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This week’s top religious news seems to be the publication of letters written by Mother Teresa as part of her spiritual discipline, letters that were ostensibly addressed to her confessors (although many of them were never sent and were more like private journal entries than letters as such). Letters which she had asked be burnt, but have instead been turned into a cause celebre by one of the priests backing her canonization process as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

(Note to those who are unfamiliar with canonization: In Roman Catholic theology, the use of the word “saint” in front of someone’s name means that they are dead, that they had lived an exemplary Christian life, and that since their death, certain documented but unexplainable events called miracles have happened to someone who asked for the prayerful intercession of the departed. The dead person, in other words, has been asked to talk to Jesus about a problem, and the problem has then been miraculously addressed. It is only considered kosher to ask such intercessions after the Church has declared a dead person “blessed” or “beatified,” which means they’re the kind of person whom we should assume will be in heaven, where Jesus will hear their prayers. After the beatification, a certain number of miracles ascribed to the intercession of the dead person is taken as proof that the dead person is actually in heaven at Jesus’ side. This process is uniquely Roman Catholic, the Orthodox Churches having generally said that someone is a saint if enough Christians venerate their memory, and Anglicans having only canonized one saint since the Reformation, Charles I of England. All other Protestants have, to my knowledge, no process for formally recognizing sainthood at all. To recap: canonization says the Roman Catholic Church believes a person is absolutely in heaven. Being beatified says they’re pretty sure. And not being canonized says they don’t know, but can make informed guesses…)

To return to the letters: the issue at stake is that, over the course of more than 40 years, Mother Teresa exhibited a consistent pattern of not “feeling” God’s presence in her life. Her prayers are dry and unfulfilling, her attachment to the Sacraments (communion, especially) is not strong, her sense that “I’m talking but no one is listening” is profoundly depressing to her. Like a lot of people, Mother Teresa wanted more from God than He was willing to give her—she wanted certainty, certainty that He was there, certainty that He was pleased with her, certainty that she was loved.

Supporters of Mother Teresa’s canonization process have said they believe this proves what a great saint she is—that she continued to do the loving thing even though it was not fulfilling. For them, her unwavering commitment in the face of spiritual dryness is a sign of supreme Christian sanctity. For others, it has been read in darker tones. Christopher Hitchins, who calls her a fanatic fundamentalist and fraud (see his scathing indictment on the blog Slate, Oct 20, 2003, or his Newsweek article published earlier today) will doubtless be among those who see in her letters a sign that she was simply a sad, empty, unfulfilled failure of a life.

The way we read these letters is conditioned by what we think of success and failure. By any standard, Mother Teresa was a success at what she did—which is to serve the poor, selflessly and at great personal cost. Born to a wealthy family in Albania, Agnes Bojaxhiu could have been a local grandee. Instead, she moved to India, took on celibacy, poverty and obedience, and spent her life caring for people who had nowhere else to die, not curing them (because they were beyond cures) but simply giving them a moment of dignity at the end of a life which had been deemed disposable by the world at large. By the same token, she was clearly, in her own terms, a failure at what she wanted to be—which is a profoundly spiritual person, one who felt God’s presence every minute and reveled in a sense of connection to the Divine.

Our society tends to idolize success, and despise failure. And for Mother Teresa to be shown as a failure, in this sense, invites societal scorn. “Look,” the critics will say, “at what a miserable empty failure she was. Why should we hold her up for adulation?” But our society is not the only measure of worth. Christian teaching has, since Christ died abandoned on a cross, said that sometimes, it is precisely how we fail that proves our greater and more noble successfulness. Paul had his thorn in the flesh which he couldn’t will or pray away; more than one saint of more recent centuries has had severe crises of faith. The Church has always said that spiritual giants aren’t the ones who are immune from doubt and despair, but rather the ones who refuse to let doubt and despair organize their lives.

