Entries in Life

Systematic Theology, Tradition, and the Cross

2010-03-06T17:22:58Z

While I've been waiting for a copy of Cox's book to read, Father Stephen has posted an excerpt from Richard Wurmbrand’s With God in Solitary Confinement.

Jesus Himself thought unsystematically on the cross. He began with forgiveness; He spoke of a paradise in which even a robber had a place; then he despaired that perhaps there might be no place in paradise even for Him, the Son of God. He felt Himself forsaken. His thirst was so unbearable that He asked for water. Then He surrendered His spirit into His Father’s hand. But there followed no serenity, only a loud cry. Thank you for what you have been trying to teach me. I have the impression that you were only repeating, without much conviction, what others have taught you.

In this, we hear the echo of that oft-repeated axiom from the fourth century Orthodox monastic Evagrius of Pontus: A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.

In the West, we tend to be systematic about things, studying them, taking them apart and seeing how they all fit back together. But this is not living the Way. The Way operates on us, in us. The Way changes us.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Where is the systematic theology in that? What is being fixed?

If we spend our time praying intead of worrying about re-forming this or that area of the church, this or that system of theology, we'll end up living The Way instead of trying to figure out the right form.

But we need form. We need structure. We create structures to provide a framework for living. Take away the structure, take away the Tradition and we'll create new ones. Jaraslov Pelikan (a late convert to Orthodoxy) observed

Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.

At another time, he said “The only alternative to Tradition is bad tradition.”

And this is where we end up without creeds: with bad tradition. In fact, we end up re-formulating our thinking so much — re-creating our personal creed — that we don't have time to actually live it.

As Henry David Thoreau observed:

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

This is why we have Tradition. First, because if we didn't have it, we would end up creating it anyway and, second, because we want to create deep mental paths. Where systematic theology failed us, Tradition offers a way out.

Where's Utopia?

2010-03-05T22:44:15Z

When I wrote about possible apocalypses last month, I neglected the other extreme that we tend to go to. Just as many of us live preparing for a coming apocalypse, many think that we're on the cusp of a new utopia, a golden era.

Harvey Cox's “Future of Faith” could be seen as one example of this, just as Sam Harris' “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason“ could be seen as another. Both share a utopian view of the future: “One day, soon, we'll all live in peace!”

Today, a friend shared an article with me that manages to synthesize Cox's utopian view with that of Harris': “Stepping Up to the Age of Empathy; ‘Empathetic Civilization’: When Both Faith and Reason Fail”. I had just finished reading a review of “Kinds of Killing”, so it made an interesting juxtaposition.

Following is my response to my friend.

When Jeremy Rifkin mentioned “embodied experience” the first thing that popped into my mind was existentialism. But then, also, the ancient (Hebrew) conception of belief: that it must be lived. At least in modern times it is common to claim to believe something, but live in ways that contradict that — often, it seems with little self-awareness.

But this bit I would take issue with:

For the former, especially the Abrahamic faiths, the body is fallen and a source of evil.

I'll agree that Augustinian Christians do see the body this way. Eastern Christianity (at least how I've experienced in, and in my reading of the Saints) sees the body as made “in the image of God”. The body is not the *source* of evil. In this way we echo the ancient Greeks who saw evil as the absence of good, rather than something of substance itself. The body isn't evil, but when we fail to do good, we “do” evil.

So, I'd say much of this is an straw man argument, or, at least, an argument against a distortion of Christianity. If we don't think the emotions and the body are not part of our baptism into Christ, then, sure, the argument makes some sense. But those of us who see the body and emotions as integral parts of the whole person would disagree. This may not be the common understanding of Christianity in much of the West, but it isn't a new take on Christianity that only just appeared during the “Age of Empathy”.

Which makes this a non-question:

If empathic consciousness flows from embodied experience and is a celebration of life—our own and that of other beings—how do we square it with faith and reason, which are disembodied ways of looking at reality and steeped in the fear of death?

I think it is telling that the Enlightenment took place in Western Europe, but there wasn't (at least as far as I know) a similar renaissance in the East. The Byzantine and then Russian Empires filled the power vacuum that the fall of the Roman Empire, along with its civilizing influence.

Which is not to say that the East is somehow purer, but that our understanding of history and philosophical development is very Euro-centric. The very notion of “Ages” seems, to me, to be part of our desire to compartmentalize. “That was then, this is now.” This is fed by our infatuation with ourselves: the idea that Humanity is advancing philosophically as well as technologically.

What period of time, wherever people had the resources to sit around and write articles like this, hasn't seen itself as entering some grand new “age”? I'm sure, for example, American slaves didn't see a new age coming, but their masters certainly did often enough.

None of this is to imply that we haven't seen a dramatic technological shift in the past 100 years. But our visions of the future are just that: dreams. Our dreams of utopia or apocalypse may change, but in the end, we'll probably end up somewhere in the middle.

Speaking of apocalypse, I just got done reading this book review.

I thought the first paragraph, which talks about how to prepare private citizens for war was good.

Then, this bit, farther down:

Mostly, though, soldiers complained of the miserable conditions of life that Russian villages offered them. “Partisan resistance prompted further reprisals, leading more to join the partisans, and so the escalating cycle of violence continued.” This inevitability, ironically, seems to have escaped the notice of present-day nations. What is the use of an upper hand if you can't spank someone with it?

“Future of Faith”? — First Impressions from a Convert to Orthodoxy

2010-03-01T15:54:20Z

Over the next couple of weeks, I plan on reading Harvey Cox's “Future of Faith.” Keep in mind I have to actually obtain a copy first: Hopefully through Inter-Library Loan or from a friend.

That said, I read (and responded to) John Goerzen's overview of the book, and I skimmed the book when I was at Barnes & Noble yesterday. (You can see much of the same material on Amazon's “Look Inside!” feature if you don't have a copy and don't want to trek to B&N for a look-see.)

After reading John's blog post, though, the first thing I did was read the Wikipedia entry on Harvey Cox. It was there that I learned Mr. Cox wrote “The Future of Faith” when he retired last year at the age of 80.

Now, I don't know about you, but I associate the hubris of predictions about the future of, well, almost anything, with the naivety of (relative) youth. Sam Harris wrote “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason” (which seems to have inspired the title of Harvey Cox's book) in his late 30s. Predictions just don't work that well — we tend to overstate near-term changes (It's 2010, where's my hover car?) and under-state or misunderstand longer-term changes.

