Redeeming Christ's Nativity From Xmas

Around this time of year, I can't escape all of the ticky-tacky, splendiferous Christmas hedonism perpetrated within evangelicalism.

I'm not being cynical; I'm merely trying to "redeem" the authentic Christmas.  After all, Christ's Nativity was raw, dirty, non-sterile, smelly, and undignified.  It was God's perfect scenario for introducing His created beings to their holy Savior:  Christ is the complete antithesis of carnal royalty!

Meanwhile, fast-forward to 2015, and we tend to forget that there is a legitimate, almost essential theme of the Nativity that we've squandered away in favor of prettiness, nostalgia, and even mirth.  Hey; joy is different from mirth.  Joy shines through the bleakness that was Christ's actual, Biblical, historic nativity.  And yes - we lose a lot of the genuine history of Christ's birth when we romanticize it.

Back in 2012, I wrote more on this topic, which I've adapted here:
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We're thick into the Christmas season now, and churches of all denominations and theological stripes are having their annual Christmas concerts.

These concerts, of course, range from sentimental seasonal affairs to contemporary Christian extravaganzas to high-brow classical concerts.  We have a gargantuan megachurch here in suburban Dallas that puts on a show every year to rival the legendary spectacle at Radio City Music Hall, complete with camels and flying angels.  I've never attended myself, but I hear their production is astonishingly professional and immensely entertaining.

Besides, since Santa Claus himself bows before the manger prop containing the Baby Jesus, it's supposedly good evangelism to boot.

And then we evangelicals wonder why the world around us increasingly views our faith as some sort of fuzzy fable.  We like to blame the world for corrupting Christmas, but aren't we doing our part within the church to mythologize what we say we believe, especially when it comes to the narrative surrounding our Savior's birth?

Christmas is No Myth

Forget all of the commercialization, the partying, the excessive gift-giving, the decorations, and the other busyness of this season.  Plenty of critics have already pointed out how the theological implications of Christ's nativity get lost in the ways we Westerners overdose on what we call "holiday cheer."

Meanwhile, one of the subtlest ways people within the church tend to fritter away the Biblical legitimacy of Christmas involves our complicity in perpetuating its traditionalist fallacies.  We want the nativity to be nostalgic and pretty.  Yet aren't the facts of Christ's incarnation far less cosseted and pristine?  How white should Christmas be, anyway, both in terms of the European spin and snowy dusting with which we Western Caucasian evangelicals fondly depict it?

If you're dreaming of a white Christmas, let me remind you of the real deal:  Mary was a pregnant teenager who'd just finished a grueling trek forced upon her and her fiancé - who wasn't the father of her baby - by their imperious government.  They ended up in a stable, with smelly hay, smelly farm animals, smelly excrement from those smelly farm animals, and no obstetrician, neonatal nurse, or midwife in sight.  Their first visitors after Christ's birth weren't nobility, but a group of illiterate, low-class shepherds.

In addition, this all took place probably in March or April, not the dead of winter, and the magi were just starting out on their journey after seeing the star in the East.  It would take them a couple of years to make it to the place where the young Christ child was.  And by then, it wouldn't have been a stable.

And guess what - it hardly ever snows in temperate Bethlehem.

Actually, if we told the story authentically, wouldn't we see that the reality of Christ's birth is more profound than the frosted fantasy into which our culture has polished it?  Thankfully, some of our songwriters have gotten it right, and attempted to marvel at God's perfect way of introducing Christ to this planet.  But it's hard for merchants to sell Christmas as an arduous, unsanitary, and bizarre event for the disenfranchised.  And unfortunately, the evangelical church has been mostly complicit with the Nativity's commercializers in making the Incarnation a sellable product for once-a-year churchgoers.

Christmas Music Needs Authenticity

Regular readers of my blog essays know that I'm an unabashed advocate for classical hymnody.  I actually believe that what we consider to be traditional corporate worship provides, on the whole, a focus on Christ and God's holiness that comes closer to what our Trinity expects when we gather together to honor Him.  I'm willing to contend that culturally, our genre of classical music has become less a Caucasian, European contrivance as much as it has become a universally-renowned, broadly-appreciated style of stately repertoire uniquely suited to the worship of God, no matter where we're born, or in what society we've been raised.

Yes, that means some expressions of culture are better than others.  It's a politically incorrect thing to say, and, some think, a woefully impertinent thing to believe.  But it's true.  No human culture is perfect, or even ideal.  And many are utterly unBiblical.  Doesn't this mean that, when it comes to how we express our adoration of God to Him, particularly in public, we can't rely on cultural norms to be adequate?  Just because we're under the misapprehension that God values all cultural norms equally?

Don't we need to discriminate between what's good, and what's adequate, or even downright inappropriate?

When it comes to such cultural institutions as Christmas, shouldn't we resist the urge to let culture dictate our worship?  Shouldn't communicating the glory of Christ's birth be done with as much theological and historical integrity as possible?

Poetic License to Mythologize?

Consider, then, one of most revered songs within the Christmas repertoire.  It's called "In the Bleak Midwinter," and the text is by noted poet Christina Rossetti, who lived from 1830 until 1894.  For the most part, these lyrics withstand basic theological scrutiny fairly well.  Yet Rossetti incorporates snowy winter themes in a way that bolsters the fictitious narrative of popular Christmas lore - which does a grave disservice to the historical accuracy of Christ's birth.

1. In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

2. Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain; heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

3. Angels and archangels may have gathered there, cherubim and seraphim thronged the air; but his mother only, in her maiden bliss, worshiped the beloved with a kiss.

4. What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; yet what I can I give him: give my heart.

Thematically, the references to a "bleak midwinter" could be argued as being allegorical to the span of quiet time between the writing of the Old and New Testaments, when it's widely thought that God's presence had been generally withheld from our planet.  Then too, since centuries ago, the Roman Catholic Church had moved the observance of Christmas to coincide with pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice, which symbolizes a time of death between the seasons of decay and renewal, a "bleak midwinter" presents a poetic linkage between mortal sin and salvation.

For the artistic among us, appreciating these delicate abstractions may be a permissible way to forgive the historical inaccuracies that help to mythologize Christmas.  Scott Aniol, a professor of church music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, argues that on its literary merits alone, the poetry of "In the Bleak Midwinter" makes it a bona-fide carol for evangelicals to use during Advent.

"What Rossetti is portraying in her poem," reasons Aniol, "is not a weather report on the day of Christ’s birth.  Rather, she is using quite conventional metaphorical imagery to paint a picture of the condition of the world when Jesus was born.  This was a harsh world, a world that was cold as ice, dark as midnight, and hard as iron... Sin had built up upon the world like snow piled upon snow upon snow upon snow.  This world was bleak.  And it is into this world that the God of Heaven descended.  Rossetti beautifully contrasts the bleakness of a cold dark world with the warmth and light of the stable.  You can almost see the light and feel the warmth through her words."

That may be, but is artistic license sufficient authorization for reinforcing inaccurate cultural baggage when it comes to the Gospel?  Literary nuance is one thing, but isn't basing it on pagan fables a bit counter-productive?  She may sure write pretty, but Rossetti's imagery does little to convey a universal application of the Christmas story to cultures where references to snow and its allegorical qualities risks tilting the Incarnation towards a Western - and therefore, foreign - aesthetic.

Granted, the Holy Spirit can overcome any obstacle we Christians can put in the way of Christ's redemptive work, but how loving is it for us to intentionally and unnecessarily complicate parts of the Gospel?

Let's Liberate Christmas from Ethnocentrism!

Maybe you don't mind singing songs that are exclusive to your culture and cohort.  And in terms of everyday socialization, doing so isn't wrong, in and of itself.  But when it comes to the Gospel, shouldn't we be seeking to free God's Good News from the shackles of our own cultural bondage?  The message of God becoming incarnate for us is a global message.  And it's not our message - it's God's!