Mother Teresa may not have felt God for decades—but through her, other people did. And not just the rich and powerful, whose friendship she courted in order to obtain funds for her work. More tellingly, it was the poor and outcast who felt God working through her, the folks whom the critics seem not to have noticed before this “fraudulent fanatical” Albanian nun picked them up from the streets and tended them in their unpleasant last hours. The measure of her success as a Christian isn’t whether she felt anything at all—feelings, frankly, are overrated. It is whether she took the actions she believed, despite the evidence, were pleasing to a God Who she simply couldn’t sense—faith being “the evidence of things not seen,” after all. Mother Teresa is a patron saint for real believers of all faiths, someone who did the right thing, the unpopular and unpraised and unrewarded right thing, the right thing that no one would have thought any worse of her for not noticing in the first place, not because she got anything out of it (not even warm fuzzies) but simply because doing the right thing was what she believed was pleasing to God. If that’s a dark night of the soul, living your faith even when you don’t feel up to it, doing the right thing because it’s right and not because it makes you feel good about yourself, then by all means, let us all pray for such darkness. ]]> http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/?entry=entry070830-080632 dwoods@joplinglobe.com Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:06:32 GMT http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/comments.php?y=07&m=08&entry=entry070830-080632 http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/index.php?entry=entry070827-130633
The Feast of Blessed Bartholomew the Apostle

The AP reports that a “high priestess” of witches in Salem, Massachusetts, has been tossing tossing raccoon parts on the doorsteps of businesses in what looks like a Wiccan community feud. “Sharon Graham, 46, and a fellow Wiccan, Frederick Purtz, 22, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of littering and malicious destruction of property. Graham also was charged with intimidating a witness. They were accused of putting a raccoon head and entrails on the doorsteps of Angelica of the Angels and the Goddess' Treasure Chest in May.” How, I wonder, does one get to be high priestess—is there a seminary degree you’ve got to have, or a conclave ending in white smoke and the declaration “habemus sacerdotiam maximam?”
Salem is, of course, the scene of the famous 17th century witch trials, and has in its current life become something of a center for the practice of Wicca and “magick,” marketing itself as the only town in America with an official witch. I used to love going there in October when I was in seminary—their Hallowe’ens are particularly outlandish. And the town itself is charming. ”A witness in the case told police he accompanied Graham, Purtz and other people when they put the raccoon remains on the doorsteps. He said Graham hoped to frame a Wiccan businessman who had fired Graham from a psychic telephone business last spring. Watson also said Graham had a disagreement with the owners of the two targeted businesses over proposed regulations that would limit the number of psychics who come to the city during the Halloween season. He said he was told the group had found the raccoon dead.” If they passed a law limiting the number of psychics, would they have to send out a warning letter, or would they assume the psychics just “knew” they weren’t welcomed?