So, when the front flap of “The Future of Faith” claims that a trend Mr. Cox calls The Age of the Spirit began 50 years ago — within Mr. Cox's lifetime – I can't help but at least raise an eyebrow. Especially when he puts this change on par with what he calls the end of “The Age of Faith”: when Constantine legitimized Christianity in the fourth century. Oh, really? During that period, Christians went from being a severely persecuted minority (read up on how Constantine's predecessor, Diocletian, treated Christians) to being socially acceptable.

Today, Christianity is the world's largest religion. What change has happened in the past 50 years that is anything like the end of systematic persecution of Christians?

Obviously, Cox is talking about something other than the obvious. Let's go back to what the front flap of the book says.

The Age of the Spirit: a trend that began fifty years ago and is increasingly directing the church of tomorrow whereby Christians are ignoring dogma and breaking down barriers between different religions — spirituality is replacing formal religion.

Hmm… Still not buying it. Thomas Jefferson's Bible or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth is an edited copy of the Gospels that eliminates any indication of Christ's divinity to reveal “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

Or, look at the Unitarians who also focus on the “spiritual” teachings of Jesus (and others) while rejecting any ideas more orthodox Christianity has about his divinity.

To put it bluntly, what Cox is describing as the “Age of the Spirit” seems to be something that has been around much longer than 50 years. Within Christianity, the changes since the fourth century parallel the changes in our systems of government. As we rejected ideas like Divine right of kings and moved to more democratic systems of Government, people's lives in the church changed as they rejected the supreme spiritual authority of the Pope. Is it any coincidence that many of the Founding Fathers of the American system of government were not Christians?

After reading John Goerzen's post and looking over the table of contents of the book, I also get the impression that Cox, like many Protestants, has an interpretation of history that sees the Constantine's legitimization of Christianity as, somehow, harmful to the Christian ethic. That, in itself, isn't an unusual point of view. Even Christians contemporary to Constantine saw the “mainstreaming” of Christianity as harmful to the Christian ethic. As a result, many escaped into the desert and, as a result, birthed the monastic movement that continues today. The Anabaptist movement inherited this monastic zeal which (rightly) sees Christ's teachings as the focus of Christian life.

The Anabaptist movement, though, like many movements and reformations that ended up in that mish-mash we today call “Protestant Christianity” seems, to me, to have developed into a culture of Christianity that chooses protest as its point of identity rather than a focus on Christian life. And the protest is against anything that feels too “Catholic” or, in the case of Cox, too authoritarian.

I could go on here, but I really want to make sure I read the book before offering too many more of my own opinions. I imagine I'll have reactions along the way, and I'll post them here.

Finally, why am I interested in reading this book? Well, John seems to have liked it and I respect John. He's built one of the tools I use on a daily basis, OfflineIMAP. He's a thoughtful Christian and I'd like to be able to have a more informed conversation with him (and those like him) about why things like the Creed matter. To do that, I have to understand a little more where they're coming from instead of just dismissing what they say as hubristic ranting.

Oops, I did it again!

2010-02-18T19:41:50Z

Working on free software projects isn't easy. Just because you're giving away your work for anyone to use doesn't mean that anyone is going to take it, no questions asked.

Take my MediaWiki work as an example. I am being paid for the work, but it is freely licensed and I'm learning about the standards of quality that the community has formed around the code.

Frankly, before becoming involved in such a serious PHP-based project, I didn't have a very high opinion of PHP. Even Rasmus (creator of PHP) doesn't seem to live in a pure php world and, as a result, thinks of systems where PHP is merely the web frontend instead of almost the entire system.

So working with others who have been neck-deep in PHP for years, building one of the top-10 sites on the net entirely in PHP, and gaining intimate familiarity with the quirks of PHP, has been a wonderful experience.

But MediaWiki isn't the only free software project I'm involved in. I also contribute to Emacs occasionally. (For those not so familar with Emacs vs Vi, let's just say this is like the social situation between Republicans and the Democrats or the Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists: You live next door to them, but you know they're going to hell.)

And it is my most recent commits to Emacs that have gained me noteriety. Yesterday, I was catching up on some blog reading (Planet Emacs, thankyouverymuch) and came across a nifty use of loccur.el. But it used defadvice instead of a hook (and hooks are better — no this is different than emacs vs vi, I swear).

I looked at the code and thought, “Hey, I can make a tiny little contribution to Emacs here!” So I made a couple of small changes.

Little did I know what a problem that was going to be.

Óscar Fuentes used my commit message as an example of how not to write a commit message. This was not the first time I've been so honored.

Three weeks ago, I made a mistake committing to the bzr repository for emacs and was again used as an example for the Emacs-devel community of how not to make a commit.

There are two reasons I'm such a stellar example for the other Emacs developers.

First, I've been using bzr for a couple of years while working on the iHRIS Suite. This experience (2 years more than most Emacs developers) naturally made me think I had things under control. So I didn't bother reading over Bzr for Emacs Devs.

Second, Emacs recently switched its source-control system (after much debate and some effort on speed the bzr side) from the ancient, worn, CVS to bzr. So people are still adapting their work flow. I just happened to make some commits that were particularly egregious and ended up being great examples of what people should avoid.

So, yes, Free Software is a great thing, but that doesn't mean the developers don't take it seriously. And being reprimanded in public isn't the most pleasent experience. But at least I can blog about it!

Notes at the Halfway Point

2010-02-16T22:16:33Z

(This is copied from the first part of last week's weekly report. I've copied it here since more people may be interested in what it feels like to work in a highly visible open source project.)

I'm halfway through a 3 month contract (a relationship with the WikiMedia Foundation that I hope to continue) and it seems like a good place to write up some of my lessons learned.

Too many times I haven't spent enough time going over my code. Or, when I'm refactoring someone else's code, I don't look over it enough. Sometimes this is due to my own inexperience with the MW code base: If I had more experience, I would have a better idea from just looking at the code that dieUsage() was being used incorrectly.

Still, experience can be created, and when it is experience you lack, the effort to create experience must be made. This is where testing comes in. More than once while refactoring the UploadChunks api, Tim has just looked at the code and told me I wasn't testing it properly.

The same could be said for more trivial things like whitespace. Mixing whitespace commits with more substantive changes as well as just the way Emacs formats the code by default have irritated other developers. From this experience, I think I need to borrow an idea from Atul_Gawande's Checklist Manifesto and make — gasp — a checklist.

