Category Archives: Night Writer

On a day like today

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by the Night Writer

My birthday was last week, and one of the presents I received was a collection of daily excerpts from the writings of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (thanks, Ben). Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis on April 9, 1945, only days before Hitler committed suicide and the arrival of allied troops in Berlin. This morning my book made note of this sad anniversary, and it reminded me of the post I did on this date back in 2005, which was also the week Pope John Paul II died. Bonhoeffer’s words are timeless, mine much less so, but his always stir me so much I decided to re-run that post here again today.

“This is the end – but for me, the beginning of life.” Those were not the words of Pope John Paul II, but of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed 60 years ago today by the Nazis in the closing days of World War II.

I thought of these words this week as the world honored the Pope and I listened to commentators in every media try to put their political spin on what a life of faith should look like. And when I thought of their words in the context of this anniversary, I could only shake my head at the subtleties of God and offer a bitter smile. Bitter at the foolishness and presumption, but a smile nonetheless in order to share in the laugh God must have been having. Bonhoeffer is one of my heroes. Supremely talented and perceptive, he saw spiritual truth in a clear light and threw himself into writing it down and vigorously living it out in total commitment to the lives of those around him, yet he was also capable of the loneliest touch of inner doubt. He was one of the earliest and most unyielding voices in opposition to Hitler as far back as 1933 and struggled to shine a light on Hitler’s co-opting of the German church and to reconstruct Christian ethics.

Fearing for Bonhoeffer’s life, his friends arranged a position for him in America ahead of the coming war, only to have him turn around and return to Germany almost immediately, saying:

I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.

A pacifist, he ultimately saw the need to try and “throw a spoke into the wheel” of the Nazi war machine and was arrested in 1943 and accused of being part of a plot to kill Hitler. Over the next two years Bonhoeffer wrote prodigiously and powerfully, cramming each paragraph with stunning clarity and revelation almost as if he sensed his time was short (he was 39 – younger than I am now – when he died). As he watched the German church crumble around him and embrace the unbiblical tenets of Nazism, he exhorted his followers and his country that obedience and belief were bound together, saying “Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who obeys, believes.”

You can find out much more about his incredible and courageous story here on the pages hosted by the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, but let me return to the present and the spirit of our age so much in evidence the past few weeks, and what Bonhoeffer might wryly refer to as another example of

“the vigilant religious instinct of man for the place where grace is to be obtained at the cheapest price.”

What he meant was that we all too easily fall into iniquity by trying to determine for ourselves and by our own standards what pleases God. Today there is a lot of easy talk about spirituality as we boomers age and find that our first commandment – “Love thyself” – doesn’t sustain. Christian or otherwise we seek to set our own standards for what is “good enough,” forgetting what it cost those who came before us to raise God’s standard. Journalist David Brooks calls it “building a house of obligation on a foundation of choice,” or, “orthodoxy without obedience.”

You can be thought to be spiritual merely for acknowledging there is a need for spirituality without admitting that you have any responsibility to live up to it in any way. It is a spirituality that honors teachers but not a Messiah. It is what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” and described as being the greatest threat to the Church. The threat, however, wasn’t from the world but rather from within the Church.

The complacency of cheap grace allowed Nazism to subvert the gospel in the German church, and the spiritual complacency of America in the 50s and 60s germinated the seeds that bear so much bitter fruit in our culture today. (Btw, you might find it an interesting study to compare the origins, thinking and actions of the original Nazis with the origins, thinking and actions of those who are the first to label others as Nazis today.) It is this “cheap grace” with which we try to cover a multitude of sins while projecting a rich aura of tolerance and enlightenment. As Bonhoeffer wrote in his classic, “The Cost of Discipleship”:

This is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without Church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without contrition. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows Him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His son: ‘ye were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

In what I have read of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and – though I am not a Catholic – what I have seen in the life of Pope John Paul II, I sense they both understood that their own lives were not too dear a price to pay for the sake of future generations. As Bonhoeffer wrote in one of his letters from prison:

“The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live.”

