Cartoon on the PCUSA and the Trinity

This cartoon, originally found here, is pretty funny, and a little sad.

The PC(USA), at its recent General Assembly, approved a paper called, "The Trinity: God's Love Overflowing." Read about it here. The paper itself is here.

While trying to be sensitive to inclusive language, I am more than a little wary of changes in trinitarian formulations, especially ones that are functional (Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer), rather than the traditionally relational one (Father, Son, Holy Spirit).

And no, we are not talking about Trinity from "The Matrix" trilogy. I wonder how many teenagers, when they hear of "Trinity", think of "The Matrix."

Don't mind me, I'm just living in a postmodern world. Ain't it grand?

Minimum Wage

Just read an interesting article in the Kansas City Star by Mary Sanchez on this issue. (H/T Michael Kruse)

Congress is debating raising the minimum wage. It may, or may not be a good idea. Sanchez seems to argue that it is not a good idea, if the idea is to make the minimum wage a "living" wage. She argues:

And yet, so many politicians seem bent on continuing to argue solely for higher wages for the low-skilled. They should be arguing for giving people higher skills, not more money for low skills that could soon be obsolete anyway.

Instead of people relying on minimum wage, why not encourage them to increase their skill set in order to make more money? Hmmmm. Reward initiative? Reward more skills, rather than less? She has some interesting statistics on minimum wage as well.

My first summer job in 1974 was at minimum wage, in the shopping center where the store in the photo was taken. I think I was making $1.60 an hour, working at Mashey's Carousel. Owned by a mixed race couple (he white, she black), it was a coffee shop/ice cream place. I loved scooping ice cream there, and cooking. Evidently, the neighborhood girls all liked me scooping ice cream as well, as a whole flock of them came in every day after the movies, watched my every step in creating their frozen concoction, and then lingered at a table in the corner long after their treats were finished. Of course, it could have been because of my co-worker, Carrie, a college student home for the summer from UC Davis.

Alas, I left for school in the fall, and the Carousel closed a few months later. It was a wonderful experience, for me, not for the owners.

Delivering on the Promise: Update

An article in the Louisville Courier-Journal today follows up on the $150 million pledge to the PC(USA), and the financial troubles the maker of the pledge, Stanley W. Anderson, is currently having. Another article is in Forbes today.

Some key grafs:

Detterick defended his decision not to check Anderson's ability to pay the money before announcing the pledge with great fanfare.

He said the church is "unlike a business that oftentimes requires verification of capability" to pay.

"When people make a pledge of a gift to the church, we accept that gift, we accept that pledge with gratitude and grace," Detterick said.

Detterick said in an interview that churches routinely accept pledges without checking donors' credit ratings.

"There's no potential exposure to the church," he said. "If the gift comes, we'll start the process of doing the grants, and not before."

The money is due by the end of November, said Detterick.

I will grant the assertion that churches do not check donors' credit ratings. However, with a huge gift like this, and with all the publicity it has generated, one would think some background check would be advisable.

Some Presbyterians questioned why the church announced such a large gift without doing more of a background check, but they agreed that it's not usual church practice to do so.

"Churches by nature are trusting organizations," said Charlie Evans, stated clerk of the Presbytery of Western Kentucky.

He said the Anderson pledge had inspired him because his presbytery had already been planning a new church.

Yes, churches are trusting organizations, but a little more financial savvy and wisdom couldn't hurt.

Again, I hope this man sorts out his financial problems and the huge gift becomes a reality. And maybe I am reading my own bad experiences with this sort of thing into this situation, and colors my view. But I find the lack of checking, even a minimum of checking, to be troublesome.

Delivering on the Promise

Big doings at the PC(USA) General Assembly in Birmingham, AL recently. The first bit of good news was that a businessman from Denver pledged $150 million to the church. This is a whopping chunk of change. This was hyped all week. Until today.

According to the Denver Post, the man's house is being foreclosed, his assets frozen, a $100,000 lawsuit judgment against him is unpaid. Didn't anyone from the PC(USA) headquarters check the guy out before announcing this? For the PC(USA) response, see here.

Many years ago, a woman came by my church. We were broke, and facing a $1 million seismic retrofit. She wore nice clothes, and drove a nice car. She talked with our Hispanic pastor, and was greatly enamored with him. She promised to give us the million dollars, and more. She and the Hispanic pastor cooked up plans to turn the sanctuary into a TV studio. Dreams were dreamed. Visions were envisioned. Hope was restored.