Wicca, of course, is the attempt to recreate pre-Christian European religion. As such, it has been a vehicle for much critique, some of it quite accurate, about the “patriarchal oppression” which has been carried out in the name of Christianity. It’s fair, after all, for Christians to know that the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch trials in Europe (and Salem) and a hefty dose of anti-woman, anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish sentiment has been done in the name of the Prince of Peace. And it’s fair for people of high principles to call on Christians to repent of those serious lapses from the standards of Christ. Even though these matters are cases where Christians were not living up to their ideals, it is still Christians who were perpetrating the indignities and crimes on others, claiming to do so in the name of their faith.
But it’s not fair to imply, which often happens, that it is only Christianity which has members and leaders who signally fail to live up to their highest ideals and get away with it. Wicca, which is predominantly a dualist religion (a god and a goddess), has members every bit as capable of matriarchal oppression (and magical bullying) as any medieval cardinal or Klan chaplain, members like Graham and Purtz. I’m not trying to equate the raccoon heads with the Crusades here in an absolute moral sense—but I am saying that great evil starts off with small acts of evil, and that if you believe a curse is real, then cursing your neighbors for economic gain is precisely the sort of small evil which will, given enough membership in your religion, grow into something much larger and scarier. After all, the Holocaust started with Kristallnacht—the breaking of Jewish windows preceded the slaughter of Jewish children.
I suspect most Wiccans are fine folks and decent citizens, even though I find their religion a bit exotic. It’s to say that all groups have their bad eggs—and that all groups need to repudiate those eggs, not to make excuses for them. And certainly not to say “hey, the other religion over there is guilty of all sorts of stuff that WE would never tolerate,” when in fact most of, maybe all of, the human family’s faiths have proven themselves able to be used for evil. Hitler was a neo-pagan vegetarian. Stalin was an atheist ex-seminarian. The thugs in Burma are theoretically followers of Buddha the pacifist. Humans have a nearly infinite capacity for selfishness. Just because they belong to a group with high ideals doesn’t mean they’ll follow those ideals. And it doesn’t mean that one should judge the group by the behavior of its baddest apples, either. After all, the notion of magickal bullying with road kill creeps me out—but I shouldn’t judge the Wiccans of Salem by that single act, unless I want them to judge me by the even creepier Fourth Crusade. It’s the ideals, the teachings, which are important in a religion, not the inability of some members to live up to them or the equally dreadful way in which some folks will twist the religion to their own selfish ends. ]]> http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/?entry=entry070827-130633 dwoods@joplinglobe.com Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:06:33 GMT http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/comments.php?y=07&m=08&entry=entry070827-130633 http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/index.php?entry=entry070815-141717
Of course, we are all shocked by the weekend’s tragic events in Neosho, where tonight I’ll be con-celebrating a feast day (tomorrow’s St. Mary Day) with our congregation there. Our prayers go out to those in that community whose lives and trust have been damaged by one man’s evil. Especially prominent in those prayers must be the Micronesian community which was directly affected (Micronesia is a small cluster of islands, formerly a Spanish, then German, then Japanese, then American colony, the most prominent of which is Guam. Currently Micronesia is divided into five “states” with varying degrees of independence and association with the US.) Also, the good folks of the Congregational Church, which hosted the Micronesians in their building, must find that they may no longer be able to use their own “house” with the same degree of ease. (Congregationalism is the church of the Pilgrim Fathers, a mainly Northeastern Protestant body which is mostly lumped into the United Church of Christ, which readers may recognize as America’s most socially liberal denomination.) And all the good citizens of Neosho must be on tenterhooks this week. For the repose of the souls of those who died, for the safety and healing of those who were injured, and for the perpetrator, that God might shine into his heart a new light--for all of them, our prayers are needed…

Many readers will have questions of “theodicy”—the fancy theological term for “why does a good and all-powerful God allow bad things to happen to His followers?” For some, the only answer is that God is simply not there at all, or—most dreadful of thoughts—is not good at all. Frankly, I’d prefer the former choice—a universe without ultimate meaning strikes me as preferable to a universe which is amoral. Some people will suggest that God is absolutely in control and absolutely good—which is the “God knows what He’s doing, it’s all part of His plan, don’t question His will,” school of thought. I find that almost as chilly and unsatisfying, frankly, as the other two choices—when my dad died, someone told me “God needed him more than you.” I wanted to choke that person…The biblical figure Job spends a lot of time questioning God’s will. What makes Job a good role model is that he also comes to understand that God doesn’t owe him any answers—he accepts God’s authority, and maintains a sense of God’s ultimate and final goodness, but never says “well, you’re right, until the Last Judgment comes along, I deserve everything I get.”

As a Christian, I have a different answer—which is that God is not all-powerful. I know, that seems like a contradiction of terms like “Father Almighty” and “Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen,” terms to which I’m committed by the Creeds, Anglicanism’s defining theological statements. However, I don’t think such an answer is contradictory at all. By saying that God has given humanity—and I assume creation itself—freewill, I agree with Rabbi Friedman, who argues in his classic book “Why do bad things happen to good people?” that God has voluntarily chosen to routinely not intervene in daily affairs. (This is not, gentle readers, deism. Deism is the notion that God has voluntarily chosen not to intervene at all in any affairs ever. This notion says that God allows most things to run without direct Divine Intervention most of the time, but does not limit God to never doing so.) That simply means that God chooses, most of the time, to let us—humans, animals, tectonic plates, asteroids—do what we intend to do. It is the cost of respecting our autonomy, no stepping in to “make everything right.” Like when a parent says “don’t climb those monkey bars,” but doesn’t rush out to catch the kid, figuring it’s best to let her fall and learn the lesson. The Greek Orthodox call this “divine economy:” Jesus explains the notion with a parable. Sometimes, God chooses not to clear out the tares from the wheat, because it would do more damage to the wheat plantation to rip up the evil in its midst than to allow some evil to exist in its midst.

