Lift Up Your Hearts!

Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

Happy Easter, one and all!

The following post is from April 2017. I still like it, so you get it again (with a few modifications).

Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. — Hebrews 12:2

This is the time of year when Christians make special recognition of Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection. I love the Holy Week services, from Palm Sunday to Easter and everything in between. Having spent much of my life in more determinedly Protestant churches, I missed walking with Jesus through the momentous events between those two happy celebrations. It's a great way to prepare one's heart for Easter.

I have to ask myself: What does Jesus think of the events leading up to Easter? Not our church services, but the actual events, from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, through his agonizing in the Garden of Gesthemene, his last Passover with his disciples, his betrayal, trial, and crucifixion, and that mysterious time between death and resurrection. What does he think of it all? I don't mean then, while he was going through it, but now. Looking back, if that has any meaning in his case.

I asked myself this question back in 2017 because I was thinking about childbirth. It seems ridiculous to compare the pains of childbirth to those of crucifixion, let alone the mental, emotional, and spiritual agony of all the sins and sorrows of the world, but bear with me here.

Setting aside the difference in scale, I think there are important parallels. In each case, there is pain, anguish, fear, physical and mental exhaustion, and reaching the point where you just know you can't go on any longer, followed by the unimaginable, unsurpassable thrill of victory, of success, of achievement—and the birth of something new, wondrous, and beautiful.

Most mothers I know like to exchange birth stories, in all their glorious and grisly detail. Those are "then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars" moments. But the toil and pain are remembered, not relived. We tell these "war stories" because we are justifiably taking credit for our part in the miracle. The pain has been crowned and glorified by its accomplishment.

Nor do we regale our children with the horrors of what it cost us for them to exist, at least not if we're psychologically healthy ourselves. If our child were to start to focus on the pain of childbirth, we would quickly tell him, "You're missing the whole point. Sure, it was a difficult process, but it was worth it. What matters is not the suffering, not the effort. What matters is that you were born! The pain is in the past, and our family is immeasurably greater because of it. The whole world is greater because you are here. That is the point. Be thankful for what I did for you, but don't dwell on it. Focus on using your uniqueness to be the best person you can be, to bless the family—and the world—you were born into. That, not your grief at my sufferings, nor even your gratitude for them, is what makes me happy and overwhelmingly glad to have endured them. Go—live with joy the life I have given you!"

So I wonder. Is it possible that Jesus has similar thoughts?

It's good to be reminded of the events that birthed our post-Easter world, and not to take lightly the suffering that made it possible. However, some people, many preachers, and even a few filmmakers appear to take delight in portraying Christ's agony in the most excruciating (consider the etymology of that word!) detail possible, even, like the medieval flagellants, attempting to participate in it. Even less extreme evangelists and theologians spend more ink and energy on Jesus' death than on his resurrection.

Could it be that Jesus looks back at that time with joy, knowing that he accomplished something difficult, important, and wonderful? Is it possible that he sometimes looks at us and thinks, You're missing the whole point? That it would rejoice his heart if we thought less about his death and more about how to use the new life he has given us?

Go—rejoice—live!

Reprising my favorite Holy Saturday cartoon.  Actually, it's the only Holy Saturday cartoon I know, but it makes me smile every time.

The following is almost entirely a reiteration of a Holy Week post from 2010. Fifteen years more of life experience has only sharpened the emotions I was feeling then.

Is there anything worse than excruciating physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual torture and death? It takes nothing from the sufferings of Christ commemorated this Holy Week to pause and consider a couple of other important persons in the drama.

I find the following hymn to be one of the most powerful and moving of the season. For obvious reasons, it is usually sung on Palm Sunday, but the verses reach all the way through to Easter.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
Hark! all the tribes hosanna cry;
Thy humble beast pursues his road
with palms and scattered garments strowed.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
O Christ, thy triumphs now begin
o'er captive death and conquered sin.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
The angel armies of the sky
look down with sad and wond'ring eyes
to see the approaching sacrifice.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh;
the Father on his sapphire throne
expects his own anointed Son.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
bow thy meek head to mortal pain,
then take, O God, thy power, and reign.

The Father on his sapphire throne expects his own anointed Son. For millennia, good fathers have encouraged, led, or forced their children into suffering, from primitive coming-of-age rites to chemotherapy. Even when they know it is for the best, and that all will be well in the end, the terrible suffering of the fathers is imaginable only by someone who has been in that position himself.