Notes: For anyone interested in gaining a deeper sense of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and vision I highly recommend “The Cost of Discipleship” and “Letters and Papers from Prison” as a start (don’t expect to rush right through these, however). “Ethics” and “Life Together” go further into what a thriving life in the spirit and in fellowship with others is about for those who want more. There are also two excellent DVDs available. Especially moving is “Hanged on a Twisted Cross,” surprisingly and effectively narrated by Ed Asner and Mike Farrell, and the very polished “Bonhoeffer” from Martin Doblmeier.

One of the things that Bonhoeffer wrote while he was in prison was the heart-rending microcasm of despair and hope in the poem “Who Am I?” It’s one that I’ve had posted on the wall of my office at work for years.

Who Am I?

Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my cell’s confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I would walk to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I would bear the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptible, woe-begone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

On poverty and the fat of the land

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by the Night Writer

The open palm of desire, wants everything, wants everything, wants everything…
— Paul Simon, “Further to Fly”

Here’s an interesting article I read yesterday:

1 in 5 Four-Year-Olds Obese, Study Finds
Associated Press Online
Lindsey Tanner
April 07, 2009

A striking new study says almost 1 in 5 American 4-year-olds is obese, and the rate is alarmingly higher among American Indian children, with nearly a third of them obese. Researchers were surprised to see differences by race at so early an age.

Overall, more than half a million 4-year-olds are obese, the study suggests. Obesity is more common in Hispanic and black youngsters, too, but the disparity is most startling in American Indians, whose rate is almost double that of whites.

The lead author said that rate is worrisome among children so young, even in a population at higher risk for obesity because of other health problems and economic disadvantages.
(…SNIP…)
Jessica Burger, a member of the Little River Ottawa tribe and health director of a tribal clinic in Manistee, Mich., said many children at her clinic are overweight or obese, including preschoolers.

Burger, a nurse, said one culprit is gestational diabetes, which occurs during a mother’s pregnancy. That increases children’s chances of becoming overweight and is almost twice as common in American Indian women, compared with whites.

She also blamed the federal commodity program for low-income people that many American Indian families receive. The offerings include lots of pastas, rice and other high-carbohydrate foods that contribute to what Burger said is often called a “commod bod.”

“When that’s the predominant dietary base in a household without access to fresh fruits and vegetables, that really creates a better chance of a person becoming obese,” she said.

It’s a conundrum of American culture that our poorest people, regardless of age, are more prone to be overweight than those with more education and higher incomes. It’s not a new revelation, but this article jumped out at me because of something else I heard recently.

I attended a Catholic wedding and at one point the priest led a group prayer asking for God’s intervention and/or blessing in a number of areas and listed “the elimination of poverty” in the petition. The elimination of poverty? I mean it’s a fine and “Christian” sentiment, but didn’t Jesus say we would have the poor with us always? It got me to thinking about just what poverty is (or isn’t) and what exactly can be done about the symptoms and the root causes. Can you define poverty by the amount of money someone has (or hasn’t), by where he lives, by his clothing…or by his actions, attitudes and habits?

The problem in defining poverty is that it is a relative term, subject to perception; i.e., “I may not be able to tell you what poverty is but I can tell you what it looks like” (or, “I know it when I see it.”) There are people here in the U.S. that you can look at and consider themm to be “poor” — until you go to the Philippines and see a family living on (not in) a piece of cardboard in the city dump. To that Filipino family the poor man in America with an apartment, food, television and midnight basketball looks wealthy and his bag of Cheetos and Big Gulp are an excessive indulgence; meanwhile that American looks at my nice house, two cars, big yard, smells the sirloin grilling on the patio — and wonders why I’m so “lucky”. And I think that if I won $100 million in the lottery I’d still clear nearly $50 million after taxes and could buy a mansion where fresh bon-bons could be delivered twice a day.

