DISQUS

He sort of needs a bra....but he's WAY cute.

I don't intend to join this discussion for long, but what I can't get over is that conservatives want to mock someone who gave up a position at any law firm he wanted after graduating and went to do grassroots, community-based work. I thought this is what conservatives WANT. They don't want more bureaucrats right? They don't want more government or specifically for "government to solve peoples' problems," right? They want LOCAL communities (like poor black people on the southside of Chicago) to organize themselves and work on solving their own community's violence, poverty, education, crime, childcare, etc. issues--am I right?
Micah's fb question is valid: We moved into a low income, black, high crime neighborhood. Should we join our neighbors to work at a grassroots level to solve some of these very serious issues or should we call the mayor and demand he find us some federal earmarks?

Set up a facebook page?

Micah here. I don't vote for anyone at all, but I'm willing to bet that not only is Obama electable, he's going to annihilate McCain in the general election.

Your decision to vote for Obama was short lived!

Ben's little heart is so sweet. Our truth telling saga goes like this the other day:
Audrey hits, pushes, possibly bites (I didn't see it all) Clara over something that must have been really important. (Again, I missed most of it.)
I put Audrey in a timeout in her timeout chair and set the timer.
When it beeps I kneel down and do the whole Audrey, you're here because you hit and pushed your sister and that's not the way we treat people...blah, blah, blah.
I go on to say: "Now you need to tell Clara that you're sorry."
A: "No."
Me: "Ummm...yes. When we hurt people we must apologize. Tell your sister you're sorry."
A: "I no sorry."
Me: "Audrey, you hurt your sister now I want you to say sorry."
A: "I no sorry. I mad. I hit."

Hmmm....honesty wins, I guess?

if you mean after 8 years of bumbling idiocy we finally deserve a speaker who is inspiring, then Bush may have been worth it. But, I'm skeptical.

Leaders lead and followers follow...you should pitch that to Faux News. Where do leaders lead? Or, more importantly for Christians, How do leaders lead? If they follow the example of Christ (which, I know, is a crazy idea), then they lead by serving incarnationally--that is, becoming like the people they hope to lead. This is why most models of leadership are so disappointing, because most leadership sets itself apart from the "followers." And this is why, despite what people who write dumb books about "Jesus, CEO" want us to believe, you can't lead unless you are at least as humble as the people you hope to lead. You lead the poor by becoming poor, you lead workers by being a worker, you lead students by being a student, etc. Given the disparity between the average hourly worker and the average executive, the business model (which is clearly the dominant model of leadership) is, to be blunt, nothing like the leadership of Christ. Housewives, especially those who give up careers and ambitions to change diapers and keep house, are perhaps a better example, which is why, as I've maintained in practice and rhetoric, the real "manly" thing for men to do is stay at home and learn to clean and care for small children, and encourage their wives professional gifts in the process.

I don't know what change means to democrats, besides change in the way we are fighting this war, change in the way we do health care, change in the way we educate our children. All of this, I suspect, is what all candidates lay out when they talk about policy plans.

Words don't have self-evident meanings. "Leadership," for example, doesn't simply mean one thing; it takes a community of folks with common convictions to act out what that means. For example, I suspect most conservatives mean, frankly, "manliness" when they say leadership--the notion that strength and acumen are essential to, say, fighting a war, or in dealing with folks like Iran.
Christians, on the other hand, would primarily see leadership measured against Jesus, who, despite what that idiot John Eldridge would have us believe, was anything but "manly." He was weak, he was willing to die, and that becomes its own type of strength.

All to say that I tend to agree that most politicians offer up mostly meaningless things in most speeches. I don't think you can expect much else. That's not to discount the importance of words; I agree that they are vitally important. I'm all for a revival in political speech that has folks actually trying to say something that has meaning. I'm just not that hopeful, and given the power of what the church could be saying, don't see much in wanting to hear more from politicians.

fun stuff! :)

Post a picture of that porker so I'll recognize him when I see him next week.
Can't wait to see you all!

Emmaline just looked at this picture and said: "Hey, Ben's a Colt's fan. I didn't know that. That's cool."

Are you kidding me? Is that the same baby I saw just a month ago? Good job, Mama.
I love those rolls. If you bunch of lame *&@#$ would come to Indiana for T-giving I could kiss them.