Mashiach is Coming! Mashiach is Coming!

Great news, the Messiah, aka Mashiah ben David, may arrive as early as next week!

According to Jewish tradition, if Jews celebrate the Sabbath two weeks in a row, the messiah will come. Thanks to Christianity, we just might pull this off.

The first Shabbat was last Saturday, Christmas Day. Most Jews took the day off. Tomorrow is New Year’s Day. Again we will be home. That is two Sabbaths in a row!

Of course these may not count because many of us went out for Chinese food on Christmas, and will watch the bowl games on television tomorrow, but who knows, maybe God isn’t Orthodox.

OK, I admit that God is most likely Orthodox, and less likely to send the Messiah just because we Jews have a couple of Saturdays off from work, but it does raise a question worth pondering: How would you change your life if the Messiah did in fact arrive? What would you do differently?

Share these with us, please. And then ask yourself another question: If the changes you’d make are good ones, why wait? Why not just make the changes now? For all we know that is really what God is waiting for.

Happy New Year.

Close Schools for Christmas? Yes. Close them for Shemini Atzeret? No.

I’m reading Stephen Prothero’s essay in USA TODAY (December 20, 2010) promoting the closing of pubic schools for religious holy days. Dr. Prothero (whose work I admire and use in my courses) notes that public schools already close for some Christian and Jewish holy days, and urges us to add Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Wiccan holy days as well. I disagree.

First of all, our kids need more school days not less.

Second, the only Christian holy day we close schools for is Christmas (more on that below). Easter, arguably the most holy day of the Christian calendar is not a federal holiday, and if some schools close for Good Friday they do so for the same reason some schools close for Rosh HaShanah: demographics.

Third, public schools don’t close for the Jewish holy days. Some schools designate Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur as “teacher work days” because so many of their teachers are Jewish and will take those days off anyway. And they do so only if these holy days fall on school days. And they only close one day for Rosh HaShanah not the two days most Jews observe. So public schools aren’t really closing for the Jewish holy days, they are closing because it is impractical to stay open.

Fourth, public schools are supposed to be secular, and secular schools should not close for religious holy days any more than Catholic schools should close for Hindu holy days. If there are Hindu kids enrolled in the Catholic school, they may choose not to attend class in honor of Diwali, for example, but the school itself need not close.

Fifth, whose holy days would we honor and whose would we ignore? If we are truly inclusive schools wouldn’t open at all.

Which brings me to Christmas. Public Schools do close for Christmas. Is that fair? Yes. Doesn’t that violate church/state separation? No. We are a country with a deeply Christian history and as such we honor the birthday of Jesus the way we honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Both of these birthdays are federal holidays because America would not be America with them.

Making Christmas a federal holiday is more of a threat to the holiness of Christmas than it is to the Constitution. According to the same issue of USA TODAY, “Many [people] skip the holiday’s religious side.” While 90% of Americans celebrate Christmas only 74% say Christmas is “primarily” a religious holy day, only 47% go to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas day, and only 28% tell or read the biblical story of Jesus birth. Sadly for Christians, Christmas is going the way of many other federal holidays: just another day for tacky car ads and excessive shopping.

For me Christmas is a time to honor the most famous rabbi of all time, and I will do that in traditional Jewish fashion: I will argue with everything he had to say.

Tea Party Principles

I am so excited about the Tea Party folks coming into Congress in a few weeks. I like when people of principle actually stand up for what they believe in. True, I don’t share their beliefs, but I respect people who say what they mean and do what they say.

My favorite Tea Party guy is Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation. He is so honest. For example, he wants to limit voting rights to property owners only. This is as American as counting slaves as ¾ human. But it makes some sense. Just look at how renters treat the houses they live in: they trash them because they don’t own them. Of course if we aren’t careful, the only people who will allowed to vote in this country will be the Communist Chinese.

I also like what he has to say about Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN). Mr. Phillips wants him removed from Congress because “he is the only Muslim member of Congress.” This makes sense to me, too. As the only Muslim in Congress, Rep. Ellison must be alienated. Alienated Muslims become radicalized Muslims, and radicalized Muslims use Second Amendment solutions to address their grievances.