The checklist is the first step, but the second would be automating as much of the checklist as possible and creating a pre-commit hook that I could use to check my own code.

From my experience, here are some ideas for a checklist:

Whitespace use.
- Tabs, not spaces
- avoiding spaces for indention and lining up code
- spaces around parens
- etc.
Code correctness.
- Ensure each exit point has a test. (Since I prefer to write unit tests for my code, noting a test for each exit point in a code comment would take care of this. An automated check would just verify that the exit point has a notation.)
- Make sure no E_STRICT warnings are thrown during tests

Note that any automation here is going to fail to really enforce anything: it is impossible to verify code-correctness completely without actually running the code. Instead the idea is not to verify that the code is bug-free, but just to make sure that I've caught the things that more experienced MW developers aren't going to roll their eyes at.

That said, the number of developers actively working on MW code as well as the CodeReview extension on mediawiki.org make developing MW code an overwhelmingly positive experience. These things mean that — combined with the depth of PHP and MediaWiki knowledge and care that people take — problems see the light of day really quickly. When your code is likely to end up on one of the top-10 sites on the Internet, this amount of care is crucial.

How close is the end?

2010-02-04T14:07:48Z

Everyone loves a good apocalypse.

Whether that apocalypse is Y2K, 2012, Financial Collapse, Peak Oil, Global Warming, or the being Left Behind, we love being scared. We can take any problem, and make it seem insurmountable and inevitable.

In our darker moments, we become fatalistic about it. Before we understood anything about genetics, we saw our fate in the stars, the bumps on our heads, the creases on our hands, or the lay of the the cards. Now that we have genetics, we look at that superstitious thinking and laugh. Instead of saying “It's in the stars” we say “It's in my genes.”

This apocalyptic fatalism means the end keeps coming — but it ain't here yet. We live in with visions of impeding doom — What will I do when the oil runs out? when the oceans flood? what if I am left behind? — or we convince ourselves there is nothing to worry about, putting our faith in Man's ingenuity, assuring ourselves that the science is junk, or simply believing our belief makes us immune.

Its a wonder our civilization has kept going for so long — that we haven't all gone mad already. I suppose its the competing visions of apocalypse that keeps us whole. As long as we don't all believe the same thing, we can keep asking “Is the end here yet?”

And the answer will continue to be “Not yet.”

Haiti & other disasters

2010-01-17T23:53:10Z

(I went to Haiti in 1987 as a teenager. I've been interested in what's been going on there ever since. My brother asked me what I thought about the most recent disaster. I spent enough time on the reply, that I thought I might share it with a larger audience.)

I haven't really been following what's been going on. Not closely. Following the news out of Haiti is pretty depressing. Following just one man, Aristide, from 1987 onward gives some idea of the what is happening in Haiti.

1987 - My missions team had to leave 2-3 weeks early because of the violence. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest, is told to stop preaching political sermons and is re-assigned.
Elections stopped in November 1987 because of violence.
1990 - Aristide is elected, endorses “necklacing” (i.e. execution) his opponents
1991 - Aristide ousted, ends up in the States.
1991-1994 - Aristide embezzle's money from Haiti's international telecom revenue.
1994-1996 - Aristide leaves the priesthood, marries. With U.S. military help, he is re-instated as president. His term ends in 1996.
2000 - Aristide elected with 10% of the populice voting.
2004 - Rebellion, Aristide is forced out and ends up in Pretoria, South Africa. (Aristide claims he was kidnapped by the U.S. military although it looks like he would have died had they not shown up.)

Of course, you could easily claim that Aristide is just one corrupt ruler in a line of corrupt rulers. But I think the problem is much deeper than Haiti's corrupt leadership.
Another way to look at Haiti and get an idea of just how bad things were before the earthquake is to look at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
On the west side of the border, where Haiti is, you can see there are fewer trees than on the east side. People in Haiti have been using up the natural resources — in 2007, less than 1% of their forests remained.
Which means they end up finding it very hard to produce anything. Two years ago, stories started popping up about people in Haiti resorting to eating clay “cookies”. (Eating dirt isn't unusual, but making it the primary source of nutrition is.)
For as long as I've been aware of Haiti, it has been on the brink of disaster. The earthquake is just another disaster on top of the countless ones that came before it. Its amazing how much poverty and political violence and unrest continues to exist in a country just an hour and half flight away from Florida.
Of course, this isn't a problem that money is going to solve. If money solved problems, Haiti would be able to bounce back from this and its other problems really quickly. And we wouldn't have ongoing “hostilities” in the Congo or Sudan. There wouldn't be pirates in Somalia. North Korea wouldn't have concentration camps.
So, while the problem in Haiti is systemic, I'd hesitate to over-spiritualize it as, say, Pat Robertson has by claiming this is all because Haiti made a deal with the Devil.
And I'd hesitate to say that this earthquake is going to lead to dramatic change in Haiti. It could, true. But any number of the crises in Haiti's past could have led to dramatic change.
I'm mostly frustrated with disaster voyeurism that we in the States seem to delight in. I applaud people who try to do something with their lives to help others. And we even need, to a certain extent, disaster “tourists” who help out whenever there is a disaster. But I'm still frustrated. And part of that is because I have done so little and there is such a great need all over the world for help.

Feeling blessed

2009-12-25T15:57:27Z

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

This year, we gave our kids their major gifts early: a Wii and a TV after spending most of the year without one. And, other than those two items, we told them this would be a Chrstmas of hand-made gifts.

And this year, since I had been out of work since the beginning of November, it made a lot of sense.

I didn't know what to expect for Christmas morning. The kids dragged me out of bed, we read Luke's narrative of the Nativity, sang a couple of Christmas carols and then headed to the tree to open the gifts our children had given.

Like I said I didn't know what to expect: I had pretty much forgotten that we had told the kids they would be making their own gifts. And, as I found out later, Alexis didn't remind them of their responsibilities.

So it gave me a great deal of pride to see the gifts and their response. Our oldest daughter had knitted a cap for the youngest. The other daughter wrapped up some sugar cookies she had made earlier in the week. My wife wrapped up some Ferrero chocolates that we had bought.

I remember how I would have reacted had this been my Christmas as a child. Barely any gifts under the tree — you could still see the treestand, after all — I think the disappointment would have been only too visible on my face.

