest of the crew. And I refuse to equate conformity with unity. So I’ve been doing some thinking the last couple of days about why I don’t fit anymore. Why don’t I just suck it up and go back if it’s so dang important to me?

Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first is this that I can’t be who I am and be in an evangelical church. Well, I haven’t found an evangelical church in my area where this is so. It may be that the crush of southern suburbia has created a church culture which is not healthy.

The second is almost more important. It is that the evangelical church, the Religious Right, and conservatives in general, have (over the past decade or so) more and more been defining themselves not by what they stand for, but by what they are against. And what they are against has narrowed their world into ever more restrictive borders. When I talk to Christians anymore I don’t hear what they are for, I hear about what they are taking a stand against. What they are defending against. It’s all in the negative. There’s nothing positive about that.

Well, the last time I checked the gospel was supposed to bring “Good News.” So when are we going to talk about what we’re FOR. When will the evangelical church talk about the good news they are bringing the world? It’s time to stand and have something worth fighting FOR. Let’s smile and bring in the Light … the Light that came to us 2000 years ago. Merry Christmas.

Today was supposed to be a quiet day. We didn’t have any plans. Well … a LightGirl had a hockey game in the afternoon. But that was really it.

Then a friend called. He made arrangements for LightBoy to fulfill a dream. And off went LightHusband and LightBoy to learn how to handle firearms. I cringed. It is counter-intuitive. But I think weapons are too serious to ignore. He passed the safety test with flying colors. Then he scored really well in his marksmanship as well. He floated home. And used many words to tell me about his adventures. He also brought treasure with him … shell casings to be sorted and categorized. Many, many, many times over.

I was home with FlamingEwe baking cookies for a cookie exchange and making decorations for our guild holiday extravaganza. LightHusband and Boy arrived home in time for lunch. Then he was off again with LightGirl and a couple of the BlazingLambs for the hockey game, while the cook baking and Christmas crafting continued apace.

Then the phone rang and one proud papa’s voice rang out, “She scored her first GOAL!!!” She scooped the puck out of the back corner, carried it around to the net and dropped it in around behind the goalie’s back.

Here she is, rejoicing in the moment with her team mates!!

That’s my girl!!

Both LightChildren floated off to bed, 3 feet off the ground, this evening. It was a good day of firsts. It was a little bittersweet for this mom. After all the other firsts I witnessed, these firsts they accomplished with others. And that was first in and of itself. This too is another good step.

What on earth have we come to? This was one of the headlines in my new-fangled personalized Google page today … “Man kills friend over $20 football bet.” So I read the story. You can too, if you click on that link. In fact, you ought to. Or maybe you ought not to. It’s depressing. Two guys made a bet on the Carolina-Clemson game on Saturday. Then they sat around drinking beer and watching the game. Then they had an argument and the guy that won the bet got his hunting rifle and killed his friend.

It’s $20 dollars folks. Whether the friend paid up or not, this is not life or death. It was supposed to be fun. Watching football together. Laughing. Eating (I’d bet … probably Doritos or something nasty). Making fun of each other’s team.

It’s all fun and games until someone gets an eye poked out.

… or ends up dead.

Really … what have we come down to? Why is it that in our culture everyone is so determined to win, we end up shooting our friends in order to win, really win, a $20 bet. Is it really worth it? What makes Playstations and bets and bits of plastic so much more important than people? How is it that we have so lost our center? When did that happen? I bet a lot of people read this and think, “Well, I’d never take a gun and shoot anyone.” Yeah … but how many times have you used words instead to grind your opponent into the dust? We all do that … and then we laugh and everyone laughs with us. Hell … even our opponent laughs, because it’s all in good fun. Right? Right? Everyone is doing it, so it must be okay.

Well … just think about it next time because words can do as much damage as a gun. And just because everyone laughs doesn’t mean they don’t hurt too. There has to be some point at which we stop this cycle of violence. When we declare that people are more important than toys and guns and machines. When we begin to recognize all the weapons is when we’ll begin to understand how to move forward. Then we’ll learn how to really have fun.