But Second Amendment solutions are part of the Tea Party rhetoric, so maybe I have it wrong. Maybe he wants to remove Mr. Ellison from Congress not because he is the only MUSLIM, but because he is the ONLY Muslim. He is concerned that the Congressman is lonely. Nice call: let’s have Muslim members of Congress only when there are enough of them to have a Muslim-American Caucus.

But my favorite principle of Mr. Phillips is his dream to abolish the United Methodist Church, or, as he calls it, “the first Church of Karl Marx.” Last Friday he wrote on his Tea Party Nation blog that the United Methodist Church’s support of the Dream Act makes it an enemy of America. “If you hate America,” he wrote, “you have a great future in the Methodist Church.” (Read his blog at http://www.tngovwatch.org/2010/12/my-dream-no-more-methodist-church/)

Yes, the end of democracy and the Methodist Church. It is going to be a great two years.

What I Want for Christmas

I don’t celebrate Christmas, and I don’t believe in Santa Claus, so Christmas presents are usually out of the question for me. But this year I am making an exception. I still won’t celebrate Christmas and I still can’t bring myself to believe in Saint Nick, but I’m hoping for a Christmas present all the same.

What I want for Christmas is a big foam #1 Finger. You know, the big yellow foam glove people wear and wave at sporting events to say their team is number one even if it isn’t.

My team is the good ol’ US of A. And we are number uno. We have the best education system on the planet, and the best health care in the world. These affirmations have nothing to do with the facts, of course, but that is why I want the big finger. The lower we fall in the rankings, the louder we should chant “We’re number one,” and the bigger the finger we should wave while doing so.

According to the most recent OECD Programme for International Student Assessment which measures the knowledge base and reading skills of 15-year-olds around the world, the United States ranks 14th out of 34. “We’re number 1(4)! We’re number 1(4)!” Now I have to wonder why we are even paying attention to a study that can’t even spell the word “program” properly, but still the number is the number, and we need to celebrate our mediocrity with flair. So how about that finger, Santa?

Similarly, in a study of health care systems conducted by the World Health Organization [by the way if you are a doctor working for the World Health Organization, can you call yourself Dr. Who? How cool is that!], the United States ranks #37 out of 190, just behind Dominica and Costa Rica, and just ahead of Slovenia and Cuba, but way ahead of Burundi (take THAT, Burundi!). If you add the digits of 37 together you get 3+7 which equals 10, and if you add those digits together you get 1+0 which equals 1, so, you guessed it! “We’re #1!”

You can see where this is going. On all matters except military spending the USA is falling behind. The only thing we are really number one at is our capacity to kill people. Now don’t sneer. We can move from #37 to #35 in health care just by bombing the hell out of Costa Rica and Dominica, so all our bombs might come in handy. But I am not ready to go to war with Cyprus (#24), and I don’t even know where Andorra (#4) is, so I can’t even pretend to bomb them (though I think we killed their life-giving Tree of Souls in the Avatar movie, which may have been the government’s way of preparing us for a real attack in the not so distant future).

Anyway, I’m not ready to go to war with Andorra or Costa Rica, so let’s not consider that. And I’m not ready to raise taxes on anyone, let alone the rich, to improve our educational system. And I don’t want the federal government to run expensive death panels when Arizona is running their own death panels at a fraction of the cost, so let’s not consider true single-payer health care reform. Nope, I want to leave things pretty much the way they are this Christmas, which is why I need the big finger.

If we are going to settle for being Mediocristan the least we can do is pretend we aren’t. We are number one in that. So, Santa, how about giving me the finger this year?

Save the Frogmen

This morning I heard Rush Limbaugh attack those who are attacking McDonald’s Happy Meals. The issue as he put is that the Nanny State is coming to the rescue of parents who cannot stare down their kids who demand that they not go to the local vegan health food diner and scarf down Happy Meals instead. And why do the kids want the Happy Meals? Because of the toys inside the box. It is wrong for a corporation to go after kids whether it is with tobacco or fat/sugar/salt, but don’t attack the toys.

When I was a kid McDonalds was a drive-in, and there were no Happy Meals. The equivalent product back then was the cereal box with a toy in it. I loved getting those toys. I would stick my hand into the box, crushing the cereal inside to find the coveted prize. Or I would open the box upside down hoping that the toy was at the bottom. Or I would pour the entire box out on the counter and watch the prize spill out in a cascade of Frosted Flakes (They’re Gggggggggggggggggreat). These are some of my best childhood memories.

