Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani and Sam Brownback endorsed John McCain.  What is a "Values Voter" to do? 
To be sure, Karl Rove's strategy of running a socially conservative candidate to galvanize the most consistently reliable Republican voters has been blown to shreds.   Now that we see this kind of independent thinking, one can only hope that religious conservatives will do likewise and break out of the two-dimensional box they have built for themselves. 

The real test will be after the Republican nomination is won.  Will conservatives throw up their hands and disengage after Thompson, Huckabee, and Paul fail?  What will Dobson's advice be? 

Let's say conservatives decide that they cannot in good conscience vote for Giuliani, McCain, or Romney.  Will religious conservatives accept the further derision of fellow Republicans after Clinton wins? 

Or, will "Values Voters" begin to realize that its not about them, but the good of the country and the Republican party?  Will they understand that our system is meant to be constructively involved?  Will they understand that the enemy of my enemy is my friend? 

It will be fascinating to see how the nomination process ends.  One thing, however is sure:  regardless of who wins the election, and how conservatives vote, the news media will continue to treat people of faith as the red-haired step-child of the democratic process.  My prediction is that about a week after the election, the mainstream media will ask all kinds of rhetorical questions about the participation of religious conservatives and how their involvement was either not enough, damaging, or some other disparaging angle. 

OK Gang...today was MW's first full day in the DO and he is going full bore on ideas for reorganizing, fund raising, the web sites, projects, and personnel.  Jared informed me about MW's request for all the things the Capitol staff is working on.  MW talked today to CGB and PW about Chris Battin's schedule, fund raising, and well, ah,...let's talk about that another time.  He did manage to get in an Indian chant of Hey ya, Hey ya while at Sammy's. 

He wants to put out an End of Session Letter for 200 of his top constituents (people w/ money).  Capitol Staff, if we do a mass mailing don't we have to follow the 199 rule?  Also, does anyone have a good handle on our mail budgets? 

I thought this is an awesome piece by Michael Gerson

The Torment of Teresa

What are we to make of Mother Teresa's letters, collected in a new volume called " Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light," which reveal decades of spiritual depression, loneliness and doubt? Should this console us or disturb us?

The pious answer is that these sentiments humanize the distant saint, showing that even the great have their struggles. But this underestimates the rawness and intensity of the letters themselves, which are in fact disturbing.

Mother Teresa in 1995.

In the 1950s she wrote: "Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The child of your love -- and now become as the most hated one -- the one You have thrown away as unwanted -- unloved. I call, I cling, I want -- and there is no One to answer -- no One on Whom I can cling -- no, No One. Alone . . . I am told God loves me -- and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul."

This is clearly not an intellectual skepticism, a normal crisis of faith. It is a profound sense of abandonment. In September of 1946, then-Sister Teresa had heard a voice calling her to serve the poorest of the poor -- what she interpreted as the voice of Jesus, asking her: "Wilt thou refuse?" But not long after this mystical encounter . . . nothing. In the long obedience that followed, there were no more spiritual consolations, no rewards of divine closeness, just interior darkness and silence. "I long for God," she wrote, but find "longing and no love." Having tasted the divine -- like a single day with a vanished lover -- God's absence seems to her beyond the tortures of nihilism. Only a believer would feel this divine departure so deeply. Martin Buber called this kind of experience the "eclipse of God" -- and it was made more terrible by Mother Teresa's vivid memory of the sun.

All of this was shocking to many who knew her, because she was constantly cheerful and smiling -- a manner she called "the cloak by which I cover the emptiness & misery." Rather than being hypocritical, this seems to have been peasant toughness. She often told others: "Pull yourself up," "Just be cheerful" and "Keep smiling" -- advice she followed herself. Such cheerfulness was not false but willed. And there is a kind of courage in losing hope without losing heart.

Eventually, on the evidence of the letters, Mother Teresa made peace with her darkness, identifying her own anguish with the suffering of her Savior and the suffering of the poor. "Now it does not really seem so hard," she eventually concluded. But she never regained the subjective religious experiences of her youth. "If ever I become a saint," she said, "I will surely be one of 'darkness.' "

There are lessons in this complicated spiritual life -- that holiness has more to do with obedience than spiritual feelings; that faith can coexist with suffering and doubt; that sainthood can be harsher and more difficult than we imagine.

But Mother Teresa's sense of abandonment raises a deeper issue. Assuming, for a moment, that she was not self-deluded in her calling, what kind of God would set such a difficult path -- ministering to lepers and outcasts for a lifetime -- and then withdraw his presence? Mother Teresa herself seemed to struggle with this unfairness: "What are you doing My God to one so small?"

There is no easy answer here, but the question is central to the Christian faith. Other noble religious traditions promise serenity, detachment from striving and release from the suffering of the world. Christianity, in contrast, teaches that grace is found in the worst of that suffering, and through a figure who despairs of God's presence in his parting words. This anguish is not convenient -- "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" is hardly the best religious marketing slogan. But for millennia this abandonment has offered hope that God might somehow be present even in shame, loneliness and betrayal, even on the descending path of depression, even in the soul's hardness and doubt, even in the silence of God himself -- and that all these things may be the preface to glory.

Through her pain-filled letters, Mother Teresa offers this assurance: Even when all we have to offer is ashes, and all we feel is emptiness, something beautiful may come of it in the end. But her decades of lonely sorrow are not an easy source of comfort. And Graham Greene might have been speaking of this abandoned mystic when he wrote: "You can't conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the . . . appalling . . . strangeness of the mercy of God."

michaelgerson@cfr.org

This is an announcement for the August meeting of the 1TIM2 prayer ministry.  I think this will change how church announcements are done.  Whatcha think? 

