"A Commitment to Human Dignity and the Common Good"

Today on Public Discourse, Robert P. George and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf pen a letter to the hotel industry on pornography, respect, and responsibility.  

Pornography, Respect, and Responsibility: A Letter to the Hotel Industry
by Robert P. George and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
July 9, 2012

A letter on pornography and business ethics written by two prominent public intellectuals--one a Christian, one a Muslim--sent to hotel industry executives last week.    

We write to ask you to stop offering pornographic movies in your company's hotels. We make no proposal here to limit your legal freedom, nor do we threaten protests, boycotts, or anything of the sort. We simply ask you to do what is right as a matter of conscience.   

We are, respectively, a Christian and a Muslim, but we appeal to you not on the basis of truths revealed in our scriptures but on the basis of a commitment that should be shared by all people of reason and goodwill: a commitment to human dignity and the common good. As teachers and as parents, we seek a society in which young people are encouraged to respect others and themselves--treating no one as an impersonal object or thing. We hope that you share our desire to build such a society.   

Pornography is degrading, dehumanizing, and corrupting. It undermines self-respect and respect for others. It reduces persons--creatures bearing profound, inherent, and equal dignity--to the status of objects. It robs a central aspect of our humanity--our sexuality--of its dignity and beauty. It ensnares some in addiction. It deprives others of their sense of self-worth. It teaches our young people to settle for the cheap satisfactions of lust, rather than to do the hard, yet ultimately liberating and fulfilling, work of love.   

We recognize that we are asking you to abandon a profitable aspect of your business, but we hope that you will muster the conviction and strength of will to make that sacrifice and to explain it to your stockholders. We urge you to do away with pornography in your hotels because it is morally wrong to seek to profit from the suffering, degradation, or corruption of others. Some might say that you are simply honoring the free choices of your customers. However, you are doing much more than that. You are placing temptation in their path--temptation for the sake of profit. That is unjust. Moreover, the fact that something is chosen freely does not make it right; nor does it ensure that the choice will not be damaging to those who make it or to the larger community where degrading practices and materials flourish.   

We beg you to consider the young woman who is depicted as a sexual object in these movies, as nothing but a bundle of raw animal appetites whose sex organs are displayed to the voyeurs of the world and whose body is used in loveless and utterly depersonalized sex acts. Surely we should regard that young woman as we would regard a sister, daughter, or mother. She is a precious member of the human family. You may say that she freely chooses to compromise her dignity in this way, and in some cases that would be true, but that gives you no right to avail yourself of her self-degradation for the sake of financial gain. Would you be willing to profit from her self-degradation if she were your sister? Would you be willing to profit from her self-degradation if she were your own beloved daughter?   

Furthermore, we trust that you need no reminding of the fact that something's being legal does not make it right. For example, denying black men and women and their families access to hotel rooms--and tables in restaurants, as well as other amenities and opportunities--was, for countless shameful years, perfectly legal. In some circumstances, it even made financial sense for hotel owners and operators in racist cultures to engage in segregationist practices even when not compelled by law to do so. However, this was deeply morally wrong. Shame on those who denied their brothers and sisters of color the equal treatment to which they were morally entitled. Shame on you if you hide behind legality to peddle immorality in the pursuit of money.   

Our purpose is not to condemn you and your company but to call you to your highest and best self. We have no desire to hurt your business. On the contrary, we want you and your business to succeed financially--for your sake; for the sake of your stockholders, employees, and contract partners; and for the sake of the communities that your hotels serve. We believe that the properly regulated market economy serves the good of all by providing products and services at reasonable prices and by generating prosperity and social mobility. But the market itself cannot provide the moral values that make it a truly humane and just institution. We--owners, managers, employees, customers--must bring those values to the market. There are some things--inhuman things, unjust things, de-humanizing things--that should not be sold. There must be some things that, for the sake of human dignity and the common good, we must refuse to sell--even it if means forgoing profit.

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University.
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf is co-founder and a member of the faculty of Zaytuna College.
Affiliations are provided for identification purposes and do not imply institutional endorsements.

Support the work of Public Discourse by making a secure donation to The Witherspoon Institute.
Copyright 2012 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

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Here's an interesting follow-up from a few days afterwards.  Thought-provoking stuff...