I loved the frogmen. They were little plastic divers with one fin-clad foot and one foot that was a tiny thimble with a cap. Put baking soda into the thimble, replace the cap and drop the frogman into a sink or bath tub filled with water. As the baking soda reacted with the water the frogman would dive and resurface over and over again. How cool is that? So cool in fact, that I still have one of the frogmen.

So Rush is right but for the wrong reason. Those who would stop corporations from putting toys in their products are robbing our kids of their childhoods. Let our kids have their toys, and if we must do something let’s insist that our food is healthier. Why not put toys with veggie burger meals?

Right Thing to Do

I’m listening to conservative talk radio this morning, and I have to admit that I agree with everything the host is saying regarding taxes. He, like me, looks to the administration of John F. Kennedy for guidance when it comes to taxes. He must have repeated his call to follow JFK’s lead in this matter at least a dozen times in less than five minutes. And I agree!

President Kennedy said, “An economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget—just as it will never produce enough jobs or profits." He was right then, and he is right today. So, along with my conservative colleagues across America, I say let’s go back to the solid fiscal polices of 1965.

I’m urging Congress to say no to the Obama tax plan, and pass a tax plan that mirrors that of JFK instead. By 1965 President Kennedy imposed a top tax rate for individuals of 70%, and a top corporate rate of 48%. He also signed a bill providing a 10% tax credit for business purchases of new machinery. And the economy boomed. If it worked for JFK, it should work for us. Right?

So let’s be clear: If you want to free America from a crippling tax scheme stop coddling the American people, and do what JFK did: set the top tax rate for individuals at 70% and for corporations as 48%. It is the right and right wing thing to do.

Just in Time for Christmas

Thousands of Iraqi Christians are fleeing to the north from Baghdad and Mosul to escape Muslim attacks against them. Of the approximately 100,000 Christians who once lived in Mosul, only 5,000 remain. Of course Iraqi Muslim fanatics are equal opportunity haters, so they continue to bloody one another along the Sunni Shia divide, but it makes me wonder: what are our women and men dying for again? Are we sacrificing American lives so Iraqis have the freedom to murder one another? Is this what we mean when we say, “the surge worked”?

The longer we stay in Iraq the more convinced I am that President Bush was correct: Iraq did and does have weapons of mass destruction. They are the Iraqi people themselves.

Tea for Jew

Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, Republican Joe Straus is in trouble. Tea Party conservatives, led by John Cook, want to push him out of the Speaker’s position. Speaker Straus’ sin? He’s a Jew.

“I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office,” Mr. Cook said. So Straus has got to go.

Now I don’t considered myself an expert on Texas, Texas politics, or even the Jews of Texas. To be honest, the only Jew I associate with Texas is Kinky Freedman, though now that I think about it, the name of his band, the Texas Jew Boys, suggests Kinky isn’t the only Jew in the Lone Star State. But why do these God-fearing Tea Bag Republicans have to ditch one of the Chosen? Because Speaker Straus’ rabbi is somehow associated with Planned Parenthood. Guilt by association. This gives us a glimpse into the America we can expect as the Tea Party completes its takeover of the GOP and the country.

The simple fact is, when the going gets tough, the tough get going… after the Jews, and Muslim Americans and illegal immigrants and…

An Update to Friday's Post

I just learned of Rabbis Against Racism and their effort to confront the rabbis I wrote about last Friday. Here is there petition. If you are rabbi, please sign it. If you know a rabbi please send it to her or him. To sign the petition on line, go to http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/rabbisagainstracism/

לא תטה משפט גר . . . וזכרת כי עבד היית במצרים
Do not pervert the rights of the stranger . . . and remember that you were once a slave in Egypt (Deuteronomy 24:17-18)

To our rabbinic colleagues in Israel,

We, rabbis serving in congregations and communities across the world, are turning to you for your assistance and leadership at a time of crisis. The recent halakhic ruling from community rabbis in Israel that forbids leasing apartments to non-Jews has caused great shock and pain to our communities. The attempt to root discriminatory policies based on religion or ethnicity in Torah is a painful distortion of our tradition. Am Yisrael knows the sting of discrimination, and we still bear the scars of hatred. When those who represent the official rabbinic leadership of the State of Israel express such positions, we are distressed by this Chillul HaShem, desecration of God’s name.