That’s all very fine and philosophically satisfying—until, of course, I become the individual wheat plant which is smothered beneath the thorns of a tare. In such a situation as exists today in Neosho, one should, I believe, offer prayer, concern, a shoulder to cry on, practical support. The theological answers (whether you choose “there is no God,” or “God isn’t in complete control,” or “God isn’t good at all,” or “God has a plan”) are not what people need when they’re in pain. Then, they need comfort. It is later, when the good folks of Neosho are distanced enough from the pain to ask questions of meaning, that such conversations can be held. Until then, it’s all very, very academic, isn’t it? ]]> http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/?entry=entry070815-141717 dwoods@joplinglobe.com Wed, 15 Aug 2007 19:17:17 GMT http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/comments.php?y=07&m=08&entry=entry070815-141717 http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/index.php?entry=entry070807-153739
In always tense Hebron, the major city in the southern West Bank which has a majority Arab population and a tiny, but very politically influential, Jewish settlement in its heart, things have gotten nasty. (166,000 Arabs and 800 Jews, by Wikipedia’s questionable count.) Ma’an News Service out of Israel reports that a gang of Israeli settlers set a mosque and two Arab homes on fire Sunday evening, and that a settler ran over a 22-year-old Palestinian man with his car. Shortly earlier, Israeli police had ordered settlers to evacuate two Palestinian-owned shops occupied by Israelis over six years ago.(“Occupied” here is a euphemism for “kicked the Arab owners out on the street at gunpoint.”) A crowd of angry settlers formed after the order was given, and Palestinian sources claim they prevented firemen from reaching the burning buildings.

Medical sources stated that the Palestinian man was admitted to Ahli Hospital (an Episcopal institution in Gaza—the roof of the chapel was partially redone a few years ago in honor of yours truly by some former parishioners who had enjoyed time in the Holy Land with me), where he is being treated for wounds sustained after being run down by a settler vehicle. This morning’s television news programs gave glimpses of Israelis being arrested, but did not follow up on the story due to the all-consuming Utah coal mine disaster.

I’ve been to Hebron, which is a tinderbox. The city is built around an architectural masterpiece, the shrine of Abraham and Sarah, erected by Herod the Great in the last years of the BC era. (See photo below!) It is immense, and fascinating. Supposedly, the shrine is built atop the gravesites of Abraham, Sarah, their kids and grandkids in the cave which Abraham bought from the Ephron the Hittite (a story told in Genesis, and no, young ladies, this is no relation to Zack Ephron of “High School Musical”). The shrine has been a mosque now for over a thousand years. Jews are permitted to enter some, but not all, of the building to pray. Christians may enter the whole building, but not the cavebeneath. I don’t know if Muslims are allowed in the cave—but I do know that the last time I went, the whole place was under such armed guard that no one was there but me and the imam, who was very upset that his Friday sermon was not going to be heard by anyone.

In the 1890s a group of religious Jews moved to Hebron to be near the shrine of their ancestors. They bought some land and were, in general, respected by their neighbors. However, in the 1920s, Palestine became politically tense, and riots broke out between Arabs and Jews in many places, largely driven by Arab desires for the independence which occupier Britain had promised, through Lawrence of Arabia, a decade earlier. Much of the tension was (shades of modern America) driven by the fact that the British simply weren’t enforcing their own immigration policies, which meant that there were boat loads of Jewish illegal immigrants coming into Palestine, “stealing our jobs and not learning Arabic.” One of the worst riots was in Hebron, where nearly 70 Jews were killed.

