Twins and tornadoes

Two very different kinds of waiting at the same time. Anticipation, apprehension. Happy face and worry face.

At six this morning, a text from “Son of my Right Hand”: “Today’s the day! Please pray.” He and his wife were headed to the hospital for the birth of  their twins. 

I texted his sister, our daughter “Honey” in Edmond, Oklahoma. No response. Texted again a couple of hours later. Nothing. Then I remembered Honey had written us last night, something about a tornado in Edmond,  but since she added “We’re fine,” I had thought no more about it.

Was her silence storm-related? Had her cell phone been funneled away? Or, more realistically, were Honey, Mr. Honey and Little Honey sitting in an underground shelter somewhere, a shelter with no cell signal? And which shelter? Had they finished the one they were having built under their driveway? The 104-year old woman across the street who had let them use her shelter for 16 years had moved into a nursing home and sold her house. The Honeys didn’t have huddling privileges in that shelter anymore.

I checked weather.com and sure enough the whole state of Oklahoma was an angry red smudge with the word SEVERE written across it. I finally called our daughter and she answered the phone breathless. “Oh, hi Mom. Sorry I didn’t answer your texts this morning. I was scrubbing the bathroom with bleach in case people needed to use it during the tornado. I dreamed last night that they did.”

So that’s what people in Oklahoma do between twisters. They bleach their bathrooms.

The family had finished their shelter just in time, she said cheerfully. They’d needed it last night to sit out “the closest one ever” in their 16 years in Edmond. This one was only 5 minutes away. “It was pretty scary,” Honey said. “It started small here but it grew and did a lot of damage in other parts of the state.”

Today she had to go turn in the paperwork for the shelter. “It’s not official till the paperwork’s done–and there’s nothing like a tornado to get the paperwork done.” All day they were bracing for the possibility of more tornadoes and she had to pick Little Honey up early from school when a new storm rolled in. Meanwhile there was significant devastation in Moore, the city south of them.

–

Little Shavers 1 and 2, the pink one and the blue one, were born around noon. Babies and parental units are all well. I enjoyed ordering an arrangement of pink lilies and light blue hydrangeas sent to the hospital.

Welcome to twinhood: My nephew in Texas, who has twin grandsons (with Aspergers), responded to the news of the births with, “Yay! Twins are 4 times as fun! One of our twins swallowed a battery this morning. Love and congrats.”

Twins. Does the whole family need to be bracing for two tornadoes?

NOTE: In light of the devastation and deaths in Oklahoma City and Moore–deaths that included 20 children the age of our granddaughter Little Honey–my small attempt at levity is inappropriate. Forgive me.

Rebecca Hamilton: What’s so bad about Gosnell? Part 2

It’s a matter of timing, not killing. 

No one questioned that Dr Kermit Gosnell had killed a lot of babies. After all, that was his business. He killed babies for a living. And he made a killing at killing. According to some reports, Dr Gosnell made millions from killing babies.

That was never the issue. Because killing babies is not a crime. The crime is where and when you kill them. The issue, the fine point that both the defense and the prosecution wrangled over day after day for weeks, was whether or not Dr Gosnell killed the babies after they were outside their mother’s bodies, or before.

Doctors routinely chop babies up when they are inside their mother’s wombs. I could put a YouTube video right here of a doctor dismembering a baby and pulling its body parts out and tossing them in a tray. Happens all the time. Happens every day.

Every. Single. Day.

The difference is when the mother delays killing her baby until the child is big enough that it’s no longer possible to chop it up inside the womb and then extract the dismembered body a piece at a time. There comes a point where it’s difficult to get that big baby out without also delivering a living child.

Abortionists go through all sorts of medical contortions to make sure that the baby is dead when they get it out. One of their favs is to jab a needle through the mother’s abdomen and shoot poison into the little one’s beating heart. If the dosage is adequate and their aim is good, the baby dies. They can then put the mother through labor and delivery of a dead child. Ta da. Dead baby and no courtroom drama to follow.

Another practice is to induce labor with such violent contractions that the contractions kill the child as it’s being born. Not so neat. And certainly a big ouch for the mother. But another ta da. Dead baby and no need to hire a defense attorney.

There are other ways, of course. One is to shoot saline solution into the mother’s womb (again, that nasty needle through the abdomen) and scald the baby to death. Then, of course, induce labor and deliver a dead child. Ta. Da. Dead baby and no visits from the police.

Of course, things get dicey when one of these tragic potions fails and a live child comes out of the abortion process. That’s when the question of timing becomes pertinent. 

