Thank You, Governor Romney

Not long ago, my wife and I worked in a few local political campaigns. Most of what we did was phone work. One of our candidates won, the rest didn't.

At the election night party for our candidate for the US House of Representatives, an insight struck me. The candidate, fine man I had known for many years came to the party knowing he had lost. He was brave, he smiled, he conversed gamely with these many people who had worked so hard to elect him. It reminded me of the wife of one of the other candidates, the one who won. When her husband lost an election for another office, a state-wide office, I wanted to encourage them to run again, and she looked warningly at me and said, "NO! I'm never going through that again!"

 

It's hard work running for office. It's grueling. It's putting your guts through a meat grinder.

 

And that night I realized that it's absolutely necessary for the continuance of democracy. People have to run for office. Somebody has to lose. There has to be a choice, or there is no democracy.

 

I've always thought Mitt Romney a good man with the ability to serve. I think he did a pretty good job as Governor or Massachussetts. I thought his dad a good man. I remember his abortive run for the Presidency in 1968. I never had doubts that George Romney was a good and capable man.

 

Several years ago, The United Methodist Church commissioned a study of a controversial topic. After some years of work the commission concluded it couldn't come up with a definite conclusion. The report was derided by people on both sides of the issue (usually a pretty good indicator that you've done a good job, by the way). The introduction to the report had a phrase that changed my life: It said, "people of good will on both sides of this issue..." People of good will on both sides. I realized that nobody on either side wanted to destroy United Methodism. People on each side sincerely wanted to help. They all believe themselves to be fighting for God's will, and for the benefit of our denomination.

 

Fundamentally, nobody on either side of this ugly political chasm wants to see the United States of America destroyed. Fundamentally, we all want what is best for the nation we love. Fundamentally, we disagree on what is best, and we disagree on how to achieve her ultimate best welfare. But we are not traitors. We are not disloyal. We are Americans. We are patriots.

 

And this morning, the morning after this awful, acrimonious election, I honor Governor Mitt Romney. He fought hard. He endured much. No one will ever know how much this election cost him, and I am not talking about money. Today he joins a list of honorable people, dating back to Thomas Jefferson's loss to John Adams in 1796. This list includes such remarkable public servants as John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Gen. Winfield Scott, Stephen A. Douglas, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Al Smith, and Adlai Stevenson. Some would come back to win another day. Some never ran again. But all labored with unimaginable toil to promote democracy. Good, bad, right or wrong, they have made our democracy possible.

 

I honor them all. Thank you, Governor Romney.

"I can't believe in a god who..."

Job 1:1; 2:1-10

¹There was a man in the land of Uz named Job, a man of integrity who feared God and turned from evil….  ^2:1One day the children of God came to stand before the Lord.  The Accuser also came to stand before God.  ²The Lord said to the Accuser, “Where have you been?”

 The Accuser said, “All over the earth."

 ³The Lord said to the Accuser, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is no one like him on the earth, a man of integrity and uprightness, fearing God and turning from evil?  He still maintains his integrity, though you got me to do evil to him for nothing.”

⁴The Accuser answered the Lord, “Skin for skin!  People will do anything to save their lives!  ⁵Put forth your hand and afflict his flesh and bone, and he will curse you to your face!”

⁶The Lord said to the Accuser, “He is in your power.  Only preserve his life.”

⁷The Accuser went out from before the Lord and he struck Job with a terrible case of boils, from the sole of his feet to the crown of his head.  ⁸Job took a shard of pottery to scrape himself, and he began to live in a trash pile. 

⁹His wife said to him, “Do you still hang on to your integrity?  Curse God and die!”

¹⁰He said to her, “You talk like a fool.  Will we receive good from God and not receive evil?” 

In all this, Job did not sin with his mouth.  (my translation)

 

All my Christian life, I've heard people repulse my attempts to convert them, "I can't believe in a God who...."  "If there really were a God, he would never allow..."