Silly me, I met with her to try to discern the reality of her offer. I asked her, "What's in it for you? No one just gives away a million dollars." She had no answer.

At the time, we were drawing up plans and requesting permits from the city planning department to start the retrofit. At one point, we asked her to pay the $10,000 fee for the plans. She could not. My initial hunch that she was a scam artist was later confirmed, but this was the first tangible sign. I mean, promising a million dollars, you ought to be able to pay a measly only $10,000. So before we actually entered into any sort of contract, we had her checked out, and my suspicions were confirmed.

She, like the man in Denver, promised more than they could actually deliver, or so it appears right now. I hope this does not wind up being the the case, but it won't be the first time church people are duped in the financial realm. I hope the man who promised the gift, by all accounts a man of integrity, can actually come up with the money.

This seems, to little old me, the perfect metaphor for the recently adopted PUP report at GA. The Peace, Unity and Purity report is the culmination of three years of meetings, discussions, papers, etc. There are five recommendations, the first four are rather benign. The fifth is the problem.

The always readable and informative Mark D. Roberts has an explanation here. Key grafs:

Today's General Assembly cast two historic votes. The combination of these votes looks almost schizophrenic to anyone not familiar with the peculiar dysfunctionality of the PCUSA. On the one hand, the General Assembly voted by a strong majority (405-92) to leave the so-called "fidelity and chastity" section of our constitution intact. In plain language, the Book of Order of the PCUSA states that all ordained officers in the church must practice "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness" (G-6.0106b). This is a standard that, until today, every leadership body in the church was expected to apply without exception to every leader and potential leader. Period. This is what the General Assembly reaffirmed with a resoundingly favorable vote.

Then there's the other vote. The same General Assembly voted by a 298-221 margin to accept a portion of the Peace, Unity, and Purity Report (PUP Report) that allows governing bodies certain leeway in how they apply the standards of the Constitution. To put it in a nutshell, the rules state clearly that persons who engage in sex outside of marriage may not be ordained. But, according to today's action of the General Assembly, leadership bodies are now free to decide whether they must follow the rules or not. So, on the same day we Presbyterians reaffirmed the rules with a strong positive vote, and then voted to allow people not to follow the rules. See what I mean? It's almost schizophrenic.

Essentially, recommendation five allows local governing bodies to decide ordination standards. While these standards are set forth in our constitution, a local governing body can allow someone to be ordained even if they do not meet the standards. This could, some say "will", open a Pandora's Box of trouble in the church. Far from bringing peace, it will bring chaos.

In wanting to satisfy everyone, we will satisfy no one. In wanting to be relevant, we have become staggeringly irrelevant. Instead of standing for the truth, we have fallen for a lie. Or so it seems. Time will tell, I suppose. I take small comfort in that we have not completely abandoned biblical morality and common sense, like or Episcopalian brethren.

Congratulations, Andrea!

On Sunday, we wakened early and left the house around 6:20 a.m. to drive to Santa Barbara. Our niece, Andrea, was graduating at 9:00 a.m. on Father's Day, from UCSB with a degree in Communications. (We discovered over lunch that she did not have to take a single public speaking course! So much for a world-class education!) We are proud of 'Drea. The picture is of 'Drea after receiving her diploma. Way to go, girl! Woohoo!

It was an overcast morning, the infamous Southern California June Gloom. But the temperature was pleasant, and not one was scorched in the two hour ceremony. Aunts and Uncles came up from Van Nuys, and dad Dave and sister Lauren came down from the Bay Area. We had a pleasant lunch afterwards. Driving north from South Pasadena that early on a Sunday morning reminded us of what engineers dreamed freeways would be: open, uncrowded, quick.

The next picture is of the South Pasadena Stochls, after the ceremony, standing by The Lagoon. How does anyone at schools like UCSB get anything done with the beach right there?

I expected that the ceremony would degenerate into Bush bashing, a popular sport on college campuses. (Hey, I did my share of bashing Carter and Reagan when I was in college, so I understand the impulse.) There were some criticisms, though somewhat veiled, and the commencement speakers by and large did a fine job exhorting the Class of 2006 to make a difference in the world. And vote Democratic!

