Let the Mocking Begin -- The Lions are Hungry

Well, that was pretty anticlimactic. I didn't expect anything, of course. Even so, can I admit, I still felt a bit disappointed. But the only thing that happened on May 21 was a volcano erupting in Iceland.

This is the largest eruption in Grímsvötn in 100 years. (They probably don't have records going further back.) It is bigger than that other volcano eruption last year that shut down air flight in Europe for so long. Iceland has shut down air flight at the moment.

So one big spit in your eye from Mother Earth is all we got on "Judgment Day". That is something, anyway.

Think if the largest eruption in 100 years had happened on Tonga early on in the expectations yesterday, around 6:00 PM their time. That would have shaken some people up for sure, until nothing much happened anywhere else.

Here we are on the twenty-second, safe and secure. The bars are or have had their "End-of-the-World" Parties and the churches are having their sermons on false prophets. Family Radio is still on the air. Some people are pitying "those people" and some are making fun of them. For the world at large this makes for great sport.

Howard Camping may have missed the mark -- again, but you have to give him credit for one of the most successful marketing campaigns in history. In all my years I often heard advertisers claim, "The product everyone is talking about."  This is the first time I have really heard everyone talking about it. Everywhere I was this week, everyone I saw, this subject came up. I heard jokes in passing on the street, mentions at work, statuses on Facebook, tweets on Twitter and monologues on TV. There were articles in each newspaper we subscribe to, on the front page no less. It came up both in a poem and in discussion at my Poetry Group meeting on Thursday and again in discussion after the Open Mic at Borders on Friday. It was the postings of many Blogs. I went to the hardware store to buy some dirt yesterday and everyone in the store, customers and clerks, were making comments about the day and what was predicted.

Now by the time I was in the hardware store we knew it wasn't happening. 6:30 PM of the 21 May had already come and gone in much of the world. It was already Sunday, May 22 in Australia and Japan; all of Asia I suppose. I had coincidentally set out to buy my dirt just as it struck 6:30 PM in Jerusalem. When the Temple Mount did not split apart I figure we could definitely relax.

There is much speculation this morning about what Mr. Camping will do now. He is 89 years old, time is running out for him to recalculate and come up with something new. I think Mr. Camping was sincere about his vision, that he truly believed in it. If he comes up with a new date, then I probably won't feel that way anymore. When he wrote and predicted that September in 1994 would see Judgement Day he wrote a book called 1994?. (Boy that makes for awkward punctuation.) There was a question mark and within he mentioned 2011 might actually be a possibility if it wasn't 1994. He gave himself an out.

He left himself no out this time it would seem. He guaranteed it. He said it would absolutely happen. It didn't. End of story with no possible twist to another announcement left, right? 

I can think of one. 

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Jonah 4:1-2 (KJV)

 Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? Jonah 4:10-11 (KJV)

Why in the world would I think these couple quotes from Jonah could be used by Camping as an out? You remember Jonah? He was that prophet whom God told to go one way and instead he ran the other, got on a ship and tried to get away from it all. You know, the guy who ended up in the belly of a great fish that everybody keeps mistakenly calling a whale. There is a lot we can say about the plight of Jonah and Christianity, Jesus and salvation, but Jonah doesn't have anything to do with Judgment Day, the end of the world or Harold Camping, does he?

Well, it could have if we think about Jonah's situation. Why did he run away from what God asked him to do? For that matter, just what did God ask him to do anyway?

God asked Jonah to go to this terrible city called Nineveh, a place so full of sin that God planned to destroy it. He told Jonah to warn those people if they didn't straighten up and fly right they would be toast,  and Jonah didn't want to do that. Why?

Because Jonah had a bad attitude to begin with. He hated those Ninevehian, uh—Ninevehites...uh, those people of Nineveh. He didn't want them saved, he wanted them flattened, but he feared they just might repent and God wouldn't smite them, which is exactly what happened. This made Jonah really sore at God. Jonah tells exactly what his feeling were. "And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil."

Harold Camping actually used this story of Jonah recently in explaining his coming Day of Judgment. He used it as urging everyone to repent, but also to show how God was patient and sometimes spared people and places because of his compassion for the few who were not sinners. You can find several such examples in the Old Testament.

