In grief it is easy to read about how faith affected or effected many things. However, the word “faith” is used several ways, and they do not mean the same thing.

First, “faith” is used to describe hope or belief. When someone applies for a job and someone else says "I have faith you will get it" they are talking the first type of faith. Alma encourages people to have this kind of faith when they experiment upon the word, to just try to give it a place in their hearts.

Second, “faith” is used to describe the spiritual process by which one reaches through to the other side and connects with the power of God. It involves the first kind of faith, but it is something more (as there is a connection leading to the repeated comments that you can't have faith in things that are not true -- you can have type one faith but not type two faith in things that are not true).

Third, “faith” is used to describe experienced based understanding that does not rise to the level of knowledge. I.e. I have faith that the sun will rise in the morning or I have faith that my cat really loves me.

Finally, "faith" is used to describe the calm belief that results from the spiritual process of reaching through and connecting. It is the calm hope and peace that many in grief have following their prayers.

In understanding faith we need to realize that just as the Greeks had words for different kinds of love (such as erotic, friendly, parental, etc.) we need words for the different kinds of faith in order to understand faith better.

Also, it helps to understand that anger interferes with all kinds of faith. In my own life I've found that when I was angry the Spirit couldn't reach me. It came to me as we were studying in Sunday School today and the teacher remarked that Joseph Smith had the same experience of being unable to hear God when he was anger, and that it wasn't until he let go of his anger that he regained contact with God.

As Joseph put it in describing his experience "when the heart is sufficiently contrite, the voice of inspiration steals in and whispers."

I've had many issues as I have dealt with my losses (and seen many others with loss deal with their issues), and for a short time anger as a block to faith and to the whisperings of God was an issue for me. Then, when I was contrite, the Spirit began to whisper to me. I still had to rebuild myself, spiritually I was weakened from the experience, but but faith was there to restore me.

Paul warns against letting bitterness spring up, and I am certain that anger is a stem of bitterness, and one that harms our faith, in all the ways faith can be a part of our lives.

Neat, the blogosphere rankings came up:

Current Status: Adorable Little Rodent
Current Rank: #4932

Neat, thought I liked Flappy Bird a lot ;)

For whatever today's is for your blog, visit http://www.truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php and type in the name of your blog. If it doesn't come up, add it.

BTW, I've added http://whenigodeaf.blogsome.com/ to my blogroll.

I'm so glad my wife is coming home today.

On torture

the elder President Bush's White House physician, a former doctor in the Army Medical Corps, had to say recently on this Bush administration's treatment of prisoners:

"Today, however, it seems as though our government and the military have slipped into Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness.' The widespread reports of torture and ill-treatment -- frequently based on military and government documents -- defy the claim that this abusive behavior is limited to a few noncommissioned officers at Abu Ghraib or isolated incidents at Guantanamo Bay. When it comes to torture, the military's traditional leadership and discipline have been severely compromised up and down the chain of command. Why? I fear it is because the military has bowed to errant civilian leadership."

We are in an interesting place.

Usually, torture and its analogs are useless. If a prisoner has not broken and refuses to talk, you get nothing from them. If they break, you get whatever they think you want, not the truth. In any case, by the time you can get the prisoner to someone who knows the right questions to ask and who can get useful information out of them, the information is dated and useless.

But, there are always exceptions. At times someone can be turned without being broken. It is almost always a threat of harm, not torture/pain that does it, and almost always in a tactical setting. The prisoner who leads the way through the minefield is a good example.

However, in an irregular war, where names, places, people, and contacts are all unknown (imagine WWII if the Allies did not know the names of the Nazi chain of command) there is suddenly useful information. It is like fighting the war on crime.

As a society we have already faced the temptation to use "the third degree" on criminal suspects, to beat, intimidate and deprive them of rights in the name of a greater good. National Socialism promised that greater good and our parents had to deal with NS (or, in English, the Nazi Party) in a world war and its aftermath.