So when my son was overjoyed with the chocolates, when my daughter demonstrated the knit cap, I was almost bursting with pride. My children were happy with, even thankful for, practically nothing. (Sure, they had a new Wii and we had a new TV, but these were not the focus of their Christmas morning.)

When I see my children showing more maturity and thankfulness than I remember posessing when I was young, it makes me think that at least this one thing is right.

The Beginning of Something Great

2009-12-23T16:42:26Z

Last night, I signed up for a three month contract with the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), set to begin in January. I'll be working offsite with Tim Starling as my mentor.

My primary duties will be to “Support MediaWiki Code Review and Release Management process”, something I feel especially well suited for. The WMF has been working to formalize the process (see, for example Special:Code/MediaWiki) and I'll be helping with take it further. I have plenty of ideas, but my first task will be integrating myself into the environment.

I'm pretty excited to have a full-time position on such a high profile piece of Free Software. Last night, I started reading “Shop Class as Soulcraft” and, while my work is not anywhere as tactile as the work Matthew Crawford talks about in his book, I've found that working on Open Source software provides me with a similar sense of accomplishment. It gives me something I can point to and say “I did that” or “I fixed that”. And, with MediaWiki, the thing I can point to becomes something that much more recognisable to others. “You know Wikipedia?” I'll ask, “That's what I work on.”

(Oh, and if you want, you can throw a few in the pot to help pay the rent for the WMF.)

Still Looking

2009-12-10T22:21:49Z

So, the non-profit (which shall henceforth remain anonymous) that had me all excited called today and let me know that they had hired someone local.

Oh well. I'll just have to work on my consulting.

Still waiting

2009-12-10T16:06:04Z

I'm still waiting to hear from them: Do I or do I not get the job?

Pins and needles!

In San Francisco

2009-12-04T13:20:55Z

I'm in San Francisco for the day. Last night I had a great time with danlyke of Flutterby fame.

Since right now is the the Advent Fast, he took me to Café Gratitude, a raw Vegan restaurant where every one of their dishes is an affirmation. I couldn't help but giggle when they handed me my coconut curry soup as they said the mantra "You are Thankful!" I would imagine that The Secret has done better here than in Lancaster County.

"But, Mark," I can hear you not asking, "What the heck are you doing in San Francisco?"

About a month ago, a non-profit here contacted me about a position they're trying to fill. They need an open-source person to be, essentially, their community liaison for code contributions to their open source project. At the time, I was still working for IntraHealth, so I told them I wasn't interested.

But the following Monday, I found out I was not going to be working at IntraHealth any longer. A new (but smaller) round of funding came through and they just didn't have room for me in the budget any more.

With this new-found freedom from obligations, I called the HR person back and told him, "Guess what? I am interested after all!"

In the meantime, this has been one of the more productive periods of transition I've ever had. Friends of mine who freelance have tossed a couple of gigs my way and I've spent a little more time with my kids. Only once have I glimpsed into abyss of fear and self-doubt that the recently jobless can end up in — the rest of the time I've been excited about the opportunities.

So, here I am in a San Francisco hotel room early in the morning. My body is still on Eastern time and I can hear the city slowly coming to life around me. I plan on scoping out Berkeley this morning and then, after my interview (during which, in my fantasy, they offer me the job on the spot) I'll go see how far CalTrain will take me.

Charting Library Shootout

2009-10-28T15:39:29Z

Recently, I had to compare several charting toolkits. Amongst the charting toolkits out there, I found three different ones that suited my needs, so I put them through their paces. They were: JpGraph, OpenFlashChart and RaphealJS. Just to be clear why I left some toolkits out, here is a list of the requirements I used. The toolkit we end up using must be:

freely redistributable. This will be incorporated into the GPLed iHRIS Suite so a proprietary license means we can't ship charting with the software.
look good. Who wants ugly charts?
work on Internet Explorer 6 and above. There are a few toolkits out there that require <canvas< support and at least one does not support excanvas.
currently maintained. Many nice charting projects haven't been touched in two or more years. I'm willing to fix bugs if I need to, but I'd like to know that I'm not alone.

All three of the charting libraries that I tried fit this criteria.

After putting the three toolkits through their paces (source included), which one did we ultimately choose? Right now, we're going with RaphaelJS — we were using a Flash-based toolkit before and wanted to rid ourselves of that dependency, and, since our primary server target is Ubuntu, JpGraph's lack of anti-aliasing with Ubuntu's PHP GD library knocked it out.

I'll try to post an update if I come across anything new.

Nuture Shock for Parents

2009-10-26T00:44:24Z

American culture — especially American middle class white culture — is neurotic about parenting. From the idea of permissive parenting that Doctor Spock supposably espoused to the use of Baby Einstein to increase language — because a 1997 study suggested that language development was aided by the sheer number of words a child heard.

The funny thing about both these ideas is that neither one is true. Dr Spock said “I've always advised parents to give their children firm, clear leadership”. Later studies (as Nurture Shock shows) showed that direct interaction with a child — not the number of words heard — helped language development.

But even the revelation that scientific studies show children do not recognise recorded speech as words will not affect the sale of Baby Einstein products. (For its part Disney, the makers of Baby Einstein, has distanced itself from any claims that its products provide an educational benefit.) Myths about parenting continue to live and get spread through parenting culture.

Which is why every parent should read Nurture Shock. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman take on a number of subjects that many parents think are settled issues — spanking, for instance — and show how empirical studies have flipped conventional wisdom on its head.

I think, though, that much of this book is aimed at relatively affluent, white, middle class parents. When I shared some of the bits about race or sibling rivalry with my wife, who was born in Vietnam, she laughed at the “crazy Americans”. Vietnamese culture does not share some of the foibles the book addresses.

But there is a lot that any parent, regardless of cultural background or parenting style, will appreciate. In a chapter titled “Can Self Control be Taught?”, for example, the authors reveal how a new program, Tools of The Mind, is enabling pre-schoolers to develop intrinsic motivation and self-regulation far sooner and far more predictably than previously thought possible.

Even better, the chapter titled “Why Hannah Talks and Alyssa Doesn't” shows a nine-month-olds vocal skills and, later, vocabulary, can be improved just by providing an immediate response (like a touch) when they burble something.

For those who want to go further, the book provides 80 pages of end notes and references. But, since they avoided marking up the text with footnotes or super-scripts, it doesn't affect the readability of the book at all.

