thinklets

Bedtime Story

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Samuel. Samuel’s family had settled on rough, rocky uncultivated land. Now that land was plowed, planted, irrigated, and fertilized, and Samuel’s family was famous for their large, juicy, sweet oranges.

Samuel once had a friend named Hassan. Hassan’s family herded sheep and cattle near Samuel’s home. After school when they had finished their chores, Samuel and Hassan would play ball together.

Samuel’s and Hassan’s families didn’t own their farms. Nobody in their entire region owned their own land. They were all tenants of a very old man who owned a large part of the world.

One day the old man died, and the other landowners formed a council to discuss what would become of his land. Samuel and Hassan’s families attended the meetings as well as all the other tenants.

Finally they reached a decision. The old man’s legacy would be divided among the tenants. Samuel’s family would inherit their farm, Hassan’s family would inherit their farm, and all the other families would inherit their farms.

The other tenants were happy with their portions, but they decided that Samuel’s family should not receive theirs.

That was because of the ancient books. Samuel’s family had a different book than all the other tenants. That made them infidels.

The book of the other tenants promised that Samuel’s family would never own their farm. Samuel’s family’s book promised that one day they would own their farm.

Everyone knew that only one book could be true.

Immediately after the council of landowners gave each family the deed to their property, the other tenants met with Hassan’s family.

"Move out of your farm for a little while," they told them. "We’re going to drive Samuel’s family into the Mediterranean. They might fight back, though, and we don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire. We must prove that our book is the true one."

So Hassan’s family left their farm and took refuge in a little camp near the other tenant’s farms, and the tenants joined together to drive Samuel’s family into the Mediterranean Sea.

Instead, Samuel’s family drove them back to their own farms.

When it was all over, Hassan’s family called to Samuel’s family from their little camp. "Give us back our farm!"

"No!" They replied. "We can no longer trust you. You might try to drive us into the Mediterranean again."

So Hassan’s family turned to the other tenants. "Let us come and live with you," they asked.

"You’re fine where you are," they replied. "We’ll soon drive the infidels out, and you will have their farm as well as yours."

Years and decades passed. They tried and tried but nobody could defeat Samuel’s family.

With each defeat, Hassan’s family became more embittered, angry, and filled with hatred. They taught their children that Samuel and his family were apes and pigs who would murder them and grind their bodies into their bread.

As their rage and hatred festered they became devious, prone to cowardly sneak attacks against the most defenseless and weak members of Samuel’s family, blowing their bodies to pieces.

Samuel’s family became adept at defending themselves from the attackers. They put up fences to keep Hassan’s family from blowing up their children. They trained the most vigilant watchmen in the world, who manned check points, inspected and interrogated Hassan’s family, but they couldn’t stop every murderer from getting in.

Yet Hassan’s family complained bitterly to the world that Samuel’s family had stolen their farm and that they were oppressing Hassan’s family with the fences and checkpoints.

The world said they must negotiate. So Samuel’s family told Hassan’s family that they would give them back their farm if they would admit they had a right to exist and promised to stop blowing up their children.

Hassan’s family said Samuel’s family did not have a right to exist. They had to prove that their book was the true.

Some of the other landowners were friends with Samuel and his family. They grieved when his little sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles and grandmothers were blown to pieces. They knew that Samuel’s family had a right to a share of the old man’s legacy.

As their bitterness and hatred grew, some of the other tenants began to plan cowardly sneak attacks against the friends of Samuel’s family, blowing up defenseless citizens of those lands.

As they became more and more obsessed with proving their book was true, they required that their own citizens dress and behave as if they were living in the time when the ancient book was first written.

They stoned and beheaded men who didn’t grow the correct style of beard or women who didn’t swath their entire head and body in flowing black garments.

They now look beyond Samuel’s farm and vow they will not stop murdering until every infidel on earth either proclaims their book to be true or is killed.

They know that in order to achieve that, they will need a bigger bomb.

Navy Spies

When I heard about the former Navy sailor, Hassan Abujihaad, who had the charming ship-board hobby of sending juicy information-filled emails to Al Qaeda – unbeknownst to his oblivious superiors – I was reminded me of another email in March of 2001 that originated from our home and was delivered to a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Persian Gulf.