My wife, in her training as a police chaplain, has taken a number of classes to help her understand the stresses and job hazards of police officers as well as the social issues that make up the environments in which they have to do their jobs. I think one of the most interesting for her was the series on understanding that the poor, the middle class and the wealthy all really do think differently and have a nearly “secret” way of communicating within their groups that are almost incomprehensible to outsiders. I know, I know…it sounded kind of specious to me, too, until she shared some examples that made me go, “Hmmmm.”

I won’t go into all that now as it could easily be three or four posts, but I will offer that I think attitudes, habits and actions have more to do with a person’s poverty than bad luck or conspiracy to keep one down. Recognizing that, we have several times in the past helped “poor” people out not just in money and goods, but in trying to show them where the critical decision-making points are, how our family manages things and how to have a vision for navigating to a better result. You’ve heard the old saying about giving a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish you feed him for a lifetime, right? We’ve helped people out with the equivalent of boats, equipment and fishing lessons, only to see them happily shove off and get out a little ways … and eat their bait.

That doesn’t mean that we’ll stop trying to help or stop trying to renew our own thinking so we can be better at it. It does make us very dubious, however, of the proposition that redistributing wealth is going to do anything to reduce poverty. The problem isn’t the amount of resources, it’s information and perspective. The poor people in America who are obese aren’t lacking food so much as they lack good nutrition; similarly education doesn’t help if it’s the wrong information. Look around and there’s all kinds of evidence that so-called “smart” people in all walks of life are making dumb decisions when it comes to finances, whether it’s in their own lives, in their families or — God help us — in our governments.

Aren’t you dead yet?

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by the Night Writer

I first saw this article and threw it into my drafts folder about a month ago and forgot about it. A little spring cleaning, however, brings you this snippet from the Llama Butchers:

Senator Warner wants to start a “discussion” about end-of-life issues
From The Virginian Pilot. Make no mistake about where this is headed: first it will be just ensuring that everyone has “information,” next it will be voluntary “guidelines,” and then the “guidelines” will no longer be voluntary. Translation: your friendly federal government wants to decide when to pull the plug–because it knows best

Here’s the article in question:

Sen. Warner calls for discussion of end-of-life treatment
By Dale Eisman
The Virginian-Pilot
© March 6, 2009
WASHINGTON

Two months into his term, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner has marched into the policy thicket that is health-care reform, urging a national discussion on the touchy question of how best to treat terminally ill people.

In a speech to hospital executives this week, Warner called for intensified efforts to educate individuals and families in advance about end-of-life care. With better information, many people would forgo expensive and almost-always-futile treatment for patients near death, he said.

Such measures account for more than one-fourth of Medicare payments and 10 to 12 percent of all health costs, studies suggest.

“We leave it to families to resolve these extraordinarily difficult decisions with little guidance,” Warner said. “Other industrialized nations have dealt with the end-of-life issue. It’s time we did as well.”

I’ve written here several times about just how other countries deal with end-of-life issues — and how nationalized medicine essentially leads to rationing of healthcare because of the high costs. Typically the very young and the very old are most at risk of being deemed a drain on the country if the costs of their care get too high — and then the Nanny State turns into the Bully State.

21st Century British Healthcare (Terminally Ill Can Be Starved to Death, UK Court Rules) (featuring an assist from Monty Python)

Charlotte’s Web: When the State Decides if Your Baby Shall Live or Die

An update on Charlotte Wyatt … and the state of socialized medicine

Scottish seniors aren’t dead yet: the rising cost of “free” healthcare

I think I’ll go for a walk.

Lumpy, part 2

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by the Night Writer

A short time ago I wrote a brief post about Romans 12:2, comparing our lives to a lump of clay either conformed by the world or transformed by God; either squeezed or pressed into a mold or filled and expanded as if by a hand reaching inside us as we spin to bow us into a bowl or vase or some useful vessel.

