National Pride

I seem to be posting all sorts of things that I got in my email lately. But this one is particularly poignient. I don't usually like receiving these things. They've always struck me as preachy and irritating, and get tossed like the other junk mail selling penis enlargements or promising a free laptop if only I'll take a short survey. But somehow this struck a chord with me and I wanted to share this with anybody who reads this. Take it for what it was, but also think about what it could mean.

To Kill an American

You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American. So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is, so they would know when they found one.

"An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan. An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as Native Americans.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses. An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God. An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return. When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country! As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan. Americans welcome the best of everything...the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least.

The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America. Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself, because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place; they are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

And did you know that Australia is the only country that has stood by the United States through all wars?

Discuss.

The Simile

When I was in high school english, every so often my AP English teacher would go on a rant about the differences between a "simile" and a "metaphor." Pop culture tells us that there isn't any difference (a simile is like a metaphor, har har), which apparently made Ms. Kritz upset. Incidentally, it was attention to detail like this and a good sense of humor (and her taste in reading material - John Irving Joseph Conrad were among my favorites) that made her such a good teacher.

Anyway, I got an email today listing some metaphors - actually similes - that high school english teachers had submitted from their students' papers. I picked out my favorites because they remind me of a few of my high school and college classmates.

Enjoy.

***

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 PM. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 PM at a speed of 35 mph.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

Whaddya Know?

I was reading through google news today and noticed this article. It made me think back to the last FORGE intensive, when I looked through the room and noticed that I was one of two people with a pc; everybody else (at least six to eight people, maybe more) had a mac. And not an older mac either - a brand-new macbook or macbook pro. So when I read this article, I had this sudden flash of insight into the reason for the rather odd trend at FORGE.

At first, I thought maybe that it had to do with popularity. So many emergent-types in the states are about doing the "popular" thing to engage pop culture. But the FORGE people seem to be a bit above that, at least, the few that I know. Then it hit me - at the apple press conference, Steve Jobs mentioned that Microsoft has, in the past few years, grievously neglected the innovation that defined them as a company in the last two decades. Jobs accused them of simply copying google and apple in everything they do, despite a $5 billion budget for research and development.

In this, I find a long-sought key to understanding why people suddenly like macs: innovation. The missional church, too, is about innovation, pioneering, starting fresh with something new and different and yes, costly. A person has to go through hell to change the way they think - believe me, I'm in the thick of it myself at the moment, hence the cost. Macs are like that now too - they're innovative, fresh, and pretty expensive if you want all the interesting features. I think, in the new macbooks, that FORGE-types (and I'm guessing many emergent-types at home) have found a kindred spirit, and as they say, birds of a feather flock together.

This is not to say that I'm giving up my Dell, only that I think I found a rather interesting explanation. But lately I have wished that my laptop was smaller, lighter, more compact ... I've been taking it with me everywhere to write, and it gets a little heavy after a while. Maybe a 13" macbook, but alas, they don't offer the lighted keyboard on those models.