No Noble Gestures May Cost Us

Right-wingers may not like admitting it, but noblesse oblige is a Biblical concept.

According to Merriam-Webster, noblesse oblige can be defined as "the obligation of honorable, generous, and responsible behavior associated with high rank or birth."

Or, in other words, "to whom much is given, much is required" (Luke 12:48).

Personally, I'm not a fan of the term "noblesse oblige." Maybe because it's of French origin, or maybe because it implies that only incredibly wealthy people have disproportionately greater civic obligations to the less-economically-endowed. If you read the Scriptures carefully, you'll note that Christ doesn't let anybody off the hook just because they may not be top income earners. Just about all of us have more stuff than somebody else - whether it's money, status, privilege, education, health, or material goods. To people who have less than us, the things we have more of than them is "much."

So Christ expects more from just about all of us than the French would.

But then, that probably doesn't surprise many people.

At any rate, the term "noblesse oblige" has recently been used in reference to American billionaire Warren Buffett and his bold assertion last week that Congress should raise taxes on fellow citizens in his income bracket. He called it "shared sacrifice."

As could be expected, some liberals have championed Buffett's call, pleased that such a highly-regarded capitalist would support such a political hot-potato in our rhetorically-charged financial climate. At the same time, some conservatives have chided Buffett for pandering to the masses, dropping a surprising admission of weak economic integrity on his part.

To be frank, I don't understand why, if Buffett himself wants to pay more taxes, he doesn't voluntarily step up to the plate. Every year, a smattering of taxpayers already send the United States Treasury unsolicited checks, ostensibly to help pay down our national debt, even though the amounts they send - generally totalling a couple of million dollars annually - don't even begin to put a dent into our outstanding balance. I doubt a few million extra in taxes from Buffett - or even the rest of our top income earners - will, either.

Let's be realistic: What's necessary isn't more taxes, but a wholesale overhaul of the way government runs and what it spends our taxes on. So conservatives are correct in portraying Buffett's suggestion as ignoring the real issue.

But can conservatives sputter, as they usually do in the same breath, that raising taxes on the rich will actually cost our country jobs?

If, for example, the choice was between making the companies these wealthy people run hire more employees, or raising their income taxes, would these wealthy folks hire more employees, or just pay the taxes?

Wouldn't it still be cheaper in the long run for the uber-rich to just pay higher taxes than hire enough workers to lower the unemployment rate? Because they'd need to hire a lot of people, wouldn't they?

How likely is it that the money these wealthy folks would supposedly pay in higher taxes could increase employment to the point where the economy could noticeably improve? Our debt is in the trillions, and growing every day.

We can't tax our way out of this mess. So no matter how you look at it, giving more money to the government will neither lower unemployment, nor pay off much debt. As far as more taxes for the rich is concerned, conservatives appear to have logic on their side.

Speaking of logic, however; after Buffett's statement last week, some of France's wealthiest taxpayers have taken up the gauntlet, calling on their government to raise their taxes. The world's second-richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, joined 15 executives of French companies to petition their Parlement français for the opportunity to pay a "special contribution." Their spin on Buffett's "shared sacrifice," and a way of modeling noblesse oblige, I suppose.

For some Americans, such a grand gesture by the French elite means very little. I'm reminded of one of General Norman Schwarzkopf's funniest quotes, when, upon learning the French refused to join coalition forces in the first Gulf War, he purportedly scoffed, "going to war without the French is like going duck hunting without an accordion!"

Of course, having American conservatives blasting a tax on the rich might have more credibility if Standard and Poor's hadn't lowered our government's debt rating to AA+ from AAA. France still has their AAA rating. But then, the French still seem to have more faith in government's ability to find financial fixes than we do.

If we're going to prove that private industry drives economic prosperity, and not government policy, wouldn't now be a good time to do it? Although Buffett has seized on the wrong approach, he does have one thing right: America's richest are in the best position to make positive economic changes for our nation.

As long as they sit on their cash during tough economic times like these, somebody's going to get inordinately jealous. Either the government, or lower-bracket taxpayers, or the welfare class that pays no taxes at all.

The more affluent a person becomes, the greater the expectation that they contribute more to society. That's not just a social phenomenon, or a socialist manifesto; it's a Biblical mandate.

And the longer we try to pretend that isn't true, the worse things may get for all of us.
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Playing Games with Brain Injuries

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I'm not a sports fan.

Yet I sometimes play one when watching TV!

Last night, after a stressful week of family issues, my father and I watched the Dallas Cowboys (that's football, to all y'all laymen out there) play the San Diego Chargers in their nationally-televised pre-season game.