For a full half of our planet, the midwinter is hardly bleak and snowy.  For them, it's like North America's and Europe's summertime!  If we sang Rossetti's song in Australia or Nigeria, we'd have to throw in the caveat, "well, this was written by a European white woman; you'll have to free it from its cultural baggage."

Maybe there are some Nigerian Christmas songs that talk about how hot and dusty it must have been during the winter when Christ was born.  See how awkward that would be for us?

Therefore, shouldn't Christ's Nativity be equally relevant to all of God's Elect, no matter where we live?  Or what our winters look like?

I'm not interested in preserving Western hymnody simply for nostalgia's sake.  I think the bulk of Western hymnody should be applicable to as many cultures as possible, because it has that much theological and artistic integrity.  It may have originated in Western cultures, but just like the message it declares, it can be universal in its applicability.

Why doesn't the church return those dreams of a white Christmas to Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby!  And why don't we instead sing:

In the bleak midwinter of mans' weary soul, 
    past the prophets' telling, silence from God's shoal;
Earth stood hard as iron, gloom as shrouds of snow, 
    in the bleak midwinter long ago.

- I edited the first verse of Rossetti's poem for a choral performance of this piece in 2007 at Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas.
 

Two Cabbies, a Knife, and Second Avenue

Hey - you know what?  It's been a long time since I've told you one of my "only in New York" stories.

And with all the talk about Muslims in America these days, I had a flashback yesterday to one night in Manhattan, when I was living there in the early 1990's, and an absurd, politically incorrect event that rattled me as much as it rattled the taxi cab in which I was riding.

Yes, the stereotypical jobs for many Muslims in America run the low-wage gamut, from counter clerk at convenience stores and gas stations to cabbies in cities large and small.  These jobs tend to be comparatively risky, and wholly unglamorous.  They're jobs many of us tend to marginalize, and although they're all around us, Muslims working these lowly jobs rarely become anything more to middle class white Americans like me than a means to an end - like paying for a quick snack of junk food, or being shuttled from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible.

So it was, then, late one Manhattan evening, and probably after I'd stood around longer than I thought was necessary for a bus, that I hailed a cab for a ride down Second Avenue to my apartment on East 28th Street.  Second Avenue is mostly residential, with no attractions for tourists, and no major office buildings, so after the evening rush, traffic would thin out fairly sparsely - by New York standards, anyway.

And my ride down Second Avenue began normally enough.  The cab clattered and rattled as it bounced over Gotham's ubiquitous potholes, and I hadn't bothered to consider the ethnicity of my driver.  What difference did it make?  By the early 1990's, white cabbies had become extremely rare; most were from the Middle East, Africa, India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh.  Many wore turbans, but I'd quickly learned to differentiate between the Muslim style - thicker, fuller and more circular shaped - and the slimmer and sleeker folds of more oval-shaped Sikh turbans.

Nevertheless, it was at an ordinary red light that I learned what appeared to be my cabbie's religion.   How can I remember that?  Because when we stopped at the intersection, my driver - a young, stocky, olive-skinned Middle Eastern man - glanced over at another cabbie who'd pulled up alongside us.  The other driver looked very much like mine.  Suddenly, however, my cabbie began yelling expletives at him (I'm assuming they were expletives) in a language I didn't understand.  Our car windows were rolled down, both men were loudly yelling at each other, and I remember that both of them were wearing the same type of thick, round turban.

Okay, so yes; I reached my conclusions through basic stereotyping.  But hey:  If they weren't Muslim men from the Middle East, they sure weren't convincing as anything else.

Then, the light turned green, and both cabbies were off - tearing down Second Avenue like there was no tomorrow!  And the way they drove, I began to wonder if I literally had no tomorrow.  David Letterman used to joke that riding in a New York taxi was "like watching your life flash before your eyes."  I'd taken plenty of those types of rides; most Manhattan cabbies believe speed limits, lane striping, turn signals, and brake pedals are for sissies.  But this ride had instantly become something far more perilous.

Indeed, I quickly realized theirs wasn't simply some disagreement - and this was back in the days before we had "road rage."  Some major hatred existed between these two cabbies, and since Second Avenue was wide open - about four traffic lanes with hardly any traffic at all - our two cabs surged and dueled across the open blacktop; potholes, uneven manhole covers, and all.

If any pedestrians had been trying to jaywalk, or walk against the light, they'd have been splattered all over Second Avenue.

We were flying.  Well, flying as much as two heavy American-made sedans can fly down a poorly-maintained big-city boulevard.  I'm pretty sure we did get airborne a couple of times though, however briefly.  And as we flew, the cabbies never stopped yelling insults at each other.  At least, I figured they were yelling insults.  I didn't understand a word of it, except that theirs were words of scalding anger and utter contempt for each other.

Before too long, my cabbie reached down and brandished a big knife - a weapon he likely kept under his front seat in case he was ever robbed.  He leaned across the front passenger seat to wave his flashy flesh-slicer at the other cabbie.  The whole episode had crossed from the merely bizarre to full-blown lunacy!  They weaved their cars back and forth across the empty traffic lanes, and even bashed their vehicles into each other!  I kid you not.  I used to wonder how New York's taxi fleet could look so incredibly beat-up and tattered, but if this is what cabbies do when the streets are sparsely-trafficked, now I know.

When 28th Street came up, I had to scream at my cabbie to stop and let me out.  By that time, he seemed to have forgotten that I was still riding in his back seat, having braced myself between the two rear doors, practically anticipating a horrendous collision, but still fascinated enough by such raw drama to maintain my ringside perspective.

He slammed on the brakes, obviously furious over the delay I was causing him, as his nemesis continued full-throttle down the avenue.  I threw a couple of bucks into the front seat - not the full fare, and certainly without any tip - and hurriedly scooted myself out the passenger-side door.  I didn't even get to close it completely before my cabbie was off again - his barely-latched back door rattling ajar as the yellow sedan tore down Second Avenue to continue the fight.

Now, I'm not telling y'all this story to bash Muslims.  I have no idea whether the grievance between these two men wearing Muslim-looking headgear had anything to do with religion, Islam or otherwise.  Maybe they recognized each other at the stoplight as being rivals for the same woman, as unlikely as it may be for two cabbies to meet like that in all of the many intersections that comprise Manhattan's street grid.  Maybe they simply recognized the serial numbers on each other's cabs as meaning they were employees of rival cab companies, between which bad blood brewed.  Since they were both headed in the same direction on a long boulevard, maybe they'd already clipped each other's cars further uptown.

Nevertheless, regardless of the reason for why two men identifying as Muslims (at least by their turbans) would pursue such a reckless and vicious episode of road rage down Second Avenue, that experience remains for me a strangely fascinating example of New York City's freakish character.

And, frankly, I thought I'd better commit this story to narrative form before political correctness silences such vignettes from being retold for fear of insulting anybody.

So, for the record, here is a list of everybody who looks bad in this story:  cab drivers, Middle-Eastern men, men who wear Muslim-looking turbans, as well as the entire workforce in New York City's street maintenance department.

Oh - and me, for not being more patient and merely waiting for a bus.  Or for not simply walking some 40 blocks back to my apartment.

Or those of us in this entire list combined - plus New York City's eight million other residents -  who apparently think putting up with such incidental experiences while living in the Big Apple is worthy of civilization's greatest city.

I have to admit I'm glad I can recount this tale from the relative sanity of bland ol' Arlington, Texas.

Has Religious Freedom Lost its Ring?

Has Donald Trump exposed a deep shift in our society?

Religious liberty used to be a cornerstone of the American narrative.  It's what prompted many of the earliest settlers to our shores.  Remember the Pilgrims?  Religious liberty was what prompted the first American Thanksgiving.

Ever since then, religious liberty is what we've used to help justify our participation in world wars.  It's part of what bolstered our opposition to Communism and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.  It's the basis upon which many immigrants and asylum-seekers have applied for protection and opportunity in our great nation.

Yet as his bluster against Islam continues unabated - and as it continues to be enthusiastically received by his supporters - Trump appears to be exploiting something that many evangelicals can't fathom:  a national decline in the perceived importance of religious freedom.

