Movies, Advertisement and Women

by Erling Lea

Many wonder why advertisers and film-makers usually cater to women, and men are only given first consideration when sports are considered. Film and the TV industry work well together with sponsors to catch the fancy of God’s feminine aspect. Why is this so? How does this benefit these companies?

Who spends more time in malls and shopping centers, men or women? Of course, the answer is: women. And men often want to make their wives happy with nice things. In any case, our materialistic culture focuses on how to get women to shop, shop and shop again. It follows that a movie with women portrayed as powerful and bossy has more value to a sponsor than a male-oriented story like Rambo.

If you watch a football game, for example, who are the main advertisers? Beer, soda and pick-up trucks prevail. It’s pretty clear that men have more limited spending habits than women.

The production value of TV-sitcoms and movies is very much centered on women, sex, violence and exploitation. Hollywood will not even finance a film if it does not have these things in it. George Duvall’s The Apostle was financed by private sources. So some True Family Values education is sorely needed in Hollywood!

True Family Values offer a true equality to women without compromising the precious Godly femininity this world so desperately needs. Thank God for True Parents and their infinite gifts to this wayward world. 

More Unification Views

The question of responsibility looms large in our current political affairs. The president, Mr. Clinton, seems unable to take responsibility for his behavior or alleged behavior. Allegations swirl around him. If he is innocent of the accusations, taking responsibility would be to exonerate himself. If he is guilty of them, taking responsibility would be to admit the error of his ways. In either case, it would allow the ship of state to progress into the coming millennium.

Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, Mr. Clinton throws himself into a conglomeration of legal, political and media institutions and allows their inborn nature of the balance of powers to eliminate the application of any authority with regard to his judgment. In other words, Mr. Clinton becomes a ward of the state, more broadly, a ward of the culture. The chief executive becomes the chief recipient of society’s self-healing institutions. The therapeutic society is designed for this. But it is, as we all see, a failure, for it absolves anyone of responsibility for their actions.

In traditional America, a lawyer setting up shop in a town was taken to indicate that the town’s clergy had failed its mission. The phenomena of lawyers setting up shop defines our present social landscape. We occasionally read tales of outrageous litigation. Here’s another one: a woman left her horse in a neighbor’s field, without permission. She was told many times to take the horse away, but refused. One day the horse escaped the field, jumping over a low point of the fence. It caused an automobile accident nearby. The woman sued the neighbor for failing to keep up his fence. She won and the neighbor had to pay for the damages in the accident.

The real failure was the lack of community which led to such a breakdown in neighborly relations. And community is rooted in religion.

If the wisdom of traditional America is correct, and I believe it is in this instance, this state of affairs results from the failure of our religious and moral institutions. Why did they fail? In the current issue of First Things, Wilfred M. McClay approaches this question in relation to the rise of "the ideal of the autonomous self" in our culture: "Was it implicit in the nation’s very beginnings? Or did it arise out of some detour from those beginnings? If the latter, then when and where did the detour occur? If the former, then what are the implications for those of us who see that the ideal has now become pernicious and destructive?"

We would turn this question as to the failure of our moral and religious institutions as follows: were the institutions implanted at our nation’s beginnings good, and evil people abandoned them, or were the institutions flawed and deservedly discarded? In general, the conservative position, on the right, would opine that the former position is correct, and the liberal position, on the left, would choose the latter. The truth as to the cause is somewhere in-between. But the truth as to the effect, the disappearance of our moral institutions, no one disputes.

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The cause of our moral breakdown has everything to do with responsibility, because both the left and right have abandoned the tenet of responsibility. The conservative position, on the right, tends toward predestination, that all things are controlled by God. Injustice is only apparent; it is in fact decreed by God. God is sovereign and planned everything to be as it is. The liberal position, on the other hands, believes that everything is the hands of man, that nothing is pre-ordained. Both positions abrogate responsibility.

The right abrogates responsibility by assigning everything to divine determination. The left abrogates responsibility by assigning everything to social, historical and finally biological forces. A person, finally, is not responsible because his social or biological, including psychological, setting prevented him from doing other than he did.

The abdication of responsibility on the right is more subtle. In a way, it is rather abstract, the assigning of predestining power to God. To their credit, conservative actions are not consistent with this doctrine. They do call for human responsibility, for example, for homosexuals to consider their behavior a choice, not a condition. They call for those on the welfare rolls to take responsibility for their poverty, and for sex offenders to do likewise.

The abdication of responsibility on the right is more subtle but just as far-reaching. Their ultimate abdication is than man bears no responsibility for the general human condition. That’s a sweeping statement. Let me unpack it.

