This policy only applies to you.

In our country, we are fortunate to believe in freedom of expression and freedom of religion. The United Kingdom has similar views about this issue.

Here is an article I found from the UK that illustrates the way some people look at these freedoms there.

The article is the story of Shirley Chaplin, a nurse with the National Health Services in Exeter. Shirley is a Christian believer and has worn a cross since her confirmation nearly 40 years ago. Her employer has decided that she is not allowed to wear a cross to work because it is a religious symbol and religious and cultural symbols are not allowed within the uniform policy.

On the other hand, if you happen to wear a hijab for religious reasons, that is perfectly acceptable.

Read this brief article for some more details and a brief discussion on whether or not the hijab is required for those that practice Islam.

Parental Legacy Tip #2

Parental Legacy Tip #2
Rev. James T. Allerton

As promised, here is the second of the weekly Parental Legacy Tips.

Someone once gave me the advice that sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is sleep. Diane and I went out for a jog at the park today and forced our kids to join us with their bikes, followed by all of us doing some circuit exercises together. While we were there, I thought I would extrapolate the sleep advice to other physical aspects.

So, sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is to take care of yourself physically. And sometimes one of the best spiritual legacies you can leave your kids is to teach them to take care of themselves physically. Being in reasonably good health helps regulate your emotions and gives you increased energy to do the things we are called upon to do.

Here are some areas we try to look at:

Sleep. Getting proper rest makes a huge difference in the emotional state of our house and when even one of us doesn't get enough, it changes the whole household atmosphere.
How does Poor Richard put it? "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Exercise. Being fit gives us more energy, stamina and the endorphins that come from a good workout make us happier...in a natural way.
Since I started with a quote for sleep, here is one for exercise: "Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness. ~Edward Stanley

Diet. With the abundance of fast food, over processed convenience foods and junk food, it is getting easier and easier to neglect a good diet. We've found that eating better helps our attitudes, energy and the whole household atmosphere.
And again by this Edward guy, “Those who think they have no time for healthy eating, will sooner or later have to find time for illness.” – Edward Stanley

If you are anything like our family, some of the bad habits we have are years in the making. Sometimes we have to celebrate the smallest of steps to keep us on the right track. But, teaching our kids to take care of the vessel that God has given them is something that will stay with them for a lifetime.

Hope this helps in some small way.

Incongruous???

I know it is a while since this one came out, but Diane and I went to see The Book of Eli last night. The thing is, we can go out to the theater and pay a total of three bucks rather than twenty. And, once the movie gets going, we hardly notice that the theater is not quite as nice.

The Book of Eli, starring Denzel, is about a man in a Post-Apocalyptic world who was led by God to the last Bible in the world and told to take it out west. The movie mainly deals with his trying to protect it from a creepy leader of a gang of bullies that wants the book so he can find the right words to dominate even more people.

The movie does bring up some interesting thoughts and ideas about living in a culture that has primarily "lost" the Bible (with the older generations having a memory of it, and the younger being totally clueless) and the power the words within have, but I will deal with a different issue for a moment.

I have heard some speculate that the movie would not play well with a religious audience, due to the level of violence. Granted, the violence is disturbing and brutal. And, thankfully, I don't think it is God's will that we go around hacking one another to bits and blowing holes through people and that sort of thing. But, there have been and are times when warriors are needed to fight on behalf of those that can't, against those that want to take what does not belong to them.

The Bible does have numerous examples of men that did this. Here are some of the exploits of a few of David's (the same David that chopped off Goliath's head with his own sword) men from 2 Samuel 23:

- Josheb-Basshebeth...raised his spear against eight hundred men, whom he killed in one encounter(whether he was alone or with his men, I do not know).

- Next to him was Eleazar son of Dodai the Ahohite. As one of the three mighty men, he was with David when they taunted the Philistines gathered at Pas Dammim for battle. Then the men of Israel retreated, but he stood his ground and struck down the Philistines till his hand grew tired and froze to the sword. The LORD brought about a great victory that day. The troops returned to Eleazar, but only to strip the dead.

Next to him was Shammah son of Agee the Hararite. When the Philistines banded together at a place where there was a field full of lentils, Israel's troops fled from them. But Shammah took his stand in the middle of the field. He defended it and struck the Philistines down, and the LORD brought about a great victory.

- Abishai the brother of Joab son of Zeruiah was chief of the Three. He raised his spear against three hundred men, whom he killed...

- Benaiah son of Jehoiada was a valiant fighter from Kabzeel, who performed great exploits. He struck down two of Moab's best men. He also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion. And he struck down a huge Egyptian. Although the Egyptian had a spear in his hand, Benaiah went against him with a club. He snatched the spear from the Egyptian's hand and killed him with his own spear.

I appreciated some of the issues that the Book of Eli brought up, including the ones I mentioned. It might be surprising that in a kind of God-Fearing-Mad-Max-Movie you would be asked to face thoughts about what would happen in a world where the scripture was lost, what would lead people to want to get rid of it and the power of the words within. But then, I suppose good art always leads us to face deeper thoughts.

