Death Penalty Comes Close

Last weekend I had the most incredible experience.  I was invited by a friend of mine to join him and 2 others to go see a Philadelphia Eagles game in Atlanta.  He had won 4 all-expense-paid tickets to fly out of town, stay at the team hotel, have a huge dinner, go to the game, walk on the field, talk to the players and just all around have a great time for two days.  It was phenomenal.

I got to meet players, I got to get my pictures with people I really have enjoyed seeing on TV.  I got to go to an Atlanta Braves game too!  It was a once-in-a-lifetime type of weekend.

But these weren't the highlights.

The greatest part of the weekend was what I learned about justice.

You see, we went to MLK's church and heard a sermon about how the justice system in the United States is broken.  The minister talked about the life of Troy Davis - scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, September 21st 2011.  As I write another appeal has failed.  It was in some ways overwhelming to set among hundreds of people who look at the legal system and our justice system with such jadedness.  It was eye-opening how much a product of my context I am.

As we walked along on the street we met people demonstrating against the execution.  We asked them the history of the case and learned more about it.  Walking away a man named Michael shook his head and said, "they gonna let him burn." And so we asked him what he thought and he echoed the same sense of disappointment in the justice system.  It was his opinion that because he was black and because a policeman died they won't let him off.

Michael then went on to say how he is stigmatized because he was an ex-con.  Listening to him, the whole situation seemed hopeless.  It stirs something inside of you when you see a grown man realize that he will never get a fair chance because of the choices he has made in the past.

It gave our group a lot to talk about.  At one point I asked them if they thought the highest expression of being human was to establish justice or give mercy.  Imagine you knew that Troy was guilty . . . what would be the greatest act - to bring about justice?  Or to show mercy?  To execute and uphold the idea of law (which is extremely noble) or to pardon in hopes that his life could counteract what he did 20 years ago (equally as noble).

Is mercy naive?
Is justice another word for revenge?

It would be easy for me to argue for mercy, but how would I feel if the victim was my father?

It would be easy for me to argue for justice to be fulfilled, but what would I want if I was in that situation?

So many questions with no clear answers.  It was a weekend that the death penalty came close to home.  What would you want?

How the NFL may teach us more than just football . . .

So here is a fun little exercise:

Think of the NFL season that just started.  Tell me your memory of the NFL season for 2011.  Technically you can tell me about your memories of the season because it has started, but you can't really tell me about the season because it hasn't ended.  Weird, I know.  Read on.

This hit me when I was listening to Dan Patrick on Yahoo Sports Radio talk about who he thinks will win the superbowl this year (incidentally he thought it would be the Falcons over the Steelers).  This got me thinking of how crazy it is to reflect back on a season once it has ended.  What people think a season will be while it is still going on versus when it has completed are two different stories completely.  That is because something has to be completed for it to have been recalled or understood.

So I wondered if the same were true of time . . .

Is it possible to really know something before you have completed it?  Can you say that you like a dessert while it has just hit your tastebuds?  Or do you need the power of reflection in order to appreciate it - which incidentally happens after the food has gone down your throat.

So . . . and I know this is a stretch . . . but is it possible that life is the same way?  If all we have is this life to fully comprehend our lives, it is inconceivable.  Except for the fact that we have something beyond it from which we could appreciate it all.  If we only live once, how would we have the power of recall to fully grasp it?

Perhaps the second life that faith speaks of is the only way that appreciating this life is possible . . .

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

What a flood of rain teaches

I wasn't a huge believer that the rain was going to be a huge deal in our area.  Afterall, it is rain.  Rain comes down, it collects in puddles and grows bigger.  If your house is near water, you better pack up the stuff in your basement and hope for the best.  Oh, and make sure you have flood insurance.

But I was wrong.  Water is a very sneaky thing.  It gets into the ground and you think it is gone . . . but it grows when it is fed by hours of rain.  The only thing I was thinking about last Wednesday was how much snow would be on the ground if it was February.

At about 9pm my son asked if I should check on the guitar amp we have in the basement.  I went down and saw a thin lip of water coming from one corner of the basement.  I got a little nervous and we began sucking up water any way that we could.  It kept coming.  It was evil.

It wasn't until my father-in-law came with a big sump pump and we broke the seal on our sump pit (thank you Mr. Radon installer for sealing our sump pit) that we saw the water go down.  I checked around the rest of the perimeter of the basement - small encroachments of water all around.

Lesson #1 - Water can come from the ground up.

Lesson #2  - I learned this a day later.  When said water comes up and gets some of your carpet, there is always more underneath than you think.

When I pulled back the carpet, it was scary to see what was going on underneath it all.  So yeah, we had a few days of fans and dehumidifiers and bleach going to stop the advance of public enemy no#2 - mold.

For me it was a creepy lesson on life.

1. Make sure you are prepared for the things that you can foresee.
2. Don't assume that because you have built your walls nice and high that the undesirable things of life can't get in another way.

and . . .

3.  Check under your rugs periodically to make sure that you aren't incubating more trouble.

Let's pray for a low humidity and breezy week . . .

The Post Office and the Physics professor . . .

The post-office lost $11,000,000,000 last year.

They did not just misplace it - because 11 billion dollars doesn't fit in a shoebox too easily.  It wasn't PASSIVELY lost - it was ACTIVELY lost . . . as in $11,000,000,000 more was spent than was taken in.

Do you know how much 11 billion is?  11 billion seconds ago Jamestown was a major colony, the King James Bible was being assembled and the Mayflower hadn't landed yet.

If you spent $10,000 cash everyday, it would take you 3,000 years to approach $11,000,000,000.

