A Saturday

It is Saturday. I have about four different posts in my brain that must be translated into posts, but... at the moment I just want to ramble, which is something I rarely do on here anymore.

It's a great Saturday. It sucks to wake up early with a baby on Saturday morning, but we had a slightly muddy adventure attempting to do the stereotypical Texas thing and take photos with the Spring bluebells. It was mostly a failure and I may have lost my sandals in the process.

While Judah was sleeping I got to sit down and actually journal-pray, which I also rarely get to do anymore. This week I have been longing for it, longing to process some very private heart things with God, and every morning when I'd get up Judah would get up too, interrupting any possibility of real quiet processing time. It was amazing this morning, the peace and stability found in prayer and meditating on some verses that I've written down that are pertinent to the things I'm processing the last couple of weeks. In high school I prayer journaled every day. Nowadays it's almost never, but I knew my heart needed it today and I am so thankful for it.

I also managed to get a morning nap  while Judah was still sleeping, and then finally finish When Helping Hurts (and also the amazing flourless chocolate cake we've been eating all week) and play with the little  man on the porch in the perfect weather, and then when he and Isaac conked out for their afternoon naps I got an hour at the thrift store around the corner. I love love shopping at thrift store dives,  and I find I need to get out at some point on Saturdays or else I feel cooped up. So - I left the store with energy, a couple of scores for me, and some 18 month clothes for Judah because everything he's in right now is getting too small!

And now the apartment is a wreck and the fridge is empty, but a pot pie is in the oven and I feel productive, rested, and peaceful. Thank God for Saturdays like this.

Iraq vs Libya - the Obama doctrine

Last election cycle was the first one where I actually got out there, did research, and tried to make an educated decision about my vote. Perhaps the most transformational thing I digested was really understanding what a President could and couldn't do. I said again and again that the President of this country actually has comparatively little power to do most of the things that we expect him to do. His largest area of power and responsibility? Foreign policy.

So, with my vote for Obama, I was supporting Obama's promised policy which, in the words of Real Clear Politics, "Envisioned an American foreign policy that was less militaristic, less confrontational, and less-unilateral than that of his predecessor."

Has it been so? Here is an over-simplified comparison of the two conflicts that Bush and then Obama spearheaded US involvement in.

Iraq:

1. US-led invasion and US responsibility for remaking Iraq.
2. Some Iraqis supported the US and some were against, making for a brutal and long stabilizing process by the US as they struggled to build a government  from nothing. 
3. Estimated cost of Iraq war was $6.2 billion per month. Afghanistan is estimated at $6.7 billion per month.
4. Invasion discouraged by our own weapons inspectors and the UN and decried by several of our allies.
5. Nearly 9 years between invasion and withdrawal .
6. Over 110,000 killed, including 4,400 Americans.

Libya: 

1. US never claimed central role or asserted itself as the main player, but supported the revolution via covert ops and through NATO air involvement.
2. The war and the ousting of Gaddafi was primarily a Libyan action - a society taking responsibility for changes they wanted to see. 
   
3. Estimated cost for the complete Libyan intervention is $1.1 billion, which is less than one week of the cost of Iraq or Afghanistan.
4. Intervention authorized by the UN, approved by the Arab League, and requested by the Gaddafi opposition. The US participated as a part of NATO.
5. The entire civil war lasted less than 1 year.  
6. Around 30,000 killed in the civil war, including 3 American journalists.

I know, I know. My husband says this is comparing apples and oranges, and perhaps that's true. Iraq was an invasion, Libya was a civil war. We were involved in Iraq because it was supposedly a security threat to us (hmmmm), and we were involved in Libya to support a revolution overthrowing a dictator.

Despite this, I think that are still some points to be drawn here. Obama has chosen to support internal movements of change rather than to externally force change. Obama has been applying a consistent philosophy of foreign policy that is, in my opinion, fantastic. He looks for self-led change and regional support for external involvement. In doing this he minimizes our death toll and financial risk while still encouraging healthy democratic change and decreasing international security problems.

