Hangman

Timmy was there when I awoke this morning. I generally stretch my arms and legs, shoulders, hips and hands before I can get out of bed to take my morning pain-meds. Tim contemplated me in silence before asking. "Dad, why did you go to the war?"

I explained that I had chosen to be a soldier many years before and that as such, it was my duty to go and do this thing. I explained that there was a very bad man, named Saddam Hussein who was the leader of a country and he had been killing thousands upon thousands of his own people for many years and America's soldiers answered the call of humanity to stop him and remove him from power. I said. "and we did catch him; he was dragged from the concrete hole where he had hidden himself. He was put on trial by his own people and they determined that he was guilty; they put a rope around his neck and they hung him.



Right away he said It's like 'hangman' the game but he didn't get to guess his letters!

No Tim, he sure didn't.

Flash To Bang

In the world of uniformed military 'flash to bang' is a rough estimate of the distance you are from an explosion. Sound travels about a kilometer a second, so if you count off the time from flash until you hear the bang, you should know approximate distance.

I developed a vernacular characterization to apply to those I thought of as pompous and useless people; "all flash - no bang". I want to discuss with you, reader a problem endemic to our society at all observable levels; the impression that some lives do not matter.

As a parent of two pre-teens, I am sensitive to the culture they are entering, wondering what role I have played in creating it and surveying my options to prepare them as young followers of Christ to impact His will. I am home all the time and devote a tremendous amount of attention and circumspection to both of my kids. The way that they are changing in maturity, becoming more aware of content and context and connecting with the world has me "on the bounce" as Sergeant Zim would say. The other morning, while I was making breakfast, Timmy brought out a deck of 'Armored Vehicle Recognition' cards from the 1980s. He said that he had some cool cards that he wanted to give me, that he had been 'saving for a long time' I replied that I recognized them since I'd given them to him... He began to review them, quizzing me about each one. He showed me the picture or described the vehicle or just read me the name; I was supposed to tell him something about each one. This made me smile because it was exactly what we used to do in the Infantry to train for 'Squad Intelligence' testing. Timmy described one vehicle to me and I asked him if it was a tank. He replied that No, he didn't think so because it had no main gun mounted.

I'm doing some things right. I try to be the same person when I am alone that I am in their presence because integrity can't be compartmentalized. If you spend any amount of time around someone or if you are a trained intelligence agent observer you can detect where the pattern ends and the frayed thread begins to reveal what is behind the curtain.

I am in a position to see a lot of what happens in the environment that my family lives in. I think spatially, which makes me good at analyzing and making obscure connections. I also have learned to be silent about what I know so people talk freely around me. I have long felt that there are perhaps more liabilities connected to great intelligence than there are benefits; I cannot enjoy the bliss of ignorance or convince myself that all is well, so how do I raise children that I anticipate will be every bit as perceptive as myself and yet encourage them to engage in a world that is really just a rotting melon?

There is, admittedly, a fair influence of my own psychological damage in this perception of mine but not so much that there really is a Santa Claus

"ich will sie bumsen" The days of my youth included seasons of rebellion and forays into dangerous behaviors. None of what I experienced as a wild teen placed me in nearly as much peril as that which today stalks a naive high school student who engages in risk behaviors. I do see the danger that lurks in the daylight, in the guise of harmless or even helpful strangers but I just don't believe that the kids who put that slogan above on their facebook page are even mildly aware of the scent it puts out to real predators.

I believe we too value less noble pursuits than we are capable of. It cheapens us as the children of God when we set, as virtue, the deception of appearance over substance of Godly character. I see our political process as the vilest example of this chicanery. In the last Presidential election campaign we saw the very worst of subtleties emerge in the manipulation of the electorate. Sophisticated marketing strategies were very successfully applied in order to influence the audience at a subconscious level; the very goal being the association of strong character values with someone who had none of those attributes. I expect that this degraded state of character is an end-times trend. We have been a state in decline as has been the case with any culture that sets themselves aside from God and replaces Him with secular aspirations. We are only a step away from making God illegal in America but as I have long averred, I will resist and become noncompliant with societal fads that make my behaviors illegal. Remember that the Constitution of the United States of America does not grant rights but recognizes inalienable rights granted by God and therefore inseparable from the citizen by the machinery of the state.

Be assured, I am the parent who actively pursues the well-being of my children.

Regardless of how an individual conducts themselves with the tasks they have accepted responsibility for, they are not just valuable but precious, to God. Each of us can take no step that is not seen by a loving heavenly Father who delights in us and mourns our bad choices. It then falls to us to be caregivers for our brothers and sisters in the way that Jesus would, cherishing and jealously protecting them.