This degradation of the Torah threatens both Israel and our communities. We struggle to maintain a strong, loving relationship between Jews outside of Israel and the Jewish state. Every day, that challenge grows more difficult. Many of our congregants love Israel and want nothing more than the safety and security of the Jewish homeland, but for a growing number of Jews in America this relationship to Israel cannot be assumed.

Statements like these do great damage to our efforts to encourage people to love and support Israel. They communicate to our congregants that Israel does not share their values, and they promote feelings of alienation and distancing. Further, these attacks on the principles of our prophets, which form the basis of Israel’s law and society, provide justification for anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment across the world.

Many of you have raised your voices in the past, and have dedicated your lives to pursuing a just society in Israel. You have taught us that the discriminatory attitude expressed in that halakhic ruling does not reflect the belief of the majority of rabbis and Torah scholars or the people of Israel, and for that reason, we turn to you. For the sake of our people, our Torah, and Israel, we beseech you to take a strong public stand and oppose those who misrepresent our tradition.

Say what you mean; do what you say

Fifty state-employed rabbis in Israel have signed and circulated a petition urging Jews not to rent or sell land to nonJews, and saying that those who do should be cut off from their people.

Thankfully the action was condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "This kind of speech should be banned in a Jewish and democratic state."

I am pleased that the Prime Minister is opposed to rabbinic sponsored racism, but his choice of words suggests he doesn't understand the nature of either a Jewish or a democratic state.

First of all these rabbis derived the decision from Jewish law. While their reading is controversial, it is the very nature of a Jewish state (as opposed to a state of Jews) to allow for just this kind of speech. If you don't want your country ruled by the mores of clerics and their pre-modern worldviews, don't set it up as a Jewish (or Islamic or Christian) state.

Second, this kind of inflammatory speech is absolutely protected in a democratic state. Freedom of speech is key to any truly democratic country, so banning opinions, even evil ones such as this, betrays the very promise of democracy.

So is Prime Minister Netanyahu anti-Jewish or anti-democracy? Of course not; he is simply speaking hyperbolically to mask his actions or lack thereof.

These rabbis whose opinions the PM says should be banned actually work for the state. While banning speech is wrong, punishing state employees who blatantly discriminate against citizens of the state is right, appropriate, and just. If the PM is serious he should fire these rabbis. Until he does it is just politics as usual in a country held hostage by clerics.

Christmas is a myth. Thank God.

On the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel atheists have posted a billboard featuring the three Magi approaching the manger. The text reads, “You Know It’s a Myth. This Season Celebrate Reason.” The sign saddens me.

“Myth” is not the same as “falsehood.” Myth is a narrative structure used to convey some of the deepest truths we humans can glean. Myths are not believed in but unpacked and lived.

The problem with contemporary religion is that it devalues myth and imagination, and seeks legitimacy in history and science. The power of Christmas is not that Matthew and Luke were historians (they can’t even agree between themselves), but that they were mythmakers. They used story, just as Jesus did, to convey a truth that science and history could not accommodate.

I am, of course, speaking as a nonChristian, but I say the same about the myths of every religion including my own. If I insist the Exodus is history I have to deal with a murderous God and a host of extraneous, harmful, and self-serving miracles. But if I accept it as myth I am dealing with the liberation of self from enslavement to power; the suffering is mine, the deaths are mine, and the liberation is mind. Myth is meant to lived rather than believed in; it is about the inner life not the political one.

The characters found in myths represent aspects of our own psyches. The Virgin Birth is neither a miracle nor a biological act of parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). It is a story about how something new and potentially redemptive comes into the world. As a myth Christmas speaks to all humans. As science and history it makes no sense at all.

If we reclaimed the power of myth, and understood its role in our lives, we could reclaim the world’s religions as keepers of myth and train clergy to be guides to myth who can help us live out the mythic and imaginal dimensions of our lives through acts of compassion and contemplative spiritual practice.

If I had the money I would post my own Magi billboards. But I would change the tagline from “You Know It’s a Myth. This Season Celebrate Reason” to “You Know It’s a Myth. This Season Celebrate the Imagination.”

No Hope

Just when I thought I could not get more depressed about the prospects for peace between Israel and Palestine, I learn that the departments of education of both Israel and Palestine have banned a unique textbook designed by Israeli and Palestinian educators entitled “Learning Each Other’s Historical Narrative.”