Today on Public Discourse, Robert Miller explores the legal and economic hurdles facing hotel execs who want to do the right thing. Hotel Pornography and the Market of Morality by Robert T. Miller July 13, 2012 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/07/5936 The legal institutions of a democratic and capitalist society are designed not to give people what is good and prevent them from getting what is bad; they are designed to give people what they want and not give them what they don't want. Public Discourse recently published a letter from Professor Robert P. George and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf to executives in the hotel industry asking that their companies stop selling pornographic videos in their hotel rooms. George and Yusuf argue that pornography is morally wrong and thus selling pornography is morally wrong, and I agree completely. I fear, however, that their request to the hotel executives will not produce the result they hope. There are two reasons for this. George and Yusuf mention the obvious one--that selling pornographic videos is profitable. But this is truer than George and Yusuf say. It turns out that many hotels would lose money offering pay-per-view videos if they did not include pornographic ones. Such hotels lose money on every sale of non-pornographic videos, but they make so much money on the pornographic ones that the operation as a whole turns a profit. Hotels in this situation cannot ditch the pornographic videos and keep the legitimate ones; they would have to stop offering all in-room movies. But it gets worse. A sizable percentage of the earnings of many hotel chains comes from business travelers, who tend to spend more than other customers. Now, most business travelers are men traveling alone. Want to take a guess who buys the most pornographic videos in hotel rooms? That's right: men traveling alone. Hence, a hotel that stops offering pornographic videos will certainly lose the earnings attributable to such videos, but it may also lose a lot more than that because some of its most valuable customers may shift their business to other hotels. If that happens, the company loses all the earnings associated with such travelers--not just the earnings from the pornographic videos, but also those from room rentals, room service, drinks and meals in the hotel restaurant, and so on. Giving up the pornographic videos could be very costly indeed. The other reason that it may be hard for executives at hotel companies to cease offering pay-per-view pornographic videos is that doing so may be unlawful. Yes, you read that correctly: there is a serious argument that choosing not to sell pornographic videos could expose the directors of a corporation in the hotel business to civil liability to their shareholders. The reason is that, as explained above, selling pornographic videos makes a lot of money for the company, and corporate directors are under a fiduciary duty to maximize profits for their shareholders. This does not mean, as some uninformed people think, that directors may cause the corporation to engage in illegal acts to make a profit. On the contrary, directors who intentionally cause the corporation to do something illegal thereby breach their fiduciary duty to the corporation, no matter how much money can be made by illegal conduct. The directors' duty is to maximize profits within the law. But as George and Yusuf point out, selling pornography is perfectly legal. So the question becomes whether corporate directors, consistent with their fiduciary duty to maximize profits within the law, may cause the corporation to terminate a highly profitable and perfectly legal operation merely because the directors conclude that the operation is immoral. I am aware of no modern case treating this issue; it is an open question in the law. Is it the duty of corporate directors to choose the course of action that they honestly believe will maximize profits within the law regardless of moral considerations, or is it their duty to exercise moral judgment as well as business judgment and so to choose the course of action that they honestly believe will maximize profits within the law and within the constraints of morality as the directors see them? In my opinion, the latter ought to be the law, but as to what the law actually is--what, for example, a Delaware court presented with the issue would actually hold--I do not know. No one knows. One thing that is certain, however, is that if a public company in the hotel business announced that it was ceasing to offer pay-per-view pornographic videos because the directors thought that doing so was immoral, some of its shareholders, encouraged by the plaintiffs' bar, would sue the directors alleging that their decision breached their fiduciary duty to the corporation. If the plaintiffs won, the directors would be personally liable for all the lost profits attributable to their decision. For a large hotel chain maintaining hundreds of thousands of guest rooms, the potential liability for the directors would be enormous. Not many corporate directors would expose themselves to bankrupting civil judgments in order to do the right thing here. Oddly, however, a board of directors that stopped selling pornographic videos for moral reasons could escape all liability to its shareholders if it was willing to lie about its reasons. That is, the directors could say that, in their judgment, selling pornographic videos offends so many customers that in the long run the company would make