Time for a Synodus Horrenda?

Interesting times we live in.

As hysterical and historical retro-activists seek to correct the wrongs of the past, it's just getting silly.

Now, I fully understand the disdain in which the Confederate flag is viewed.  I can almost understand Corporations like Amazon banning availability of the Confederate flag, while at the same time allowing Nazi and Communist memorabilia to be sold unabated....because, after all...the scourge of bigotry and slavery in American History was so much worse that the scourge of bigotry and slavery in Nazi Germany and the former USSR.  Heck....many of my family members were sent to the Gulag...but I also acknowledge that at this time in history, victims of communism are not popular....nor even seriously viewed as victims....perhaps in a 100 years?

No matter.

The next step in retro-justice is coming.

Last week the Mayor of Memphis, Tennesee, A.C. Wharton, stated it was time that the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife dug up from a City Park and moved to another location.

Digging up bodies of people we don't like? Ooooo. 

We could advocate for retro-trials.  After all, there is historical precedence... the Cadaver Synod (Synodus Horrenda) of 897, where the body of Pope Formosus was dug up and put on trial.

And found guilty.

His punishment? His body was interred in a grave for foreigners....then eventually dug up and thrown into the Tiber River.

Take that you evil Pope.

In the enlightenment we as a society now seem to possess, why not correct all the historical wrongs just like we did in the past? Why not dig up everyone in the past we have a problem with...put them on trial (Reality TV at its best) and judge them accordingly?

Even my own nation of Canada is struggling to find a way of dealing with the well-known drunkard and genocidal land-thief known as Sir John A. MacDonald...who also happened to be Canada's first Prime Minister.  

Why not just dig him up and put him on trial?

Britain passed judgement on Oliver Cromwell....and three years after his death Charles II ordered Cromwell's body to be dug up, hanged, drawn and quartered.  Cromwell's head was then removed from his body and placed on a spike at Westminister.  As a warning to all.

John Wycliffe was burned as a heretic 45 years after his death.

Vlad the Impaler (you know him as Dracula) was beheaded after his assassination.

Famous Russian mystic Rasputin was dug up by a mob and burned with gasoline.

Gebhard von Blücher was dug up by Soviet troops and his skull taken and used as a football.

There is no shortage of names, no shortage of those attempting to correct the crimes of the past.

Because as an amateur historian, I just think it's so cool that we insist on repeating history.

We've come so far in our enlightenment....so pass me a shovel and let the healing begin.

But first, I have a bone to pick, literally, with Josef Stalin.

We Were Hoping: A lesson from the Resurrection.

Elizabeth Elliot died yesterday.  The wife of martyred missionary Jim Elliot had much to teach us about faith.  Here is one such article.

This article originally appeared in the October 10, 1969, issue of Christianity Today. It was posted June 15, 2015, to commemorate the death of Elisabeth Elliot.

Whenever we hear people say we were hoping…” we can be pretty certain that their hopes have been dashed. Whatever it was they looked for they did not get.

When Martin Luther King was killed, the hopes of a lot of people were dashed. They were hoping he would be their saviour. Others looked to Robert Kennedy with hope of a new era in America. When President Nixon was elected, the hopes of those who voted for Humphrey went down the drain. We were hoping…” they said.

Things happen in our lives that make us want to “pack in” on everything, as the English say. We work and plan and look forward to something and it all comes to nothing and we are tempted to say 

“What’s the use?” 

But perhaps we should take a careful look at some of our dashed hopes and try to remember what actually happened later. This isn’t always possible, for our memories are often short. But for years I have kept a sort of journal in which I put down things that seem worth remembering, and it has frequently amazed and cheered me to see the pattern of things past. Some of my hopes failed, and then there have been occasions when something far beyond my hopes took place. “To those who love God,” wrote Paul, “everything that happens fits into a pattern for good” (J. B. Phillips’s translation of Romans 8:28).

Sometimes the worst has to happen in order for the best to happen. We hold a high hope, we lose it, and to our utter surprise something infinitely better than we had hoped is given to us.

Two people were walking along a stony road long ago. They were deep in conversation about everything that had happened. Things could not have been worse, it seemed, and I suppose the road was longer and dustier and stonier than it had ever been to them, though they had traveled it many times. As they scuffed along, trying to make sense out of the scuttling of their hopes, a stranger joined them and wanted to know what they were talking about.