But we are in a position of great temptation. The enemy is irregular (in traditional war, irregulars have no rights and are generally shot on sight). The enemy will not treat prisoners any differently no matter how we treat their prisoners (and can not take any great number of them -- all of whom they will brutally torture and murder). And, the enemy holds the promise of useful information that will not decay, if we only take the time to turn them.

Now, we are not abusing prisoners with the goal of causing them pain. We do not want them to break. Instead, we are trying to seduce them with methods that actually work. Which is why we, ourselves, risk seduction.

When God told Joseph Smith that those who lied in order to deceive were not excused because they thought others were deceiving them (or trying to), I think he was stating an important principle. When Mormon refused to lead the people in preemptive war and warned them that the grace of God would depart from them in that endeavor, he was giving a strong warning.

Now the war in Afghanistan was not preemptive. I don't think the President told any intentional lies (and honestly, given the track record of those attacking the "cake" story, their opposition would have been enough reason to believe it was true).

But I think we are facing a terrible temptation and that we are giving way to it. I have no doubts that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I have no doubts about where it leads either. I think that in spite of the fact that those who point out the problems with abuse are caustic and at times glory in hostility e.g., they may be right this one time (heck, they may be right more than once, a stopped clock is right twice a day, hundreds of times a year).

I am not making a call for action. I'm not suggesting that we condemn anyone. But I do think it is a time for thought and discussion, knowing what we face and what we want to become. That is because the ends do not justify the means. The means are the end. How we live and how we accomplish what we do is what we are and what we will become.

Whether we are talking about how we treat people of a different sex, or a different religion, or a different race or a different creed, in peace or in war, how we act is what we are.

Useful context links:

John Bruce's Blog

powerline comments on POWs, etc.

After Carl had been with the firm about a year he cornered me. I'd always told him the truth and had been one of the partners who voted to hire him. He had learned a lot about the firm's history, including the number of disasterous hires who were gay. "How could you hire me, with all the problems they had?" I should have thought before I answered, but I think "But what did their being gay have to do with their problems?" kind of answered his question for him.

Of course Carl turned out to be probably the best employee we had ever hired. He finally moved on to a better firm, but I'd recommend (or hire him) today.

There are a lot of characteristics about people that have meanings, in different areas. It is easy to look at our own problems and forget those of others, or to define people by characteristics that have no meaning as to who they are in the context you meet them. At times society overcomes those lines (what professional sports team cares about the race of a player now), at times we seemed to be mired by them.

As I've mentioned, negotiation and mediation are professional interests of mine.

Stu's an author of hundreds of comics, has decided to let bloggers use them, subject to specific rules.

For the terms, see volokh archived comment

Thought that was neat.

Otherwise, visited Wichita Falls, where we used to live, went by all of our old houses and apartments, visited friends, spent time where the girls are buried, was grateful to Alison for caring for their tombstones. Read Harry Potter (can't believe I let my oldest talk me into taking her down to wait in line. She wanted to wait in line and wanted company. Then we got up at six o'clock the next morning for the visit to Wichita Falls).

Missed some people (they weren't in/around) took others out to lunch, got home in time to sleep.

I meant to write a post about why I have this blog, but decided that will wait.

annegb has left some comments that I've thought about changing into a guest post or two, they are really good. Next time I think I'll ask her if she would mind doing a guest post or two on my blog.

I used to write legal articles, had a research agenda that I followed in ADR (dispute resolution), negotiation and professional responsibility/ethics, with a couple articles on Civil Procedure. Civil Procedure can be thought of as "the rules of the game" where the game is being a lawyer, and if you litigate, civil procedure is your life's blood in many ways. In those interests I started a web site, my home site, adrr.com. It still runs about 60,000 hits a week, mostly for people who are interested in "accessible" writing (that is often a dirty word from an academic standpoint) -- writing that they can understand and follow.

What is interesting in terms of where I was thinking is how grief and the experiences of loss deepened some of my thoughts, but how those concepts (such as there being five, not two, standard negotiation patterns) were an outgrowth of my exposure to Elgin's work long before any of these things happened. Grief is an overlay, not a building block, and it took far more than it gave.