The conservative tradition in America proudly identifies itself with Judeo-Christianity. This tradition in general exalts human freedom and responsibility. The covenantal tradition of the Old Testament views God and man as partners. Consider Abraham’s negotiating the fate of Sodom with God, a typical instance of the relationship of the chosen people with the Lord. If you follow my commandments, sayeth the Lord, you will prosper. If you violate my commandments, you will perish. Your fate, within the principle of creation, is in your hands. And God is forbearing, "flexible" in today’s vernacular. He warns, He waits, He tries to work things out; He always gives a second chance.

The tormenting questions concern the relationship between our suffering and our responsibility before God. If God is just, and cannot protect those who violate His commandments–i.e who fail their responsibility–if we suffer, what commandment might we have violated? There are three answers. One is "narrow-minded": somewhere, somehow, you failed your responsibility and you are justly suffering. To solve your suffering, your disease, for example, the first thing is to get yourself right with God. A second is "broad-minded": let’s not jump to conclusions about this; God is mysterious and we don’t really know why or even if He is punishing us nor what our responsibility was. If you have a disease, don’t blame yourself; just go see a doctor. This tends to pull us toward the third answer: atheism.

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Christians like to posit that man is free to respond to God’s love or to reject God’s love. Here Christianity is consistent with the Torah. But this principle is hung out to dry at the two most crucial points of providential history: when Adam and Eve were in the Garden, and when Christ was on the earth.

These two points are the points of creation and re-creation of the human race. Suddenly, Christianity declares that we had no choice. We were victims. We were just doing what he had to do, what we were created to do. God knew we would do it and in fact, He wanted us to do it.

In the Garden we witness the first cover-up. In fact, human history started with a cover-up, and we’ve been covered-up ever since. What did Adam and Eve cover-up? The same thing Mr. Clinton is covering up: what they did with their lower parts. They came up with the first human invention: aprons of fig leaves. Adam said it was not his fault, that he was not responsible. The woman, he said, whom You gave me (so it’s ultimately Your fault, God); she tempted me. That’s why I ate. There’s really nothing wrong with me; it was her temptation. Likewise, the woman blamed someone else, the crummy serpent, who wriggled off to live on the dust of human veniality.

So history begins with a set of responsibility denials. But that’s not the only problem. The serious problem is that theology justifies their denial of responsibility by teaching that they had to fall, that it was no less than the will of God that they fall. Christianity is reduced to teaching that Adam and Eve followed the will of God by rejecting the commandment of God. God becomes a silly fellow who commands His children to do the opposite of what He really wants them to do.

Let’s consider the issue of responsibility in relation to the event of re-creation, the coming of Christ. Let us assume, for the sake of moral coherence, that human beings had the responsibility to follow Jesus. That is the Christian’s responsibility today, and, presumably, that was the responsibility of moral persons back then. Jesus believed this. He praised those who believed and followed him. He chastised those who persecuted and rejected him. At one point, he referred to those who did not follow him as spiritually dead ("leave the dead to bury the dead; you come and follow me").

If we follow what Jesus taught here, then, we would conclude that those who crucified him did evil, spiritually dead, and that those who protected him did good, spiritually alive. And we would assume, since Jesus did try to persuade them to do good, that they had the freedom to do good and that to be responsible was to do the right thing.

Enter "theology." The assertion that Jesus came to earth for no other reason than to die mitigates against the freedom of people to accept Christ on earth; i.e., to do that which Jesus was persuading them to do. Somehow the rules of the covenant between God and man changed during the life of Jesus, not with an abrogation of the principle that disobedience brings on a curse, but in abrogation of the principle that it is possible to obey the commandment. It was necessary that he die, therefore, it was necessary that people kill him. If it was necessary that they kill him, then they had no freedom not to, and if they had no freedom not to, then they had no responsibility to accept him. Those who executed Jesus, quite legally, were victims of their social/historical environment. There was no crime committed. Such was the sovereignty of Satan.

But theology tells us that it was a moral sin to crucify Jesus. The Gospel writers felt such; John said that "Satan entered into Judas." Jesus called upon God to forgive those who killed him. The centurion exclaimed that they had killed an innocent man. Judas threw the blood money back at the Sanhedrin and killed himself. But from the viewpoint of the predestination of his death, no one was responsible for this sin. Thus, irresponsibility is again integral to the dogmatic foundation of faith.

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I hope that at this point, all Christians would cry out, "NO! We are responsible for the crucifixion! The whole human race is responsible and thus held worthy of death and hell! This is why Jesus’ forgiveness and shedding of blood is so great, because it removes this curse from us."

To such a conscientious Christian, I would say two things. One, Jesus died for our sin, yes. But we can be more precise. He did not die for sins in general. Sins in general he could and did forgive on earth. He died for one sin and one sin only: the sin of rejecting him, the one unforgivable sin. This one sin is beyond the vernacular of "sins." It is not just another sin, such as a robbery, adultery, a murder, a lie. It is the sin by which we confirmed ourselves willfully alienated from God, because it is the sin of rejecting the holy spirit, rejecting God. Jesus came to bring in God’s Kingdom, and we failed to accept him, and he died for that. Thus he came as a judge for the human race.

