mayfly

That statement may be true in many respects, but the title of the post reflects an introspective truth for me.

On June 21, 2008 (tomorrow), I will be the age that my father was when I was born. 41 years, 9 months and 21 days (or 15,269 days if you like) is the accounting.

Daddy is still kicking at 83, and tomorrow I can say with some precision that he is twice my age. From my vantage point, I try to imagine myself in his 1966 shoes. I am struck by how very young he was then. Growing up, I always thought that I had the very oldest parents of any kid in town.

It must have been a burden, that last day of August. Already a father of four and (more-or-less) broke; with the oldest daughter just beginning college; when babies #5 and #6 (twins!) arrive. He realized that the uncertain paycheck in farming and carpentry might not be enough to feed his growing brood and he soon found work in industrial construction.

He still farmed, built houses, did income tax work in the winter and worked at the cotton gin in the fall.

There’s nothing quite so motivating for the work ethic as having little people who depend upon you.
My life is much easier because his was so hard.

Thank you, Daddy.

I suffer from that malady common to (almost) all parents when I tend toward boastful pride in my children’s accomplishments.  On occasion, the mayfly has exhibited examples of my paternal exuberance.  My exuberance, I must now confess, will be tempered considerably by my knowledge of an amazing Medieval English infant.  The talents of my own six prodigies suffer in comparison to the exploits of St. Rumwold.

Rumwold is also known as  St. Rumbald, St. Rumbold, and St. Rumwald.  His geographical appellation is usually given as Buckingham; sometimes as Brackley.

Rumwold packed quite a list of accomplishments into his three short days of life.  Born in Mercia in 662, Rumwold could speak from the moment of his birth and his first words are recorded asrepeated uttering of “Christianus sum, christianus sum, christianus sum” (I am a Christian).  He requested baptism wherein he chose his own name and then, after receiving Holy Communion, prophesied his death.  In his remaining days, Rumwold preached a carefully argued sermon concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, quoted scripture liberally, and emphasized the orthodoxy of the Athanasian Creed.  He outlined careful plans for his own burial, asking that his relics be removed to Buckingham.

No less that six English abbeys or churches were named for the amazing infant saint whose major feast is November 3.  His story provided reassurance for medieval folk that infant baptism was appropriate and that the Trinitarian view was sound.

St. Rumwold’s Church near Bonnington
Two medieval stories regarding the infant Rumwold bear repeating briefly.  After his quite untimely death, Rumwold continued to have a presence in the north of England.   On his wedding day in 1282, a local Buckingham peer known as Sir Alured was chastised by the infant saint for coarse language.  Alured repented and cleaned up his foul mouth. However, at a royal feast some ice cream made the knight suffer a toothache, which caused him to curse loudly.  Rumwold’s disapproving visage suddenly appeared in a window, and Sir Alured’s bride disappeared in a puff of perfume, leaving behind her clothes.

A statue of Rumwold which was displayed at Boxley Abbey in Kent could (it was established) only be moved by people who were pure of heart. The penitent’s chastity could apparently be measured by the size of a financial gift to the abbott.  If the moneybag was of sufficient weight, one of the monks would operate a ratchet mechanism that aided the offeror in moving the statue. The statue ruse was exposed along with another Cistercian flim-flam, the Rood of Grace, during the English Reformation.

I will soon complete my second term as Chief of Staff for our hospital system.  I enjoy the challenges of the position, but I look forward to fewer meetings and administrative headaches.  In a recent corporate e-mail, our CEO thanked me for my service and added that I would receive a plague in recognition for my work.

I am anxiously awaiting the delivery, hopeful for a typographical error.

A Tennessee church has been sued for damages resulting from alleged improper faith healing. In an impartation of the Holy Spirit during services last year, a respondent for prayer was reportedly felled by the actions of the Holy Spirit. Sadly, the church had failed to provide “catchers” for the inevitable pneumatic tumble and the man injured his back and neck.

