I recall a discussion I had with some friends years ago about how we thought we should offer a guest something to eat or drink when they walked into our home. Being young and just getting our feet under us, most of us didn’t have much. I remember someone saying something about cinnamon toast. People laughed, but I loved that, because I like cinnamon toast and would gladly eat it at someone’s house. No one has ever offered it, though. Maybe it seems too ordinary.

A persistent little ping on my spirit leads me to write this entry. I’ve got nothing. I’m pretty empty just now as I’ve been insisting to the Lord daily, but the ping is like a knock on the door that is hard to ignore. That same ping led me to write my first musical. I’ll tell you about it sometime. Anyway, I feel a bit like someone who has very little to offer, but is offering it anyway. I’m sitting here with a cold cup of coffee. Lucky you. Yet I think just now that’s what the Lord is asking of all of us. What does each of us have to offer? Let whatever it is that you can offer be your cinnamon toast. Let it be your cold cup of coffee. Do that, because we have a year coming up that will be one for the record books if I don’t miss my guess.

Smoke from the new year’s starter pistol is still drifting upward and already we’ve seen so much that it makes our heads spin. I started listing it all, but it just got depressing, so I deleted it. Were it that simple. Let me just say this. Despite the natural phenomena, newsworthy trouble and personal struggle; despite the news we believe and the news that we shake our heads at, despite everything, we need to address all of it not with more sound, but with silence. Our own. By ourselves. In our own little corner in our own little chair.

What we need just now even more than news or pictures or podcasts or blogs is a time of quiet. Just quiet. And that’s all I really want to say today. We’re all witnessing a mess and it’s going to get messier. But if you read a Bible, you know how to get through this stuff.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27) That’s it. Find time every day – even if it’s just ten minutes – and be still. Turn off every noise. And think about how good God is. How powerful and loving. How merciful. And listen. You might feel a ping or maybe something will come to you that God is gracious enough to put in your thoughts. Maybe, just maybe, that’s what He’s been waiting for all along.

And when you get up from your chair, offer someone your version of cinnamon toast.

If you had told me even a year ago I would be writing about Kanye West – and favorably – I would’ve suggested you might ask your doctor about an antipsychotic medication. Yet here we are.

This man who was first exposed to pornography at the age of five, who married a beautiful woman whose first claim to fame was a viral sex tape, who interrupted the VMAs to grab Taylor Swift’s award and claim it should go to Beyoncé (I believe Ms. Swift wrote Bad Blood sometime after that.), the rapper/singer whose preferred lyrics were less than noble – this man – is holding worship services that attract thousands – hundreds of thousands and no doubt more, thanks to the internet – who hear the gospel from . . . this man. Waaat?!

To add to God’s sense of humor while we learn our lessons, just as I started writing about this, my computer crashed. I don’t know if that’s the correct term. One day it was working and the next day it wasn’t. I took it to a big box techie place, they diagnosed a motherboard problem, and strongly suggested I buy a new computer. I went home to ponder the situation (i.e. wish things were different and talk it over with my husband).

You see, at the moment the computer decided life was no longer worth living, I was tearing up the bathroom linoleum. That was prompted by an appointment I’d made to

have the living room floor refinished (nearly 30 years of 4 kids and 2 dogs running, playing, and jumping – or, as some would describe it: life, lead to less than stellar floors). Actually, they were pretty awful, especially the one spot that got the most traffic and dog drool. So one project which led to another project blossomed – like a prickly thistle you step on barefoot – into an unwanted third project; a project that lasted nearly a month, I kid you not.

Oh, it didn’t stop there. Once we’d moved the furniture out of the living room, and, believe me, two bookcases complete with books is no small task; after numerous trips to the big box techie store, then phone convos and 2 follow-up trips to an independent computer guy; after installing vinyl flooring (it took an entire week – don’t ask); and, finally, admiring the finished floors, I came to one conclusion. The walls looked dingy.