If you've got a child living at home — or if you're just interested in child development — you should read this book.

Quick Emacs Tip: Scale fonts in a buffer

2009-08-12T18:18:25Z

Emacs23 includes default keybindings for scaling fonts up or down:

C-x C-+ — scale the current buffer's face/font up

C-x C-+ — scale the current buffer's face/font down

This is good as far as it goes, but I'd really like something a little easier. So I've added the following to my .emacs file:

(global-set-key [(control mouse-4)] (lambda () (interactive)
                                      (text-scale-increase 1)))
(global-set-key [(control mouse-5)] (lambda () (interactive)
                                      (text-scale-decrease 1)))

Now, if I hold down the control key and scroll the mouse wheel, the font will get larger or smaller. Some other applications (e.g. Firefox) use "Control +" and "Control -" to do something similar along with "Control 0" to return to the default size. You could set these keybindings in Emacs without losing too much (unless you're used to C-- and C-0 as prefixes, in which case, you still have C-M-- and C-M-0):

(global-set-key [(control ?+)] (lambda () (interactive)
                                      (text-scale-increase 1)))
(global-set-key [(control ?-)] (lambda () (interactive)
                                      (text-scale-decrease 1)))
(global-set-key [(control ?0)] (lambda () (interactive)
                                      (text-scale-increase 0)))

None of this will permanently affect the size of the font, so for the next buffer you open or the next time you start Emacs, you'll have the same size font you started with. If you want to change the default font size, use M-x customize-face RET default RET instead.

Patch and directions to build 64bit Google Gears

2009-08-05T05:07:16Z

Ok, it's been a couple of weeks since I posted the 64bit Linux installer for Google Gears. And some people have asked for the diff or a smaller installer. Fair enough. There they are.

The directions for compiling your own are simple enough. Here is a cut-n-paste list of directions:

svn co http://gears.googlecode.com/svn/trunk gears
cd gears
curl http://mah.everybody.org/gears.diff | patch -p0
chmod +x third_party/gecko_1.9/linux/gecko_sdk/bin/xpidl
cd gears
make

If you look at the diff, you'll see there is nothing particularly 64bit-ish about it. Its mostly just fixing warnings and declarations.

So the real question I have is: Why doesn't Google offer 64bit builds?

(Now, if only I could come up with an Ubuntu package for this…)

The Universal Health Coverage Bogeyman

2009-07-30T05:04:10Z

Universal Health Coverage is coming!

Universal Health Coverage is coming!

Get out your guns!

There is an enormous amount of fear mongering going on around the issue of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

From the UHC advocates, we hear about scary medical bankruptcies.

From the UHC opponents, we hear that this is just a way for the government to run our lives.

In fact, that last article was sent to me by an old college friend. “Is this the health care bill you want?” she asked. (Peter Fleckenstein (aka “the fleckman”), the creator of this “analysis”, posted a complete copy on his blog.)

Well, if its as bad as the tweet-filled weblog post makes it out to be, no, I don't want it.

A couple of points.

Mr. Fleckenstein and many reactionaries harbor a deep suspicion of bogeymen such as ACORN and illegal aliens. These bogeyman don't scare me. I will totally ignore those sections of the criticism. I don't care if the government supplies health care for members of ACORN. And even illegal aliens are people who sometimes need health care. Which part of “Universal” did you not understand?
The bill being referred to, HR 3200 — “America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009” — is over 1000 pages long. I don't have time or interest to read every page. What I do have time to do is fact-check statements about the bill that I find alarming. Good thing “the fleckman” provides direct pointers.
This is the House bill. The Senate bills up for consideration aren't finished. One doesn't include a government-run plan — something that seems to be the biggest sticking point for many of the article's complaints. I am personally more comfortable with the “co-op” idea of the Senate Finance Committee's bill — it sounds similar to Germany's version of UHC.

With that in mind, lets look at a few claims:

There will be a government committee that decides what treatments or benefits you get. (Sec. 123)
The actual text says: “Committee to recommend covered benefits and essential, enhanced, and premium plans.” There is a big difference between a recommendation and a decision. As far as I can tell, no one is going to stop you from paying for extra treatment if you want it.
Your health care is rationed!!! (p 29 ln. 4-16)
The actual text referenced here has nothing to do with rationing health care, but with how co-payments on the public option will be adjusted.

Government will have “real-time” access to individual finances. (sec 163)
This is a modification of the onerous HIPAA regulations. The addendum the bill puts in does, indeed talk about “[enabling] the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual's financial responsibility”. But again, this isn't mandating access to your individual finances. Instead, it seems to be saying that they want universal standards for determining a co-pay or your liability for a specific treatment or office visit instead of the current system — which involves multiple rounds to the insurance company.
Government will have direct access to bank accounts. (sec 163)
The actual text here: “enable electronic funds transfers [for] … health care payment and remittance advice”. This isn't government access — this is the access for the health care provider. And enable processing isn't the same as forcing individuals to surrender information.
Government will tell doctors how much they can charge. (sec 225)
Just like they set payment levels for Medicare and Medicaid. Doctors are not obligated to accept the government plan. If you want health care from a doctor who doesn't accept the government option coverage, then you can get it, provided you can find a way to pay for it.
Employers must enroll employees into the public plan. (sec 312(a))
This section is talking about how an employer can meet the government requirements. One of the requirements is “automatic enrollment”. Part (c)(2) of this section explicitly states that an employee may make “an affirmative election to opt out”. And the plan doesn't have to be the government option. If the employer offers adequate private insurance, then they meet the criteria.
States give up some of their State Sovereignty.
The horse is long ago out of the barn.

When my friend and I were in college in New Orleans, there were news stories about a drinking age being imposed on the Quarter. Previously, it was illegal to buy alcohol if you were under 18, but not to sell it to anyone under 21. This makes an incredibly hard law to enforce. The federal government, in order to bring Louisiana into compliance with the rest of the country's drinking laws, threatened to withhold federal money for roads if the laws weren't changed.

You can argue that this infringes on a state's sovereignty — but no one is forcing the state to take the money. If it wants it, it has to change. If it is willing to fund its own road system entirely, it can leave the laws as is.

This is a pattern the federal government has repeatedly followed when dispensing federal money. It has withstood Supreme Court challenges on the basis that it infringes a state's sovereignty. But the state, if it really wants to be sovereign, can opt-out of the federal money.

