OMF in North East Japan

This is the photo we took at our last OMF Prayer Meeting. Usually just Aomori missionaries meet together but this time the Sendai folks came and we had an overnight in the Aomori Christian Center at Moya. Luke and Yuko came, too. They are applying to be OMF Partners and since Luke had the day off work they decided to join us.

Old mail

I've had this excerpt from a 1963 OMF Superintendent's Letter in my Inbox for weeks because it seems too good to file away without notice. But with 294 emails in my Inbox ... I think its time for some housecleaning! But I'm posting it here before I file.

"For two weeks in early April 1963 Dr. Billy Graham will be in Japan again. On his previous visit this was his message to missionaries:

'If I were a missionary in Japan, I would do six things.

1. I would make sure, absolutely dead sure, that I had been called of the Spirit of God.
2. I would make sure that I had been filled with the Spirit.
3. I would learn the language with God's help.
4. I would do all I could to show that Christianity is not an American religion.
5. I would get 12 men around me. It may take 5 years to do it, but get 12 people that are thoroughly born again and spend dayswith them, hours with them, have them as disciples right around you.
6. I would work together with all those who love Jesus Christ.'

Our new cat door!

Intrepid examining our new cat door.

The real story is that they brought the wrong bath the other day, so we still have a gaping hole in the side of our house. But we find that humor helps! So we call it the cat door. And there is a silver lining to this most recent trouble. We get to enjoy the local hotspring. Ordinarily it seems "too expensive" but when we "have to go" we certainly enjoy it! There's an outdoor bath which is lovely in the moonlight. (This weekend is full moon.)

And the cats are certainly enjoying their new catdoor!

Singing while you work (walk)...

...is definitely more difficult than its cracked up to be. The songs song by chain gangs, galley slaves and the men who built the railways (or was that the chain gangs?!) always sound so cool. And I thought they did it to make the work go easier. But how did they do it?! I can't even sing when I walk without my voice breaking!

Why I don't answer my mail anymore

... nor a great many other things!

I'm slowly going blind. Or at least that's what it feels like when I try to work on my lame laptop.

SHARP PC-CL1-5VE

Moby Dick as Sarah christened my laptop is slim, light, has a DVD player and lots of memory... but the fan is always running. In the photo its propped up on hymn books so that it won't overheat. And, maybe because it overheated too many times, the backlight (inverter?) died just as I was about to leave for summer vacation in Miyagi Prefecture at the beginning of August. Naturally this was just a few months AFTER the warrantee ran out.

Matthew, who was staying with us at the time, showed me how to hook it up to an old monitor that I borrowed from another missionary. So now I have a non-portable laptop that is slowly driving me blind.

I suppose I should take it in to be fixed SOON but backing up the files is such a daunting a task!

I miss my old IBM.

Guilt and Innocence

"Why, I wondered, was there so little Russian outrage at the Gulag? Why did its perpetrators live on unpunished? I became dogged by the idea of a national collusion, in which everyone was guilty, everyone was innocent."

- p. 153 Colin Thubron, In Siberia

This paragraph from Colin Thubron's (very depressing!) book reminds me of the situation in Gosh that I have been writing to our prayer partners about... The inertia of good men (and women) has my stomach in knots. But surely God reigns.

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;

do not fret when men succeed in their ways,

when they carry out their wicked schemes. PS 37:7

No Shortcuts

This was too good not to share!

"The most delicate and critical element of a deep relationship is trust, and there is absolutely no way of arriving at trust overnight. And so it is obvious that there are no shortcuts. That is why thoughtful adults, who have watched sadly and helplessly while young people try these shortcuts, conclude that sex experience before confidentiality, empathy and trust have been established can hinder, and may actually destroy, the possibility of a solid, permanent relationship.

"Sexual acts between a man and a woman probably do not remain meaningful for any appreciable length of time outside marriage. It is the intent behind the legal ceremony of marriage that provides continuity to the sexual relationship, gives it meaning and validity, turns it into something to develop, to deepen, to protect and to sacrifice for. In the repeated sexual act within marriage, a man and a woman are saying to each other, "I chose you once above all others, and now I choose you again. I'll choose you tomorrow and next year and the year after that and when we're 40 or 50 or 60 and neither of us is any longer so attractive.

"For herein lies the key: marriage is not something imposed by society or religion - far from it. Marriage is a state freely and consciously and joyfully sought by men and women. It is an elective state. What is the secret of the highly constant polarity of most human beings toward this relationship? The answer is that only within the self-sought marriage bond can two people create for themselves the security of peace and solitude and time - lifetime - by which they can accomplish that which is pivotal and central to all else, namely, total communion. "

-from There Are No Shortcuts to Marriage by Mary Steichen Calderone, M.D.

It kind of reminds me of some of the issues Luke has discussed on his blogs Gaijin for Life and Luke and Yuko's Wedding .

Beginning a lifetime of trust!