Normally, if I watch sports, I watch baseball, where you can get some genuine intrigue and the athletes have skills I can appreciate. In my estimation, however, there's no better way to let your brain vegetate than watching professional football. I clarify the level of football because, I have to admit, college games can be far more interesting than watching multi-millionaires pushing each other up and down a field.

And last night's game was no exception. The Cowboys still seemed to be back at training camp, only managing to put seven points on the board to San Diego's 20. Actually, Dallas could have had at least 13, if the touchdown by Phillip Tanner had counted for anything.

A running back, Tanner scrambled to extricate himself from a pile of Chargers during one down and in the process, lost his helmet. But he managed to escape and make a crowd-loving run to the end zone for some badly-needed Dallas points.

To the home crowd's chagrin, however, a new rule in the NFL designed to address the rising awareness of brain injury in the sport meant that when Tanner lost his helmet, the play was over. In fact, not only did the touchdown not count, Dallas was penalized 5 yards for a separate infraction they committed on the play.

Up in the broadcasters' booth, however, announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth were lavishing praise on Tanner, gushing about his enthusiasm and stubbornness, being so eager by running the ball even after losing his helmet. That kind of driven, goal-oriented athleticism makes a great player, they crowed.

All this adulation, ironically, even after some long-winded comments earlier in the same game about the NFL's new concussion-risk rules when San Diego's Malcom Floyd was taken out in the first half after suffering one. And even despite Collinsworth's reputation as an advocate for brain-trauma prevention in the NFL.

Last year, the New York Times quoted Collinsworth, a longtime youth league coach, as questioning the suitability of football as a sport for children:

“'This is a league that we’ve always celebrated the biggest hits and the bone-jarring blows, but you can’t hide from the evidence anymore,'” Collinsworth, in a telephone interview, said regarding the short- and long-term effects of football head trauma. “'We’re talking about the very essence of the game. I’d be less than honest if I said I didn’t have my doubts as to whether my children should be playing football.'”

What a curious thing for a football announcer to say!

After decades of phenomenal popularity, America's lionized football industry has begun to face a dark reality that the physical brutality for which it is so celebrated can penalize its players with irreversible brain injuries. The trauma players suffer despite state-of-the-art helmets and other protective gear can return to haunt them in the form of mental illnesses later in life. Speaking as a person who's watching a loved one lapse into the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, I would think the NFL would want to do everything it can to help its players avoid anything that could precipitate a similar diagnosis.

Broken bones are one thing. A damaged brain is something else entirely.

So to hear Collinsworth and Michaels cheering Tanner for his tenacity in running the ball even without a helmet sounds disingenuous at best. We saw live video of Tanner's teammates congratulating him for what medical experts would say was a stupid move. Upon losing his helmet, Tanner should first have known that the play was over, but even if instinct had compelled him to make a run for the end zone, his own awareness for his physical safety should have been equally strong, urging him to let the play end.

Is it good enough that Tanner kept going, risking injury to a naked head when everybody else on the field still had their helmets on? Is such bravado in the face of such risk worthy of admiration? Should sports writers, commenting today on the play, be casting the NFL's new rule about helmets in such a somber tone, considering how helpful a touchdown would have been for the Cowboys?

How herioc does Tanner's success at reaching the end zone become when you realize that everybody else on the field likely assumed the play was over the minute his helmet came off? How strenuously did the Chargers try to stop him after that? Even though, admittedly, the chances of Tanner getting walloped in this short run and suffering a head injury weren't great, is this really something anybody can brag about or uphold as an example of gritty determination?

I hope that today, Tanner has reconsidered his impetuousness and at least resigned himself to a rule that could, in some future game, save his life. Or at least his mental health. Hopefully, other players and coaches are using last night's incident as a teachable moment today, reminding themselves of the important protection that helmets provide, even thought that protection isn't failsafe.

On the topic of head injuries in sports, NBC sports writer Gregg Rosenthal wrote an opinion column on July 4, 2010, pontificating that "Americans, by our very nature, take risks. And if we didn’t take risks, we wouldn’t be celebrating 234 years of independence today."

With all due respect to sports lovers, taking risks for establishing a democracy, building the Hoover Dam, and engineering the Space Shuttle can hardly be compared with playing football without a helmet.

Let's have some real-life perspective here, people!

It's this type of blind, consuming reverence for sports that keeps me from taking much of it too seriously.

Although meanwhile, I'm saddened that too many people don't take brain injuries in sports more seriously.
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Are Christians Doing Less With More?