A reminder—between 1929 and 1949, both sides did some nasty business, which stemmed not from some fictitious “ancient racial hatred” but from Britain, the colonial power. In World War I, the UK was fighting the Turks. The Brits promised the Jews an independent Jewish state in Palestine in exchange for Jewish support of the war effort. At the same time, the UK promised the Arabs a democratic, independent and united Palestine if only the Arab’s would rebel against their Turkish masters—which meant, to the Arabs, that they, being 70% of the population, would vote in an Arabic language, multi-religious state. What they got, instead, was two countries, one Jewish and the other Arab, which was itself occupied by the Jordanians and then, in 1967, by the Israelis. To be perfectly fair, if anyone is to blame for today’s headlines from the Middle East, it is London—which is why so many Muslims get very vexed when we say we want democracy in the Middle East, but then are allied with Brits in occupying Iraq. The UK is simply not viewed as an honest power by Arabs…

After 1967, when the Israelis took the West Bank from Jordan, a group of super-nationalist Jews set up camp near the shrine, effectively making an armed camp in the middle of the town’s shopping mall. They seized property owned by Jews before 1929 (not unreasonable, given that the Jordanian government had desecrated the Jewish synagogue and cemetery), and proceeded to establish an armed presence in the town. To this day, getting from the bus station to the shrine requires some nervous negotiation—down the road from the camel butcher, there’s a barricade manned by Israeli troops who are there to ensure the safety of the settlers, even though the whole area is supposedly autonomous Palestinian territory. The occupied shops in question in this week’s story were, however, never owned by Jews, before 1929 nor since.

The settlement at Kiryat Arba is a continuing sore spot for Palestinians, and an embarrassment for the Israeli government, which would like to see such ultra-nationalist groups go away. After all, it is from Kiryat Arba that Dr. Baruch Goldstein came—the fellow who, in 1994, entered the shrine during Muslim prayers with a rifle, killing 29 unarmed Muslims and injuring nearly 125 before himself dying at the hands of survivors, who overwhelmed and beat him to death. Such exchanges of blood for blood do nothing for the peace process which most people on both sides so desperately want.

Kiryat Arba’s leaders have been known to praise Goldstein, saying that he was taking vengeance for the 1929 massacre of Jews in Hebron, something which happened before either Goldstein or any of his victims were even able to walk. You can imagine how much trust that generates in the minds of local Arabs, who see armed Israeli settlers walk about with impunity in what is supposedly a “Palestinian” town and cannot, I fear, but wonder when the next bullets will fly. After all, Goldstein was a member of the Israeli army, and was walking around in his uniform shooting people in the mosque, allowed to carry a gun into the holy place by other members of the same military because he was one of their own.

I like the notion of absolute certainty—wish, frankly, I had more of it. (I am absolutely certain that I have bad eyesight without prescription lens, and no future in the NBA. Beyond that, it’s mainly educated guess and “leap of faith.”) And I like the notion of living out one’s faith. But at the same time, it is worth wondering whether, sometimes, there is a bit too much religious certainty in some people’s minds. Like when “my right to this property” (which is based on a religious belief) justifies burning other people out of their homes and running over bystanders in the street. Or when “my right to this property” (which is based on a religious belief) leads to strapping bombs around one’s waist and stepping into a discotheque. How about this for religious certainty—God made everyone, and if I can only achieve His promises to me through your pain, blood, death or poverty, I believe I must forego my rights. After all, everyone involved here is a child of Abraham. The Arabs are descended from Ishmael, according to Genesis 25, and it’s reasonable to assume that almost all Palestinian Arabs are the Muslim descendants of the Jews and formerly Jewish Christians who made up the area’s population when the Arab Conquest occurred—the Palestinians have only a few drops of Arab blood, being mainly, well, people whose ancestors lived in the Roman province of Palestine. And we’re all children of God, aren’t we? I can’t imagine the Deity approving any of His kids beating each other up over who owns a shop, can you?
]]> http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/?entry=entry070807-153739 dwoods@joplinglobe.com Tue, 07 Aug 2007 20:37:39 GMT http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/comments.php?y=07&m=08&entry=entry070807-153739 http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/index.php?entry=entry070803-150439
Well, the annual Marian Days at the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix in Carthage is in full swing. The 4-States largest ethnic festival (possibly simply largest happening period) goes through this Saturday evening, and the food is amazing, by anyone’s standards. Last night I visited for “safe” beef noodle soup and bubble tea with my wife—the night before I went alone, and had the pork chitlins. Yum!

