The marriage decision

For a few years I have been writing a letter weekly to my teenage granddaughter. I think that probably most teenagers need all of the emotional and spiritual help that they can get. I write. She does not reply, but I know that she reads the letters. Here is an excerpt from last week’s letter concerning her plans to marry Douglas.

You know the set of questions that I have offered to you at each of your last couple of birthdays? (You can expect the questions to come again in a couple of weeks with this next birthday.) It looks like it is time for another set of questions that you need to answer for yourself (and nobody else needs to know) about you and marriage.

This is not about Douglas (though he too should have a list of questions that he needs to answer), it is about you only V.

1) Will marriage bring you more or less happiness?

• How?
• In what specific ways? List more than one, more than five.

2) Will marriage bring you more or less security?

• Financial security?
• Physical security?
• Emotional security?

3) Are you willing to give up looking at, flirting with other hot men?
4) How long do you expect this marriage to last?

• Are you intending to not ever give up on it “until death do you part?”
• Or do you see it as a marriage “as long as it works for us?”
• Or “as long as it works for me?”

5) What are the boundaries, the limits, that you would refuse to allow to happen and still keep the marriage?

• If Douglas has affairs with other women?
• With men?
• If Douglas gets violent with you, beats you, causes you physical harm?
• If Douglas contracts cancer next year and loses half of his weight, and his job, and you have to work enough jobs to keep you both alive?
• HIV/AIDS
• You find a guy that is rich, hot, handsome, who wants you?

6) What freedoms are you giving up when you marry Douglas?

• Your mornings alone, or evenings alone?
• Friends that you like but that you know that Douglas does not like?
• The schooling, education, college, that you hope to have for yourself?

7) What is it about you that Douglas finds so good that he wants you all to himself?
8) What parts of you is Douglas allowing you to share with others?

• Emotional (Will Douglas be “okay with” you going to a friends residence and crying about a huge disappointment in your life like the death of a loved one or a hurt that Douglas caused you?)
• Physical (can you kiss another man as a friend?)
• Financial (a friend wants to borrow $200 from you)

V, have you read into any of this that I disapprove of you marrying Douglas? I hope that you have not thought that. The decision for you to marry Douglas is completely, 100%, your decision. (And Douglas gets the same right, 100% his decision). I have tried to tell other people that I love, at other times in my life, that the person they were intending to marry was not right for them, or that that person was right for them. Through the “school of hard knocks” I’ve learned that I can not predict what will be a good marriage and what won’t be. I love you a lot and I want you to be safe and happy. If this marriage does that, then I will be very pleased. If this marriage harms you more than you have already been harmed by your short childhood, then I will be very unhappy and worried. But that is me. You certainly should not decide to marry or not to marry so that grandpa will be happy! That’s another very wrong reason to either marry or not marry.

Diocesan Convention Stories

A major part of the joy of attending our local, annual Diocesan Convention with the ministry-which-is-the-store as vendor with the exhibits is the interactions with the attendees. Many have become friends over the years, others are quickly becoming friends, others are just very interesting to talk with. Here are a few stories from this weekend’s convention, from our view with out exhibit.

The alphabetical Episcopalian: He told me that when he was about 20 years old he decided to shop for a different religious tradition than the Mormonism in which he was raised. He studied a book that listed the characteristics of each denomination and found four that he thought worthy of checking out. They were Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Episcopalians. Since there were congregations of each of those in the town where he lived he thought that he would begin looking at them alphabetically. He visited the Episcopal church, found it to his liking and did not leave. He said, “So, I’m an alphabetical Episcopalian.”

The priest who is a competitive rower told us of her success this summer at a big regatta on the Charles River. She also commended her congregation who supports her in her rowing passion by allowing her to be away from her congregation on four Sundays this past year so that she could compete in rowing regattas.

Two intertwined stories from a Franciscan monk visiting the convention from Alaska: We have a priest friend who lives in a town near Anchorage. We have not met him in person. Over many years, with many phone conversations we have shared our lives with each other. The Franciscan monk knows the priest. We plied Br. E with many questions about our priest friend whom we have not actually met in person as we also shared our stories of his life with the monk. What fun it was to learn that our priest friend is, among many other attributes, “normal size” and not the large bear of a man that we have created in our minds’ eyes!

Alaska has been without a bishop for several years. Because of the remoteness of the communities in Alaska and the long, community-held traditions that vary from place to place, the monk described to us how difficult it is to have the clergy in that diocese meet together and share common church-related traditions. The new bishop, whomever that may turn out to be, will have a special challenge with that diverse and geographically as well as theologically expansive diocese.