Indeed, not only does Trump, egged on as he's been by his vociferous partisans, openly decry an entire brand of religious persuasion in sweepingly unAmerican generalizations, but in his calls for barring adherents to one particular religious brand for any length of time, he's calling for a precedent against religion in general.

That precedent is to declare religious freedom as being negotiable when it comes to protecting America's homeland.  And Trump is getting away with it not because he himself is powerful enough to make it happen, but because his followers want him to be.  Which means that a growing number of Americans must genuinely not seriously value religious freedom anymore, since they're more than willing to chuck it if doing so means our nation might be more "secure."

With an emphasis on "might."  Maybe.  But it's not guaranteed.  Still, however, it's worth ditching religious rights to see how secure our country would be without them.

Yeah, let's "make American great again"...

The historic - and former - home of First Baptist Church in Sedgwick, Maine.
Local apathy allowed the congregation to literally die out in 2010,
and the structure has sat unused since then.

Now obviously, during times of war and national emergencies, certain civil liberties are subject to rational limitations.  There is a legitimate concept called "treason," and an American media outlet broadcasting secret American troop movements, for example, could be a form of treason.

Sometimes, freedom of the press - and free speech in general - depends on people not exploiting free speech to say whatever they want.  That's why it's illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire.

The measure for such restrictions is how many people could be injured - or how much overall could be lost - just because one person wants to exercise their "liberty" at the expense of the broader community.

On the one hand, Trump and his supporters are correct in their claims that Muslim extremists don't care about the "broader community," unless they can destroy it so they can personally claim a greater eternal reward.  Radical Islam, as many call it, is not about religious pluralism or freedom of expression.  So the only way to protect our American way of life against such an oppressive mindset, according to Trump, is to prevent it from taking root on American soil.

Unfortunately for all of us, radical Islam is not a nationality, or a corporate entity, or a political party, or a non-religious organization.  In an "open" society such as ours, there's little Constitutional leeway when it comes to weeding out terrorists from non-terrorists.  It may sound easy to merely lump-in all adherents to a particular ideology, and therefore impose restrictions on followers of that ideology, but in the United States, doing so creates a dangerous precedent.

Remember the "Golden Rule"?  "Do unto others as you'd wish they'd do unto you."  It's a basic principle of Western society and law.  But just because a sub-section of a world religion adamantly refutes the Golden Rule, we can't make exceptions.  Otherwise, the religious freedoms of all Americans are compromised.

For many of Trump's followers, that may not be important.  After all, religion in general and Christianity in particular have fallen from favor as American society grows increasingly secular and carnal.  Sure, a majority of Americans may still consider themselves religious or "Christian," but that doesn't mean that faith is of the utmost importance in their life.  They're willing to bend with the populist currents, marginalize Biblical truth, and accept the idea that morality is relative.  And if it means that curtailing the freedoms of one religion curtails the freedoms of all religions, so what?  After all, isn't national security more important than religion?

How bitterly ironic that after years of "seeker-sensitive" Christianity, and our development of America's vast evangelical industrial complex, the society around us not only continues to exist outside of our insular religious empire, but now seems to consider our very existence expendable!

At least when it comes to exchanging our freedoms for the guise of national security.

What's worse, many evangelicals are willingly parroting Trump's hubris, unwittingly relinquishing the free exercise of their faith for the hope of physical safety.

Or, are they? Perhaps a lot of people who profess faith in Christ actually have more faith in another industrial complex - our military one.  If that's true, then those folks will still have faith, except it won't be in God.  It will be in something other than the God of the Bible.

Which, to make the irony even more bitter, will be a win for radical Islam.

Hey Christians: Our Votes Aren't About Us

Hey, all you American evangelicals:  Guess what?!

This upcoming election isn't about us.

Our current presidential contest isn't about Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives.

It isn't about watching Donald Trump make a mockery of civilized discourse and conventional politics.  It isn't about whether or not Democrats will have the temerity to nominate somebody with as much political baggage as Hillary Clinton.  This election isn't about politics anyway.

It's not about abortion, or gay marriage, or civil rights, or gun control.  We're not voting to secure our way of life, our economy, our childrens' future, or our position in world affairs.  We're not casting ballots based on immigration issues, minimum wage laws, or states rights.

This upcoming election isn't about morality, religion, money, opinions, or media coverage.

It's about God.  It's about what God expects His people to do, and how He expects us to act.  It's about those things that bring Him glory, and those things by which He proves His grace in the hearts and minds of those who claim to be His:

Love.
Joy.
Peace.
Patience.
Kindness.
Goodness.
Faithfulness.
Gentleness.
Self-control.

This election isn't about us.  It's not about protecting our Christian faith.  It's not about protecting ourselves from the faith of people who are currently fleeing a war that our national policies have helped to inflame.  This election, like everything else, is about God.

Yes, we need to be grateful that our Lord still lets us contribute each of our votes towards a future we like to imagine we're able to control for our country.  But this election isn't about the United States, either.

This election is about the one, holy, sovereign, unchangeable, apolitical, righteous, and supreme Father God.

May we serve Him with our votes, and no one - and nothing - else.

Guns, Terror, and Which Gospel We Serve

This is NOT the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

"If more good people had concealed-carry permits, we could end those Muslims before they walk in and kill us.”

This IS the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

"Put your sword back into its place.  For all who take the sword will perish by the sword."

American evangelicals seem to be rapidly and enthusiastically squandering one of the broadest and ripest opportunities for ministry that God has presented to us in quite some time.  As refugees from war-torn Muslim countries pour into the West, instead of gearing up to shower them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ here at home, we're freaking out over whether a few of them might kill us, or make Uncle Sam confiscate our guns.

Now, let's be clear:  This is not a debate about whether guns should be illegal.  Whether you're a left-wing radical or a right-wing zealot, guns aren't the issue here.  This is a soul-searching opportunity to realize those things - or people - in which we place our confidence.

As I've said many times on this blog, I'm not a fan of guns, but neither do I believe that more gun control will solve our problems with gun-involved violence in the United States.  In fact, whether you're for or against gun control, wasting time and energy on this debate obfuscates the real issue at hand.  We have a violence problem in our country, not a gun problem.  How can I say that?  Because the vast, overwhelming majority of America's gun owners never murder anybody.

Nevertheless, how much of your confidence is placed in your ability to pack heat?  Sure, conceal-carry is one thing, but is that the primary thing?  Is whether you die today, tomorrow, or 50 years from now dependent upon whether or not you've got a gun?

If you believe in the sovereignty of God, your answer is "no."  Right?

But then the swaggering president of the supposedly "Christian" Liberty University incites his audience of sophomoric college students with what he's packing in his hip pocket, and that he wants everybody on campus to carry one to defend themselves against Muslims.

Can't you see the fallacy?

Meanwhile, I received an e-mail this morning from a missionary friend serving in Quebec.  He and his wife speak French fluently, and a majority of their ministry centers on French-speaking Muslims temporarily living in Canada to attend college.

You see, these friends of mine believe that Christ's Gospel is the best way to combat violence, terrorism, and other forms of hatred.  And they marvel at the ways God is bringing Muslims out of war-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East to North America, where - at least for now - some of them can be exposed to what Christ-followers believe to be true about humanity, our world, sin, and salvation from that sin.

In other words, my missionary friends relish the opportunities they're having of meeting and befriending Muslims.  They're not afraid; they're eager.

Wow.  Wouldn't it be nice to be that unafraid?

What about the rest of us who claim to follow Christ?  What's the real issue facing us?

Terrorism?  Gun control?  Muslims?

All of the above, or none of the above?

Whose Gospel do you truly believe?

I Hereby Repudiate Trump's Politics

Donald Trump may speak for a bullying, bigoted chunk of American blow-hards, but he does not respect the United States Constitution, human rights, and basic principles of decency, diplomacy, governance, and logic.