On the way home, Mark drove. Part of his 50 hours of practice before he takes the behind the wheel test in August. He did a fine job, though the freeways were much more crowded at 3:00 p.m. than they had 9 hours earlier. He seems to like the Botts Dots on the right side of his lane a bit too much, though. Still, driving the Odyssey is tougher than driving the Accord. You go, too, son!

Great Commercial

I like Pepsi, and I like this commercial.



It echoes, in a way, the old Mean Joe Greene commercial for Coke from 1979.



Enjoy!

(HT Michael Kruse)

USA Ties Italy, 1-1

The US side played better today that last week against the Czech Republic. A 1-1 tie seems to be a fair result. The officiating seemed a bit questionable, especially the second US red card, which forced the US to play a man down for most of the second half. The US briefly took the lead in the second half, only to have the goal disallowed for offside. On replay, it showed clearly a US player obstructing the vision of the Italian keeper.

Our only hope for continuing now is if the US beats Ghana on Thursday, and that Italy beats the Czechs. If that happens, The US and Italy would have 4 points, while Ghana and the Czechs would have three points apiece.

Kissinger's Guide to Watching Soccer

Interesting stuff from the Wall Street Journal, here. (For subscribers, only.)

For sports fans frustrated with the World Cup's excruciatingly low scores, the world's most famous diplomat has some advice: The game's appeal isn't about the goals.

Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state, Nobel Prize-winner and lifelong soccer connoisseur, compares the game to warfare or theater. With many American sports, he says, "you can segment them into individual moves," which translate into lots of statistics that fans track avidly -- like batting averages for baseball and completion percentages for football. By contrast, "soccer is more of an unrelenting drama," with no timeouts, commercials or water breaks, and limited opportunity for substitutions.

With the TV at his Park Avenue office in New York tuned to the Switzerland-France match, Dr. Kissinger offers a tutorial on the fine points of soccer, a game Americans are notorious for failing to grasp. Atop his dated Sony Trinitron television set rest icons from baseball, his other favorite sport: autographed photographs of New York Yankees manager Joe Torre and shortstop Derek Jeter. "The rest are just world leaders," he says with a wink, sweeping his arm along two long windows lined with dozens of other signed pictures.

While Dr. Kissinger is no less a Yankees fan than a soccer aficionado, he watches the two sports differently. With baseball, he is more laid-back. He cheers for his favorite team, and revels in "the game's great periods of latitude," with its moments of relaxation between points of high drama. He munches on hot dogs and chats with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who frequently invites Dr. Kissinger to his box.

He is less partisan when it comes to soccer, savoring its ebbs and flows of frustration, elation and ultimately exhaustion. "Soccer gets me at a relatively high pitch of attention," he says. He plans later this month to attend a World Cup semifinal match and also the finals, regardless of who is playing. He's fascinated with how national characteristics translate into playing styles: Brazil's unbridled joy, England's noble purpose, Germany's grim determination.

Dr. Kissinger keeps an eye on the TV and the Swiss team's surprisingly strong first-half showing against a French team that on paper is far superior. "I don't want to say anything anti-Swiss, but this is against expectations," he announces. As the match continues, Dr. Kissinger offers up some up other tips for appreciating this year's Cup:

Take your eye off the ball. "Soccer is a game that hides great complexity in an appearance of simplicity," he says. "It looks like 10 people chasing a ball. But they have to be coached scientifically so that they know where to move when the ball is in play."

Dr. Kissinger studies the patterns that teams try to create with their movements, whether they are predominantly attacking teams (which he prefers) or defending teams (which has become more the norm, to his chagrin).

"Oh, my God," Dr. Kissinger says, interrupting himself, as a French player fails to kick the ball into the net when he receives a perfect pass in front of the goal. "A deadly striker would have scored there."

Note the three primary playing styles -- but also the way globalization is homogenizing them. Dr. Kissinger separates the approaches to the game into three broad types: English, European continental and Latin. The traditional English style focuses on winning through athleticism -- kicking the ball deep and long and then outrunning the opponent, with defenders and attackers well-defined. With the European style, six players typically move forward and pass skillfully and four players remain back. That said, they often shift positions so that defenders can become attackers.

His favorite is the Latin approach, which is about style as much as substance. "When a Brazilian team is in good form, it looks like a ballet coming down the field. There are two troubles with the Brazilians: One is they get so infatuated with their dancing and acrobatics that they sometimes forget to shoot goals. The other is they often don't have a good goalkeeper. My explanation is that he doesn't like staying back and not joining the fun."

