December 15, 2009 at 6:25 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: Teenagers, Worship, Church, Christ, Religion, Faith, Jesus, Life, Pop Culture, Youth Ministry, Culture, Theology, Entertainment, God, Money, Christianity, Opinions, Happiness, Christmas, Credit Cards, Advent, Santa Clause, Slate Magazine, Advent Conspiracy
A Christmas Crisis?
Americans spend $450,000,000,000, in just thirty days, for the Christmas holiday. And moneysupermarket.com claims that four out of five people will unwrap presents they neither want, or need.
We are in a Christmas crisis. Perhaps there is value in this post, then:
“You Shouldn’t Have: The Economic Argument For Never Giving Another Gift”
by Joel Waldfogel
for Slate Magazine
With just three weeks till Christmas, the Red Bull-infused phase of the holiday shopping season is upon us. If recent history is any guide, the month of December alone—with just 8 percent of the year’s shopping days—will bring 23 percent of the year’s sales at jewelry stores, 16 percent at department stores, and 15 percent at electronics stores. U.S. December retail sales can be expected to exceed sales in other months by $65 billion. Finally, some good news for the economy. Or maybe not.
Normally—during the 11 non-December months of the year—I’ll spend $50 on something only if it’s worth at least $50 to me. Typically, measures of spending provide a lower-bound on the value of the satisfaction that buyers expect to reap from their purchases. While some of our own purchases ultimately disappoint, we generally buy well for ourselves, so using spending as a barometer of consumer satisfaction makes sense. Spending on gifts is different. When I set out to spend $50 on you, I operate at a significant disadvantage. I’m not certain about what you have or what you want, so when I spend $50 on a gift, I may buy something worth nothing to you. There’s no guarantee that consumer satisfaction meets, exceeds, or even comes close to the amount spent on the gift.
How much satisfaction do we purchase with the $65 billion worth of stuff we put under the tree? Over the past 15 years, I’ve done a lot of surveys asking gift recipients about the items they’ve received: Who bought it? What did the buyer pay? What’s the most you would have been willing to pay for it? Based on these surveys, I’ve concluded that we value items we receive as gifts 20 percent less, per dollar spent, than items we buy for ourselves. Given the $65 billion in U.S. holiday spending per year, that means we get $13 billion less in satisfaction than we would receive if we spent that money the usual way—carefully, on ourselves. Americans celebrate the holidays with an orgy of value destruction. Worldwide, the waste is almost twice as large.
But doesn’t this analysis ignore the joy of giving? you ask. Can’t that joy make up for the inefficiency of gift giving? Let’s consider an example. Your Aunt Mildred buys you a $50 sweater. You don’t hate it, but you don’t love it, either. In all likelihood, you’d have bought it for yourself only if it was a steal—let’s say you’d have been willing to pay no more than $30 for it. So far, her gift appears to destroy value. But suppose Mildred got joy in giving the gift, and while it would be hard to do so with any precision, let’s suppose we can attach a dollar value to Mildred’s joy. For the sake of discussion, let’s say it’s another $30. That would bring the total benefit of the transaction to $60, $10 more than its cost. But wait: If Aunt Mildred got the same joy from giving you a sweater you actually wanted—worth its $50 price tag to you—then the transaction could have created $80 in value. Relative to this, the bad gift misses out on $20 worth of satisfaction. So even accounting for the joy of giving, our gift-giving is inefficient. Of course, it’s also possible that Mildred enjoys giving you only sweaters you do not like, but if so, then Mildred is a sadist. And I doubt that sadism motivates the vast lot of gift giving.
It’s bad enough that we buy a lot of stuff that no one wants. It turns out we buy it using money we don’t yet have. It wasn’t always this way. In the 1930s, almost 10 percent of Christmas spending was financed with money squirreled away into Christmas clubs—bank accounts paying little interest but helping consumers save for the holiday. Participants promised to contribute weekly, frequently as little as $0.25 at a time. These accounts were popular because they helped even unsophisticated consumers—many of whom didn’t have another bank account—avoid the temptation to fritter their money away. Since 1970, by contrast, the explosive growth in consumer credit has had the opposite effect, helping consumers fall prey to their lack of self-control when it comes to borrowing. In recent years, one-third of holiday spending is still not paid off two months after Christmas.