The book places the Israeli and Palestinian versions of the history of their homelands side by side, allowing children on both sides to learn how the other understands the history they take for granted. Of course both versions are controversial in the eyes of the other, but that is the point. There is no “true” history, there is only the narrative histories told by each side’s historians. And being able to see the reality the other sees is a huge step toward authentic dialogue and empathy.

Of course the leaders on both sides fear both empathy and dialogue, and so both have banned the book from public high school curriculums. How sad.

On the other hand it does show that the leadership of both sides are not really on opposite sides at all. They are on the same side: the side of fear and hatred that keeps them in power.

Just as the Israelites could not enter the Promised Land until almost all of the older generation passed away, peace may not come to the region until all those currently in power are pass away. The questions we must ask are these: how many generations of status quo leadership are left; and how many people must die before these leaders finally die?

The American Dream

The problem with the American Dream—the problem with all dreams really—is that you have to be asleep to maintain it. In the case of the American Dream—the notion that our kids will live richer and more productive lives than their parents—this means being asleep to the fact that real wages have been falling for decades, that corporations are making more money now with millions of Americans out of work then they were when they employed those Americans, and the realization that the lie of the American Dream is the same as that found on the sign heading into the Auschwitz death camp: Arbeit macht frei/Work sets you free.

It doesn’t. Work, especially working at something you hate to maintain a life style you can’t afford and never have time to enjoy anyway, is slavery. When work is fun, it is no longer work. That is why so many employers try to make work fun; they no it isn’t.

I gave up the American Dream the day I decided not to enter my family’s business, and to pursue instead a life as a rabbi, educator, and writer. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to have a summer home up north, a winter home down south, and buy a new car every two or three years. My hope now is to inherit one of those homes, sell it, and use the money to buy a more recent used car than the 2005 Mazda Protégé I currently drive. But am I bitter? No.

My dad loved what he did, and I am proud of the business he and my uncle built, and happy for my cousins who are making it even greater and more financially rewarding. And I am delighted with the life choices I made, and recommend them to my own son who is just beginning his career as an educator and writer. What about rabbi? He teaches Jewish American literature at the university—close enough.

So as Black Friday comes to a close and we begin to prep for Shabbos, let me suggest five ideas to share with your kids about the American Dream:

1. Wake up and stop dreaming it. Find what you love and do it. And if you have to do stuff you don’t love to supplement yourself, do that too. Just don’t abandon what you love.

2. Move somewhere cheap and live even cheaper. The less you have the less you have to earn and the more time you have to play. Get a good financial planner to help you manage the surplus.

3. Don’t go into debt. Only exception is when buying a house, and even then buy small and think twice and then twice more.

4. Don’t count on anyone to take care of you: not parents, employers or the government; yet don’t imagine you can take care of yourself. Build a network of friends who pledge to help one another in times of crises. Even then be prepared to be disappointed. Learn to live with anxiety, ambiguity, and doubt. It called adulthood.

5. Measure the quality of your life by how often you are happy and of service to others. The only advantage to being rich and miserable is that the rich can afford legal drugs to mask their misery while the poor have to risk jail time for their’s. Forget about being rich or poor; seek only to avoid being miserable.

TSA Rhymes with Gay. Coincidence?

I travel a lot, often by plane, and, I am concerned about the new pat-down and scanner procedures of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA). My concern with the scanners is not so much that they show my naked body to the world, but that my naked body is so not worthy of such attention. If I were 50 pounds thinner, and if I had actually lifted weights at the gym rather than watch others do so, I might be more comfortable. But really, I wear size XXL to cover up a multitude of dietary sins. If I wanted some guy to view my naked body with x-rays, I’d move to Metropolis and kidnap Lois Lane.

Of course I don’t have to go through the scanners. I could allow a TSA agent to run his hands over my body to make sure that my testicles are not in fact grenades. But this option doesn’t appeal to me either.

Yet I am a patriot, and as such I am willing to allow my country to fool me into thinking that this technology can catch terrorists, and to scare me into believing that everyone from an 8 year-old kid to an 88 year-old grandma is a potential terrorist, so I will put up with it. But I
do have two suggestions to make this procedure more palatable.