As Gosnell’s defense demonstrated, it doesn’t matter that Dr Gosnell killed children. All that matters is when he did it. Their whole defense rested on the contention that the good doctor had managed to kill each of these babies while it was still inside mama’s womb. His grisly practice of using scissors to sever their spinal cords afterwards was just a bit of — excuse the word — overkill.

They were successful enough with this defense to get several charges dismissed and to have the jury find the doc not guilty on another charge. In other words, it worked. Fortunately for justice lovers the world over, it didn’t work completely. The jury evidently decided that Dr Gosnell had not killed all the babies before getting them out. Three of them managed to survive the abortion. Killing them then made it murder. 

Five minutes before, it would have been good medicine. 

Dr Kenneth Edelin

Dr Gosnell is not the first abortionist to get hung up on this quibbling technicality of when they kill the baby. Dr Kenneth Edelin and his colleague tried to abort a baby that was around 20-24 weeks back in 1973. First, his colleague used the then-standard process of injecting saline into the mother’s womb. When the baby survived that, Dr Edelin tried what is called a hysterotomy, which involves cutting the mother open and then running his finger between the baby and the placenta, severing its lifeline. In theory, the baby smothers and dies and we have another ta da. Dead baby and no legal troubles for doctor.

In this instance, prosecutors maintained that Dr Edelin failed to kill the child again. He ended up smothering it after it was born.

Instead of a ta da, Dr Edelin had to go to court, where he was convicted. His conviction was subsequently overturned, based largely on claims that the baby was “not viable” anyway.

That overturned conviction, based as it was on the question of viability, set the stage for 40 years of slaughter of late-term babies.

The prosecution achieved a first in the Gosnell case. They got a jury to acknowledge that what Dr Gosnell had been killing were human beings. A first degree murder conviction is only possible if people are killed. You can not be charged, much less convicted, of first degree murder for killing chickens or pigs or goats. First degree murder requires that a human being deliberately and with premeditation kills another human being.

That’s what Dr Gosnell was charged with and it’s what the jury convicted him of doing.

That’s a big win.

But it still begs the question: If these babies were human beings when Gosnell killed them, why were the other babies for whom charges were dismissed, not human beings?

Let’s examine this contention. The babies who were “already dead when they were born” had been killed by Dr Gosnell. Not one person disputes this. But because they were killed a few minutes earlier in their lives than the other babies, their deaths don’t matter. They are non-human thingies that anyone can kill for any reason or no reason at any time.

But, 15 minutes later, they are full-fledged human beings and killing them is premeditated, first-degree murder that is liable to earn their murderer the death penalty.

In both the case of Dr Edelin in 1973 and Dr Gosnell in 2013, the legality of using timing to determine humanity is insane. There is no logic or explanation that can make it seem sane to any thinking person. 

Yet that is the law we live by. It is the law these babies died by. 

We have made murder a “right,” and we are, every single day, reaping the whirlwind that comes from that.

So, the question arises. If it’s only a matter of timing, what’s so bad about Gosnell?

–

(Re-posted from “Public Catholic” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/publiccatholic/2013/05/part-2-whats-so-bad-about-gosnell/  by Rebecca Hamilton, May 16, 2013.)

Rebecca Hamilton: What’s so bad about Gosnell? Part 1

Remember this? This video is from this legislative session in Florida. It reflects the current attitude of Planned Parenthood concerning babies who are born alive during late-term abortions. That’s the same Planned Parenthood we seeing throwing Dr Kermit Gosnell under the bus and condemning the very practices they paid a lobbyist to protect just a few weeks ago. I’ve written that Dr Gosnell is the monster pro choice built. Actions like the one in this video are how they built him. Dr Gosnell only did what this lobbyist was working to protect. He was the physician. His patient had already voted that the baby should die by coming to him for his services. The Planned Parenthood lobbyist’s contention that the “decision” of what to do with a baby born alive during abortion “should be left up to the woman, her family and the physician,” was pretty well covered; the lobbyist’s oddball insertion of “her family” into the decision-making process notwithstanding. So, what’s so bad about Gosnell?

(Re-posted from Public Catholic http://www.patheos.com/blogs/publiccatholic/2013/05/part-1-whats-so-bad-about-gosnell/ by Rebecca Hamilton, May 15, 2013.)

Behind FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds

The interior of a humerus bone from the wing of a white pelican magnified 100X by a Scanning Electron Microscope.

One of the delights of being allowed “backstage” during the filming of FLIGHT was the progress reports sent to us every couple of months from Producer Lad Allen.

