Give the Devil His Due

I haven't dressed up for Halloween in years--not until Saturday, when my writers' group read at the Lake County Library. None of my writings fit the theme, so I volunteered to get Edgar Allan Poe to emcee the event.

On the way to the library, I tuned into Christian radio station WMBI and listened to the host and his guest discuss whether Christians should participate in Halloween. Nobody asked that question when the guest was a child or when I was growing up. My brothers and I always dressed up and went trick-or-treating on Halloween, and my minister father never called it a pagan holiday or worried about its effect on our young minds. It just wasn't an issue in those days.

I admit it. I let my children dress up and go trick-or-treating when they were young, and I hand out candy every year. For me, it's still a non-issue.

In his preface to The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis said, "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them." So yes, we do need to give the devil his due. But what is his due?

My edition of The Screwtape Letters includes quotes by Martin Luther and Sir Thomas More. According to Luther, "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." And to shorten the Thomas More quote, "The devil . . . cannot endure to be mocked."

Are we really showing an unhealthy interest in the devil when we let our children go trick-or-treating on Halloween? Or even when we dress them in red suits with horns and a tail and give them a pitchfork to carry? If it has any meaning at all (and for most people it doesn't), isn't it closer to scorn and mockery?

Yes, Satan is a force to be reckoned with, and both Christians and non-Christians should be on guard against him. But his influence is more subtle than what occurs on Halloween.

Christians give the devil too much due when we forget that there are three things he is not. He is not omnipresent (God allows Satan to walk this earth but he cannot enter heaven without God's permission); he is not omniscient, or he would have known better than to enter Judas and bring about his own defeat; and he is not omnipotent. God, and only God, is in control. When we view Halloween as a threat, we take Satan too seriously.

So give the devil his due--but no more.

Dream Small

Dream small? If we don't dream, we won't accomplish anything. And don't bigger dreams lead to bigger accomplishments?

Not necessarily. Few people get the chance to be president of the United States or to play in the NBA. If the person who dreams of being president isn't willing to work for it or the basketball player has no talent, then the big dream means less than a small dream that the dreamer can accomplish. Yes, it is good to stretch yourself, but bigger doesn't always mean better. Butterflies add as much joy to our lives as elephants do.

So what brought this on?

Now that Roland and I are empty nesters, we are thinking of making a slight lifestyle change and moving from a house to a condo. I want a dedicated office, Roland wants a place to exercise, and we both want one-story living so we won't have to worry about stairs when we get older. But unlike many of the home buyers on HGTV's Househunters, 2000-3000 square feet isn't one of our requirements. Neither is a jetted tub or a walk-in closet, although we will take them if we can get them.

A large home isn't in our budget, and it isn't our dream, either. Why pay for square footage we would rarely use? Our dream is small, but it is also realistic.

That doesn't mean I don't have any big dreams. I aspire to write the great American novel and make the New York Times bestseller list. But it will never happen unless I put in the time and effort to write.

Because all dreams--big or small--need a touch of realism.

Taps for Sailing Season

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky,
All is well, God is nigh.











Another sailing season is over. A week ago, Roland and I took the wings off our bird as we stripped her of her sails. Yesterday, we emptied her stomach by packing up dishes and cushions and other sailing gear. And on Friday, we will lift Freizeit from her nest and bury her for the winter.

Well, not quite. Our bird doesn't die and it doesn't fly south for the winter, but it does hibernate.

Sort of like a phoenix.

No, Freizeit doesn't combust. Still, I feel a bit like the children in Edith Nesbit's The Phoenix and the Carpet saying goodbye to their beloved feathery friend as he left them with these words:

"The sorrows of youth soon appear but as dreams."

Right now, the end of sailing season is a sorrow. Soon, it will become more like a dream as our thoughts turn to Thanksgiving and Advent and Christmas and Valentine's Day and Lent and Easter.

Then an egg will appear in the ashes, and Freizeit will rise again.