Either he's been paid-off by Bill and Hillary Clinton to throw the election her way, or he's simply become delusional regarding his own importance and influence.  There's hardly any other way to analyze his increasingly ridiculous statements on the campaign trail.

True, on the one hand, it helps to know what Trump personally thinks and believes, especially since those thoughts and beliefs disqualify him as a person of integrity, as well as being in rational contention for the presidency (history has shown those two qualities are not mutually exclusive).  Indeed, just because he has a legal right to say the things he's saying doesn't mean he should say them.  And just because a sizable portion of contemptuous conservative voters like what he says doesn't make the things he says correct.

Trump and his followers brazenly imperil free speech, freedom of religion, and even our already questionable efforts at national defense.  How bizarre it is to witness the same people who profess such allegiance to "the American way of life" making a mockery of it through their enthusiastic support of Trump.  Many of these folks claim that President Obama has brought shame upon our country by the ways they believe he's ingratiated himself to the Arab world.  Yet they can't see how Trump's xenophobic hubris wreaks tangible harm on the United States, especially as we confront the dangers of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

For what it's worth, for the record, as an American, as a white male, as somebody who mostly votes Republican, and especially as an evangelical Christ-follower, I personally repudiate Donald Trump's politics.

May God have mercy on the United States of America as we endure such a misguided, mean-spirited candidacy for the presidency of this, my native country.

Gun Control No Fix for Losing Human Control

 

Update & Disclaimer 12/4/15: 
Before I had written and posted
yesterday's blog entry,
I had not read this article
in the NY Times regarding
the troubled family life
of the male suspect in Wednesday's
mass-shooting in San Bernardino.
But it adds credibility to my claim
that there's often more to a big story
behind the scenes -
starting with a
perpetrator's upbringing.

After yesterday's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, it seems that fewer people are voicing now-stale rhetoric about more gun control being needed in the United States.

Frankly, even the President's hometown, Chicago, proves that more gun laws don't reduce violence.

With 14 victims dead - not including the two alleged perpetrators - the San Bernardino tragedy is America's worst mass shooting since Connecticut's Sandy Hook tragedy, perpetrated by Adam Lanza.

And as San Bernardino is being compared with Sandy Hook, it quickly becomes obvious that guns play a secondary role within an over-arching story of disaffection and uncivilized behaviors that apparently propelled both Lanza and yesterday's husband-and-wife aggressors.  While we still don't know the motives behind yesterday's attack, it seems pretty clear already that the suspected Muslim couple were radicalized towards some sort of dehumanizing ideology, even as we don't know definitively what that ideology was.

Lanza, of course, had his own deeply personal problems.  And this is where the fallacy of gun control comes into play, because every perpetrator of a mass-shooting is a complex human being with an equally complex rationale they've developed for why they execute their attacks.  It's this complexity that makes gun control a side-show at best in the broader narrative of recognizing warning signs and balancing civil rights with protection.

Perhaps your recollection of Lanza has grown a bit fuzzy, since, after all, it was three years ago.  Back then, I wrote about Lanza and one of the troubling revelations about his childhood years given by his own father.  Not that Lanza's dad is directly responsible for what happened at Sandy Hook, but take a moment to peek into the background of one family's dark prelude to a massacre, and recognize how difficult - and intensely personal - it is to predict the future, and its causes.

Indeed, when a society loses a person to something other than our common good, the best any legislation can do is merely tinker with the aftermath.
_____

Peter Lanza's Regrets Look Like Causes
Originally posted Monday, March 10, 2014

"I wish he'd never been born."

According to writer Andrew Solomon, that's what Adam Lanza's father admitted about his own son.

Granted, Adam Lanza is the troubled young man who killed his mother in their home, and then 26 other people at Sandy Hook elementary school in affluent Newtown, Connecticut, over a year ago.  Not exactly anything for a father to find worthwhile about his son.  But still:  to wish he'd never been born?

I've heard a lot of parents confess to the media that, despite the atrocities their children may have perpetrated against humanity, they still loved them.  It's what parents do, even if they can't sanction the behavior of their children.

Throughout his interview with Solomon for the New Yorker, however, Peter Lanza virtually bristles with contempt that Adam was ever his biological offspring.  To his father, Adam apparently was one big nuisance, a "normal, little, weird kid."

"Let’s keep in mind that you expect Adam to be weird," Adam's father repeats to Solomon, as if it was normal for a father to use such a derogatory term in relation to his child.  Especially a child that wasn't just endearingly odd, or extraordinarily gifted, but downright emotionally disabled.

"You can’t mourn for the little boy he once was," Adam's father rationalizes, but to hear Solomon tell it, the elder Lanza was never particularly fond of even the little boy who didn't speak until he was three years old.

"You can't get any more evil," he says of his son.  "How much do I beat up on myself about the fact that he’s my son?  A lot."

Not that it's ultimately Peter Lanza's fault that his youngest son holds the record for killing the most people in a school.  Obviously, there are reasons for why Adam Lanza did what he did, and various contributing factors, plus certain lifestyle choices that he made for himself, all of which set the stage for Sandy Hook's tragedy.  But it's also obvious that Adam was brought up in a family environment that was crippled to a certain extent by what sounds like misplaced devotion by his father.

In any divorce, there are two sides to the story, and Adam's mother initiated her lucrative divorce from his father because their marriage had "broken down irretrievably and there is no possibility of getting back together."  Yet we know that her husband, an accounting executive for a GE subsidiary, worked 60 to 80 hour weeks, earning a fabulous salary in the process.  Perhaps hindsight is the only way to see where all of those long hours at the office could have been better spent trying to invest in both quality and quantity time with his troubled son.  Nevertheless, since Adam was a patient of several doctors and specialists all during his growing-up years, it shouldn't have taken his slaughter of 27 people to indicate that his needs likely wouldn't have been met by a workaholic father who moved out of the family home... and had a girlfriend shortly after his divorce was final.

Asking for a writer from the New Yorker to interview him for his side of this story, Peter Lanza had his prime opportunity to set the record straight about public misperceptions about his parenting style.  And maybe he tried, with his recollections of assorted weekends with his boys, even if he admits to hardly ever seeing them during those many weeks during their growing-up years.  He was earning all that money for the family, and according to our society, that's not morally questionable.  After all, America has plenty of kids being raised in the homes of harried corporate executives, and how many of those kids turn into mass murderers?

And just as every divorce has at least two sides, every child has two parents.  To blame Adam Lanza's father exclusively is to ignore this basic fact.  And although his father appears fairly gracious to his late ex-wife in the New Yorker, it's difficult to envision her as somewhat clueless regarding the depths of despair to which her son had sunk.  Then again, whereas Adam's father seems to have been intentionally distant, and perpetually playing catch-up regarding updates about his youngest son, Adam's mother may have been so personally involved in his problems that she couldn't see the forest for the trees.  Between the two of them, perhaps it could have been hoped that a satisfactory middle ground could have been achieved for Adam's benefit, but to simplify his case so arbitrarily isn't fair to his parents.  Here again, hindsight shows us what went wrong, but isn't particularly useful otherwise.

While it is possible that Peter Lanza and the mother of his children did everything possible to raise their son to the best of their abilities, it's obvious that something didn't click along the way.  We don't have Adam's mother here to give her side of the story, but we do have an engrossing narrative from his father, expertly crafted for a prestigious magazine, and that narrative is more narcissistic than paternal.  Yet few people seem interested in casting blame on Peter Lanza.  For one thing, it seems cruel, considering all he's gone through.  For another thing, hardly anybody seems to know him.  Then, too, basing allegations on an article despite its pedigree in the New Yorker could be derided as hubris of an exceptional impertinence.

So let's take Peter Lanza at what he says is his purpose for telling his story.  And that purpose is to, in some way, perhaps warn other families who might see similarities between his experience and their own.  The problem with that, however, is that many people in our society today are much like the former Mr. and Mrs. Lanza.  They view long work hours as the price we pay for financial success.  They view whatever family dysfunction that may arise from their dedication to corporate America as something to hide, or something to try and escape from through divorce.  They view divorce as one of the potential drawbacks of workaholism, and wealth as something that should minimize whatever fallout comes from divorce.