Dr. Kissinger worries that globalization is "brutalizing" the Brazilians, who have lost some of their Latin panache. All but three of their 11 players have had their styles dulled by playing in the highest-paying but more-conformist European leagues, he says. The English have also shifted to a more European style. Meanwhile, Dr. Kissinger says Germany is playing a more spontaneous and cheerful attacking style this year, which contrasts with the country's history-laden pessimism.

He has high praise for the Argentinians. "They have many of the skills of the Brazilians, but are ruthlessly oriented toward scoring goals and doing whatever is necessary to win," he says.

Don't underestimate the element of exhaustion in close games. Mr. Kissinger notes that goals are often scored late in the match when players are most fatigued.

It's near the end of the French-Swiss game, and though the French have improved in the second half, there still is no score. Dr. Kissinger delivers his verdict: "The French, while still elegant, have become stodgy," he says. "The French don't have the killer instinct or the killer capability."

Pass, Pass, Pass

In Argentina's 6-0 World Cup win over Serbia, they made 24 passes leading up to one goal. Count 'em, 24. Twenty four. Watch it and marvel. Awesome.

Graduation Day

Last night, our daughter, Rachel, graduated from middle school. We are really proud of her. She has worked very hard. The ceremony was very moving last night, as hundreds of people gathered at the school to cheer on the former 8th graders, who are now freshmen in high school. The picture at left is of Rachel and her brothers, Mark and Josh.

Actually, Rachel has many brothers, as most of Mark's friends have adopted Rachel as their little sister. "Little" only in the chronological sense, as Rachel is taller than many of Mark's friends, as she is closing in on 5' 11".

This picture is of Rachel and some of her brothers and sisters. What I take for granted, and what is surprising, is that Mark and Rachel are the only Caucasians in the picture. Much has been said about diversity in this country, this photo is evidence that the diversity thing works best from the ground up, not something mandated by law. Let people get to know one another, work together, play together, and diversity will happen.

The last picture in this montage is Rachel and her mom. Rachel is catching up to Beth in height. Wonderful smiles on both of them!

Congratulations, Rachel! We are proud of you!

Hooligans. In Soccer? Inconceivable!

The first week of the World Cup matches in Germany has been relatively calm, until yesterday. Over 300 "hooligans" were arrested before the Germany vs. Poland match, see here.

This behavior is puzzling to me, really. I know that in much of the world, there is violence surrounding soccer matches. In the recent National Geographic magazine, there is an interesting article by Nick Hornby on English soccer hooligans. Why this sort of drunken machismo has developed over the "beautiful game" is a mystery to me. But it is deplorable.

Another recent article on soccer was posted at The New Republic, written by Franklin Foer, entitled, "Why Facists Can't Score at the World Cup".

I understand that sports sometimes operates at a symbolic level. When the USA hockey team beat the former USSR hockey team at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympic Games, it was more than simply a hockey game. Two economic/political systems were clashing, winer take all on the ice. But there were no riots, no mayhem at Lake Placid.

I remember reading of the Celtic-Rangers soccer matches, where the fans of each side were to sit on opposite sides of the stadium, separated by several empty sections of seats, and dozens, if not hundreds, of riot police. Something not just about soccer, but the long running feud between Protestant and Catholic faiths.

In 2002, the Rangers played Celtic in the Scottish Cup. Here is a description of what followed.

A total of 28 police officers and 50 civilians were hurt in a clash here between nationalists and unionists following a soccer match in Glasgow, according to a police toll issued Sunday.

The clash occurred Saturday when Glasgow Rangers, mostly supported by Protestants, and Catholic-backed Glasgow Celtic, faced each other in the Scottish Cup final, which Rangers won. Police and troops moved in to separate the rival factions and a spokeswoman said a number of plastic baton rounds were fired.

Petrol bombs and fireworks were thrown and one police officer was struck on the head by a breeze block thrown from the roof of a shop. One policeman was being treated Sunday for a fractured skull while others suffered various fractures and cuts, police said.

Another interesting read from 2001 about the Rangers-Celtic rilvary is here.

It's all very puzzling. Unlike the gentlemanly way Giants and Dodger fans treat each other. Or how the Giants and Dodger players treat each other.

