Things to remember about 9/11

Courtesy of Tony Woodlief:

I’m no expert on global politics. I can’t discern whether it’s better to find and kill Islamofascists with all the collateral damage that entails, or play a Clintonesque diplomacy shell game, or something in between. But I do know that right action springs from right thinking, and right thinking is reflected in clear words. So it seems to me that seven years after that awful morning we ought to remember clearly — every citizen and certainly every politician who wants to represent us — a few essential things:

• These men, women, and children were murdered.
• Their murderers were slaves to a cult that hates truth and peace.
• There is no reasoning nor negotiating with people who celebrated in the streets when they heard the news.
• If we choose to resist this death cult, some of us will die.

And finally, for the Christian, these truths: that the line between Dark and Light traverses every heart, that it is not by our own merit that we were born outside the death cult, that we are enjoined to pray for our enemies, and that the reason we do so is because, on that blessed day when vengeance pours down from Heaven, no dark thing will escape.

The line between Dark and Light traverses every heart. Including mine.

It is not by my own merit that I was born outside the death cult. It is an unearned blessing from God, and I need to treat it as such, to be thankful, and to find ways to show that thanks.

We are enjoined to pray for our enemies. Not just the people who tick me off in traffic. Because God is not wanting anyone to perish, and that includes those who conspire against Him to kill His innocent children.

Showing kids how work can be meaningful

I'm slogging through a Tony Woodlief essay this morning -- this one in the Wall Street Journal -- because I like Tony Woodlief -- but taking no joy in it as he drones on about capitalist, Christian and Marxist views on work.

And then I get to the end and Tony slams me with this:

One summer I installed stairs and flooring in our stifling-hot attic. My oldest son, 4 at the time, insisted on donning his little work belt to help. I situated him in a corner with his tiny hammer and watercolor paint, where he spent hours hammering and painting while I nailed floorboards. Months later, out of the blue, he took my hand and asked when we could do that again. Focused on the heat and the weight of those boards, I'd found the work miserable. But to my son it was blissful. We now had a "secret room." And he had worked with his daddy.

Perhaps too many children fail to value work because their parents fail to shepherd them into a world where work can be meaningful. So maybe I should just shut up and get to working with a smile on my own face. As is so often the case when raising children, the qualities we want them to possess must first be cultivated in ourselves.

How many times have I worked on something and heard a small voice from the doorway -- Daddy, can I help? -- and ignored it because it was easier? And yet, as Tony so kindly points out, that's not exactly a helpful example.

Did I say I like Tony Woodlief. I take it all back.

What really makes a leader?

My favorite internet writer, Tony Woodlief, found a book he likes. It's called Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, and is a story of the Battle of Thermopylae that Woodlief calls "far more faithful to history than the stunning film, 300."

But what caught my eye was not Woodlief's recommendation, but his snippet of a lecture that the character Xeones gives to the Persian King about the character qualities of a real king:

A king does not command his men’s loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him.

And then, Woodlief ties a great quote to a great thought:

Replace king with pastor, CEO, or — dare one say it — U.S. President, and perhaps this lesson extends beyond royalty. But if we took it to heart, how many self-styled “leaders” would warrant replacement? And with whom would we replace them?

It's a thought-provoking point, so I tried to reshape the quote to apply to presidents in particular. Alas, mine is a bit more wordy than those from Pressfield via Xeones:

A president does not command the loyalty of his country by milking tragedies or exaggerating challenges. He does not purchase that loyalty by trying to create a government program for every boo-boo in society. A president earns the love of his countrymen when they see in him a genuine concern for their challenges, and when he works tirelessly with other decision-makers -- both inside and outside of government -- to find solutions without trying to score political points or make his opponents look smaller. His principles are clear and unwavering, but the solutions that fit within those principles are wide-ranging and sometimes out-of-the-political-box. When a president asks his countrymen to shoulder a burden, he first demonstrates his own sacrifices to meet that burden, and continues to sacrifice until the burden is lifted. He never forgets that he works for his country and its people, that the decisions he makes will have real impacts on his countrymen for many years to come, and that he thus has a responsibility to regularly address the reasons behind those decisions. He does not insist on blind loyalty -- either from the people immediately surrounding him or from the country at large -- but invites push-back to temper his ideas. In short, the president is elected to serve his country, and he should demonstrate service -- to family, staff, Congress, country and God -- in every action he takes.

Is that too high a bar?

For parents who have tried a restaurant with their kids

The reason old couples sit in restaurants and don't say a word? Tony Woodlief says it's because of decades of cacophony from their children:

It's because they are all talked out. Just watch them. They don't even speak to the waitress; they just point to what they want on the menu. I imagine once the last boy is out of the house we may go for a good solid year without saying a word. And it will be blissful. Then we'll spend the rest of our days wondering why they don't come visit more often.