Bring on the hymns!

Sunday night we had a song service instead of the usual worship service. I used to feel I could sing all night but this time I was tired after an hour. The songs were pretty but it was so hard to distinguish the melody with those particular instruments and singing with the microphones overpowering everything gave me a sore throat. Why do people use microphones in small buildings with good accoustics?!

Quite frankly I missed hearing the voices of the congregation. I missed the chance to choose some of my favorites. And I missed the old hymns - I'm not the only one who chooses them!

Masa probably loved it. On Saturday he gave the most novel excuse I've ever heard for not singing hymns... They convict him of sin and make him cry.

Bring on the hymns!

Mount Iwaki: Waiting on the weaker brother

Usually our Mt. Iwaki expeditions are exhausting and exhilarating, but relatively uneventful... Although I suppose there was the time my mother pitched off the path headfirst into the bushes and was rescued by the (JET) English teacher who was with us - he grabbed her by the foot. At least, I think that's what happened. It happened so long ago that I now remember the story rather than the actual event.

Subsequent climbs have been considerably less exciting but I think our climb the other day has exhausted my adrenalin for the month!

Taking a break at the midway point

It was a muggy day - lousy for climbing really - but the only day possible and Mary and Michael both pressed hard to keep to the plan. The mountain was cold and windy and very tiring - especially after Ghents' team passed us out. (I HATE being left behind!)

At the top

As we started down it crossed my mind that the young man in front of me - one of Ghents' team - should perhaps have rested longer. He had finally struggled to the top just minutes before we all started our descent and he seemed determined to make better speed going down. He also looked as wobbly as I felt, but in the split second that my brain registered that thought he stumbled and rolled - over the edge.The nature of his physique and the steepness of the incline lent itself to the assumption that once started he would roll all the way down.

I felt so paralysed, but in actual fact I yelled his name - as if I could stop him by the sheer force of my voice! - and I was the first to reach him. I grabbed him by the wrists but soon began to think he would let go of the spike he was hanging on to and plunge down the mountain taking me with him. So I was pretty relieved when my husband and another member of his team hauled him back on to the path.

We were escorted down by the Mountain Patrol who had hung around waiting for us because they had noticed Mary climbing in flip-flops. (We didn't tell them that its not the first time Mary has climbed in flip-flops!) As the only Japanese speaker at the front of the line I was lectured quite thoroughly on mountain climbing etiquette - always go at the pace of weakest member of your group - and apparel - no flip-flops!

Our team and half of Ghents' team

I think there is a spiritual lesson there, but will let everyone draw their own conclusions.

Why I haven't even commented on my son's wedding... or anything else!

John and I have felt overloaded for several months now - not by work really so much as by too many voices, sudden changes and the general confusion that occurs when there are too many competing events.

But I think that there is an even more important reason. My room...

Its hard to think when your desk looks like this!

And I suppose it began to look like this because I was overloaded by other things, but somewhere along the line it became a cycle. Sort of like the old poem:

DO YE NEXT THING

"Lose this day loitering, and 'twill be the same story

Tomorrow; and the next, more dilatory:

The indecision brings its own delays,

And days are lost, lamenting o'er lost days."

Why do good men do nothing?

"All it takes

for evil to triumph

is for good men to do nothing."

-Edmund Burke

What I want to know is WHY do good men do nothing?!

Tonight I want to shout this question. I'm not talking about politics - at least not world politics. I'm talking about when 5 people are on a committee and two of them know that the two doing the most talking are dead wrong, why do they say nothing? Especially when they KNOW what the consequences will be for the group the committee is running.

Why do they say nothing?

I ask my husband this question a lot. He says "They won't listen." But wasn't John the Baptist "a voice crying in the wilderness." What about Jeremiah? Did anybody listen to him?

God told Ezekiel, "You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen."

So why are good men silent? Can they still be good if they do nothing?

Drinking Rules

I've had this entry on the back burner for weeks... the cherry blossoms are long gone! But life with the Elliots has been in high gear and I feel like I haven't had time to think in weeks. But I have done lots of thinking, just not much writing.

And its been a while since we've had an outing quite so nice as this picnic under the cherry blossoms. It was beautiful! And quiet. Not one drunk shouted "This is a pen." Or anything else. In fact, there were no drunks in this park. And THAT is remarkable. The first couple of times I went to see the cherry blossoms I wondered if anybody was actually looking at the blossoms! It seemed to me that most people were eating and drinking themselves silly without so much as an upward glance.

Our organizer, Sarah Heidebrecht, me, and Hans Welti (Swiss STW with the Elliots).

I don't actually drink for reasons I may explain in later posts. But sometime around the Cherry Blossom Festival I wrote down my "Rules for Drinking" on the back of a tissue box lying around my room. (I think this action was precipitated by daughter number #3 telling me that daughter # 1's in-laws were encouraging her to take a little wine for her stomache.)