First Team Middle Blocker, Rio Hondo League

The boys volleyball banquet was tonight. The coach recapped a largely successful season, and handed out awards to each of the players. It turns out that Mark led the league in kills as well as blocks, a rare feat. For this, he was chosen as first team all league as a middle blocker. Wow! Congratulations, son. The picture is of Mark with Allen Vince, former SPHS player who went on to a fabulous career at UCLA. Allen has helped coach the team since graduating from UCLA, and in between pro volleyball stints in Puerto Rico and in Europe. I used to think Mark was tall, not any more....

One of Mark's teammates, David Allen, made honorable mention all league as an opposite, as a sophomore. The team is positioned to do very well next season. As long as they beat San Marino and La Canada!

Friends in Far Away Places

One of the great joys I had as a pastor in Los Angeles was to work with the finest group of seminary interns ever. No bias here! Will, Chad, Adam, Shirley, Nicki, and Jan were all marvellous to work with.

I just got an email from Shirley Hill, who is now ordained and working as a Presbyterian Mission person in Cameroon. Many years ago, Jeff and Janet Johnson (now in Santa Rosa), spent a summer in Cameroon. I was so pleased to hear how Shirley is doing. I am including the link to her "home page" on the PC(USA) web site for anyone interested in following her mission career.

Godspeed, Shirley! May the Lord be with you.

I've Seen The Da Vinci Code Movie

I just got back from seeing The Da Vinci Code movie. I have been teaching an adult Sunday School class on it at church for the past three weeks. I had some time today, so I went to see it. I want to share my intial reactions to it. I am not sure why, as so many others who are smarter, more articulate, and more perceptive have written mountains on this book ad movie. My favorite is Mark D. Roberts, pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church. The guy, as they say, is "wicked smart."

My initial impression was that I liked the movie, aside from all the Christian bashing that goes on. It was better than I expected, but that may say more about my expectations than about the movie!

I thought it was a wee bit on the longish side of things, but not excessive. One New York Times wag wrote that it took him longer to see the movie than it did to read the book! Must have been an Evelyn Wood graduate.

I like puzzles, and I liked the puzzles and the mystery in the book. But I thought that many of the puzzles were resolved much too quickly. (And I complain of a long movie!) What I mean is, in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", Indy solves riddles and puzzles in minutes or hours, puzzles his dad spent a lifetime researching, and puzzles that have remain unsolved for centuries. The comparison, though, is that Indiana Jones movies are pretty campy, and not to be taken seriously. They are all played like Saturday morning cartoons, and not a little tongue in cheek. The Da Vinci Code is much more serious and earnest in approach, and it detracts from it, I think.

I was struck by several things. In spite of the severe lack of chemistry between Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, I came empathize with her character. In the story, her parents and her brother had been killed in a car crash when she was four, and she had been raised by her grandfather. At the end of the movie, she meets her grandmother, who, with tears in her eyes, welcomes her granddaughter home. Call it a sappy moment, but as one who has lost both parents in the last two years, I was moved by that. There is a sense that she now "belongs" to a family, in a way she had not before. Also, a very PoMo idea, her life now has significance.

I think Mark D. Roberts comments on Tom Hanks are right on. In the book, Hanks is a hard core pagan, devoutly espousing the "divine feminine." In the movie, he appears to be a lapsed Catholic, and is a foil to Teabing's (McKellen's) ranting about conspiracy theories and church corruption. Perhaps Hanks and Ron Howard (along with Dan Brown) wanted to soften Langdon's character be be more sympathetic.

I was not at all pleased with the anti-Christian rant by Leigh Teabing in the middle, "the centerpiece" of the movie. The continued enthusiastic spouting of historically inaccurate details about the church was appalling in its naivete. And yet, these comments about the fraud that is Christianity were themselves historically suspect, and had no basis in actual history. I expected it, as it is mostly in the book. But I was surprised at how virulent it sounded on the screen, with howlers like, "The church has done more harm than any other group in the history of the world."

Right. Like Stalin, murdering 30 million of his own people in the Gulag, and sending another 20 million soldiers to die fighting in WWII with tactics that were old when Attila the Hun was a lad? Or like Hitler's Germany murdering six million Jews? Yup, those darn Christians built schools, teaching people to read and write. Christians build hospitals to help the sick. Christians almost single-handedly ended the slave trade. Christians helped enact child labor laws in the early days of the Industrial Revolution.