Our sailor son, Nathan, had emphasized the importance of military security enough to provoke his dad’s teasing nature, prompting the following communication:

Hey, Nate,

How are you this fine NAVY morning? I am a happy little lad because I have the day off and the weather is chipper and the birds are chirpy. Do the seagulls follow your ship? Do dolphins lead it? Are you already getting sick of these dorky questions? Are you convinced that your dad is a real dorknut, dipstick, doofer?

Actually, this is all code for Persian.catster.kidnapster.wargames.battleships.netster. nukeworld.gov… Please destroy this message before you receive it. It contains secret datalink megacode intersplicing information that only you will recognize because your dog, Sheldon, ate the McGuffin and threw it up on the veranza. (That is code, too, by the way!)

Are you getting all this… This message will self-destruct in 29 O-niner seconds, so read fast! The weather is fine today… that is F I N E (fine)… Are you getting this? Hey, I set my computer to the Atomic clock today, so all is well in the USA Today and the Cold War is on ICE (ice).

It took me a while to link up today because the radar (internet) was jammed and the chickadee couldn’t lay her egg (email wouldn’t work) but the situation is now rectified. We will await further instructions from you. By the way, the weather is FINE this FINE NAVY morning.

P.S. I know that wasn’t your camera because yours will take BETTER pictures! So get the Satellite linked and fire up those birdies, and get them chirping straight through the webnet! We are counting on you, Natester, so get to it! This is your Dadster speaking!

Signing out (side) for now,

Chirp at you later,  Big Daddy Chirpster

We received a very terse reply from Nathan, basically, "Knock if off!"

I aren't stoopid

Shhh… They’re all around us. If you listen hard you can almost hear them. Invisible comets of information whizzing through the air.

Occasionally one will plunge through my atmosphere and lay cooling on my terrestrial consciousness – a compact pellet of knowledge from a snobby Easterner who graduated from a 300-year-old university and thinks I’m a moron.

You can’t see them unless you turn on your TV or radio. All the little messages for us drones in fly-over country who need to be told what to think.

That was what Hillary Clinton was doing when she recently announced to a crowd, "Mr. President, the American people have lost patience in the war in Iraq."

If Hillary says we’ve lost patience, doggone it, she must be right! And we know why. We’ve been taught well.

• Great presidents always adjust their decision-making to frequent public opinion polling.
• Great presidents never sacrifice their current popularity ratings for the well being of future generations.
• Great presidents have a crystal ball. That’s why a wrong decision has never been made in all previous United States wars. The president always knew what the enemy was going to do in advance.
• Bad presidents make courageous decisions and stick with them even at great political cost and opposition from foes, even as their friends and allies begin to crack under the pressure.

So we’ve been told over and over and over. Along with the following… Okay, they don’t actually say it, but it’s implied:

• Americans are gullible.
• Americans are ignorant.
• American’s are too stupid to identify the contradictions that always accompany large batches of lies.

For example, we need government to control our access to trans fats, but we’re living in a fascist police state because the government listens to Mohammed chat from a cave in Pakistan with Abdul in New York.

It’s an inspiring victory for freedom of speech when a student defies his principal by unfurling a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner on a school field trip, yet the entire Bill of Rights is under attack if a fourth grade glee club sings Silent Night at a school’s winter concert.

If they told the truth they wouldn’t get tied up in such knots. Oh, I forgot. They don’t have to. Nobody notices anyway.

Hugo Chavez and the sixth grade meanies

This last week as I observed Hugo Chavez tagging along behind president Bush’s Latin America tour, followers in tow, I was reminded that there is something vaguely familiar about his style of obsessive hatred – You know, the catty lies, vicious ridicule, insults and exclusive I-hate-George parties with Harry and Cindy.

Then it came to me. Could it be that Chavez is afflicted with a rare manifestation of a common adolescent malady, mean girl syndrome?

Imagine for a moment that instead of George and Hugo, we have, say, Heather and Jennifer. Now imagine, if you can, Heather standing before the United Nations saying, "Jennifer spoke in this place like a whole day ago, and it still stinks. She’s always, like, ‘I own the world.’ She totally thinks she’s John Wayne. Whatever. It’s so retarded."

Isn’t that what mean girls do? Bully through gossip, ridicule, and slander?

"He was an alcoholic - you have a president that’s an alcoholic," Chavez expounded from that same podium that has hosted some of history’s greatest statesmen. "He’s a sick man with a complex."