One thing I didn’t note at the time is that in both cases, the lump of clay has very little say in what it gets turned into. Conformity is a matter of channeling our thinking, while transformation is a matter of renewing our mind (or having it renewed) so that those channels are overflowed. We might go along with either activity but once we submit to either we don’t know just how it will turn out.

Not that we don’t try, especially when it comes to the transforming/expanding touch of God the Father. Having spent our lives conformed, we almost can’t help ourselves from repeating the process as we are being transformed. At first we are in awe of what God has done and is doing, especially when we are aware of the quality of the material that He’s working with. All too soon, however, it seems we can’t resist trying to shape God into something that suits our purpose instead of the other way around.

A little bit of revelation, or a transcendant, even miraculous, experience can seem like our destination rather than just a signpost on our way. When God wants to continue to work in our life we’ll still instinctively hunker down, even with (or because) of our new understanding, and decide that “God obviously can do this, but there’s no way He’d do that.” It’s as if he just put up a frame and a roof on our new house, but we don’t think he’s qualified to do the plumbing as well; especially if we’ve always handled the plumbing ourselves.

Conforming is easier because we have a sense of when we look like the other items on the shelf; transforming is harder because we’re continually changing as the Master Potter spins, shapes and elongates, perhaps even adds a handle. Yet in effect we’ll say, “No, please, I’ll just stay a salad bowl. I never thought I could even be a salad bowl, but please don’t turn me into an urn.” Ceasing to conform and beginning to transform usually means throwing out some old thought or doctrine we had in favor of a new revelation; but it’s as if we think that there was only one or two thoughts or doctrines that needed to change.

It’s amazing how quickly we become expert theologians, even as the potter says, “You ain’t seen nothing yet, Lumpy.”

Tiger Lilly’s gift

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For my birthday today Tiger Lilly gave me a writing assignment that she completed from her writer’s exercise book, 3 a.m. Epiphany by Brian Kitely. It read:

This was an exercise in The 3 a.m. Epiphany that I thought would be interesting to do. The exercise was to take a phrase or saying (preferably one with a large variety of words in it) and form 15 sentences out of that saying. The words needed to adhere around a character in a situation that seems related to (but necessarily a response to) the author’s original sentence. I managed to get a slightly silly pointless deep, meaningful story out of it. I used the following quote:

Two roads diverged in a wood and I,
I took the road less traveled by;
And that made all the difference.
— Robert Frost

I traveled by two roads.
I traveled in a wood.
Two roads traveled in a wood.
A difference in the wood made the roads diverge.
The two roads diverged.
The roads made all the difference.
I diverged in the wood.
I took the road less traveled by.
I made all the difference.
I traveled less in the wood.
The road and I diverged.
I took the difference and made the road that made the difference.
I made the road diverge in a wood.
The road and I diverged.
And that made all the difference.

Tiger Lilly’s present reminded me of Peter Gabriel singing “The Book of Love.” In turn I’ll modify one of the lines in that song to say:

And you, you can write me anything.

An early Father’s Day

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There is a lot of commentary back and forth following Tuesday’s post about the German family seeking political asylum in the U.S. so that they can have the freedom to home-educate their children. This has had me thinking of the role of parents, and of fathers, and reminded me of something that happened at our March Inside Outfitters meeting.

This is the monthly men’s breakfast and teaching that has been drawing a large group of men from Minnesota Teen Challenge, a residential drug rehabilitation program. Last month we were at my partner Earl’s church for the meeting and Earl shared a message aimed at the men who had grown up without a positive male role model in their lives. He described the hurt and frustration of knowing you were missing something but not being sure what it was, and of the resulting anger and defensiveness that caused so many men to reject God the Father and to understand what it meant to be instructed and guided.