Well, life has passed me by, I'm 49 and unlikely to start once again getting cold calls from people interested in having me interview for tenure track positions (though my wife got a couple -- which really tickled her, though she turned them down for the present). I'm lucky in that I like my work and my co-workers, love my children and adore my wife.

But I miss doing research and writing seriously -- in an academic way. I didn't get over 20 zeros in the first six months of the year by not being serious about my research and writing at work, but it is a different kind of writing. When Jessica took sick in 1992, a lot of things began to die, including a number of dreams and interests I didn't realize were dead.

So, I hold my five-year-old daughter's hands as she goes to sleep (it keeps the nightmares away for her), think and dream and love my family and remind myself that there is a lot more to life and that I am lucky to have the things and people and love that I have.

And I may yet write an article on how the clash over ethics in negotiation is a clash between styles, more than a clash between right and wrong -- though it may be that as well. There is so much and never enough time for all of it.

Brigham Young said this, "We think the sisters ought to have the privilege to study various branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed. Women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but they may also stand behind the counter, study law and physic [medicine], or become good bookkeepers, and all this to enlarge their sphere or usefulness for the benefit of society at large. In following these things they but answer the design of their creation."

In that regards, explorations, "Am I not a woman and a sister?" But what does it mean to be a woman, a sister, a feminist, a Latter-day Saint?

I always liked that quote while I was at BYU's law school, and it encouraged me when my wife was working towards her CRNA.

Alot easier to post on than the fact Robin would have been baptised this week and too many girls in our congregation who would have been Jessica's age are getting married. We even held one of the bridal showers in our house. Sometimes it is just too hard.

Well, they had us wait until this morning for the swelling to go down. After everything, the surgery will only be on Heather's hand, they are putting two pins in at 6:30 a.m. Win had to work last night, but will be getting off early and meeting me at the hospital. Heather is in good spirits, finished her econ final, I'm hoping she will still pass trig. She thought she was going to class this afternoon after surgery this morning.

Rachel has been very concerned about Heather. She is so sweet.

Anyway, things are well.

Heather had a close encounter with an SUV on her bicycle. She will spend the night in the hospital and when the swelling goes down they will operate on her in the morning.

My wife always accuses me of being too positive, but I expect Heather to recover just fine. Still, this reminded me that she is always my baby girl.

I try to post about once a week. This will have to do it for this week, I just don't have more in me.

When I was younger, a lot younger, I had an older guy tell me "all women are crazy" as advice. At the time I thought he was an idiot (to be blunt), but now I think he just didn't phrase it right. From a guy's perspective, all women aren't guys and don't think like guys. That doesn't make them crazy, so much, as make them women.

Kind of like my wife stopping sometimes and saying "you are such a guy" when I've acted normally (but "wrong" from a woman's perspective). For example, ask a guy to do something and he does it. A woman almost always will think he hasn't because he hasn't done the related things. A guy doesn't seem them as part of the same thing (and if the woman asking him to do whatever the task is also asks him to do the other jobs, what she would call "the rest of the job" he will happily do that too).

Such as "please fold the clothes" means also to put them up after folding and put the fresh sheets on the bed after folding them. It is amazing how much happier you can make young couples by teaching the wives to ask their husbands to do the other related things and by teaching guys that their wife means "do a, b & c" -- once they understand it, they are much happier doing what what make things go well. Twenty years of their wife saying "you didn't do 'a'" won't work. Because they did do "a." Five minutes of saying, "your wife may say 'a' but she means 'a, b & c'" works like a charm.

Anyway, are all women crazy? No more than all men are crazy. But, with work and patience they can not only love each other, they can make each other happy.

Father's day has often been very hard for me. I felt such a sense of personal failure at the deaths of each of the three daughters we buried. I would ask myself the question: "What good am I if I failed to keep my children safe and well" and asked it every Father's day. I had made my children the function to measure myself against, and with their deaths the value of my life seemed voided.

As time passes, I take so much joy in the children Win and I have in our home now that I am regaining hope in life. This June 19th it was good to wake up and see my daughters and to be not a survivor of tragedy living with loss, but to be happy at being a father and their dad. Time returns me to the basics of being in love with my wife and loving my children.