The fear-mongering continues, but I've got to get to bed. The pattern I see here is that Mr. Fleckenstein is skimming (understandably) the 1000+ pages of regulation looking for alarming phrases and not bothering with the context. He ignores other parts (like the religious conscience exception on p170) completely.

Server setup: forwarding only local email

2009-07-28T14:29:14Z

Often, when setting up email on a server, you want to receive email from local processes (cron jobs, etc) but don't want email accounts to be abused by spammers.

For example, on Ubuntu systems you might have a cron job that runs as www-data that you want to get mail from, but you don't want spammers sending email to www-data@example.com. I just had a client ask me to fix this problem for them, so I thought I'd share the solution I came up with.

Typically, the /etc/aliases file directs mail from all these extra accounts (like www-data, nobody, etc) to root and you're expected to set up an forwarder for root (e.g. mah@example.com).

Instead of directing mail for all these accounts to root, I created a locked out account. The only purpose of this account is to verify that only locally generated email is sent on to the end recipient. No more Viagra spam for www-data@example.com!

To set up the locked out account:

$ sudo /usr/sbin/useradd localmail
$ sudo /usr/sbin/usermod -L -s /dev/null localmail
$ echo '"|exec /usr/bin/procmail"' | sudo -u localmail tee ~localmail/.forward
$ echo <<EOF | sudo -u localmail tee ~localmail/.procmailrc
# replace example.com with whatever domain locally generated email has
:0:
* !^Return-Path: .*example.com
/dev/null

:0:
!root
EOF

This works with postfix, but I haven't tried other MTAs.

Bits and pieces from RAGBRAI

2009-07-28T00:42:17Z

Last week was my first RAGBRAI ever. (Poor quality camera-phone RAGBRAI pictures here. They're only meant to covey concepts, not realistically portray anything.) RAGBRAI and I are the same age and its a real shame that this is the first time I've been. We've both been around since 1973. Some bits and pieces from my first RAGBRAI, recorded here without too much organization:

The first night we got there we found a county-fair-like atmosphere in the small town's town square. It was as if the whole town had come out, but the town was made up of 10,000 cyclists and their families and, instead of staying in one place, the county fair covered 70 miles of roadside.
It rained the first night. Thunder and lightening woke up Jim (my cycling buddy) at 3AM. We both had trouble getting through the night. But we were both up with the tent packed and on the road by 7AM.
The first day of my ride (Thursday) included an optional 27 mile loop to bring the day up to a full century (100mi). Jim and I split up and I took the century route. I quickly met a 60 year old contractor and we spent those 27 miles talking about work, family, death, and changing times. It was a great ride. We split up when I decided to take a ride in one of the ultralights that a group of pilots had set up beside the road.
I didn't get my “century patch”. This is kind of disappointing since I learned later that everyone who rode the century route could get the patch. Ride enough RAGBRAI centuries and you get to plaster a jersey with them.
By the time I arrived at that night's campsite, Jim had been there for two hours and had the tent set up. We had a choice of the primitive shower my team (the Road Hogs) put together or a $5 group shower. I was already soaked by the rain that came down during the last half hour of my ride. I chose the makeshift shower instead of paying $5.
Pie! Practically every small (and medium) church along the route was selling pie or some sort of food. Pie is an essential part of the mythos of RAGBRAI — so much so that this year's RAGBRAI poster depicted the ride stages using a pie chart — made up of pictures of a real pie being consumed.
As a result of all the pie, as well as home-made ice cream and other heavy food, I actually managed to weigh in a couple pounds heavier at the end of the race. This, despite the 4000+ calories that the ride took each day.
The thousands of cyclists riding 450 miles across Iowa were not the insane ones. Well, not the *most* insane ones. There was a woman attempting to run the 70+ mile route each day. I heard that she was admitted to the hospital at least once, possibly twice.
The age and size of cyclists ran the gamut. Let no one say they're too young, too old, or too fat to ride RAGBRAI. I saw men on recumbent who were easily 350lbs+. Fathers and mothers brought their kids on third wheels or tandems. I even saw one young couple on a tandem pulling their 2 year old in a bike trailer. Most of the men on my team were retirement age or older. One father from St. Louis told me that the team he was with was made up of a few different families with at least three different 11 year olds.
Jim and I fell into a rhythm: we would ride together in the morning and then make our way to that night's camp site separately. The third and last day, only 40miles, we split up after grabbing coffee (“Organic, Fair Trade!” the proprietor would repeat at every sale). Feeling relatively awake, I started pumping the pedals. I spent the last 20 miles that day chasing a cyclist from the Air Force cycling team. We blew past everyone at 23mph. In the end, he outlasted me, but it was a blast.
Some people treat this rolling town as a big party and stop in every town along the way to drink. Don't try this at home. It is only possible because of the sheer number of cyclists, the state police, and Ambulance drivers every few miles along the route. The partiers don't generally arrive until sunset — about 9pm at night.

I plan on doing the entire RAGBRAI next year. I'd love to get a tandem so I could take two of my kids for at least part of the day.

Highly recommended, even if you aren't in that fit or are just a casual cyclist. The chance encounters were a great way to restore my faith in humanity. The party atmosphere and conviviality made the time on the road a ton of fun.

Emacs Hack: mediawiki.el

2009-07-20T14:46:18Z

I've gotten some feedback on the mediawiki mode I've been working on. So I'm releasing a new version. Some highlights:

Now works with HTTP Auth (I'll write a seperate post on how Emacs handles credentials for HTTP Authentication).
Introduced tab-completion of sites. If you have multiple MW sites set up that you work on, this makes switching between sites super-easy.
Started working on making it more XEmacs compatible. As far as I can tell, XEmacs lacks the Unicode support that GNU Emacs has. The released version of XEmacs also lacks the POSIX character classes for regular expressions and ships with a very out-dated version of url.el. All these combine to make it very difficult. But do-able. I'm surprised there are still XEmacs users, but if it doesn't cause me too much pain, I'll help them out.
Misc other clean up (including making the url.el wrappers much better).

Google Gears for 64bit Linux Firefox

2009-07-20T01:53:28Z

Since I run 64bit Ubuntu, I couldn't use use Google Gears. Which was annoying. The Google Gears site says 64bit OSes are not supported.

But it is open source.

So I grabbed the source code, tweaked a few things here and there and I now have Google Gears up and running on my 64bit OS. It hasn't crashed and burned yet, but I haven't really tested it heavily yet, either (suggestions welcome).