 

The other day, on my way to work, I was trying to explain to God (as if I could explain anything to God!) that their point isn't totally invalid.  Bad, awful things happen, horrible things, things that are impossible to explain when you believe in a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, AND all-loving.  Logically, you can posit three of those things AND admit evil; but not all of them.  I haven't endured the worst of calamities, but I have hurt enough that I do sympathize.

 

A great Christian couple I know buried a 16-month-old son after suffering several miscarriages and bringing this child to term only after having this lovely wife stay in bed six months.  Then suddenly the child, this inhumanly beautiful boy, this sweet child, was dead.  I heard the grieving father was heard to say, "Why even bother to pray?"  And to this day I don't blame him  He was overcome with grief, and he was not as damning toward God as Job gets later on in the book.  To his credit, he got past his grief, he stayed strong on faith, and now he and his wife have grown children!

 

But what of those people who have lost their faith because tragedy has just destroyed them?  I knew a psychiatric nurse who would say, after an intake assessment in the hospital where she worked, "If everything that happened to her happened to me, I'd be in a psych hospital too!"

 

Job  lost all his children and all his wordly possessions in one day, and he only said, "I brought nothing into this world, and I can take nothing out.  The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away.  Blessed by the name of the Lord!"  (Job 1:21, my revision)  I'm 56 years old, and I still hope I grow up to be like Job.  I don't think I'm quite there yet!

 

That morning I was patiently trying to educate God, he dropped an insight on me:  that those who lose their faith after a devastating  loss (I'm not talking about deep grief from which you recover and continue patiently, trustingly, stubbornly followin God) then your god has let you down, but your God is not the Lord.  You have been trying to use the Lord as a means to an end, you have set up God as servant to something more important to you. 

 

Your real god is that which is most important to you.  That is what you serve, that is what you worship, and that is the thing from which you expect to get your needs met. 

 

I used to say, "God won't play second fiddle in your orchestra.  He'll sit first violin, or he'll pack up his bow and his instrument and go home."  And that's not because he's an insecure weenie who constantly needs his ego stroked.

 

It's because if I place anything else in first place in my life, anything but God the Lord, I will expect more from that than it can perform, and I will do damage to that, as well as bring devastating pain into my own life!  It's because to praise and worship and serve any other God than the Lord is to hurt ourselves.  That means there can be no thing and no one who means more to me than he does.  That means he must be first, before my daughter, before my wife, before my job, before my country, before my health, before my life.  That means my relationship with him cannot be "I will worship you if".  It means "I will worship you PERIOD!"  If I win, if I lose, if I prosper, if I go down in flames, if I am loved, if I am hated, if my car falls apart and I can't afford another one, if the doctor says "cancer" to me, if the doctor says "cancer" to my wife.

 

Pain happens.  Not God's first choice, I think, but they happen.  So he uses them, because he uses everything available to him to help us grow, grow into his likeness and image.  He wants us to be like him.  And what's he like?  Is he ignorant?  Is  he weak?  Is he lazy?  Is he stupid?  Is he an infant?  Is he a sheep? 

 

He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords!  And he wants you to grow to be like him!  Who are the kings over whom he is to be king?  Us!  Who are the lords over whom  he will be lord?  It's his will for us!  He wants us to be kings!  Why are we not yet?  Because each of us is born with a do-it-yourself kingdom kit.  He's waiting for us to build our kingdom! 

 

He doesn't make it easy, but he makes it possible.  From him we get salvation, we get peace, we get love; we also get that sense of accomplishment, of confidence, to grow into his likeness.  He helps.  We are to grow into helpers.  He gives.  We are to grow into givers.  And it's hard.  It takes work.  It takes time.  It takes courage.  It takes patience.  It takes cussed stubbornness.

 

Honestly, look back on your life.  Aren't the things you're most proud of now the things that were the most uncomfortable then?  Aren't the things of greatest value to you the things that were the hardest to get?