Finding meanings that work is not only the heart of an individual's life, but is the core of a successful communal enterprise. There must always be meanings that matter.

I will return to utopias and life and hopes of Zion, but for now I am glad that my life has returned to meaning.

Some links:

Nate Oman's latest on Utopia

Sojourner's Net

Ozarque on the meaning of words

So often I read someone urging someone else to just "drop their baggage" -- with the baggage being their job, their religious quirks, their spouse or something else the urger doesn't see, feel or hear as important.

How important is the "baggage" -- the things that we are certain that God doesn't really care about?

Laying aside the idea of a child or a spouse or a parent or a job as "baggage" -- what about God and the rules in the Old Testament? Surely God didn't really care about them, did He?

But those rules are what preserved the Children of Israel as a people and prevented them from being swallowed and assimilated. Without those rules to preserve the Jews as a peculiar people, they would have ceased to be a people.

It is easy for us to take a census, eat shrimp, use butter on our potatoes while eating steak or have some bacon for breakfast, while wearing a cotton/nylon blend and to think that anything to the contrary is just “baggage.”

But all of those prohibitions were, at one time, important to God. It was obedience as a people that made it possible for Christ to be born of Mary.

So I look at our world, our times and wonder what of the things we have that we might consider “baggage” are important like having blue threads in our hems, observing a Sabbath on Friday nights or reserving the priesthood to a family line of less than 10% of the population.

How many of the things we work with and are asked to obey work together in ways we do not understand, for purposes that we just fail to grasp, but that have meanings as significant as those had by the Macabeans who resisted the urge to drop their baggage and be one with what was the modern world of their time, and led the resistance against the Hellenic forces that sought to destroy the culture and heritage prepared for the birth of Christ?

I do not know, and I do not know the meaning of all things, but I do know that God loves his children.

BTW, for an interesting perspective on this, Someday Saint has an essay on her site:
Part Two

Utopias are interesting things. To me, utopia is my kids not getting sick (or if they are sick, not saying "don't pray for me, wait until I get older, if I live that long, then you can pray for me" and "am I going to die too this time"). I'm waiting on my five year old, her strep throat and her cough. Grateful for tylenol and antibiotics.

In writing about utopias, what I am really writing about is stable communal societies or organizations, not perfect places. To succeed, such an entity needs:

1. A shared culture that will work for both adults and children (I've seen a lot of attempts at utopia that worked for the adults, but that failed for the children they had, and a few that worked for kids but fail for the adults).

2. Sufficient resources to:
a. Establish the society,
b. continue the society and export from it,
c. endure, create accumulations, support members who have lessened productivity due to age.

3. Must be self-sustaining

Interesting examples include the Hutterites (a religious group of sealed communities that just keeps expanding. They export goose down to the outside world that at one point was the gold standard for goose down), small steel mills (there is a "modern" small fab plant steel mill system that is generally worker run in a communal system) and several worker managed piecework factories.

Entities that seemed like they would succeed and failed share some hinge or collapse points.

1. intellectual property issues and a changing environment.
2. rent seeking behavior
3. free riders and feather bedders.
a. the piecework factories manage to break through the "magic number of 100 to 200 adults by having a payment system that prevents free riding.
b. the worker managed railroads have worked on staffing levels of specific tasks to solve the same problem.
c. several worker owned companies have suffered from control groups forming and using that control to loot the communal good for the benefit of the group.
4. giving in to the temptation to create a management class (vs. renting or hiring it from consultants or outsiders as some unions have done).

Examples that are closer to home are law firms and other partnerships (which, for the professionals, though not the staff, are communal organizations which are prone to grow into non-communal ones), Yugoslavia under Tito (the only marxist state with a free market society), agricultural cooperatives (for machines that are effectively shared and for shared marketing tasks.