First, increase the power of the scanners so that they are capable of identifying tumors and diseases, and have medical techs rather than TSA agents review them and inform me of my current health status. I’d be grateful for that procedure.

Or, if some guy is going to fondle me, why not hire trained chiropractors? Then they could feel for bombs and realign my spine at the same time. Given the horror of airplane seating, I’d be willing to undergo this kind of screening getting on and off the plane.

But until the TSA comes up with systems like these, I’m going for a third option: I’m go to claim I’m gay.

The TSA doesn’t allow a male agent to fondle a woman passenger because of the sexual impropriety, so they shouldn’t allow a male agent to fondle a male passenger if said passenger is gay. Since I would be more comfortable with a woman agent, I am, for all travel related purposes, now choosing to be gay.

If the government denies my claim saying that homosexuality isn't a choice, I will harness support from many well-known pastors and politicians who insist homosexuality is a choice. In a free country I can choose to be gay if and when I want to. And for TSA screening purpose I want to, so I am. And where are the churches and synagogues on this, anyway? Do we really want our children molested by people who aren’t even ordained clergy? And if homosexuality is a choice—which when I’m not flying it isn’t, but when I am flying it is—would we want to put homosexual ideas in our kids minds by having them groped homosexually at the airport? Could it be that the TSA is in fact on the front lines of the Gay Agenda? I’m just asking.

Islam has a Muslim Problem

On October 31st gunmen burst into Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation church during Sunday mass and opened fire killing two priests and 48 parishioners. The murderers belong to the al-Qaeda linked terrorist group called Islamic State of Iraq that has declared jihad against Iraq’s Christian population.

This is one of an on-going series of attacks on Iraqi Christians by Iraqi Muslims. Hundreds of thousands (the Catholic Church puts the number at one million) Iraqi Christians have fled to other countries to avoid being murdered at the hands of Islamic fanatics. And make no mistake these are Islamic fanatics; fanatics fuelled by their version of Islam. They are not attacking foreigners, but fellow Iraqis. Their hatred is not fueled by America policies or Israeli occupation of the Palestine. It is fuelled by a belief that Muslims must kill Christians.

Islam has a Muslim problem. The problem with Islam is Muslims who have signed on to a radical, violent, murderous faith that, while violating the deepest principles of Islam, continues to masquerade as Islam, and does so successfully.

Islam lacks a pope who can speak for the religion. And at the moment there is no Reform Islamic movement that can work to bring Islam into the 21st century as Reform Judaism has done for Jews. The kind of academic study of scripture and religion commonplace in so many Christian and Jewish seminaries is largely absent in the Islamic world. There is no quest for the historical Muhammad as there is the historical Jesus. Islam seems to know only competing orthodoxies when it desperately needs liberal reform.

There are factions within Judaism and Christianity that refuse to have anything to do with modernity, let alone postmodernity. And some among them are violent. But these groups are not engaged in wholesale slaughter of innocents. No matter how strongly I oppose the settler movement in Israel and condemn the violence that often defines it, there is no moral equivalency.

This is not religion’s problem; this is Islam’s problem. Only Muslims can solve it. And while no Muslims have asked my advice, I would suggest that someone convene a world council of imams who could make clear to Muslims and nonMuslims alike just what it is Islam stands for, and that would condemn unequivocally the insanity and violence that is perverting the message of Islam. I would also like to see wealthy Muslim visionaries fund
young American Muslims seeking to create a new kind of Islam that embraces science, secular scholarship, critical thinking, and nonviolence even as it affirms the prophetic message of Islam and upholds the beauty and genius of Islamic civilization. Without it I worry that Muslims are doomed to wage a civil war of Muslim against Muslim that will take thousands of nonMuslims down with them.

Farting is Such Sweet Sorrow

Ohioan Christian Summers is eleven years old. Christian Summers is a boy. Christian Summers farts and thinks its funny. Christian Summers suffers from FHS, Flatulence Humor Disorder.

This is not a joke. Millions of eleven-year-old boys suffer from this disease. As explained in Wikipedia, “Flatulence is the expulsion through the rectum of a mixture of gases that are byproducts of the digestion process of mammals and other animals.” ["Other animals" refers to eleven-year-old boys.] “Flatus [the gas generated in the digestive tract] is brought to the rectum by the same peristaltic process which causes feces to descend from the large intestine. [Which is why sometimes farting surprises us with something a bit more tangible.] The noises commonly associated with flatulence are caused by the vibration of the anal sphincter, and occasionally by the closed buttocks.” What Wikipedia fails to tell us is that this entire process is beyond funny if you are an eleven-year-old boy suffering from FHS.

