Author Archives: The Night Writer

Nobody worries about upsetting a droid Christian

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I was reminded of something this morning as I thought about the loathing the secular world has for Christians compared to the fear and loathing it has for radical Muslims. Nope, it wasn’t a scripture, but a short bit of dialog from Star Wars, Episode 4 when the droids are playing holographic chess with Chewbacca.

When Chewie protests a legal move by R2, C-3PO responds:

C-3PO: He made a fair move. Screaming about it can’t help you.
Han Solo: Let him have it. It’s not wise to upset a Wookiee.
C-3PO: But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid.
Han Solo: That’s ’cause droids don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.
Chewbacca: Grrf.
C-3PO: I see your point, sir. I suggest a new strategy, R2: let the Wookiee win.

Hmmm, was there ever a time in any of the six movies when C-3PO had a good idea? I mean, every time the cowardly appeasing “protocol droid” suggested a course of action, or whined about someone else’s action, wasn’t it always 180 degrees opposite of what needed to be done?

That said, I’m not surprised at the U.S. State Department condemning the publication of the Mohammaed caricatures. As much as it might (might) support free speech, anything further stirring up emotions in the Mideast can’t be too helpful for the mission. Since Osama bin Laden endorses a truce, however, the concept must be acceptable to the faith. Therefore, let’s propose a truce: We’ll urge the Western media to stop using images of Mohammed (and all insensitivities to all faiths) if the Muslim media will stop producing dramatizations of the “Protcols of the Elders of Zion” and running editorial cartoons depicting Christians and Jews as devils.

Deal? I didn’t think so.

Update:

A very interesting chronology of this cartoon intifadeh over at Shot in the Dark.

Challenging Word of the Week: numinous

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Numinous

(NOOH muh nus, NYOOH-) n. adj.



Anything described as numinous is spiritual, has a sacred quality, is mysterious and awe-inspiring. Numen (NOOH mun) is literally, “nod” in Latin, related to the verb nutare (to nod, or keep nodding), and by extension came to mean “divine will” (as indicated by the nod of a god). Numen was taken over intact, to mean “divine power” or “spirit,” and gave rise to the adjective numinous, which denotes a quality that is divine, especially in the sense that it is beyond human understanding. There is something numinous in the late quartets of Beethoven. Dark forests have a numinous quality that inspires reverence and awe. The Roman satirist Juvenal (60-c. 130) wrote that if people had foresight, Fortuna wouldn’t be a goddess — she would have no numen.



This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.



My example: Violent Islamists claim to be acting upon a numinous mandate. One has to wonder, however, how much numen their god possesses if he needs their intervention to settle his scores.



I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Filings: Did Allah fall off the throne?

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There are countless opportunities for us right-wing fundie evangelicals to take offense and grow wroth with the culture. Television, movies, magazines, the NEA, Clinton presidencies — it’s almost as if there are elements out there deliberately looking for sticks to poke us with. Each time X, Y or Z causes an uproar, my pastor has a common reminder for our congregation: “God didn’t fall off of the throne because of X, Y, Z.”

His point is that God is still in charge and undismayed and unthreatened by such goings on, and even laughs at the thoughts and plans of men. He’ll often go on to point out that we shouldn’t be shocked when sinners sin. The reason he does this is not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned about what goes on, but to help us change our perspective to see the big picture: how do we get the revelation of God’s grace and mercy to those who seem bound and determined to test it.

With the news this week detailing the reactions of Muslims – rioting, threats of violence, kidnapping and other intimidations – to their prophet being depicted in editorial cartoons it seems that there may be a fundamental difference in the way Christians and Muslims view the power of our God. I believe a Christian perspective is to hope that those who oppose us will live long enough to see the error of their ways and repent well before a final judgment; the Islamist approach appears to be to try and yank as many as you can to judgment right away.

It’s also interesting to note that our own culture and media are willing to celebrate, in the name of free speech, crucifixes soaking in jars of urine, religious icons smeared with dung or Kanye West portraying himself on a magazine cover as the crucified Christ, yet it cowers in the face of Muslims being outraged over a few cartoons. The mainstream press and television will pull the cartoons, or pixilate them, or fire editors and reporters for running the images and claim they do so out of a desire to be “sensitive” to their Muslim audience. No such sensitivity appears to be available to Christians who, despite the fears and portrayals of many, are not generally given to violence. Meanwhile, look cross-eyed at their faith and you’d think Muslims are a bunch of frenzied liberals reacting to Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell whenever she departs from the dogma that Democrats have nothing to do with the Abramoff scandal. (see photos of the banners Muslim protestors are carrying here).