It never ceases to amaze me how many professional Christians we have running around North America, busy with professional Christian stuff.

And I'm not just talking about ordinary senior pastors and church staffers.

I'm talking about the people of faith who write books and blogs and magazine articles, who guest-preach and teach and hold seminars, who pontificate on nuances in doctrine and theology, establish non-profit ministries to advance their viewpoints, market their radio and TV programs and websites, and generally contribute to a vast religious subculture of ways to propagate faith among the world's wealthiest Christians.

Not that it's all bad, wrong, ill-intentioned, or even new. It's been going on for at least half a century, and probably only now seems overwhelming since the Internet and social media make it so easy for anybody to set up a website, blog, or Twitter account. Granted, some individual participants in this mass-marketing of Christian ideology may not present the best expressions of faith-based ministry, but as a whole, I cannot dismiss the potential efficacy and sincere intentionality of many of these professional Christians. After all, we're promised in the Bible that when God's Word goes out, it does not return void.

But I have to look at all of this professional Christian activity, and then at our country, and wonder: God's Word may not return void, but how productive are all of the efforts of these professional Christians? Judging by the evangelical church's impact on our modern society, it looks like rain falling on fields of netting: the nets get wet, but most of the water just drains right through.

Or, perhaps what we see today in our world would look far worse if we didn't have this massive religious marketing machine churning out new books, paradigms, formulas, growth models, CDs, and opinions?

I look at my own blog, and question its relevance and necessity in the North American church culture. As I mentioned almost two years ago when I started, this blog primarily is supposed to be serving as a living resume for me to secure a writing job. Of course, I've been pleased at the feedback I've received along the way, and it has been helpful as I've tried to hone my writing craft and provide readers with a better product that's more respectful of their time and attention. But at the end of the day, isn't it up to the readers who are willing to invest that time and attention - especially to stuff by far more eminent people than myself - to make this material worthwhile?

Doesn't it seem like those types of readers, perhaps even instead of we bloggers, writers, teachers, and ministry leaders, are the people upon whom the legitimacy of this massive Christian publishing and marketing industry rises or falls?

Because I have no real reason to do otherwise, I'll take on face value that most of the personalities and material that North American Christendom is churning out these days has some benefit to Christ's kingdom. Every generation has people upon whom God has provided an impetus for writing about aspects of His glorious character, and any of us who squelch the honest calling of God in this way is to be pitied.

But let's face it: very little of what any of us write or teach is actually new. Everything we NEED to know about God is provided in His Word, while a lot of what the Christian marketing industry produces these days addresses materialistic, hedonistic, and narcissistic issues God never intended His people to prioritize in their lives anyway.

Good and insightful Christian writers and teachers inevitably rise to the top in every generation as people blessed with more skills and gifts than others, and I try not to be jealous of those people, like the Al Molher's, Tim Keller's, and Tim Challies' of our day. Besides, my purpose isn't to pick apart some leaders and ministries as inferior to others. To the extent that people believe they are being led of God to participate in His work on Earth by writing and teaching, I pray that they are indeed glorifying God with the talents they believe they've been given. Remember, what makes me question this whole industry is the apparent lack of impact this massive confection of professional Christianity is having on our world, not the likelihood that some participants in this industry have more integrity than others. The stronger one's faith, the easier it should be to discern the better messengers of God's truth.

Think about it: more resources are available to North America's believers than to any other cohort of believes at any place at any time in the history of the world. And to whom much is given, much is required, right? Yet we evangelicals still burn through our marriages at rates equal to the society around us. We still bicker, squabble, and gossip in churches like they're more country clubs than houses of worship. Most of us even center our lives around our careers, instead of Christ, and that's reflected in the choices we make regarding how much time we spend teaching our children about Christ in our homes.

Perhaps most telling, I'll point out to the consternation of most Christians, is the amount of energy we spend trying to emulate the things of the world rather than the Son of their Creator.

After all, careers, nice homes, vacations, technology, sports, education, and even politics and church have been created by a God Who loves us. None of them are bad in and of themselves, and there's not one verse in the Bible which tells us to flee any of these things. Yet in our society, they all add up to a culture of urgency, necessity, and consumption which inevitably distracts us from what should be our overarching aim in life: to worship God and enjoy Him forever.

So to many people of faith, it makes sense that consuming books and seminars and blog entries presenting concepts and ideas and opinions of urgent necessity plays a legitimate part of faith. In fact, technology has widened our access to all of this media and our natural inclination to feel behind the curve if we're not up on the latest popular preaching series propels us to continue feeding the obligation to continue consuming more and more of it.