Christian is a mammal and/or other animal. Farting alone is common to his kind. The disorder arises with the involuntary laughter that Christian also expels along with the flatus [so called after the Roman Emperor Flatus Maximus who was known to defeat entire armies by releasing gas from his rectum].

You see those who suffer from Flatulence Humor Disorder think flatus is funny. The louder the expulsion of flatulence, the funnier the FHD sufferer thinks it is. This is a genetic disease found in about 100% of eleven-year-old boys.

The sad thing in this story is that Christian has attacks of FHD while riding on his school bus, and his bus’s driver, who may not be a mammal and/or other animal and who was never eleven years old, gave Christian detention for having this disease.

We should not penalize our children for being the victims of FHD. In fact it may violate the First Amendment. Flatulence may be protected as speech since some eleven-year-old boys can actually make their butts talk while farting.

Whatever you may think of eleven-year-old boys farting on school buses, we must take pity on children who suffer from FHS and not consign them to detention. Or, if detention is the route society insists we take, we must have compassion for the adult who has to sit in a closed room for an hour with these exploding boys.

GOP vs DEMs? No. Lucy vesus Charlie Brown.

Looking for a metaphor for American politics? Try Charlie Brown trusting Lucy not to pull the football away as he races to kick it.

In 2008 the American voter played the role of Charlie Brown and the Democratic Party played the role of Lucy. The football was Change We Can Believe In. Yes, we believed. And then Lucy pulled the ball away and we found ourselves flat on our backs. This year the American voter is once again playing Charlie Brown while Lucy is played by the Republican Party. The football is still and always Change We Can Believe In.

Is anything going to change come January? No. Why? Because Lucy is Lucy regardless of who plays her.

Prime Directive

This morning I head out for my daily five-mile walk with God. About 3.0 miles in I see a huge turtle walking along a concrete path under a roadway. The path links two sections of the Greenway and Lytle Creek. At this point in my walk I am usually in love with everything, and here is this fat old turtle totally exposed to predators and I am convinced that she (he?) needs my help. My plan is to tap on her shell, and when she withdraws inside, to pick her up and carry her to the water on the side toward which she is walking.

This is my version of a boy scout helping an old lady to cross a street.

This act of pure love for my fellow manifestation of the Divine Mother was met with a vicious turn: the turtle attacked me! This huge mouth opened wide and the turtle lunged at me. True it took her an hour to turn around and do this, but it was shocking nonetheless.

Anyway, I backed off, apologized for the interruption, and walked on by. This was a teaching moment, and the tortoise taught me the difference between Rabbis Hillel and Jesus versions of the Golden Rule.

Hillel taught, “Don’t do unto others what you do not want others to do to you.” Jesus taught, “Do unto others what you would want done unto you.” I assumed that I would like someone to pick me up and move me along my path, and therefore so would my turtle friend. But when I think about it, I wouldn’t like this at all.

Just imagine: you are walking along enjoying the fall foliage (or dying leaves, depending on your mood), and suddenly some giant reaches down, grabs you around the waist, and carries you along dangling in mid-air. Doesn’t sound so good. Yet this is precisely what I wanted to do with the turtle.

Next time I see a turtle ambling along I will just let her be, and if she is attacked by some carnivore along the way and brutally torn to pieces and eaten, I will simply smile and say, “Serves you right for trying to bite me, you reptilian brained moron.”

iBigot

I am a bigot. At least by NPR standards. NPR fired Juan Williams yesterday for admitting that when he boards an airplane with Muslims dressed in Muslim garb he feels a twinge of concern. Not because he believes all Muslims are terrorists (he doesn’t) or because he believes that all terrorists are Muslims (he doesn’t). He feels what he feels because (1) we can’t control our feelings and (2) Muslim shoes and underwear tend to explode. This has nothing to do with the people wearing those shoes and underwear, and everything to do with the quality of Muslim shoe and underwear manufacturing. Just like Toyota cars used to race off on their own regardless of the driver’s will, so, as I understand it, Muslim made underwear tends to explode at certain altitudes. It’s one thing to explode into your underwear—that’s what it’s for, and quite another to have your underwear explode into you. So, Juan, I get it.