I'm with Thomas Friedman, who says:

In Libya, Obama saved lives and gave Libyans a chance to build a decent society. What they do with this opportunity is now up to them. I am still wary, but Obama handled his role exceedingly well.... So let’s be clear: Up to now, as a commander in chief in the war on terrorism, Obama and his national security team have been so much smarter, tougher and cost-efficient in keeping the country safe than the “adults” they replaced. It isn’t even close, which is why the G.O.P.’s elders have such a hard time admitting it.

 There are other areas where I've been less comfortable with Obama and even with some of his foreign policy actions, but Libya is illustrative of exactly what I like about Obama's approach.

The Plan

We have a plan.

I don't really like to write about it or even tell people, because it's still so uncertain to me. Anything could change. We might not be accepted to the organization we're applying to. Even if we did, we might not end up going to Indonesia after all. And as to how long it all lasts? That's anyone's guess.

I'm not afraid, though. I feel like I just have open hands, moving forward, ready for whatever change of plans is thrown my way. If one thing doesn't work out, something else will. There's a path to start on. It could end anywhere. I'm okay with that right now.

But you know, this post has been sitting in drafts for weeks and today? Today I'm terrified. Not that it won't work out, but of change and of my own limitations and insufficiency, of a future that is unknown.  There are moments when I wish I could freeze time because right now, right now I am happy and right now things are familiar and I am capable. Not last year. Not next year. Right now. But I know that even if I tried to grasp at the present and hold it, it passes, always, and keeping things as they are can't possibly nail down what I love about life right now. Things must change, so if it must change we better get on hustling down the path we've been waiting to start down for the past four and a half years.

We turned in our application to an organization that works overseas. It's been quite an application. We've done all sorts of testing - medical, psychological, theological. We've filled out waivers and informational forms and life histories. We've done interviews and had friends fill out references.

And then. If we are approved, we begin the next stages of a journey that would have us end up in a little town in Papua, Indonesia. Isaac would be teaching at a local college. It is the same island I grew up on, but a different town. There are only a couple of Westerners nearby. The school is run by Indonesians.

We looked at a number of organizations. It wasn't so much about the organization as much a place where Isaac can teach. That's stage one in finding out what God wants us to do with the rest of our lives.

We have the tentative beginnings of a plan. We will take steps forward.

M. Scott Peck on Love and "Falling in Love"

It's been too long since part 1 and part 2 of my thoughts on M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled. His take on love is just fascinating. How does a sort of mystical secular psychologist evaluate love and infatuation? He distinctly draws a line between real love and "falling in love".

Two problems are immediately apparent [with falling in love]. The first is that the experience of falling in love is ... consciously or unconsciously sexually motivated. The second problem is that the experience of falling in love is invariably temporary. No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love if the relationship continues long enough. This is not to say we invariably cease loving the person with whom we fell in love. But it is to say that the feeling of ecstatic lovingness that characterizes the experience of falling in love always passes.

If falling in love is not love, then what is it other than the temporary and partial collapse of ego boundaries? I do not know.

I'm 100% with him that real love is hand in hand with commitment. What was really different to read were his theories on "falling in love" and ego boundaries.

By the time of mid-adolescence, young people know that they are individuals, confined to the boundaries of their flesh and the limits of their power, each one a relatively frail and impotent organism, existing only by cooperation within a group of fellow organisms called society. Within this group they are not particularly distinguished, yet they are isolated from others by their individual identities, boundaries, and limits. It is lonely behind these boundaries....

Most of us feel our loneliness to be painful and yearn to escape from behind the walls of our individual identities to a condition in which we can be more unified with the world outside of ourselves. The experience of falling in love allows us this escape - temporarily. The essence of the phenomenon of falling in love is a sudden collapse of a section of an individual's ego boundaries, permitting one to merge his or her identity with that of another person. The sudden release of oneself into the beloved, and the dramatic surcease of loneliness accompanying this collapse of ego boundaries is experienced by most of us as ecstatic. We and our beloved are one! Loneliness is no more!

I think this is a pretty accurate description, at least in my personal experience. It makes you feel as though you are no longer bound by the limits of your individual identity. It's euphoric. It has little to do with the actual relationship or even necessarily the person.

In some respects (but certainly not in all) the act of falling in love is an act of regression.