Has the church been perfect? Not at all! Has the church lived up to its identity or calling? Partially, but not perfectly. Has the church been the single largest source of evil in the sordid history of human beings? The accusation is laughable, but there was Ian McKellen, making those charges. With great passion!

I was also a bit concerned with the penultimate ending, at the English chapel. After discovering her true identity, Sophie and Langdon converse outside the chapel. She wonders at the weight she must now bear, that she knows that she is a descendant of Jesus Christ, and that if the world ever found out, it would be disastrous. Besides, since the body of Mary Magdelene has disappeared, there is no real test or proof of Sophie's true identity. At this, Langdon replies something to the effect of, "Well, the reality is what you believe it to be." In other words, reality is not defined externally, but internally. If you believe you are a direct descendant of Jesus, you are! If you do not believe you are, you are not. As if we individuals are the final arbiters of truth in our own lives. How PoMo!

Now that I have read the book and seen the movie, I can talk intelligently with others, and there seem to be a great many others, who have seen the movie. I'd be interested in what you thought of the movie.

Can An Atheist Join a Presbyterian Church?

At the end of March 2006, I posted a pseudo-rant about a University of Texas professor who claimed to be an atheist, but who had joined a local Presbyterian church. I was, to be blunt, outraged.

It turns out that the Mission Presbytery formed a task force, a "listening group" to talk with the church session and the professor. Their report is here, via Presbyweb.

I want to commend the Mission Presbytery for their hard work, and for their willingness to deal with this issue. And I am relieved at their conclusion, that the church remove the professor from the active membership roll, and that they review their process for receiving members. They essentially ask nothing of new members. They want to allow others to describe their own faith journeys, and to be able to say "yes" to the church within their own understanding of it.

Well, color be non-plussed. I am a Myers-Briggs type "J". A pastor friend of mine recently said she was so much a "J" that she was almost a "K"! A "J" likes conclusions, the end of the journey, the destination, judgment. Getting there is NOT what I consider fun, though I do see it as essential.

Certainly, one must believe something in order to be a Christian. And I do not believe it is up to the person to decide what he or she wants to believe! This is not what we call the Lordship of Christ! To be a Christian is not just to embrace Jesus' teachings but to embrace Jesus the person, and all he says and all he is.

I am a soccer referee. Soccer has no rules, they are rather called "laws." I cannot imagine anything but chaos ensuing in a soccer match if the referees were to referee the game not according to the laws, but according to what they felt about the game of soccer. (Not to say that chaos does not ensue even with the Laws of the Game!)

We are responsible to something larger than ourselves, outside of ourselves, not to be solely interpretted by ourselves. The message appears to be at St. Andrews that you can be and do anything you want (except be a conservative Republican) and you can join our church. We make no further demands on you. If this belief is widespread, no wonder the PC(USA) lost 48,474 more members last year!

The congregation at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church identify themselves as "progressive." It is a term I hear quite frequently, and the impression I get is that self-defined "progressives" see themselves as a whole lot smarter than the rest of the human race. They exude the sense, with a self-satisfied smirk, that they know better. So, the church traditionally has had membership questions that have been used for hundreds of years? We "progressives" "know" better, so we will dispense with them.

Now, to be completely fair, there are conservatives who act similarly, with the self-satisfied assurance that they were with Moses on the mountain, and they are privvy to the counsels of God on all sorts of contemporary issues. But that is not the issue for this circumstance.

In reading the Mission Presbytery's report, I was also struck by another issue. The atheist professor actually preached at the church! Now, I am all for people of other religious faiths, or none at all, to speak in a less formal setting that worship. But for an atheist to preach? To handle the Word of God? Now that is a new one for me, and really goes beyond the pale.

Someone who preaches is to live under the authority of God's Word. Someone who professes to have an affinity with Jesus' teachings, but who has not placed themselves under the authority of Jesus' teachings (many of which concerned himself!)

I know this is beyond the scope of the report, but this gets very little attention in the report. It is just passed over.

Well, at the end of the day, I think the Mission Presbytery got it right. I am anxious to see how the church responds to this.

A Kilobyte of Hits

According to Sitemeter, the blog has just been visited by the 1024th person. Thanks to the dozens of you who take time out of your regular web surfing to check on my little blog.

As you may know, 1024 is a magic number for computer geeks, it is a kilobyte, which is a 1024 bytes. See here for details.