Hold on there! Isn’t spending good for the economy? The economy consists of buyers and sellers. In normal transactions, the seller gets a price exceeding his cost and therefore makes some profit, while the buyer gets an item she values at or above its price (in which case the buyer receives some surplus). A well-functioning market maximizes the joint surplus experienced by sellers and buyers. With gift giving, the seller still gets his profit, but the ultimate consumer (the gift recipient) gets an item that produces less satisfaction than an equal amount of spending would have led to if she had purchased an item for herself. So, is holiday spending good for the economy? It’s good for sellers, but it’s not sufficiently good at producing satisfaction for the ultimate consumers. And most of us are, after all, consumers rather than sellers.
Second, while cash is in principle an appealing gift, as it allows the recipient to choose something she actually wants, it’s considered tacky in our culture. Gift cards are probably the next best thing, although you need to be careful about fees and about losing them. Gift cards would be even better if their unspent balances—10 percent of spending by some accounts—went automatically to charity after a few years. With about $80 billion in annual gift card sales, there’s $8 billion at stake here.
OK, Professor Scrooge, I can’t really just not give anyone gifts—do you have any advice for how to give better gifts? First off, keep giving gifts to people you know well and see often, especially kids. When you know your recipients’ wants and needs, your gifts are far less likely to destroy value. Gifts from givers in daily or weekly contact are, on average, about 10 percent more satisfying, per dollar spent, than those from givers in only monthly or yearly contact. In fact, the right gift can, in some circumstances, be even more satisfying than what the recipient would have done with cash. While textbook economics views people as fully aware of all the things they might like to buy, in reality our friends sometimes know about things we’d like before we learn of them. In those situations, well-chosen gifts can allow us to enjoy wonderful items that we did not know existed.
Finally, gifts to charity on behalf of recipients deserve a look. Such gifts can allow your friends and family to experience a luxury they probably can’t usually afford. While luxury evokes images of jewelry and fancy chocolates, if you look at household spending data, one of the clearest luxuries—that is, an item whose share of expenditure rises with income—is charitable giving. So charity gift cards (offered by Charity Navigator or TisBest.org), which allow recipients to choose which charity gets the money, make it possible for recipients to act like rich guys, while transferring resources to high-value uses. Admittedly, these would be terrible gifts for 11-year-old boys, but they may be an ideal way to fulfill your giving obligations with other adults. Like it or not, we are about to go on our annual holiday spending sprees. That spending can be a force for waste or a force for good. Think twice before you put that sweater on your Visa.
Joel Waldfogel is the Ehrenkranz professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School. This article is drawn from his new book, Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays.
For another take, visit The Advent Conspiracy. You’ll be glad you did.
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November 5, 2009 at 7:28 pm (Blogging)
Tags: Afraid, American History, Christianity, Church, Communication, Culture, Faith, Fear, Forgiveness, George W. Bush, Ghosts, God, Guilt, Happiness, Haunting, History, Jay Leno, Jenna Bush, Life, Lincoln's Ghost, Music, Opinions, Politics, Pop Culture, Prayer, Presidents, Purpose, Regret, Religion, Supernatural, The White House, Theology
The White House, photographed for the first time in 1846 by John Plumbe during the Polk administration.
It seems to me, that if any place in America would be haunted, it would most certainly be the White House, with all of the tension and stress and decisions made within those walls.
There must be some sort of supernatural residue still lingering there. A former resident certainly believes it to be so.
Fright House: Jenna Bush on the ghostly music playing in the presidential home already ‘haunted’ by Abraham Lincoln
by Sara Nelson
for the Daily Mail
The daughter of former President George W Bush has claimed she saw ghosts during her time in the White House.
Jenna Bush Hager told chat show host Jay Leno she had been terrified by spooky events near the fireplace in her bedroom.
The 27-year-old teacher, who now works as an education correspondent for the Today Show said: ‘I heard a ghost. I was asleep, there was a fireplace in my room and all of a sudden I heard 1920s music coming out.
