Book Review: “Bee Wigged” by Cece Bell

As I mentioned the other day, I have received two books to review. I’m hoping to post both of those reviews tonight … we’ll see how that goes!

Anyway, the first is Bee-Wigged by Cece Bell. Before I say anything about the book, I have a suggested promotional shot:

Eagle with Bee-Wigged

In my family, we have now read the story of Jerry Bee several times, and my little Eagle loves to grab it off her shelf and flip through it. She also loves the large picture on the front cover of Jerry Bee … and the inside cover (black and yellow stripes).

Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery

Exodus 20:14 (NIV, Courtesy of BibleGateway.com):

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

It’s very simple. Virtually everyone knows that it’s one of the Ten Commandments, and even non-believers know that it’s a basic measure of trustworthiness, regardless of what they think of the Commandments themselves.

This afternoon, former Senator, former Vice-Presidential candidate, and former Presidential candidate John Edwards confessed that he failed that measure. He has now confirmed a story broken by the National Enquirer, and I’m afraid that it wasn’t the one about aliens on the moon.

Obama’s Prayer

I had promised myself that I was done writing pro-Obama posts, but then I heard the radio talkers complaining about Barack Obama’s prayer at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Apparently, someone committed the wrong of snatching the piece of paper on which he wrote the prayer and publishing it.

I heard the prayer, and I listened to the comments. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh each expressed their shock about this kind of awful false prayer. I’m going to cite here James Taranto’s Best of the Web piece, from which I take the text, though Taranto cites from elsewhere:

Lord–

Protect my family and me.

Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair.

Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just.

And make me an instrument of your will.

Tell me, what exactly is wrong with this prayer? According to Beck and Limbuagh, it’s not how real people pray. I guess they have a point … I try to construct my sentences a bit better than that, I try to avoid starting sentences with “And,” and I usually go on a lot longer.

Wrestling

(Sorry about how much this post rambles … I’m sure that it doesn’t look like weeks’ worth of work, but it really has taken most of my blogging time for a couple weeks. It’s been all over the place, at one point approaching 3000 words, discarded entirely, etc.. I hope that it’s worth the read, anyway …)

Originally from Quakers Are Funny, and I found it at the web site for the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum:

One World War II Quaker conscientious objector had been a professional wrestler. When he and some other inmates of the Coshocton CPS camp in Ohio made a trip into town, they were hassled about their pacifism by some local youths, who insisted that only force could change the Germans’ views.

In response, the ex-wrestler took off his coat, challenged one of the local boys to a match, and promptly threw the townie across the room. He then asked the youth, “Now do you believe that force won’t change people’s views?”

“Heck, no!” the local boy hollered back.

“That’s exactly my point,” said the Quaker, who put on his coat and left.

Sorry, folks …

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been around that much lately.

In real life, I have quite a few things going on. I’m helping to edit a friend’s writing, I’m working on some of my own writing (two different projects there, actually), and I have a friend who’s in a very difficult situation right now, and I’m trying to be useful to him.

Top it off with looking for a real job again, taking care of my daughter, and spending some time with my sons, and there hasn’t been a lot of time for blogging.

To be honest, I was a bit discouraged by the way one of my recent posts went, and so I’ve sort of sulked about the whole thing.

I’m still plugging away at a post whose working title is “Wrestling.” It’s not a small project, however it goes. Along the way, I’ll talk about some other things.

I haven’t gone away (whether you like it or not), but I’m just not getting a lot of time for such writing at the moment. That’s really too bad, because my list of things about which I haven’t blogged but want to is growing rather quickly at the moment.

The Mythical Ronald Reagan

You know how you’re not supposed to discuss politics or religion at work? My best defense is … I didn’t start it.

A coworker was ranting today about the idea of having talks with Iran, referring to sitting down to meet with them as “appeasement.” I refrained from saying anything like, “Do you even know what the word ‘appeasement’ means? It doesn’t mean talking.”

I was discussing the merits of the idea, and mentioned that diplomacy would be preferable to another open war.

He lashed back, “Reagan would never talk to those terrorists!”

Martian Invasion: A Thought Experiment

First of all, I think that I might need to explain what a thought experiment is. It’s an attempt to control circumstances in order to analyze thoughts and ideas … much as a laboratory experiment controls conditions in order to determine scientific facts.

I concocted this particular scenario about five years ago, and posted it on the War Stories forum of Slate magazine’s “The Fray.” It went over just about like a lead balloon, so I’m hoping that readers here will get it a little better.

So, here we go … the hypothetical situation.

The Martian Invasion

The High Council of Mars has decided that conditions in the United States are intolerable. Seeing that abortion is going on with no end in sight, and no particular efforts at protecting the unborn, the Martian fleet has sent a battle group to invade the United States.

Listening to Each Other (Updated)

(In response to OneMom’s comment, I did rewrite my conclusion to make sure that I was clear, and didn’t manage to contradict my entire point.)

This post is more or less directed just to Christians, though I suppose that the principle applies to other people, as well. It’s also going to reprise a number of other conversations I’ve had, including a number of posts here and comments on other people’s blogs.

There are times when honest Christians disagree with each other. I think something, another believer disagrees with me. Because of some of the issues I’m going to discuss in this post, I want to make sure that all of my biases are revealed up front. Consider it “full disclosure,” as the real reporters like to say.

My church is part of the Conservative Baptist denomination. We have a contemporary worship style (for those who don’t know, that means that we have guitars, drums, a keyboard, etc., and the worship songs we use are very different from traditional hymns). Not only does my church use a projector to put song lyrics on a screen in the front of the worship center, I am one of the people who operates that projector and runs the computer tied into it.

Listening to Trumpkin

I’m wrestling with a serious moral issue right now, and I’m not at all sure how this is going to wind up.

Some time in the near future, I’m going to share more about that. For the moment, though, there’s a little something that strikes me. It has to do with how Christians make decisions and what resources we use to make those decisions. We rely on quite a lot of information, and often it is a kind that we can’t trust.

I’m speaking, of course, of secular information. Often, when we are called to make moral decisions, we look for facts and other people’s ideas. Sometimes, these ideas are entirely secular in origin. This is a mistake.

I’m reminded of C. S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian. Lucy (the youngest of the Pevensie children, in case you don’t know … and if you don’t know, you MUST read the Narnia Chronicles immediately!) sees Aslan while the Pevensies and the dwarf, Trumpkin, are trying to figure out how to reach the other Narnians. Since she alone sees him, there is a vote to see what they should do.

Shaking My Head

Two hat tips on this one …

First, to maidensong of the Huckabee Alliance for her post, which I read this morning. She made mention of the outrages being committed by Republicans, against which Mike Huckabee spoke. (By the way, her post is great, you should really check it out.) One of them was:

How about telling that to the Texas republicans at their convention who wore buttons saying ‘If Obama wins the white house, will it still be called the white house?”