This brings me back to Kanye West. He and I are worlds apart, but now we are brother and sister in Christ. I am inspired with how he has hit the ground running! He actually puts me to shame, and it hit home hard when I lost use of the computer I should be writing on every day. Computer problems are, for me, like spending a pitch-black night alone in a cemetery is for others. And God slammed me to the wall when I didn’t have the opportunity to do what I should have been doing all along. Is any of this familiar to you?

And I suppose Kanye is discovering, as Christians the world over daily find, that who we thought we were isn’t nearly who we really are. And God, in his kindness, peels back the layers bit by bit. We need a sanding machine here and there and, yes, it can be painful. And we’re delighted to find how wonderfully He is making us over. Until we look a little closer. One project is done only to find how dreadful we are in another area; a part of us that looked perfectly fine before.

I hopefully predict more folks will realize that being washed in the blood of Jesus is more purifying than anything they’ve ever dreamed of. And many of these people will have histories and names few have contemplated would wear the name Christian; but everybody needs Jesus.

I wish Kanye and all new Christians everywhere the best. Read your Bible, pray, go to church. These three things are the Christian healthy food/workout routine with a proven track record. And when someone who you never dreamed would come to Jesus makes a 180, forget and forgive the junk that is being sanded down. Even be a little sympathetic. After all, your walls look like they need a little attention.

Samuel Longhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain, wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Hukleberry Finn, and The Prince and The Pauper, among other works. He also is attributed to have used the phrase, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics“. He wasn’t the first to say it, though. That credit, as far as I can tell, goes to a man by the name of Leonard H. Courtney who used it in an article he wrote in 1895.

First, statistics. Let’s be honest: There are math people and there are people for whom math brings on a type of catatonic state. I don’t know about you, but I have no affection for statistics. When I took graduate statistics, I broke out in a sweat just doing the homework. I missed an A by 1 point, and, no, the professor didn’t see any reason to change my grade despite my hard work. Because – statistics. He did not grade on a curve and his life was black and white. He wasn’t like the ones alluded to in the above quote. He didn’t dilly dally with numbers. But plenty of people do. Let’s walk down that inviting path for a minute.

A study cited by reporter Wesley Lowery in a 2016 Washington Post article is an example of how statistics can be used to lie – Wesley, not the study. His writing is guilty of flaws that misled readers. “Lowery wrote that ‘black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers’.” He neglected to include the part of the study that notes “Police are 42% less likely to use lethal force when arresting blacks than when when arresting whites, and 59% less likely to use lethal force when arresting blacks for serious violent crimes than when arresting whites for the same crimes.”¹

Or take, for instance the passionate concern about the environment to the degree California now restricts the use of plastic straws, and San Francisco bans them outright.²  With the disgust of our country voiced from both within and without, I’m thinking we produce A LOT of pollution. Until you understand that as far as ocean pollution is concerned, China produces 8.8 million metric tons. So I’m looking . . . 3.2? Nope. 1.8? Nope. 1? Nope. Keep going to the bottom of the list. There it is! The USA is guilty of 0.3. “Tell me again how America is guilty of destroying the environment.”³ Those who use partial statistics are guilty of more than pollution.

Speaking of which, there are all sorts of ways to deceive. Yes, we are now at the part of the quote dealing with lies. Why, there are some organizaitons that belie the truth by just using a nice-sounding name. “Liddle Kidz Foundation Global uses the power of touch to reach the world’s most vulnerable children with experiences of appropriate nurturing touch that they often lack.”4 Isn’t that nice? Except when you realize that they welcome volunteers from a wide net of sources and look at pictures on their material that don’t appear reassuring at all. Congressman Schiff might know something about it since, though it claims an address in Vancouver, its 818 area code number is in his California jurisdiction. Someone should ask him when he’s done giving what is now being called a “dramatized version” of a phone call before the House Intelligence Committee.

Gossip, i.e. second-hand (at best) information about which we have no first-hand knowledge might be considered lying, but it’s tempting, isn’t it? Some people are starting to call it whistle-blowing now, but that’s a disservice to real whistle blowers with real alarms to sound, not those who simply don’t like someone or his politics. I’ll let you travel that path without me for now.