more money by not selling such videos. Then, regardless of how implausible this theory may be, under the corporate law doctrine known as the business judgment rule, a court would not intervene and would not hold the directors liable, provided the directors claim to honestly believe the explanation they were offering the court. Since George and Yusuf say in their letter that they are not planning to organize a boycott of hotels selling pornographic videos, they have inadvertently undermined such a stratagem. But this hardly matters, because directors who object to pornography on moral grounds are not likely to be willing to lie about the corporation's business to its shareholders, much less perjure themselves in court. But let us assume, as I think right, that the law allows directors to exercise moral judgment as well as business judgment and would protect their decision to choose, for purely moral reasons, a course of action that fails to maximize profits for shareholders. Assume further that, having read George and Yusuf's letter, the directors of the various hotel corporations decide to terminate sales of pornographic videos in their hotels. Then what? I doubt we would soon see the end of pay-per-view pornographic videos in hotel rooms. The reason is that, if the companies' shareholders disagree with the moral judgment of the directors, they can vote such directors off the board and replace them with individuals who agree with the shareholders on moral matters. Hence, to stop hotels from offering pay-per-view pornography, we will need to convince not only the directors of such companies but also their shareholders that they should accept lower profits in order to do the right thing. Given the broad shareholder base of most public companies, and given too that when a shareholder objects on moral grounds to the corporation's actions, his usual response is to sell his shares to someone who does not object to the corporation's actions, we would need to convince a large portion of the population, not just some hotel executives, that selling pornographic videos is morally wrong. There is an important lesson here about how our society is organized, and it can be best brought out by a comparison. Like pornographic videos, videos espousing racist views are immoral but legal, but we never find such videos on offer in hotel rooms or, for that matter, almost anywhere else. Why not? Obviously, because practically everyone nowadays finds racist views deeply offensive, and any company that attempted to make money selling such trash would be severely punished by the market. The situation is different with pornographic videos because a significant portion of the population wants to watch such videos and, more importantly, a large majority of the population doesn't object to their doing so. With racist videos, market institutions reinforce a moral result; with pornographic videos, market institutions reinforce an immoral result. The lesson is that, when a people's desires are consistent with moral norms, markets produce moral results, but when a people's desires are inconsistent with moral norms, markets produce immoral results. The economic institutions of capitalism are thus analogous to the political institutions of democracy. With limited exceptions, laws can be enacted and enforced in a democratic society only if they command the support of a large majority of the population. Hence, it is not so much wrong as it is impossible to impose moral norms through law: the only norms that can be imposed in this way are norms that already command broad support. The legal institutions of a democratic and capitalist society are not designed to give people what is good and prevent them from getting what is bad; they are designed to give people what they want and not give them what they don't want. For this reason, some people decry capitalism and democracy as amoral. Such views are misguided. In a democratic and capitalist society, there is a certain division of labor: it is up to the people themselves to become moral individuals with moral desires, while the political and economic institutions of the society implement the individuals' aggregated desires. In any alternative system, there are institutions not accountable to the people and powerful enough to impose their will (really the will of the individuals who control the institutions) on everyone who disagrees with them. The historical record of such institutions has been terrifying, which is the best argument in favor of democratic capitalism. It is true that, in such a system, it may be harder to be moral when your understanding of morality is different from the majority view, but at least you will not often be forced into doing what you think is wrong. You may be seduced, but you will not be coerced. Democratic capitalism is a moral system, but in this system the guardians of morality are not institutions but the people themselves. Thus we read in the Book of Wisdom, A large number of wise men is the safety of the world. Robert T. Miller is a Professor of Law at Villanova University, and as of August 2012 he will be a Professor of Law and Sandler Faculty Fellow of Corporate Law at the University of Iowa. Receive Public Discourse by email, become a fan of Public Discourse on Facebook, follow Public Discourse on Twitter, and sign up for the Public Discourse RSS feed. Support the work of Public Discourse by making a secure donation to The Witherspoon Institute. Copyright 2012 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