And mothers?

The Protestant Church doesn't talk much about Mary. The ostensible reason is to avoid what they see as the idolatry of the Catholic Church, though given the adoration heaped upon male saints and church notables by many Protestants, I'm inclined to suspect a little sexism, too. In any case, Mary is generally ignored, except for a little bit around Christmas, where she is unavoidable. But in Holy Week, it's important to recognize that, whatever else Mary may have been and done, on Good Friday she was a mother who had just lost her son.

Did she recall then the prophetic word of Simeon when Jesus was but eight days old: "a sword shall pierce through your own soul also"? Did she find the image of being impaled by a sword far too mild to do justice to the searing, tearing torture of watching her firstborn son wrongly convicted, whipped, beaten, mocked, crucified, in an agony of pain and thirst, and finally abandoned to death? Did she find a tiny bit of comfort in the thought that death had at least ended the ordeal? Did she cling to the hope of what she knew in her heart about her most unusual son, that even then the story was not over? Whatever she may have believed, she could not have had the Father's knowledge, and even if she had, would that have penetrated the blinding agony of the moment?

In my head I know that the sufferings of Christ, in taking on the sins of the world, were unimaginably greater than the "mere" mental and physical pain of injustice and crucifixion. But in my heart, it's the sufferings of God his Father and Mary his Mother that hit home most strongly this Holy Week.

Who is Bill Maher, and why does he deserve a place in my Heroes category?

No one who knows the deep extent of my ignorance of pop culture (among other things) will be surprised that until I looked him up on that great foundation of American knowledge and ignorance, Wikipedia, I had no idea who Bill Maher was. Now I know he's a comedian, politically and socially liberal, and a potty-mouth. There are issues on which Maher and I agree, and I've reluctantly come to accept the need to endure crude speech because these days I know so many otherwise highly intelligent and reasonable people who for reasons unknown apparently cannot speak without being vulgar. However, I find modern comedy generally too edgy for my taste, so I'm unlikely to add Maher to my list of favorite speakers.

Thus it was only through a friend (also intelligent, reasonable, potty-mouthed, and one of the funniest people I know) that I heard the following monologue (13 minutes).

What I find amusingly frustrating is that Maher's simple description of spending time with President Trump has people on both sides of the aisle asking, "Has Bill Maher gone MAGA?" No, he hasn't; he's just being a reasonable human being, the way that was standard not all that long ago.

I suspect he will take a lot of heat for being reasonable—lives have been ruined for less—and he knew it before deciding to speak out. But he spoke the truth anyway, and that makes him a hero to me.

It was eye-opening, when we first visited Switzerland, to discover that they don't refrigerate their eggs. Nor do they get sick from that practice. Why must we refrigerate American eggs? Here's an Epoch Times article that explains why we are once again being given the short end of the gustatory and nutritional stick.

Being raised in the United States, I was startled during my first trip out of the country. I noticed that the eggs at the store were not refrigerated. How is this possible? ... I gradually came to realize that the United States is the outlier, apparently the only country in the world where eggs go from the chicken to the refrigerator, both at the store and at home.

The United States seems to be the only country in the world that requires the washing of eggs before they are sold. As a result, the outside membrane—called the cuticle—is washed away, leaving them vulnerable to outside bacteria and other sources of spoilage. That’s why they must be refrigerated. ... However, if you don’t wash away the cuticle, they can sit happily on the counter for a very long time and be ready to eat anytime.

It’s because of Big Agriculture and industrial methods of egg harvesting. They pack chickens in huge warehouses inches apart and in tight layers. The whole place is a gigantic mess because machines can’t stop the natural function of the digestive system. In essence, the place is filthy. As a result, washing the eggs is absolutely necessary to remove all the pathogenic muck.

The industry, then, lobbied the government over decades to make this a general rule, providing them with a level competitive playing field with small farmers who run much cleaner operations. ... In effect, the USDA and the FDA have adopted rules on behalf of the biggest players in the industry while forgetting about the small farmers.

Maybe in the future, Americans will have the right to raise and sell eggs without washing off the protective layer from the shells. Maybe in the future, we will stop being seemingly the one outlying country in the entire world that routinely refrigerates our chicken eggs? We shall see.

Maybe in the future we will have better access to eggs bursting with nutrition and with beautiful, deep-golden yolks that come from a natural diet that includes bugs and a variety of vegetation, not something added to a grain-based diet just to make the eggs look good.