Okay, deep breath. God is still on the throne.

I have done things in my life that were deeply disrespectful to Christianity and Christians. I did them at the time with little fear or awareness of possible repercussions though by the standards of the rioting Islamists God had every right to strike me dead. Actually, I agree with them – God had every right and more than enough power to do just that. Instead I lived long enough to meet Him and Jesus Christ in miraculous ways and to profoundly repent. Furthermore, the revelation that I have been spared helps me to see others, no matter how offensive, in a different light, even the same light that God sees them in: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

Some Muslims (and Christians) may think that God wants us to take heathens, pagans and infidels out; I believe he wants us to bring them in.

Friday Fundamentals in Film: Beyond the Gates of Splendor

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I want to go in a little different direction with this week’s movie. Instead of a classic movie or a more contemporary film that illustrates strong values and virtues I want look at the documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor. This documentary is the factual and very well done basis for the new movie in theaters now, End of the Spear (both were produced by the same people).

This is a very intense film that tells the story of the massacre of five missionaries in the 1950s by a primitive tribe of people in the jungles of Ecuador, and the subsequent and near miraculous actions of the families of the men to continue the work that they began — with the same tribe and individuals that killed their husbands and fathers.

While the story is nearly forgotten today, it was a major sensation at the time it happened. While it took place in the 1950s there are enough people still alive today to offer first hand accounts of the events. There is also a lot of home movie clips shot by the men that have been worked into the film. These accounts and film clips are especially moving and compelling elements of the documentary. The time that has passed also provides an interesting perspective when discussing how similar and different the world is now compared to then.

Beyond the Gates of Splendor begins almost as a National Geographic program as it details the primitive life of the Waodani tribe. It is a violent life where murder is the expected and accepted way of settling disputes. With six out of every 10 adult deaths attributed to homicide, the tribe is spearing itself into extinction. Then the focus shifts for a time to the background of the missionaries and their families. The five men — Nate Saint, Jim Eliot, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming and Roger Youderian — will certainly challenge the image some may have of what a missionary looks like. They were all young, handsome, fit, energetic and resourceful. They were leaders in everything they did and drew people to them; truly the flower of a generation. They literally could have done or been anything they wanted yet their hearts were for people in distant lands.

The second half of the documentary details their efforts in Ecuador and Peru and their initial and ingenious method for making contact with the Waodani and early successes. All is well until a young Waodani, to cover his own misbehavior, lies to the tribe about the men, resulting in the fatal assault party. If the film stopped here it would still be compelling, but the real story is just beginning as the wives, children and friends of the men continue to minister to the tribe over the next generation, leading to a spectacular turnaround — so much so that at one point one of the missionary’s daughters is baptized at the same spot in the river where her father was killed, with two of the men from the group that killed him participating in the ceremony. My kids were completely mesmerized by Beyond the Gates of Splendor and while it can be emotionally challenging at times, it is a stirring depiction of vision, commitment and faith.

Points to Ponder:

  • The Waodani society was based on two key values: egalitarianism and autonomy. No one could consider himself better than anyone else, but also, no one could get away with wronging another. With no institutionalized way of settling disputes, murder was the recourse of choice, often sparking a cycle of retribution. Does this sound familiar to other parts of the world or cities you know?

  • What is your conception of the mission field today? Do you think it is the same or different from 50 years ago?

  • What would you have done?

Questions to Answer:

  1. How did the men go about introducing themselves to the Waodani? Why did they do it this way?

  2. Nate Saint said “They’re not ready for ready for heaven, and we are,” in explaining why the men had decided not to use guns even to defend themselves. What did he mean by that?

  3. What were the circumstances that led up to the attack? Could they have been prevented?

  4. Why did the women return to the Waodani?

  5. What effect did all of this have on the Waodani?

Chris Coleman on right path to reduce St. Paul emissions

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New St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman kept a campaign pledge by signing the U.S. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement committing the city to align itself with the Kyoto accords. According to an article in the Strib:

The agreement will require the city, by 2012, to reduce pollution from cars and power plants to 1990 levels. What the city must do to get there will be hammered out in the next six months.

“We no longer can pretend this is not a serious issue or one that we don’t need to address,” Coleman said.

Although his predecessor, Randy Kelly, criticized the agreement during the 2005 campaign as “useless symbolism,” Coleman defended it as a way to try to “force leadership on a national level.”