Earl is one who knows first-hand what that is like. He grew up with a violent, abusive father who was still highly respected as a deacon in their church. Earl’s heart hardened with each outrage as he and his brother, sisters and mother absorbed each outburst. He grew violent himself and turned violently to crime and to drug and sexual abuse. He eventually found himself in Minnesota’s maximum security prison, where the gentle spirit of a visiting pastor finally showed him who is real father is and set him on the path to becoming a pastor himself. As he finished his message, he told the men that God has plans for each of them and they need to be open to receive instruction and blessing and set aside the anger and hurt that was getting in the way. Then he did something kind of unusual. He invited my pastor and I to come up front with him, then he invited the men (some in their 30s and 40s) who hadn’t ever had a word of support or acceptance from their own fathers to view the three of us as stand-ins, and to approach and receive that word from us.

About 40 men came forward, some almost staggering, and divided into three lines. As each man facing me approached I wrapped my arms around his shoulders or pulled his head down towards mine and said, “I’m proud of you. You’re doing the right thing.” Some started to shake so hard that it was difficult to hold them up. Many wept openly. I got pretty misty myself. As we finished I went over to Earl and put my arm across his shoulders and addressed the group.

“I didn’t have a father like Earl’s father,” I said. “He had his outbursts and his moments, but I always knew he loved me and supported me and I know the sacrifices he made for me.” I added, “I’ve thought from time to time how our lives might have been different if Earl had had my father and I had had his as we grew up. Where would I be today, and where would Earl be, if that had been the case?”

I paused to let that settle a bit. It was dead quiet. “Where would we be today?”

My pastor spoke: “You’d both be right where you are now, doing what you’re doing.”

“Exactly,” I said, “because God the Father’s plan is greater than anything we, or you, might have missed or might have done. You have the same opportunity — and He’s proud of you.”

Learn the lessons

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by the Night Writer

On the heels of an article in the St. Paul paper this week about the surge in homeschooling in the U.S., I read an article today about a German family seeking political asylum in Tennessee so that they can homeschool their children.

MORRISTOWN, Tenn. — Homeschooling is so important to Uwe Romeike that the classically trained pianist sold his beloved grand pianos to pay for moving his wife and five children from Germany to the Smoky Mountain foothills of Tennessee.

Romeike, his wife, Hannelore, and their children live in a modest duplex about 40 miles northeast of Knoxville while they seek political asylum here. They say they were persecuted for their evangelical Christian beliefs and homeschooling their children in Germany, where state school attendance is compulsory.

When the Romeikes wouldn’t comply with repeated orders to send the children to school, police came to their home one October morning in 2006 and took the children, crying and upset, to school.

“We tried not to open the door, but they (police) kept ringing the doorbell for 15 or 20 minutes,” Romeike said. “They called us by phone and spoke on the answering machine and said they would knock open the door if we didn’t open it. So I opened it.”

The Romeike’s case may sound extreme, but the fact is Germany is adamantly anti-home education, as I’ve reported in this blog on a couple of occasions. The first time was in November of 2006 in a post entitled Ve haf vays…

Stones Cry Out excerpted a story last week about German police forcibly delivering home-schooled children to the local state schools.

A Nazi-era law requiring all children to attend public school, to avoid “the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions” that could be taught by parents at home, apparently is triggering a Nazi-like response from police.

The word comes from Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, or Network for Freedom in Education, which confirmed that children in a family in Bissingen, in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, have been forcibly hauled to a public school.

“On Friday 20 October 2006 at around 7:30 a.m. the children of a home educating family … were brought under duress to school by police,” the organization, which describes itself as politically and religiously neutral, confirmed.

A separate weblog in the United States noted the same tragedy.

Homeschoolblogger.com noted that the “three children were picked up by the police and escorted to school in Baden-Wurttemberg, with the ‘promise’ that it would happen again this week.”

The Network for Freedom in Education, through spokesman Joerg Grosseluemern, said the Remeike family has been “home educating their children since the start of the school year, something which is legal in practically the whole of the (European Union).”