“You must be the only stranger in Jerusalem who hasn't heard all the things that have happened there recently!” said one of the two, whose name was Cleopas.

It seemed that the stranger had no idea what things he referred to, so Cleopas explained that there was a man from the village of Nazareth, Jesus by name, who was clearly a prophet but he had been executed by crucifixion a few days before.

“We were hoping he was the one who was to come and set Israel free.”

Things had been bad for Israel for a long time, and those who understood the ancient writings looked for a liberator and saviour. Cleopas and his friend had pinned their hopes on this man from Nazareth. 

Very likely he was the one God had sent. They sincerely hoped he was. But he had now been killed, and they knew nowhere else to turn.

The story goes on to tell how the stranger explained to them that they had not really understood what the prophets had written, and that this death which had so shattered their faith was inevitable if the Messiah was to “find his glory.”

This must have seemed a strange phrase. “Find his glory.” What could it mean? I can imagine the two looking at each other, baffled. This shameful death—in order to find his glory?

It was not until they had reached their destination and had persuaded the stranger to stay with them that, while they were seated at the table and he broke the bread, they suddenly saw who he was.

Jesus himself was back from the dead.

The two who sat with him were no pessimists. They had indeed hoped. But what puny hopes theirs had been! In their wildest optimism they could not have dreamed of the glory they now saw. A resurrection—the ultimate contradiction of all the world’s woes—had taken place; they saw Jesus with their own eyes. What must their own words have seemed like to them if they thought about what they had said? We were hoping. . . .” They could not deny that those hopes had died, but what insane dreamer could have imagined the possibility that had become a reality before them? Their saviour had come back. He had come to them, and had sat down with them and broken their bread for them.

If resurrection is a fact—and we would not observe Easter if we did not believe it to be—then there is no situation so hopeless, no horizon so black, that God cannot there “find his glory.” The truth is that without those ruined hopes, without that death, without the suffering that is called inevitable, the glory itself would be impossible. Why the universe is so arranged we must leave to the one who arranged it, but that it is so we are bound to believe.

And when we find ourselves most hopeless, the road most taxing, we may also find that it is then that the Risen Christ catches up to us on the way, better than our dreams, beyond all our hopes. For it is he—not his gifts, not his power, not what he can do for us, but he himself—who comes and makes himself known to us.

Elisabeth Elliot is the author of seven books, including Through Gates of Splendor, The Savage My Kinsman, and No Graven Image. She holds the A.B. from Wheaton College and was formerly a missionary.

H/T

The madness continues

The next step in the great social engineering experiment is hitting us.

I'm talking about the issues surrounding mental illness, and our embracing of the choices of those who suffer from mental illness.

Basically, we affirm anything and everything...even if we have to surgically alter scientific reality to do it.

I'm talking about those becoming "disabled by choice".

But why not? 

Much of society is already stampeding in their acceptance of Bruce Jenner's surgical alteration.

The Cult of Caitlyn marches on...despite the total unscientific embracement of surgical transgenderism.

It's only a matter of time before we start paying for surgery for those who want to be disable by choice.

Next up?  I always wanted to be a unicorn....can I have my surgery paid for? 

Deathly fears

By Marvin Olasky

Issue: "Christianity in China," May 30, 2015
Posted May 15, 2015, 01:00 a.m.

Dr. Alex Lickerman, former director of primary care at the University of Chicago, wrote recently, “I’m always surprised by people who say they’re not afraid to die. … Though I can imagine there are indeed people who, because of their age, character, or religious beliefs, truly do feel this way, I’ve always wondered if that answer hides a denial so deeply seated it cannot be faced by most.”

He continued, “Certainly, this has been the case with me. I love being here and don’t want to leave. … Whenever I’ve tried wrapping my mind around the concept of my own demise—truly envisioned the world continuing on without me, the essence of what I am utterly gone forever—I’ve unearthed a fear so overwhelming my mind has been turned aside.”

Such honesty is rare. Novelist Walker Percy wrote that a standard secularist lives “as if his prostate were not growing cancerous, his arteries turning to chalk, his brain cells dying off by the millions, as if the worms were not going to have him after all. [He] works, grows old, gets sick, and dies and is quite content to have it so. Not once in his entire life does it cross his mind that his situation is preposterous.”