Anyway, here's the XPI to install it. I'll post the source soon. Or maybe just the diffs to the Google Gears list.

Review: Genome

2009-06-16T02:15:52Z

The crude distinction between genes as implacable programmers of a Calvinist predestination and the environment as the home of liberal free will is a fallacy.

This sentence is the sum of what Matt Ridley does so well in Genome. He takes conventional wisdom and turns it on its head.

He doesn't shirk from the most dangerous ideas that can accompany genetic determinism — eugenics, selecting for ability — but he also wraps up his book with a very good argument that free will and determinism are compatible. Yes, you may have a gene that makes it means that likely develop Alzheimers. But that doesn't have to run your life.

And then he flips it around: isn't it better for you — including your genes — to determine what you become than for someone else — the state, your peers, or even your parents — to proscribe a path for you?

I have my own Libertarian tendencies (strongly tempered by
communitarian Orthodox Christianity), so I find his reasoning pretty compelling.

Matt Ridley is a special kind of journalistic genius. He can wade through volumes of technical arcana and create something like Genome, a very readable, very enjoyable, book. If you want an overview of what we know about genetics (or what we knew 10 years ago, at least) this is a great place to start.

But, the book is over 10 years old. A lot has happened. He hints as much when he talks about developments in genetics that happened in the decade leading up to the publication of the book — sometimes dramatic developments.

The story wasn't finished when he wrote it and I am starting to look around for something more up-to-date than this. Like any good author, he has captured me and left me wanting more.

This week at the GRC

2009-05-29T16:25:15Z

This week I'm at the Global Health Council's conference in Washington D.C. IntraHealth (my employer) is working hard to promote our work in Capacity building and, especially, the work we've been doing in iHRIS and other projects with Open Source Software.

Listening to great speakers like Hans Rosling of Gapminder.org is always fun and entertaining. Hans promotes a fact-based world in a way that challenges a lot of our assumptions about the world and isn't
afraid to kill sacred cows. “You should forbid the discussion of ‘HIV in Africa'” he said at one point after presenting data that showed the differences of infection rates across the continent. (I had a chance to meet Hans and talk to him about the iHRIS software when he came to IntraHealth's event Wednesday night. He asked lots of great questions.)

But it is often said that conferences are most useful for what happens in the hallways, not the main sessions.

From the people I met during the conference, it made my time at the GHC36 much more valuble to me and, I hope, IntraHealth. Here are some of the more interesting people that I met at the conference:

Martin Namutso — Actually, I met Martin last year in Uganda when I helped him implement a new Knowledge Management portal for the Ministry of Health in Uganda. He works as an Open Source developer in Uganda, implementing Open Source solutions like iHRIS. It was good to catch up with him and talk about future prospects.

I especially like the story Martin tells about his decision to focus on Linux and Open Source right out of school in order to compete for different jobs than most of his Microsoft-focused classmates.

Paul Biondich — Paul is one of the creators of OpenMRS. He's a pediatrician and software developer bringing an Open Source EMR (Electronic Medical Records) system to low-income countries.

When I mentioned that I had worked on a pilot project in which I created a PHP interface into the OpenMRS's database schema, he asked for my help in maintaining the PHP interface to the OpenMRS API in any future work I do. I hadn't found this when I was looking before, so I readily agreed. Working with OpenMRS's API instead of the database directly would be a much more robust solution to building PHP applications that work with OpenMRS.

Jørn Klunsøyr — Jørn is a registered nurse and software developer at the University of Bergen where he works on mobile projects like EpiHandyMobile to make form submission
with cell phones much easier. Using a web-based application, it is possible to build forms and push them to a low-power J2ME cell phones. Later, after the data has been gathered, the data is sent from the phone via SMS, GPRS, or BlueTooth to the EpiHandy server and, from there, to applications like Clinica and
OpenMRS.

When he demonstrated the software, I immediately saw applications for iHRIS: making it easy to fill in the iHRIS information in the field when a laptop and Internet access might not be available.

Eric Woods — Eric Woods is the Executive Director and Founder of Africa Aid. His org is helping distribute cell phones to doctors across Africa. While the phones are useful in and of themselves, he is looking for applications and partners that would make the phones that much more valuble for the doctors.

One example he thought of was a cell phone directory. Making the contact information in iHRIS available to other doctors would make it possible for doctors to more easily consult with each other and develop relationships that they might not otherwise.

These are just a few of the people that stand out from those that I met. After talking to them, I can see ways that we could work together and I hope that before we meet at GHC next year, I will have worked with a few of them.

Hearing Voices

2009-05-18T13:42:11Z

My friend Jim has a couple of good posts on listening to people from the “ex-ex-gay” movement.

I think he is right: the Church does need to hear from people who have tried to convert from homosexual to heterosexual — especially those Christians who believed they could “convert” their sexuality from being gay to being straight. We need to listen especially closely to those men and women who have sincerely attempted to alter their own sexual orientation and failed.

Most importantly, those of us (and, yes, “us” includes me) in the Church who believe that homosexual relationships are sinful need to listen.

Before I tell you what I hear, let me explain a bit about where I'm coming from.

It is no surprise that there are a lot of confused people out there. And by confused, I don't mean the men and women who are homosexual. No, I mean the people who think that being a homosexual is, in and of itself, wrong. There is nothing wrong with being gay.

I would go further, though, and say that if you are not actively seeking a relationship with God, then you are not better off in a straight relationship than in a homosexual one. The primary concern is our relationship with God. Everything hinges on that.

In fact, morality doesn't matter. Morality plays no role in our relationship to God.

This should be clear enough from story of the Publican and Pharisee that the Orthodox begin each celebration of Great Lent with.

The tax-collector was the morally disreputable person in Jesus' day — the person everyone knew was doing wrong, cheating them out of their hard-earned money. In his place, I can imagine a gay man, someone all conservative Christians would “know” is a sinner.

The Pharisee stands there proclaiming his piety, ridiculing the tax collector. Likewise, I see many conservative Christians holding themselves up as moral examples, making a very public display of their moral superiority. They kick and scream when they feel they've been wronged — when someone has stripped their courthouse of the Ten Commandments or a crèche — and loudly condemn those whose sins are more public.