Judgment came while he was on earth. Had he been accepted, we would have been judged righteous and he would have forgiven all our sins and gone far beyond that. But we rejected him and nothing was forgiven. Therefore, he had to die. He died because we failed our responsibility. It was not the devil’s fault. It was not God’s fault. It was not a requirement of pure theological reasoning.

Two, we must reinstate responsibility in a thoroughgoing way. If a worldview denies human responsibility at the two events which define the human condition, then there is no way that it can serve as the substratum for a culture of responsibility. There will always be an out, a shrug of the shoulders, a pointing of the finger, a closing of the eyes.

True children take responsibility. Immature children blame others. "I hit you because you made me so upset! The house is a mess because he messed it up!" Growing up is a process of accepting responsibility. Our culture has two areas in which to accept responsibility.

One has to do with the fall of man. Our culture must take responsibility for its sexual behavior. Anything short of sexual purity, chastity and complete faithfulness (absolute sex) is a failure of responsibility. No more winking, joking, bending the rules, playing around.

The second has to do with the messiah. Our culture can grow beyond the paradigm of the "man who cannot but sin but praises God that he is forgiven." Christ did not come to forever forgive generations of inveterate sinners. Christ came to bring us into the Kingdom of God. And this is what Hebrews 9:28 says he will came back to do: not to deal with sin, but to save those who are waiting for him.

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Jesus would surely be glad were we to move beyond the need of continual forgiveness, into the realm of God’s original love. In fact, he returns to bring us into this realm. If we did not accept the messiah then, 2,000 years ago, we can accept the messiah now. Accepting the messiah, we accept human responsibility in a thoroughgoing fashion, reaching back to the beginning of history.

Love is not achieved by magic. It requires the hard work of actually loving people and this takes responsibility. Since people are not perfect, and thus are not worthy of love, actually loving people means loving the unlovable. It is easy to love people when they are nice to us, when they are loving us, when they are good. Love comes to have meaning for growth when we love people who are not nice to us, whom we feel are hating us, whom we feel are evil, and may actually be so. This is what it really means to be a Christian, in fact, to be a devout person of any righteous faith or culture.

This is why marriage is crucial to eternal life. Marriage is the intimate, no-escape relationship in which we "love or suffer." Marriage is the crucible of responsibility.

The problem has been that the most righteous among us can and do love others, but receive mostly suffering in return. This is because we are not truly righteous; our righteousness is as filthy rags, as the Bible states. What Christ does on his return is give us the key to practice true righteousness. This does not remit us from our responsibility. It allows us finally to fulfill our responsibility. Fulfilling our responsibility will in turn create a culture of responsibility, a society of true love.

IRFWP Regional Expansion: The United Kingdom Chapter

by Dr. Frank Kaufmann-NYC

The Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace (IRFWP) is undergoing an era of expansion through the establishment of regional and national chapters.

In the middle of 1997 IRFWP headquarters extended an invitation to all nations to apply to establish a national chapter. Over 56 nations responded requesting application procedures.

Just at this time however, pressure for the Fourth IRFWP Congress (part of the World Culture and Sports Festival (WCSF) began to mount, and we were inhibited from devoting sufficient attention and resources to this most encouraging response.

These limitations notwithstanding, in 1997 and in the months since the Congress, a number of nations have successfully inaugurated national chapters. The first countries to establish chapters were Cote D'Ivoire, closely followed by Benin, both in West Africa, in 1997. The inaugural convocations in these countries were particularly impressive with overflow attendance and participants at the highest levels of both the religious establishment in their countries, as well as having some participants from the political establishment.

Currently Venezuela, Guatemala, Finland, and the United Kingdom have completed or are in the process of establishing national chapters. Communications with the many nations which have applied in order to resume the process of completing establishment in each nation is pending and will resume shortly.

On March 1, 1998 the IRFWP had its inauguration in the United Kingdom. Nineteen people representing the religious traditions of Buddhism, Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox), Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism, and Unificationism met. It was a simple but effective program consisting of the following elements.

Marshall D'Souza, IRFWP Director for the UK hosted the meeting and acted as Moderator for the evening program. Prayer was offered by Father Anthonious Shenouda, followed by an overview of the history and international activities of the IRFWP presented by Dr. Thomas Walsh, Presiding Council member of the IRFWP, and Executive Director of the International Religious Foundation (IRF).

Following Dr. Walsh's presentation, Dr. Frank Kaufmann, Executive Director of the IRFWP moderated a round-table discussion around the question "What Are the Aspects of Life in the United Kingdom to which Interfaith Endeavors Can Contribute or Respond." Each symposium participant had prepared a written response to this question as their contribution to the session. As a result the conversation and exchange was quite substantial and instructive.