 

Jesus loves me.  But that doesn't mean I won't ever hurt.  In fact, if you read your church history, you'll see greatest heroes of our faith, the ones who seem to be God's greatest favorites, have actually suffered the most.  One day, I intend to meet them, and I'm going to ask them, "Was it worth it?"  I know what they're going to say.

 

And I'm going to greet Jesus.  I'll see the scars, still in his hands, the little prick marks still in his forehead from the crown of thorns.  And I'll say, "Lord, was it worth it?"

 

Do you know what I think he'll say?  I think he'll wrap his arms around me and say, "Will, you're here.  Yes, it was worth it."  That's what he'll say to you too.

Judas--My Brother

Tradition has it that Judas betrayed Jesus on Wednesday.  The Bible doesn't say it was Wednesday.  The Bible doesn't say it wasn't Wednesday.  Whatever.

I have fasted on Wednesdays for decades now.  Nothing extreme--just no food between midnight and noon.  When any discomfort comes on me, I remember to stop and pray.  It's been a good exercise.

Please understand--God doesn't command this.  Nor am I ingratiating myself to Him.  Any good parent understands God does not enjoy watching His children's discomfort.  I do this for me.  It is a religious exercise that reminds me how great a price was paid for me, how valuable I am to God. 

In the past several years, it has also brought me closer to humanity.

We believe Jesus died for sins, and if I had been the only one ever to have sinned, Jesus would have done it all for me.  Guess what!  If I had been the only sinner, I would have had to be the one to kill him!

And when Judas went to the Sanhedrin, he set in motion a series of events that has bought Eternal Life for me.  Brothers and Sisters, Friends and Family, Judas was my agent.  He acted on my behalf.

How can I despise him?  I wish he had repented before he died.  I can't believe Jesus would have put somebody worthless in His Inner Circle.  It seems to me that God had to find a Paul to replace Judas.  What if Judas had repented, and had gone on to be the peripatetic Apostle to the Gentiles?  What a story of grace that would have been!

No more can I despise any other sinner, even though their betrayal of Jesus is different from mine.  We are Family, Brother and Sister Sinners.  No murderer, no child abuser, no sex offender, no matter  how heinous or despicable the crime, no one is beneath me.  "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."  (Romans 3:23)  If I desire the damnation of anyone, how can I pray for my own forgiveness? 

Who is the worst sinner you can imagine?  Hitler?  Stalin?  Torquemada?  Jesus loved each one of them.  Jesus died for each one of them.  When God created each of them, just like He did for us, he was proud, and he had big BIG plans for them.  Not even a mother weeping at the news her child has been executed can know the bottomless grief God feels for all the babies he sent into the world just chock-full of gifts and graces, who used all those gifts and graces for evil.

One morning before sunrise I was driving to work and a car passed me recklessly.  I mumbled something that included the word "idiot".  Then I realized the idiotic things I had done in my rush to get out that very morning, and I realized that offensive driver was my Fellow Idiot.  We are idiots together.

Suddenly I felt solidarity with all sinners of all times and all places.  I wanted to spread my arms wide and embrace them all.

Then, in the next instant, I realized that's exactly what Jesus did when He spread His arms to be nailed to the cross.  He embraced us all, all of us sinners.

When we of the more liturgical Christian traditions receive Holy Communion, we pray a prayer of confession.  The one we use most commonly in my church says:

Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart.  We have failed to be an obedient people.  We have not done your will, we have broken Your law, we have rebelled against Your love, we have not loved our neighbor, and we have not heard the cry of the needy.

A good Methodist was once heard to proclaim, "Why should I have to pray that prayer every time?  I haven't done all that!"

Maybe you haven't, my precious Sister.  But We have. Maybe I'm not guilty of all that, but We are.

We are the Church.  We are the Church together.  Sinners united, saved by Grace.  One in the Spirit.  One in the Lord.