This year was the second convention for our diocese’s new bishop. It warmed our hearts that he made a quick tour of the exhibitors at the convention. It is easy for the exhibitors to think of themselves as important to the convention but also an easily overlooked ministry whose participants are taken for granted. That the bishop made an appearance, even if cursory, was important to all of those who were working the booths in the exhibit hall. The bishop stopped by our booth and shook our hands. He spent perhaps one minute in our booth, but that is a longer visit than we can remember of former bishops in the twenty-six years that we have been exhibiting at diocesan convention.

Nancy and I ended our store's presence at the annual diocesan convention of the Episcopal Church in W. Washington yesterday. We had decided to include a bible give-away as part of our exhibit. There is a new edition, the Green Bible, with all of the passages that encourage care for the environment printed with green (soy-based, environmentally friendly) ink. It also has theological articles in it about the environment. Convention attendees could enter their name to win the bible. Near the end of the last plenary session we had a drawing for the winner. A convention page then delivered the bible to the winner during the meeting, a woman from Port Angeles. After the session ended the winner came to our booth to warmly thank us. She is one of those who "never win anything" and she was thrilled. And, that made the donation even more enjoyable for us.

Personalities: business and personal

Book publishers have personalities. It is no doubt obvious, but it surprises me that publishers and other businesses have personalities. Some publishers have the personality of cooperation for the betterment of everyone. Other publishers have the personality of maximizing for themselves short-term gains with little regard for others, including those retail stores that are selling their products.

It is, in my humble view, through the difference in a business' purpose that the different personalities appear. Is the main purpose of the business to maximize short-term profits or to meet the needs of their niche market and ensure their long-term health?

Here is my view of business history since World War II. At the end of the war many returning GIs started their own businesses. There became Lapenski Fuel, Magdanz Hardware, Tuell Funeral Home, and Shorey’s Books to name a few. From what I recall and can determine, the purpose of each business was “to find a need in the community and meet it.” The local community was vital to each business. You can see that by the support that they gave to community organizations from supporting bowling teams and children’s sporting teams to Scouts and school projects. Ah, more community involvement: when the local drug store saw a student shopping in the middle of the day, the store owner would often phone the school to see if the kid had permission to be not-in-school.

Sometime later business thinking changed. Perhaps it was in the 1960s when the emphasis on the individual bloomed. Perhaps it was the same time that the view of sports changed to that famous statement “winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing.” The big business model expanded to state and to act as “the bottom line is all that matters” and “it’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”

I think that the results from this thinking changed to optimization of short-term profits for the owners while short-changing the long-term reliability of the business. The other event that encouraged this movement was the retiring of the many small business owners who began their businesses at the end of the war. A small business owner has a few choices for leaving the business: passing it on to the offspring, selling it to the highest bidder, or the famous “going out of business sale.” The offspring typically grew up with the business in the family and they knew the amount of commitment and effort that the parents put into the business, likely at the expense of better parenting. The offspring chose to do something else. Selling to the highest bidder encouraged larger businesses to expand by purchasing others. Offering shares of stock in the larger businesses allowed the managers to raise enough money to purchase more smaller businesses, whether funeral homes, hardware stores, or fuel companies, or bookstores.

Today’s result is that we have a few corporations that are now so large that the people and the government cannot allow them to fail because too many individuals will lose their jobs and the economy will become even worse.

When there are fifty auto manufacturers in the U.S. and three of them fail due to poor business practices of maximizing short-term gains for the owners and neglecting the long-term health of the business you have “a market correction” or a result of “you reap what you sow.” A few manufactures fail. But when the nation has only three major auto manufacturers and the decisions that they have made will put large numbers of wage earners out of work, then we have a nation-wide economic crisis. It is likewise in the financial industry where a few very large corporations have swallowed hundreds of small financial institutions over the years.

Each business has its own personality. We choose our friends in some respects by their personalities. Perhaps we choose the businesses we associate with in some respects by their personalities too. Can you name five businesses that you really enjoy working with and five that you work with but don’t enjoy? Does the personality of each business affect your feelings about those businesses?

The obvious next question is, “Why do you continue to work with those businesses that you don’t enjoy?”

The Election of a lifetime.