This session began with brief, formal remarks from Professor Ursula King and Rabbi David Goldberg, both chosen for their long association, and intimate knowledge of the work of the IRFWP over the years. Their presentations were followed by responses and open discussion from the floor. A significant number of valuable recommendations and insights arose in this session not only pertaining to the UK situation but also some which are applicable to interfaith realities in other place and more generally.

Many of these presentations related interfaith potential to such areas as education, family life, and social reality including racial harmony, social service, youth issues, care of the elderly, prisons, and other areas where religions can cooperate under shared values and concerns while transcending doctrinal and ecclesiastical boundaries.

It is the hope of the author that those reading this article will consider the possibility of establishing and IRFWP chapter in your nation, region or state. Interfaith activity in almost all cases proves a great benefit to the societies in which it occurs, as well as in the lives of those who engage in it.

In Memoriam David Carlson

by Vanessa Nishikawa-Fairview, OR

David Carlson was my brother and my friend. He passed on last March. He was a man of great passion, of great drama and great dedication. During the past two years that I have known him and worked with him, God has blessed me with a sisterly love and compassion which helped me to see his potential and to understand his hopes and struggles.

We shared several things in common, one being a similar perspective on spiritual matters. This helped us to confirm and validate our life experiences and through this we could offer one another empathy. We also shared a love for chocolate, which helped us to laugh and poke fun at one another.

But much greater than these two was our common vision for the betterment of our church building and our church community. This was the basis for our working relationship in the finance committee of our church.

In the finance committee, we relied heavily on David’s knowledge and expertise in planning the renovation of our church building. His sharp mind was always looking for the best way to accomplish every project. He was able to clearly articulate his plans for the future well-being of our community and always expressed deep sensitivity and concern for the whole community’s needs.

He was always willing to lend a helping; no job was too big or too small for David.

He and his wife Kyoko and daughter Kristy have been good friends to our family for the past two years and we have shared many a friendly supper, board game or basketball game.

Although his spirit, with his kindness and sportsmanship, will remain with us, we will miss him. We will miss his good ideas and his funny jokes. We will miss his passionate presence in our daily lives.

As a tribute to David, I have written a poem which I would like to share with you. It is an impression I received about his spiritual journey.

It is entitled "Ode to a Warrior."Ode to a WarriorThe warrior sinks to the rocky soil at the mountain’s peak, his body aching with exhaustion. he glances back momentarily at the steep incline he has just traversed. His eyes burn with the memory of the climb and he presses the palms of his hands against them, trying to block out the harrowing images of his journey. He breathes in the fresh mountain air; a memory of a fragrance assaults his nostrils.

How many mountains has he climbed in his quest? How many deserts has he crossed? In how many valleys has he found rest?

Too many to count. Too tired to remember.

He opens his eyes and surveys the deep green valley before him. It stretches out for seemingly endless miles until it touches the vast ocean far in the distance, the twilight sun now grazing its surface with amber, glinting gently in the warrior’s eyes.

The ocean that waits, holding the ship that will take him back home.

He rests. And while he rests, he dreams.

His dreams, at first, are stormy, full of the images of his clashes and his conquests, and he cries out, tossing in his sleep.

Then he is calm. He breathes deeply in his sleep, and the fragrance is of his wife, her clean hair against his face while he slumbers. His mind yearns for her comfort, his body for her soft caress.

He hears her tender voice waking him, encouraging him to rise to the challenge of a new day. In the background, the laughter of his daughter, beckoning him to play. And ever so faintly, the tiny heartbeat of his unborn child.

The beat throbs inside of him...envelops him...becomes him.

He wakes with a start.

He is on the sandy beach of the crystal blue ocean.

The waves crash against the shore, beating rhythmically, penetrating his mind, amplifying the beat that throbs within.

The sails of the ship billow in the morning breeze, pure white like the clouds that glide by on the sapphire sky.

He stretches his arms to wave a greeting and notices that the weariness is gone.

His jubilance reflects a single thought: one more ocean to cross before he is home.

Sail on, young warrior. Fare well.

Dedicated to David Carlson
10/30/54 - 3/16/97
my brother and friend
by Vanessa Nishikawa

How does your "love" garden grow?

Marilyn Morris

Marilyn Morris resides in Westerville, Ohio. She is a full-time wife and mother of three, and a part-time pastoral counselor.

These days, the word "family" and "values" are used widely and with many different meanings. True Family Values attempts to express the essential meaning of these two words. Promise Keepers, a program attempting to reintegrate men into leadership roles within their families, is sweeping the nation. According to the most recent articles, it is not being driven by men with the desire to take over the family as a "macho" ruler, but rather by women persuading their husbands to go in an attempt to create a stable home life. General interest in this topic cannot be underestimated as Stephen Covey's most recent book "The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Families" is already back ordered in many bookstores before the arrival of the first shipments!