Read all about it at The Smoking Gun.

Why couldn’t the preachers just heal the injuries and end all of the legal battles?

1. Bill Laimbeer, the whiny Detroit Piston flopper, appeared as a Sleestak in Saturday morning kid’s show, Land of the Lost. Laimbeer was a 17 year-old Southern California high school basketball player when he was tabbed as one of the hissing, rubber-suited Sleestaks in the fantasy series. The Sleestaks really scared me.

2. Senator Joseph McCarthy was the godfather to Robert F. Kennedy’s oldest child, Kathleen. McCarthy and Joe Kennedy had a long history and McCarthy had even dated two of Joe’s daughters, Patricia (later Lawford) and Eunice (later Shriver). Although Republican McCarthy and the Democrat Kennedys were not often aligned on political matters, they shared a strong anti-Communist sentiment and a deep Catholic faith.

3. A Tennesseean was briefly the President of Nicaragua. William Walker (1824-1860) the “Grey -Eyed Man of Destiny”, was a Nashville native and adventurer. After initially pursuing a degree in medicine and later reading for law, he found himself involved in schemes to establish English-speaking slaveholding colonies throughout Central and South America. His forays succeeded, to a point. In 1853, he captured La Paz, capital of Baja California and declared himself President of the “Republic of Lower California”. A later proclamation as head of a “Republic of Sonora”, was more bluster than fact.

After a brief setback in which he was tried and acquitted by a California (U. S) courts for conducting wars, Walker marshalled an 1855-56 expedition of over 1,000 American and European mercenaries which succeeded in capturing Nicaragua, then embroiled in civil war. The grand plan had been to conquer Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and El Salvador. Walker was ‘elected” President of Nicaragua. His experient failed, primarily because he angered Cornelius Vanderbilt whose financial interests in Central America prompted a response from the U. S. Navy.

Walker made four more forays into Central America.  He eventually died at age 36, executed for attempting an invasion and coup in Honduras.

Scene from the local Food City.

While hauling away trash and listening to my second-favorite NPR program last Saturday I learned of a new evangelistic tool. Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, second only to Car Talk on my short list of NPR faves, formats the week’s news stories in game show style. One segment has three celebrity panelists each read a purported news story, only one of which is true. A telephone contestant then attempts to identify the legitimate story.

The three news items all involved the broad subject of internet technology. First was a password program that a father had invented to help control his son’s internet usage. The program required the teen to answer a series of academic questions and his computer time for the day would be determined by how well he did on the quiz. Sadly, this one was false.

The second story told of an implanted chip that can track a person via GPS. The vignette described placing a chip in the middle ear of a child, thus allowing parents to follow the child’s location via the web and also to communicate directly via programmed or live voice messages. Thankfully, this one was false.
The true story was that of Rapture Letters. A particular flavor of Christianity has interpreted Christ’s Olivet Discourse (with a sprinkling of I Thessalonians 4) to say that at some point in time all believers will be transported immediately to heaven, rescuing them from a period of tribulation. Those “Left Behind”, however, can still come to faith in Christ and Rapture Letters intends to target those people whose Christian friends have vanished leaving piles of (modest) clothing and (cross or fish) jewelry. How does it work?

Rapture Letters has enlisted a cadre of true believers, the sorts of people you just KNOW would be raptured when the time comes. Each of them is asked to log-on to a control page for the website daily. If, at some point, three days pass and each of these good folks has failed to log-on, the “dead man” swith is triggered and a series of evangelistic e-mails are sent to the address lists. All you have to do is give Rapture Letters the e-mail addresses of all of your heathen friends and they’ll take care of the rest. Your non-believer pals will get a weekly e-mail explaining just what has happened and what they can expect next. Here’s letter number one:

    Dear Friend;

This message has been sent to you by a friend or a relative who has recently disappeared along with millions and millions of people around the world.

The reason they chose to send you this letter is because they cared about you and would like you to know the truth about where they went.