I did not party in the street after the election. I did not write about my feelings about it. I am hugely relieved that we have a chance for a change in the country that better fits what I think we can become, but I'm not yelling-happy about it. Yet again, why do my eyes mist when I hear reports of all sorts of people who are so thrilled? And, it touches me deeply that so many people, in so many places, in so many ways, are ecstatic about the results of the presidential election. The "silent majority" has shown its relief and hope, in my humble opinion. Maybe we all actually can work together for the betterment of the common good.

The world says...The faithful say

One thought that I received during yesterday’s sermon:

The world says:
Be fearful
Worry
Blame
They are wrong and we are right!
Be angry

The faithful say:
Rejoice
Be happy
Celebrate
Be at peace
The angels say, “Fear not”
Philippians 4: 1-9 reminds us to focus on what is true, what is honorable, what is just, excellence

The faithful remind us that when one thinks that there is not enough, that there is always enough to share.

My EV and politics

“This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine…”
Courage came to me when a magazine publisher, Jack Love, in his trade magazine, Internet Retailer, October 4, 2008, wrote, “In 40 years of publishing, I have not supported a candidate in print.”
http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=27946
I have been driving electric vehicles (two) since the year 2000. After 25 years of talking about converting a car to run on electricity I finally did it in the millennial year. My ’81 VW rabbit pickup is my second conversion. It is my daily commuter vehicle that uses only battery power that I plug in to my home electrical power each evening much like you would plug in an outdoor barbeque or space heater.
A few weeks ago I made and attached to the rear bumper three bumper stickers. One states, “Driving better electrically.”
A major motivation for converting a gasoline-burning vehicle to electricity was my miniscule effort toward reducing our dependence on oil from other countries. It is somewhat like choosing to eat locally produced food. Seattle City Light, the source of my EV’s fuel states (2007) our electricity comes from: Hydro—90.6%, Nuclear—4.8%, Wind—3.3%, Coal—0.8%, and Other—0.5%.
We are on the brink of the release of several new electric vehicles. Within the next two or three years you will see several major automakers, and several relatively unknown startup car companies, offering reasonably priced electric vehicles (not hybrids) with the new lithium ion battery technologies.
Since my first EV conversion in 2000 I have learned the dire situation our planet is in due to global warming. Ninety percent of the world’s scientists who have studied global warming agree that human activities are the major cause, hence the reason for my first bumper sticker, “No more dependence on carbon-based fuels.” We must drastically reduce our use of carbon-based fuels in all its forms, for all of its uses in order to assure the continuation of life as we know it on this planet.
Politics: Senator McCain’s energy policy, from what I have learned, includes significant oil drilling, off shore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, major research into creating “clean coal” and building many more nuclear power plants. The first three will do nothing to slow or reverse global warming. And, as for nuclear power, the half-life of uranium is about 4.5 billion years. In order for it to be safe we must absolutely guarantee that wherever we store the spent nuclear material it will be kept away from human beings of at least that long, and best, twice that long. Until we can insure that guarantee, in my humble opinion, we have no right to be using nuclear power.
Senator Obama’s stated energy policy includes a massive effort to increase solar, biomass, and geothermal energy to create electricity and stopping our dependence on foreign oil within ten years. He also has recently given in to accepting some limited national oil drilling as well as increasing the construction of nuclear power plants.
I have deep concerns for the healthy future of our country. I have deeper concerns for the health of life on our planet due to the effects of global warming. From this position you may see that my third bumper sticker on my electric vehicle, my daily commuter car, reads, “Obama, of course!”
Yes, both McCain and Obama tell lies in order to get elected. Who can know for sure what either one of them will do once they are the President. We certainly did not expect what we got from the current President. During his first campaign he was the one who was going to finally bring high morals to the White House.
Certainly the country’s and the world’s economy is the elephant in the living room that we all must deal with. There are many other issues to consider. For the topic of global warming and several others, but not all other issues, I am convinced that Obama might be better for the country and the world in the long run.

Website growing pains

Our store and our website are in a kind of growing pains situation that is good while also inconvenient. We have been developing our new, much improved website this summer. It is almost ready to launch to the World Wide Web. All of the products from the “old” current site have been transferred to the new site to help us with formatting and fine-tuning.

At the same time there are many new book titles that we have received in our store. Do we add them to our old site, put them on the new site, or both? The amount of work involved indicates that adding them to both sites is too much. As a result I have been adding them to the new site. And that has been very instructive itself! But woe to the poor website visitor. You are missing out on viewing the new titles immediately.

Like all growth and changes, this transition time will soon be over. When the new site goes “live” you will be able to view many new books, as well as all of the other attributes of the new site.