True Family Values does not try to create specific roles for men and women, but rather reveal core concepts of how we develop and relate to one another as human beings in the family, which we call, the "school of love."

From the chart, we can see that there are four basic areas of emotional development within a healthy family setting.

Love (able to live for the sake of others)
Parental (sacrificial) Love
Dependability

Hope (able to live for one another)
Conjugal (intimate) Love
Interdependence

Trust (able to share with others)
Sibling/Friendship (mutual) Love
Independence

Faith (able to count on others)
Children's (selfish) Love Dependence

Stages of Emotional Development

For children, the normal range of emotional development is self-centered. When a baby is hungry, he cries. The baby does not think of how tired the parents might be at 2:00 in the morning. He just knows his own needs and demands that they be met. If they are fulfilled in a loving and caring manner, the child is able to develop the basis of faith, meaning that he can believe in others and count upon them in times of stress, no matter how simple that stress might be.

If the child suffers neglect in essential areas of his early development, either physically or emotionally, he will not be able to depend upon others and learn how to move into the next stage of development. Sharing things and making friends will be difficult. Having learned not to believe in others, creating relationships of mutual trust will not be possible.

We can see where this leads. Without being able to practice relationships of mutual trust, the child, emerging into his teenage years will only experience fleeting friendships and shallow relationships with both sexes. There is no basis for intimacy. Sexual relationships can be physically attained, but intimacy can only be built over a long period of time where the two partners willingly share in all things and in all ways. This is why the commitment, only attained in marriage, is so significant. Marriage, as an institution, understands that for two people to secure this level of human relationship, they must be set apart from all other human relationships and especially honored. Thus, pre-marital sex undermines young people's attempts later on to build intimacy in their lives, while extra-marital sex can destroy intimacy within the marriage relationship altogether.

Without the first three stages of development, the fourth and most important stage cannot be attained. Sad to say, many, many children are born from situations where the only basis for their being is where two very selfish people come together for physical needs, but are unable to offer the kind of sacrificial love that will help the new child develop beyond his first stage of emotional development. And so, the pattern repeats itself.

As a professional pastoral counselor, I have counseled numerous married couples and can see that many of the marital problems that have been described to me stem from two people caught in the first or second stage of development and unable to create intimacy and dependability. Not all married couples are two totally selfish people. Usually, they are caught in the stage of mutual love, each expecting the other to give back in equal amounts what they perceive they have contributed to the relationship. Almost never can such equality be attained in a marriage. Intimacy requires being able to give more than what one perceives he/she receives in return. Otherwise, husband and wife live parallel existences and never plumb the depths of each other’s heart. However, when both partners attempt to give more to one another than what they expect to receive in return, intimacy will begin to emerge between them. They learn to negotiate each other's needs for the sake of the relationship and not only for the sake of their own well being.

This sets the stage for the next development of heart which puts aside all concern for its own needs and directs its focus upon the needs of the other. This is the main characteristic of the parental heart in which the parent willingly sacrifices their needs for the benefit and well-being of the child and it is such a heart that most closely resembles how God relates to us, His children. Thus, it is nearly impossible to understand God in a heart-to-heart manner without developing through the above stages of emotional growth. St. Paul understood this in his explanation of religious development when he advised that those new in the Christian faith take "milk" rather than "meat." He meant that they could not digest the more difficult forms of community relationship until they had first established basic faith in God's work in their personal lives.

Often the words "faith" and "religion" are synonymous in people's minds, reflecting a general misunderstanding that religion is mostly about receiving from God according to one's needs. But, this is an immature view of faith and, in the long run, not a deep understanding expression of God's heart. In a religious life, we need to further our development in mutual relationships, i.e., sharing with one another in a community of faith. Through this we can emerge into a more intimate relationship with God, thinking more of what God might need from us rather than what we need from God. Finally, the truly mature person goes beyond even their own religious boundaries, thinking of how God might take care of the world's situation and stepping in whenever they can to reflect how they perceive God might feel toward others.

Mother Theresa exemplifies this parental heart expressed within a religious embrace. Her ability to love the outcasts of Calcutta's streets, and later other mean streets of cities throughout the world, endeared her not only to Catholics but to people of all faiths. Such a person is truly a saint. Mother Theresa was able to attain this level of love by enacting the example she saw in Jesus who, two thousand years ago, asked God to grant mercy even to his enemies, the powerful, corrupt leaders representing Roman interests in Israel. This heart of parental concern, even for the most destructive child, but nonetheless God's child, gave rise to a new religious expression for humankind, Christianity.

This is why Mother Theresa could experience Christ when she touched the untouchables. It was a real and tangible experience because through this sacrificial practice she could open and expand her heart to relate and resonate with God’s at the highest and deepest levels. In other words, she could look upon others, not from her own point of view, but from God's point of view, as a parent with no concern for oneself, but only with concern for others, no matter how difficult or dire their situation might be.