It would be quite possible to put forth that God was ready to pronounce judgment upon the world, but out of his desire that no one be lost postponed the date. The reason would be there are some who God knows will come to Salvation yet and so a new Judgment Day must occur. 

As a Christian, who believes a real Second Coming of Christ must eventually come on a day and hour no man knows, I am not effected much by what Mr. Camping does or doesn't do. I do take what he did seriously, though, as causing great harm.

It certainly harmed many folk who choose to put their faith in Mr. Camping. Some of these will suffer as a result of this fiasco. But so will we Christians who argued against his interpretations all along. The world isn't going to be overly discriminating between some of what we believe and what they have been hearing preached for many moons in the media leading up to May 21. No, the mocking began in earnest last week and it will continue for a while, and in the future anyone proposing Judgment Day is at hand will be quickly compared to Mr. Camping's crusade.

Christians are fair game these day, as the Bible told us we would be. We have plenty of those out there quite willing to feed us to the lions, if not in actuality, at least figuratively. 

Jesus left us in the dark as to exactly when he would return or when Judgement Day would be. However, he and other prophets left us with a number of signs that will point more and more to that time as we approach it. As a younger man I used to be mystified reading the prophecies, the events that would begin to happen, and yet the Bible said men still wouldn't turn to God or believe this was from Him. I wondered how knowing such happenings before they happened anyone could deny they were from God. But it recent years I have heard many discussions that would put in place excuses to not believe God had a hand in such things, for instance "Global Warming". 

This May 21 will make it more difficult to get anyone to seriously consider such prophecies if we begin to recognize a quicker pace in the signs of the times. People will simply compare any such warnings as akin to Camping's folly.

Remember as well, December 2012 lies ahead. Expect more media coverage of this other prediction of the end of the world. Even though this one has nothing to do with Christianity, it will certainly bring forth much rehashing of the May 21, 2011, failure to launch and all Christian belief will be held up to ridicule as well.

As for me, I trust in the Lord. This is not a prediction of the end of the world, but a prediction of labor pains growing closer together. I would keep awake and keep my eyes on this September and the state of Israel. Yes, indeed, I would.

Is It 1,000 or is It Not?

This is a follow-up to what I posted yesterday.

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 2 Peter 3:8 (KJV)

And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. Revelation 20:1-3 (KJV)

As perhaps many of you are aware, or have seen many of the placards and billboards, this year has been proclaimed the last.  According to Howard Camping Judgment Day will occur on May 21, 2011, a date that has all ready begun somewhere in the South Pacific this very day. In fact, as I begin to write this, it is 12:45 AM, Saturday, May 21 appropriately enough in the Christmas Islands. Thus, if Camping is correct, in less than 12 hours the great earthquake will begin.

I do not believe any such thing will happen, but many do. Camping has said if you dispute him, you must do it from Scripture. There is not enough space here to take on that challenge  and I am not such an expert on the Bible to feel equipped to do so. However, there is a statement he has made that popped out at me as making no sense.

In his explanation of the timeline, he has said there is no 1,000-year millennium as traditional Christian prophesy often teaches. It is stated in Revelation that Satan is seized after Armageddon and bound for a 1,000 years after which he is let loose a little bit. He contends the 1,000 is not physical time, but is symbolic. In his scenario, Satan was bound at the time of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. Satan was thus chained up for 1,955 years, until 1988 and then released. In 1988 upon release, Satan then took over all the churches in the world and so everyone who is truly saved should get out of the churches.

He has also stated that during this 1,955 years that Satan was bound, he was still able to roam about seeing whom he could devour like a roaring and sowing "tares" in the churches. I do not quite understand how he could be bound while also roaming free. Perhaps somewhere Mr. Camping explained that.

Note that I said Mr. Camping. I have seen and heard him called in the news media a Preacher or Minister. He is not a minister. He is a civil engineer, turned founder of a Christian radio network called Family Radio. Up until 1988 he was a member in good standing in a Reformed Christian Church, but never more than an Elder. I would call him a Bible scholar.

As long as we are correcting the media, many have gotten great glee in reporting Mr. Camping called for Judgment Day in 1994 and it didn't happen, so he wrote another book. This is technically true, but the original book was 1994?, with a question mark, and he did say in it there was a possibility that 2011 might be the actual year if 1994 wasn't. He has not left himself any wiggle room this time. He has unequivocally and absolutely guaranteed May 21, 2011 is it.