Rules:

1. Never drink alone.

2. Never drink before noon. Better yet, wait until the evening meal.

3. Never drink without eating.

4. NEVER get drunk.

5. ALWAYS show a restraint that will give courage to your weaker brother. In fact, it is better not to drink at all at parties.

Perfect Baby Syndrone

Sarah and I met John and my nieces at Narita on Wednesday afternoon - which I suppose would be somewhat like driving down from Connecticut to pick them up in Virginia - and drove up to Takayama where we have been catching up on a month's worth of discussion, and sleep.... and being Elliots, naturally, reading. John keeps reading us long and stimulating passages out of Nancy Pearcey's book Total Truth.

The old cabin where we do our reflecting

But what has caught my attention this morning is short passage out of an article in a magazine article I randomly picked up this morning. (We have books and ancient magazines in nearly every room of the cabin.)

In an April 2004 article in The Weekly Standard, Gordon College professor Agnes Howard puts it this way: "Already we act as though what gives moral standing to pregnancy is the choosing of it, preferably in advance, if necessary after the fact but always the conscious determination to continue it rather than end it... To universalize genetic diagnosis is to entrench even more deeply than we already have the idea that a baby becomes a baby only when we choose to grant it that status - if and when it passes genetic muster."

It was that phrase "we act as though what gives moral standing to pregnancy is the choosing of it" or maybe the phrase "we have the idea that a baby becomes a baby only when we choose to grant it that status" that caught my attention. It fits right in with what John's been reading to us.

And it touched me deeply. I thought not of babies but of a young man whom I never knew but whose body I sat vigil over several years ago.

After an evening of drunken foolishness he lurched into the path of a speeding car with predictable results. Friends kept vigil as long as there was hope and his girlfriend never left his side - until the family gathered to say good bye. But after the good-by was said he lay alone and died alone. Even I was struck by the unconscious callousness - did his broken life really have meaning and existence only until they chose to let him go?! - but my daughter was horrified and wanted to go sit by his side (though she didn't know him) until he died. I wish now that I had helped her do that.

We are deceived indeed if we think our choice is what determines the worth of a thing.

The "Perfect Baby Syndrome" article ended: By destroying children like him; by forgetting the words of the One who said, "Whatever you did to one of the least of these you did to Me" - we may defeat certain diseases, but the price is our own moral and spiritual health.

Do you know this man?

Do you know this man? I afraid I didn't. And he was VERY surprised!

Taro Kimura - Aomori's representative in the Japanese Diet

I see his face often enough on poster boards all over the prefecture... but I wasn't expecting to see him at the Kite Festival. I suppose his black suit should have tipped me off - and the fact that he was shaking hands with so many people.

We both watched each other surreptitiously for awhile and finally started talking. He said his wife is from Ajigasawa. When I asked him who he was his eyes widened and he asked incredulously, as he handed me his business card, "You really don't know who I am?"

Of course, I knew him as soon as I read his name - and was duly embarressed.

A European Entry

A Local Entry from Kuroishi

Got pretty bashed up. The wind kept whipping it into the ground.

There were some rather novel entries ... although the Europeans told me that they weren't able to bring out their best kites because the wind was so tempermental.

Enduring hardships

I didn't have a nifty camera phone like Luke's with me - in fact, I didn't have any sort of phone with me because I seem to have left it on the floor of the truck in the Aomori Ferry Terminal parking lot - or this would be illustrated with a photo of my dismayed face when I realized that I could either stand in the wind for an hour at in front of U of Hokkaido's branch campus ... or walk an hour into town.

I started walking. And it occured to me that a few days before when my heart had thrilled to the challenge "We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God," I must have been planning to pick the hardships myself!

Somehow climbing Mt. Iwaki - when I choose! - is exhilerating even for my middleaged self. But having to walk into Hakkodate carrying a backpack, computer, and a shopping bag because the bus driver of the wrong bus did't have the courtesy to suggest that if I wanted to catch the right bus I might better hustle.

I did get there, Mary was still waiting for me, and I was easily convinced to spend an extra 2 hours with her to rest my blistered feet. So having spent the weekend with 3 (Mary, Yuko, and Anna) of my 5 daughters, I've now forgiven or at least mostly forgotten my unfriendly bus driver.

What I really wanted to say!

This recent comment on an old post is too good to miss, so I'm bringing it forward. THANK YOU (!) Jacob for putting it even better than I did.