You might be surprised to see what is making the news today.  Among the stories of war, corruption, pollution, and where carnival workers live, there are glimpses of the Kingdom and accounts of redemption. 

Take Monday, June 18th in the San Diego Union Tribune.  The UT has never been considered a bastion of articles on faith, but on this day three separate pieces appear that promote the Gospel.

First is the story of Christopher Yanov.  Yanov seems like the classic product of a church youth group.  Smart, college bound, and wondering how to serve God in today's hustle and bustle. 

After college, he subed at a jr. high not far from where I grew up in San Diego and noticed the oppression and hopelessness gangs and broken families have on smart kids.  So he walked in their shoes and reached out to Hispanic gang members.  Now he runs Reality Changers, a ministry that tutors smart kids from tough neighborhoods so they can get to college. 

The UT also featured Majur Malou, a Sudanese survival of torture for his Christian faith and belief in democracy.  Malou was assisted by Survivors of Torture and now is the director of St. Luke's Refugee Network, an outreach to Sudanese refugees settling in San Diego.

Last was the story of Richard Liggett, the Louisiana convict who built the coffin in which Ruth Graham was buried.  Liggett was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder and found Christ.  Liggett built simple, but beautiful birch caskets at the prison before he died of cancer.  

These three stories are examples of today's medium for the Gospel.  These are the quiet stories that reach people without knowing that God has just laid His hand on their shoulder.  These are the examples of redemption in our midst. 

What other names did your parents consider for you?

It wasn't another name, it was the first part of a double name.  You know how some people have double names  like Mary Ellen, or Julie Anna or Bobby Joe.  Well the first part of my double name was Goddammit.  So the full name would come out as Goddammit Paul. 

For a while there I thought they might shorten it to GP, like how some people go by JP if there name is John Paul, or TJ, if there name is Thomas James.  But heck if my folks weren't purists and GP just never stuck and they kept the whole thing. 

Ah....those precious childhood memories. 

Maybe it was the NyQuil.  Maybe the fever.  Whatever it was, it sparked a new focus and symbolism for my life. 
It was a month or so ago when I had a terrible flu.  Head pounding, eyes burning, sinus erupting flu.  I felt awful. 
The worst part was I had committed to house/dog sit for some dear friends.  We got there Friday afternoon and by Saturday mid-day,  I was just worthless.  So, I did what any red-blooded American male does on a weekend when sick:  I watched cable. 
As I flicked up and down on a cable system with which I was totally unfamiliar, I landed on the umpteenth replaying of The Lord of The Rings on TBS.  I love LOTR.   Its a great movie, with great characters and all.  And, of course, as a dying man in a recliner, how could I pass it up? 
But something about this particular viewing of LOTR really got to me.  It wasn't anymore about a cool adventure with interesting creatures and the classic battle of good vs. evil.  During this viewing the true analogy of God's redemptive plan for the universe became clear.  The fact that man, among the most fickle of the creatures, had a hand in the fall and redemption of of middle earth.  The fact that creation was a part of the drama.  And that fact that evil was displayed so well all hit me very hard. 
I determined that, ala John Eldridge, I too would become a warrior.  I would engage in the Great Adventure against evil and have to rely on those who were perhaps considered insignificant by many.  I would do my part to keep this fragile hope alive not because there is anything in it for me, but because I simply cannot do nothing. 
What I needed was a symbol.  Maybe a LOTR poster?  They were inexpensive and featured all the characters. 
But a friend of mine suggested something better:  a sword.  Ah...yes!  What every warrior needs! 
I looked on the web and was attracted to Anduril, the sword of Aragorn (the guy played by Viggo Mortenson).  Now Anduril was made from the shards of Narsdil, the sword that Aragorn's faither Elendil, used to fight Sauron.  Elendil was killed and the sword shattered but Isildur, Elenddi's son, took the hilt of the sword and used it to cut the One Ring from the hand of Sauron.  So, bottom line, this is a sword with some juice.
Oh sure, everyone thought I had become a total fantasy geek as I became more interested in LOTR.  The wife thought for sure this was the beginning of some crazy mid-life crisis where I start attending renaissance fairs and start asking her to dress like a wench. 
No, this was about LOTR and the story - not about medieval martial arts and weaponry.  Weaponry, however, as always been a latent interest of mine.  I do own a set of Philippino Arnis fighting sticks, an official marine K-Bar combat knife, a US Army machete, and a couple of other cool weapons. 
When I was a pre-teen I had to accompany my parents as they shopped for antiques when we lived back east.  Most of these trips were just frustrating as a kid.  But in one shop in central New Jersey I found a cool thing:  a real medieval style shield.  I have been carrying it around with me for many years. 
I stripped the paint off the shield, buffed it out, and painted it black with a white tree, the symbol of Gondor, one of the human Kingdom's of LOTR middle-earth.
I am pretty excited about these new symbols in my life.  I look forward to having grand-children and telling them the significance of the sword and shield and introduce them to Lord of the Rings.

I'll load a picture of my sword and shield soon.   

So did you hear about the activists planning to rebuild Noah's Arc on Mt. Ararat?  Greenpeace plans to build a replica of the arc in order to bring attention to global warming. 

This seems pretty funny to me in that liberal activists will take the Bible at face value when it serves their purposes but have no problem ignoring the rest.  Do you think they will use gopher wood?  Perhaps after the Arc they can attempt to recreate the tower of Babel because then they could get up into the heavens to actually figure out what is going on w/ the climate.