It kind of makes you wonder about a government that’s afraid of what parents might teach their children…or that believes it is the rightful parent of the nation. Perhaps they’ve read their William Ross Wallace and know that “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world,” and they find that discomforting. I’m also amazed that this “Nazi-era” law is still on the books in Germany; it is all für der Kinder, no doubt.

This all reminds me of how the roots of the U.S. education system go deep into the Prussian model of the early 20th century (believe me, we got more than just “kindergarten” from this influence). I had started digging into this topic for a post a long time ago and got sidetracked; it might be time to resurrect this effort. For now, at least, we can appreciate that our money is the only thing the state forcibly takes from our homes and sends to public school.

Like the Pilgrims before them, the Romeikes came to America seeking religious freedom (not freedom from religion) and to live their lives free of government interference. Good thing for them they came to Tennessee, though, and not California where the education unions and courts march in goose-step together, as I wrote about here last March…

More compelling was one judge’s written opinion:

“California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. “Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws.”

Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.

The ruling sent shock waves throughout the estimated 166,000 home-educators in California as well as through the California legislature and even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said, “Every California child deserves a quality education, and parents should have the right to decide what’s best for their children. Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children’s education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts, and, if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights, then, as elected officials, we will.” Interestingly enough, Schwarzenegger’s signing of SB777 last year may be one of the things that have led many parents to abandon the public schools. Give the Governator credit though; he may not be great at logic but he definitely knows how to count votes and probably realizes that whatever other political beliefs a homeschooling family may have, telling them that they have no right to educate their own children trumps them all.

Personally, I’m not shocked. California has long been the most overtly hostile state toward home-educators (ironically it’s own school system struggles to place a certified teacher in every classroom, yet would seek to mandate it in every home-school). Similarly, Education Minnesota has no love lost for home-educators and my hunch is that they wouldn’t mind if their pet DFL pupils in the Minnesota legislature were to bring them a similar bill as if it were a bright, shiny apple.

Of course, it takes a real socialist mentality to proclaim that the State is the rightful owner of your children, as I’ve documented before regarding events in England and Germany. The Germans, in fact, are still embracing the 1937 law instituted by a certain mustachioed megalomaniac that mandates compulsory state school educations. Seventy years later they’re still enforcing it by forcibly taking kids from their homes to school in police cars or even removing children from their parents’ homes and hiding them in psychiatric hospitals for evaluation.

Maybe the Germans have this thing about control, but surely a liberal democracy and member of the European Union would have respect for things like rights and constitutions, right? After all, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union declares that “the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions”. Yet according to the entry in Wikipedia where I got that quote:

Homeschooling in Germany is illegal with rare exceptions. The requirement to attend school has been upheld, on challenge from parents, by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. Parents violating the law have most prominently included devout Christians who want to give their children a more Christian education than what is offered by the schools. Penalties against these parents have included fines (around €5,000), successful legal actions to take away the parents’ custody of their children, and jail time for the parents.[1]

In a landmark legal case commenced in 2003 at the European Court of Human Rights a homeschooling parent couple argued on behalf of their children that Germany’s compulsory school attendance endangered their children’s religious upbringing, promoted teaching inconsistent with their Christian faith — especially the German State’s mandates relating to sex education in the schools — and contravened the declaration in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union that “the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions”. In September 2006 the European Court of Human Rights upheld the German ban on homeschooling, stating “parents may not refuse …[compulsory schooling] on the basis of their convictions”, and adding that the right to education “calls for regulation by the State”. The European Court took the position that the plaintiffs were the children, not their parents, and declared “children are unable to foresee the consequences of their parents’ decision for home education because of their young age…. Schools represent society, and it is in the children’s interest to become part of that society. The parents’ right to educate does not go as far as to deprive their children of that experience.” The European Court endorsed a “carefully reasoned” decision of the German court concerning “the general interest of society to avoid the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions and the importance of integrating minorities into society.”