Anyway, back to my problem with 1,000.

Mr. Camping has explained the Devil being bound at the Resurrection for 1,955 year as the fulfillment of the 1,000 year bondage spoke of in Revelation. So how does he explain adding 955 more years on?

He references the passages quoted at the beginning of this post. With 2 Peter 3, He interprets "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" as simply symbolic.

 Explaining that numbers are used both figuratively and symbolically in Scripture, he goes on to note we must determine how a number is used, a fact I have no argument with. It is his view that Peter as well as John in Revelation are using it symbolically here. It is his opinion that Peter did not mean a day was literally a thousand years or vice-versa to God, but simply meant "a long period of time". This is also how he viewed the 1,000 years mentioned in Revelation.

This is possible, and certainly in the case of Peter could be exactly right. Peter was calming people impatience about Christ not yet having returned. He began this way: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

Obviously he is telling the believers that what seems a long time to them is nothing to God. I don't see that as the case in Revelation. I feel where it says a 1,000 years there it means a 1,000 years.

Even so, Mr. Campings stretching 1,000 years to 1,955 for the convenience of his timeline is...well...it is a stretch. (I'm not even going to get into his placement of this event where he did.)

A problem with his argument is he is fine with using the 1,000 equals a day concerning other events, for instance, the 7,000 years between when the Great Flood came and this coming Saturday. Here he uses such things as the seven days of Creation, Daniel's Week and the seven days between when God told Noah to get in the Ark and when the rain began as indicating there would be 1,000 years from then to Judgment Day.

In these situations as described by Mr. Camping I don't think you can have it both ways.

There is an irony that Mr. Camping should rely so heavily on Second Peter. In that Book, Peter spends much time warning against false prophets and those who interpret Scripture to their own devices.

A second thing I would like to touch upon is knowing or not knowing the date of the Second Coming. Mr. Camping is emphatic that true saved Christians will know the date and the hour. One reference he uses to support this is from 1 Thessalonians 5:1-10:

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.

But I see this differently than he. If a thief is going to come to rob your house, you will not know the day or time. However, if there have been a number of burglaries in your neighborhood, then there are signs that such a criminal attempt could be imminent. You would then take protective measures and you would be sober and aware, so when such a crook came you were not caught by total surprise and are ready. 

The people who feel safe, who get drunk or go to sleep without care are those who do not believe Christ will come again or dismiss the signs around them. They are taken by surprise.

We Christians need to believe in what Jesus told us and be ever ready for his appearance, not in fear, but in hope. But we shouldn't not so focused on the specific day or hour we lose sight of everything else. That would be counterproductive.

As to going as far as naming the hour, 6:00 PM, that is even more problematic, but this piece is already very long, so we will leave that go for now.

It is now 10:30 here. Less than seven hours to the earthquake begins in the South Pacific, so we shall see, shan't we?

The illustration is "Judgment Day" by Michelangelo.

The full 2 Peter passage:

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. 2 Peter 3:3-17 (KJV)

In These Next Few Waning Hours

I suppose it is possible this could be the last post, a time I should be saying goodbye, so long, been nice to know you, my friends, what with Judgment Day coming by the weekend. And if I believed that this would be so, then this would be such a piece.

But I don’t believe it.

Still I am disturbed by some of the mocking comments being made about those who do.

It especially bothers me to hear a Sunday sermon opened this way: “Just so you know just in case the crazies are right and we don’t get to see each other next Sunday … listen today like this is the last day [here]”

The objection is not to simply say, “In case this thing happens, and we are not here another Sunday,  listen as if it’s true.” My objection is referring to these people as “crazies”.

As a Christian I will tell you what I believe. I believe in a God who created the world and universe. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in the Virgin Birth. I believe in the Bible. I believe in the Resurrection. I believe in salvation and a Judgment Day. I believe Jesus will return as He said He would, and following the daily news and seeing how events are occurring and the world is lining up; I believe that the Second Coming is not far off.

I presume this is what many Christian preachers also believe. So are we the “crazies”?

I would never call someone of faith a crazy or a nut case or a wing nut because they believe something different than I.  If someone professed to being Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or Atheist (and yes Atheism is a matter of faith), would you dare to call them “crazies”? Obviously I believe they have placed their faith in the wrong beliefs. If I did not, then I would be a Jew or a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu or an Atheist.