My Favorite Season

Autumn is my favorite time of year. An artist's palate filled with shades of orange, yellow, and red. Crisp air tickling my nose, tantalizing my tongue, and caressing my skin. Anticipation of upcoming holidays with family and friends.

But there are other people who capture the feeling better than I can. So today I'm going to yield the floor to Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African-American poet born shortly after the Civil War ended.

Merry Autumn, by Paul Laurence Dunbar

It's all a farce,--these tales they tell
About the breezes sighing,
And moans astir o'er field and dell,
Because the year is dying.

Such principles are most absurd--
I care not who first taught 'em;
There's nothing known to beast or bird
To make a solemn autumn.

In solemn time, when grief holds sway,
With countenance distressing,
You'll note the more of black and gray
Will then be used in dressing.

Now purple tints are all around;
The sky is blue and mellow;
And e'en the grasses turn the ground
From modest green to yellow.

The seed burs all with laughter crack
On featherweed and jimson;
And leaves that should be dressed in black
Are all decked out in crimson.

A butterfly goes winging by;
A singing bird comes after;
And Nature, all from earth to sky,
Is bubbling o'er with laughter.

The ripples wimple on the rills,
Like sparkling little lasses;
The sunlight runs along the hills,
And laughs among the grasses.

The earth is just so full of fun
It really can't contain it;
And streams of mirth so freely run
The heavens seem to rain it.

Don't talk to me of solemn days
In autumn's time of splendor,
Because the sun shows fewer rays,
And these grow slant and slender.

Why, it's the climax of the year,--
The highest time of living!--
Till naturally its bursting cheer
Just melts into thanksgiving.

I couldn't have said it better.

Miracles Still Happen

I should be dead.

Thursday night I was cruising down an unlighted expressway at the 70-mile-an-hour speed limit. Suddenly a dark car loomed in front of me, parked sideways across my lane of traffic. In the split second before the impact, I thought I was going to die. As our cars collided, mine continued moving forward through an inky blue mist, which must have been pieces of the other car flying into the air. Then my air bag deployed and my Honda Accord coasted to a stop on the right shoulder, safely out of the way of oncoming vehicles.

And I realized that I was not only alive but virtually unhurt.

Not something I can say about my car.

This picture shows the front right of the car while it was sitting on the bed of the truck that came to haul it away. Unfortunately, it was dark and the only camera I had with me was the one on my cell phone. But maybe you can see a little of the damage from this photo.

The seat belt (which I always wear), the air bag, and the safety engineering of the car had a lot to do with saving my life. Although the front end was almost unrecognizable, the damage stopped far short of the passenger compartment. Thank you, Honda engineers and U.S. safety standards.

But the fact that I was able to walk away? That was a miracle that can only be attributed to God. He obviously has something left for me to do before I die.

The other miracle is that no one was in the other vehicle at the time. Just minutes before, the driver hit a deer and his car spun sideways across the freeway. It isn't a heavily traveled road, and the light traffic gave him time to flee from his automobile before another car (mine) collided with it.

So even though his car ended up looking like a skeleton with shattered bones, my sprained wrist was the worst of the injuries, and that came from the air bag rather than the actual collision. Not that I'm complaining. A sprained wrist is nothing compared to what could have happened without the air bag.

At the time of this post, I'm still waiting for my insurance company to tell me whether it considers the car totaled or just in really bad shape. However, it was bad enough in my eyes that I went out and replaced it with another Honda Accord. And what they had in stock was the same color, so no one can tell I bought a new car. Oh well.

For those of you who may ask, no, my life did not flash before my eyes. I didn't have time to hit the brakes, and I didn't even have time to feel afraid. But I don't fear death, anyway, so I am more likely to have worried about how it would affect my family. And although I am prepared for death, I'd rather it didn't happen yet. So I praise God that I'm still here.

Some people would call it luck, but I call it a miracle.

Tribute to the One-Room Schoolhouse

My mother and her mother attended the same one-room school: District No. 1 in Danville, Iowa. This picture was taken in 1977, long after Mama's school days. By that time, the building had been decommissioned as a school and converted into a house.