One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving. ...

I love that Peck here describes falling out of love not as a point of hopelessness but rather as the beginning of the opportunity to develop real love.

What's real love? Peck's definition is limited, but again I'm fascinated to hear some of these things come out of the mouth of a secular psychologist in an age of narcissism. In describing why falling in love is not real love, he shows what he thinks characterizes real love.

Falling in love is not real love because:
1. Falling in love is not an act of the will. It is not a conscious choice. We can choose how to respond to the experience of falling in love, but we cannot choose the experience itself.
2. Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them. Lazy and undisciplined individuals are as likely to fall in love as energetic and dedicated ones. Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.Falling in love is not.
3. Falling in love has little to do with purposely nurturing one's spiritual development. If we have any purpose when we fall in love it is to terminate our own loneliness.

It all gets at the idea that falling in love is a false sense of relational intimacy, and it will pass. Mistaking falling in love with real love actually prevents real love from developing, because you are constantly seeking for the emotional connection rather than building the foundation of love upon which the emotional connection with grow and thrive.

Office Pranking Extravaganza

Last week was Spring Break in the local public schools. All of the execs in our office went on vacation... at the same time.

How does one pass that up?

*cough*

I mean.... someone in our office clearly took advantage of the situation.

Or rather.... several someones.

Or maybe... half the office staff? Fingers are still being pointed.

Exhibit A: Aluminum Foiling


Awesome, right? The best thing was the detail. Individual books.


See the plant? Individual leaves on that baby are foiled. When I came in on Monday my boss was unwrapping foil from an individual vitamin pill he'd left on his desk.
It was amazing.


I think this was my very favorite of all.  The aluminum foil kleenex coming out of the kleenex box.



Exhibit B. - TP
Classic... a TP job.... but with a twist.

Hung down over strings, so that there were just curtains of tp that you walked  through as you went through the office. This VP was so funny - she walked out of her office that morning and exclaimed that she was so honored to have her office pranked.


 Exhibit C - Post-It Noted!


Amazing.
This, folks, is why I love my office.

Also - pranking spreads like a disease. However, I don't think our office will ever top having three executive offices well-pranked in one week.


(it was a really fun week)

Spring at the Dallas Arboretum

A friend from work got us guest passes for the Dallas Arboretum. We'd never been and the weather was perfect - mid 70's and cloud cover. The spring blooms are everywhere, and it was just stunning.






At the far end of the Arboretum is an amphitheater. They had piano music playing, and the place was full of families picnicking. It was so relaxing and beautiful, and we let Judah wander all over. At the bandstand in the center, little kids were gathering and dancing to the music. Completely adorable, really. Bigger girls with floaty skirts spinning and clearly playing out ballerina dreams. Little boys running in circles. Toddlers like Judah toddler dancing.

All in all... truly beautiful and refreshing.

And, about that toddler dancing....

My husband and I swapped personalities

Something strange has happened. Isaac and I have flip-flopped personalities.

When we met and started dating, Isaac was a brand new freshman. He was that kid that comes in talking with plenty of braggadocio and sarcasm that never quit. He had European humor (perceived often as completely inappropriate by American Bible college students) and loved being in front of a crowd. He wasn't shy in any way, shape, or form. He was more of a loud-mouth.


I, on the other hand, was known for being sweet and much quieter. I liked sitting in corners and watching people, I hated having all eyes focused on me, and I was timid in most social situations and way behind current cultural trends in most areas of life.

 It's been 10 years, and last week on the way home from a meeting, we decided that we might just have switched personalities. I might just be the more extroverted person in our marriage, and Isaac just might be the introvert. Whaaaa...? How can I, the quiet girl, be an extrovert? How can that loud freshman kid have ended up as an introvert?
Today, when I tell people at work that I'm an introvert, they are surprised. When I get a day off of work, I want to be out and around, exploring, shopping. I love being at parties, love events and social times. Isaac, given the choice, would probably rather chill at home. Social events can be fun, but if he's sitting next to people he doesn't know, he feels no compulsion to chit chat, whereas I'm very likely to strike up conversations with strangers. He needs lots of time alone - it energizes him. I can handle some time alone, but eventually I feel drained and ready to get out.