Obviously I believe Christianity it true. Otherwise, why would I be a Christian?

But because I disagree in where someone else has placed their faith, does not mean I think they are “crazies”.

I do not think Howard Camping or all these many people who have accepted his claims that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day are nuts, nor do I think they are stupid. I just think they are wrong. If you have read the material put out by Camping you would not find some rambling mad utterances. It is very structured and intellectually presented. It is even convincingly logical, given Mr. Camping’s interpretation of Scripture. It is very understandable why many people would be willing to embrace it as the truth.

On the Family radio site there is a countdown clock. Today it reads “2 days to go”. But given Mr. Camping’s forecast of how it will begin, it is in reality just a bit more than one day away at the time I am writing this. It is his stance that a great rolling earthquake will begin at 6:00 PM on Saturday, May 21. It will begin in the South Pacific and will follow the time zones around the world, quaking in each area at their hour of 6:00 PM.

If this part of his prediction is true, then we here in my part of the country will know if it is happening sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 PM Friday evening. Why? Because it will already be 6:00 PM Saturday in the South Pacific just over the International Date Line. Of course if nothing happens at that time, it will not necessarily mean Judgment Day will not come on Saturday, only that this part of his calculation is wrong.

Of course, I expect nothing to happen, no worldwide earthquake, no Rapture, no Judgment Day…not yet.

If I am wrong and they are right, then nothing I have wrote matters. If they are right and I am wrong, then I will be among those facing condemnation by God, for that is what they believe. They believe if you cannot accept that Saturday is Judgment Day it is because you are not truly saved even if you think you are.

However if they are wrong and I am right, then on May 22 we are going to have a mass of disappointed and disillusioned people around this world, not the least of which will be Mr. Camping. This will not be something to gloat about. These will be people on the verge of losing faith in anything and some may be facing a very uncertain future. Some of these people have spent their finances and now will face difficult times. Some have split their families and will need healing. These will be people we should not mock, but instead show compassion for, reach out to with love and understanding. We should be prepared to help them back to faith in something and lift them up from their folly back into a life of true hope.

These people are not “crazies”, but like many, many others, they are just folks who lost their way for a while.

Bad Markets

I think we have a subject that lends itself to a salad of discussion in the current corporate scandals and I’m going to start by expressing some of my own philosophy tossed with a bit of religion.

I have a deep faith in God (despite the desires of certain Federal judges).  There are many reasons. As a younger man I was a crusader against church and religion.  I still am at odds with some churches, but not with The Church; that is, the true Body of Christ.

When the Better Half lost our seventh child (and ironically seven is an portent number in Judeo-Christian history) she was in deep depression. The baby died at birth and the doctors were urging my wife to have her tubes tied, to give up thinking about having a baby.  She had had an operation called something like chi rock (which is probably not quite how you say it and is certainly not how you spell it) in which essentially a drawstring is implanted that is supposed to hold the fetus in place.  One of the Better Half’s problems was she could not hold on to the baby once it reached a certain weight. We had suffered two previous stillbirths because of this affliction.  The other four were all miscarriages.

When she began to lose this baby in her fifth month she was put in the hospital labor room and they hooked up a drip designed to stall labor. She was in this room a week struggling to hold on to the child. They had a monitor attached to her and you could hear the baby’s heart beat on the monitor.  I sat in that room many hours with her listening to a pretty strong heart fighting to survive and something in that sound convinced me there was a god. I didn’t come to believe in the God until later, but that was the start, even though in the end she lost the battle and the baby.

During her depression I suggested maybe we should try church one more time. I figured at least it would get her out of the house and around other people.  They had just built a new church down the road from us and so we went there the next Sunday. The pastor spoke on Elijah and what he said hit me as addressing exactly where I was and how I felt at the time. ( I Kings 19:4 But [Elijah] himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.)

The point was that Elijah was a very good man and he had done everything God had asked of him and now he found himself hiding in the wilderness in despair because the rich and powerful had sworn to kill him.  Much like Job, a good man losing everything to evil because he was a good man. This is where I felt I was then (and probably I’m back it that wilderness again now).  This was a church that gave a call at the end of each service and I raised my hand for prayer. Two weeks later I went forward and accepted Christ.