Teaching is a noble undertaking, but when it’s misused to lead students down a path littered with innuendo, it’s nobility takes a wrong turn, a turn that distorts the truth. Stanford University put out an excellent article: “In seeking to understand the current history wars, we might go so far as to say that they have become politics by other means.  American history has been afflicted by presentism, examining our past with 21^st century sensibilities and standards.” “We live in a time when we seem to engage in every possible approach to history except to learn from it.  We seek to erase it, cover it over, topple it down, rewrite it, apologize for it, skip it—but not to put it out there to learn from it.” 5 

We’re wading, dear readers, into a dark slough of untruth, the depth of which is bound to drown us. We are, admittedly, living in a time where it’s difficult to discern what’s true and what isn’t. But it is our responsibility to try. And when someone lies once, then again and again and shows no signs of stopping, we need to do the stopping. We need to stop listening to the lies. Who’s guilty? The one who speaks a lie? The one who writes a lie? The one who pays for a lie? Or the one who believes a lie? This is your mother speaking: Stop being lazy and research a thing or two from a source other than your favorite.

While I detest profanity, I am a lover of the truth; and there are actions and words that are – truthfully – damned. When we continue to align ourselves with someone who believes not in the rule of law or justice, but that revenge is a right and says whatever it takes to topple their perceived enemy, truth be damned, we’re treading on dangerous ground. 

Sources: 1 justfactsdaily.com /new-york-times-spreads-falsehood-that-motivated-murders-of-police/; 2 Eater.com Whitney Filloon@whitneyfilloon  Sep 21, 2018; 3 Wall Street Journal and @conservativefun; 4 Whitewatertruth.com, February 19, 2018 by Sandy Whitewater, investigative journalist; 5 Hoover Institution Journal, hoover.org. How Not To Teach American History by David Davenport, Gordon Lloyd. Tue, 9/17/19. Davenport is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Lloyd is a senior fellow at the Ashbrook Center and Dockson Professor Emeritus at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.; Images: Unsplash.com, -mark-solarski-0R1ci4Rb9jU-; -andrew-neel-a_K7R1kugUE-; -jorgen-hendriksen-uCPQi2dxKAQ-

On Memorial Day, we often think of black and white pictures of faces from times we’ve only read about. We might consider a newspaper article or item on the nightly news about a soldier who died, though we can’t recall where or when in the next minute. Some citizens have a personal connection to a father or mother, grandfather, uncle or great someone or other whose medal is in someone’s attic.

If we’re conscious enough of the day and our city is, too, we might go to a parade. If we try even harder, we go to a cemetery and listen to a speech, prayer, and song.

The United States Military of today is second to none. They are highly trained professionals. It is more stringent now than in years past. They are the one percent: citizens who choose to defend the country they love, pass the required tests to get in, and demonstrate the resolve, determination, strength, and grit to complete and pass a brutal training process. A surprising number do not make it. Yes, they are the one percent, but their families are ordinary people with an added layer to the usual worries of life.

If you have someone near and dear in the military, Memorial Day goes a little deeper. It is personal. It is close.

At the beginning of your soldier’s training, you belong to groups who help each other through. You learn of plans accomplished or delayed. Someone got their college degree and decided to enlist. Someone has dreamed of this since he was 5. Someone enlisted and told her family afterward, leaving them to adjust quickly and ignore the gut punch. You see question after question about this new life. What does this phrase mean? When does this phase happen? Eyes glaze over from the number of acronyms until you start using them, yourself, as a convenient sort of shorthand. You read many requests asking for prayer for their trainee to pass yet another test. To recover from an injury or sickness. To survive heartbreak. To endure missing important family events: funerals, weddings, graduations, births. To keep going when they’d rather quit. You see many photos of handsome and pretty soldiers and compliment the ones who posted them. You smile at family pictures and can almost hear the exclamations of greeting and laughter and catching up. You cheer every success and graduation.