Video Updates on Steve Saint

Here are the latest video updates from Steve Saint...

Mischief Managed

I just got home from a whirlwind of trips and travels, only to find three different emails from three different organizations alerting me to a password compromise I have been involved in.  That's too many for comfort.  Apparently malicious dudes are getting better and better at their mischief.  So, what am I--a little computer cretin who can't compete with such evil--going to do about it?

Well, I've started with this website, "How Secure Is My Password?"  It promises to test the security of your proposed password, giving you peace of mind as you make your selection away from something like "BobFacebook." (That takes a mere 169 days to crack. And once they do, other passwords that follow the pattern like "BobLinkedIn" and "BobGmail," likely take 1.69 seconds!)

My results?  "It would take a desktop PC about 778 thousand years to crack your password."

That'll do.

U.S. Faith

I found this interactive map to the results of a USA today "pew survey" regarding the religious affiliations of Americans interesting...

Just click on the link above to explore it.

Gone From Our Sight

I am standing upon the seashore.  A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.  She is an object of beauty and strength.  I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight.  That is all.  She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.  And just at that moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"  There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

And that is dying.                                                                           - Henry Van Dyke

Tiiu Muursepp Sitterding

January 11, 1939 - May 21, 2012

Third cousins, twice removed

Okay, so I have like a bazillion cousins, since my parents were each one of three children, and those siblings each had at least two or three children, and each of their children who has them has had at least two or three children so far.

So, needless to say, we're always quite confused about "cousin relationships" around here, what with first and second and third, and then the once- or twice-removed or whatever.

I found this very helpful chart today, and I might want to be able to find it again. So, if you're confused at all about cousin relationships, too, check it out!

Just in case you haven't seen this, dubbed "the most beautiful seatbelt commercial ever."

Ten Lords-A Leaping

And OG didn't even know about the (then) upcoming December Blog Challenge when she called out to her siblings, "It's the Seasonal Ball and we have to be 'ten lords a-leaping'!"


Too bad I got to my uh-oh-it's-late-and -I-don't-have-a-blog-post-yet post on the SIXTH day of Christmas!

We see Him come, and know Him ours...

Enjoying this beautiful music... pondering the deep realities clothed in His coming...

What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honor to this day,
That sees December turned to May.

Why does the chilling winter’s morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
‘Tis He is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To heaven, and the under-earth.

We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.

The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart.
Which we will give him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do him honour, who’s our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.

What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a carol for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
- Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

I have not known this song until yesterday, and I have deeply appreciated pondering it... studying it, like I would a poem. So many things strike me, but predominantly this, today, on the first pass: "We know Him come, and see Him ours, Who, with His sunshine and His showers, turns all the patient ground to flowers..."

Oh, the sweet truth that my sovereign Lord is come, and is mine! And that He promises to work all things in my life--both sunshine and showers--together for good! Oh, sweet joy. Quiet trust.

May I rest as willingly and well as that patient ground, confident of the coming flowers...

Radiant Beams from Thy Holy Face

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth

These lyrics have been rolling around in my head all day, taunting and convicting me. Why, you might ask, since these words seem all glorious praise, not words of challenge and exhortation. Well, mostly because of some other words I read this morning, on iivo's thankfulness list. He was dead serious, not being the least bit smart aleck, and yet I was mortified. "Waking before the alarm to slumber in the light of Laurie's iPhone." Ugh! Right there among a list of such glorious things as

- God's word to draw my wandering mind, my fretting heart (Dan 4, 1 Pet 1, Ps 119)
- hope given by God's kingdom coming
- coffee

I do believe that he was thankful to awaken before the alarm, to enjoy a few stolen moments in dozy slumber before the demands of the day pushed him out of the warm bed and into the morning chill of our bedroom, of life. But to slumber "in the light of Laurie's iPhone"?! Not exactly "radiant beams from thy holy face"!

My friend Pam once made a resolution not to use her i-something (phone, pad, pod-touch?) in bed when her husband was there. I don't remember whether I read it on her blog or her Facebook page, but I remember the mild pang that hit me...the vague discomfort whispering from the edges of my mind, "That's right. You know that's right. You should do that, too!"

I didn't. And not because I didn't want to. Not even because I didn't try. I did. Twice. And yet my husband can write those awful words "in the light of Laurie's iPhone" because it still sometimes shines while he slumbers next to me.

Oh, how I long instead to be adorned with "radiant beams from Thy holy face"!

"...the dear Christ enters in..."