I began to read the Bible and now I understood it and found it made sense when you took it all in context and it seemed to explain exactly what the current day was like and where we were headed in this world.  In fact everyday that part of the message gets cleared and clearer.  This satisfied my intellectual needs.  Then in 1977 when the Better Half became preggers again and the doctors didn’t even want to take her case because they said there was no hope and she was a fool for letting herself get pregnant. (I was shocked, because she had told me she had had her tubes tied after she lost the last baby, but now she confessed she had lied because she still wanted to try and have a baby of her own. Personally I had already accepted the idea of never being a parent.)

A Christian doctor took her case and she had that operation again and he put her to bed for term.  Our new church began prayer circles just for us and they brought meals to us.  I was working, going to school and doing all the housework, cooking whatever. The Better Half could only be on her feet briefly, so in the morning she walked from the bedroom to the living room sofa.  I had arranged the living room to be as handy as possible for her, TV in easy reach, a cooler with some food and drink, etc.

She had our daughter on March 1, 1978 during a snowstorm. She was sure she was losing another, because it was coming way early. They tried to slow labor again and then they gave her steroids to help develop the baby’s lungs. This must have worked because Daughter #1 was born crying loud and angrily, as if disturbed from a sound sleep.  We named her Laurel for Laurel Hill Bible Church and Christine, which means “one of Christ’s”.   And then we had two more babies.

Noelle was born with no human aid. (Again the Better Half had lied about having her tubes tied after Laurel was born.)  When she realized she was pregnant again she thought she was about the second month. She wasn’t showing and it was November.  She never did go to a doctor.  In December, she though she was having a miscarriage and I took her to the hospital. Noelle was born, but not expected to live.  She was only 4 pounds.  They rushed her from Delaware County Hospital to Fitzgerald-Mercy, which had a neonatal intensive care unit. There she stayed all December. The doctors decided she would live, but said she would be blind and severely mentally handicapped. She had to have a blood transfusion because the Better Half and I have conflicting Rh factors. She had jaundice. She was down to 3 pounds 6 ounces.

She came home on January 1, 1981 in a giant red Christmas stocking. She didn’t die, wasn’t blind and hardly mentally incapacitated. She was in the honors classes in high school; she won several academic awards over the years, including the Presidential Academic Excellence Award.  I always said God gave us Noelle to prove it was He and not men behind the miracles of my children’s births.  Then He gave us Darryl so we’d have a son.  All were supposedly impossible births according to medical science.

I give you this testimony so you understand I do have a faith in a God who sets a standard for right and wrong, and I believe what we see everyday in the news now was predicted many centuries ago. And I also want to deal with the subject of money and riches that is often misinterpreted. And I want, if you’ll forgive a bit of preaching, quote the Bible a bit on the subject.

I do not think there is anything inherently immoral or sinful in having money or being rich. I know nothing in the Bible that says money or wealth is wrong. People misquote the Bible all the time on this.  We are always hearing “money is the root of all evil”. That is not what the actual quote says in 1 Tim 6:9-10

But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

It is not money per se that is evil.  It is the love of money. Treating money as simply a reward and a need and a tool is fine and necessary, but when you love money and crave more money, then you open up yourself for evil. Notice it says this love is the root of all evil.  Not some evil, but all evil and you look at what is happening and you can see this everywhere. No one is satisfied with having a comfortable profit and a comfortable life, they want more and more, money for the sake of saying they have a lot of money, money beyond all need and all want really.  If I can clear away a third of the debt burden I have, I could live a very nice life on the money I make. When I clear all my current debt, I can live a quiet nice life on my pension and social security and neither is a great deal of money.  There is probably nothing I need and very little that I want materially that I could not obtain on that income. What might someone possible need or want that multiple upon multiple of millions of dollars is able to buy?  Oh sure power and anything they want, but really there is a limit to what you really, really would want to get. And certainly a limit to what you need.

I am not against things or comfort.  I see money as freedom. But I can have some freedom with a minimal amount of money. I don’t need a mansion and certainly not mansions in several different places. After all, you can only live in one room at a time. I want a car that is reliable and gets me from point A to point B. It doesn’t have to be bigger and faster and shinier than my neighbors. I’m just grateful I can afford to have a car.

Look around at how many people are possessions poor. They have the big SUV and the fancy sports model and bills up the tailpipe. They teeter constantly on the edge of disaster simply because they want toys that say I have more than you do.  Don’t need to play that game. I have no problem with who I am. I don’t envy anyone, because I don’t really know his or her real situation.