‘I could feel it, I freaked out and ran into my sister’s room. She was like “Please go back to sleep this is ridiculous”.
‘The next week we were both asleep in my room, the phone had rang and woke us up.
‘We were talking and going back to bed when all of a sudden we heard this opera, coming out of the fireplace.
‘We couldn’t believe it, we both jumped in bed and were asking the people that worked there the next morning “Are we crazy?”
‘We tried to rationalise it, but they said they heard it there all the time.’
Jenna and her family lived at the Washington DC presidential home from 2001 to 2009.
She told how her parents were settling in well back at home in Texas, and that the former president has even been offered a job at a hardware store – but turned it down, feeling he was overqualified.
The former first daughter confessed she had never seen Abraham Lincoln’s ghost – which is said to regularly haunt the White House – but wished she had.
Lincoln’s ghost is widely reported to walk up and down the second floor hallway, knock at doors and stand at certain windows with his hands clasped behind his back.
Indeed Winston Churchill refused to sleep in the former president’s bedroom after reportedly spotting his ghost lurking there.
The British Prime Minister had stepped into the room after a relaxing bath with a cigar and a glass of scotch.
Still naked, the premier is reported to have spied an apparition of Lincoln standing by the fireplace. The pair are said to have started at each other for some time before the ghost faded away.
Former first lady Hilary Clinton has also spoken about the spooky atmosphere in the White House.
The US Secretary of State said: ‘There is something about the house at night that you just feel like you are summoning up the spirits of all the people who have lived there and worked there and walked through the halls there.’
She told the Rosie O’Donnell Show: ‘It’s neat, it can be a little creepy.
‘You know, they think there’s a ghost there. It is a big old house and when the lights are out it is dark and quiet and any movement at all catches your attention.’
Indeed Harry Truman once wrote to his wife: ‘I sit here in this old house, all the while listening to the ghosts walk up and down the hallway.
‘At 4 o’clock I was awakened by three distinct knocks on my bedroom door. No one there. [The] place is haunted, sure as shootin’!’
As well as human hauntings, the have been tales of a demon cat prowling the building’s basement.
According to legend, years go by without a sighting of the animal, but when it does appear, national disaster is said to be imminent.
Some witnesses claim the demon cat first appears as a helpless-looking kitten, which grows in size and menace the closer one gets to it.
A White House guard claimed to have seen it a week before the great stock market crash of the 1920s and it was also reportedly seen days before the assassination of JFK.
I’m not sure if Lincoln’s ghost is more frightening, though, than the thought of Churchill fresh from a bath.
Anyway, ghosts are most definitely real. And while they may not be the unattached spirits or souls of the dead, they are real in the sense that after any great tragedy, or crisis, we allow some sort of residual effect to linger.
A fight. A death. Turmoil. Job loss. Rebellious kids. Conversations with harsh words. Wrecking decisions. All of these give us remorse, guilt, and we are haunted with the sheer regret of the crisis. And that residue, sometimes, just won’t leave.
May we have better discernment about the words we say and the actions we choose, or, maybe more importantly, about the words we keep, and the actions we disregard.
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November 3, 2009 at 4:37 pm (Art)
Tags: Art, Berlin Wall, Christianity, Church, Communion, Communism, Culture, East Germany, Education, Eucharist, Faith, George Bush, God, Graffiti, History, Life, Memory, Opinions, Photography, Politics, Pop Culture, Purpose, Religion, Ronald Reagan, Street Art, Theology, West Germany, Worship, Youth Ministry
I often think about the Eucharist. I am amazed at how little, in the New Testament, it is mentioned. Most often, it is called, simply, “breaking bread,” and seems to imply that the Eucharist of the early church may have been a memorial meal, shared by all of the saints, which offered a chance of fellowship and memory, possibly not unlike our own Thanksgiving meals.
We have moved it to something very somber, though. Most faiths tend to have it as a part of the design of worship, with specific prayers. Some faiths, even, have the Eucharist offered by a leader in the church. And, like most human things, it has its varying degrees of executions, but always with some sort of quiet meditation.