But then a true mean girl would never pass up such an opportunity to socially assassinate her victim, because she needs to build up a network of gullible third parties. For example, useful idiots like Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, and all the Americans who waved Venezuelan flags and cheered while a grinning and ingratiating Chavez strutted about on American soil last September, lampooning Bush’s walk.

Would such nastiness from a hostile outsider be tolerated in Venezuela? I don’t think so.

Yet Chavez preaches that the United States government is the "first enemy" of a citizenry virtually strait-jacketed by the Patriot Act.

His unfettered access to American television and radio communications to spout off such profundities would seemingly contradict his words, but then anyone who would call Saddam Hussein his "brother" and nurture cozy relationships with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro may not know what the definitions of freedom and oppression actually are.

All it takes is an entry on the State Department’s list of terrorism sponsors to secure the friendship and allegiance of Chavez, even though the bondage of the Patriot Act would probably seem like a sudden release from gravity to the citizens of those countries.

Still Chavez never passes up an opportunity to express his compassion for the oppressed American people. "I would like to talk about life and greet the US people with a lot of affection, with a lot of love, and with a lot of pain due to the tragedy in New Orleans and the gulf states," he stated after Hurricane Katrina, then went on to describe how he was "...cooperating very humbly in trying to save lives and assist the homeless."

Is this the same Chavez, oozing all this sloppy love for the American people, who presides over a population with 40% poverty and 11% unemployment? And incidently has urged activists worldwide to help bring down the evil "U.S. empire?"

But I have a hunch that deep down Chavez doesn’t really care about the suffering of American citizens. Call me cynical, but I think he’s just trying to buy more members for his I-hate-George club.

As Heather would say, "I think, you know, Hugo is like pretending to be America’s best friend. I mean, if everyone totally liked Hugo more than George, then George couldn’t go around acting like he’s like the boss of everybody."

So, why does Chavez hate? Maybe President Bush had a slumber party and didn’t invite him.

Groundhog Day for Republicans?

Obviously Scooter Libby’s perjury conviction is bad karma for Clinton haters. After all, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury while all the Republicans in Washington cheered wildly.

Now the Republicans are getting a taste of their own medicine. What goes around comes around.

And Clinton and Libby were both convicted of perjury. That makes the two cases virtual carbon copies, right?

Well, sort of.

Libby was convicted of revealing something legal to several people, then lying about the chronological order of those conversations a year later. Libby says he simply remembered wrong, but the jury thought otherwise.

Clinton was impeached after a sordid chain of events that started with his assault then slander of a young working-class woman, Paula Jones.

Let me recap. Clinton pulled down his pants and propositioned Jones shortly after they were introduced. Jones was traumatized and bolted. Then later her name popped up in an unflattering light in a national magazine. Apparently a Clinton aide assumed Jones had served Clinton one of his random quickies that afternoon and mentioned it anecdotally to a reporter.

That’s when things got touchy. Jones had the gall to request an apology from Clinton and was promptly disciplined for her effrontery with a full-blast onslaught of the famous Clinton retaliation machine.

It didn’t work. Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment

Clinton’s contempt for women was never more apparent than his behavior during the trial. In Clinton-think Jones did not merit fair, perjury-free testimony. But this is America. We don’t have a king, and even a young blue-collar woman doesn’t have to take crap off of the president of the United States.

Hence Clinton was impeached for perjury, and Republicans have been paying for it ever since.

Everybody says Clinton oozes charisma. I never could see it. His embarrassingly over-sentimental mannerisms always reminded me of Dopey in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I was amazed by the saccharin photo-op after the Lewinsky scandal blew wide open. You remember the one – with the faithful, devoted family at his side, standing on the church steps lugging a Bible as big as a sofa cushion. It was an insult to the public’s intelligence, so I thought anyway.

I was wrong. It made people feel warm and cozy all over America.

But then I never did get the Clinton thing. My boys learned that they shouldn’t pull down their pants in front of strangers before they were two. But the majority of Americans were fine with their president doing it.

Clinton is a fascinating character study. I don’t think his assaults on women stem from a mental disorder, a compulsion or even an addiction. I am absolutely convinced that each episode is simply a manifestation of his immense conceit.

He truly feels that he alone is entitled to behavior that is off limits to everyone else alive. I am convinced that the famous Clintonian outrage and retaliation against anyone who fails to understand that – even his victims – is completely genuine.