The answer is not to hide your sin, not to be discreet about it. “All have sinned” and no one persons sin is any less or any more than anyone else's. No one is perfect. No one can exalt themselves above another or look down on another. Jesus told us as much when he said it was the tax collector, not the pharisee, who went home justified.

Which means, of course, that I'm no better than the most flamboyant, promiscuous gay man. In fact, I have no right to comment on anyone else's sin.

I'm reminded of the story of Abba Sisoes from the fourth century:

Considered to be a very holy and venerable man, many drew near to Abba Sisoes while he was on his death bed. In his last moments, he saw choirs of angels and archangels, not to mention prophets, Apostles and saints. Wondering what was going on, those gathered around him asked, “With whom are you speaking, Abba?”

“With the angels,” he replied, and indicated that he was seeking to do penance before he left this life for the next.

Knowing his holiness, one friend said to him, “You have no need for penance, Father.”

Abba Sisoes replied, “I have not yet begun to repent.”

Here is someone no one thought could be condemned, yet, truly embodying the spirit of the publican, he felt he had not yet begun to repent.

At this point, I hope I've made myself clear: I am in no position to proclaim my own piety or tell others that they are condemned.

So what does this all have to do with listening to “ex-ex-gay” people?

One thing I hear is a gay man (Peterson Toscano, founder of Beyond Ex-Gay) who struggled for almost 20 years and spent over $30,000 to become “straighten” himself out. It didn't work.

At this point, it sounds like a bad Scientology tale.

The first thing that comes to mind (and Peterson says as much) is the obsession with sex. Since the focus is on sex continually, it heightens the awareness and temptation. In another video, Peterson even says that he had more sex when he was trying to “de-gay” himself than he has since he gave it up.

But that part of it, obsession with sex, seems to be a part of American Christian culture. Witness sites like Book22.com (a Christian sex-toys web store), or Christian sex toy parties, or even Exodus International's methods — at least, those Peterson describes.

The focus is on sex. Sure, we pay lip service to putting God before all else, but the idea of a married couple voluntarily abstaining from sex? That would be unheard of! Lifelong voluntary “marital fasting” that some saints of the Orthodox church undertook seems impossible and ridiculous to us. As one person described this fasting:

Rather than repudiating the legitimate pleasure taken in eating and in marital relations, fasting assists us in liberating ourselves from greed and lust, so that both these things become not a means of private pleasure but an expression of interpersonal communion.

The second thing I hear is the singling out of this particular sin. As Peterson says: “I thought I couldn't be gay and a Christian.”

While all Christians are called to live pious lives, many of us struggle with a particular sin or temptation. Sometimes, we sin and are not aware that what we do is sin. So, again, the focus on homosexuality, singling it out for special attention and treatment, and not on whether or not homosexuality is a sin, is where we're going wrong.

Consider the advice that St. Theophan the Recluse gave to a young girl: When confronted with a thought to pursue some sin, don't fight it. Don't grab onto it to beat it into submission. Instead, let it pass and immediately pray the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

By turning our attention to God instead of the thought to sin, we redirect our energy. Note, also, the parallels between the Jesus Prayer and the prayer of the Publican.

Finally, and probably most controversially, it makes me wonder about things that we universally agree are wrong today, but that, at the time the New Testament was written, weren't seen as huge sins.

Slavery, for example. I see no evidence that new Christians freed their slaves or started treating them humanely. I also know of no restrictions on ordaining slave owners.

Yet, today, we see any kind of slavery, not just the brutal kind sometimes practiced in the early American South, as universally wrong.

So what's the point of all this? What have I found from listening to this ex-ex-gay man?

Well, to be honest, I haven't learned anything. I have taken the opportunity, though, to think through my prejudices and to clarify them a bit. Peterson deserves our compassion: he has been ill-served by a church that tried to take him down a road he simply couldn't travel — by a church that made his sexuality more important than his relationship to God.

The focus should, as always, be on God, not our sin.

Melancholy thoughts

2009-03-07T05:20:47Z

Have you not looked down ... at a city and seen how much it resembles an ant heap, full of blind creatures who think their mundane little world is real? You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that there must be many interesting stories behind them. But what you know is that really there are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food, who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more account than a whisper of wind. (from Soul Music by Terry Pratchett.)

Sometimes, as I'm driving down the road, I wonder about the other people I see and where they are going, how it might be interesting to follow a random person and see what they were doing.

But the reality is that if I did pick a person to follow at random, they'd probably be going to work or home. They'd get out of their car, walk in a building, and wouldn't emerge again for several hours. And whatever fantasy I entertain about how exciting someone else's life might be would only be met by the reality of how depressing my own vicarious skulking was.

Life is never as interesting as we think it should be. Life is never as exciting as we wish it were. There are bright spots, glimpses of excitement, but these are not the norm.

I suspect that by the time they reach 35, most people have given up on whatever they thought life was supposed to be when they were 16, 17, or 18 and resigned themselves to the mundane and everyday. Perhaps this isn't true for everyone, but this is how I've experienced life.

What is there to show
for all of our hard work
here on this earth?

People come, and people go,
but still the world
never changes.

The sun comes up,
the sun goes down;
it hurries right back
to where it started from.

The wind blows south,
the wind blows north;
round and round it blows
over and over again.

All rivers empty into the sea,
but it never spills over;
one by one the rivers return
to their source.

All of life is far more boring
than words could ever say.
(Eccl 1:3-8 CEV)

We can, as I think I have done, manage to find a great deal of satisfaction, even joy, in our mundane little lives. Once we understand how little the world cares of us, the love we share with those closest to us becomes incredibly precious.

Amongst the black backdrop of life, we find that our accomplishments, our family, our friends are valuable precisely because of what they mean right now, not because we've managed to change the world forever.

Our friends and children will carry on without us. Even most people who couldn't imagine life without us now will manage to create a new, mundane routine without us after we move on.

We can realize all this and still, while we're here, savor the love of our wife, rejoice in our child's accomplishments, and enjoy the company of a good friend.

There is no such thing as a legacy except in our imagination. There is only now.

We cannot change the world, no matter how hard we try. As Moses wrote, and Jesus later affirmed: There will always be poor people. Someone will always be in need.

Still, this is not an excuse to do nothing. There is no utopia, and Sisyphean our task may be, but doing nothing will only lead to depression, despair and despondency.

Hope can only live in action. Hope and Love are all we have. We cannot save the world or accomplish world peace, but we enjoy this brief little spark that is our life before it fades.