A failure of a cooperative endeavor occurs when:

1. The administrative cost is too high (centralized economies anyone?).
2. The cultural needs of the members diverge too far (you may think living in Big Bend as an artist is heaven -- but will your children who haven't learned to read by age 12?).
3. The level of assets fails to sustain the group (note, retirement planning need not be a part of the cooperative endeavor. It is for Hutterites. It isn't for steel mills).
4. Stratification destroys the communal nature.
5. External attack (the group of pacifists that got eaten by New Zealanders in the 1800s are a good example of this).
6. Problems of scale swamp the society.
7. Stratification (sometiems combined with scale issues) destroys the communal or cooperative nature.

The false issue is waste, as all systems have it.

Quick notes.

The magic size for many communal groups is 100 to 200. More than 200 and the group generates too many slackers and free riders. Under 100 adult workers and there seems not to be enough "community."

Cooperative groups can work just fine in a market society, competing with other such groups and non-communal groups. I would note that worker managed firms tend to outperform other management types inside the magic number size limits so that they can be quite competitive. It is very possible to run a country where the government runs the banks, military and universities and cooperatives handle everything else.

Universities can be used to create mental capital and intellectual property and they seem to do it well.

One thing the Amish have mastered is the art of making people suspect by virtue of their being willing to be leaders. There are problems with such a model -- especially when attacked violently by outsiders or when it needs to respond quickly. Communal systems benefit by having a slow economy vs. a fast one. (Imagine in the stock market only ran once a week instead of every day? If property had to be held for five years before you could sell it again and people preferred to live in the house their parents lived in.).

Some things are possible, some are not, though for miracles, I just want children not to die.

VADE MECUM....


FROM W. W. PHELPS to JOSEPH SMITH, Jr. .....

Go with me, will you go to the Saints that have died—
To the next better world where the righteous reside?
Where the angels and spirits in harmony be,
In the joys of a paradise vast?—Go with me.

Go with me where the truth and the virtues prevail;
Where the union is one, and the years never fail;
Not a heart can conceive, nor a nat'ral eye see
What the Lord has prepar'd for the just.—Go with me.

Go with me where there's no destruction or war;
Neither tyrants, nor sland'rers, nor nations ajar;
Where the system is perfect, and happiness free,
And the life is eternal with God.—Go with me.

Go with me, will you go to the mansions above,
Where the bliss, and the knowledge, the light, and the love,
And the glory of God do eternally be?
Death, the wages of sin, is not there.—Go with me.
50 Nauvoo, January, 1843.

Some misc. comments, on a personal note, rather than essays.

Just switched to Sunrocket for our telephone service. Switching from a $45.00 a month basic service telephone (extended calling area and some other "options" are required here) to $29.00 a month cable internet and $199 a year Sunrocket resulted in unlimited calling, an extra telephone number in Portland (so my brother can call me as a local call)and more reliable service than the DSL line was giving us. Without the extra cost of a DSL line. So, for less than basic local telephone service I have x2 DSL internet and unlimited long distance calling and two lines. So far, so good, and the free telephones included work very nicely.

I like New Balance Express for atheletic shoes. My feet are hard to fit and it can be hard to find cross trainers I like. Up to size 20 and up to 4E in width. I've small feet, I have relatives with smaller feet and some with gigantic feet. This is a great site.

Another essay soon. Paris was wonderful, the French were friendly, hardly anyone smoked, few dogs, and spring time was perfect. Being there with Win was like dreaming.

One thing that always struck me about historical research was just how miserable the lives of those living in the past were by our standards while they were joyous to be living them.

Take the Sun King of France. His murals aren't to my taste, my air conditioning works better than his, my bed has fewer bedbugs and lice (seriously, in some parts of the United States bedbug powder was still selling strong in the 1950s) and the food I eat is more varied, fresh and healthy than the food he ate. My car goes faster than any thing he rode in, and more smoothly, my teeth are in far better shape. It is as if we live in different realities, not just different times, yet he rejoiced to be born, not to mention we have the writings of those in far more humble circumstances who relished life and the experiences they had.

It always amazed me that people rejoiced to be born, leaving the presence of God. But from the outside perspective, life in and of itself is a valuable thing, the duration is short, and the experience is like an extreme camping trip, even for the most privileged -- and not measurably different from an eternal perspective for the worst.

