A beautiful movie

Just wanted to pass along a recommendation for the movie, Children of Heaven. Created by Iranian filmmakers and set in an Iranian city, the film shows the life of a family that is as dependent on one another as it is joyous. It shows the hardship and blessedness of poverty. It's bright colors against gray and brown backgrounds, and its sound, which was done almost completely without music, are as much a part of the art as the story itself.

Seeing kids so full of love for one another as the siblings in this film, changes my expectation for what is possible for the relationships between my own children. As soon as they are able to read subtitles, I will show them the movie, too.

Dancing in the Minefields

Few songs address the beauty and difficulty of love within marriage. I burned a CD of about 10 of these songs for my girl last Valentine's Day. This song, by my longtime hero Andrew Peterson, wasn't out when I burned the CD, but it would have made the cut. If you're married, wait to watch it with your girl or guy. Enjoy.

more on fire boats

I have more to say about fire boats.

Fire boats were used by the US coast guard to put out the flaming oil rig in the gulf of Mexico at the end of April. Fire boats were our collective response to our collective problem, which in this case was oil dependency. Of course the fire boats did not stop the oil leaking or even hope to cure us of oil dependency. They just responded to the emergency.

I've been thinking since I wrote my rant last night that our political debates center around such fire boats. Democrats advocate fire boats, and that the government should provide them, with an underlying tone that they will solve our true problems. I'm talking here about welfare, unemployment insurance, VA hospitals, after-school programs, controlling guns. The sense from the democratic party is that by responding with fire boats, our problems will go away. But without the underlying causes of poverty, joblessness, war, poor education and violence lessened, the interventions advocated for by democrats spray problems while the gushing oil exacerbates underneath.

Republicans rightly understand that the democrats' fire boats are incapable of solving our problems. But often I find that the policies the Republicans advocate worsen the fires, instead of push against their causes. Pushing most often in the direction of leaving the needy to fend for themselves, corporate interests, attacking our enemies, tax cuts for the very rich, and access to semi-automatic weapons, the Republicans often widen the gaping, gushing holes.

What's on my mind

I'm done. I give up on the status quo. Western society as it is known is a lost cause; a failed experiment; a flop.

Look at us. We are more emotionally and physically unhealthy than anyone has ever been. Depression, diabetes, PTSD, asthma, suicide, obesity, autism, alcoholism. These are not flukes. They are the results of lifestyles we as a society lead. Some of these issues (like autism, diabetes and depression) are hard to connect with specific causes, but I can't think about them without thinking that generations now of sedentary, fast food, unnatural light, 69 degrees, rat-race lifestyles is messing with the way our bodies are composed.

But we can't stop. We are on an unstopping roller-coaster ride that we didn't choose to get on, and can't get off. Do you see those fire boats in the picture? The fire boats are part of the roller coaster. To every problem we create, we throw solutions. We spill oil because we use so much, but no one is really gonna stop using so much. All we'll do is spray the results with water. Another example: our carbon emissions from plane trips is ruining the atmosphere, but we wont really stop flying. We will hope for another fire boat when catastrophe comes. We will hang on for the ride.

I want off. I will question as many decisions as are in my power to question. I will question work, spending, consumption of food, clothing, waste, travel, war, the use of money, food, care for creation, where I shop and eat out, entertainment, the origin of every item that enters my home. I will monitor as best I can my time, my spending, my patterns of life, my consumption of art. I will not buy any gadget that is the latest thing, and laugh at the notion that it could have made me happy. I will read the Psalms every day. When something breaks, I will do without it for awhile, and enjoy having life a little simpler. I will not work on the Sabbath. I will not be too busy to help someone in need along my way.

I am not trying to be holier than you. I am trying with all my might to resist the schemes of the evil one; to throw off all that hinders and run with perseverance the race marked out for us; to test everything and hold on to the good.

Funny and True

Happy Independence Day

This song puts our holiday into proper perspective, I think. You can hear other great songs from Ben Shive's website. Just scroll over the music player. His only album, The Ill-Tempered Klavier, is one of my favorites.

4TH OF JULY
Words and Music by Ben Shive

The first star of the evening
Was singing in the sky
High above our blanket in the park

And by the twilight’s gleaming
On the 4th day of July
The city band played on into the dark

And then a canon blast
A golden flame unfolding
Exploded in a momentary bloom

The pedals fell and scattered
Like ashes on the ocean
As another volley burst into the blue

But the first star of the evening never moved

We stood in silence
The young ones and the old
As the bright procession passed us by

A generation dying
Another being born
A long crescendo played out in the sky

Yeah

This nation, indivisible
Will perish from the Earth
As surely as the leaves must change and fall

And the band will end the anthem
To dust she will return
So the sun must set on all things, great and small

But the first star of the evening
Will outlive them all