Whew!

Along the way, of course, a number of people actually do get fed, and people of faith do encounter gems of truth presented in novel ways that help them capture God's Word in a fresh relevance. If none of this stuff had any value, the market for Christian material wouldn't be running rampant with new content all the time.

But at what point should we be seeing a credible impact by the way we live our lives and believe in God on the society around us? Rather than having a Christian subculture that would be sorely missed in North America if it disappeared tomorrow, how many of us would be mourned if our spheres of influence were denied our presence? Remember the early church in Acts, which actually found favor in Jerusalem at large by fellowshipping and worshipping with each other in counter-cultural ways?

Let's fact it: we are not influencing our culture in North America as much as copying it. And the volume of material cascading over and generated by the Christian community appears to be concealing that fact.

But is that the fault of the people and ministries producing this material?

Or the people who are supposed to be consuming it and letting God use it in them to live for Him?
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Bare Heads and Bears

Recently, a single female friend of mine made a joke about dating bald guys.

(BTW, she's dating a guy with a full head of hair.)

After realizing what she'd said - and acknowledging, well, the fact that I'm bald - my friend rushed to apologize, fearful she'd accidentally insulted me or something.

But no, she hadn't insulted me, and I assured her there was nothing for which to apologize. Quite frankly, I've gotten used to having very little hair. Yes, I know I'm bald. No, I'm not convinced I look better now than when I had hair. And yes, I realize baldness doesn't look compelling on most men.

Or women, for that matter.

But we cope, we victims of denuded scalps. There are bigger problems on this planet than a lack of hair, even though this particular one can bother some of us more than others.

And in the most peculiar ways.

Hair Apparent

For example, when I used to ride New York's subways, it never ceased to amaze me how desperate some men were to re-grow hair. Standing smushed in a packed subway car, holding on to the railing, and gazing down at the head of a guy seated below you, it became common to see neat rows of little red dots in the wake of mens' receding hairlines, where hair follicles had been transplanted. It looked like Farmer Jones was growing corn on the guy's forehead.

I'm not vain enough to have ever even considered hair transplants, but I'm reminded of my baldness whenever we recite, of all things, the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism and its answer. I always tend to grin with an acknowledgement of God's sovereignty - and humankind's attempt at quantifying it - as expressed by a particular line. See if you can pick it out:

Question: "What is your only comfort, in life and in death?"

Answer: "That I belong - body and soul, in life and in death - not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of His own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that He protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit His purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him."

Obviously, since God protects me so well, not one of my hairs has ever fallen from my head without His approval, and I can appreciate the theological significance of that fact. While that analogy portrays an incalculable comprehension and repository of knowledge and data on God's part, and helps describe how intimately familiar He is with all of His creation, since I'm bald, my mind has sometimes wandered into the far more trivial aspects of this truth.

For example, might the people who drafted the confession with this example about balding have been follicly- challenged themselves? Why didn't they pick some other fascinating factoid to describe God's attributes? And since God has ordained my personal baldness, is it wrong for me to wish that he kept count of changes in my life by some other method than my rapidly declining hair inventory? Or, might having less hair on my head for Him to count make up for all of the other benefits and graces He needs to bestow on my fragile, mortal existence?

Bald-acious

After my friend's joke earlier this week, then, imagine my delight in finding this passage from 2 Kings in my devotions this morning, concerning the prophet Elisha after Elijah was taken to Heaven in a celestial chariot:

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!"  He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.  And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.  2 Kings 2:23-25

Good grief! I've read this account before, but it's certainly not one of the Bible's epic narratives, like Daniel in the lion's den or Christ's feeding of the multitudes. Have you ever heard a sermon on Elisha's retaliation against mockers of his baldness?

Actually, Elisha likely was less perturbed that the youths were making fun of his apparent lack of hair then he was their insolence at his position as a prophet of the living God. He'd just taken up the mantle of Elijah the prophet - literally, even - so maybe these kids still had no idea who he was. But it better fits the character of God for Him to zealously protect His prophet's status than to be so bothered when somebody taunts a believer's physical characteristics.

Nevertheless, it's one thing to "call down a curse" on malcontents, and then for bears to come out of the woods and kill them! Although the NIV takes a relatively wimpy stance on the translation of this account with the word "maul," other translations get far more graphic. What chaos must have ensued as two bears tore apart 42 teenagers!