In my own pain, the one thing that struck me about the terrible things that happened as I buried child after child from different causes is that my loss was not unique or unusual, only out of context for the community I lived in. That in the historical context, I was luckier than most, if not all.

It also struck me that better men than I had faced pain and complained to God about it, but that living in a fallen world, as an experience, involves living in a fallen world. That means pain without consolation in this world.

Not that the pain is not real when experienced (that is one thing I like about both Paul and Joseph Smith, both acknowledge that pain is pain and suffering is grevious when it occurs), but it is also experience and that the promise of God is not that it will pay off in this life (that is just another riff on the theme that if we worship God he will give us Mammon) but that it will be swallowed up and balanced in the next.

But, that which does not kill me merely does not kill me. Not necessarily stronger or weaker, not necessarily more or less alive. Those are my choices in how I react, combined with time and effort. And life will eventually kill me, but that is not the point. The point is that Christ can welcome me home and heal me of all my wounds, not that I will not be wounded by life.

So I live for my wife and children and with the hope of Christ. May that hope be also with you.

A heart breaking post at Happy Birthday Betsey Pearl -- a story from Portland, Oregon where my brother lives and where I visit from time to time.

The Silence of the Lamb – What is happening when we can not hear Christ in our time of sorrow.

Introduction

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani" -- My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? -- is haunting whether it is sung in a Synagogue or read in Matthew 27: 46 or in the full context at Psalms 22:1-21ff.

Of all the miracles in life, the one that is both the softest and the strongest is the voice and presence of God in our lives. But at times, God is silent and the Spirit is withdrawn. Not only do we not receive the tangible miracles we expect or hope for or have seen, but God seems to be withdrawn as well.

Sometimes the Spirit of the Lord is grieved and withdraws from us because of sin, especially if we wrongfully oppress others. We are all familiar with stories and examples and similar things in our lives (e.g. if you lift weights and then quit, you will lose strength over time, if you quit praying and related activities, you will grow weaker in spirit). But the issues go far deeper than those shallow examples, and with more complexity.

This is especially true since silence, especially in the face of suffering and loss, seems to draw the most anguish of all (and, the essence of a fallen world is suffering and loss – which is all death is). We know that God’s silence compelled Christ to voice. We are not greater than He and his silence to us causes us to give voice as well.

The Sounds of Silence

Before silence can be talked about with any intelligence, we need to talk about the various sounds, looks and feels of silence – a collection I refer to as the sounds of silence.

Chaim Potok’s book, The Chosen, (a good summary for the purposes of this discussion is at: summary) talks about a man who raises his son in silence, never talking to him. “He also explains why he raised his son in silence--it was to teach him to listen to silence, to learn compassion, to develop a soul to go with his magnificent mind.” If our purpose here in life is to grow, (vs. life as a replacement for amusement parks and television) then silence makes a good metaphor for the general distance between our state and God.

There are some God is silent with in order to teach them to hear.

A young child, who I will not identify by name, once banged her shin. To reduce the sensory load, she closed her eyes as she hopped about complaining about first the pain and then that she could not see. Some times we can not hear God, can not see his hand, can not feel his Spirit because we are so overloaded that we close down.

Of course, sometimes we are faced away from God, through our decisions to turn from him to our sins. While that is the reason many think of most often (read Job and consider the advice and comments of his “friends” – all they could do is insist he had some terrible hidden sin), that approach is scarcely useful for understanding God’s silence with the just (such as Job) and the humbled.

In addition, sometimes our spiritual senses have atrophied so much we have difficulty hearing God over any sort of background noise, including that of our own sorrow or pain. That same child who closed her eyes, also yelled pretty load and also complained that she couldn’t hear me. She had to quit shouting before my voice would come through. The more background noise or internal noise, the less atrophy we need before we can not hear anything over ourselves.

There are also other times of silence (such as when Oliver Cowdrey was praying to God for an answer and God finally spoke, saying “remember, I already answered this question, think on the answer I gave you before” [paraphrased]).