As time passes,you admire crafts made by hands of someone who is urging their soldier home stitch by stitch, project by project. Maybe you let someone know love is sent their way when they are lonely or worried. You commend every promotion. You read questions about locations of military bases. What are they like? How dangerous is it? You are privy to close calls and near misses. You hear about news of deployment and visceral sickness and worry so heavy it makes it hard to do ordinary things that need doing. Pride and fear become inextricably linked, and heaven is inundated with desperate prayers from all corners of the country at all hours.

And often on those support pages you see the picture of someone’s son or daughter or husband or wife and read that they were killed yesterday. They were killed in a live fire training exercise. They were killed in a roll-over tactical vehicle accident. They were killed in Afghanistan or Iraq or someplace whose name we know, with a few facts we can repeat, but not much else. You recognize a name. A face. And there it is.

Because Memorial Day is so much more than a parade or speech or photo. It is a person you knew. A person whose mother you talked with and whose visits home you celebrated. This soldier is a member of those admired by good people, but personally known by few. And this soldier deserves not just a minute on a day of remembering. He or she merits some time of reflection on his life and dreams, quirky sense of humor, tender letters home, anxious waiting, and desire to do a good thing. This soldier deserves a country’s honor.

Images: Unsplash; National Infantry Museum

When you look at your newborn, tiny and soft, with eyes that hold the trust of the ages and hair as soft as down, you wonder how, in an instant, you can protect this little one. You are a mother. Somewhere your subconscious tells you that new title is yours for life. You cannot get enough of soaking in the sight of the little one in your arms.

And through those first weeks at the smallest sound you go over to where your baby is sleeping to check and make sure all is well. And all the years afterward you continue to “just check” and watch that little one grow and become a mixture of what you hope and what you don’t understand. Your child asks you to look. “Look and see what I can do!” Other times they hope you won’t see what they’ve done. And on through the years, the invisible, inescapable pull set in mothers everywhere by the Creator, Himself, is a contrast of welcome and unwelcome.

This Mother’s Day I think of my own mom and I remember . . .

Our dog was giving birth to a litter of puppies in the corner of our dirt floor garage. I was elementary school-aged. My mom had called a friend so she could bring her kids over and we could all watch the miracle of birth together. We huddled together by the garage door and watched Specky during her most personal moments as she ate the membrane and licked each newborn. I was embarrassed while Mom was enthralled, but we watched because she wanted me to learn.

As I drove home through the dark streets, I could see my house lit up and a shadow in the window watching for me. I’d been out with some high school friends drinking pop and talking and laughing. It was nearly midnight. In her mind I’d been kidnapped and was struggling to escape. In my mind whatever it was I faced from imagined kidnappers held nothing to what I faced from my mother.

I carried out a few suitcases and whatever other few things I had to bring, and stashed them all in a friend’s car. I was leaving for college during a time when my residence had one phone that hung on a hallway wall. There were no emails nor texts, and long distance costs were by the call and by the minute. Kids who went to college didn’t have much contact with their parents other than letters and holidays. As we pulled away, I could see my mom in the rearview mirror. She stood in the driveway and watched us until we were out of sight.

I was in my 30’s fulfilling some duty at the front of the church, probably leading worship or some other such role. My mom had, herself, spent her life doing the same thing, though her fingers always made the piano keys sing more sweetly than mine ever did. What can I say? She had a great touch. There was mom sitting in the pew listening and watching with a slight smile. It’s possible she was thinking what could have been done to make the song sound better. It’s probable she would have been right.

When I was in my 40’s, I look up as I inserted the key into the car, and there she was at the window watching to make sure I’d made it safely from her house to my car. Granted, by now her house was in a part of town that, while not riddled with crime, held the potential for occasional trouble. I don’t know how she planned to fight off my attackers.

We’d gotten a pretty good wallop of snow, wet and heavy and high; the kind that lands folks in the hospital with a heart attack. I was feeling my 50 some years as I shoveled the layers to get to the pavement, and as I trudged, out of breath, back to the house to return the shovel to its usual place, I caught a glimpse of my mom. She’d been standing at the window watching me. Still.