Last October he shared that a pelican’s bone “looks like a cavern laced with arching beams. This architecture is no accident. Instead it serves a vital purpose. White pelicans are large birds and magnificent flyers. A key component of their success in the air is a skeleton that is both strong and light weight–especially the bones in the wings.

“The majority of the bone is hollow (that certainly takes care of the weight requirement). But, the stress inflicted by soaring and flapping would snap a wing bone filled with nothing but air. That’s where the ‘beams’ come in.

“A pelican’s bones contain a network of narrow struts. They work like trusses in a bridge to strengthen the bones most required for flight (it’s the same basic design medieval architects used to support the ceilings in their massive stone cathedrals). The entire skeleton of a 20-pound adult pelican weighs about 20 ounces.”

In April he wrote, “A project like this is really a massive jigsaw puzzle. You start out with a general idea of the story you want to tell. Then you spend months collecting all the pieces needed to bring that story to life.” He described how Google, Facebook and SKYPE enabled the team to discover, consult and receive “extraordinary cooperation from photographers and scientists I’d never met in Greenland, Denmark, and Florida. . .  It was a puzzle with pieces that came together from all over the world. Pieces I never even knew existed when we first decided to produce this film. . . . Almost like some supernatural intelligence was guiding and directing us every step of the way.“

These connections enabled the team to film stunning sequences such as the dexterity of hummingbirds in flight (and the dexterity and detail of their tongues gathering nectar) and the choreographed patterns of  “murmurations” of starlings sweeping across an English countryside.

An Arctic tern in flight at Potter Marsh near Anchorage, Alaska.

I liked when Lad shared his own emotions as he and photographer Jerry Harned traveled to southern Alaska last June in search of the champion long-distance traveler of the entire animal kingdom–the Arctic tern. Each year, these terns migrate from the Arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America to the South Pole, and back again. In the process they journey more than 30,000 miles. Some terns live for 25 years. That means, in its lifetime, the bird can travel a distance equal to three round-trips to the moon.

“We arrived in Anchorage about 2:30 A.M.,” Lad wrote. “When we got to the hotel, I was too excited to sleep. I knew we were within 15 miles of where Arctic terns laid their eggs and raised their young during the early summer. I took the camera and the directions I had received from a park ranger and set out for Potter Marsh.

“As I was driving, I remember thinking, ‘what if the terns aren’t there!’ Nothing is certain when you’re working with wildlife. Finally, I stopped the car in the turnout circled on my map. It was about 5:00 A.M. and I hadn’t slept for 24 hours, but I couldn’t have been more wide-awake. I bolted out the door and immediately saw hundreds of gulls, geese, and ducks. Very nice birds, but not what we’d traveled 2000 miles to photograph.

“Then I heard a distinctive, high-pitched call. I quickly looked up to see an Arctic tern flying right at my head (they are very protective and aggressive during egg-laying season). I jumped out of its way, then sprinted to the car to get the equipment. This was going to be a good morning.

“During the next three days, Jerry and I filmed several hours of wonderful footage. The terns are graceful in flight and equipped with spectacular vision, internal navigation systems and bio-clocks, a host of aerodynamic components absolutely essential to fly, and physical strength that must ooze out of every pore of their two-pound bodies. In short, these birds are elegant products of purpose and plan. They were designed. The story of their incredible migration will be included in Flight: The Genius of Birds. We look forward to sharing it with you.”

Lad Allen
Producer

Pictures c) 2012 Illustra Media

FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds

Today, Illustra Media‘s new DVD is being released to the general public. (BlueRay release is June 15.) We have been waiting eagerly for it, our expectations sky high because of their track record. They sent us an advance copy because we helped in a small way to make this extraordinary film possible.

Jerry, my brother Tim and I sat down the day it arrived to watch the result. It is magnificent, elegant, way cool! At the end, sitting in the seclusion of our den, the three of us applauded. Tim declared, “Barukh ata adenoi eloheinu, she kakhalo b’olamo.” (BLESS OUR LORD G-D, WHO HAS SUCH THINGS IN HIS WORLD!)

We hope your appetite will be whetted, as ours was, by this trailer. (If after seeing it, you want to help spread the word, check out https://www.go2rpi.com/E-MailSpecials/Flight-IM-Announcement-1.htm.)

Wee word study: The Veil that blinds–removed

The veil blinding the minds of Israel as a nation will be removed when they see their Messiah coming in the clouds and simultaneously realize who he is. But many individual Jews have already recognized him and as Scripture promises, “in Christ” the veil has been removed from their eyes.