Thanks be to God, through the unbelievable gift of Jesus Christ, who with His dying breath prayed for forgiveness for Judas, for Annas and Caiaphas, for Pilate, for the Roman soldiers who crucified him!  And for me!

The Self-confidence Formula: Third

Third:  I know, through the principal of autosuggestion, that any desire I persistently hold in my mind will eventually seek expression through some practical means of obtaining the object back of it; therefore I will devote ten minutes daily to demanding of myself the development of self-confidence.(Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich)

In his book The Dreamgiver, Bruce Wilkinson says God gives each of us a dream at birth, that the dream doesn't belong to me, it is God's, I am merely the steward of the dream; and that, if I don't follow my dream, others will suffer.  I am now convinced this is true. 

God put in each of us a unique combination of gifts and graces, and he placed each of us where he placed us, and exactly when, not for a reason, but for a host of reasons.

You are God's gift to the world.

Each one of us is.

When any of us fails to achieve our dreams, something God wants for the world doesn't come to fruition.  If people don't suffer, they don't prosper as they should.  And frequently, people suffer.

You are that important to the world.  And your refusing to believe it isn't "humble".  It's shirking your duty.  It's abdicating your responsibility.  And it's short-circuiting your own greatest happiness.

So self-confidence isn't optional. It's necessary. We will never be of any use to anyone before we believe in our abilities.

This is where I think Satan has his greatest triumph:  in convincing us that we are no one of any significance, that nothing we ever do will make any difference, that the world would be no better off without us.  I think this is behind teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, obesity, a host of evils.  I think all of these things grow out of our failure to recognize ourselves for what we are:  nascent Children of God, royalty beyond anything the House of Windsor will ever reach, greater than all the greatest kings, emperors, caesars, czars, presidents, prime ministers, popes, prefects, patriarchs, premieres combined will ever be.

I demand of myself the development of self-confidence.

I'm not 100% sure what that means.  I don't really know how to do that.   But I have learned, from the few times I have acted, that when you really get into a part, you can become that part. 

I know what self-confidence looks like.  Self-confidence looks others squarely and forthrightly in the eyes.  Self confidence stands tall and erect.  Self confidence moves deliberately, and not too fast.  Self confidence speaks firmly, slowly enough to be understand, never shrilly.  I can do that.  I will do that.  I must do that.  The dream God has given me is so huge and so important and so necessary, the world suffers so without it, for the sake of the world, I demand of myself the development of self-confidence!

The Self-confidence Formula: Second

Second:  I realize the dominating thoughts of my mind will eventually reproduce themselves in outward, physical action, and gradually transform themselves into physical reality; therefore, I will concentrate my thoughts for thirty minutes daily, upon the task of thinking of the person I intend to become, thereby creating, in my mind, a clear, mental picture.  (Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, p. 46)

One of my favorite quotes is from the Prophet Muhammad:  "The most excellent jihad is that for the conquest of self."  I quote it because it's right, it's true, it's wise.  There is no greater struggle, none more difficult, and none more necessary!  The closer you come to that conquest, the easier EVERYTHING else is.  If you go easy on yourself, everything else will beat you up and take your lunch money.

Let me state a powerful, powerful corollary of this truth:    Self-indulgence is suicide.

When I was in seminary, it was a popular thing to ask stressed people, "What are you doing to take care of yourself?"  I used to answer that question with fun things I would do, things I would do to give myself a break.  And these are necessary, like salt.  But, like salt, overdone, they are poison!  Face it:  anything in life too far out of balance is poison.  And to live for self-indulgence is to take pleasure in your own slow dying. 

But a few years later, I learned a powerful lesson.  My wife was in her first years as Director of the Wesley Foundation at Georgia State University.  They were building a new building and moving Student Services into it.  One of the women there, who was greatly responsible for the move, and under a lot of stress, began to lose a lot of weight.  Winnie was worried about her, afraid the strain was hurting her.  The truth, however, was that this woman, under such a strain, chose to take control of one important area of her life:  her weight.  Her response to strain was to tighten up on her self-indulgence, and give herself the gift of a healthier body.  Now, she knew how to take care of herself!