But that's okay, because we'll visit them. Mostly because we love them. But also to watch them eat with their own children. Heh heh heh.

Read the whole thing. It's good for a laugh.

Quote of the Day: Obama vs. the New Yorker

Today's quote comes from Tony Woodlief, who writes a tongue-in-cheek summation of today's news:

Barack Obama...is furious that the uber-conservative New Yorker magazine's latest cover depicts him as a radical Muslim. Through a spokesman he denounced the image and issued a fatwa against the New Yorker's publisher and cartoonist.

Quote of the Day: the state fair

Tony Woodlief, who lives somewhere in the state of Kansas, took his family to the state fair. Twice. And then wrote about it:

No Kansan is too good for the state fair. In fact, nobody is too good for the state fair, period, though perhaps the state fair is too good for some people. If you find it beneath you to get elbow to elbow with people who have not enough money and too many kids, and folks who work the earth, and greasy-fingered, shiny-eyed cheerful miscreants operating the rides, then perhaps you have too high an opinion of yourself, because we are all made of the same suspect dust, it seems. And if your mistaken opinion of your social position prevents you from getting a fresh corn dog and a hot steaming plate of sugary funnel cake, then it serves you right. Go content yourself with a pseudo-cosmopolitan meal in your favorite faux Euro-bistro with the cheap furniture, and pretend you live in New York. As for me and my household, we'll take the fair.

Quote of the Day: The least of these

Today's quote comes from my favorite internet writer, Tony Woodlief, whose family has been "adopted" by a stray cat even though he's not a cat person (emphasis mine):

There's no telling, is there, who or what will cross your path once you start opening your door to strays, be they cats or people. I know a few people -- a precious few -- who seem to have spotlights over their homes, calling every broken-down drunk and homeless single mother and three-legged dog in the county to their doorsteps. I used to think it was their circumstances that were peculiar, that they just seemed to be always happening upon those in need. Now I see it's more the case that we all cross the paths of those in need, but we've trained ourselves to ignore them. We wall them out, whether they are the hurting, socially awkward people in our own churches, or the desperately poor people south of our national border.

I know I have a wall like that -- several of them, actually. Even as I pray this, I'm fearful of the answer, but I'm asking God to help me remove those walls.

Quote of the Day: 'Plainer talk' on abortion

My favorite internet writer, Tony Woodlief, weighs in on the Supreme Court's Partial-Birth Abortion ruling, improving on my comments from Wednesday:

It's not clear that the latest ruling will reduce the rate of infanticide, despite the gnashing of teeth among pro-abortion spokesmen and corresponding celebration by anti-abortion spokesmen. Deprived of the relative convenience of murdering the infant outside the womb, abortionists will return to severing its limbs and head inside the womb.

Does the language offend? Shall I refer to that creature with eyelashes and grasping fingers and the capacity to feel the sun on his face, were he wanted, as a fetus? Shall I call the act of hacking him apart late-term intact dilation and extraction? I'm not one of those who indulges in the fantasy that every abortion-rights advocate is profoundly evil, but there is something distinctly wicked about this mangling of language, all in an effort to disguise precisely what goes on when a woman who believes she has no more options puts her feet in the stirrups.

As he says later in the piece, "Pro-abortion advocates too often clinicalize and dehumanize the child to be murdered, and anti-abortion protestors too often dehumanize the woman who consents to the killing. Perhaps a little plainer talk, a little more honest talk, might do us all some good."

Maybe, but I'm not optimistic.

I second the motion

My favorite internet writer, Tony Woodlief, writes wistfully about what should be done with Pat Robertson:

Imagine that you wanted to foster among the public and the press the impression that Christians are ignorant, mean-spirited buffoons. How might you go about it, were you a clever person? Rather than attack Christians directly, you might instead find yourself a puffed-up, theologically ignorant preacher, and give him a nationally televised cable program focused on current events. Maybe you'd even have him run for president a few times, so everyone could enjoy his ill-considered ruminations, delivered in the smarmy, self-righteous tones of a Hollywood actor doing an over-the-top impression of a Christian. You might invent, in other words, Pat Robertson.

He goes on to note that Old Testament prophets who were wrong would be put to death, because it was obvious that God wasn't speaking through them (after all, God is never wrong). Lucky for Robertson, he's living in the 21st century and can be a wacko without fear of being thrown to the lions. Too bad, as Mr. Woodlief says, Robertson doesn't follow the lead of a real Old Testament figure and wait "in silence" for God's counsel.

Good stuff from Tony, as usual.