Peter Lanza even told Solomon that when he and his wife separated, "the funny part is that the separation didn’t really change things for the kids very much."  Oh?  And how could he judge such a thing?  And how does that square with what Solomon references in his preceding paragraph, when Adam told a psychiatrist that his parents, even before their separation, "were as irritating to each other" as they were to Adam himself?  Even if the Lanza's separation "didn't really change things very much," apparently that was hardly a good stasis.

Sure, we could blame Adam's mother.  We could blame all of the behavioral experts who never forced him into an asylum.  We could blame guns, which is the scapegoat upon which lots of liberals are focusing.  And we could blame his father.

But we Americans have more to do now than simply cast blame.  We need to wake up, and forget the notion that this was simply the Lanza family's failure.  We need to stop blaming guns, even though blaming guns is a whole lot easier because they're not people.  People like Peter Lanza's superiors at that GE subsidiary where he worked, for example.  As he struggled with his wife - and then his ex-wife - to raise Adam, how many of Peter's bosses stepped up to the plate and told him, "take off whatever time you need to work with your son; we can see he's weighing on your heart."

Come to think of it, how many companies dangle enormous salaries out there for their hard-working employees to burn the midnight oil over?  And how many of us assume that enough hard-earned income should buy our way out of these types of problems?

One of my friends evaluated all of the media coverage being devoted to the Sandy Hook tragedy and wondered how intense the reporting would be if a similar incident had happened anyplace other than "Currier and Ives Country," as he put it.  Suburban Connecticut pretends to be rural and quaint, but it's an elegantly cloistered world of supersized paychecks, supersized work loads, and supersized egos.  For somebody like Adam Lanza to actually grow up in such an environment and do what he did anyway likely sends shock waves - and guilt - through a lot of parents there, but they're so focused on what they expect from themselves, and their careers, that they can't see what their children truly need.

Ironic how 20 children and their educators paid for it with their lives.

Hate Shouldn't Stoke Pro-Life Debate

 
America's pro-life battle isn't waged simply between political factions.  Sometimes, it's waged within evangelical Christianity itself.

On one side, ardent pro-life advocates simmer with contempt not only for abortion, but also for those who support it.  On the other side, still within evangelicalism, are those who desire to pursue a more gracious tack in aid of abortion's victims - victims who include those very people who have been deluded into supporting it.

Although we've yet to know for sure, last week's shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic that left three people dead appears to have been perpetrated by a radical pro-life gunman, representing the extremist element of the hard-right religious/political spectrum.  Meanwhile, in the wake of that shooting, an article appeared in Christianity Today calling for "Loving Our Pro-Choice Neighbors in Word and Deed."

And many within evangelicalism are now howling.

The piece was written by an English professor, Karen Swallow Prior, for CT's Her-Meneutics blog, which is geared to women.  "Calling abortion what it is will bring good," writes Prior.  "Doing so without the temperance of love will bring harm."

Which, of course, is true, isn't it?  Yet Prior takes the odd position that "calling legal abortion 'murder' when it isn’t... is to say what isn’t true."

Yes, read it again.  I had to!  Prior is saying abortion isn't murder.

I think I understand what she's trying to say when she writes that abortion isn't "murder."  I suspect that, summoning her credibility as an English professor aghast at the misuse of our language, and charged by her professorship with guarding how we use words, she's probably trying to be a vocabulary purist.  In other words, since abortion is legal, Prior means it's technically not legally murder, since murder is illegal.  See?  She's attempting to expose a linguistic fallacy.

But the fallacy doesn't exist, does it?  Whether murder is legal or not, it's still murder, right?  Why should she harbor a linguistic pet peeve over describing abortion as murder, when it is, even if the law allows it?  After all, we don't need a law telling us that the sky is blue, do we?

Prior's over-arching point appears to be that North America's pro-life narrative has become infused with sinful vitriol, and considering the tone many evangelicals take when addressing anybody who doesn't believe with them, she's correct.  But why does that make it wrong to classify abortion as murder?  Is there another word in the English language I don't know about that means "unilaterally taking somebody else's life from them"?

Not that Prior isn't pro-life herself.  She says she's volunteered at crisis pregnancy centers for 17 years, and has counseled women outside of abortion clinics for ten.  Indeed, she also affirms that "abortion ends a precious human life."  She simply doesn't like calling it murder.

Unfortunately, by taking this unusual stance, Prior only confuses her readership, and ultimately fails to make a convincing argument for loving our enemies.

After all, judging by the feedback being posted on CT's website and in social media, plenty of self-proclaimed pro-lifers are outraged by Prior's article.  Many pro-lifers are appalled that she dares to write such blasphemy, and others contend her article, approved as it was by the editors at CT for their webzine, points to the sinful decay of Billy Graham's once-great periodical.

Part of the problem, obviously, is that reading comprehension by people surfing the Internet has become abysmally low.  Few people today - no matter their political or religious persuasion - invest the amount of time and mental energy necessary to interpret and digest intellectual arguments.  And Prior's take on the "murder" language certainly qualifies as an academic - albeit sloppy - argument that probably would be more at home in an English department's staff lounge than the World Wide Web.

Still, it's also obvious that many evangelicals get far too virulent when they criticize other people.  We're all about grace when it comes to drinking alcohol, or gambling, or overeating, or gossip, but when it comes to our hallowed political causes, we can get downright nasty.

But should we?   

Sure, although pro-choicers advocate for murder, we're still supposed to love our enemies, right?  And pray for them.  God still allows the sun to rise and set on both the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45).  We are to be discerning, but we don't know who or when God might save, even if they advocate for abortion.  Remember, we shouldn't want to see unbelievers destroyed; we should want to see them saved.  And then there's Proverbs 25:21:  If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For you will heap burning coals on his head, And the LORD will reward you.

And then there's this:  Can the world around us - including abortionists - recognize that we're children of God's by the love that we have for those of us already included in Christ's redeemed congregation of believers?  Can abortionists recognize that the love we profess for unborn children represents an extension of the love Christ wants us to have even for them, the people who advocate for pre-birth death?  This is a counter-cultural approach that we often - myself included - forget to embrace when it comes to recognizing the eternal element in our battle against sin and the flesh.

Disagree with Prior if you want - and I do disagree with her.  But I don't hate her.

And by all means, advocate for life in opposition to those who advocate for the cessation of life; but should we hate them because of the lies Satan has told them?

Isn't hate what's causing abortion to exist in the first place?

National Security Is Not Job 1

Think about it, folks!

The primary role of government is NOT to provide security or protection, as many advocates claim in regards to pulling up our national drawbridge to Syrian refugees.

The primary role of government is to ensure that our human rights are protected, and there's a big difference.

Presuming that our government exists primarily to protect us from physical harm is short-sighted at best; and at worst, potentially lethal to human rights.

After all, what good is being protected from "harm" when we can't think, act, speak, and congregate as we wish?

The Soviet Union did a good job of protecting its citizens, but who would want to live in that environment of civil oppression?

There is a growing wave of security-minded zealots in the United States who want to be able to control our population through official scrutiny and incessant oversight.  We've already resigned ourselves to the fact that our government knows far more about each of us than we likely do ourselves.  Our banking transactions, credit card purchases, drivers license numbers, medical records, and airline ticket purchases are all strictly monitored.  Security cameras record much of our movement in public.  Toll tags and cell phones track where we go, and when.  And all of this data is recorded and stored by people we don't know for a length of time we don't know.

To be used in ways we don't know.

Part of the trend towards hyper-security is driven by atrocities like terrorism, but part of it also involves our government's desire to control us.  Politicians on both sides of the partisan spectrum have already admitted this.  So why do we keep feeding our government's thirst for control by parroting the grim hawkish mantra about physical security being our government's top priority?

After all, if we're physically secure yet unable to find privacy or think and act freely, how wonderful is that?