When you have mastered yourself, you can master virtually anything.  When you have mastered yourself, then and only then can you really enjoy yourself.  You'll never find real pleasure in self-indulgence.  That is the artificial kind.

Real pleasure comes with excellence, with accomplishment, with achievement.  And that comes with self-control, self-mastery.

God has given you the godlike power to create yourself, and to recreate yourself.  You can make yourself into what you want to be.  But it will only take place with great desire, great effort, and probably a great deal of time!  It takes self-talk.  Self-hypnosis.  Saying it aloud, over and over and over again, until you convince yourself.  It takes a "clear, concise mental picture", a picture you hold up before your own eyes until it sparks an intense flame of desire within you, a desire that overwhelms all opposition, almost all of which will come from within yourself!

Or you can be ordinary, just like everybody else.

Is that what you want?

To Unscrew the Inscrutable

IMPORTANT:  Read Psalm 25:1-10; Genesis 9:8-17; I Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15 before you read another word!

I call the Bible my first love.  I loved the Bible before I loved the Lord.  I went to seminary, not because I wanted to serve God or anyone else; I went to seminary because I wanted to learn the Bible!  Now I consider myself somewhat expert in the subject. 

But that passage in I Peter beats the living daylights out of me!  I don't know what it's talking about!  I've heard many, many interpretations.  This transition from "suffered in the flesh" to "preached to spirits in prison" to "hence prefigures baptism" is something I've never been able to work through.  But that's okay.  I know God.  I know his love.  I know his power.  I know how imcomprehensibly magnificent he is.

What do you suppose happens when an infinite God touches a finite world?  Incomprehensibility, that's what!  Logically indefensibile paradox!  Theologians have wasted forests of paper and rivers of ink trying to define the indefinable, "unscrew the inscrutable".  For instance, God.  One God, three Persons.  Hmm.  Okay.  Which is it?  Is God one or is God three?

The answer is Yes.

Jesus.  Is he human, or is he divine?  Yes.

When we break the bread and serve the wine in the Lord's Supper, what really happens?  Children receive and comprehend the truth.  Theologians stutter and gasp. 

The Flood Narrative begins with another of those mysteries I find inscrutable. 

¹When the human race began to multiply on the face of the ground, daughters were born to them. ²The sons of the gods [literal Hebrew] saw how lovely the daughters of humanity were, and they took all they desired for wives. ³Then the Lord said, "My Spirit will not put up with humanity forever..." (Genesis 6:1-3a, my translation)

Any of you who wish to explain this to me, please do.  While you're about it, have a go at explaining why the angel of the Lord decided to kill Moses when he decided to accept the mission to free the people from Egypt.  Miriam saw  her husband lying on the floor of the tent, dying, so she reasonably circumcised their baby son, threw the bloody foreskin at Moses' feet, and the angel of the Lord quit killing him.  "Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said. (Exodus 4:24-26.  Look it up!)  Then you can ease my mind on Jacob's wrestling match at Peniel (Penuel?  Genesis 32:22-32).  For that matter, Balaam begs God's permission to go see what King Balak, God finally says, "Okay, go ahead", then God changes his mind and decides to kill Balaam for going (Numbers 22:1-...Aaah, read the whole chapter!  It'll be good for you.  Read the next two chapters and get the whole story).

ANYWAY, the Flood.  For centuries scholars have tried to debunk it.  My favorite piece of evidence is that virtually ancient civilization has a narrative of a flood that wipes out the world, except for a few survivors.  The multitude of legends proves it never really happened, right?  (How's that again?)