Now this is no rant about politics - it is clear that stupidity is a human condition, not a political one.  But it is to raise the question . . . "if we are so smart and have all the answers to every question in this life and the one to come . . . how come we can't figure out something simple like keeping a post office afloat?"

I am dead serious.

If we are so ridiculously negligent in trying to figure out simple things here on this planet, why would we even trust for a moment that some guy with a Ph. D in physics knows there is no God.  I mean really, something as simple as "don't pay out more than you have" seems self-evident . . . but then again, so does the existence of a great designer of all that we see.  But I think we missed on that too . . .

So if your trust is in human wisdom and human-centered reason, just take a look at the post office.  It's a mess.  And if we can't do the easy things well, how are we so expert at the mysteries of life?

Just sayin . . .

I've already done that . . .

In recapping the VMA awards from last night, it is fascinating to muse over a statement from someone like Britney Spears about where we are as a culture . . .

If you didn't get the chance to see the exchange between her and Lady Ga-ga, it can be found here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7378797n

The short story is that Lady Ga-ga, in another one of her sort of strange attention-getting gimmicks spent most of the show as a guy smoking cigarettes and looking like a 50's greaser.  When Ga gave the award to Spears, the two sort of orbited each other with Spears looking at the crowd as if to say, "should I?"  Of course the crowd roared in support of another lip-lock that has now become famous between Spears and another pop-queen a few years ago.

Spears pulls up and leans into the mic and says, "I've already done that." and leaves the despondent-looking Ga-ga behind.  It was so 7th grade (or maybe 6th).

Imagine that!  An idea that has has run it's course.  Pretty interesting that the biggest headline last night wasn't the kiss that almost was, but Chris Brown's flying through the air and Beyonce's baby bulge.  Is it possible that ideas . . . even RAUNCHY ideas . . . can become passe?  Is Spears onto something here?

"I've already done that" hints at the redundancy of pushing the envelope.  In other words, the shocking only works once.  The reason it only works once is because we didn't really care about bringing in same-sex kissers at every VMA awards - we only cared if it COULD be done.  And now it HAS BEEN done.  Which led to Spears saying it shouldn't be repeated.  Which really makes you wonder if it ever should have been done at all.

The biggest test for some of these actions are the sustainability of them.  We give to the poor, we help the homeless, we love the unlovable because it never goes out of style.  It has substance.  Faith has depth - it has a gravity that doesn't make headlines, but it repeats through our culture over and over.

Shocking acts onstage somewhere are doomed to be one-hit wonders . . . just because we can push the limits doesn't mean we should have in the first place.  Spears is off to the next thing, but it will be just as empty . . .

And that is why we need to keep living out the truth - because everything else is empty.

Hurricane a brewin . . .

Hurricanes are not supposed to get you excited . . . I know.

But I get really excited when a hurricane is coming.  Maybe it has to do with living through a handful of them in Ocean City growing up.  It pretty much meant great surf before and after - as well as a day of complete wind chaos.  And who doesn't love a little wind chaos every now and then?

I remember one particular hurricane - I think it was Belle, not sure though.  We were living on 3rd street and the "ocean met the bay" which was an ominous way of saying that the storm surge pretty much ravaged the island.  I was sitting on the porch at night in the middle of the storm and a lightning bolt hit an antenna across the street from us - it was right out of a movie with sparks flying and everything.  When a firetruck went down the street, the water was so high the truck stalled out right in front of our house.  I remember firemen trudging through knee-deep water.  It was so bad that the tenants below us came running upstairs because they were a little nervous about what was going to happen next!

I remember another hurricane that we waited out - a day of things blowing all over and heavy rain.  When the eye moved in, we went up to the boardwalk and looked around - everything was battered and churning.  As the eye wall moved in, the wind picked up and we loved leaning into the high gusts.

Of course I was young and it was all very exciting - the dark clouds brewing,  the people on the radio and TV warning of impending doom.  My parents even took us to the beach the day before to see the size of the waves.  Such drama!

Now of course you hear of people losing their lives and property and it has a little more weight to it.  You never wish any of that on anyone of course.

But there is still a good part of me that is anxious to get down there and show my own kids nature's awesome presence.  Of course they are still a bit young - maybe the next one!

Where were you when . . .

I found myself saying it today . . .
"so where were you when the earthquake hit?"

I felt so stupid saying it - because it was really a non-event.  I sat in the back seat of a Ford Ranger Pickup Truck while it happened.  We were stopped at a stoplight and I was on the phone.  I thought that maybe the guys in the front seat were rocking the car for some reason so I quickly dismissed it.  It was only until my wife called and told me what happened that I stitched it all together.  It was like waking up and recalling a dream - I DID feel the shaking.  Weird.

What is really strange is the perspective that is so warped.  I am in a car at a stoplight on my phone thinking that my world is governed by such things as phone calls, traffic and to-do lists.  Meanwhile several million tons of solid rock grinds against itself miles underneath the surface of the earth.  One event that is considered feeble by West Coast standards is felt from DC to Maine.  So what is the real 'reality?'  What forces really control our lives?

It reminds me that we are not as god-like as we might think.  We are (literally) ants that scurry around on rather large rocks that float over a sea of lava.  Moreso, we are little creatures that have a beginning and an end and if today was our last there isn't a thing we could do about it.

Usually it is this kind of thinking that pushes you toward a belief or away from one.  Those who get pushed away get a glimpse of the meaninglessness of it all.  They conclude that the earth shrugs its shoulders from time to time  - the natural world is a collection of great blessing and great devastation - there is no rhyme or reason.

For me, it pushes me toward belief . . . the bigger the scale, the more it impresses me that we can't possibly have the mind of God.  Huge rocks, scalding lava - all of it the product of things far greater than I can imagine.