Monthly Archives: October 2013

The DSM and erosion of the rights of children

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The mental health professionals who shape the language of the DSM have been toying with the diagnostic language associated with pedophilia.

This matters because the pressure is now (and for some time has been) on legitimizing pedophilia.

Children are already largely the target of exploitation here and abroad. And in many parts of the world the legal protections for children are severely compromised or non-existent.

This waffling over the DSM is one more symptom that the rights of children to safe passage through childhood is eroding precipitously here as well.

Of the dark

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etiology

I swear to you
I would have slept
Long ago
If it weren’t for violet
Across the sky
Lightning and the occasional
Rumble of thunder

Disturbs her perhaps
Or the child who most
Reminds me I am
Beautiful

Says
I am afraid of the dark
Along with the cold, unnatural glow
Of the words I write
To stave off
The monsters of memory and loss

I do not tell him
What I have told his older siblings

I have read that no one is afraid of the dark/only what lurks therein

What lurks in our nightmares
What if I lost you?

Every beat of my heart
Asks this question–will you let me keep them?
Knowing they are Yours.

You keep them
for me

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Numbered with the transgressors

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Not quite four years ago.

It was a watershed moment. I looked around the courtroom at the other bewildered parents, frankly wishing that my (adopted) son was just a weed dealer or boat thief.

He had done so much worse, and to people who were too young, innocent, and precious to deserve such terrible affliction.

I whined to God–why?! Why me? Why us? Why this?

Too much to bear…

That was my line of thinking until steady eyed Jesus reminded me of the thing He had done for me–

…numbered with the transgressors

I was numbered with the transgressors.

The message was clear–if He, blameless God, could be counted with the evildoers, I could stand this terrible heartbreak and shame.

After all, He was numbered for me, an actual transgressor.

We often forget what misery we have bought but not yet fully paid for in our rebellion against Love.

Love, heartbroken for His children. All His children.

Approaching the Infinite

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My young son poses the greatest math questions–

Is x 15 hundred thousand million billion? Is y 85 hundred 251 thousand 6725 million?

Yes. I know that means I need to work on number sequence with him, but there is a lovely poetry to his big, big numbers that I am not anxious to lose.

He approaches the infinite with gusto.

We, the American tax payers, often seem to have even less of a grasp of the bigness of big numbers. We need to break them down into meaningful units.

A trillion, for instance. Do you know how much a trillion is? A trillion dollars? A trillion stars? If we are ever to regain our fiscal footing we all must face an unimaginable debt. A debt in the trillions. Lots and lots of them.

And how about a billion? A billion people? A billion years? It is easy to pretend to grasp numbers that are beyond our normal comprehension.

And even a few hundred million. Heck, let’s just say 65. Sixty five million is great lottery payout, but a nightmarish loan.

Be careful of the debt you are not rich enough to pay by yourself. Be careful not just about money–here today, gone tomorrow, but the other kinds of debt a human can incur.

Grace or judgment on each note.

John Green and Stupid People

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I write to stay off a steady diet of chocolate chip cookies and chips.

Notice I said–steady.

Sometimes I write an essay and then shelve it because it is too personal or polemic.

You can imagine how rough these pieces may be.

One such unpublished essay was, on review, well-spoken, passionate, and almost entirely wrong.

I had misjudged a man by a meme.

A man I now deeply respect and a quote taken out of context.

Yes, I still believe that we should not refer to people as “stupid.”

But as a current rabid fan of the Crash Courses on YouTube produced by John and Hank Green, I thoroughly endorse the Green Bros. and their ability to teach. They rock and they make my job as an educator much more fun and engaging.

Nothing stupid about that.

The 30 Mile Rule–Good Medicine

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I will never forget the auditorium full of eager young doctors repeating that ancient oath associated with their profession.

A state school, to be sure…but I still registered shock when the good medicine of not doing harm and not administering abortions was strangely excised.

Because when you wanna convince doctors to look the other way when abortion becomes status quo you gotta take it out of the promise.

Excise babies? Excise conscience.

But the truth is that without that promise to protect life doctors are free to do unconscionable things.

The 30 mile rule is good medicine. It will save lives.

This is restoration of the unilateral protection of the law.

No more, no less.

The Rain Song

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Rain comes down
After the rush
After the game
Someone, always someone has to
Drive home in the dark
Defeated

Whilst the victors go to Walmart.

You bring rain
You always God
You bring rain
And with it midnight lullabies
For an old insomniac like me

I understand the darkness
In his voice
In his shared sense
Of humor

How “finishing the job”
Could seem so reasonable
To a monster-
o-us–

She listens to the darkness
The rain
The lullaby for a child who would not
Ever
Relent

Now become a man
Face your god
Face your God
No wonder you do not believe in
One
When the other is something so unspeakable

Rain

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I love sunshine, in fact the sun was a major factor in our decision to move to Texas years ago.

I love the sun.

But…

The drought in Texas has been bad, really bad–historic bad for years.

Farmers lost crops.

Ranchers sold their cattle.

Trees died.

It has been bad.

So the presence of rain in any quantity has been a blessing meriting worship. I made a deal with God to thank Him publicly for any rain. I got the easy part of the deal. I always do with Him.

So the beautiful, steady rain has been this wonderful reminder of God’s blessing and grace. Even more so knowing that

He sends the rain on the just and the unjust.

I figure we are all unjust. So that would mean the rain falls on Jesus and the rest of us.

That is God for you. He rains blessings only Jesus deserves on all of us.

And in return we should not miss the parable of the drought–if we live in the absence of the Spirit of God, our lives will be dry, barren indeed.

Let justice flow down.
Let Jesus reign.

My Joy

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John 2:9-10 (NIV)
and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside [10] and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

Pour the water first
Jesus is coming
Joy.

So Much for the Children

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If I had a dollar for every time someone argued that expanding the definition of legal sex was NOT going to end in disaster for our kids, I would actually have enough money to opt out of the Cap’n Crunch ads that defray my blog costs.

In a week when the DOJ makes a show of shutting down a crucial child advocacy website this story out of Virginia should put everyone on notice.

An aggressive endophile was allowed to walk free by Virginia courts precisely because sodomy laws no longer applied and the judges involved did not deem the aggressive solicitation of sex from a minor to be a crime that mattered to them.

If you have children you care about you should take note of this case.

What follows hereafter will be more of the same–courts and justices deciding not to pursue legally valid statutes against sex between adults and minors.

We are not far from the end of civilization and we are already a failed state.

You may want to start disguising your kids as pets. They will get more legal protection from PETA and the SPCA than from our courts.