Is that equal to Scooter Libby who after a year incorrectly identified the first person who told him Joe’s Wilson’s wife sent him to Niger?

"Malicious, nefarious lies!" the jury pronounced, although each and every one probably couldn’t tell you what they had for dinner last Wednesday.

Interestingly, that group of supposedly nonpartial, apolitical people secured their spots on the jury by swearing they had no opinion about the case, yet somehow managed to catch on to the popular notion that Libby is a pathetic semi-evil dupe for the truly evil Bush, Rove, and Cheney. Maybe it was by telepathy.

Libby was just trying to set the record straight. After all, Wilson wasn’t going to do it. He wanted everyone to think the Bush administration was stupid enough to send him to Niger.

For wiser heads than mine...

I’m trying to figure out this Scooter Libby conviction, so here’s what I’ve got so far... I think...

Joe Wilson was content to let the whole world think that the White House was masochistic enough to send him on an African fact-finding mission to prove that the Executive Branch is filled with intelligence-manipulating, war-mongering liars. Also to show that Wilson is smarter and more capable than British intelligence, but mostly to prove that the White House is inhabited by intelligence-manipulating, war-mongering liars.

And the notion that Wilson had actually been sent by the White House heaped even more delicious humiliation upon the Bush administration.

But when Wilson’s report turned up – not in a White House intelligence briefing but in the New York Times – mouths dropped open all over the executive mansion, because apparently nobody there even knew about the trip to Niger.

That was because Wilson was sent to Africa by the CIA at the insistence of his wife Valerie Plame.

Now Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to the Vice President, is facing up to 25 years for perjury and obstruction of justice for ratting out Plame to journalist, Robert Novak. His motive? To kick sand in Wilson’s face for embarrassing the president of course!

Actually, that’s not quite correct. Scooter Libby didn’t tell Novak about Plame. It was Richard Armitage. Mean, jealous, vindictive Richard.... Wait. Hold on. Richard Armitage is a vocal Bush critic and probably wouldn’t care if Wilson embarrassed the president.

Enter Federal Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. Obviously somebody was out to get revenge on Wilson. Armitage didn’t fit the description, so Fitzgerald kept looking until he found Libby.

Libby knew that Plame cooked up the African mission to prove Bush a liar and Saddam Hussein a pussycat who would never ever think of trying to purchase uranium from anyone. (Incidentally, Saddam Hussein did try to buy uranium from Niger, but that’s not the issue here.)

Libby knew about Plame, because by then everyone kinda did, and he mentioned it to a couple reporters, but not to some other reporters, almost as if he didn’t know it was a big deal, but Fitzgerald knew that was a crock, and he was on Libby like a tan until he finally caught him in a lie.

But first he indicted Libby for blowing Plame’s cover as a CIA spook on a covert, top secret mission overseas.

Actually, that’s not true. Plame had a desk job in Washington and was not covered by the Secret Agents Identity Act. Maybe that’s why Fitzgerald never went after Armitage, the guy who really blabbed Plame’s name to Novak.

So, let me see if I understand... Fitzgerald indicted Libby for something he knew Armitage did and, by the way, wasn’t illegal in the first place?

Then Libby told the grand jury he learned Plame’s identity months ago from one guy, then he told another guy, and then a little later told another guy. And then Fitzgerald got all those guys to testify, and they said that Libby heard it from another guy, then mentioned it to a different guy, and then to the first guy. Voila! Perjury!

I hate to belabor this, but if what Libby told the guys was legal, why did it matter who he told it to first, and incidently why was he under grand jury indictment in the first place?

Maybe for being part of an evil White House plot to punish Wilson by outing a woman who wasn’t outable?

Or maybe for being part of an evil White House plot to defame, slander, and abuse Wilson and teach him never ever to make them mad again?

Or maybe for saying something legal to a couple guys, but stating who he told it to a year later in the wrong chronological order?

I’m getting a headache.

There are lessons to be learned here. Never allow yourself to become consumed by jealousy and vindictiveness that festers, boils, and builds inside until one day you snap, blurt the name of a CIA desk jockey to a couple guys and then claim under oath not to remember which guy you told first a year later.

I know, I know... He had other things on his mind. He was helping to run a war. I don’t care. It was despicable.

Potential child?

Samuel Armas was diagnosed with spina bifida at 14 weeks’ gestation, a condition that, if left untreated, can lead to paralysis, brain damage, and other problems.