And that is not wrong, or offensive. I shared a conversation with a member of my church, just last week, who said he has grown tired of an image of a crucifed Christ displayed during the communion moments. Instead, he wanted a picture of an empty tomb, because, he said, “that’s what all of this is about, anyway.”
I believe our exercising of the Eucharist would be found insulting by those in the earliest models of the Christian church. What seems to be a celebratory meal of fellowship has been turned into just another moment in the design of a worship event. Long gone are the loaves of bread, broken together, with large pieces eaten and chased by overflowing cups of wine. Instead, there are small wafers, and a slight sip, all with the idea to remember the remarkable moment in the Christian faith.
Maybe these ideas are foreign to you. Perhaps you worship in a church where the Eucharist is only observed during special days, or occassions, or maybe you worship in a church where communion is shared every Sunday. Either way, it deserves a second look.
Which brings me to the following story. It is a slight story about the Berlin Wall, but I think it says volumes about the human desire to simply remember, both the awful, and the celebrations which follow.
Twenty Years After, Berlin Wall Gets a Facelift
by Kristen Grieshaber, for the Associated Press
Stroke by stroke, Gerhard Kriedner applied pink acrylic paint with a small brush on a 14-yard stretch of the Berlin Wall, recreating the mural he first painted months after the Berlin Wall came down on Nov. 9, 1989.
Kriedner and 90 artists from around the world have gathered again to repaint their original creations on the concrete slabs, bringing new life to images that have been eroded by the elements over the last two decades, on the longest remaining length of the wall that once split Germany’s capital.
“This is a very emotional thing for me,” Kriedner, 69, said, adding that he escaped from communist East Germany to the West himself as a young man. “The Berlin Wall stands for the total lack of freedom we had at the time.”
While Berliners were initially eager to tear down the city’s most detested symbol, in recent months there has been a major effort to restore the 3/4 mile-long (1.3-kilometer) dilapidated East Side Gallery — a major tourist attraction with 106 different paintings and graffiti.
“The wall was rotten through and through,” Kriedner said on a recent chilly, overcast autumn day as he put the finishing touches on his mural — a dark, barren landscape with bursting soap bubbles colored pink and light blue, his interpretation of the promise of Socialist dreams colliding with reality.
“In order to restore the wall, the entire artwork was scraped off, the concrete was chiseled down to the steel insides, and then everything had to be reapplied, but this time with waterproof acrylic paints,” the Bavarian artist said, adding that he’d been working off a photo of his original piece to ensure the new version mimicked the original.
Kani Alavi, the head of the East Side Gallery’s Artists’ Association, has been the driving force behind the restoration work that started in October 2008. Alavi lobbied for years to collect the euro2.5 million ($3.7 million) from the city, state and federal governments needed for the restoration process. That included room and board for the artists, who otherwise worked for free.
Of the initial group of artists, only five declined to participate in the renovation project. Six others died and their murals have been restored by other artists.
“We thought it was really important to recreate the paintings because, by now, there’s a whole new generation that no longer remembers the original Berlin Wall and the historic events that led to Germany’s reunification,” said Alavi, an Iranian-born artist who had already restored his own mural of East Germans crossing Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin on the night the border opened for the first time.
Every day, the East Side Gallery in Berlin’s formerly eastern Friedrichshain neighborhood attracts thousands of tourists who pose for snapshots in front of the murals.
The western side of the wall was covered in graffiti during the decades after the barrier was erected on Aug. 13, 1961. The eastern side stood barren, desolate and guarded by stern border police for decades. Only after the wall’s collapse did a group of Berlin artists decide to decorate the stretch — the first joint art project of the formerly divided city.
They called on artists from around the world to join them in expressing their feelings in paint and color on the formerly untouchable east side of the wall.
“We had nothing, only cheap paint and brushes, but we were so euphoric about all the historic changes and we wanted to express them in our paintings,” Alavi said, adding that the murals show the joy and hopefulness of overcoming injustice that people believed was possible at the time.