In the end, I am still shy, but shy doesn't necessarily have anything to do with introverted or extroverted. I still hate being the center of attention and I am by no means a leader. I hate being new.  Despite that, I am still someone that loves people and having fun with people.... once I'm settled enough to feel comfortable. It's true... I draw energy from crowds. Isaac is still more confident, a natural leader, and a dominant and fun personality.  Despite that, he really is a homebody and increasingly an introvert.

This is super weird for me, particularly with watching the change in a man I initially knew as super outgoing. We've both always been close to the center of the introverted/extroverted scale, but we may have inched over on opposite sides than where we started.  It's really when I've been a place a while and have a network of people around me that I really move onto the extroverted side. I wrote about my senior year of high school, which was one of those times. I had times where I was settled into undergrad and was quite extroverted. Now, after years of living and working in one place, I find myself again edging into extroversion.

Gender and Romance in the Hunger Games

I finished the last Hunger Games book this week. I tell you what, you want to get a big response on facebook? Post on the Hunger Games. Everyone wants to talk about it! Isaac is starting the first book today, and I can.not.wait for the movie.

I loved the series. It's not super deep or profound or intricately written, it's just really good entertainment. Jaimie was right, the third book is not as good as the first too. It was a little like watching the final season of Lost. The writer would develop a plot line and you'd think you're heading into a major event, and then Katniss is shot or knocked out or something, wanders around disoriented and angsty for a while, and you're right back where you started. I did like that it took a black and white story and added some moral complexity, because that mirrors reality. Are the good guys really good and trustworthy? Is the rebelling society really going to be better than the one you are rebelling against? Also, actually spending time developing the character of Gale was good, because he's just a vague figure in the first two books and you're never able to accurately compare Gale and Peeta. Unfortunately, Gale's developed character kind of sucked.

I was really fascinated by the character of Katniss and her relationships. Generally immensely popular characters like this both form and reflect trends in our society. I think the form heroines take in young adult literature says a lot about the way women are raised to think. Some of that is good - there is no need for a male character to come and rescue the girl for her to be happy and meaningful. On the other hand....

Katniss is portrayed as generally a stronger character than the male leads. She's smart, strong, a leader, and in the end, usually the winner. She's certainly portrayed as superior to Peeta, although Peeta has a good heart. I know there are still rampant problems in our society today with inequality in the treatment of women, we're also beginning to see the other side. I've seen workplaces and marriages and now scores of young women (and the YA literature that reflects them) that truly do generally think that they (the women) are smarter and more capable than the guys around them. Not equal. Better. Swinging from inferiority to superiority in this next generation won't do either side any good. The truth is that Katniss is actually an extremely selfish character that is gifted but very emotionally wounded and guarded. I hope she isn't the ideal that our girls want to be like.

Katniss sort of likes two guys in the story, and we readers have all divided over whether we're on Team Peeta or Team Gale (Team Peeta!!). Thing is, she doesn't trust either one of them. She never lets her guard down to truly love either one. She has to be self-sufficient. She never admits to loving either one unless they are dying, never when they are there to actually exist in a mutual relationship. I think this reflects what girls today perceive. They need to be self-sufficient. They shouldn't NEED relationships. They can enjoy the benefits of them, but never fully let their guard down.

The readers are wooed by the devotion of both guys to the woman that they love and will do anything for, even die to protect. They are at her beck and call, both just waiting for her to decide who she will choose. And this supposed to end up in a healthy relationship? I think this is the classic problem in chick stories today. The narrative is that we are pursued at any cost by a man who will change completely in order to win our hearts (that's one thing I like about the Gale and Peeta characters. They're waiting for her, but they're not changing for her. They are who they are). The problem with pursuit concept is that it never portrays an equal relationship or loving compromise. I think our young women are actually told never to compromise lest they lose their rights or miss the ideal that they deserve. End result: relationships based on a constant power play and women feeling useless when the "pursuit" stage of the relationship has passed.




I haven't read the Twilight series, but from what I hear, much of this is true in that series as well. Am I onto something or am I off track?