Cracked Pots Next Door

Our neighborhood here in Tucson is a bit different than our neighborhood in Sacramento was. When we first moved here, we threw ourselves a welcome us to the neighborhood party, since it seemed clear that the other neighbors weren't going to bring baskets of fruit or plates of cookies. At the party, many of the neighbors were introducing themselves to one another, since they apparently had never done so.

In our Sacramento neighborhood, pretty much everyone knew everyone and kept up on each others lives and tried to help out when someone else needed it. I know this might annoy some people and seem to Leave It To Beaverish for some, but it I really do think it is better to know your neighbors and to look out for one another's property and keep up with their lives.

We are starting to make some progress around here tho. Last week, one of our neighbors came and whacked down a tree for us with his chain saw. Diane was working on it with a hand saw and the neighbor's wife thought that he should offer his services and his saw. While he was cutting it down, Diane wondered if I didn't feel guilty that he was doing the work for me. They probably asked Tom Sawyer the same thing when he gave all the kids in town a chance to help out with whitewashing his fence. No, I didn't feel guilty. I was glad to give the neighbors a chance to be neighborly.

Here is an article about some of the exploits of the son of one of our other neighbors. He made a remarkable discovery of some Sinagua pottery several years back. Sinagua is a name given to a tribe that floated around Northern Arizona and disappeared some 600 years ago. The pottery he found was perfectly preserved and quite large, one being three feet in diameter and the others holding twenty gallons each. Check out this article for some more info about the find and why they named it after his brother Tim, that passed away shortly before the find.

I know that we are more likely than not to ignore those that live closest to us, unless they are too noisy and we need to call the cops. But I think you should find out a little more about your neighbors anyway.

Friday with Jay

I took a couple of buddies from work to the Good Friday Breakfast this morning. The speaker this year was Jay Dobyns, the guy who went undercover with the ATF to infiltrate the Hell's Angels.

Jay shared some stories and advised that we avoid some of the mistakes he made. A couple of those mistakes were coming to the realization that he had put his relationship with God on the back-burner (which came when he was spurting blood onto the ground from a bullet hole) and realizing that he had neglected his family, friends and peers in pursuit of his mission, leaving a wake of destruction behind him.

He also shared about his life-changing involvement with Heartbeat for Africa, so my post would be remiss if I didn't encourage you to check them out here.

So, while none of us stood up when they tried to get all the cops and prior military to stand up and be prayed at, we still enjoyed the breakfast and were encouraged and challenged by Jay's message.

Thanks for joining us Jay!

And here is a video intro to his book, No Angel.......

Crisis in Copperopolis

I know it sounds like the name of some town in a Dr. Suess book, but it really is the name of a fine little town in Northern California.

When we are planning on departing from Sacramento, I threw my hat into the ring for a Church that needed a new Pastor in this town.

Things were going along wellas they described some of the challenges they were having and I told them about myself and my family. They found that my resume and my experience was just what they were looking for at their Church.I sent them some cd's of some of my recent sermon's and they absolutely loved them. One of the guys told me that he felt like he already knew us.

But, he didn't know me well enough.

The Church had recently had a split and it revolved around something very silly. You see, a few years ago they had bought into a plan to be a "Purpose Driven Church". The P.D.C. was a Rick Warren book that he wrote several years before the Purpose Driven Life. In it, he described how a church should focus on five basic biblical purposes. It is a great book with great principles the Warren and Saddleback Church to grow huge and affect thousands of lives.

The Church in Copperopolis had used the principles in this book to anger half their crowd and drive people away. From what they described to me, it was easy to see that this was an ongoing problem. The people that remained were convinced that they had to do all in the book right now, or they weren't fulfilling their purpose a s a Church.

When I had my first phone call with the group of them, I told them that they were going to continue to go down the tubes as long as they were adamant that the most important thing was to dance to the tune they had been dancing to all along.

Once I explained this to them, it pretty much ended the conversation. I think they immediately lumped me in with all the critics that had already left their Church. I could feel the tension palpably when I spoke the words.

So, I never went to Copperopolis. It did have kind of a cool name.

Parental Legacy Tip #1

Parental Legacy Tip #1
Rev. James T. Allerton

I recently took on the challenge of leading the Kid's Club at our local Congregation. As a part of this role, I thought I would throw out some tips, thoughts, insights, struggles and the like on building a spiritual legacy for our children. About once a week I will post a Parental Legacy Tip for the parents of the Club Mac kids. The rest of you that read my posts regularly are welcome along for this added on ride.

This week, I gave the kids some bibles from my collection of give away bibles. Some of the kids were pretty excited, wondering how you find some of the stories we have talked about, if they could write in the bible and why there were so many psalms. Afterward, one of the parents told me that they would encourage their children to read them. Then, I began to think about how they would go about doing that.

One of the best ways I have found to get children interested in being interested in the things that they should develop an interest in is to let them see us having an interest in it. If we tell them they they need to be reading their bible, but they see that we always put it aside for other pursuits, then it will be meaningless to them. The same is true for other things.

Yes, we will still have to make them do the things they ought to be doing. We still have to send Ethan off to read his bible lessons before he can do other things. But, his interest is growing because he see us interested in this too.

You may not see results immediately in their lives, but we are going for a long term legacy. It will happen.

Hope this helps in some small way.