So the next time you hear a politician or media personality sternly reminding you that your government's primary role is to protect you, don't buy it.  I want my government's primary role to be protecting my civil rights.  And my civil rights extend to more than my physical safety.  The government can turn my physical safety to my disadvantage if they've already taken away my right to champion my independence.

Frankly, I'm surprised at how gullible all of my evangelical cohorts are in this matter.  On the one hand, we complain about our religious freedoms being taken away, and then on the other hand, many of us want to give the government a responsibility that could compromise our religious freedoms in the future.  If you say that protecting us from physical danger is what Washington should be doing, how long do you think it will be before some left-winger convinces enough people that Christianity poses some physical danger to society in general?

Now do you see why "national security" is not government's primary role?  For your sake and mine, I hope so.

ISIS Is Already Winning PR War

ISIS is winning the public relations war in the United States, and they haven't even bombed us yet.

From governors playing to fears from their citizenry about welcoming Syrian refugees, to right-wing websites almost enthusiastically predicting future terroristic events, the one battle that almost never reaches a battlefield or courtroom is being quickly won.

That battle is the PR battle - the fight to control how people think.  And ISIS wants us Americans to shiver in fright and quake in dread of the misery and mayhem they represent.

ISIS wants us to fear them, and fear them completely.  If they can't convert us to their brand of Islam, they want us to suffer for not converting!  They want to destabilize us and subdue us.  They want to undermine whatever religious or political solidarity can still be found in America.  ISIS wants to dominate our consciousness, fill our airwaves, and be relevant no matter the topic.  Sports? ISIS.  Rock music?  ISIS.  Air travel?  ISIS. 

Drones?  The Pope?  Disney?  Oil?  Christmas?  All touched by ISIS, at least according to this afternoon's Drudge Report.

All this frenzy, and ISIS has yet to perpetrate anything concrete on American shores.

It's not like ISIS doesn't like all of this negative attention.  This is what they want.  So far, America's mighty media machine - and, ironically, America's right-wing media machine - is playing right into ISIS' hands.  ISIS wants us second-guessing.  They want us blaming fellow Americans, and contemptuously taunting those fools still self-righteous enough to think welcoming refugees is some sort of goofy humanitarian gesture.

ISIS doesn't want Syria's refugees to enter the United States any more than most conservatives do.  ISIS wants as many people to schlep through these dark days in as much agony as possible.  Sure, to ISIS, we're all infidels worthy of death, but they can't kill all of us.  Yet, anyway.  So why not do the next worse thing, and make as many of us as scared, conflicted, and vulnerable as possible?

While ISIS may have a surprisingly robust budget, and a remarkable ability to recruit soldiers online, they don't yet have the worldwide network of operatives and jihadis to efficiently foment large-scale panic.  So they've taken the liberty of letting hawkish right-wingers do some of that job for them.  And of course, it helps when the arch-enemies of conservatives, those flaky liberal patsies, have nothing but a stale old "compassion" argument to keep chirping into the gale of hysteria over refugees.  There's nothing that stokes one's indignation quite like being told you're too hard-hearted to think of the plight innocent Syrian civilians are facing.

Of course, for many conservatives, being "hard-hearted" is considered a badge of honor.  But we ain't seen nothin' yet when it comes to hearts being hard.

And that, my fellow Americans, is what ISIS is banking on.

Animal Instincts in Post-Paris USA

Science teaches that with one key trait, we humans can distinguish ourselves from all other animals.

That trait involves our ability to process information in a rational way.  We don't just react; we have the capacity to apply a range of intellectual resources to improve a particular situation.

Therefore, just because a group of humans may choose to express their emotions in a vulgar, bestial fashion, the rest of us have the option - and indeed, the obligation - to meet that inhumanity with something better.

Last Friday, a rogue band of Muslims went on a killing rampage in Paris, France.  Initial clues regarding the identities of those terrorists indicate at least one of them may have been a refugee from Syria's ISIS-dominated civil war.  So it hasn't taken long for many right-wingers across Europe and North America to call for an immediate end to the acceptance of refugees from Syria and the Middle East.

Indeed, the refugee crisis from the Syrian conflict has already proven to be a financial, political, and logistical nightmare for Europe, whose liberal immigration policies for war refugees have come under unprecedented strain as hundreds of thousands of displaced Muslims from across the Middle East and northern Africa flood the continent.

Syrian refugees have begun trickling into the United States as well, with increasing numbers predicted to arrive as Europe reaches its breaking point.

Before that trickle turns into a torrent, however, an easy way to try and prevent a repeat of Paris' Friday-the-13th on our soil would be to immediately stop welcoming Syrian refugees.  At least, that's what knee-jerk reactionaries say.

Even if two or three terrorists can get through amongst an overwhelming tide of non-violent refugees, that's two or three too many.  Right?

Or... if we're going to be smarter than a horse or an ant, don't we have to think deeper about this?  Are provincialism and petty patriotism good expressions of intellectual resources?

First, we need to understand why last Friday night happened.  Was Paris merely a soft target, or is its cosmopolitan reputation more symbolic of hedonism in general?  Were the terrorists primarily exploiting the refuge crisis?

Maybe we can deduce those answers at this early stage in the aftermath.  But there are more questions.  And harder ones.  For example, how much has America's botched militarism within Islam contributed to the radicalization of Muslims across the world?

After all, it's impossible to argue that Iraq was less stable before the US-led invasion tied to 9-11.  That's been the Bush family's worst legacy.  The Obama administration's amateurish indulgence of the "Arab Spring" has been almost as disastrous. And it's impossible to argue that any Western force has been able to tame Afghanistan.  Can we really expect that none of these debacles will have consequences?

This isn't merely about politics, or even humanitarianism and compassion.

Consider what might happen if all Western countries immediately closed their doors to Syria's refugees.  What are all of those displaced people going to do?  At this very moment, there is a flow of homeless people surging across the Middle East and Europe.  This isn't a theory, or a hypothetical situation.  People with blood like yours and mine are literally fleeing their homeland.  This means that they've made a critical, bitter decision based on immense conflict.  They're not just on vacation, or taking a tour.  If anybody has an intrinsic right to act on animalistic instincts of self-preservation, isn't it these folks?

The word "desperate" comes to mind when describing them.

Now, when anything flows, that flow doesn't usually just stop without causing some sort of ancillary action.  Usually, if something stops a flow, there is a build-up of energy that eventually amasses enough strength on its own.  Then what happens with that mass of energy?

There is a simplistic logic in the presumption that keeping Syrian refugees out of the United States - even if it creates a logjam of human misery in Europe - could also confine any further violence to Europe.  But in our age of communication, travel, and technology, how can we be sure?  Besides, as America's current problem with illegal immigration shows, our borders are already pretty porous.  Only law-abiding people respect international borders - it's what many right-wingers already say about migrants.

The raw reality is this:  Syria's refugee crisis represents human kinetic energy created by deeply flawed politics both within Syria and across the political spectrum.  It is the result of not only domestic problems within Syria, but diplomatic bumbling and machinations from the White House to Downing Street to the Kremlin.  Fear ISIS and Islamic jihadists by all means, but we can no longer pretend that modern-day Muslim-backed terrorism has been fomented in some desert vacuum.

Politicians look for simple fixes, and it sure sounds simple enough to close borders and prevent refugees from getting in.  After the media saturated our consciousness with the horrors from Paris, people who desperately want to feel safe will be tempted to react in short-sighted ways, rather than peek across the broad train-wreck of factors that contributed to last Friday's attacks.

What really needs to happen is for the situation in Syria (and much of the Arab world) to stabilize enough for refugees to return home.  That will not happen overnight - if it happens at all.  And it will mean that we sanctimonious Westerners need to relinquish our notions of imposing Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman democracy on Arabic cultures.  We've never been able to convert any Muslim country from even the most liberal interpretations of Sharia law.  Indeed, as the West marches incessantly towards secularization - a reality for America many evangelicals are only now beginning to fear - many Muslim countries have been vilifying secularization, especially as modern communication technology exposes more of their people to it.