Not once? Percy’s character Kate observes that “only in time of disaster or illness or death are people real.” But doesn’t everyone face disaster or illness? And everyone faces death. Don’t you think fear grows the closer a person comes to the inevitable—unless there’s faith in One who says, Fear not?

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson downplays elderly panic. He contends, “If you’re dissatisfied, frustrated or downright miserable, cheer up. There’s apparently a cure for you. Even better, it will materialize automatically. Just sit and wait; the very anticipation of its arrival might improve your spirits. The remedy: getting older.” Samuelson’s proof is public opinion polls: “Almost 40 percent of Americans 65 and older rated themselves ‘very happy’ compared with only 33 percent of those 35 to 49.”

Atlantic journalist Jonathan Rauch contends happiness has a U-curve, with “life satisfaction falling for the first couple of decades of adulthood,” bottoming out in the late 40s or early 50s, “and then, until the very last years, increasing with age.” Rauch offers more evidence: Zookeepers, researchers, and other animal caretakers found that 500 captive chimps and orangutans suffered middle-age depression but became happier as they became elderly. Rauch concludes that human distress or happiness results partly from “the biology we share with closely related great apes.”

To me, that’s true only if we turn down our brains like the sheets in hotel rooms. Sure, great apes may feel sadness when their mates die, but we have no indication that, Lickerman-like, they contemplate the possibility of their own nonexistence. Unless we die suddenly like the Germanwings passengers early this spring, we face the dissatisfaction of those “very last years.”

Lickerman realizes secularism’s inadequacy. He has been a practicing Buddhist for 26 years but doesn’t claim it works: “One of the supposed benefits of manifesting the life-condition of the Buddha is freedom from all fear. I’ve tried to resolve my fear of death intellectually and come to the conclusion that it can’t be done, at least not by me.”

Can others merrily face nonexistence? Howard Nemerov, poet laureate of the United States, died of cancer in 1991, soon after writing that “no rational being … holds on to the inveterate infantile hope that the road ends but as the runway does.” The gospel hope, though, is that cars turn into planes: The God who created the universe out of nothing can make us fly. And if we have no runway, all we have is Lickerman’s despair.

Some hymns show the right attitude: “Through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on.” So do some catechisms: The Heidelberg from 1563 declares that our only comfort in life and death is that we belong to Christ, who “assures me of eternal life.” So do some historians of Christianity: Yale scholar Jaroslav Pelikan said just before he died, “If Christ is raised, nothing else matters. If Christ is not raised, nothing matters.”

As usual, a psalm says it best: “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you?” (Psalm 73:24-25).

Email molasky@wng.org

Grace looking back

My grandparents, Paul & Elisabeth Gerk, left their families and escaped from Russia to Canada.

The intent was to sponsor their families to Canada.

It was never to be.

The iron curtain slammed shut behind them.  Contact between them and their families was forbidden.  They had no idea what happened to them.  It was, what I call, the Great Silence.

So they lived their lives here in Canada.  Raising their children. Struggling to make ends meet...working hard to provide for their family.

The Grace?

It abounds.

I was just thinking the other day...my grandfather lived in the Kelowna area...settling here in 1929.  They were members of Saint Theresa's Catholic parish in the Rutland area of town.

Family tradition says that when the new Saint Theresa's Church was built, in the early 1950's, my grandfather purchased the cross that sits atop the Church, donating it as an anonymous gift.

Paul Gerk, died in 1954, never knowing what happened to his family...but always wondering and often searching.

In 1984....we found them.  Sent to Siberia in 1941, labour camps and then release....we managed to piece together their tragic story.

In 1989...we brought my grandfather's youngest brother, Johannes Gerk, to Canada for month to visit.

He stayed with my aunt and  uncle...a block from Saint Theresa's Church....and attended Mass there every day.

This Grace.

My grandfather, heavily involved in the life of this Church...not knowing that one day his youngest brother would travel from the USSR and attend Church in the same place where he gave so many devoted hours of his life and faith.

(Johannes Gerk, youngest brother of Paul Gerk, at the grave of his brother, August 1989.)

