Merry Christmas

What follows is Ben Stein's commentary that he delivered on CBS's Sunday Morning this past week. As always, very well said, Ben. I probably won't blog again until well after Christmas, thanks to a little thing at my parents' house I like to call dial-up. A very Merry Christmas to each one of you. May the reality of His birth and life be so present in your heart that it outshines all that is insignificant.

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young? It's not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

Black and Gold and White

Steeler game, Dec 11, 2005
Originally uploaded by Jules Verne.

December Steeler football in the snow... it really doesn't get much better than that. Of course winning helps, A LOT. Coming in and handling the 9-3 Bears like champs did a lot to restore my faith in their season. Now, I didn't jump ship before this game, but let's just say I've been more grumpy than usual. And not just in the mornings (beat you all to it).


This would be a great time to plug my new favorite blog. I'm not really one to spend time reading blogs from people I don't know. I spend enough time on the internet as it is. But I stumbled across this one after Google-ing a particular Steeler story (Maddox trash in lawn situation). This guy (I have no idea who he is) writes about his three favorite teams: the Boston Red Sox, the UNC Tarheels, and, of course, the Steelers. Being the time of year that it is, he's been mostly talking about the Steelers. He's funny, passionate, smart, and humble enough to say he's really not that smart. If you're a Steeler fan, you'll feel like you've made a new friend after just one post.

http://heelssoxsteelers.blogspot.com

Excerpt from December 6th:
By the way, I'm slowing turning into all that I hate about sports fanatics. Leading up to Sunday's game, all I could think was that, because of Ben's myriad injuries, there was a 100 percent chance Maddox would see the field. I then spent the game yelling at most every play call, and almost every player on the Steelers. After the game I felt like Jimmy Swaggart after he got caught at that Motel 6 with a hooker: embarrassed by my actions, and worried that all the crying as I repented would create a mini-climate super humidified in the general vicinity of my head, and totally wreak havoc with all the hairspray keeping my wig in place. OK, maybe not quite that bad -- or weird -- but I do hate those fans whose sole purpose it seems, is to complain about their team under every circumstance. And even though I didn't get caught with a hooker, I feel obliged to apologize to the Steelers organization for my behavior. So there.

Christmas Controversy

A so-called "megachurch," my church garnered national attention this week. It was negative attention, and I can tell you that we didn't ask for it. A good many in the media, from CNN to Good Morning America, picked up the story that Southland, along with other large churches across the country, have decided to not hold services on Christmas Day. Being a church that requires 300+ volunteers just to make a day of services happen, that could be reason enough for me, although it's certainly not the only one. Although our senior pastor, Jon Weece, received nasty emails upon emails from very angry people--mostly those not from our church, and who know nothing about us--he declined all major interviews. Instead, he answered each and every email personally, and in love, and addressed his congregation this past Sunday from stage. I could go on forever about it, but I think Jon says it better than I ever could. I stand behind him and our elders and the decision they made. While I plan on attending church on Christmas morning with my family in Pittsburgh, I have no doubt that Southland made the right decision for Southland.

CNN's story.

Listen to Jon Weece's December 11 address to the Southland congregation. It's kind of long, but it gets really good near the end if you want to skip to that.

Random Employee Story of the Month

My co-worker, Steve Thorson (Thor), contributed the following for our company internal newsletter (Balance: Blurring the line between professional and relational). Because I'm not getting around to writing anymore about our trip myself--and because this was so funny--I asked him if I could post it. He said no, but I pretty much do what I want anyways. ( Just kidding - he said yes.)

As you all know, Peter, Julie, and I represented Cre8tive Group in Mississippi two weeks ago. The relief efforts were headed up by Mark Troyer (aka “Dirty Bird,” as Julie liked to call him). A seemingly wise decision, Mark Troyer decided that the safest way to navigate the town of Pass Christian would be by way of “adult” drivers. Allow me to define this word:

Adult (n.) - One who is not enrolled in academic courses. Commonly misused as: One who has attained a high level of driving maturity, ability, or awareness.

Being that most of the volunteers on this trip were Asbury students, at any given time 24 of them were subject to riding with our three older, but not necessarily better-driving, 8G representatives. Though no one was seriously harmed, I’ll recount a few close calls:

• One day after lunch, I gathered my team and headed towards our van. As excited as I was to get back to work, I imagined that my team, inspired by their leader’s zeal and eagerness to serve, would be fervently clawing their way into the van as to not waste one precious second. On this note I jumped into the van, cranked the engine, and tromped the gas, only to be halted by the screaming of a student hanging out of the side door. Apparently she was only half-way motivated to get back to the job, because only half of her had gotten into the van before it took off.


Thor with some of his team (victim still in tact) over lunch.


• “Hold on everyone!” was a phrase that was often heard in Peter’s van a few moments before his off-road-machine went hurling over some mountainous railroad track or hunk of washed out street. “Everyone thinks I’m a bad driver, but I'm a fun driver; it’s kind of like a Disney ride,” I remember him saying. On our last day, in a final attempt to ramp the Menge Street railroad crossing, Peter managed to hit the bulge in the road with such momentum that one of his passengers flew out of his seat and into the ceiling.



Peter scheming up another railroad jump, outside the food tent.


• Not only did Julie find a way to back directly into a telephone pole, but a few days later she also succeeded in making enemies with some guys on the freeway that were quite possibly on their way to murder someone. Fortunately, the thugs pulled their glass bottles instead of their Nines. Julie and her caravan escaped unscathed.


Despite the accident, Julie's team still thought she was a better driver than Peter.

Though many could have perished on account of your well-meaning 8G drivers, all students were returned safely to their dorms, and the three of us returned in good spirits and ready to collect our week’s paid vacation. Oh, and Peter and I were wondering, Chad, if we could take the Pathfinder to pick-up that slot machine in Ohio?