This all means that the Syrian crisis isn't going away anytime soon, so we need to be smart, not scared.

With so many moving parts to this conflict, how is it possible to latch onto one aspect of it - the movement of refugees from a marginalized, war-torn country to more stable and prosperous ones - and expect to diffuse it without addressing its causes?

Meanwhile, there remain those humanitarian and compassionate considerations that could go a lot farther in diffusing some of this crisis.  Sure, the cynic in me is aware of the uncomfortable chance that "no good deed goes unpunished."  But even at the rates of refugee acceptance we're talking about for America, the numbers would not be large.  Our portion of refugees to welcome would be a token, considering the millions who are displaced.  Surely the integrity we would demonstrate on the human level would be of greater value than the provincial security our refusal wouldn't guarantee anyway.

That's not being cavalier when it comes to security.  But if security is all that America is about these days, how are we any better than marauding lions?

(By the way, in western Africa these days, lions are an endangered species.)

Things to Know About Dementia, Part 4

For Part 1, click here.
For Part 2, click here.
For Part 3, click here.


19.  Shoes and Socks

Some dementia patients seem to develop a peculiar obsession with their shoes and socks.  I've already told you about Mr. Laurel, the gentleman at Autumn Leaves who wears mis-matched shoes.  And never with socks!

The bank CPA hardly ever wears shoes at Autumn Leaves; she walks the halls all day long either in her stocking-feet, or bare-footed.  Or, often, with one sock on, and the other sock left hanging neatly on a hallway hand rail at the other end of the building.  Or simply placed on a couch, or dropped onto the floor.  One of the secretaries keeps a bin behind her desk for all of the stray socks the CPA - and several other residents - leave behind for somebody else to find.

The lady with Lewy Body dementia can't do a lot of things, but one task she can deftly perform is removing her shoes and socks!  The staff will put on each sock, and then her slip-on shoes, and practically as if by magic, she'll wiggle her feet, and they'll be bare!  It is uncanny.  She, the CPA, and several other women don't regularly take off any other garment except for whatever is on their feet.  (There is one female resident who frequently unbuttons and removes her button-up blouses; why do staffers continue to dress her in such a top?  Because her husband refuses to admit that his wife shouldn't wear such garments, and he insists that her wardrobe be dominated by them, because that's what she used to prefer pre-dementia.)

In our experience, men don't seem to have the same fixation with bare feet.  But Dad did eventually forget how to tie his lace-up shoes.  Laces also become a trip hazard, so we took the decorative leather strings off of his rubber-soled house slippers and let him go with the strapless look.


20.  Going Home

Where is home for you?  It's where you're living right now, correct?  When you're at work, and you say you want to go home, you mean you want to be at your current place of residence.

Granted, if where you live now isn't as comfortable or nostalgic an environment for you as the place where you grew up, it's common to say that the prior, primary location of nostalgia for you is your "home."

So, when a dementia patient tells you they want to go home, what "home" do they mean?

During his early years of dementia, Dad could remember his home address with ease.  He could recognize our neighborhood as he pulled into it off of the main street.  He could identify our house as he approached its driveway.  He knew where "home" was.

However, things began to get tricky when Dad would be safely inside the house in which he'd lived since 1978, and ask us when we were going home.  He'd be tired, or confused, and he wanted us to take him home.

He'd stand at the sliding glass door, looking out onto our wide patio and the backyard he'd mowed for three decades, and ask whose apartment he was in.  Was this in Brooklyn?  Our expansive, suburban property sure didn't look like the dense urban environment of his childhood!

That's when Mom and I realized Dad was spending more and more of his mental time in his far earlier memories of New York City.  At first, we deduced that Dad was "living" in his former home at 755 42nd Street, in Brooklyn, where he hadn't lived since the early 1960's.  As his dementia worsened, Dad "moved" himself back even further, to 832 42nd Street, where he grew up.  Several times, he was back to his preschool days, on 41st Street - where home had been for him over 80 years ago.

Where is home?

I've already mentioned the resident at Autumn Leaves who frequently waits in a hallway for the evening bus to Maysville.  This resident's wife told us Maysville was a town close to where he'd grown up in rural Oklahoma.

Shirley, the nonagenarian resident famous for her red sweaters, constantly pines for Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where she grew up, raised four children, and buried two husbands.  Her daughters say she hasn't been to Tahlequah in over half a century, but she can recall details of the place that sound pretty accurate to us.

The bank CPA appears to have no idea where Arlington, Texas, is (the city in which she's lived most of her life, and where Autumn Leaves is located), but whenever Mom or I mention "Maine" to her, the state where she was born, she usually lights up with a big smile.

Last fall, Dad began what would become a regular ritual of his, mostly in the late afternoons and evenings, during that dreaded "sundowning" exhibited by most dementia patients:  "I want to go home."

"When can I go home?"

"I'm going to go home."

Yet he was home.  He just didn't recognize where he was as his home.  It quickly became extremely upsetting to Mom and me, realizing that Dad didn't know where he was.  The one place where we usually feel safest and most secure - our home - had been taken from him by his own brain.

And it wasn't just that he didn't recognize his own home.  He began to accuse us of holding him hostage, so he couldn't go home.  There were times I'd stand before the closed front door as an obstacle to keep him from walking out into the chilly night air.  We installed a buzzer on the front door (he never tried to "go home" through any other door in the house) to warn us whenever he'd try to leave.

One winter afternoon, while it was still light outside, I finally let him "go home," just to see what would happen.  I followed him as he stalked down the driveway, got the street, and began arguing with me about going home.  But he didn't know which way to go!  He had no idea where "home" was anymore.  It was so pitifully sad to watch.  He simply argued with me, as if I was delaying his escape to his home.

If this happens to your loved one, don't be surprised if it breaks your heart.  Their desire to go home is something that most dementia patients seem unable to control.  And you can't control it, either.  We had a big framed poster of Sheepshead Bay, a coastal neighborhood in Brooklyn, hanging over the fireplace, so I took it down and hid it in a closet, thinking the Brooklyn reference was tricking Dad's memory.  We stopped closing the drapes at night, and I turned on the backyard lights when it got dark so Dad could see his patio and lawn and understand he wasn't in somebody's high-rise apartment.  Mom and I took Dad on tours throughout his own house, hoping that by pointing out pieces of furniture, paintings, and family photographs, he'd recognize where he was.  None of it worked.

We finally figured out that "home" for dementia patients isn't a geographic location.  For dementia patients, "home" is a state of mind, a place of peaceful refuge from the confusion and anxiety of severe memory loss.  "Home" to a dementia patient may look an awful lot like the place where they grew up - back when, as a child, their responsibilities were far less demanding, and their lifestyles far less complex.  But "home" isn't really Brooklyn, or Maysville, or Tahlequah.  "Home" is that elusive cocoon of serenity and placidity that most all of us probably desire for ourselves, but which doesn't really exist for any of us.

For people of faith, like Dad was, "home" eventually seemed to become a reference to Heaven.  For a long while, Dad's speech remained the most lucid when he prayed, and he had a deep faith that Jesus Christ loved him and heard every word he prayed.  Even during his stay at Autumn Leaves, Dad would almost plead with God to be taken Home to Heaven.  The Bible teaches that Heaven is the eternal Home God is preparing for all of us who believe that Christ is His holy Son.  It is a place of perfection, peace, health, and wholeness.

And Mom and I believe Dad really is now finally Home.  He knows he's Home, his memory has been restored, he knows who he is and who we are, and he is at peace in the literal presence of his Lord, the God Who allowed dementia to ravage him in the first place.

In Conclusion

So, why does God allow people to suffer awful diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's?  It's a question that has haunted me for years, and even now, I can't claim to have found an utterly irrefutable answer.  But I have come to understand in a better way how profoundly evil our sin nature is to God.  In the same way that dementia thoroughly destroys a human brain, sin thoroughly destroys the purity God desires each of us to have.  After all, the Bible teaches that God can only look upon purity.  That's the whole point of Jesus Christ, His Son, coming to Earth and dying for our sins.  Christ' perfect sacrifice purchases our salvation from sin, so God can receive us as His holy people.