Several years ago, walking down a lonely Maine road through some woods one evening, I saw several yards ahead of me, a roly-poly black ball trundle out into the roadway. This country lane was lined with tall trees, and this cub just rolled out of one wall of trees, scurried across the pavement, and into another thick bank of trees on the other side.

It was so cute, and regular readers of my blog know I don't say that tritely.

By that time, I had reached the spot at which the cub had crossed the road, and - unwisely, in retrospect - I crept to the tree I'd seen him dart in behind.

As I slowly approached, I could hear the little bear, likely frightened out of it little wits, start to instinctively climb the tree, whose bark was old and crusty. Displaying remarkable acumen for such a young animal, the bear scooched itself around the other side of the big, fat tree to keep itself out of my sight. Yet alas, the crusty old bark gave way in its claws, and the cub dropped from the tree, about three feet, to the leaf-cushioned ground below.

As adorable as ever, it let out a muffled, painless grunt when it hit the base of the tree. I could practically hear it go "oof!" After catching its breath, and figuring it was now or never, it picked itself up quickly and scampered into the thick forest, by now rapidly descending into dusk's deep darkness.

I stood there for a minute, reveling in what I'd just witnessed, and so impressed at the bear's dexterity and human-like grunt when it fell. Then I remembered something: There is no such thing as a cub on its own! Certainly not in this part of coastal Maine, at least. Wherever there's a young bear, its mama is somewhere close by.

I didn't run, but I turned around and walked very quickly back the way I'd come, glancing over my shoulder every other step to make sure I wasn't about to become dinner for a family of bears. Thankfully, mama bear knew I wasn't a threat, and was probably more interested in giving her offspring a lecture that went along the lines of, "See what happens when you don't follow me closely?"

I've been called worse things in my life than "baldy," and nobody has to worry about me cursing them to death if they use that term towards me. Still, I take some comfort in knowing that God responded aggressively to the sensitivities of His newly-christened prophet, Elisha, who lived in a time when long hair on men was culturally significant.

"I'm Also the President"

God could have sent a pack of wild dogs to scare away the kids who were mocking Elisha. But no; He sent two bears to kill 42 of them.

For making fun of His chosen prophet's apparent lack of hair.

God used Elisha's baldness to demonstrate His own power, as well as validate Elisha's holy mandate.

Hmm... I wonder if that means hair restoration remedies are unBiblical?
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Allowing Peace

Due to some continued strife in my family regarding my aunt's medical condition, I've been unable to spend the time necessary to craft an essay.

But I would like to say that in the flurry of phone calls, texts, and e-mails that I've been sending and receiving regarding this issue with my aunt, the Lord drew my attention to the Greeting of Peace which we always recite in my church on Sundays.

Right after the offering, the minister says "'Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful.' The peace of the Lord be with you always."

And we in the congregation respond, "And also with you."

You may recall that the verse comes from Colossians 3:15, and its immediate context involves harmony in the congregation of believers.

However, this morning, the Lord drew me back to the first word in that verse, the word "let."

As in, "allow."

Do I let, or allow, the peace of God to rule in my heart? After all, God's peace won't do much good to any of us if we don't allow it to permeate our beings. Both for the benefit of our fellowship of saints, and for ourselves individually.

So as the news today has gotten progressively worse regarding my aunt, I've tried to allow the peace of God to rule in my heart.

Maybe "letting the peace of God rule in your heart" is helpful for you to hear today, too.
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Coming to Terms with Toddlers

Watering some plants in the front yard, I had gotten lost in my thoughts, mesmerized by the glistening water as it splashed about the azaleas and ivy.

"Hi, Tim!" a cherubic greeting suddenly rang out.

It was the sing-song voice of my 5-year old next-door neighbor, Daniel.

His father was in their yard, watering some plants just like I was. Here in Texas, with our summer heat, it's what many of us find ourselves doing in the evening whether we want to or not.

Except Daniel. He and his sister had gotten bored with their yard, and had decided to visit mine. A thick swath of mondo grass runs along the line where our yards meet, so Daniel and his two-year-old sister, Charlotte were kicking their short legs high with each step to navigate the terrain.

"HAAA!" Charlotte yelled, having already mastered her Texas twang, but not the accompanying southern lilt. "WHY DA HAVE A DOG?"

Clueless as to what she had asked, I turned to her brother, who immediately translated "why don't you have a dog?" in the bored intonations of a big brother who always has to tell people what his sister is saying.

What an odd question, I thought! What two-year-old cares about the reasons why people do or don't have a dog?

But I had hardly enough time to answer. Charlotte was already babbling another question, which her brother didn't even understand.