Since then, pollution, weather and time turned famous images like the fraternal communist kiss between East German leader Erich Honecker and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, or the East German Trabant car that appears to be bursting through the wall, into a sad sight — with long cracks in the concrete and big chunks of paint flaking off.
Then there were the souvenir-seekers who chipped off pieces of rock or scrawled their names and messages atop the paintings.
The East Side Gallery received historic monument status in 1991. But despite new signs asking visitors not to tamper with the bright new paintings, it’s uncertain whether the new art will be free from graffiti, vandalism or souvenir hunters.
Some, however, didn’t seem to mind that prospect.
Julie Zinser, a tourist from Riverside, California who was strolling down along the wall said she loved the paintings, but the bright new colors made the it look less authentic.
“It seems like the gritty beauty of this city got a little lost,” Zinser said and then posed for a photo with her two daughters.
The Berlin Wall
What is a memory worth, anyway? To these artists, it is a teaching moment, a moment when the world will once again understand the oppressive effects of a dividing wall broken against a surge of freedom. Old artists now want to use it as a canvas, to teach this generation of such a powerful moment, for those in Germany, and even in the world.
We have a need to remember. We glance through old photographs, share stories around weekend dinners, watch black and white films, all because we really do like to remember those moments.
The Eucharist is a common memory, then, a chance to again find great peace and celebration in an act of deliverance. But what is this memory worth to you?
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July 29, 2009 at 4:26 pm (Church)
Tags: Art, Astronauts, Buzz Aldrin, Church, Coral, Culture, Earth, Faith, God, God's Plan, Gulf of Mexico, Insignificance, Life, Mystery, NASA, Nature, Papua New Guinea, Photography, Purpose, Religion, Sahara Desert, Satellite, Satellite Images, Space, Storms, The Amazon River, The British Isles, The Great Barrier Reef, The Manam Volcano, The Moon, Theology, Unknown, Vacation, Worship
Buzz Aldrin once said that from the moon, he could cover the earth with the tip of his thumb.
When I vacation in the Gulf of Mexico, I often stand with my ankles in the ocean, and look away, over the waters, to the horizon, and have my own feelings of insignificance. There is much I do not understand about the plan of God here.
It is humbling to feel so insignificant. And the following images only add to that humility.
The pictures, released by NASA, were taken from satellites and astronauts. From on top of the world, they provide a glimpse of our home as if it were nothing more than the toy of a child.
The photographs are both inspiring, and chilling. The palate of our planet is beautiful, but frightening, as we get a glimpse into how small even our largest elements really are.
A mosaic of NASA satellite images.
The Great Barrier Reef, with the colonies of coral.
The Manam Volcano, of Papua New Guinea, with billows of smoke rising into the atmosphere.
The Amazon and Negro Rivers of South America, during flooding season.
Dust from the Sahara Desert, blowing over the British Isles.
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July 25, 2009 at 2:25 pm (Opinions, Thinking, Worship)
Tags: Adventure, Ballooning, Culture, Earth, Everest, Faith, God, History, Hot Air Balloons, Leo Dickinson, Mountains, Mt. Everest, Nature, Nepal, Outdoors, Photography, Space, Technology, Tibet, Worship
Mt. Everest is 29,035 feet above sea level, making the tip of the great mountain the highest point on planet Earth.
It is also a sight few of us will ever see with our own eyes.
But Leo Dickinson took a photograph of the mountain, a mile above its summit. Taken in 1991, it is claimed to be the “best picture on earth.” Take a look.
Mt. Everest, from one mile above the summit.
To the left of the summit is Nepal, and to the right of the summit is Tibet. Surrounding Everest, too, are nine of the highest summits on the planet. At an altitude of 36,000 feet, Dickinson was in the stratosphere, in a hot air balloon, when he snapped the photograph. He also braved a temperature of minus 56C for the journey, and the picture.
Such an impressive view from above the tops of the earth, inspiring and breath-taking, even when viewing it in this medium. It is a testament to the beauty and the mystery of creation, and the matchless wonder of our home. God is truly the giver of all good things, including this playground we call Earth.