Earlier this month, just as Advent was beginning, Iivo and I went on an "Ulti-mate" couples' prayer retreat. Just the two of us (and our workbooks) headed to a private retreat spot and got busy. We got busy examining our lives individually and considering how we're doing as a family. And what did we realize as we "got busy"? Among other things, we realized that we are busy! We are busy as individuals, busy as a couple, busy as a family. Now don't get me wrong. Most of the things we are doing, we are doing with great deliberateness and purpose. And we have made a concerted effort as a family to build "margin" into our lives by eliminating some superfluous activities this year. And yet, Iivo and I both felt an acute awareness of the unavoidable frenzy of this season in our family's life.

One of the things we decided to implement upon our return was what we've dubbed "downtime."

down·time\ˈdau̇n-ˌtīm\
noun
1 : time during which production is stopped, especially during setup for an operation or when making repairs
2 : inactive time (as between periods of work)

This glorious time occurred daily at 5:15 for about a week. Iivo was going into work earlier--it is much more produtive for him to get there before many others arrive--and trying to get home earlier in order to join us. But that first week of nightly "downtime," he wasn't able to make it. Nevertheless, at 5:15, the kids and I gathered in the den. We dimmed the lights and lit a few candles and turned on Pandora Radio's "instrumental praise." And then we began the serious business of making ourselves slow down. "Production stopped." We savored "inactive time between periods of work."

How hard it was at first! "But I need to just..."

Iivo didn't join us, but he felt the benefits of "downtime" immediately. The home he came home to was more peaceful. We were kinder. Happier. Calmer. Even the dogs.

He never did make it to join us, before the week of holiday hit, and with it the stomach flu that swept through our home. "Downtime" was abandoned in a blur of sickness and travel and preparation and celebration.

Tonight, we pulled it back out again. Oh, welcome back, friend!

I particularly love the words to the final stanza of the great Christmas carol, "O Little Town of Bethlehem."

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is giv'n
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heav'n.
No ear may hear His coming,
But, in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still
The dear Christ enters in.

Such a sweet, sweet thing is the reality of His presence with us! And what a very sweet time it has become to stop and marvel in it.

Breathe deeply of Him.

Rest.

O Christmas Tree!

One of the greatest spiritual lessons of this year's Christmas season came, for me, via our Christmas tree.

This year, we got our tree earlier than ever.  Usually we wait until a week or two after Thanksgiving, heading out together as a family on the weekend near iivo's birthday.  This year we adults were to be gone that weekend, so we headed out the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

I love the many holiday traditions that have developed over the years for our family, especially the silly ones that make sense to no one but to those of us who have lived through the years of making them.  The tradition of heading out to choose from the really great, just-$14.99 trees at Taylor's Do-It Center is one of them.  Many years ago we decided to replace the artificial tree with a real one, complete with the smell and look and feel of real pine, and the then-$9.99 bargain at Taylor's suited the small budget of our small family.  Over the years the family has grown, but the budget for the tree has not, so we've continued to shell out the less-than-twenty dollars, enjoying rather to spend a few extra bucks on a once-a-year lunch at Tijuana Flats, conveniently situated right across the road from Taylor's.  It costs our little brood of six a pretty penny to enjoy this fun, Mexican fare, so this is our once-a-year splurge of grilled burritos and queso and guacamole feasting.

This year the selection of trees was better than ever.  "Maybe earlier is better!" we thought.  We selected the largest, fullest, greenest tree we have ever gotten from the bargain rack at Taylor's!  We cut off the bottom again ourselves, at home, and placed it right into the water bucket.  We mixed the "preservation solution" as instructed, and the tree drank and drank.  For the first year ever, I think, we had a tree that was actually taking in the liquid we kept checking the level of.  Pitcherfuls of the stuff disappeared.

And then it happened.  The drinking tree, greener and fuller than any we've ever chosen, began to drop its needles.  Sure, this always happens, but not like this.  This tree, still lovely and green-looking, was shedding them fast.  If you brushed past it, you heard a shower of needles fall to the ground.   Bare patches began to appear on the branches.

Evergreens, we call them.  They don't drop their leaves.  They are never meant to stand skeletal and empty.  Yet this one, clad only in twinkling colored lights, was undressing quickly.  Hanging ornaments on it was out of the question... every time we even touched it, it would send down that rain of needles!  Winston would stand near it, tail wagging, and with each "thwap" we'd hear the familiar sound of falling pine.  It began to be a joke.  iivo reached inside and grabbed the trunk, giving it a good shake.  A sound filled the room, remarkably like the fake rain drops of "Spring Shower" on the white noise app.  It would have been really sad if it weren't so laughable... so laugh we did!  We accepted the bittersweet reality of The-Year-Without-Ornaments-On-The-Tree.