But there are things I want. I do want my PC. That helps me keep in contact with people and it lets me do research on subjects that interest me and it is a tool for my writing. I want a TV and a machine to play music. I want to buy books to read and music to listen to. I would like to go to some cultural events: plays, concerts, ballets. I would like to travel and visit different parts of our world.  And you know what – materially that’s about it.  And I believe the economic system should be geared to providing us with these modest desires, but the love of money by some has robbed many of these simple pleasures.

Here is what I believe business should be.  It never was and never will be, but it is what I think it should be.

Businesses should not grow into giant conglomerates to begin with.  What ever happened to the anti-trust laws anyhow?  More businesses mean more competition and choices and respect for the consumer.  Forget the argument about the economy of scale.  That only works with an honest business climate that really does pass the savings of bulk on to the customer. But some of those savings come at a cost to one of the things I think should be part of business, employment.

A business should be developed to meet a need of people. There is nothing wrong with the person getting rich because they invented something people want.  There is something wrong, though, if that person deliberately doesn’t produce what he is capable of producing to create an artificial shortage and thus drive the price up.

I believe a business should provide:

A goods or service of use to the people and it should be honest in dealing with its customers, assuring quality and a fair price.

Jobs for people at a descent wage and with job security based on reasonable working hours and conditions and the true demand for the product, and on the acceptance of a reasonable profit, not an attempt to inflate profit at the cost of employee and customer.

Lastly, a reasonable return to the owners or investors in the business.  But the thrust of the business should be in development of a needed product, the quality of the product and the well being of the employees, not simply increasing the wallet of the investors.

There should never be the great chasms of cash between the upper managers and the lower workers. Certainly the higher ups should make more than the janitor and the clerk, but it should be in proper scale. And there should always be the opportunity for that janitor and clerk to work themselves up the pyramid by hard work and initiative.

Here is something I say: If I was an honest car mechanic I would never lack for customers. If I charged fair prices, did the work as I claimed and only where needed, people would flock to me.  I would make a profit and live comfortably and I would be respected.  And I would also have a house full of mirrors, because I could look myself in the mirror and see a decent human being.

Today’s CEOs and other top managers are like vampires in many ways.  They suck the lifeblood out of their fellow man and they have no need for mirrors, for one casts no reflection and the other can’t look at theirs.

Straight to the Heart of the Matter

Store aisles once garnished by Rudolph’s red nose and Jolly Old Santa Claus are now festooned with giant red hearts and naked Cupids. Gone are the boxes of tree balls, garlands and inflatable snowmen, replaced by candy from satin and lace boxes of chocolates to tiny multi-colored hard hearts embossed with sayings such as “I Love You” and “Wow”. Love is in the air and lovers are in the card shop seeking the perfect expression of it. Saint Nicholas has returned to his hearth in the North Pole and Saint Valentine’s Day is upon us.

What has this saint to do with love?  Perhaps little or perhaps much depending upon which stories you wish to believe.  In the Lives of the Saints (Rev. Hugo Hoever 1961), an official church publication under the imprimatur of the late Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Day and the Saint were only a coincidence of the date February 14. Hoever tells us little more than Saint Valentine and Saint Marius assisted 3^rd Century Christians being persecuted by Claudius II; that Valentine was taken to Rome in 270 AD and then beaten unmercifully with clubs until he was beheaded. Not much love shown there.

However, he does note that February 15 was the Feast of Februata Juno, a Pagan goddess.  It was a custom on the day before this feast for the boys of Rome to hold a lottery in which they pulled from a box the names of the girls of Rome in tribute to Februata.  There is a bit more to this story and custom than the Rev Hoever reveals, however.

Saint Valentine may be an appropriate symbol for true love once one considers what got him into so much trouble with Claudius II.  The Emperor didn’t have much time for Romance.  He was too busy conducting nasty, unpopular wars and having difficultly recruiting men into the army to fight them.  Since he believed the problem wasn’t the terror of battle, but the love of the men for their wives and children, he outlawed all engagements and marriages in Rome. According to legend, Valentine and Marius went to the aid of the young lovers of the city and secretly married them defying the Emperor’s ban; this led to the arrest and death of St. Valentine.