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January 28, 2009 at 3:40 pm (Church, Prayer)
Tags: Bible, Christ, Christianity, Culture, Devotional Thoughts, Faith, God, Happiness, Ice, Job, Life, Nature, Pop Culture, Purpose, Religion, Scripture, Snow, Storms, The Old Testament, Theology, Thoughts, Weather, Weather Phenemon, Winter, Winter Break, Work
As we experience a cold, cold winter, many of us are enduring the hardships of ice, while others are enjoying a day of rest a good day of snow can only provide. Through these winter months, and especially on snowy days, I am reminded of the following verse from Job 37:
God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ So that all men he has made may know his work, he stops every man from his labor.
God sends us snow so we may rest from our labor, from our work, from our week of filled schedules, so we can, if for a moment, behold God’s power. We marvel at the inspiring beauty of snow and ice, even while we endure its inconveniences.
Just remember, though, that it was always God’s intention to provide the snow of winter, and the storms of spring, so that even the visible weather would testify to the invisible God.
May you enjoy your rest today.
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January 26, 2009 at 4:05 pm (Happiness)
Tags: Art, Coma, Culture, Disney, Edward Burne-Jones, English Art, Fairy Tale, Faith, Family, God, Happiness, Heart Attack, Kiss, Love, Prayer, Princess, Purpose, Sickness, Sleeping Beauty, True Love, Valentine's Day, Walt Disney, Worship
She has been given several names throughout her incarnation. Called Talia, and Briar Rose, we know her best as Aurora, and her tale has inspired millions of little girls as Walt Disney retold her story in Sleeping Beauty.
The Sleeping Beauty, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, ca. 1870.
It is also the subject of a classic English painting, done by Sir Edward Burn-Jones, a nineteenth century artist. Burne-Jones, inspired by Renaissance painters, believed the kiss of the story of Sleeping Beauty could be a metaphor for needed change in England, and it inspired him to paint the now-famous image. But it is, above all, a classic tale, first told in the seventeenth century, of an evil witch, a curse, fairies, and a princess who slept the sleep of death, only to be awaken by a kiss of true love. And now, this story is true.
Emma Ray, and her husband Andrew, were shopping just a few days after the birth of their child, when Emma c0llapsed. Andrew, in desperate attempts, tried to revive her, and her heart was eventually restarted while in the care of a local hospital.
The diagnosis was grim, when Andrew was told that his young wife, Emma, was in a coma, and may never wake up. In the doctor’s own words, Andrew heart that his wife could remain a “sleeping beauty.”
Desperate, he stayed by her side, caressed her hand, spoke to her, and played recordings of their newest baby, crying, hoping that somewhere, somehow, Emma would hear those cries and respond. But all of that was to no avail. Emma showed now signs of response.
And then, in a moment of desperation, almost two weeks after Emma collapsed, Andrew leaned over his wife and asked her for a kiss.
Emma then turned her head, opened her eyes, and readied her lips, and gave her husband a kiss. Of all the things that Andrew tried, it was the kiss which woke his wife.
And though her recovery has lasted for almost two years, she is alive, and well, because of true love, and a hope that never died.
You can read more about them here.
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December 30, 2008 at 3:55 pm (Art)
Tags: Acoustic Guitar, America, American Culture, American History, Art, Barack Obama, Billboard, Christian Entertainment, Contemporary Christian Music, Culture, Entertainment, Faith, Girl America, God, Mat Kearney, Music, Poetry, Politics, Pop Culture, Presidential Election, Rap, Religion, Spoken Word, The United States of America, Top Forty, Worship
Mat Kearney is a poet.
When I first opened his album Bullet, in 2004, I was completely overwhelmed at his acoustic stylings, playing against spoken words and great hooks. And then I dissected each song, and was drawn into the music.
I burned it, though, played it until I was no longer interested, until I picked up my acoustic and learned a few of the tunes, and that catapulted my interest again. This week, the album is once again spinning, and this time I was drawn to his song “Girl America.” The song itself, as well as Bullet, was repackaged into his second album, Nothing Left to Lose, and right now, I am awaiting his third album, and trying to be patient.