The Importance of Training

I've complained about the current trend in missions towards short-cycle church planting.

Actually, I love the focus on church planting. The short-cycle bit concerns me sometimes, it just depends how it's applied. What really gets me is that it sometimes seems that organizations are pursuing multiplication of church planting and shutting down training and education of church leaders. I know for sure that there's a train of thought that says that institutional training and education will slow church multiplication, so we really should shut down our western-style education because it's counter-productive.

It's actually so pervasive that mutiple missions that we've contacted have recently shut down nearly all of the theological training that they were previously doing. 

With that in mind, it's a little interesting to be heading overseas in order to train leaders.... in an institutional setting. We're definitely not going with the current flow. Why not?

There's a lot of reasons.

- If you do end up with a multiplying church movement, you will eventually have older churches and a need for leaders to lead the newest, youngest leaders. Church growth eventually necessitates the need for training and education at the top.  It's true that we may have it backward sometimes, because you really need to start out with evangelism and then church planting and multiplication, rather than to start out with training as the West has often done in the past. To be reactionary and become anti-training is dangerous.

-  Ending up with a church that has spread organically but has few trained leaders leaves you wide open for cults and all kinds of craziness. Incidentally, this is very true in Papua, where the church has grown and cults are a massive problem. It's also true in China. Throughout church history we see that it takes careful shepherding and commitment to orthodoxy to keep the church from drifting away.

- We've seen the anti-intellectualism streak in American evangelicalism (thank you, Mark Noll, for writing about the importance of this issue) and do not wish to propagate this mentality around the world.

-  Providing education empowers the local community. Why would we want to grow a church that is dependent on the West to engage on theological and philosophical questions in the world? A growing local church movement needs local leaders that can confidently engage on these levels in their society - you even see that in Acts and the early church.

There are still problems with implementing Western-style education as the way we train around the world. We can work at being innovative and flexible. Training up leaders in scripture and theology, though, is a necessity.

An event to remember

An event I was a part of back in Chi-town

On Saturday my workplace, which feels like a family, threw a really, really big event. The type of event that I spent four years catering for in Chicago for an event planning company. Those were big corporations and weddings, not like us, a small organization with volunteers doing most of the work.

It was so much fun. Fun, as always, to watch this body work together, everyone pitching in with no complaints, even when 8am on a Saturday calls for coffee and puffy sleepy eyes. Do you know how much of a gift it is to work with people that laugh together? People that spread laughter are one of my favorite things in the world.

It was amazing. Months and weeks and days of work that came down to those last hours of intense prepping. My little team hung gorgeous photos that showed wrinkles and smiles from people across the world. We set programs and gift bags on banquet tables and panicked when there weren't enough, sending swarms of co-workers to set up an impromptu gift-bag factory and relieve the problem in 30 minutes.

Event setup and management is so me. It's the years of working in Chicago, yes, but I found out back then that not everyone loved the job as much as I did. I've discovered that I am a high "C", and something about the methodical process of so many things done together to make one big beautiful stunning event gets my energy going. This time around friends teased me and asked me to please organize their lives for them, which amazes me because I'm only just understanding this part of my gifting and personality. This event thing is just familiar too. I know where dessert spoons go and what those tall tables in the reception area are called (highboys) and who to talk to when a table setting is missing. I love being familiar with things and feeling competent.

And then it was beautiful to run upstairs with my friends that had been working with me all day. Here we were at this beautiful new luxury hotel and we get to get ready in a suite! The view of the city from the floor-to-ceiling windows on the 9th floor was absolutely stunning, and it felt like an awfully glamorous locker room! Love the chatty bonding atmosphere  between us girls was certainly present as we did makeup and painted nails and checked each others' hair. The event was seamless and everyone is still talking about it





All in all, it was a night for the books, and another reminder that I'm glad I stuck it out and am still working where I'm working. This year has been so worth it.

Link Love

Bridget Hunt wrote a great post for all soon to be mamas about what they can expect, good and bad!

My friend Rachel wrote intimately about being brought to tears when her pastor talked about leadership and assumed married mothers weren't a part of the leader category. She asks for insight from her readers. What would you do? 