This may come as a shock to you, but the one who sent you this has been taken up to heaven.

If you read a Bible, you will see that after chapter three in the book of Revelation, the church is no longer mentioned as being on earth. (The church are the believers in Jesus Christ, not the buildings in which people meet.)

In the Bible, 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4 verses 16 and 17 tell how Jesus came to take away His church. But, you have to believe the Bible is the Word of God in order to believe this.

I am sure that there will be a lot of speculation as to what happened to all these people. The theories of some scientists and world leaders will have so much credibility that most of the world will believe them.

It will sound like the truth!

But, there is only one truth. And, that truth is that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came back to earth and took with Him to Heaven all who believed in Him and made Him their Lord.

If you would like to give your life to Jesus Christ and be born again, it is not too late. First you must pray to God saying”Father I admit I am a sinner, and I will turn from my sin and do good. I believe that Jesus was your son and that He came here to die for me so that my sins would be forgiven. I ask you to forgive me and I will repent of my sins. In Jesus name I pray.”

If you just prayed that prayer and meant it with all your heart, then God will know you as one of His own. You should now seek out others who have also given their lives to Christ, read a Bible daily, and do your best to bring others to Christ.

God bless you.

From the website front page:

    After the rapture, there will be a lot of speculation as to why millions of people have
just disappeared. Unfortunately, after the rapture, only non believers will be left to come up with answers. You probably have family and friends that you have witnessed to and they just won’t listen. After the rapture they probably will, but who will tell them?

We have written a computer program to do just that. It will send an Electronic Message (e-mail) to whomever you want after the rapture has taken place, and you and I have been taken to heaven.

How is this accomplished, you might ask. It’s a dead man switch that will automatically send the emails when it is not reset.

If you wish to do something now that will help your unbelieving friends and family after the rapture, you need to add those persons email address to our database. Their names will be stored indefinitely and a letter will be sent out to each of them on the first Friday after the rapture. Then they will receive another letter every Friday after that.

Jim Manzi writes a thoughtful piece over at National Review Online discussing the implications of attitudes toward science in the political arena.  Since the NRO audience is conservative, his emphasis tacks toward that viewpoint, but I think you’ll find his insight and commentary more broadly instructive.

Manzi writes on occasion for NRO and The American Scene and is the CEO of Applied Predictive Technologies.   He skewered the film Expelled last month for NRO readers.

Alan Cooper of Jewish Theological Seminary was one of the founding members of Sha Na Na.

Dr. Cooper is the Elaine Ravich Professor of Jewish Studies and provost of JTS.  A Hebrew Bible scholar with many publications, he was the lead for Sha Na Na’s “At the Hop” performance at Woodstock.

Sha Na Na was originally a group of Columbia undergraduates who spoofed 50’s doo-wop music.  Their Ivy League heritage is revealed in their post-music careers.

Fellow Sha Na Na founder Dr. Robert Leonard is a professor of linguistics at Hofstra.   He stayed at Columbia to earn his Ph.D. The bass player earned a Fulbright for his Ph.D. research in East Africa, where he spent seven years studying Swahili and other Bantu languages.

Dr. Leonard’s brother, George, is a humanities professor at San Francisco State University. Several other original Sha Na Na members also went on to professional and academic careers: a vocalist, Scott Powell, is an orthopedic surgeon; Bruce Clarke, another bass player, is an English professor at Texas Tech University. Elliot Cahn and Rich Joffe became lawyers.There is no truth to the rumor that “Bowser” is to be the next Lucasian Chair at Cambridge.

As a part of the modern state of Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration, an International Bible Quiz has been arranged.  The contest has come under fire from certain quarters because a Messianic Jewish teen is included among the finalists.

Bat-El Levi (great name) is a 16 year-old who won an Israeli national Bible quiz to place among the finalists.  She belongs to a  Messianic congregation.  I understand the controversy, but I would hope that all parties would acknowledge that Bible study and knowledge are desirable, even for those with whom we disagree.