"See?" she asked, changing the subject yet again. Charlotte held out the hem of her pink shirt emblazoned with a cat's face. By now, she'd gotten closer to me and didn't have to yell.

"I'm 'Hello Kitty!'"

"She always dresses like that," her bored brother immediately informed me, as if he gets embarrassed because his baby sister always wears pink Hello Kitty clothes.

Then Daniel spotted the dry, empty shell of a cicada, the flying insect that sheds its outer skin in the summer.

"Look what I found!" he announced triumphantly.

"Oh, it's a cicada's shell," I dutifully observed, assuming he'd already seen plenty of them around his own yard, but perhaps wasn't familiar with the name of its former owner.

Except that Daniel looked up at me quizzically, like I was some sort of idiot. A frown rippled across his lips.

"That's not a shell," he scoffed, almost incredulous that I didn't know the correct terminology. "It's an exoskeleton."

Did I mention that the kid has been attending nature camp all summer?

By that time, Daniel and Charlotte's father had meandered down the street to see if he needed to save me from his children.

But I was laughing out loud at Daniel's vocabulary, completely caught off guard by his mastery of what exoskeletons are. I pointed to the dry, crusty shell in Daniel's hand and asked his father, "Daniel has corrected me. This is an 'exoskeleton,' not a 'shell.'"

"Oh, yeah," their father grimaced. "He's correcting his mom and me all the time!"

I mean, when you were five, did you know what an exoskeleton was?

When he was about three or four, my eldest nephew was riding with my father and me as we drove past a construction site with a large machine parked near the road.

"Look, Andrew! A backhoe!" my father exclaimed from the driver's seat.

My toddler nephew, strapped into his carseat, turned casually to glance out the window, and in the bored, level brogue of a wizened foreman, corrected his grandfather.

"That's not a backhoe," he observed, "That's a 'dozer!"

Which it was, of course.

Mustn't it be some sort of hopeful spark regarding the competence of younger generations when they follow terminology better than we do?
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Remembering Rain

I'm racking my brain, trying to remember what rain is like.

Here in north central Texas, we're burning through our 33rd straight day of 100-plus degree days.  Our last measurable precipitation was in June.

And I got to thinking about the summer in New York City when we got our first thunderstorm after an unseasonably long dry spell.

You see, both "hot" and "dry" aren’t usual descriptions for New York City summers.  Sure, it gets hot, but it's rarely dry.  Usually, sprawling as it does alongside an ocean, the region's humidity cloaks everything like a sticky, soggy blanket, while Gotham's fetid air, seemingly torched by all its concrete and glass, punishes every move with drenching heat that can suck away your breath.  The shrill winds that bitterly surge through those skyscraper-lined canyons in wintertimes seem to go on vacation every summer.

And that particular summer was both hot and atypically dry, dry, dry.

Rain isn't always welcome in the City, especially if you’re a subway commuter.  Draining rainwater pours through cracks and patchwork asphalt down to the aging tunnels below, where waiting passengers sometimes open their umbrellas - yes, underground - as dirty runoff sprinkles from overhead.

Not that even above ground, you can keep clean in a New York rainstorm.  Standing by a curb, you're bound to be splashed with oily water as cabs and buses charge past next to the sidewalk.  Standing water around clogged drains can create miniature lakes across crosswalks through which pedestrians must wade.

Yet that summer, as weeks went by without rain, those problems melted away in the relentless heat.  Layers of dusty grime eventually coated just about everything.  In Midtown, the maintenance departments for many corporate office towers break out high-pressure water hoses every summer evening, after rush hour, washing down not just sidewalks but also the first-floor walls of granite and glass skyscrapers, trying to keep things looking relatively clean and odor-free.  At least overnight.  But the entire city desperately needed that treatment; a good washing-down.

So as usually happens in New York’s predictable unpredictability, the first rain in a long time came during an afternoon rush hour.  At just the right time, as commuters who that morning had dressed for work with leather shoes, silk blouses, and hand-made silk ties - all completely inappropriate for exposure to rain - were leaving their office buildings, heading back home.

Yet here we were, walking on the newly-slick sidewalks to subway stations, bus stops, to our apartments, to our reserved black cars, double-parked with windshield wipers squeaking from lack of recent use:  All getting wet.

If this was just another thunderstorm, and this was just another day of rain after many other days of rain - meaning the rain was not special or particularly novel - the wetness would have been greeted with disdain, a sea of umbrellas, and soggy sneakers as pedestrians dodged puddles (with expensive shoes in bags or briefcases - these were the days before most New Yorkers used backpacks).