When Grandma went to No. 1 in the late 1800s, it was a true one-room school. By the mid 1920s, when Mama started, the big room had been partitioned into two. But since the smaller room was merely a foyer, the students still shared a single classroom.

For those of us who never went to a one-room school, there is something romantic about the idea, and my mother has good memories of her early school years. Still, I'm not sure I want to go back to the days of coal stoves and kerosene lamps and outdoor toilets.

Although Grandma never went farther than her classes at No. 1, she got a good education there and excelled in arithmetic and algebra. My grandfather attended a different rural school until he was twenty and left after eighth grade. That was a common situation for farm boys, whose duties often kept them out of school. But their persistence shows how much they valued education.

So why am I reminiscing about this now? Mostly because my mother recently received an inquiry from the current owner of No. 1, who wanted to know what the building looked like when it was still a school.

There is another reason, though. Mama believes she got a good education at her one-room school, where teachers cared about teaching and students were willing to learn. (Mama went on to high school and college and eventually became a teacher herself.) In contrast, my husband teaches in a "modern" city school and frequently complains that some teachers don't teach and many students don't want to learn.

Of course, the old rural schools didn't always do the job well, either. Teachers could be hard to find, especially for the small schools in isolated areas, and students didn't always pay attention in class. Still, there were fewer distractions, and the pupils went to learn rather than to play football or basketball.

And sometimes I wonder if this country wouldn't be better off with a few more one-room schoolhouses. 

It's Easy to Believe a Lie

Why do people believe lies that should be easy to detect? Usually, it is because the lies promise things the listeners want badly.

When we were cleaning out my mother's house, I came across Hansi: The Girl Who Loved the Swastika. Now out of print, the book is a memoir by Maria Anne Hirschmann, who was known as Hansi while a dedicated member of Hitler's elite Youth Corps.

Maria grew up in a foster home, and although her foster mother was loving, her foster father was cold. As a teenager, she just wanted to belong. When she was selected to attend one of Hitler's new Nazi schools, she thought her dream had come true.

Maria's foster mother was a devoted Christian, and when Maria left for Hitler's school, her mother said, "Don't ever forget Jesus." So Maria was confused by many of the things she learned at school. Among other things, she wondered if it was wrong to pray.

When Maria asked a beloved teacher about prayer, the teacher gave her a copy of Wanderer Between Two Worlds by a Nazi writer. The author's mother had taught him to pray for protection, so he decided to see what would happen if he didn't. After several days without anything tragic happening to him, he decided he didn't need prayer. Maria tried the same experiment with the same result, so she dispensed with prayer, too. It wasn't until years later that she realized the experiment had been deceptive.

Deceptive experiments are also an effective way to convince people to invest in something that sounds too good to be true. In one type of scam, a telephone solicitor would call sixteen people and tell them that the solicitor could predict the direction the futures market was going. Of course the people who received the calls were skeptical, so the solicitor said he didn't want them investing yet: he just wanted them to give him a chance to prove himself.

The swindler told eight people that the price of heating oil would go up the next day, and he told the other eight that the price would go down. The next evening he called the eight he had given the correct "prediction." But he still told them he didn't want them investing yet. Then he told four that the price would go up the following day, and he told four that the price would go down. By the time he narrowed the field to two victims, they threw their money at him.

Why are people so willing to believe? Usually, it's because they long for what the lie offers. The people who fell for the investment scam thought money would solve their problems, and they wanted to believe they had found the path to material riches. Instead, they lost the money they already had.

Maria wanted to belong, and she thought that giving up God would get her there. But after the Nazi regime fell, she discovered she had given up the thing that mattered most.

Satan used this same ploy in the Garden of Eden. He told Eve that if she ate from the tree in the center of the garden, she would be like God. But, having been made in God's image, she already had what Satan promised. No, she was not God, but she was as much like Him as she would ever be. Satan created a longing for something more, and when Eve listened to the lie, she tarnished God's image in her.

When we let our longing rule our heads, we make ourselves gullible.

Because it's easy to believe a lie.