And if Juan Williams, perhaps the lone liberal voice on Fox News, is a bigot, then so am I. Let me honest about my feelings.

Like Juan, I too am leery of Muslim made underwear. But that’s not all. I don’t want to fly with Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, either. I’ve seen these people walking up and down the aisle asking to speak to their fellow passengers about their religion, and I don’t want to be hassled.

Similarly, I inquire into the religious beliefs of my pilot and co-pilot. If they are Rapture-ready Christians, I don’t want to fly with them. Give me a Jew, Muslim, or Catholic over an evangelical Protestant any day. At least I know we won’t crash because God took the pilot and co-pilot up to heaven and allowed the rest of us to die.

I am also nervous when I see Hasidic Jews on the plane lest they conscript me into a mid-air prayer service. And, if I were a Palestinian, I would be nervous about any Jew on the plane lest they try and spread out from their seat into my seat claiming that their great great great great great great great great grandparents sat in that those seats a long time ago and so it is rightfully their seat today.

Atheists too are a problem for me. What if we are going to crash and we have to call on God to save us, and maybe God is Jewish and requires a quorum of ten Jewish men to listen to our prayer and all we have are nine Jewish guys and an Atheist, and so we all die because this idiot can’t go along to get along.

I don’t want hip-hop Blacks on my plane either because they might start singing and making that spitting sound and messing up my Pringles.

And fat people. I don’t want to sit next to fat people because they ooze over into my space.

People with babies are on my no-fly list as well. I don’t want to sit next to some screaming baby, and insist that all parents drug their children into a stupor so I don’t have to buy Bose noise reduction headphones just to keep from getting a migraine.

So, Juan, I’m with you. And if I had a job at NPR I would expect them to fire me as well. Because, hey, who wants commentators to be honest?

Islam is a Religion

Islam is a religion. It’s true. The United States Department of Justice has said so, and it is the banner headline of this morning’s Daily News Journal here in Murfreesboro. This may not be news to you, but it is to thousands of my neighbors, and, to be quite frank, I was beginning to wonder about this myself.

I mean a religion is supposed to be about your relationship with God, and Allah isn’t Jesus, so Allah isn’t God. And a religion is supposed to have a holy book, but the Qur’an isn’t the Bible so the Qur’an isn’t a holy book. That’s why we can burn the Qur’an and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” but not the Bible. And Jesus said it is what comes out of your mouth not what goes into it that counts (Matthew 15:17-18), so any religion that restricts what foods you can eat, isn’t a religion. [Editor’s note: I once heard a gay Christian cite this text to suggest Jesus was in favor of oral sex. Really.]

And then there is the issue of Sharia. What kind of religion is it that wants to dictate to people how they should live? You don’t see Christianity doing that, do you? And what about the idea that Islam is going to fly its flag over the White House and the entire world? What kind of religion wants the whole world to be converted to its way of life? Why that would mean sending missionaries to every country of the world to preach the Gospel! Can you imagine that?

Clearly, if Islam is a religion, it is a religion the likes of which you haven’t seen in this country since the last time you watched the 700 Club. But, look, this is still a free country, even though it is governed by Red Fascist Nazis who are running FEMA concentration camps across the land. I heard that the FEMA camps are actually renting space from the Islamic terror training camps also spread across this country, which proves the link between our so-called President and terrorists of the so-called religion of Islam.

And what does it mean that the Obama Justice Department declares Islam a religion when it refuses to acknowledge that the United States of America is a Christian country? It means that the government is in cahoots with the Muslims against the Christians, that’s what. So I call upon all of you who are reading this to call the Justice Department and demand that they issue a list of acceptable religions in the United States, and when they turn down your request even though they just declared Islam a religion you will know that the United States of America recognizes only one religion and that is the religion of Islam.

Remember that when you go to the polls on November 2nd and they ask you to dip your right pointer finger into a jar of purple ink to prove you are a Muslim. I’m not making this up. I've been told that the confirmation button on the electronic voting booth shoots purple ink onto your finger when you push it. You won’t see it because it only shows up under black light, and even then only in FEMA concentrations camps. But believe me, it is there.