Godless socialists and Alberta

Well, the Alberta election is over.

The Godless Socialists, er, the NDP easily won the election.  At least in Canadian terms.

What does it mean?  Has Alberta, that bastian of conservative thought, abandoned its principles?

Hardly.

Truth be told, it was really an anti-PC vote.  Folks in Alberta were tired of the "culture of entitlement" that surrounded everything PC.

Basically, it was a throw-the-bums-out-vote.

And good on them. 

I'd rather have an honest socialist than a "dishonest, pompous face at the trough person", in government any day.

And Alberta?  The conservatives there deserved to lose.  It's all about cleaning house.  But will they learn the lessons here?

Time will tell.

Wisdom for leaders....

Is it possible that we two, you and I, have grown so old and so inflexible that we have outlived our usefulness? 

-Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

On not providing a citation. Sigh.

Last year I was sent a copy of the GRHS News (Germans from Russia) in which the main article dealt with Volga German farmers and an insurrection in the summer of 1918.

Fascinating also because it lists my family's village of Josefstal as one of the villages involved in fighting the local communists. (article is here)

I inquired about the article because it does not list a proper citation, only the name of the publication, St. Peter's Bote, and the aproximate year it was published.

Alas, the translator who had access to the original article had passed away...and no one knew when it was originally printed.

Just this last month, after 5 months of requests and paperwork, I was able to get 2 microfilms of St. Peter's Bote through our local library.

The article suggested 1925, so I ordered that year and 1924 (Cost $30)....as my grandfather came to Canada through the sponsorship of the Volksverein, somewhat associated with St. Peter's Bote.

Sigh.

Nothing.  Now, I could very well have missed it.  The paper IS in the German language.

I had hopes of getting the exact citation, maybe a clue to the identity of the author....and hoped that my grandfather's trek to Canada might be covered.

But nothing.

Frustrating to be sure.

Back to the drawing board on this one.

91 Years ago: Paul Gerk to Canada

Paul Gerk circa 1924

91 years ago this month, April 1924, my grandfather, Paul Gerk, left a refugee camp in Frankfurt/Oder Germany and traveled to Canada.

Sponsored by a family in Holdfast, Saskatchewan, Paul was to make his way to the west....in hopes of a new life.

Escaping war and revolution....and not knowing if he would ever see any of his family again....the bravery of this young man was amazing.

22 years old.  The horrible things he had seen and lived through.

I have often wondered what was going through his mind as he made that trek...escaping from Soviet Russia....to the west...not knowing where he would end up....just knowing he had to get away.

A year later, he would sponsor his wife, Elisabeth, and she would make the trek...alone...to her husband in Holdfast.

The two very quiet people would live in Holdfast for 3 or 4 years...then make their way to Rutland, B.C. in 1928-29.

Paul would never hear from the rest of his family again.

91 years.

Our family owes so much to this brave couple.

We live in an amazing country.

There is much to be thankful for here....starting with Paul & Elizabeth.

Arrived aboard the SS Montrose in St. John's, NB on April 5, 1924

SS Montrose

Happy National Sibling Day!

For National Sibling Day I'd like to call out my amazing brothers and sister!

John, Bill, Tom & Deb.  You are amazing people and it has and always will be an honour to be related to you!

My awesome brothers.....just a few years ago :)

Thoughts for Valentines Day.....

Oak Island: Fascination with a buried treasure

When I was about 12 years old, as my fascination with books started growing, I bought a book from Scholastic Book Services about buried treasure.

The book was called "Treasures beneath the Sea".

It had chapters on various treasure mysteries all over the world.

One of those chapters was the mystery of Oak Island.

For those of you who don't know, Oak Island is a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia.

The fascinating history can also be detailed in a great Readers Digest article that also appeared in 1965.

History Canada has made a fascinating TV program out of the whole thing, including showcasing new owners of the Island, who are carefully trying to find out what exactly is buried on the island, and by whom.

The Curse of Oak Island.

History Canada is even having a contest this season, with the grand prize a trip for 2 to Halifax and a private tour of Oak Island.

Both my brother John and I have been entering each week....it would be an amazing trip.

And it's just fun to watch and wonder.