One Hebraic conception of pre-Creation chaos is that the universe is water, endless water.  God has in effect created a bubble (the firmament) in all that, with land and water at its bottom and the sky at its top.  The Flood wasn't just a huge, heavy, too-long rainstorm.  "In the 601st year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that very day the fountains of the great deep were cleft open, and the windows of heaven were opened" (Genesis 7:11).  The water fell from the sky and erupted from the ground.  It must have been terrifying to the people, a return to the chaos God found "in the beginning" (Genesis 1:1).  It must have seemed as if God were uncreating everything, just erasing what he had done.

 When I read this week's gospel lection, I asked my wife, "Why did Jesus have to be baptized?"  Wisely, she said, "What are you talking about?  Do you mean why did Jesus have to be baptized, or why do we have to be baptized?"  Well, I meant Jesus, but I was open to going from there to us.  The most frequent answer is he did it because we must, he took our sin on himself.  He had his own personal flood experience, his annihilation with water, as it were (Not half bad as a Pauline definition of baptism, by the way--Romans 6:1-11).

Okay, but immediately after his baptism, the Spirit led him into the deadly Judean wilderness to fast for forty days.  I'm a good Wesleyan, and, like John Wesley, I approve of fasting.  I do it myself, on a small scale, regularly.  But why 40 days?  Doesn't that seem a bit extreme?  And only after such a death-defying trial, and only after the news of the arrest of John the Baptist, does he begin to preach.

Mystery upon mystery.  Unanswered question.  What's going on here?

Maybe we may find a hint of the answer in one of those wonderful products of Hollywood that so subtly, so deftly, show us pieces of eternal truth?  There is one that may suggest an answer, a grand epic, a classic, exalted and praised almost universally.  Perhaps you've heard of it?  "The Karate Kid"?

Daniel-san wants to learn karate, and Mr. Miyagi agrees to teach him.  How do his lessons begin?  "Sand-a porch!"  "Wax on!  Wax off!"  "Paint-a fence!"  Hour after hour, every weekend until, in disgust, Daniel angrily confronts Miyagi, feeling discouraged, exploited, maybe a little stupid. 

Has your life left you feeling that, ever?  Mine has.  It does, once in a while.

But how did it end up?  Miyagi showed Daniel that the motions he had had him repeat ad nauseam were the very moves he needed to master karate.

What if the inexplicables of our lives are the very things we need to become all God wants us to be?  What if the things that make no sense, the things that  hurt, the things that burden are the gateways to strength, to accomplishment, to freedom, to the Kingdom of God?

In the last couple of decades, I've become convinced we aren't going to spend eternity sitting on our angelic rear ends growing spiritually fat on spiritual food.  Jesus said "My father works and I work."  God's a working guy.  Work isn't a curse.  Futile toil is a curse.  Work is a blessing.  To have done something difficult, to have accomplished something that took everything we had to give, to stand back and see what you have done--THAT is joy!  Self-indulgence is suicide, both here and in eternity.  But hearty enjoyments of the fruit of what you have done, of what you have earned, of what you have built is perhaps the greatest human fulfillment there is.  Why do you think God didn't give us a world with houses built and fields planted bulging with rich harvests?  Why do you think God set it up so that we must sow first, work first, then eat?  God wanted us to know the joy, HIS joy--the joy of being Creators. 

So I am convinced that when we enter heaven, we will enter into our true work, the work for which God created us, the perfect work, the work that will suit us perfectly, in which we will find perfect fulfillment, perfect joy, perfect peace?

And this life here is practice.  Here is where we learn to be the people God wants us to be, the people with whom he will rejoice to share eternity.  Life here is to eternity what childhood is created to be to adulthood.  Have you ever noticed that all the games children play, they are pretending to be adults?  They naturally practice, prepare, strengthen their muscles, as it were, for adulthood.  One of my seminary professors said children naturally learn, all the time; that the only way to make children stop learning is to put shoes on their feet and make them sit at desks.