I edited out parts of 2 Corinthians 3 in my last post to make a point about the existence of a veil. In the parts I deleted the former Saul, now the apostle Paul, is discussing how the veil is removed. Here is the entire passage with those parts restored and highlighted so you can read them in context:

2 Corinthians 3:7-18 NLT:⁷ The old [Mosaic] way, with laws etched in stone, led to death, though it began with such glory that the people of Israel could not bear to look at Moses’ face. For his face shone with the glory of God, even though the brightness was already fading away.

⁸ Shouldn’t we expect far greater glory under the new way, now that the Holy Spirit is giving life? ⁹ If the old way, which brings condemnation [because we can't keep the commandments], was glorious, how much more glorious is the new way, which makes us right with God! ¹⁰ In fact, that first glory was not glorious at all compared with the overwhelming glory of the new way. ¹¹ So if the old way, which has been replaced, was glorious, how much more glorious is the new, which remains forever!

¹² Since this new way gives us such confidence, we can be very bold. ¹³ We are not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so the people of Israel would not see the glory, even though it was destined to fade away. ¹⁴ But the people’s minds were hardened, and to this day whenever the old covenant is being read, the same veil covers their minds so they cannot understand the truth. And this veil can be removed only by believing in Christ. ¹⁵ Yes, even today when they read Moses’ writings, their hearts are covered with that veil, and they do not understand. ¹⁶ But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. ¹⁷ For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸ So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.”

By not recognizing Jesus, the Jews gave the rest of the world an opportunity to be saved by him. But do not think the Jews have ceased to be G-d’s people or the focus of his attention and affection. Despite the growing popularity of  the heretical “replacement theology,” G-d has not rejected them. The church has not replaced them. Soon, their Messiah will come:

Zechariah 12:10 in the Old Testament has G-d promising that in the last days (of which we are now feeling the “birth pangs”): “Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem. They will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn for him as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a firstborn son who has died.”

Revelation 1:7 in the New Testament echoes this promise: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.”

When they see him coming in the clouds and recognize him, the blindness, hardness and veil will fall away. Then, as Romans 11:26 promises, “All Israel will be saved.”

–

In the 11th chapter of the book of Romans, the apostle Paul spells out what this means to Jews and to gentiles. It is such a rich passage, I am pasting it here in full:

ROMANS chapter 11 : “So I [Paul] ask, ‘Has God rejected his people Israel?’ That’s unthinkable! Consider this. I’m an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin.  God has not rejected his people whom he knew long ago. Don’t you know what Elijah says in the Scripture passage when he complains to God about Israel? He says, ‘Lord, they’ve killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I’m the only one left, and they’re trying to take my life.’ But what was God’s reply? God said, ‘I’ve kept 7,000 people for myself who have not knelt to worship Baal.’ So, as there were then, there are now a few left that God has chosen by his kindness. If they were chosen by God’s kindness, they weren’t chosen because of anything they did. Otherwise, God’s kindness wouldn’t be kindness.

“So what does all this mean? It means that Israel has never achieved what it has been striving for. However, those whom God has chosen have achieved it. The minds of the rest of Israel were closed, as Scripture says, ‘To this day God has given them a spirit of deep sleep. Their eyes don’t see, and their ears don’t hear!’ And David says, ‘Let the table set for them become a trap and a net, a snare and a punishment for them. Let their vision become clouded so that they cannot see. Let them carry back-breaking burdens forever.’

“So I ask, ‘Has Israel stumbled so badly that it can’t get up again?’ That’s unthinkable! By Israel’s failure, salvation has come to people who are not Jewish to make the Jewish people jealous. The fall of the Jewish people made the world spiritually rich. Their failure made people who are not Jewish spiritually rich. So the inclusion of Jewish people will make the world even richer. Now, I speak to you who are not Jewish. As long as I am an apostle sent to people who are not Jewish, I bring honor to my ministry. Perhaps I can make my people jealous and save some of them. If Israel’s rejection means that the world has been brought back to God, what does Israel’s acceptance mean? It means that Israel has come back to life. If the first handful of dough is holy, the whole batch of dough is holy. If the root is holy, the branches are holy.

“But some of the olive branches have been broken off, and you, a wild olive branch, have been grafted in their place. You get your nourishment from the roots of the olive tree. So don’t brag about being better than the other branches. If you brag, remember that you don’t support the root, the root supports you. ‘Well,’ you say, ‘Branches were cut off so that I could be grafted onto the tree.’ That’s right! They were broken off because they didn’t believe, but you remain on the tree because you do believe. Don’t feel arrogant, but be afraid. If God didn’t spare the natural branches, he won’t spare you, either. Look at how kind and how severe God can be. He is severe to those who fell, but kind to you if you continue to hold on to his kindness. Otherwise, you, too, will be cut off [from the tree].