A lesson from History: Night Crossing

Having grown up during the cold war, I was fully aware of the risks that many, many people took in escaping their communist taskmasters.

This movie, Night Crossing, from the late 1970's....documents the story of two families who escaped from communist East Germany into West Germany, in a hot air balloon.

I've always loved the movie, for the glimpse it gives into life under communism, but also because it documents the bravery of the two families....wanting freedom for their kids...and willing to take risks to obtain it!

We have had all our kids watch it...so they get a small glimpse into the life their Mom had, living under communism.

We watched it again last night, with another family.

It was a great reminder of where we have come from.

Ironically, when we first had seen the movie, little did we know that in a few years the whole system would collapse.

Looking into the story again, I read that the two families were harassed by "unknown" folks even in the west, because East German officials were so bugged that the families had outsmarted them!

Great movie and a great family time.

Me & Sports

As the youngest of 4 boys, needless to say, our family was a "sports" family.

My older brothers were good at baseball, very, very good. My sister was also very, very good.

Hockey Night in Canada?  Bring it on in our home!

Alas, I was not gifted in the sports department.

Sure I loved hiking, skiing...those types of activities.

But watching sports was the worse torture for me.

I loved my siblings, but I had to be dragged out to watch their games.

Talent and ability in sports was NOT genetically handed down to me.

So I read.

It didn't make me better than everyone else....my parents let me choose my own path and interests.

It's just funny....my Dad and the rest of the family loved their televised hockey games...while I could not handle how boring they were.

For the record....I love going to live hockey games....the atmosphere in the stands is amazing!!  I just can't handle watching it on TV....it's like watching paint dry.

And...watching my own kids play sports?  I love this!!  It's the most amazing thing to watch!

Wired to remember....

I am wired to remember the past.

No, seriously.

It's both great and annoying.

It's why I never forget birthdays, or other important dates.  I actually relive some events in my mind...usually a year later.

It can take that long for me to process some of the events....so I relive them.

A year ago?

The last week of Mom's life.

So...I am reliving that week.  On this day I was doing this....doing that.  On this day we took Mom home from the hospital...the next day I brought her some soup Marina had made....said good-bye...told here again I loved her....and the next day she was gone.

January 9th.

A year already?

November 27th.  22 years since Dad was gone?

I guess...it shows us once again....you never know.

So..be kind....be loving....hug...tell those whom you love that you do care for them.

That last good-bye?

It could actually be a last good-bye.

I hope I learned that.

A Medieval Perspective on Modern Identity Politics

 

Great article from First Things. I would just add that "Identity Politics" actually diminish our humanity for short term gain.

We are created in the image of God...and for that reason we have value...all of us.

Advocates of LGBTQ rights often accuse their critics of living in the past, specifically in the Dark or the Middle Ages. In my case, I am guilty as charged. Indeed, while revising my Medieval Church lectures over Christmas, I was reminded of just how medieval I am by the new book from Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual. The book tells the story of individualism from ancient Greece to the late Middle Ages, with the major focus being on the latter. It also sheds unexpected light on some of the most pressing of modern political issues.

Siedentop’s central thesis is provocative and plausible, though inevitably in need of further documentation and argument. In essence it is this: Christianity, by stressing the equality of all human beings before God effectively undermined previous categories which divided up or stratified society. Family, polis, and social hierarchy were all ultimately relativized in the light of the concept of a universal human nature.

Perhaps the key figure in Siedentop’s narrative is Duns Scotus who carefully distinguished between the freedom of the will to act and the notion of justice. Freedom to act was a necessary condition of moral behavior but not a sufficient condition: Acts also needed to be in conformity with what was just. Scotus thus gave conceptual clarity to the relationship between the individual human agent and the common standards of moral action rooted in shared human nature. 

Scotus was himself an epistemological realist, but his conceptual innovations helped pave the way for the nominalism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as espoused most famously by William of Occam. Of course, Siedentop’s narrative is selective and focused in a way that cuts through much of the complexity of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is for others to provide the subtlety and the detail. But his thesis, bold as it is, seems persuasive. It is also noteworthy for its attention to social, political, and economic aspects of what is primarily the history of an idea.

His argument is also helpful for understanding aspects of modern politics. For example, it offers yet one more reason why the current debate about the politics of sexual identity is fundamentally discontinuous with the Civil Rights struggle of the fifties and sixties, despite the noisy claims to the contrary made by many. 