The Schiavo case is pretty troubling for me. Autumn and I have discussed it at length and come to several conclusions. There is no way the courts should have allowed the husband to take her off the tubes. There was just as little medical hope for her when she began to live in this way, the only thing that has changed is HIS level of hope, which is a sad way for the courts to make any life and death decisions. There is quite a big difference between allowing someone to slip away naturally, and giving them life sustaining food and care for years and then ACTIVELY denying those essentials based on your waning hope. He also had moved on with his life, started another family, essentially divorced himself from her. That should have been enough to make the courts see that he did not have her interests in mind, only wanted to ease his guilt. I feel bad for him, but I feel worse that the courts would make a decision based on this case. Her parents, not moving on with life, were willing to choose life, to choose hope, but the courts chose to up hold the husbands 'rights' based on a contract (marriage) that fails over 50% of the time, over a bond between parent and child! He didn't have to do anything, simple hand the care over to people that WANTED the burden. The courts got stuck on the question of quality of life and the husband's rights. Goodness! When in doubt of what is the right road, I say choose life! ---Jacob

Jacob & Autumn Witt

Active versus passive living

Luke's April 18th blog entry on "No TV" brought back a lot of memories.... we did in actual fact have a TV when the kids were small - we bought a miniscule black and white TV in order to make the neighbors take back their TV. But we only watched one program a week - Sesame Street. When we moved to Ajigasawa and started the church we bought a larger TV - but no antenna - and a video machine. We watched only one movie a week (although we might watch that one movie a number of times) and on Sunday night we discussed it in depth.

Watching Sesame Street

It didn't really have so much to do with bad programming - we've watched a number of not so very good movies in our time - but rather with living our own lives.

We wanted our children to actively THINK about everything they saw and heard - not just passively take it all in. We wanted them to get up off their fannies and go do their own living instead of sitting and watching the world go by!

We also wanted them to have an attention span longer than most the children we knew, so other rules were: if you are watching, then watch; if you start watching you watch it to the bitter end; never watch alone; discuss, discuss, discuss.

Utilizing women

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been thinking a lot about actively living life instead of passively letting it happen to me. So perhaps that's why I was so annoyed by the questionnaire I had to fill out about gender and gifting.

It started:

Please indicate how much you agree with the following statements regarding the gifts and abilities of women in OMF:

They are well utilized according to their gifting and skills.
They are well utilized according to their past experience.
They are well utilized according to their leadership potential.
They are well utilized in their available time.

By the time I got this far I was well annoyed. What kind of attitude is that? Why should I wait around to be "utilized"?!!!!!

So my answer was: "There was no space to comment on your earlier questions which I did not answer because I object to the wording. I don't believe that OMF - or anyone else - should be "utilizing" women. I believe that women should be actively serving God not passively waiting to be "utilized" by OMF. I live too far off the beaten track to comment on the rest of OMF, but my sister and I have certainly made good use of our training, skills, past experience and leadership potential! And I trust that we have also made good use of our time."

Using my training, skills, past experience and leadership potential

Teen Camp Birthday Party ... "I had made a cake and set the tables up with candlelight and decorations from the caretakers secret supply room. But the program came to me in a moment of frustration when I arrived at the evening meeting just as it was closing. It was a VERY short meeting! But there had been a good message. I briefly considered lobbying for more songs on the spot, but decided in favor of the fact that the woman with the food had the power of choice. So I made them all "sing for their supper". We had an impromptu testimony and song time (modeled on Sunday evenings at Eastford Baptist in the 1960s and 70s.) It was much more satisfying then a response to my lobbying would have been. We sang A LOT of songs and the only people who didn't give testimonies were two girls who have never even gone to church."

My Cosmetic Life

Today I've been thinking all day about active (versus passive) living. But there is no time to write down all my thoughts. So I shall begin in a VERY SMALL way by bouncing off a conversation with Yuko (Luke's fiance) on the way to the ferry this morning.

Women in Eastford, Connecticut in the 1960s didn't wear much make-up besides the lipstick that they put on for special occasions - and then blotted off almost entirely before covering with powder. There were a few REMARKABLE exceptions to this generality - usually old ladies in fur coats with startlingly colored hair.

But I still admired the well-made up women in magazines and longed for the day when I too could have long black eyelashes, and pastel green eyelids. My mother, naturally, told me I was nuts, and I, naturally, did not believe her.

I began - and pretty well ended - my make-up life with mascara. I soon discovered that I cry when I'm sad, when I'm mad, when I'm happy, when I see something beautiful, when the music touches my heart ... I also rub my eyes. I gave up eye makeup in favor of maintaining an active emotional life.

I did attempt to persevere with the tradition of lipstick for special occasions - until I had proved - or rather my husband had proved - that any lipstick that matches my skin tone (an expensive and time consuming feat in itself) does not taste all that hot. Since I rather enjoy kissing my husband, I was only mildly disappointed to discover my daughter had used it for other purposes.

Sarah's Alternative Use of Cosmetics

Sarah's Art in a More Traditional Medium

Sarah's Cosmetic Job

Lenten Candles

Services For The Lenten Candles

I just discovered that I did NOT invent Lenten candles - I just seriously revised the custom in my ignorance. Apparently you're supposed to extinguish a candle each week instead of lighting a new one. "Just as the Lenten season reminds the Christian of Christ's journey to the cross, the seven candles and the weekly extinguishing of each one enhances that long, soon-to-be dark journey. When the last candle is extinguished and the darkness seems to be all-consuming, worshipers will feel the darkness of the soul at the time of Christ's crucifixion."