I’d like to take a moment or two to discuss the meaning of the festival. It’s not an ethnic festival per se (although almost everyone there is Vietnamese), but rather a religious one. It is, as its name proclaims, about the Virgin Mary (whose festival day, called “The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin” in Roman Catholicism, “The Falling Asleep of The Blessed Virgin” by the Orthodox, and simply “St. Mary the Virgin” by Anglicans and Lutherans) has always been observed on August 15. Marian Days falls the week before that feast. The difference in titles is about, ahem, an assumption—which is what happens to Mary at the end of her life. Roman Catholics are required to believe that the Virgin was bodily assumed (“taken”) into heaven, probably without first dying. The Eastern Orthodox assume that she dies (“falls asleep”) and her body is then taken into heaven where she gets a sort of early resurrection. Anglicans and Lutherans simply say that it is highly unusual and quirky that Mary, alone of the major saints, has no relics, tomb or tradition about her place of death, and leave it at that.

In this celebration, Vietnamese Catholics join together to celebrate their faith, which, as most readers know, places a high emphasis on the Blessed Virgin Mary (Luke 1:48 say that “all generations will call (her) blessed”, so let’s use the biblical phrase here, hereinafter abbreviated BVM). This year, there is particular emphasis on the message given by Mary to some Portuguese shepherd children early in the last century at a little town called Fatima. Some readers will question whether such “apparitions” of Mary occur. I am far, far less skeptical…but it doesn’t matter, really. For Roman Catholics, such as the festival-goers, Fatima, Lourdes, Guadalupe et al. are matters of faith, not opinion. As part of the festivities, some particular devotions, especially the Rosary, a series of prayers based on Scripture which are about the life of Mary and her Son, will feature prominently.

The very site of the festival is dedicated to the BVM. The name of the religious community (“monastery”) which resides there is “Mother Co-Redemptrix.” That is a particular Roman understanding (not official doctrine, but allowable useage) which says that the BVM, being a particular human being in a particular time, place and culture, had a role in how redemption works itself out in Christ. After all, if Jesus’ mother had been an Eskimo in the 18th century, things would feel a bit different, wouldn’t they? Rather than bread and wine, the Sacrament might be fish and blubber? And rather than a cross, He might have died on an ice-floe, making a crystal the most popular form of religious earring. (Some readers may find that comparison sacrilegious—I propose that it is anything but, simply an acknowledgement that God knew who and what He was working with and chose a particular woman, culture and century because it was the best material available to allow the message of the Incarnation to shine forth “like a lamp in darkness.”)

Thus, while Jesus is the sole fountain of redemption for Romans as for all Christians, His blessed Mother plays a role in making Him who He is and therefore plays a role in how redemption works itself out. Some readers will undoubtedly question the wisdom of using the word “co-redemptrix,” which can be easily mistaken to mean “she’s as important as Jesus in this whole spirituality thing,” but we ought to take note of the fact that the word, when used correctly, does not mean that at all. It’s hardly fair to say that people should be held responsible for other people’s misunderstanding of what they’re trying to say…

What, I think, Roman Catholics (not uniquely, but perhaps most visibly) try to say is that Mary is an especially important role model for Christians—as a woman, a mother, a virgin, a person in mourning, a refugee from political violence, an example of someone who says “yes” to God’s sometimes spooky, weird and even dangerous call to obedience. And having been to several of the major Marian sites worldwide (Fatima, Salette, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Medjugorje, Walsingham, Loretto), I must say that I find some appeal to the thought that maybe, once in a while, God might see fit to send the one human who (if Christianity is correct in its theological assertions) can legitimately look at Jesus Himself and say “this is my body…this is my blood” back for a visit to those of us who are less familiar terms with Him. Whether you think of the BVM as Co-Redemptrix or simply as Mother of the Christ, you’ve got to admit that she certainly has a uniquely personal (because physical) relationship with the One Whom all Christians call Lord and Savior. And that ought to mean that we should show a bit of respect for her, since we’re all striving for a uniquely personal relationship of our own. Marian Days is about one way of showing such respect. Anybody out there got other suggestions for how to do that within your own tradition?

]]> http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/?entry=entry070803-150439 dwoods@joplinglobe.com Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:04:39 GMT http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/znewsblog/father/comments.php?y=07&m=08&entry=entry070803-150439