Often, I'm tempted to gloss over the heinousness of sin, or the damage and destructiveness sin can wreak upon us physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, socially, politically, and emotionally.  Yet now, for me, dementia reminds me almost constantly of how vile and wicked sin is in God's eyes.

Back when I was a youngster, my dear Dad explained to me who Jesus is, and ever since then, I've believed that Christ provides me salvation from my sins.  But it's been during these past eight years, as I've had a front-row seat through Dad's journey with dementia, that I've been forced as never before to evaluate what I believe about God, Christ, holiness, sin, salvation, and eternity.

Now that I'm on this side of that awful journey with Dad, I can say that I'm more convinced than ever before that I am not in control of my life, just as Dad wasn't in control of his life.  And you aren't in control of your life, either.  So who is in control of our lives?  It must be God, right?  That's what the Bible teaches.  Which means God is holy, Christ is His Son, sin is real and really evil, and that salvation from that sin is essential in determining where I spend eternity.

Not that I understand all of this completely, or have yet found perfect peace in the wake of Dad's "Homegoing."  But I believe that I have re-discovered my reason to hope in God.

Indeed, it's the same reason any of us have to hope.  The reason is that God truly is sovereign.  Which means I am not!  Yet He loves me anyway, even more than my dear Dad did.

Things to Know About Dementia, Part 3

For Part 1, click here.
For Part 2, click here.
For Part 4, click here.


18.  Activities for Dementia Patients

What activities can you do with dementia patients?  Guess what - this is not an easy question to answer, either!  If you're looking for a bullet-point list of activities to try, that's not the place to start.  Like everything else with dementia, you're going to have to work harder than finding a list of suggestions.

Why?  Well, like many things about dementia, this is a question whose answer depends heavily on the individual patient.  Variables include the stage and type of dementia being exhibited by the patient, their overall disposition and competencies before their diagnosis, other physical limitations they may have, and however robust their attention span is.

Indeed, a dementia patient's attention span plays a critical role in how and what they can accomplish.  An attention span relies almost exclusively on memory, and what's the hallmark of dementia?  An ever-declining capacity for memory, right?

Why is attention span so important?  There are many residents at Autumn Leaves who can only remember simple instructions for simple tasks for literally a second or two.  I'm not kidding.  So, if they can't remember what they're doing, or why they're doing it, the best activity in the world will be fruitless.  You'll be spending so much time reminding the dementia patient of basic procedures and reasons, it won't be a positive experience for you, and your aggravation likely will be negatively sensed and processed by the dementia patient.

Sometimes, for example, staff members have to repeatedly remind residents of a task like "sit down."  One lady who can't walk will try to stand up out of her wheelchair, and the staff will say gently, "sit down, please;" and she'll obediently say "okay," and sit down. But as soon as her bottom touches the seat of her wheelchair, the resident will begin her process of trying to stand up again.  The staffer will say gently, "sit down, please," and she'll say "okay" in the same obedient, monotone voice, and sit down.  Yet this process can go on numerous times until a staff member wheels the resident to another room.  Is the resident being intentionally belligerent?  No, she simply cannot remember the request for more than a second or two.  Meanwhile, the staff has discovered that placing her in a new environment - even just another room - usually is enough to "redirect" her attention span to something else, instead of wanting to get up out of her wheelchair.

So when it comes to activities for dementia patients, you will need to factor in the length of time a dementia patient can literally remember what they're supposed to be doing.

Plus, their ability to remember what they're supposed to be doing correlates with their ability to remember how to do it.

During the early years of his retirement, my father used to paint with acrylics and watercolor, work crossword puzzles, draw, read, mow the lawn, and listen to classical music.  It wasn't long after his diagnosis of dementia that Mom and I noticed him painting less and less.  Finally, he'd become so frustrated in his growing inability to paint what he wanted to paint that he completely stopped what had, for a long time, been his favorite hobby.

Crossword puzzles lasted a little bit longer, but I noticed they became more and more incomplete.  Drawing stopped.  Dad continued to read his Bible up until the time we finally had to place him in Autumn Leaves - but by then, it seemed as though he spent more time staring at his open Bible than actually reading it - and who knows how much of what he read he could comprehend.

He mowed the lawn up until the spring of 2014, even though the quality of his mowing had already gotten pretty bad.  He'd leave gaps of tall grass across the yard, a sloppiness due at least as much to his forgetting to wear his glasses as much as his overall mental decline.

And classical music?  Over the years, Dad had amassed a collection of dozens of CDs, cassette tapes, and over 100 old LPs, but about two years ago, we noticed that he never listened to them, or to the all-classical radio station in Dallas.  Occasionally, he'd ask me to find WQXR on his Bose radio, but that was one of New York City's classical stations, and he didn't understand that Dallas' station was all his radio could get here in Texas.

So how did Dad spend his days?  Well, he spent a lot of time staring at his Bible, dozing, asking Mom and me the same questions over and over, and rummaging through the drawers of the desk in his home office, rearranging all of the pens, pencils, 3x5 cards, nick-knacks, small hand tools, paper clips, and other whatnots countless times.  In fact, rearranging his desk drawers, his office closet, his bookcase, and his collection of music CDs soon became his primary activity.

At Autumn Leaves, the staff will give high-functioning residents some repetitive tasks so that the residents will be occupied but also get a sort of sense of purpose and accomplishment.  Things like folding letters, stuffing envelopes, folding towels, sorting M&M's by color.  They're things "healthy" folks consider monotonous; yet monotony is a valuable, soothing, and healthy thing for dementia patients.

One of the most engaging activities they hold at Autumn Leaves involves a big balloon that a staff member, in a room full of residents, will toss at somebody, and then encourage them to bounce towards somebody else.  Even weak and lethargic residents can at least tap the balloon, or let it hit an arm or leg, and thereby make the balloon move.  And with a balloon - softer than the softest sports ball - nobody gets hurt.  Balloons also move through the air at a slower speed than any other ball, so dementia patients can more easily watch it and visually track its movement, giving their brain and muscles time to coordinate and react to however the balloon is moving.

Some residents could paint quite artistically, and a professional artist with training in coaching dementia patients through crafts was brought in monthly to host a painting workshop.  They took Dad in to paint in one of those workshops, however.  The artist had cut up bits of scrap wood and drawn a bird on each one that the residents could then paint however they wanted.  Dad had scrawled a weak line of yellow paint across his bird, and could do no more.  Mom and I almost cried when we saw it, and what it represented:  the complete absence of his former proficiency in painting.

So, in what ways can you creatively engage your dementia patient?  Be realistic about what you want to accomplish.  Even at Autumn Leaves, the number of residents who participate in daily exercises, sing-alongs, "this day in history" activities, and cooking activities represents a small portion of the facility's overall population.  Some of the higher-functioning residents get taken on short excursions out to eat or even to the zoo, but those require a high degree of planning and execution so everybody is kept safe and accounted for.

We let Dad do at home whatever he wanted to do, and that was predicated on what he'd wanted to do back before dementia.  But your loved one's interests and abilities will decline, and there's little you can do about it except adapt to each new low.  Dad used to enjoy fixing his own lunch, for example, but when we caught him trying to microwave something wrapped in aluminum foil, we had to start warming things up for him ourselves.  He used to go down the steep embankment to the creek behind our house to feed the turtles, but when we realized his balance was getting bad, Mom simply stopped giving him bread to take down there.  And he forgot to ask.

Fortunately for us, Dad was often content to merely sit under the massive magnolia tree in our backyard and watch jet airplanes circle about overhead in the afternoons.  But again, his balance was so bad, I'd often go out with him, just to make sure he didn't fall when setting up or closing up his camp chair on the grass.

I'd also sit with him out there so that when he'd ask me whose backyard we were in, I could reassure him that it was his.