At Christianbook.com they even sell the purple candles with one pink (we use purple candles with one white) and a cross holder (our holder is a lily).

Perfection or nothing

"Have any two people never felt like walking away from each other? The difference is that the deep underlying sense of the importance of family continuity must be stronger than the insistence on having perfection. People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it. Everyone has been in danger of this, but many more each year are giving in to it."

-Edith Schaeffer, What is a Family?

I'm actually getting along just fine with my husband - despite a little tension this week arising from the huge task of getting him packed off to Canada for a month. But it wasn't always fine. Recently I lent Edith Schaeffer's book to a young lady who wrote today noting this very passage which I have marked in my own copy. (I was feeling possessive so I lent her my daughter's copy.)

Look at what I would have missed!

I'm glad I stayed!

Who Qualifies for Personhood?

Tonight I read a good editorial by John Leo, A Regrettable Limit on Life , and was particularly struck by the following paragraph:

"Instead of the traditional emphasis on the sanctity of life, bioethics began to stress the quality of life, meaning that many damaged humans, young and old, don't qualify for personhood because their lives have lost value. The nonpersons should be allowed to die and in some cases be killed. This explains why so few bioethicists have protested what the state and her husband planned for Terri Schiavo, who is severely damaged, but not in pain or dying, not brain dead, and in no position to protest her own execution on grounds that other people consider it best for her. "

A Visit With Terri Schiavo
Terri Schiavo Expresses Her Wishes

I think I would have been impressed in any case but today it was particularly poignant because we stopped in Morioka on the way home to visit a handicapped man we first met in Sapporo 25 years ago when he was a child of 8 and we were (verbally handicapped) language students.

He drives a car, he has a job. On the wall are photos of him sking. We watched a DVD of him Scuba Diving in Okinawa. But in Hitler's Germany he, too, would have been eliminated. A non-person...

With Koji Oya in his home in Morioka

Appreciation of Beauty and the Gift of Articulation

"Parents unconsciously teach their children what is valuable by the way they spend their own time. If television is more important to the parent than books, the children will likely choose the same. If the caliber of television, and its advertising was consistently excellent, then perhaps less would be lost. Television is here to stay, and its better productions are highly recommended learning experiences. Certainly it would be folly for me in one paragraph to try to defeat the allurements of the screen. But families do have to repeatedly make conscious decisions about what is valuable and then choose the best over the mediocre. If appreciation of beauty and the gift of articulation are meaningful to you, than I suggest that exposure to great writing is a necessity."

- Gladys Hunt in "Honey for a Child's Heart"

No Easter Bunny

I've had these Easter photos sitting in a draft for days now waiting to be struck with eloquence. But eloquence hasn't struck so here is the prosaic version...

Molded Cakes, Passover and Lenten Candles

When the children were small and we were just starting the church in Ajigasawa, my husband said (over and over and over and at every opportunity) that Easter should be celebrated in a bigger way than Christmas. This proved somewhat of a challenge at first. When it came to the traditional routes of celebration, my father ruled out the Easter Bunny (pagan), my mother ruled out Easter Baskets (bad for your teeth), and my husband objected to fasting for Lent.

So I invented Lenten candles. At least, I think I did. I've never seen them anywhere else. The first year I dipped white candles in melted purple crayons - one for each week of Lent - and we ate supper by candle light every night for 40 days while working through the I AMs in the Gospel of John. ( I AM the bread of life, I AM the light of the world, I AM the gate, I AM the good shepherd, I AM the way, the truth and the life, I AM the true vine, I AM the resurrection and the life.)

Good Friday Last Supper Celebration of Crackers and Grape Juice

(I was pregnant and feeling rather green!)

Before coming to Japan, John, Luke and I lived in the Jewish section of Toronto (at Bathurst and Wilson) and so eventually we decided to add a Passover celebration. (I had bought a candlestick and several books of Jewish Celebrations.)

The Elliots first attempt at a Passover/Last Supper Celebration

This Year's Celebration

Somewhere along the line when I was out trying to buy purple candles (without success - we did crayons again that year) I stumbled upon 3 German cake molds: a hen, a rooster and a lamb. So now we've added cakes to our celebration.

We have the hen on Palm Sunday to remind us of Jesus grieving over Jerusalem "How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."

The rooster on Good Friday reminds us of Peter and how easily we deny our Saviour.

And, of course, the lamb on Easter reminds us of Jesus, "the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

In 1994, we started the English Worship Service in Itayanagi with the Ghents and so now we celebrate the Passover/Last Supper twice - in Japanese on Friday and in English on Saturday. It's not as repetitious as it sounds because my sister prepares the Itayanagi meal and her style is quite different from mine. (We did bring a rooster cake though!)