We walk by faith, not by sight. — II Corinthians 5:7

The "faith" part is still strong, but the "sight" part is hard to take.

For several months, to all appearances Grace has been as happy and healthy a three-year-old as anyone could want, free at last of medications and living a normal life except for the more frequent medical examinations and tests. Her language has been exploding; she is bright and funny and happy. She delights in her family, and frequently initiates video calls with Grandma, Dad-o, and Noah.

But NF1 (neurofibromatosis type 1)—a genetic disorder that Grace was born with, though it was not discovered until after her second birthday—has long been the elephant in the room. For a year NF1 considerations had to take a back seat because of the immediate need to deal with the dinosaur in the room, her JMML (juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia), which was caused by the NF1 mutation. Thankfully, for all that time the leukemia was the only manifestation of the disorder.

Actually, another problem had been there all along, but was hidden. As you may remember, her audiologist noticed a mild hearing loss in her right ear at her first exam, and again subsequently—but in every case there was something else to blame it on (a cold, COVID). Now, however, the doctors have turned their attention to it, and to a small lump Heather had noticed in that ear. After months of bouncing around—from "no worries, it's just fluid in her ear," to "maybe it's a neurofibroma, we'd better do some testing," to "it might be a fibroma, but that's not causing her hearing loss, so we'd better do some more testing," to "great news, it's not an NF1 fibroma at all, but we're going to take biopsies to be sure," to "oops, the biopsies say it's definitely a plexiform neurofibroma, and the options for treatment are not pleasant." And then on Wednesday, "the neurofibroma is much larger than we thought, and Grace needs to start on a novel medication that has all sorts of potential nasty side effects, for which she'll need to learn to swallow a pill whole twice a day—and take it for at least two years, maybe for life." Knowing Grace, she'll take it all in her stride, but it's rather hard for this Grandma's heart to take.

In Heather's words:

We had our appointment with the NF1/oncology doctor yesterday. It turns out the neurofibroma is even bigger than we thought. In addition to what we already knew, which is that it goes from her external ear where we can see into her middle ear, it also extends down under her ear into her parotid gland which is a salivary gland in the cheek. This is a plexiform neurofibroma, which is something that has actually been there since birth. And it has grown over time. (There are other neurofibromas that can come later possibly, but they are not the plexiforms.) This plexiform right now is benign, but it could potentially become malignant at some point. An initial screening has indicated that this one is one step towards becoming malignant, but they are still unsure of how many steps the body takes to get there.

Grace will be going on a medicine which is designed to shrink the tumor, and it may prevent some other kind of tumors. This medicine can have some unpleasant and even dangerous side effects, including diarrhea and rashes, vision impairment and heart issues. So Grace will be going in monthly and then every 3 months to check on all those functions. Right now, the plan is for her to take this medicine for 2 years, and then reevaluate, based on new research and her body's response to the drug.

One fascinating thing that I learned yesterday is that the longer hair on her right side that we have noticed since she was very young is related to this neurofibroma. The doctor said that because of extra vascular activity on that side it is not surprising that it would cause faster hair growth. When I heard that, I went back to my list of Grace's symptoms that we made before her NF1 JMML diagnosis while we were trying to figure out what was going on with her. I noted that she also would get redness on her right cheek when she ate sometimes. We thought at the time it was an allergic reaction, but it is likely due to the extra vascular activity. (It still happens sometimes.)

This will be TMI for many of you, but there are several medical people who will read this and be curious about the drug. It is called Koselugo (selumetinib) and you can read all about it here. When I think of the terrible potential side effects of this very new drug—it was granted FDA approval only in 2020—I remind myself that until five years ago there was nothing they could do for inoperable neurofibromas but let nature take its course, likely with effects worse than the drug.

Some of you may be wondering (I hear you Grandma!) why could they not see this in the imaging. The reason stated is that the plexiform neurofibromas are a soft and spongy tissue, and is easy to not notice them, and/or think that they are something else. The ENT even said that it's made of the same kind of tissue that your outer ear is made of anyway, so then it's really hard to distinguish.

On top of all that, Heather just added:

Grace's kidney numbers from her lab draw yesterday were concerning to the doctor, so she's getting another draw today and then an ultrasound on Tuesday.