Coleman joined mayors in 200 cities around the country who have signed the agreement, including those in Minneapolis, Apple Valley, Eden Prairie and Duluth.

The agreement challenges cities to meet or beat the conditions of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to address climate change that took effect in February 2005.

People say Coleman will be spectacularly ineffective but I think he can really pull this off. By the time he institutes smoking bans in private businesses and raises taxes to pay for the environmentally friendly initiatives he’ll have so gutted the city that hitting the emissions targets will be a snap. Think of it, no reason to go downtown, so fewer cars — and just think about how nice it will be without all those people exhaling carbon dioxide everywhere! Furthermore with less business and fewer people there’ll be less need for power and therefore fewer nasty power plant emissions!

Another one of the objectives from the agreement is to “reduce sprawl and increase open space.” Done! There will be lots of wide, open space in St. Paul.

Oh well, I suppose I need to be more realistic. Given the “success” that those progressive and green-thinking Europeans have had in meeting (not) their targets (see here) the objectives won’t be reached. Not that the city won’t die trying, though.

If Coleman is really serious about cutting emissions in our capitol city a good start would be cutting the amount of time the state legislature is in session by half. Signing a decree to that effect will have about as much impact as what he signed yesterday.

No way to treat a Lady: is The View anti-Dame?

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Three network news and talk shows, including the all-woman show, The View, may have declined to interview Dame Judi Dench because she was too old. At least, that is the claim of Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of Miramax Films and head of the company distributing “Mrs. Henderson Presents”, for which Dench received an Oscar nomination earlier this week.

NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein says Judi Dench was snubbed by three network talk shows because of her age while promoting “Mrs. Henderson Presents,” according to New York magazine.

Dench, 71, was nominated Tuesday for an Oscar for her performance in the film, which was distributed by Weinstein’s new production company, The Weinstein Co.

Weinstein, who co-founded Miramax Films, says Dench was turned down for interviews by NBC’s “Today” show and ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “The View.”

“They said that she didn’t fit their demographics,” the outspoken movie mogul tells the magazine in this week’s issue.

This could be a calculated claim on Weinstein’s part to create more buzz about the film, and the full text of the above article includes statements from The Today Show, Good Morning America and The View disputing (somewhat nervously) that age is the reason they declined opportunities to interview the actress who previously won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love.

Would The View turn it’s tailored back on an older woman? You wouldn’t think so, not with Barbara Walters (who’s 40+ years in the business would mathematically make her much closer to Dame Judi than the target demographic) as co-host, co-owner and co-executive producer. If so, however, this is almost cosmically laughable. Surely there must have been some other reason? Perhaps the ladies were trying to hold a space open for James Frey.

Paying more to get ‘less

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Here at the villa of the Night we like cordless phones with a base unit and extra handsets because when you’ve got two daughters and three floors of living space it’s handy to not be tied to the wall when you talk on the phone. It’s also good exercise for me to run around the house trying to locate what pillow or piece of furniture the handset is under when the phone rings. Cordless phones are convenient, loaded with features and let us roam our home.

Around our house they also have about the same life expectancy as a pan of warm brownies.

Over the years we’ve had many, many cordless phone sets. Some were made by big brand name companies, others made by company names that appear to have been written by a dyslexic Korean. Regardless of name, each one seems to last only about 12 to 18 months. This was a great source of annoyance to me for awhile and then I actually started to pay attention to the kid working the cash register at Best Buy when he tried to sell me the “extended product replacement contract.” The standard deal is for that magic $9.99 number you can get whatever you purchased replaced free if it stops working in the next two years. (Note: very few things are fixable anymore, at least where electronics are concerned. It’s usually more cost effective to throw something away and replace it than to repair it).

Yeah, my grandfather (“use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”) would have a fit if he knew this is what things have come to, but that’s progress. For some time now when the kid at the counter goes into his warranty spiel when I’m buying a phone I no longer think to myself, “Blah, blah, blah, whatever and no, thank you.” Now I think “Bwa-ha-ha! You’re mine!” At least the last three cordless phone sets we’ve owned have had this extra protection and the result is that for my original $100 investment and a couple of $9.99 “insurance premiums” I’ve had multiple new phones. So last week when the basement handset started dying regularly halfway through “Hello,” it may have made people calling us think I was swearing but I was really pretty mellow. I gathered up the entire set and headed back to the Return counter at Best Buy.