The Civil Rights movement was built on the egalitarian assumption that African Americans shared with those of European ancestry a common humanity which transcended and ultimately undermined racial categories; by contrast, LGBTQ politics assumes that self-determined individual sexual identity trumps everything. It is thus built not on the foundation of a common humanity but on the priority of the individual’s will.

This is not a stance unique to LGBTQ activists. In fact, it is one of the major assumptions in the contemporary political climate. Much of modern politics—right and left—operates with an impoverished, solipsistic definition of selfhood. The result is that we have lost the classic liberal balance between the constraints rooted in the concept of a shared humanity and the rights of the individual. The late modern self would seem to be understood primarily as a self-determining agent whose desires are curbed only by the principle of consent when brought into relationship with the desires of another self-determining agent.

Contemporary society is gambling that the principle of consent will be enough to maintain some kind of viable long-term social ethic. But if we extend Siedentop’s analytical narrative to the era of late modernity, the principle of consent looks like little more than the last, flimsy vestige of an earlier moral discourse built on a richer understanding of a shared human nature. After all, consent implies that there must be something held in common between two or more parties which gives them commensurability. In other words, the principle of consent is built on a foundation which has already been demolished, and its continued plausibility has more to do with social tastes than philosophical coherence.

This demolition of the concept of human nature started centuries ago and is now firmly ensconced in art, in literature, in social and material relations, and in legal and political institutions and the standard news and entertainment media narratives. It thus has tremendous momentum. Anyone wishing to defend the unborn or traditional marriage has a much greater task on their hands than that faced by those who oppose them on these issues. The consensus of historic thinking may well be on our side, but the dynamics of historical process are far otherwise.

Still, there is some ironic comfort here: The advocates of LGBTQ rights are clearly living in the Middle Ages as much as their opponents. So perhaps that is one piece of rhetorical abuse that can now be set aside.

Carl R. Trueman is Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Some of the good from 2014

Did I mention I have the most amazing siblings?

Three brothers and one sister.

Why do I say they are amazing?

Mom died one year ago. Our Dad had died in 1992, at the young age of 59.

As I have written here, we had to go through the process of sorting all our Mom's stuff.  Deciding what to give to whom.

Many families can't do this task.  It has the potential to create a lot of conflict.

My siblings were amazing.

There was no conflict.

We took what things were personal mementos, and gave away the rest.

Everything that was done, was done with thoughtfulness and kindness...with regard for each other rather than just "ourselves".

My brother John commented that not all families could do what we did...and it was a testimony to the upbringing by our parents.

But I think it was more than just that.

My brothers and sister are just plain amazing and kind people.

The silver lining in a year of much pain.

2014: It is well

Through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You
Through it all, through it all
It is well
Through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You
It is well with me

The Empty Chair

Well, Christmas 2014 has come and gone.

Some of my siblings got out of Dodge, because they knew how hard it would be.

The first Christmas after a loved one has gone is always the hardest.

I still remember so well Christmas 1992.  My Dad had died just a few weeks before.  We had Christmas at their place...Christmas Eve, as our family had done for so many years previous.

The empty chair....Dad's chair...was very painful to see.

I think we were all wrecks that night...but we struggled on.

Christmas 2014...Mom's empty chair was gone...her apartment closed up...a thousand knick-knacks given away.

But I think of that chair. ( I took a photo to remember it)

We gathered together this past Christmas Eve again.  At the back of all of our minds...our loved ones who are no longer here.

Mom & Dad....we love you....and we miss you.  Christmas is just not the same without you!

Thankfully....we had small children to keep us occupied....our minds focused.

And I am grateful.  Mom & Dad would have loved it too.

O Come, Emmanuel

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer 

Our spirits by Thine advent here 

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night 

And death's dark shadows put to flight. 

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel 

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Memories: The Happy Prince

When our kids were young, I would often borrow the 16mm projector from work.

Amazing how technology has changed in the last 30 years!

Our local library had a great selection of movies.  On huge reels!

We would close the window shades, and I would use those shades as our screen.

Our kids loved the novelty of the whole thing!

And so did we.