A college friend, Maureen, did some research and put together a list of celebrity couples that have only married once and remain married to that first spouse today. It's interesting and sometimes surprising.

Lianna Carrera wrote an article called "10 Signs You Were a Christian Kid in the 90's". Hello McGee and Me and Bible Drills. A few of these I (luckily) missed out on by being overseas. I managed to never be in a dance/mime team. SWEET.

Yet again Kelle Hampton makes my list with her blog post about a dance for special needs folks. What beautiful

Considering buying this Hunger Games t-shirt. 

My friends Jared and Theresa are headed back to Papua where we both grew up and they are blogging about it.

I echo Brett in this post , which challenges our obsession with authenticity when it results in encouraging brokenness and scorns healthy lives as inauthentic.

Delight

Last week on twitter I said this: "These are beautiful days. Weather, yes. But also spiritually, emotionally. So beautiful."

It's true. Much of the time in my last two years of high school were like this. Sure, there were the little ups and downs, but I delighted in life. There was a song that a friend introduced me to in which a woman sings about driving to the beach and dancing on the sand at night. The chorus goes, "I could go on for a million more years if we danced like this every day." It's soft, beautiful, haunting. It would play in my head in those many moments when I would be with friends, watching a Papuan sunset, or watching my family in the living room.

That is how much of this last year and a half have also been. There is still stress and arguments and tough days, but it is so stunningly beautiful simply to live this stage of life. To join into a team of people that I know at work and feel like I contribute and am useful. To come home to little arms around my neck, to get phone calls and hear babbles of excitement on the other end. We are busy, but we have a few evenings at home together each week, and every time Isaac and I find ourselves looking at each other over our little tow-headed boy on the couch or the bed or out and about somewhere and just marveling that this is us, we are a family, and we get to live this life.

I delight in it. I wrote a couple of times (like here and here) about this delight after Judah was born. I speculated and was told that it could be like the honeymoon period of motherhood. I have had many overwhelmed moments with sickness, fussiness, messes, and the other things Judah has come with, but that honeymoon period hasn't passed. Even when externally it really doesn't look fun - when he's clingy or wiggly and I am at my wit's end.... there is that delight. Still there. I can't describe how it wells over me when I pick him up in the morning and lay him down again at night, when I kiss his cheeks or chase him around or make him giggle.

It's more than Judah, though. It's the gorgeous Texas winter evenings that are like Chicago summers, and we spend them on our porch or kicking the soccer ball in the field next door.  It's this stage of life. Parenting as a team with my husband, and watching him take delight in Judah too. Knowing this place, this people, having hope and vision and voice. It's a beautiful time. I breathe it in.

I know that parenting and everything else I love about this stage of life truly won't always be like this. One of the things that I've decided and learned from it all is that I want to delight in my life and in those around me. Delight, like joy, is not circumstantial. I can be immensely struggling with other things and still experience delight over the beauty around me. Speaking the truth about pain, suffering, and difficulty, is important. Delighting in the beauty is the balance that is equally important. It recognizes that, my God, You are certainly good, and that goodness is still all around.

This has clarified a few things for me about marriage and parenting for me. I want Judah to know that he is delighted in - that his life alone is worthy of delight. I want to delight in my husband and in the wonder of parenting and doing life together. Sure, the world is marred and we are broken and there is suffering, but there is also beauty, and wonder, and joy. Where I find those things, I want to delight in them.

Thoughts on hearing former President George W. Bush speak

Last night I met George W. Bush. Or rather.... I was involved in an event at which the former President spoke, and he walked past me.

Okay, fine. Not the same thing. I did find it ironic that I was wearing a beautiful outfit made for me in Pakistan. As I left I thought that the man that made it for me probably would have refused to make it if he'd known it would be worn at an event at which GW was the speaker!

It was fascinating, though. It was an evangelical event, and so of course I was a little hesitant about having a political speaker as the highlight of an evangelical event for an organization not at all about politics.  I conclude that down here in Texas most conservatives really do believe that Bush shares their evangelical convictions and just tones them down because he's in the public arena, and so of course he's a natural choice as a speaker. Regardless, despite not always liking his political decisions, I like George W. just fine and do not think he is stupid or evil, and so I looked forward to hearing him speak.