Interestingly, Valentine is not the Patron Saint of Lovers, but the Patron of Greetings.  This seems appropriate considering the great exchange of cards on his day. Many cynics probably attribute this custom to the marketing departments of the card sellers, but it too has its origin with the Feast of Februata Juno.

Remember those boys drawing names on the eve of the feast.  Each girl drawn would become the partner of the drawer for the feast, although often this partnership lasted the full year and many of these couples ended up married.  The early church fathers took a dim view of this Pagan practice and they tweaked the custom slightly substituting girls’ names in the box with those of saints.  Now the boys pulled a name and that became their special saint for the rest of the year. Hopefully this kept their minds on purer pursuits. Your probably thinking the young men were thrilled with this modification.

If you believe that, you would be wrong.  The young men weren’t happy with this turn of event at all and eventually substituted sending an expression of love to the young women in hope that would bring them the ladies’ affections.  They began to evoke Valentine’s name in their plea. Thus evolved the Valentine Day card that we continue to send, although many of our modern sentiments are comic if not downright insulting rather than romantic.

There does exist a legend that while in prison Saint Valentine fell in love with his jailer’s daughter.  Prior to his death, he supposedly sent her a letter, which he signed “From your Valentine”.  Take it with a grain of salt if you must, but it makes a nice closing to my story.

Illustration: painting of St. Valentine, artist unknown.

Leaping Leprechauns, Lies & Legends

Ah, the Emerald Isle with its magical tales of Faeries and glorious images of St. Patrick chasing the snakes into the sea. Just be careful for what you take as reality may be myth and mist.

Take St. Patrick for instance. One is hard put to pin down just where he was born, let alone establish the facts of his life. Although forever associated with the Irish, the Catholic Encyclopedia says he was Scottish. However, there seems to be credible evidence that he was actually born in Wales. (There are also those who put in a claim that he was Italian based on his name having been recorded as Patricius.) If his origins are up for question, one thing is certain, his most famous claim to fame never happened. There were no snakes in Ireland for him to chase.

Which brings us to faeries. Don’t ask me how we made this transition of subject, for that is just the nature of magic. Things just happen out of nowhere. The best-known Irish faeries are Leprechauns. Technically, they fall into the category of Sprites or Goblins.

Apparently Leprechauns must be born old, for you never see an illustration of a young one. They are always shown as old men of short stature, generally pegged at a height of two feet, although sometimes they have been presented from a range of a foot or a height approaching five feet. Nonetheless, they tend to garb their tiny bodies in an exotic green outfit, which includes knee breeches, swallow-tailed waistcoats, pointing toed buckled shoes and squat hats holding a shamrock. They almost always carry a twisted walking stick or shillelagh and a leather purse of gold coin tethered to their belt. They top it all off with a long clay pipe and perpetual mischievous twinkle in their eyes.

There is quite a dispute over the very name Leprechaun. Some say it derives from the old Irish word for “little body”, which is luchorpan.  Others hold to the idea that Leprechauns are offspring of an ancient Euro-Celtic sun god named Lugh (pronounced Luck). A third claim is the name is a corruption of “leath bhrogan”, which translates to shoemaker. This last seems credible enough, since Leprechauns are always depicted as shoemakers, and very good ones, at that, capable of working their lathe drunk or sober, and since they have more than a bit of weakness for a nip or two this is probably a good skill to possess.

Now Leprechauns are shy little folk and well should be since people seek them out for their riches. All Leprechauns possess some great cache of gold that they are bound to lead a human to if caught. The problem is, that even if a human manages to snare one of these chaps and find the gold, it is quite another feat to get it home.

One tale of how tricky the Leprechauns can be tells of a lucky chap who grabbed a little folk and was led to the treasure buried in a field. In need of a shovel, the Irishman tied his red handkerchief to a bush to mark the spot and dashed home to get a digging tool. The two minutes it took him to get home and back was enough for the Leprechaun to fasten a red handkerchief to every bush in the field.

Now most take this to show the magical and devious side of the wee folk. I take it to display the Leprechauns enormous sense of humor. Certainly it would have been much easier to untie the one handkerchief in those two minutes than to fasten hundreds to every bush in sight, but certainly wouldn’t have given the Leprechaun the great joy of seeing the stunned and amazed face of the Irishman leaning in frustration on his now useless shovel.