I came across one of our favorite movies, on YouTube.

The Happy Prince (Published May 1888)...based on a book written by Oscar Wilde.

The video is narrated by Canadian Actor Christopher Plummer.

I love the story and the timeless message. And I love remembering the good times we had as a family.

Medicine & a warning from history

In my public speaking days, I often had the chance to refer to an amazing article by Dr. Leo Alexander, that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1949.

Entitled, "Medical Science under Dictatorship, the article examined the numerous social reasons for the corruption of the medical community before and during the second world war.

It is a fascinating read, even today, especially when there are elements still pushing for euthanasia.

I know one must be careful in using ANY comparisons with medicine during that time.

However, there are principles and decisions that impact medicine, and either place or remove the view of "life", by that I mean the specialness of "sanctity" of human life.

What is always important, is to make sure we examine history and then learn from it.

This is just such the case.

Dr. Alexander has much to teach us, even though so many years separate us from the evil of that day....and people don't realize that it had nothing to do with the NAZIS. 

For example: 

    Even before the Nazis took open charge in Germany, a propaganda barrage was directed against the traditional compassionate nineteenth-century attitudes toward the chronically ill, and for the adoption of a utilitarian, Hegelian point of view. Sterilization and euthanasia of persons with chronic mental illnesses was discussed at a meeting of Bavarian psychiatrists in 1931.1 By 1936 extermination of the physically or socially unfit was so openly accepted that its practice was mentioned incidentally in an article published in an official German medical journal.

    Lay opinion was not neglected in this campaign. Adults were propagandized by motion pictures, one of which, entitled "I Accuse," deals entirely with euthanasia. This film depicts the life history of a woman suffering from multiple sclerosis; in it her husband, a doctor, finally kills her to the accompaniment of soft piano music rendered by a sympathetic colleague in an adjoining room. Acceptance of this ideology was implanted even in the children. A widely used high-school mathematics text, "Mathematics in the Service of National Political Education," includes problems stated in distorted terms of the cost of caring for and rehabilitating the chronically sick and crippled. One of the problems asked, for instance, how many new housing units could be built and how many marriage-allowance loans could be given to newly wedded couples for the amount of money it cost the state to care for "the crippled, the criminal and the insane."

 Alexander then goes on about sterlizations, experimentations, etc. and how it was all related and "justified" for the good of society.

He then sets his sites on Western thought and attitudes...and includes a warning...answering the question everyone asks...how could it have happened?

He writes:

Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the nonrehabilitable sick. 

And one of the most powerful of quotes:

It is the first seemingly innocent step away from principle that frequently decides a career of crime. Corrosion begins in microscopic proportions.

The entire article has been put online and is available here. It makes for fascinating reading...and serves as a warning that we ignore the lessons of history at our own peril...and our discarding of the age-old Judeo-Christian views on life come at a price.

Why we Remember...

In the fall of 1995, I was able to travel to the site of the notorious concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen.

It also is the place that Nazi victim, Anne Frank died and is buried at.

To stand there is a moving experience, to say the least.  How can you process what you see....when you gaze upon a mound of dirt, and see the words "5000" buried here...over and over again?

I came across this description of Belsen, when I sat in the museum located just a few feet from the mass burials, and it chilled me with its description.  Written by an Allied physician, trying to put into words his thoughts of what he saw just after the camp was liberated...as they started the process of burning down some of the disease infested buildings...

It seemed to us the devil smiled, then, and seemed to say, 'I am stronger, more personal and more fearful than you thought possible in your little sheltered lives and bourgeois homes.  You thought Apollyon was a myth, a faery tale of misty, ancient days when men had superstitious minds and didn't know about modern science, progress and motor-cars.  Well, I hope I've shown you otherwise.  Now go home and deny me if you can, forget Belsen, hate for a time, take a little bloody revenge and then go back and gradually feel it wasn't true.  You'll soon believe that even what you saw was propaganda, when you're not believed at home.  Then when again the world is lulled with its own petty round, I'll give you another taste of what I can do when men give me their souls.'

                                                      -Robert Collis "Straight On" (1947)

So, on Remembrance Day, I am thankful for the brave men and women who fought against this evil...and won for me and for my children and grandchildren, freedom and liberty.

May we never be "lulled" again.