My thoughts:

- George is in his home territory and the pressure is off, and he feels free. He was sunburned from golfing that morning, easy-going, jovial, and reminded me of my grandfather as he was a few years back. Giving everyone a hard time, telling story after story, and just loving being around people. He's funnier than I expected. I like him.

- He is proud of pouring money into aid for Africa. He named vast sums of money that he directed to Africa during his eight years as President, and I know that doesn't go over well now in a down economy with people not wanting money to leave our country. In his words, though, "If there was a vast pandemic killing (insert astronomically high number of AIDS deaths) people in Africa every year and as the leader of the most powerful country in the world I'd stood by for eight years and done nothing, what would that say about me?" Agreed. I am proud that he was and is so involved in Africa.

- Bush spoke so highly of Tony Blair as a man of courage, honesty, and principle. He said, "It's not often that another politician looks you in the eye and tells you something and you know absolutely that he will follow through with it."

-On the other hand, he ripped Putin to shreds. Interesting timing, because I was just listening to NPR's feature interview with the author of a new biography of Putin that highlights his machismo "strongman" fixation. Bush's stories coincided with that telling of things. I was just dying laughing when he said that once Putin visited him at Camp David and Bush introduced him to his Scottish terrier, Barney. In Bush's words, "I love that dog! He was by my side all the time through eight years of the Presidency." Bush says Putin looked at Barney and looked back at Bush in disbelief as if to say, "Really?!" When Bush went to visit Russia this massive hound comes bounding across the lawn towards them. Putin points with pride and says, "Bigger, stronger, and faster than Barney." Really??? Putin's intense desire for machismo is hilarious.

- The Putin slamming went on, with one aside about his tight black macho shirts, "Just like a bad B movie."

- Along those lines, I was actually a bit surprised at how biting he was in his comments about other world leaders. I'm sure some of them deserve it and it's how an average American perceives some other cultures, but that is indicative of why I was uncomfortable with much of how Bush interacted with world leaders. Perhaps it didn't start us off on the best foot most of the time. Obama is bashed for his foreign relations humility but I think it serves us better.

- Having heard Bush speak about his faith, I don't understand how you could say that the way he talks about his faith is any different than Obama talks about his. Both of them reflect platitudes and they repeat back what the American Christian culture says. Neither one of them seems to have really wrestled theologically, but then... they are politicians, not theologians, and who are we to judge the state of the heart? My point is only that it's ridiculous to condemn the faith of one and honor the faith of the other when they both say essentially the same things..... exactly what the voters want them to say.

- Bush repeated what a great many American politicians do, which is to present democracy as the salvation of the world. It will apparently solve all ills. I happen to also think that it is the best political system, but I think this idolization of democracy is one-sided. You can have democracy and still have a society devoid of soul. There are a great many democracies filled with depressed people and a society that is falling apart for lack of spiritual life and morality. Democracy is not everything. It is certainly not the salvation of the world.

- I really appreciate that Bush refuses to bash Obama. He could have in this crowd and they would've loved him for it. But no, he is respectful and told people to pray for Obama because Presidents desperately need it (it wasn't condescending). He is intentional in staying out of policy discussions right now and refused to discuss Obamacare. The only political point that he said he is very concerned about and that he will continue to speak publicly on is the rise of isolationism. Interestingly, this is probably more of a problem in his own party at the moment, and perhaps most of all here in Texas.

- "Power and fame are addictive. Did I like having power? Yes. Do I miss it? No."

- Most horrifying to me is that he said he was very proud of deciding to have Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
water boarded. WHAT? Proud? I mean, that decision could have been a lot of things and he could have described it many ways, but to just bluntly say it's one of his Presidential decisions that he's proud of??? I would even understand (though not agree) if he'd said that it's a decision he hated having to make but it was necessary. But....proud? Ugh, very uncomfortable with that. And his logic was that that decision was necessary in order to get information that would save people. That's exactly the problem, really. If we are willing to give up moral standards in order to save people, then we have no boundaries and our democracy is pointless and dangerous.