I did not realize at the time that this happened to be a particularly hardy telephone; it had outlived the replacement agreement by 36 days. While such an achievement might otherwise have caused me to organize a celebratory parade and to buy stock in the maker’s company, I instead felt betrayed. Oh well, I can afford another phone and just chalk this up to being one of those times where life gets the last laugh, except that I also had another phone mission in mind with this particular trip to the Big Blue Box.

My wife and I have had cell phones for the last 8 or 9 years with one of the big wireless network providers. The original contract was cheap, cheap, cheap and we’ve done pretty well by renewing it whenever we needed new phones and the provider had an enticing promotion. The result is that we now pay barely $30 a month for our two lines and a “puny” 300 minutes, which suits our needs fine because I think we’ve exceeded our minutes maybe once in all this time. Our current phones are now more than four years old however, and mine no longer connects properly with the battery charger. We have to charge the battery in my wife’s phone, switch it my phone and put my battery back into her phone to recharge. Not overly inconvenient but, you know, why not look at getting a new phone? Especially one of those new camera phones because, as a blogger, I never know when I might run into a situation with great blog fodder such as, say, a car loaded with Wellstone bumper stickers gets booted right before my eyes.

Equipped with the Best Buy gift certificate I received at Christmas, I wandered over to the cell phone counter where several phones supported by my provider were being advertised with little signs saying, “Free” or “Just $25.99” and similar. I knew I’d have to sign a new 2-year contract, go through the rebate hoo-doo and maybe have to pay a little more for the monthly service but I thought it was worth checking it out. The knowledgeable and helpful young man waiting on me helped me find a couple of phones that would fit my admittedly low-demand cell phone lifestyle and then entered my account into his computer.

“Dude,” he said, “how long have you had that phone?”

It turns out that he can’t sell me any of the phones he had unless I upgraded my contract. Ok, again, not unexpected. Smiling dismissively I said, “Yeah, yeah, so what’s the damage? What’s the cheapest monthly family rate to have the network behind me?”

$80.

Have I ever mentioned that I’m Scottish, or even at that, that my wife is the really frugal one in the family?

Of course, for that I’d get an extra 100 minutes a month that I wouldn’t use; at least not as much as I’d use the extra $50 they wanted to charge me. I guess I’m keeping my current cell phone a bit longer as I ponder the lessons of this night’s technological transactions: being cordless doesn’t mean there aren’t strings attached.

Flight and fight

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I didn’t blog last night because I was watching an incredible movie that left me feeling simultaneously too wired and too wiped out to write when it was over. The movie was Flight 93 (A&E channel), a dramatization about the 9/11 passengers and crew who fought back against the terrorists to prevent the jet from being flown into the White House or Capitol Building. Based on research, interviews and facts from the public record, the movie has a disconcerting realism that wrapped me in feelings that were equal parts outrage and helplessness.

When I first heard that a made-for-tv movie about this was going to be on I didn’t have a very positive reaction. I thought it would either be overly sappy or, worse, try too hard to “understand” the terrorists. I didn’t watch when it debuted Monday night, but heard positive reviews so I decided to check it out when it was rebroadcast Tuesday night (remaining re-broadcast schedule at the end of this post).

Even knowing the ultimate outcome (or maybe because I knew) I found my heart pounding from the opening, quiet moments of the movie. There’s no back-story on any of the people involved although a few things are hinted at in snippets of conversation or in glimpses at carry-on items; you don’t “meet” anyone anymore than you do when boarding an airplane. The story essentially takes place within the timeframe from the beginning to the end of the flight. As a viewer you get a vivid sense of how surreal the situation was as passengers, families at home, the citizenry, the media and the authorities all tried to wrap their minds around what was happening. Sometimes I almost wanted to shout at the television because it was so frustrating to see elements of the big picture already in my head revealed bit by bit and wanting the people in the film to understand. That same sense, however, also helped me to marvel at how quickly the people on board ultimately were able to not only understand but process, accept, adapt and act on that understanding. Can you imagine what it would take for you, going about your daily business, to completely re-order your reality to the point where you are making life and death decisions within a span of a couple of hours?

Adding to the compelling eeriness of the film is that it is so brightly and cleanly lit. No “Bourne Supremacy” type of dark edges and stylized blurred action; we see the bright light and clean lines we’re accustomed to in modern jets and the sunny, “just another day” weather around the homes of families talking to their doomed loved ones on the telephone. It all certainly heightens the “how can this really be happening” sense of everyone involved. It’s heart-breaking to see the families trying to cope while hoping for the best, and to think what it must be like for these same families to see themselves and their loved ones portrayed in this film.