Our life here is heaven practice, preparation to enter into the labor, the joyful work, ahead.  Here we begin go grow into the "likeness and image" of God.  Here the dream may start to come true.

About my second or third year of seminary, I went to visit my parents.  After a good long sleep, after a long drive, I sat with my parents at the kitchen table for hours, talking.  My mother made pot after pot of coffee and we visited.  It was the first time in my life we talked like that--not parent to child, but adult to adult.  And that was the relationship my dad and I enjoyed until he died.  It was a joy I never could have expected.

Now my daughter is 21 and brilliant.  I visit her at college, we go out and eat and talk.  People around us listen in on our conversations, conversations like most people never get to enjoy; we talk as one adult to another, and this is a joy I hope you all may know.  She is a remarkable woman.  She is like me, she is like her mother, and she is totally her own woman, with her own magnificent mind. 

What if I told you God wants something like that?  What if I said God doesn't want sheep, and he doesn't want infants, and he doesn't want slaves?  What if what God wants from us is the joy of companionship with people who have grown to be as much like him as possible?

He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords.  Who are the kings he will be King over?  You, that's who!  I don't know a gender-neutral word that carries this freight, so I have to say it this way:  Sisters and brothers, you were created to be kings.  God is waiting now for you to build the kingdom over which you are to be king.  He has made it every bit as easy as it can be, and every bit as hard as it has to be, for you, for your growth.

"God has done everything for us we could not do in order that we might be saved; God has done nothing for us we could do in order that we might be strong."

Floods and wilderness starvings, baptisms and proclaiming Gospel to the damned; inexplicable, inconceivable, incomprehensible.  Infinity touches finitude.  God becomes human and humanity now may become divine. 

Who would have thought it?  Who can explain it?

Thanks be to God!

Tears for Whitney, Tears for Me

Okay, so Whitney's dead.

For the record, I was NOT her number one fan. 

Okay, so she was both beautiful and almost heartbreakingly cute, with that supernova smile and that sweet little girl's nose that could crinkle and bring in the spring thaw all by itself. 

Okay, so she had a three-octave range and was every bit as brilliant at the low end as she was at the high.

Okay, so she could sell a song like almost nobody else you ever saw.

I enjoyed her, when I happened upon her performing.  I didn't go out of my way to see her, but I always enjoyed her when I did.

Scratch that--I wasn't going to watch that horrid reality show on a bet.  I saw the commercials, and I did NOT want to see Whitney portrayed like that.  Though I wasn't her number one fan.

I can't keep the tears out of my eyes today. 

Because Whitney's dead.

And the world is just that much less beautiful today.  There is not enough beauty, for the eyes or for the ears.  Whitney looked as beautiful as she sounded.  There aren't nearly enough beautiful singers.  There's not nearly enough beautiful anything.

I don't know what the coroner's report will say.  But, like everybody else who knows anything about her story, I expect it will say something about how drugs and alcohol had weakened something or other.  If she hadn't done those things, she would still be with us.  Unintentionally, but truly, she killed herself.  She stole from us.  She stole herself from us.  Just like Elvis and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and Mama Cass and John Belushi, she robbed us.

There is not enough beauty in the world.  And there is too much pain, and too much evil.

Whitney wasn't evil.  She was beautiful.  And she was in pain.  Self-medicated.

Like me.  Only I eat--my drug of choice.  I've gotten so fat my chest tingles where the huge fat gut intersects my lower ribs.  It will kill me as surely as that illustrious roll call above were killed.  I don't know their pressures and their pains.  But I know mine.  And right now there is a jar of lightly-salted dry roasted peanuts I can't keep my hand out of.  Because one handful of peanuts won't make that much of a difference, right?

Is that why I can't keep the tears out of my eyes?  Because Whitney was a fellow addict?

Have I lost a sister?

Maybe we all have.

Recquiescat in pacem, Whitney Elizabeth.  You made the world better.