At 21 weeks’ gestation, a team of doctors, led by Joseph Bruner and Neal Tulipan at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, lifted Samuel partially out of his mother’s uterus, closed the lesion in his spine, then placed him back in the womb where he stayed for another 3-1/2 months.

Michael Clancy, a Nashville-area free-lance photographer snapped the photo when the surgery was nearly over, and caught the unique moment when Samuel extended his hand through the partially-closed incision and squeezed the surgeon’s finger.

It must be getting harder to call it a blob.

www.michaelclancy.com

More Precious Than Rubies, Press release

"This one has a little of everything: romance, tragedy, drama, humor." A reader from Salem, Oregon, comments on MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES, by Elena Ives, published by Meadowlark Press.

Charm is Deceptive and Beauty is Fleeting...

In MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES, an antique ruby necklace — a souvenir from long-ago tragedy — is now a silent witness to deep and timeless love, then treachery and deceit, until eventually becoming an emblem of God’s unconditional forgiveness.

Medical student, Gabe Westbrook, literally counts off the days until he can return to his parent’s summer vacation home in Cannon Beach, Oregon, and be reunited with the girl next door, Rachel Albrecht. Each of the past five summers have bound them into deeper friendship, marked by Gabe’s powerful undeclared love.

One summer Rachel and Gabe meet Ian, a doctoral student from Portland. At first Gabe disagrees with Ian’s outspoken antagonism toward faith and patriotism, but it is Ian’s pursuit of Rachel that he soon finds barely endurable.

Then, when Gabe’s grandmother gives Rachel her most cherished possession, her mother’s ruby necklace, it tragically becomes a tool for treachery and deceit when Gabe’s narcissistic mother uses it to drive Rachel and Gabe apart.

"The main theme of MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES is the peace that comes from obedience and sacrifice, truly dying to self," said Elena Ives, author, referring to Gabe’s fervent soul-searching years later when he discovers that he had been tricked into walking out on Rachel that summer. "The truly catastrophic moment for Gabe was when he faced the feelings that he still had for Rachel and realized that he had no right to them."

Readers of MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES may experience a twinge of déjà vu, and according to Ives, familiar themes were intentionally borrowed from Jane Austen’s Persuasion and The Country Girl, Paramount’s 1954 movie with Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby.

Ives, author of MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES and CITY OF ROSES lives in Oregon with her husband, Don.

MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES is available from the following Internet booksellers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders, or can be purchased through the publisher at MeadowlarkShoppe.com

More Precious Than Rubies

by Elena Ives. 5.5 x 8.5, softcover, 267 pages. ISBN: 0-9773591-8-2. $12.95. Publication: Winter 2005-2006

City of Roses Press Release

"Elena Ives has invited us to join her in experiencing the joys, pain, love, fear and longing she expresses in her writing." A reader from Portland, Oregon, comments on CITY OF ROSES, by Elena Ives, published by Meadowlark Press.

Rose City Cinderella —Thorns and all

Byron Holgrave is a well-known Portland physician. His late father was a US senator, and Byron is a member of one of Oregon’s most wealthy and prominent families.

Margaret McKenna is a housekeeper. Her father was an out-of-town sailor, one of thousands who celebrate at the Portland Rose Festival Fleet Week every year, but when he sailed away, he left something behind– a daughter. Margaret, born nine months later to an alcoholic, emotionally crippled woman, is a member of one of Oregon’s most disadvantaged families – but Margaret and her brother and sister have one asset: the prayers of a godly grandmother.

Byron is the medical director of the trauma unit of a Portland hospital — where Margaret mops floors — and also devotes long hours to scholarly medical research. When a chance event catapults Byron’s humanitarian actions into public view, however, the notoriety only brings emptiness, loneliness, and the aching reminder that there are no accolades from the only source that matters to him, Margaret.

As a reader from Oregon City, Oregon, commented, "Here is Cinderella in the ashes and the prince in clouds of glory."

"There is something irresistible about the archetypal Cinderella character," said CITY OF ROSES author, Elena Ives. "She is actually a very complex person. It has to be clear to the reader why Prince Charming chose her. After all, he’s Prince Charming. He can have anyone. Cinderella has got to be very unique, or it just isn’t believable."