When you first listen to his song Girl America, you’re left a bit confused. He speaks the words so fast, and the chorus and the bridge, the songful parts of the tune, are good, and you start to wonder a little. And then you break apart the song, find the lyrics from a Google search, and realize that the song itself is quite powerful. And quite poetic.
I’m not sure what he planned for this song. I’m not sure if he thought he was writing something so poetic and contemporary and raw. And maybe, through the fiasco of the last presidential election, with all of the image and pomp and American degradation, this song speaks to me even more now. I’m not sure, but I have found a new realness in this song that was somehow missed in all of the previous listens.
Click here for his site, and listen to the song by shuffling through his tracks in the music tab at the top. Then read these lyrics, and then maybe you’ll see America in a much different way.
**********
Girl America
by Mat Kearney
My girl America is just a youth in this world,
Her smile is more precious than the sparkle of pearls.
And though her age reads, she’s just a young girl,
The age behind her eyes show the pain that she’s swirled, through the hand that’s been dealt,
Though it’s quiet as kept,the weight that she felt last night when she slept,
And as she crept into the dreams of the things of her past.
Seems to have grown so fast, way beyond her own class,
Though they’re right there with her, her brothers and her sisters.
A natural born leader even when her peers dis her.
My girl, she’s at a crossroads, people praying for her.
Some are preying on her.
Magazine ads, sex, drama, smoking marijuana,
Longing for a father to call her “daughter.”
She’s part of a generation longing for reconciliation,
And this future that they’re facing and this poison that they’re tasting,
My girl, I know this love you’re chasing.
****
My girl America’s crying when she’s lying on her bed at night,
I can see that she’s screaming when she’s dreaming for her freedom.
My girl America’s dying while she’s trying just to stop this fight.
Don’t stop believing, my girl America.
****
Boys with hungry eyes have been beating her door,
Telling her that’s what she’s for, trying to rob at her core,
Then leave calling her a whore, but still she knows there’s more.
I know she knows there’s more because there is a voice she can’t ignore,
‘Cause it was founded in the foundations, from the day of her creation.
“In God we trust” engraved on the treasures of her nation,
And the void that the boys can’t fill,
With the tipping of the bottle or the popping of the pill.
But still most of her friends don’t care as they glare,
Ready to drown down the funnel as they frown down the tunnel.
They stumble and they tumble breaking down into rubble.
My girl America, stop! Can’t you see?
It’s not the circumstances that determine who you’re gonna be,
But how you deal with these problems and pains that come your way.
It’s for you that I pray with hope for a brighter day,
And so I say, your deliverance is coming.
****
My girl America’s crying when she’s lying on her bed at night,
I can see that she’s screaming when she’s dreaming for her freedom.
My girl America’s dying while she’s trying just to stop this fight.
Don’t stop believing, my girl America.
****
Faith like a child from your first birth.
You left it in the dirt on your worst hurt.
And I see each tear and every scar,
The hands that have held you where you are.
And I can see we’ve strayed so far.
A king born under that morning star.
As a crown of thorns was placed to erase
Each tear that’s touched your face.
And his palms and sides were pierced with spears
He hung in love just to draw you near
My girl, out of this whole world,
Can’t you see this is where we started?
****
My girl America’s crying when she’s lying on her bed at night,
I can see that she’s screaming when she’s dreaming for her freedom.
My girl America’s dying while she’s trying just to stop this fight.
Don’t stop believing, my girl America.
**********
Powerful, isn’t it?
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December 22, 2008 at 11:08 pm (Culture, Thinking)
Tags: Advent, American History, Bagdad, Barack Obama, Belief, Celebration, Christ, Christian, Christmas, Christmas Carols, Church, Faith, George W. Bush, Happiness, Holidays, Hope, Iraq, Iraq War, Islam, Jesus, Joy, Martyr, Muslim, Parade, Peace, Persecution, Purpose, Salvation, Santa Clause, Theology, United States of America, Worship
The Christmas Celebration in Bagdad included a poster of Jesus.
Joy to the world, the Lord has come!
Let earth receive her king!
Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing!
That may be possible …
The following story is from CNN, and you can find it here.