Am I hinting that we need to be saints in order to parent effectively? Yes, I am. Not that we must be saints on the world level such as Mother Theresa, but that we must at least be saints on the day-to-day level attending to the needs of our children, our spouses, our homes and our communities. Think about it. St. Paul described it so beautifully when he concluded his chapter on love with "Faith, hope and love, but the greatest of all of these is love." Many of us are nearly saints without even knowing it. We should value how love grows and tend to it in every possible way. True Family Values strives to give us the tools with which to dig the soil, plant the seeds and nurture the family garden. How does your garden grow? With faith, trust, hope and love, that's how your garden grows. 

Hello, Elmer!

by Catherine Ladolcetta-Irvington AL

"I’m cold!" Elmer was complaining as he had done ever since he was old enough to talk. "Where is everybody, anyway?" He rubbed his hands up and down his arms, shivering, and looked around. All he saw was emptiness. "This is crazy; I’m leaving!" Elmer’s voice was emphatic, but somehow he knew that he wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he had a scary feeling that something awful had happened. He was beginning to wonder if he might be dead.

"Hello, Elmer, ya got here!" A pleasant, friendly voice spoke out of nowhere. "We weren’t sure ya were coming after all."

Elmer spun around as quickly as he could. "Who said that? Where are you?" He turned in a full circle, slowly this time; looking more carefully-up, down and sideways. Nothing. Nothing at all. "Look, can you tell me where in tarnation I am" I’ve got a plane to catch. People are waiting for me. If I don’t turn up on time, they’ll come looking for me." He tried to sound threatening, but his voice faded into a frightened whine.

"Elmer, look over here. Stand still and look straight in front of yerself. Do ya see me yet?"

Elmer stood as still as a tree and stared directly ahead. He saw a blurry, fuzzy sort of nothing that blended into the wavery nothing all around, and yet he knew he saw it. He gulped and held as still as he could. It seemed to him that the blurry nothing was coming his way.

"Look, where am I? What is this place?" He took a deep breath and then shouted as loudly as his fear allowed: "Am I dead?"

"No, Elmer, ya aren’t dead. But, ya are passin’ over. It took ya a mighty long time to make up yer mind to come but, by golly, yer here?"

Suddenly, like one of those impossible 3-D pictures of dinosaurs or dolphins on sale for $19.99 in the video store, everything came into focus. Elmer was standing in radiant sunshine. He blinked and glanced up to find the sun. He half expected it to be green or purple or something. Instead it simply wasn’t there. As he swung around, thinking that it was behind him, he heard the voice again.

"There isn’t a sun here, Elmer. Ya see, light here is the light of love. Can ya see me now, Elmer?"

Elmer looked and, sure enough, there stood a young man, dressed in pale blue, stone-washed, boot-cut jeans and a cowboy shirt of sunset-pink and sky-blue plaid with gold threads and the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. His hair was curly and dark brown; it tickled his collar. He wore rather large, creamy-white, suede-side-out, high-heeled cowboy boots. As Elmer struggled to believe his eyes, he searched the cowboy for details that would prove he was real. Deep blue eyes twinkled from under bushy brows and a dimple tugged at each cheek. He was breathing. Elmer couldn’t help but notice that he was a healthy-looking 25-year-old.

"Are you real?" Elmer’s heartfelt question burst out almost without his permission. "I mean, are you really standing right there, holding that ridiculous yellow hat?"

The cowboy laughed a gentle, kind sort of laugh. "Ya know, almost everyone asks me that. I used to think it was because my boots were so beautiful, but don’t worry about them; nothin’ ever gets dirty here. After a while, I figured out that folks just plain wondered how an ole bulldogger like me could make it in a place like this. Well, to answer yer question, I’m as real as y’are. And yer pretty doggone real. Aren’t ya?"

Elmer was flabbergasted. He thought to himself that he must be dreaming. "Real? Yes-yes, of course I’m real." He pinched his own arm to prove it. There was no pain-no sensation of squeezed skin stinging, no feeling of arm hairs pulling. He turned quizzically toward his odd companion, and found that he wasn’t there any longer.

"Over here, Elmer. I’m over here; come on and have a look." He gestured to Elmer to come on ahead. Elmer tried, but he couldn’t move a step. "Oh, sorry, I forgot; ya don’t know how yet. Well, I’ll help ya this time, just until we have a chance fer a lesson." And Elmer was standing beside the cowboy, looking over the side.

"Ahhhh!" Elmer flung his arms up over his eyes and tried to turn and run. As before, he went nowhere and all his flailing around just caused him to fall down. Over the edge he went, screaming and twisting. Just as suddenly as he fell, he was back, standing beside the cowboy who wiped the sweat from his forehead with a large golden flower-print bandana and grinned in a good-natured way.