Ives describes herself as an "unabashed romantic" who can become "intoxicated by Jane Austin." However, she is unapologetic about the novel’s heartfelt documentation of today’s societal pressures versus Christian ethics, which is woven throughout CITY OF ROSES in a style reminiscent of best-selling Christian author, Randy Alcorn.

"In writing courses, they teach, ‘If you want to send a message, call Western Union,’" she said, "but even a quick glance at great literature shows that’s not necessarily true. For example, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen didn’t hide their obvious concern about the social problems of their times. Many of the situations that made their characters sympathetic and compelling were caused by external societal injustices."

Ives, author of CITY OF ROSES and MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES, lives in Oregon with her husband, Don.

CITY OF ROSES is available from the following Internet booksellers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Borders, or can be purchased through the publisher at MeadowlarkShoppe.com

City of Roses

by Elena Ives. 5.5 x 8.5, softcover, 241 pages. ISBN: 0-9773591-0-7. $12.95. Publication: Winter 2005-2006

I have a photograph

September 2001

I have a photograph that I keep put away. It is of a young man who I’ve never met because he died in 1945, 15 years before I was born. It shows a smiling teenager in an army uniform. Although I’ve never met him, he’s not a stranger. There is something in his eyes that is familiar. By looking in his eyes, I see gentleness and intelligence that some day would have matured into wisdom. I know this because they were just like my mother’s eyes.

He was her baby brother who she adored, who she delighted in making laugh so hard that he would roll around on the ground. She told us about him, how he would get up before dawn, before everyone in the house, to light the stove and milk the cows. I heard stories about their days in a little country schoolhouse and how one day my shy mother sassed their teacher because she made her little brother cry.

As my own sons began to approach manhood, It became painful for me to look at that picture. Because it was so tragic that that sensitive, hard-working farm boy, Bernard Polehn, should be violently killed by a machine gun far, far away from home before he even reached the age of 20.

He had to lay down his life like countless others, in other conflicts and other places and times, because there are entities that hate us. They wait in the shadows on other shores and in our own land. Over time one entity will go away, but it will be replaced with another. They patiently wait and watch, obsessed and consumed with desire for our destruction, for us to become complacent and forget that they are there.

It is easy for us to forget they are there because we don’t understand them. It is our nature to live and let live, raise our families, work hard, and mind our own business. It is easy for us to stop being watchful, to slide into the assumption that others are doing the same. We don’t understand why our existence on this planet should inspire some to make it their life’s mission to level as much murder and mayhem upon us that they can muster, some even at the expense of their own lives.

The paradox is that when this greatest of evil strikes, it is always matched and then overtaken by the greatest of love. Jesus, who knew something about the subject, said, "There is no greater love than this, that one should lay down his life for his friends," John 15:13.

To the possessors of this love, a friend can be a nameless, faceless individual miles away and thousands of feet below them on the ground; a not-yet-born niece; or a fellow New Yorker or Washingtonian.

The greatest of love rushes from safety into a mortally-wounded skyscraper even as others are running away from it. The greatest of love counts not his life, in fact, hastens his own death in a doomed plane out of concern for those on the ground. The greatest of love travels halfway around the world to unfamiliar places and risks his or her life in order to drive back darkness that threatens to cover us all.

Conversely, the greatest of hate imposes oppression and misery on the innocent in the name of God. The greatest of hate feels that strict religious legalism practiced out of fear is preferable to faith that is freely chosen with an open heart. The greatest of hate despises societies that are free, hospitable, open, and trusting. They hate the prosperity that those attributes produce. However, the greatest of hate will exploit those attributes that they despise in order to effectively, patiently, and deliberately carry out plots to vent their hatred. Those with the greatest of hate understand the greatest of love only to the extent that they plan their destructive deeds in such a way as to cause more heros to be forced to sacrifice their lives for others.

The greatest of hate could be defined as the antithesis of the greatest of love. That, however, suggests that there are equal amounts of each, and that isn’t true. Love always has the majority. Those who hate may feel that if they kill enough of the best and the brightest, those who hate will eventually outnumber those who love. They never seem to learn that it doesn’t work that way. Out of ashes, rubble, and tears, love always multiplies and flourishes. It increases from person and person, house to house, and between nations that are oceans apart.

We are daily recipients of precious gifts, provided at unimaginable cost to others, some recently and some of them decades and centuries before we were born. We have all benefitted from the sacrifices of those who possessed the greatest of love. The greatest tragedy of all would occur on the day that we ever forget their example.