And I began to ponder these things in my heart.  I became vaguely uneasy about the spiritual lesson trying to push its way into my consciousness.  The quiet whisper of the Holy Spirit began to convict me.  "I am the vine.  You are the branches."  Snatches of memorized Words found their way into my mind.  "If you abide in Me, and My Words abide in you..."  What was that promise?  Snippets.  Warnings.  "If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers."  The words of John 15 weaved their way into my Christmas musings.

I also began to ponder the words Nat King Cole sang to me in German.  "O Tannenbaum," he crooned, and a bunch of other unfamiliar sounds.  I began to wonder what these guttural words meant.  As I studied the literal English transliteration of the original German words, the full import of the lesson began to make its way into my heart.

O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
How loyal are your leaves/needles!
You're green not only in the summertime,
No, also in winter when it snows.
O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
How loyal are your leaves/needles!

O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
You can please me very much!
How often has not at Christmastime
A tree like you given me such joy!
O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree,
You can please me very much!

O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
Your dress wants to teach me something:
Your hope and durability
Provide comfort and strength at any time.
O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree,
That's what your dress should teach me.


And it is true!  The boughs of the evergreen do stand strong and true and green through all seasons and all circumstance.  All seasons and all circumstance save one.  When cut off from the source of life, it begins to wither.  "You are the branches..."

And so this year we were given the gift of a dying evergreen, the parable of its dropping needles reminding us with each passing day what happens when we do not abide in Him.

Six Geese A-Laying

In the should-have-been-famous words of our dear friend David Harris, who sang them to us those many years ago:

These days are golden
No matter what they say
And you cannot hold them
For they soon will pass away

So, for at least this one more year, there are still six (silly) geese a-layin' around in our bed on Christmas morning!

It took us a few tries, what with our having to take it ourselves and our not being able to see the screen...

Happy Christmas morning!

...far as the curse is found

This morning we received the sad news that Onu ("uncle") Toivo, beloved brother of iivo's mother, Tiiu, died sometime in the wee hours this morning.  His wife, Elve, found him in his room with his light on at about 5:15, his having already passed from this life.

This has made for a bittersweet morning here in North Carolina, complete with reminiscing and laughter through tears.  Toivo was a very attractive, active man, full of spunk and charm and strong opinions, always ready with a quick smile and a hearty laugh.  At least this is how I remember him.  He lived in New York, and I only met him a few times since I joined this wonderful family twenty years ago.  One particular time, while we visited at iivo's parents' house together, he and I got up early one morning and went for a long, vigorous walk around the New England streets of Groveland, MA.  I remember that he gave me quite a run for my money, even though I was thirty years his junior!  We walked and talked, up and down the hilly streets, discussing everything from water purification to child-rearing to a woman's aging gracefully.  I remember this charming man with such fondness.

"It was around 5 o'clock in the morning when my father died, too," Emi shared this morning.  "I was the one to call the ambulance.  I remember thinking that the sun should not be shining.  It was a beautiful, bright sunny morning.  I thought the birds should not be singing.  But they were.  I felt like I had to do something.  At times like this, I always feel like I must do something.  I remember that I started to clean the kitchen floor.  The police were still there, and I was cleaning the kitchen floor."

Oh, the joyful reality that one day there will be no more tears!  "For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes" (Revelation 7:17).

No more let sins and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found...

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

I'm not cheating! I'm just getting a "practice day" head start or two on my friend Pam's December Blog Challenge.

I've been more than a bit absent from the blogosphere lately, and, though I could blame it on the intestinal flu our family has been passing around, it would be a lie.

I am sitting at my in-laws' house in NC...the delicious smells of pork roast and verivorst--Estonian Christmas sausage--wafting through the house...listening to the achingly beautiful strains of Pandora Radio's "instrumental holiday" station...