"Now look, Elmer, ya gotta take it easy. Ya don’t have the hang of it yet and ya can’t just go jumping into thin air like a gazelle. Here now, bend over a little so I can show ya the sights. Okay, easy does it. Can ya see?"

Elmer held on tight to whatever not on earth he was standing on and stared at the emptiness below him. It wasn’t exactly below, more like beside him, or around him-well, maybe it was above him. He was confused; what he saw wasn’t like anything he had ever seen before. People were walking in the air all around where he and the cowboy stood, essentially, on nothing.

---

"Billy, can you explain something for me?" Elmer was standing in the air beside his teacher, whom he was beginning to think of as his friend. "If I’m dead, how come I’m alive? I guess I believe you when you tell me that I fell down with a heart attack at the airport and died. I mean, I’m certainly not there anymore. But how can I be here talking and breathing and happy sometimes and missing Becky Susan and little Dickie and Sara and Jenny sometimes just like I was still living on the earth?"

Billy smiled. He was a genuinely good-hearted fellow and he wanted so much for Elmer to be happy in this new part of his life. He had already taken Elmer for a trip to visit his family in Life. It had gone quite well. Apparently they had really loved one another because, when Elmer and Billy went inside Elmer’s former home, each one had stopped his or her work or play and had come into the den. There, they all stood together holding hands and Elmer’s wife, Becky Susan, had started to sing and all three children joined in. It was a song about loving one who had gone on before, and missing him, but feeling that he was often right there with them. Elmer had begun to cry as he listened and Billy had to put his arms around him. They stood and listened to the rest of the song and then, as the family went back to their tasks, the two of them had returned to Billy’s place.

"Well, Elmer, it’s like this; we were created to live forever. But not in just the same way all the time. Before we were born, we lived in water, right?" Elmer nodded. "Then we came out of our watery home to live in the air and sunlight." Billy nodded at Elmer and smiled happily. "Then, when we had done all we could on the good, ole earth, we came on home. It’s just another part-this life. Now we live in the air and sunlight of everlasting love. It’s great, don’t ya think?"

Elmer smiled slightly at this last; he wasn’t sure yet whether it was great or just irreversible. He couldn’t help but wonder if he had really done all he could on the "good ole earth" as Billy so tenderly put it. From what he remembered, he had been unhappy a lot, complaining about this and that, and often, he thought sadly, he had been pretty selfish. Why, even that last plane trip had been an unhappy affair. Becky Susan couldn’t come because she had to teach and the children were so busy in their own schools that he had gone to the airport by himself. He was going on a vacation all alone. He had promised that they all would go, at the beginning of summer, to the Islands. But then he’d felt he couldn’t wait any longer, so he had just said he was going by himself for a week.

"Well, I was tired from working so long on that case; I needed a rest." Elmer, as a former lawyer, knew that he was trying to justify his own mistake. "Even now," he thought, "I’m thinking of myself."

"Billy, I’m not sure I’m really supposed to be here." Billy looked up; his face held an expression of wonder. "Boy, ya are in a hurry, aren’t ya?"

"What do you mean, Billy?" Elmer frowned. "I don’t think I did things right while I was on earth. Does anybody else ever feel that way?" Elmer’s brown eyes were sad. "Billy, I want to go back and fix up my mistakes if I can. Is that possible?" Elmer was surprised at his own request. He was even more surprised to realize that he was asking for the deepest thing in his heart.

Good Fortune Comes To New Jersey Jin-A School

by Jin-A Staff-Clifton, NJ

We wish to publicly acknowledge and thank Mrs. Hiramoto and the Los Angeles National MFT for donating a very special gift to New Jersey Jin-A Childcare Center. Valued in the thousands of dollars, the "Ohinasama," or Japanese display of traditional dolls, stands tall in our office, waiting to be seen by all the parents, children and teachers.

Every year, from the end of February until March 3, a holiday especially for girls, is celebrated in Japan. This holiday is called Hina Matsuri, translated as "Doll Festival." Dolls are displayed on a red-carpeted staircase elaborately decorated with the Emperor and Empress on the top stair, followed by six lower stairs for the Emperor and Empress on the top stair, followed by six lower stairs for the Emperor’s close attendants, next step their musicians, next step their prime ministers with weapons which means loyalty, next step the servants, next step furniture which includes a tea set for the tea ceremony, and finally down to the last step of carriages and a gyushah-which is similar to a rickshaw but pulled by a cow. The cow has a special meaning as a messenger from God which only royalty can use in this way. This doll display is all in miniature, of course. Such displays are passed down to a daughter’s descendants if kept in good condition.

The Hina Matsuri holiday is not just for fun. Parents pray before this display for their daughters good fortune through life, which includes finding a good husband. And the display cannot be exhibited too long or the daughter may never marry!