Saturday in Itayanagi

This year there was a song service after the Itayanagi Passover which made it extra nice.

Sunday morning Mary wakes us up by calling out "Christ has risen" like my father used to do - only he said it in Greek! And we reply "He is risen indeed!" I didn't take any photos of our Sunday morning breakfast with the Sunday School in Aji this year but our breakfast is also a somewhat personal tradition.

After much describing of services I have attended and hinting at what would be nice to immitate ...I finally gave up. There isn't a chance of getting our present Aji congregation psyched up for a Sunrise Service! However, they will come for breakfast at 8:30 or 9:00AM. So every year we have fish and French bread for breakfast at Sunday School on Easter morning.

The first year we ate breakfast at the beach - an exhilerating experience in the sharp spring wind - but we are wimps and it has been at the church ever since.

Last year Sarah instituted a new custom for our family. She stuffed all the texts from Handel's "Messiah" into beautifully decorated Easter eggs and our family opened the eggs and read the texts together. (Which, of course, led to listening to a recording of the music!) It was so special that we did it again this year.

A few of this year's Messiah stuffed eggs.

Are only beautiful lives worthwhile?

When I asked Ruth Mae for the details today, she didn't recognize my story - but she told me another one that was pretty amazing - so perhaps its Cassandra or Samuel who confirmed yesterday's story. They both worked at Camp Joy a few years after I did.

Ruth Mae does have a large fund of stories - many of them very personal - about what unconscious/unresponsive people hear. (Scarey stuff!)

And from my short months of experience working with the profoundly (mentally) handicapped at Valley View, I have a strong consciousness of life behind the barrier of a "persistent vegetative state".... and who we to say that life isn't worthy?

Are only beautiful lives worthy?

Our Useless Cats

Enjoying Their Useless Lives By the Stove

Why Kill Her?

We are at our summer cabin for a few days for bit of a break (assuming that a change is as good as rest) and I'm enjoying the sound of rain on the roof, the warmth issuing from the wood stove and the comfortable feeling that comes from watching 3 cats curled up on my bed purring contentedly.

I remember the summer I was sixteen. There were cabins and there was rain ... and there were incredible stories.

1971 Lakeside Bible Conference

Sam, Laurie and SuAnn Mannhardt

I was working at Camp Joy in Carmel, NY as a counsellor for kids from NYC. Our kids were from the inner city and had their own (often frightening) stories to tell. But the story I am thinking of tonight I heard in the chapel where we gathered every night with the children from the adjacent Camp Hope.

Camp Hope was divided into A and B for physically and mentally handicapped children and as the name indicates, the camp founders believed in hope for the handicapped.

Some of the children were there because of the horrible things that had been done to them... some had been thrown out of upper story windows, some had been beaten to a pulp by their caregivers. Others were, for reasons known only to God Himself, simply born that way.

I think the boy in the story I'm remembering was damaged at birth - possibly cerebral palsy. He definitely didn't move at all for the first 15 or so years of this story. I think he could easily have qualified as being in a "persistent vegetative state", but I don't remember vegetative states being part of our vocabulary in those days. Certainly nobody had given his parents any false hopes - or any kind of hopes at all. But they kept him at home and cared for him. One day his mother found him on the floor. And then again. And then again. Since he was profoundly handicapped and had been so for many years, his mother didn't immediately assume his falling off the bed was volitional. But when he persisted in falling off the bed, she began to have niggling doubts. Maybe he was cognizant...

So she began to work with him - and, miraculously, he responded! Eventually he achieved a certain amount of mobility and learned to communicate.

The really incredible part of the story and the part I found hard to believe - until one of my sisters actually met him and heard him speak - is that he eventually married, had children and became a pastor. Perhaps I've got the details wrong - I'll ask my sister tomorrow. But I KNOW that after many years a profoundly brain damaged young man "woke up"and lived a "meaningful life."

So while I don't for a minute believe that Terry Schiavo will ever be the Terry she was before losing consciousness that night long ago, I believe with all my heart that Peggy Noonan was absolutely right when she said:

"Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads."

But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it?"

Yes, why kill her? What IS good about it?

Painless?

If dying without food and water is so painless - and can anyone in their right mind really believe that?! - why do they have to give Terry Schiavo morphine for the pain?

Dr. David Stevens, executive director of the Christian Medical Association in Bristol, Tenn., has worked in some of Africa's poorest nations.

He recalls watching people die of dehydration with symptoms that include thick saliva, severe cramps and dry heaving. As their mucous membranes and intestines dry out, they bleed from the mouth and nose, and begin to hallucinate.

Stevens says the quiet death that physicians often associate with dehydration comes to patients whose bodies were already shutting down from cancer or another terminal illness. "That's a whole different thing than someone like this, whose body is in metabolic equilibrium," he said.

--from news article "Schiavo's Hydration Level Raises Questions"

Don't Kick the Bag!