“If Jewish people do not continue in their unbelief, they will be grafted onto the tree again, because God is able to do that. In spite of the fact that you have been cut from a wild olive tree, you have been grafted onto a cultivated one. So wouldn’t it be easier for these natural branches to be grafted onto the olive tree they belong to?

“Brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this mystery so that you won’t become arrogant. The minds of some Israelites have become closed until all of God’s non-Jewish people are included. In this way as Scripture says, ‘Israel as a whole will be saved. The Savior will come from Zion. He will remove godlessness from Jacob. My promise to them will be fulfilled when I take away their sins.’

“The Good News made the Jewish people enemies because of you. But by God’s choice they are loved because of their ancestors. God never changes his mind when he gives gifts or when he calls someone. In the past, you disobeyed God. But now God has been merciful to you because of the disobedience of the Jewish people. In the same way, the Jewish people have also disobeyed so that God may be merciful to them as he was to you. God has placed all people into the prison of their own disobedience so that he could be merciful to all people.

“God’s riches, wisdom, and knowledge are so deep that it is impossible to explain his decisions or to understand his ways. ‘Who knows how the Lord thinks? Who can become his adviser?’ Who gave the Lord something which the Lord must pay back?  Everything is from him and by him and for him. Glory belongs to him forever! Amen!”

 

Wee word study: The Veil that blinds

Matthew 27:24-26

Mel Gibson was so severely criticized for including in The Passion of the Christ the statement Jews made during Christ’s trial, “His blood be upon us and upon our children,” that Gibson removed that scene from the movie.

But in 33 AD Jesus’ contemporaries, gathered in Jerusalem from all over Israel for Passover, did make that chilling statement, cursing themselves and all their generations to come with the guilt of putting their Messiah to death. It is recorded in Matthew 27:24-26 (above).

This does not mean we are not all, every one of us, Jew and non-Jew alike, responsible for that death. Nor does it justify persecuting Jews for that or any other reason.

In 33 AD the Jews “did not recognize the time of their visitation” by their Messiah (Luke 19:44). They “did not accept their opportunity for salvation.” And so salvation was offered instead to the gentiles. When, through spiritual blindness, the Jews rejected their Messiah, their self-curse re-enforced this blindness on down through their generations.

The thoroughly Jewish Saul of Tarsus, “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee” (Philippians 3:5) wrote to Roman Christians,  “I want you to know my brethren, this mystery, lest you would be wise in your own opinion, that blindness of heart has for a little time come to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles will come in” (Romans 11:25, Aramaic Bible in Plain English). Many translations use the word “hardening: “a partial hardening has come upon Israel.” GOD’S WORD Translation has, “The minds of some Israelites have become closed until all of God’s non-Jewish people are included.”

Second Corinthians chapter 3 calls it a “veil.” The passage starts out describing the veil Moses put across his face whenever he came down Mt. Sinai after having been in G-d’s presence, because the light of G-d’s glory lingering on his countenance was so intense “the children of Israel could not look steadily at [it]” :

“ ⁷ The old [Mosaic] way, with laws etched in stone, led to death, though it began with such glory that the people of Israel could not bear to look at Moses’ face. For his face shone with the glory of God, even though the brightness was already fading away.

“. . . Moses. . . put a veil over his face so the people of Israel would not see the glory, even though it was destined to fade away. ¹⁴ But the people’s minds were hardened [blinded, made dull]. . .”

Their minds were blinded by the brilliance of G-d’s glory. But their minds were additionally blinded by the veil itself, preventing their seeing the glory. The passage goes on to say, “–and to this day whenever the old covenant is being read, the same veil covers their minds so they cannot understand the truth. . . ¹⁵ Yes, even today when they read Moses’ writings, their hearts are covered with that veil, and they do not understand.”

A spiritual veil covers the minds and understanding of Jews reading their own Scriptures.

Ironic.

This veil does not prevent Jews from knowing all kinds of truth and understanding all kinds of other things. It doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent, insightful people in other areas. But it blocks their ability to see or understand clearly expressed truth by which they could recognize their Messiah.

We have a friend who was in the presence of an Israeli General a few years ago. Every time she looked at him she thought something was wrong with her eyes. Then she wondered if it was something wrong with his eyes.  There seemed to be a grayness or cloudiness covering them. As she looked more closely, it seemed to be a rectangle of fog. She realized in her spirit that she was actually seeing the veil described in those passages!

(To be continued)