Part of a good school program is recognizing the cultures of the children attending the school. Therefore, Mrs. Izumi Zaccaro explained the holiday in a talk specifically designed for her young audience. And then came the fun of preparing Oshi Sushi, a large rice cake, together. Mrs. Yuko Karjalainen led a lovely origami art project. We would also like to extend a special thank you to Mrs. To, who brought the collection to us from Los Angeles and set up the doll display for us at Jin-A.

Jin-A deeply appreciates this gift as a tool to better love, serve and educate all the children. We also wish to convey our pride in being the caretakers of such precious gifts. Mrs. Christl Brunkhorst, director of N.J. Jin-A, reminisced, "You know, I was once on Los Angeles MFT myself."

Freedom of Expression: An Absolute Right?

by Haven Bradford Gow-Eudora AK

Recently, nine Florida high school students were suspended and later arrested and charged with a felony for publishing on campus a pamphlet which included drawings depicting a rape, a head with a bloody fork protruding from it and the school’s black principal impaled on a dart board. The state’s attorney office in Miami had the students arrested for allegedly violating a 1945 criminal libel law prohibiting anonymous publication of material that "tends to expose any individual or religious group to hatred, contempt, ridicule or obloquy" and Florida’s "hate crime" law, which proscribes offenses motivated by hatred toward a racial, ethnic or religious group.

The state’s attorney in Miami eventually dropped the charges; even so, she and school officials defended the arrests, noting that the student pamphlet contained language and drawings of "an outrageous and highly offensive nature."

Writing in the March 6, 1998 Delta Democrat-Times, Greenville, Miss., Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at Reason magazine, a libertarian publication, sharply rebuked school officials and the local prosecutor and strongly suggested that the First Amendment right to freedom of expression is an absolute right. Mr. Sullum observed: "Americans to often forget that freedom of expression was a controversial notion for most of human history not because our ancestors were benighted fools but because they recognized that speech is often pernicious. The classical liberals who opposed censorship did not claim that all speech was equally worthwhile, but they did insist that a central authority could not be trusted to sort the good from the bad."

Concerning the notion that freedom of expression is, or should be, an absolute right protected by the Constitution, James Vargason, district attorney of Cayuga County, NY, provides this perspective: "There are some who would have us believe that to restrict the dissemination of patently offensive materials infringes certain Constitutional rights, thereby threatening all forms of personal expression. Such an argument ignores the reality that many forms of personal expression are routinely restrained without Constitutional infringement." He adds: "You cannot walk into a crowded movie theater and yell ‘fire’ unless there actually is a fire. Moreover, consider the ongoing debate in America about smoking. Tobacco is a legal substance for adults, but advertising it is severely restricted, clearly infringing upon personal expression."

Mr. Vargason insists that the societal harm caused by pornography and obscenity justify legal restrictions on effort to produce, distribute and view pornography and obscenity; he declares, "Recently I prosecuted a 16-year-old young man for sexually abusing a five-year-old girl. While he was baby-sitting her, he found the little girl’s parents’ triple-X rated movies. He watched one, became aroused and proceeded to sexually molest the little girl. I have also prosecuted grandfathers who have molested their own grandchildren while watching pornographic materials." Pornography, he insists, "is not a victimless form of entertainment, and anyone who thinks otherwise is mistaken."

Like District Attorney Vargason, retired FBI agent William Kelly, an expert on organized crime’s involvement in pornography, says people who affirm an absolute right to pornography and obscenity should consider the societal harm caused by such degrading kinds of materials. Mr. Kelly says evidence supports the contention that a connection exists between the widespread availability and popularity of pornography and the nationwide epidemic of sex crimes and violence. Consider:

* The Los Angeles Police Department points out that in the more than 40 child sex abuse cases it investigated between Oct. 1976 and March 1977, pornographic photos were found in every case.

* Twenty-nine of 36 serial murderers researched by the FBI confessed that pornography influenced their thinking and conduct.

* Adult and child pornography is used by pedophiles to seduce children into sexual activity; in one case, a six-year-old girl testified that her father used pornography to entice her into sex.

* Law enforcement people across the United States have found in thousands of cases that most child molesters either collected or produced child pornography.

Pornography reduces sex to a plaything, human beings to mere bodies and human bodies to sex machines; it denigrates the sacredness of sex, marriage, family and human life and transforms sex from a sacred union of life and love to a tool of masturbatory and voyeuristic gratification.

Even those who contend that pornography is harmless must at least tacitly acknowledge the power and influence of words and ideas; otherwise, they never would attend school, go to the library, or write letters, articles, books, advertising copy, and TV and movie scripts.

Certainly if what we read, hear and see affects our thinking, and thinking influences behavior, then pornography indeed can and does have a damaging impact on thinking and conduct.