Prayer requests:

• That Grace will be able to swallow the capsule (twice a day!).
• That she will not have any serious side effects. We would also appreciate if she didn't have any other side effects. It's been really nice the last few months to not have to deal with diarrhea.
• That the medicine will do its job, which is to shrink the tumor. I forgot to ask if her hearing loss is permanent or if it could come back with tumor shrinkage.
• That the results of her kidney tests will be good news.

Thanks for hanging in there with us!

Tomorrow (April 9) is a big meeting with Grace's doctors to discuss how to move forward with her ear situation. The results of her biopsies were not great news. It gives one the ping-pong ball feeling: No worries, it's just fluid in her ear—Maybe it's a neurofibroma, we'd better do some testing—It might be a fibroma, but it's not causing her hearing loss, so we'd better do some more testing—Great news, it's not an NF1 fibroma at all, but we're going to take biopsies to be sure—Oops, the biopsies say it's definitely a plexiform neurofibroma, and the options for treatment are not pleasant.

As usual, Heather says it best. You can see some other news and pictures as well on their site.

Grace's NF1/oncology doctor called Jon with biopsy results on Friday. It is the opposite of what we were hoping. Both biopsies indicate plexiform neurofibroma and it's really one big tumor that connects from the outside where we can see to the inside behind the eardrum. Surgery in this delicate area is not advised. We will have a meeting with the doctors Wednesday to discuss treatment. Some good news is that Jon has talked with other NF1 parents whose kids have done well on the medicine.

That news was a blow, but I am doing better after attending a prayer meeting on Friday and church on Sunday. I am holding onto the hope that God is still working and will heal her one way or another and in his timing.

Both Jon and I are going to the meeting tomorrow, so we can be clear on the options, side effects, pros, cons, etc.

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. — Matthew 5:43-45

The following inspirational story came to me from one of my genealogy sites, Fold3. An Act of Kindness Unites Enemies is a heartwarming story from the bloody Civil War Battle of Antietam; it especially caught my eye because one of the protagonists is Bela Burr, who happens to be Porter's third cousin three times removed. (Click on any image to enlarge it.)

In case you for some reason can't see the article, here's an introduction, followed by the story as printed in the Harrisburg Telegraph of September 5, 1895. Note that both young men were not yet out of their teens.

The dead and wounded were strewn across the battlefield. Among them was 18-year-old Bela L. Burr. Burr lay in the sun for hours, his wounded leg bleeding. He’d only been in the Union Army one month, having enlisted in the 16th Connecticut Infantry on August 7, 1862. Burr realized his life was slipping away and began resigning himself to the inevitable.

Just then, an angel arrived. But this angel came in the form of a Confederate soldier. James M. Norton, 19, a Confederate picket from Oglethorpe County, Georgia, was marching near the battlefield when he heard Burr’s cries for water. Norton took note of the sharpshooters concealed in the trees. They were aiming at anyone moving on the cornfield. Dropping to his knees, Norton inched towards Burr as shots rang out. He finally reached him and offered him his canteen.

The following letter, published in the Orlando Sentinel in April 2015, was written by a friend of ours, a good man with whom we seriously disagreed on several issues. Those were the days when being on opposite sides of heated battles did not spill over into personal life. I discovered a copy of the ten year old letter when cleaning up files, and decided it needs wider circulation.

The inspiration for the letter was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that had been recently passed by the state of Indiana, but the sentiment is as applicable, and essential, today.

Religious belief is among the most personal of human attributes, and deals with the spiritual and the infinite. Governments are, rather, an expression of general agreement in things secular. In theory, these philosophical areas should complement each other; however, in practice the boundaries frequently conflict.

Thus, one person's faith becomes another person's bigotry.

So it is with the Hoosier State, which, like many states before it, has passed its own RFRA.

When is a business acting on its sincerely held religious beliefs, and when is it merely denying services to people unjustly and hypocritically using religion as a cover?

Discriminating against people because of who they are is categorically wrong. But when a customer demands, under penalty of law or litigation, that I render a product or service, which, according to my religious belief, constitutes the facilitating of sin, I must draw the line—a line protected by the RFRA. So, the baker, florist or photographer should, in good conscience, sell their wares to all comers, but they should also have the option not to be a part of events that they believe are proscribed by their faith.

My favorite sandwich place is closed on Sunday. My favorite Florida chicken restaurant is closed on Saturday—both for religious reasons. A local obstetrician/gynecologist believes abortion to be infanticide. Shall I compel their cooperation?

This is ultimately an issue of fairness and tolerance for both sides. Acceptance should be optional, but tolerance, caring and respect are essential to the human conversation.