Thinking and listening

If we start with the beginning, which is that the world is fallen, telestial, and fails of the glory and joy of God, imperfection and sorrow become the side effects of mortality, not the purpose of them or their end. In a blog entry, I can not give this foundation the pages of text it deserves, but it provides a beginning place.

Of course sorrowful events do not make the world a better place because, by definition, the world is not a better place. As Paul said, if we live in this world only, those who know Christ would be of all the most miserable because they would know more than any others the depth of how unfair and fallen the world is. In the world is not where we expect consolation.

In addition, in the world is not where miracles, tangible or not (see my earlier post) dominate – they come only after faith, not before and not in place of faith.

Finally, God has warned us that he will try each of us, purifying our faith and giving us experience. This life ends in death, the question is when, not if. All that is required of us is to draw breath, the rest is a gift of experience and choice so valuable from an eternal perspective that those who await being born are willing to be born any time, any where and in any condition.

It is only from our perspective that God has failed us by giving us what we so much desired when we had a full perspective.

So why the Silence

God gives us silence for many reasons.

In some cases, we grasp silence and God allows us to hold to it until we release, open our eyes, and hear, all at once, like the unnamed child I’ve referred to above who closed her eyes and her ears as she coped with pain.

In some cases, God gives us silence to teach us or to allow us the fullness of experience that would otherwise not be complete without silence. Christ on the cross had silence that he spoke into, both for his experience and for our teaching (so that we could learn from his experiencing silence).

At other times, silence comes upon us as all other experiences do, because the world is imperfect or because we are.

I have faced silence. Once to teach me that I had learned a lesson and could do certain things without “training wheels” so to speak. At other times to aid me in learning charity, as a direct answer to prayers seeking to learn compassion and love. I’ve experienced silence that gave me perspective of how people live and think and cope in silence so that I could understand them better. And, I’m certain that I’ve also experienced not hearing the voice of God or seeing his hand or feeling his Spirit to know his will, at times, because of my own sins or failures of effort.

Finally, I’ve experienced silence because it wasn’t time for an answer or I had gotten an answer and wasn’t listening to it.

Conclusion

Silence is a deep subject, of which this is only an introduction to start a conversation, not the end of the answers. But there is a rhythm and meaning, a touch, sound and look to silence that is too often too easy to miss, and that leaves us feeling in the silence of the Lamb of God that we have been sacrificed rather than sacrificed for. It is my testimony that while we may not understand, the one truth is that God loves his children and that no silence, no depth or height or loss or sorrow, power or dominion can separate us from that love if we only allow that love into our hearts and bear patiently until the silence is quiet and the voice of God speaks again.

Stephen

The kids were well. The grandparents had a delightful time and everyone was very happy. I'm still jet lagged, but I dropped my mom and dad off at the airport, had a great family home evening, and am about to go to sleep.

Our hotel was grand. Right next to a metro station (on the M4 line), hot water and great water pressure on the top floor, quiet (very well insulated against sound) and clean.

Paris was a delight. We met one (1) rude frenchman (he was also short, stout, bald and drunk -- while the other short, stout and bald frenchman we met was gallant in the extreme).

I so love my wife, it is hard to express. I have to confess that sometimes I talk to her in her sleep about how wonderful she is. And we are both so glad to be home with our kids.

I'll blog more latter. Too much to write about.

Win and I are going to Paris to celebrate our 20th. Why Paris in springtime? Aside from the fact I've wanted to go to Paris since the 1970s and for a romantic place to take one's love in the springtime I can't think of any better? Of course it cost a lot less to go to Paris and stay in the 30th best ranked hotel than it costs to go to San Francisco?

Ok, I'm stretching. I just really wanted to take my wife to Paris.

Am I nervous? Yes, I've never been away from my children this long before. My parents are coming up to watch them, and they are good kids, but I've just never been away.

I'll be back in May. The office will survive without me (in fact, I'm amazingly caught up, just got another zero today -- that makes eleven or twelve on the year, when twelve to fourteen is usually what I do in a year), as Felicia Sorenson says "worse case scenario, the world just keeps on turning, best case scenario, pretty much the same."

But I miss my kids so much already and all they are doing right now is sleeping in the rooms next to me.