Life really is so unbelievably rich and wonderful, and I am so sinfully, defiantly ungrateful when I stew around in impatience... Indignance... grumpiness... ingratitude. May I remember every moment of every day those good "tidings of comfort and joy" that changed absolutely everything! What have I to grumble and fret about when the Lord of all has rescued and redeemed me and walks with me in sweet fellowship and the promise of unending faithfulness.

Overruled!

Stroke of Color

I have not yet had a chance to visit my sweet grandmother, MuMama, who had a stroke on Tuesday. The following sketch is imaginary, based on descriptions from my father and my daughter OG, who are there and have had a chance to visit with her these last days. We're not sure how she is, really, or how she will be, yet, and we certainly have no idea what the remainder of her time on this earth will look like. She is in her 90's. She is so precious to me.

I wrote this character sketch as a sample for the students in my Creative Writing class.

The old woman just lies there. Her head is turned in the direction of the window, so a careless observer might assume that she is looking out of it, at the trees and sky beyond, but I know better. I know that she is just staring at the air in the direction that is now most comfortable for her damaged body. Her head is resting funny—wrong, really—like the flopped-over face of a rag doll tossed thoughtlessly on the bed.

Dejected. Lonely. Confused. These are never words I would have thought could be used to describe my grandmother, who has always been vivacious and infectiously joyful. Happy. Laughing, usually. But not now. Now that the stroke has ravaged her body, her face hangs limply, eyes staring out from a face that contorts awkwardly if she tries to smile. Her once free-flowing speech, now slurred and difficult to understand, has almost entirely ceased. The words are difficult to find, like some long-lost memory of a name, so close on the edge of the mind, but never quite accessible.

Her face looks old. Before that morning—the fateful morning that both left her with us and took her from us—the lines and wrinkles were barely noticeable, swallowed up in her bright smile, closely enfolding the eyes twinkling from within the folds of that blanket of flesh. Now that same blanket of creased flesh surrounds those same eyes, but the sparkle in the eyes is gone. Blankly they stare, in the direction of some barely remembered dream that she can’t quite find again.

I know that if I speak to her, move into her field of vision and address her by her sweet, sweet name, she will rally. She will push through the fog and swim through the sludge to find me. Those eyes will brighten again, and the blanket of flesh will lift, beautifying the face that the stroke has tried to ravage. I will be reminded once more that Death has no sting.

“MuMama,” I barely whisper past the lump in my throat. I find my voice and try again. “MuMama! Hello!”

With great effort, she turns her head my way, and the light returns to the angelic face. I think that, really, it has never been so beautiful as it is in this moment…this moment of pure joy upon hearing my voice. With great force of will, I anchor my trembling chin and shore up the eyes that threaten to burst the dam, and I reach out for her fragile hand. She has been given another day of life, to live in praise and submission to the One who grants her every breath, and who has chosen, in the mystery of His sovereign wisdom, to have this day be lived like this. And He has chosen to let me be here to share it.

“Hey, Sugar!” Her familiar voice reaches my ears, and I smile.

The Day I Knew...

Today is the day I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my decision to finally outsource my son's math instruction this year was a good one. This is the letter to his teacher--written totally "in Greek"--which I found cc'ed in my inbox today:

Mrs. M.,
When we find the inverse of a function and then prove that f(f-1(x)) = x and f-1(f(x)) = x, does that mean that f(x) = f-1(x)?
If we solve for f(x) = f-1(x), though, they don't cancel each other out. For instance:


f(x) = 6x

f-1(x) = x/6

If f(x) = f-1(x), then 6x = x/6, which is impossible, because then:

6x = x/6
x = x/36
1 = x/36x
1 = 1/36

OR

x/6 = 6x
x = 36x
1 = 36x/x
1 = 36

But, since f(f-1(x)) = x is true, f-1(f(x)) = x is true, and f(x) ≠ f-1(x) is true, does that mean that x ≠ x? I'm a little confused by this... Could you explain it for me?

Thanks,
PT

Hunh?! Thankfully, he is now asking somebody besides me!!

Fed Your Brain Today?

In this gloriously packed time of adjusting to a new homeschool schedule, I have run across this wonderful link to a great site.



I'm putting a permanent link in the sidebar so my kids can easily find it.  Thanks to Ann Voskamp and her wonderful blog for this list!  (This link will lead you to her blog post.  Scroll down past the photos to get to the list.)

A Girl and Her Dog

This is how I found them...