Good luck to the Romeikes. I know from first-hand experience that the U.S. immigration and asylum courts can be very difficult. My hope for the family, and for the U.S., is that we all will enjoy prolonged freedom. Freedom requires vigilance and conviction, even to the point of risking conviction, and I hope the examples of Germany and — closer to home — California, are educational.

Update:

The real issue here isn’t what the parents believe, it is whether they or the State have the right and the responsibility to determine the best education for their children. This is fundamental, whether the State is totalitarian, benevolent or a right-wing theocracy. How would people react if their children were required by law to go to the latter? Will some parents fail spectacularly at this? Of course. And so do many schools. Yet the principles of liberty and freedom must be vigorously and vigilantly defended at every point, especially within the family.

We are better served by honoring and defending the rights of the individual than we are promoting the authority of the State. I learned that in school, once, a long time ago.

I’m it! I’m it!!!

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by the Tiger Lilly

This is in lieu of Anorex[st]ics Inaneymous, which will be posted later.

I was tagged by the controller of Through The Illusion: the awesomely awesome of awesomeness Hayden Tompkins with the 7 Things meme. I will be tweaking this to make it, ‘7 Things That May Or May Not Be True About Me’ to throw all you stalkers and enemies off. Obviously, you are still sworn to secrecy. That being said, I will continue with the aforementioned meme.

1. If I find that someone has given away any of the secrets I will divulge here in complete confidentiality, I will make it my personal job to hunt you down and unleash my tamed (I guess you could call them cowed) ninja cows upon you. Then I will also have to hunt down the poor fool that you told the secrets to, and erase their memories, or something drastic like that.
Just kidding! (or am I?!?!?!?! Muahahahahahahahahaaaaa!!!!! *Ahem*)

2. I have had my appendix removed. I’ve found that that operation needs to be done to a few books, as well (especially the ones that have Appendix A, Appendix B, etc etc).

3. I took the crazy test, and the results came out as, ‘You are Paranoid Crazy!’ But you never would have guessed that.

4. I plan on traveling a lot when I get older. At some point, I’m going to save a lot of money, pack a few things, get into my car, and just drive with no particular destination in mind.

5. I have written a novel, and am working on the sequel.

6. Because I’m feeling an excess of rebellity and a superfluity of naughtiness, I’m only going to tag one person.

7. I tag: Sly the Family Rat. She has just told me she will post later this week.

Okay, there you go. Now you can decide if all was a lie, none was a lie, or if I put down a mixture of both. I hope this drives at least some of you insane (although, for some of you, it’s less than a drive and more of a short putt).

Ciao for now!

The Emperor’s Groove

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It struck me the other day that the modern Disney classic The Emperor’s New Groove, is a stunning forecast of the Obama administration, even though it was released at the dawning of the previous administration in 2000.

Now, I don’t blog about politics too much because there are so many better bloggers out there with more fire and deeper insights than I, plus my own belief is that there’s really not a nickel’s worth of difference between the two major parties’ ruling credo of “just win, baby.” I am a big movie fan, however, and some of the recent political headlines started dovetailing with the great songs and dialog in the movie. Were the Disney studios eerily prescient in their allegorical (not Al-Gore-ical) forecast of an Obama administration, or did I simply spend too many hours in a car this weekend with too little to occupy my mind? You be the judge.

Submitted for your consideration, the following excerpts with President Obama as Emperor Kuzco, Senator Judd Greg as Pacha, Rahm Emanuel as Kronk and a host of “characters” that Obama has thrown under the bus represented by the emporer’s ex-advisor, Yzma.