But as I walked home from the 6 Train's 28th Street subway station, rushing under my umbrella (which had been stored in my briefcase, perhaps more optimistically than pragmatically that summer), and jumping over puddles, I noticed a curious phenomenon.

Most people were walking briskly, yes, as is normal for New York; but not in an agitated manner, like pedestrians usually do when it's raining.  People were not treating the rain as their enemy.  They didn't hustle along with their shoulders hunched, squinting as if doing so helped keep the rain off their eyebrows.  Puddles weren’t obstacles or destroyers of leather shoes.  Even more incredibly:  Umbrellas were neatly folded.  Drenched hair was dripping over faces and ears, but not to the consternation of their wearers.

And yes, some people were actually STROLLING!  New Yorkers don't stroll.  Sometimes - much to the frustration of hardened, harried New Yorkers - tourists stroll.  But my neighborhood was not a tourist haven.

It suddenly hit me:  People were enjoying the rain!

So I closed up my wet umbrella and carried it, letting the rain pelt my carefully-combed head of hair (that was back when I had a lot of it, and I kept it neatly feathered under a thick coat of hairspray).  For maybe the first time in my adult life, I realized how rain could be truly refreshing.  And I walked along, my starched dress shirt first speckled with wet spots, then soaked.  My necktie became a soppy strip of silk dangling from my throat.

Granted, Manhattan has no Elysian fields of grass or hay whose idyllic, seasonal aromas can be unlocked by a nice rain (Central Park?  Fuggheddaboudit... not enough grass for too many lazy pet owners).  Still, the bouquet of that rain, that day, held an urban sweetness and a promise of freshness as trees were rinsed, sidewalks were scrubbed, and building facades were doused.

And we walked home, we relieved urban dwellers, reveling in the wetness.

Stylized hair can be washed, shirts can be laundered, and there are plenty of neckties in the city.  Those are prices we willingly paid for the beauty of rain after a long, hot, dry spell.  And leather shoes never last long anyway, not in a city with concrete sidewalks.

When people talk about appreciating simple pleasures, even a rainy rush hour can be one of them.

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Four Lessons from a Wet Frog

It's not exactly been America's finest hour, has it?

These last few weeks during Washington's epic squabble over the country's debt ceiling.

What started out as just another hike in our country's borrowing capacity suddenly turned into an ideological war over how money gets spent in Washington. To the extent that today's compromise, hashed out between the White House and partisan leaders, actually represents a fiduciary accomplishment, our country has been saved - however briefly - from insolvency. And that's a relief - or, more accurately, a reprieve.

But not much of either.

Tea Partiers have been howling "foul" ever since this debate began, and although I don't subscribe to their tactics, I have to admit that in substance, they're more correct than even traditional Republicans want to admit. Big changes to the way government is done - and paid for - still need to be made.

Lesson 1: Pick Your Fights Wisely

However, this was not the fight to pick with the expectation of solving America's problems. After all, Washington's wasteful policies have been nurtured by decades of cronyism, sleazy lobbying, partisanship, earmarks, and political patronage. This debt ceiling measure, as what would otherwise have been an innocuous - albeit damaging - formality, never provided an opportunity to construct a new framework for spending and taxing, which seemed to be the Tea Party's objective.

It could even be said that the Tea Party itself is simply another lackey in Washington's grand tradition, only this time a puppet of libertarian autocrats like the Koch brothers. If that is indeed the case, as many politicos suspect, Tea Partiers represent the same duplicity of which they accuse the two main political parties. No small wonder, then, that some traditional Republicans appear to tolerate their Tea Party brethren more than they respect them.

This means Tea Partiers need to be logical in their pursuit of meaningful change.

As I've said, I don't disagree with a lot of what Tea Partiers claim to champion: small government, lower taxes, and personal responsibility. I differ from Tea Partiers when it comes to funding our military, because the same wasteful spending so easily identifiable in programs like welfare and Medicaid can also be seen in our defense budget. It's just that since we currently have military personnel being killed in two active wars, we have to use surgical strikes on the Pentagon's budget instead of cluster bombs.

I'm also hesitant about wholesale changes to entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and welfare. Wiping out government programs won't put people to work or erase their medical bills. Yes, I'm convinced widespread fraud exists in these programs which must be weeded out. But taking away safety nets cold-turkey will only dump more impoverished people on the streets and likely increase crime. Personally, I also suspect that the reason most Tea Partiers so loathe these programs is because they don't understand all of the economics of poverty and how extreme practices of capitalism don't do the middle class any favors.