Narinari still hasn't handed over the disk of photos for KGK Camp. (He says there are 200 photos.) But there's something else I want to comment on anyway. The Terry Schiavo case has moved me ever since I looked at the videos quite by chance. When I first read about the legal case I pictured a fetuslike unconscious ball - something like Karen Quinlan - only kept breathing by a machine. What I saw was a woman who was alive and responsive. She was profoundly brain damaged BUT she WAS conscious, certainly as conscious as the profoundly retarded adults I cared for when I worked at Valley View.

Today John sent me an editorial by Peggy Noonan that really expressed my feelings. I quote in part:

"There is a passionate, highly motivated and sincere group of voters and activists who care deeply about whether Terri Schiavo is allowed to live. Their reasoning, ultimately, is this: Be on the side of life. They remind me of what Winston Churchill said once when he became home secretary in charge of England's prisons. He was seated at dinner with a jabbery lady who said that if she were ever given a life sentence she'd rather die than serve it. He reared back. No, he said, always choose life! "Death's the only thing you can't get out of!"

......

"Just so. Life is full of surprise and lightning-like lurches. The person in a coma today wakes up tomorrow and says, "Is that you, mom?" Life is unknowable. Always give it a chance to shake your soul and upend reality.

"At the heart of the case at this point is a question: Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?

No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It's a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"

"Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.

"But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he'd say, "Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something's in it and you don't know if it's alive, you don't kick it, do you?" No, you don't. "

Thinking like a Christian

This is a small part of what I wrote on the final day of the KGK Camp...

My real and lasting burden - the necessity that I am struck with at every turn - is the need to address the lack of a Christian world view. A Christian should think like a Christian. A Christian should talk like a Christian when he/she "sits at home and when [he/she] walks along the road, when [he/she] lies down and when [he/she] gets up." Deuteronomy 6:7

And all this talking in the natural course of life should make a (positive) impression on the children (again Deuteronomy 6:7) in the home.

Akiko, Shino, Mary and Yuri

I was astounded by the young man who wasn't sure if he has an hour's worth of discussion with his Christian parents in the course of a week. (I feel like he said a month, but we will be gracious... ) That's appalling!

I want to be part of inspiring this rising generation to do differently, to practice their Chrisitanity at home and everywhere, to eat and drink and do even the smallest things in life to the glory of God.

I'm tired of a little bit of Christian paint over worldy core values and I want to change that in my part of the world.

"What Should I Do? My Will and God's Will"

Gaining a Daughter

I'm still waiting for the disk of photos from KGK Camp. So all the KGK entries I had planned are on hold for the moment.

But here are couple of photos of our expedition to Hakodate on Monday to meet our son's future in-laws. (Luke has posted a full collection on his blog.) By amazing co-incidence Mr. Takahashi's hometown is Yuda in Iwate - the very place we had just been for the KGK Camp last week.

Yuko Takahashi with her parents

Yuko chose the Old English Consulate in Moto Machi for our meeting place - a place where Mary and I have often stood gazing through from the little gift shop and wishing we were comfortabley seated in the tea shop instead of just windowshopping. This time I was comfortably seated! The sun shone and we drank pots and pots of tea while we talked.

Luke and Yuko's Happy Parents

Luke is very fortunate in his choice of a wife and we are all looking forward to their marriage on June 25th.

For those of you who are impatient to see the camp photos I found a few on the Zion Kinshuko website - see if you can find the photos (本日のシオン錦秋湖）and the first 5 or 6 photos feature the KGK Camp. (That will change when they finish the High School Camp this week and the Jr.High Camp next week.)

When good men do nothing

All it takes
for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing.
– Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was right - BUT I was much too cynical when I first posted on Sunday afternoon. So this is now "Take 3" on the AGM in Gosh.

While I can't help but feel that some very BAD decisions were made, it is so important to maintain a good attitude. "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:21)

We must go on hoping. Sunday morning I read "And you will again see a distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not." (Malachi 4:18) Surely that time will come!

In the meantime "those who suffer according to God's will, should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and CONTINUE TO DO GOOD." (1 Peter 4:19)

Image versus logical thought

Thinking does not play well on television,

a fact that television directors discovered long ago.

There is not much to see in it.

It is, in a phrase, not a performing art.

-Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death

How is it possible to read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18, 19) and not realize that Sodom and Gomorrah are cities?! I find this lapse of understanding amazing (appalling?) However, last night not just one but two people in my small group Bible study said that, although they had heard the story before, up until now they had always thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were people.

Try reading the story with Sodom and Gomorrah being people instead of cities - I don't see how it is logically possible to mix them up. Perhaps Postman was right about our image based society and what television has done to shape its thinking? ? ?