Kuzco’s theme song: This was sung by the great Tom Jones, but the cartoon vocalist with his red-blond afro and over-the-top enthusiasm sounds a lot like Chris Matthews to me. Consider these lyrics (think “Big O” instead of “Kuzco”):

He was born and raised to rule
No one has ever been this cool
In a thousand years of aristocracy
An enigma and a mystery
In Meso American History
The quintessence of perfection that is he

He’s the sovereign lord of the nation
He’s the hippest dude in creation
He’s a hep cat in the emperor’s new clothes
Years of such selective breeding
Generations have been leading
To this miracle of life that we all know

What’s his name?
Kuzco, Kuzco, Kuzco…

He’s the sovereign lord of the nation
He’s the hippest cat in creation
He’s the alpha, the omega, a to z
And this perfect world will spin
Around his every little whim
‘Cause this perfect world begins and ends with him

What’s his name?
Kuzco, Kuzco, Kuzco…

Weird, huh? Well how about these lines of dialog (real names inserted for cartoon characters):

Pacha/Judd Gregg: Uh-oh.
Kuzco/Obama: Don’t tell me. We’re about to go over a huge waterfall.
Pacha/Gregg: Yep.
Kuzco/Obama: Sharp rocks at the bottom?
Pacha/Gregg: Most likely.
Kuzco/Obama: Bring it on.

[after the stock market’s fallen into the alligator pit]
Kuzco/Obama: Why do we even have that lever?

Kuzco/Obama: Oh, and by the way, you’re fired.
Yzma/Rick Wagoner: Fired? W-W-What do you mean, “fired”?
[Kuzco/Obama snaps his finger and a servant comes in and writes down Wagoner’s “pink slip”]
Kuzco/Obama: Um, how else can I say it? “You’re being let go.” “Your department’s being downsized.” “You’re part of an outplacement.” “We’re going in a different direction.” “We’re not picking up your option.” Take your pick. I got more.

Kronk/Rahm Emanuel: Hey, it doesn’t always have to be about you. This poor little guy’s had it rough. Seems a talking llama/talk show host gave him a hard time the other day.

Kuzco/Obama voiceover: This is Carville, the emperor’s advisor. Living proof that dinosaurs once roamed the Earth.

[Kuzko/Obama collides with an old man/Jim Cramer while dancing]
Kuzco/Obama: D’oh! You threw off my groove!
Palace Guard/Media: I’m sorry, but you’ve thrown off the Emperor’s groove.
[the old man/Cramer is thrown out of the palace window]
Old Man/Cramer: Sooooorry!

Kuzco/Obama: When will you learn that all my ideas are good ones?
Pacha/Gregg: Well, that’s funny. Because I thought that you going into the jungle by yourself, being chased by jaguars, lying to me to take you back to the palace were all really bad ideas.
Kuzco/Obama: Oh, yeah. Anything sounds bad when you say it with that attitude.

Pacha/Gregg: Why did I risk my life for a selfish brat like you? I was always taught that there was some good in everyone, but, oh, you proved me wrong.
Kuzco/Obama: Oh, boo-hoo. Now I feel really bad. Bad Obama.

Yzma/Rev. Wright: Why, I practically raised him.
Kronk/Emanuel: Yeah, you’d think he would’ve turned out better.
Yzma/Rev. Wright: Yeah, go figure.

I don’t know about you, but right now I’m scrutinizing Monsters vs. Aliens for predictions of the next election.

Deep theological question…

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by the Night Writer

Road-tripped with the Reverend Mother and Tiger Lilly this weekend, and among the tunes on the car stereo was Marc Cohn’s “Silver Thunderbird”:

Don’t gimme no Buick
Son you must take my word
If there’s a God in heaven
He’s got a Silver Thunderbird
You can keep your Eldorados
And the foreign car’s absurd
Me I wanna go down
In a Silver Thunderbird

Which raises the question, “If God drives a silver Thunderbird, what does the Devil drive?”

I said, “Pinto.”

Tiger Lilly: “A Prius.”

Enter your suggestions in the comment section.

(Actually, I’ve always heard that God had a Chrysler, because the Bible says He drove Adam from the garden in his Fury.).