A megabyte is 1024 kilobytes, or a million bytes. One of my first computers at Tandem was an IBM XT with a then guargantuan 10 megabyte hard drive. I wondered, "Who would ever fill up ten whole megabytes?"

A gigabyte is a billion bytes, or a million kilobytes, or a thousand megabytes. Computers now have hard drives that are many gigabytes large.

I find this stuff sort of interesting, don't you? Well, what do you expect? Once a Math major from Berkeley, always a Math major from Berkeley. Now if I could only find a paying job....

A Class Act

I grew up reading sports biographies. My favorite one was of Bill Goldsworthy, and Minnesota North Star in the 1960's, a wonderfully talented goal scorer with a terrible temper. His temper kept him in the penalty box more than on the ice, so he had to work on his anger management. The book described him running through golf courses in the summer wearing heavy chains, pushing his body relentlessly, and fighting his anger. It rermains a poignant picture to me.

There are many fine things to be learned from sports figures, some very moving stories. This is one from the San Francisco Giants. Dave Righetti was an all-star pitcher for the New York Yankees, and is now the pitching coach for the Giants. He has always worn number 19.

A Giants' rookie, Kevin Frandsen, grew up in San Jose, where Righetti lived. Righetti has known Frandsen since he was a baby. Frandsen had an older brother, named DJ, who battled cancer his whole life. DJ died in 2004 at the ripe old age of 23. Number 19 was DJ's favorite number. In fact, Frandsen has a tattoo with DJ and 19 superimposed.

Imagine Frandsen's surprise when he walked into the Giants' locker room this week to find, hanging in his locker, his jersey with his name on it, and bearing number 19. Evidently, Righetti has given up that number, worn for 20+ years, to Frandsen in order to honor DJ.

Classy thing for "Rags" Righetti to do. Read about the moving story here. From the article:

"It's pretty special," Frandsen said. "It's not something I asked for. He offered it. I'm pretty excited about that."

Righetti had broached the number change with Giants clubhouse manager Mike Murphy, who in turn raised the idea with Frandsen.

"I didn't want to take it because that had been Dave's number for so many years," Frandsen said. "I didn't know how to react. I was excited, but there was a reason my brother loved the number so much. I told Dave, 'It was because of you.' He said, 'You go take that number.' "

This story begins four decades ago, when Righetti was an 8-year-old ball rat who served as a batboy for a team Dave Frandsen played for. Frandsen was five or six years older, "a guy I looked up to when I was a kid," Righetti said.

The families live close by and stayed close. Dave Frandsen is a teacher at Leland High in San Jose and was its basketball coach. Naturally, when Dave Frandsen married and had children, the kids grew up knowing Righetti, this big-league pitcher. Righetti often visited the house, and whenever DJ had a bad bout with his illness, Righetti would come by the hospital.

"The bond was always there," Righetti said.

As Righetti spent his years pitching in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Oakland and Chicago, then moved into coaching, Kevin Frandsen was maturing into a fine baseball player in San Jose.

"I started going to San Jose State alumni dinners and I see this young kid out there, and I'm thinking, 'You're kidding me? Kevin's here?' Next thing you know he's the all-time hit leader at State. Then he gets a chance to come to the Giants," Righetti said.

As soon as the Giants drafted and signed Frandsen in 2004, Righetti said, he thought about handing his number to Frandsen if ever made the big club. Frandsen had worn it in the minors, but not at San Jose State, he said, "because I always had to just take the littlest jersey."

When Righetti got 19 in New York, it was not random, but an honor. Any number that ended with 9 was reserved for a pitcher with promise. Ron Guidry wore 49, Ron Davis 39, Catfish Hunter 29 and Dick Tidrow 19.

"I believe Don Larsen threw a no-hitter wearing that number. I was the next Yankee to throw one after him, so to me it was good luck," Righetti said. Nevertheless, knowing the bond between the Frandsen brothers, DJ and Kevin, Righetti had no reservations about handing it down. Murphy then assigned Righetti 46, Kirk Rueter's number. That was meant to be an honor, too.

Frandsen can guess what his late brother would have thought about seeing Kevin wear No. 19 in the majors.

"He'd just say, 'Don't screw up wearing that number,' " Frandsen said.

DJ Frandsen died on Sept. 16, 2004.

He had battled cancer for most of his years -- 19, to be exact.