KGK Spring Camp

Gracie's Guardian Angels

One of the stories that we OMFers talked about at the Retreat was this one:

Gracie’s Guardian Angels

(as told by her father)

Separated by 1000's of miles every time we farewell our children we must commit them to God's care. Grace, who has traveled across the world on her own far more times than most teens, was actually quite scared about using the British rail system on her own. When she set off for the Ayling Kids Family Christmas on January 28th, she had no inkling of the lesson in "grace"God was about to teach her.

The Christian Mountain Centre where she is working is in a remote coastal area in the "wilds" of Snowdonia, North Wales. However, the centre boasts its own unmanned station. (Just stick your hand out to stop a train and pay when you get on.) She had made the change at the junction in mid Wales without incident and arrived in Birmingham to change for Loughborough. Feeling thirsty she thought she'd buy a drink... No wallet!! What to do! No ticket, no money, no bank card!!! At THIS moment her cell phone rings. It's friends touring IN INDIA phoning from a street telephone. "How are you doing?" "Well... actually... " and amid tears and anguish her story tumbles out. "Hang on I'll call my Mum" assures her friend. Within a short time to the disbelief of the station master a ticket is transmitted to Grace. SO began her "2nd Christmas" weekend. Story not over. On the way back at the junction change in Wales the same conductor is on the train. "Did you lose a wallet on Friday?" "YES!!" "We'll get it to you on the train."

Can God be trusted with what is most precious to us? Yes He can.

I love this story... and I love Gracie's parents. Gareth and Ruth Ayling have been such an encouragement to us ever since they welcomed us to OMF's Language Center in Sapporo in the spring of 1979.

Language School Days

Roots

Last week Sarah and I had cabin fever. I'm pretty sure that's how I ended up reading to her while she did the dishes. Of course, reading aloud to each other is such a common occurence in our house that would usually hardly warrent notice. Its the book I want to comment on.

This is the sort of thing Sarah does when she has cabin fever!

Sarah is working through a section in her world views course concerning the Christian view of suffering and so she's reading Edith Schaeffer's "Affliction" ... one of the few of Mrs. Schaeffer's books I haven't read. I had trouble reading without blubbering, not because of the sad stories - there aren't many sad stories in Chapter 5 - but because I started thinking about my roots.

Edith Schaeffer grew up in China, the child of CIM missionaries, and that heritage permeates her works. I felt like I was reading about my roots - I joined CIM/OMF because of the rich heritage of prayer. I read the books, I listened to the China hands... and I tried to model my life after them. But reading Mrs. Schaeffer's book to Sarah I felt as if somewhere along the line I have become detached.

I was particularly rebuked by her passage on the temptation "to take an academic view of prayer excusing ourselves, by hiding behind God's sovereignty, from ever asking anything in the wide areas God has specifically told us to ask - with faith as a grain of mustard seed and expecting changes in history as titanic as the removal of mountains."

While I was still contemplating this, I left for a Retreat at Megumi Chalet in Karuizawa. It was NOT a good time to leave home but the speaker, Jean Barsness, has been our prayer partner ever since we left Briercrest where she became the head of the Missions Department after her husband was martyred in Panama during our 2nd year of college (1974).

Jean Barsness, me and my sister, Ruth Mae Ghent

(Why doesn't anyone ever tell me when my hair needs combing?!)

Mrs. Barsness 4 messages just seemed to further the train of thought that began with reading to Sarah.

I can't remember exactly how Mrs. Barsness said it but Edith Schaeffer put it this way, "Day by day - when we have a drastically crushing load at the office or problems that seem to have no solution in our business; a crop to bring in from the fields or garden and then vegetables that need freezing far into the night before they spoil, or jelly or jam to be made before the fruit goes moldy; a pile of broken glass to sweep up and then carefully gather in wet newspapers, more on-the-knees care to get all the slivers in wet paper towels; a sick child who gets us up in the night when we are too tired to even finish the day's work before going to bed; noises shattering the air during our period of needed rest; a blast coming at us from a critic whom we had thought of as an understanding friend; dropping the grocery bag, leaving the most expensive bottles broken and the other things a soggy mess; in little and big situations of dismay and dismal awareness of our weakness and inadequacy for taking one more step in life - we can speak to the Lord, enter His presence in the context not of our imagination but of His Word, and bring our need of having His strength given us in the immediate situation."

It really was a time of going back to my roots in many ways - when Mrs. Barsness spoke of the "Methods of Bible Study" class back at Briercrest that really brought me up short. All my good intentions... lost in the business of surviving Japan.

Some of my favorite OMF colleagues

Mrs. Barsness told so many good stories. So did my friends and I loved hearing their stories, too.

One last quote from Edith Schaeffer "There is no doubt that we are meant to pray, believing that He is able to answer. We should have a growing history - like a trail of footsteps behind us in an unbroken field of snow- which will bring to mind that great reality which Jeremiah was reminded of as he looked back and spoke forth with great conviction: 'Great is thy faithfulness...' We should be able to look back and gain courage to go on because of the trail of answered prayer. It should be part of the fabric of life."