But I digress.

Lesson 2: Don't Dilute Noble Objectives with Vitriol

Where I distance myself from Tea Party rhetoric comes at the point when their noble objectives of fiscal austerity and accountability become infested with an irascible, petulant, and downright nasty mentality. The expectations of many Tea Partiers seem woefully unrealistic, and they seem surprised and easily abrasive when they find the mechanics of downsizing government don't function at warp speed.

These unrealistic expectations may be due to a poor understanding of American history and a lopsided view of political science. I'm not just criticizing American public education, of which many Tea Partiers are a product. A considerable number of neo-cons have taken to personally studying selective bits of American history and developing assumptions supporting preconceived nostalgia which tend to wither under wholistic review. History cannot be accurately perceived when viewed through the microscope of dogma. Not for liberals who want to distort the legacy of Christopher Columbus, for example, and not for self-taught conservatives who insist orthodox Christianity governed our Founding Fathers.

Indeed, for many Tea Partiers, I suspect that a threadbare Christian theology has been woven into the downy quilt with which they so desperately want to cradle their perception of America. Not just in terms of our government, but our economy, with rose-colored glasses lingering over Biblical passages condemning slothfulness yet ignoring many more passages commanding us to love our neighbors.

But I digress yet again.

Lesson 3: Revisionist History Runs Both Ways

Granted, the complexities of history and politics can make almost anybody glassy-eyed, but if conservatives really expect to be taken seriously, we're going to need to put more effort into justifying our exasperation at the status-quo in Washington.

For example, consider this brief collection of sound bites culled from a cursory review of websites sympathetic to the Tea Party movement (each is followed by my own response):

- From TheHill.com: We pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities.

Ten years ago, September 11 hadn't happened yet. And we weren't in two wars simultaneously, both started by a Republican, and both in Islamic countries where insurgencies have helped re-define modern warfare.

- From Mark Meckler, a Tea Party leader:  We have compromised our way into disaster.

But aren't politics all about compromise when you've got different political parties controlling different mechanisms of the legislative process? At most, the Tea Party could claim 40% of voters in 2008, which basic math tells you does not equate to "political capital." Until Tea Partiers control the Executive and Legislative branches, compromise will be essential to getting anything changed for the better.

And this debt ceiling legislation isn't the end of the road. We won't know if this leads to disaster until our government hammers out more details on how these problems will be comprehensively addressed.

- From RedState.com: It’s times like this that I wonder “Is the GOP in cahoots with the Democrats to destroy freedom in this country and make this a police state?”

How has this admitted fiasco over the debt ceiling contributed to the destruction of freedom in the United States? When Republicans voted for George W. Bush's seven debt ceiling increases with nary a blink, how was that not destructive of our freedoms? When he crafted the Patriot Act, how did that not contribute to America becoming a police state?

- And from Glenn Beck: Isn’t it curious that when Democrats wanted to push through a $1 trillion stimulus plan that enriched every social engineering project in the country they got it done? Isn’t it amazing that Democrats had the willpower to ram through health unpopular Obamacare which changed
our entire health care system without any compromise whatsoever? Why can’t Republicans find a similar backbone? Why can’t they fight for the people who elected them? Are you telling me they can’t find significant waste and fraud in the Federal government right now?

If you had bothered to pay attention in your high school civics class, Mr. Beck, you'd have learned that when one party controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, a lot of stuff can get done without compromising between parties. Democrats were in control of Washington during most of the stimulus frenzy, and for all of the Obamacare debacle.

Lesson 4: Politicians Aren't the Only Problem

If there's anything on which I can truly sympathize with Tea Partiers, it's how discouraging it can be for a republic to end up with the politicians it deserves. We usually end up voting in the people we deserve because they're the folks who most effectively play on our desires, our fallacies, and our indulgences. Very few politicians actually get to change society - don't give them that much credit! Almost all politicians reflect the people who put them in office. That means our problems don't lie so much in Washington as they do in the suburbs, farms, and cities of the United States.

We need to remember that for all these years, it hasn't been some vagabond, rogue band that's been dragging America down the gritty path of overspending, bloated government, and over-regulation. It's been a majority of Americans who've been approving, through incremental rationalizations, the festering stew of dysfunction we see today.

Kind of like killing a frog in a boiling pot of water. If you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put a frog into a pot of cool water, it will stay in it, even as you slowly turn the water up to a boil.

At which point, the frog dies.

Hopefully, the bubbles we've started to see in the water means its still just simmering.
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