While certain parts of what actually happened have to be conjecture, there is a remarkable amount of information available because of the communications that were sent and received, and it’s hard not to be caught up in the story or to imagine how you yourself would be reacting in the same circumstances. 9/11 wasn’t the day the world changed; that happened long before. It was, however, the day we realized the world had changed. Flight 93 is a timely and gripping story without patriotic rants and Boris Badinov cartoon villains and it resonates in these days when so many seem determined to forget the hard lessons learned that day.

Rebroadcasts this week (all times EST) on A&E:

Wednesday, Feb. 1 — 9:00 pm
Thursday, Feb. 2 — 1:00 am
Saturday, Feb. 4 — 12:00 pm
Sunday, Feb. 5 — 12:00pm

Update:

Welcome to visitors following Amy Ridenour’s National Center link to this post. I’m honored by Amy’s link and appreciate your interest.

Encouraged by this development, I’ve submitted this post to this weekend’s Open Trackback Alliance collection via the OTA portal at The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns.

It’s winter time: Do you know what your daughters are doing?

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The Mall Diva and I did a little sports-watching bonding Saturday night. Nope, it wasn’t football, basketball, figure-skating or her new-found favorite, hockey. It wasn’t even lacrosse (sports with sticks that you can hit people with usually get her attention). We were watching the Women’s Snowboard SuperPipe competition at the Winter X-games.

Truth be told, she was already watching the event when I arrived in the basement hoping to check out what was on the movie channels. We have just one television in the house and really only one rule on what to watch – he (or she) who gets there first, rules. Since she was unmoved by my puppy eyes and salesmanship, the SuperPipe it was.

Actually, it was pretty interesting. I’ve not followed the so-called “X” sports that much since I’m of the generation that prefers coffee to cola as a morning eye-opener and gravity and I have long-since settled on the terms of my surrender. SuperPipe is a long, wide tube with the top cut off and the sides and bowl packed with snow. Contestants snowboard back and forth across the “pipe”, riding up and over the sides high into the air while doing twists, flips and other stunts, mixed in with the occasional face-plant. Hey – women in danger; now that’s good TV!

Besides appreciating the skills and “did you see that!” moments of this particular event I was amazed at how much my daughter knew about the sport and the contestants. While I can go three-deep on the NFL’s team by team skill position rosters, the snowboarding stars, jargon and arcania section of my memory capacity is as fresh and unmarked as a slope of new powder. According to my daughter, someone called – what was it, the Raging Tomato, Flaming Tomato, Flying Tomato? – had already won the men’s competition and the leader in the women’s event was Kelly Clark, the American girl favored to win gold at next month’s Olympics and someone who has the name “Jesus” painted in large pink script on the bottom of her board. A shredder for Our Savior? I can dig it.

This is definitely a different kind of event, and one that hasn’t caught the eye of network advertisers yet since we saw the same two commercials over and over (“what do you think your beard is doing all day, taking a nap?”) but it has more than just attitude to set it apart from more traditional women’s winter sports. The competitors wear baggy, kind of punk, “uniforms’ instead of the skintight suits of skiers or the foofaraw of figure-skating outfits, and when the ladies are interviewed at the end of their runs they inevitably have hat hair, creases on their face from goggles and flaming red noses. No, this definitely isn’t figure skating. The girls have, however, mastered the big-time trick of keeping their sponsors’ names (including Jesus) prominently displayed for the cameras.

I think I can get to like this.

Tiger Lilly’s challenging word

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Hi, sorry I’ve been away so long.

Dad said that I can do my own challenging words, so here’s one:

Picklewiener!

Ha! Just kidding. Here’s my real word:

Orts, n.
Fragments; pieces

Imagine using that word in everyday conversations. “Hey, Ted, would you hand me that little ort of glass right there, please?”

“Riiight. What’s an ort?”

“Well, an ort is a (see above). Now give me the ort, you picklewiener!!! O.K., O.K., hold on a minute! Someone needs anger management classes!”

Weird, huh? It even sounds weird. It’s one of those words where if you say it too many times, you forget what it means. Ort, ort, ort, ort, ort, ort, ort, ort, ort, ort. What does ort mean again? Oh, yeah (see above).

So that’s my challenging word. Well I guess it’s more weird than challenging. Maybe it’ll be challenging to remember.

Ciao for now!
Tiger Lilly