And maybe, just maybe, every single heart can prepare him room. Even the heart which has never believed.
Baghdad Celebrates First Public Christmas Amid Hope, Memories
by Jill Dougherty
CNN.com
From a distance, it looks like an apparition: a huge multi-colored hot-air balloon floating in the Baghdad sky, bearing a large poster of Jesus Christ. Below it, an Iraqi flag.
Welcome to the first-ever public Christmas celebration in Baghdad, held Saturday and sponsored by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Once thought to be infiltrated by death squads, the Ministry now is trying to root out sectarian violence — as well as improve its P.R. image.
The event takes place in a public park in eastern Baghdad, ringed with security checkpoints. Interior Ministry forces deployed on surrounding rooftops peer down at the scene: a Christmas tree decorated with ornaments and tinsel; a red-costumed Santa Claus waving to the crowd, an Iraqi flag draped over his shoulders; a red-and-black-uniformed military band playing stirring martial music, not Christmas carols.
On a large stage, children dressed in costumes representing Iraq’s many ethnic and religious groups — Kurds, Turkmen, Yazidis, Christians, Arab Muslims not defined as Sunni or Shiite — hold their hands aloft and sing “We are building Iraq!” Two young boys, a mini-policeman and a mini-soldier sporting painted-on mustaches, march stiffly and salute.
Even before I can ask Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf a question, he greets me with a big smile. “All Iraqis are Christian today!” he says.
Khalaf says sectarian and ethnic violence killed thousands of Iraqis. “Now that we have crossed that hurdle and destroyed the incubators of terrorism,” he says, “and the security situation is good, we have to go back and strengthen community ties.”
In spite of his claim, the spokesman is surrounded by heavy security. Yet this celebration shows that the security situation in Baghdad is improving.
Many of the people attending the Christmas celebration appear to be Muslims, with women wearing head scarves. Suad Mahmoud, holding her 16-month-old daughter, Sara, tells me she is indeed Muslim, but she’s very happy to be here. “My mother’s birthday also is this month, so we celebrate all occasions,” she says, “especially in this lovely month of Christmas and New Year.”
Father Saad Sirop Hanna, a Chaldean Christian priest, is here too. He was kidnapped by militants in 2006 and held for 28 days. He knows firsthand how difficult the lot of Christians in Iraq is but, he tells me, “We are just attesting that things are changing in Baghdad, slowly, but we hope that this change actually is real. We will wait for the future to tell us the truth about this.”
He just returned from Rome. “I came back to Iraq because I believe that we can live here,” he says. “I have so many [Muslim] friends and we are so happy they started to think about things from another point of view and we want to help them.”
The Christmas celebration has tables loaded with cookies and cakes. Families fill plates and chat in the warm winter sun. Santa balloons hang from trees. An artist uses oil paint to create a portrait of Jesus.
In the middle of the park there’s an art exhibit, the creation of 11- and 12-year-olds: six displays, each about three feet wide, constructed of cardboard and Styrofoam, filled with tiny dolls dressed like ordinary people, along with model soldiers and police. They look like model movie sets depicting everyday life in Baghdad.
Afnan, 12 years old, shows me her model called “Arresting the Terrorists.”
“These are the terrorists,” she tells me. “They were trying to blow up the school.” In the middle of the street a dead “terrorist” sprawls on the asphalt, his bloody arm torn from his body by an explosion. Afnan tells me she used red nail polish to paint the blood. A little plastic dog stands nearby. “What is he doing?” I ask. “He looks for terrorists and searches for weapons and explosives,” Afnan says.
Her mother, the children’s art teacher, Raja, shows me another child’s display called “Baghdad Today.”
“This is a wedding,” Raja explains. “Despite the terrorism, our celebrations still go ahead. This is a park, families enjoying time. And this is a market where people go shopping without fear of bombings. This is a mosque where people can pray with no fear.”
In the middle is a black mound that looks like a body bag. Policemen and Interior Ministry forces surround it. “This is terrorism,” she tells me. “We killed it and destroyed it, and our lives went back to normal.”
A Christmas tale perhaps, I think, but one that many Iraqis hope will come true.
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