James xxxxxxx Apopka
[I doubt our friend would mind my using his full name, since it was published in the paper, but just in case, I have redacted it.]

It's hard to believe that I'm looking back at 2015 as an era of civility, but relatively speaking....

The February 2025 issue of Hillsdale College's Imprimis magazine features an excellent article by Roger Kimball, "Restoring American Culture." It's five reasonably short pages, with no paywall. He expresses what I've been feeling for many years, only better and with more authority than I can.

At the beginning of his Discourse on Method, René Descartes said that common sense was “the most widely distributed thing in the world.” Is it? Much as I admire Descartes, I have to note that he was imperfectly acquainted with the realities of 21st century America. If he were with us today, I am sure he would emend his opinion.

After all, is it common sense to pretend that men can be women? Or to pretend that you do not know what a woman is? During her confirmation hearings, a sitting member of the Supreme Court professed to be baffled by that question.

Is it common sense to open the borders of your country and then to spend truckloads of taxpayer dollars to feed, house, and nurture the millions of illegal migrants who have poured in? Is it common sense to sacrifice competence on the altar of so-called diversity? To allow politicians to bankrupt the country by incontinent overspending?

Like most important concepts—think of love, justice, knowledge, or the good—common sense is not easy to define. But we know it when we see it. And more to the point, we instantly sense its absence when it is supplanted.

In recent years—indeed, at least since the 1960s—our culture has suffered from a deficit of common sense. That deficit has eroded a great many valuable things, from our educational institutions to our cultural life more generally.

From the moment Donald Trump was shot at a rally last July, people have been speaking about a “vibe shift,” a shift in the zeitgeist of American culture. That revolution in sentiment picked up speed with Trump’s election in November, and it began barreling down the main line with his inauguration. We always hear about the “peaceful transfer of power” when a new president takes office. The usual procedure is for the old crowd to vacate their positions while the new crowd slides in to take their places. The institutions remain inviolate. Nothing essential changes.

Trump’s ascension was the opposite. He was elected not to preserve the status quo but to remake it.

Kimball spends some time analyzing three cultural phenomena: Kenneth Clark's amazing television series, Civilisation, which we watched in its entirety when it first aired on PBS (and again later in the VHS tape era), Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, and Harry Scherman's Book of the Month Club.

One of the hallmarks of Civilization is its absence of chatter. Clark is a gracious historical guide, but he does not go in for small talk. He is genial but also serious. An abundance of glorious music often commandeers the audio. Clark says his piece and then lets the camera pan slowly over the art, architecture, and landscapes he has assembled for our enjoyment and edification. “Throughout,” as one reviewer noted, the show “maintains a majestically slow pace. Luxuriously long moments where the visuals are completely unencumbered by any commentary whatsoever.”

The original Civilization was pitched at a high level. It was also meticulously accessible. The treasures Clark toured were allowed to speak for themselves, and so speak they did. The elites didn’t much like Civilization, partly because they found it insufficiently multicultural, partly because they objected to Clark’s unstudied air of competence and cultural mastery.

But Civilization is a good example of what it might look like to restore culture in an age that has abandoned common sense. If it seems old-fashioned and out-of-date to a generation weaned on social media, special effects, and incessant lectures about the evils of capitalism and the West, that tells us more about the quality of our times than it does about Clark’s achievement in this series.

Something similar can be said about Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. Bernstein began the concerts in 1958, just two weeks after he took the helm of the New York Philharmonic. These marvelous concerts—with commentary by Bernstein—aired on television, first in black and white and then in color, until 1972. Bernstein organized each concert around a theme—the meaning of music, musical modes, orchestration—drawing on the orchestra’s current programming for suitable illustrations. In 2005, a new nine-disc selection of the concerts was released, some 25 hours of music and commentary.

As with Clark’s Civilization, there was no small talk. The music was central. 

The Young People’s Concerts were a huge popular success, in Europe and Asia as well as in the U.S. ... Despite Bernstein’s success as a conductor and composer, some commentators judge this long-running concert series to be his greatest musical achievement. He might have agreed. Looking back on the concerts years later, he said they were “among my favorite, most highly prized activities of my life.”

The point is that all these initiatives bore witness to a culture at one with itself. It was a culture innocent of the self-loathing that has been such a disfiguring feature of elite American culture since the 1960s. From our perspective in early 2025, it is a culture of common sense—affirmative, forward-looking, and normal.