Yesterday Cleveland’s Plain Dealer newspaper ran a front page, five column photo-spread and story about Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 students at Virginia Tech during a gruesome shooting spree. On the other front page newspaper column, was a story about the Supreme Court upholding a partial birth abortion ban. The article said that this procedure accounted for 5,000 of 1.3 million abortions a year in the U.S. On Monday, 32 students were brutally killed in Virginia. On Monday, some 4,400 babies were brutally killed (dismembered in the womb) throughout America. We are absolutely aghast about Virginia Tech. Yet many of us don’t bat an eye about babies being killed and dismembered in the womb. What a tremendous spiritual disconnect. Note: I was jogging through a rather hardscrabble neighborhood in Cleveland recently. A neighborhood replete with “Beware of Dog” signs. At one point, I actually stopped and did a double take. A red sign in one front window read: “Beware of God.” And that’s something we need to be seriously thinking about with this abortion thing.
4/18/07
On the Virginia Tech shootings, the Nichols Mines Amish girls shootings, the Columbine shootings… It wouldn’t take a professor of Social Psychology to figure this out. We are awash in media/entertainment violence. It influences our pysches. If someone tips from, say, an emotional problem — they are now (in the year 2007) more apt to act out some of the violent imagery they’ve been watching. And here’s the rub: We are all responsible. Each time we watch a violent television show or movie, we are making a consumer choice. Those consumer choices translate to quantifiable viewing figures. Companies then weigh these figures and spend big money with the shows that get the most viewership. In other words, we are subsidizing a violent culture! Yet we won’t connect the dots on this thing, because we’re too addicted to watching the violence at this point. Note: Those consumer viewing choices also translate into: morally quantifiable figures.
4/16/07
I attended a talk by Joe Mueller at Cleveland’s Catholic Worker House. Mr. Mueller is a Christian Peacekeeper Team member who has been to Iraq twice. On his first trip, last year, the Peacekeeper Team that came in after his was abducted. One of the members, Tom Fox, was killed. In the face of such danger, Mr. Mueller went back because he said he believes in a “radical” interpretation of the Gospel message: “He who lays down his life for another…” He said Christian peace activists should be as committed to dying to prevent war, as soldiers are committed to dying in war. Mr. Mueller said fear is absolutely “pervasive” in Iraq now, with all the bombs, kidnappings and targetted assissinations… He said a general consensus among the Iraqis he’s talked to is that America is there to set themselves up in a strategic position to control the oil. “Why don’t they just take all the oil and leave,” Mr. Mueller said many Iraqis seem to be saying at this point. What’s more, he said America’s insatiable demand for oil is the crux of the problem. He also said that, in general, the U.S. has 5% of the world population and uses 30% of the resources (including oil). “We need addiction counselors. We live with such excess (in comparison to much of the world),” Mr. Mueller lamented. He added that a reason why more Americans aren’t taking to the streets to protest the war is because they have no “personal attachment” to the people in Iraq. And he added that it mystified him that with all the graphic footage of the carnage in Iraq, we can still remain so “apathetic.” Note: For our position paper on Iraq…
4/13/07
We have just updated our son Joseph’s page on our website.
4/11/07
Our daughter just won a Earth Day Coalition essay writing contest in Cleveland. She chose the topic of global warming within the context of something that is going on in the city here to help reverse it.
4/9/07
We have recently completed our about the family update for this site. It gives a much more in-depth look at us as a family and what our motivation is. And part of that motivation: is to win this thing.
4/6/07
Good Friday reflection: With Easter weekend upon us, I recall the many conversations I have had with people around the country about letting go to the will of God. I often share that I am inspired by the witness of Christ’s struggle in the garden. Christ knew the climax of His mission was upon Him, this was what He was born for. Yet in His humanity, he struggled to say yes, not once, but three times. I note also that it was not until after abandoning himself to the will of God that He was comforted and strengthened by an angel, and undoubtedly by grace. How often I have said ‘yes’ not knowing how I could possibly undertake the task — only to discover that graces follow. Let our Easter be a call to the garden. Trusting in grace, let us abandon our lives to His will, not our own. For instance, as we continue to see nuclear proliferation (not least of all in our own country), let us abandon our own fear and insecurity to work unceasingly for peace. As we see another year of starvation in many parts of the world, let us abandon our greed and provide just distribution of land ownership and wealth. As we see another child killed in the womb, let us abandon the fear of opening our homes to women in crisis pregnancies. Then shall we see death to our old self, and “resurrection†to the new. –Liz
3/27/07
We have just put up our position paper on the Native American issue. It is based on exhaustive cross-country research, including trips to numerous Reservations. Our country, since it’s inception, has been going in the wrong direction because we failed miserably at coexisting in peace and learning from each culture how to create, through synergism, a much more spiritually balanced, environmentally conscious, emotionally healthy… society. The good news is: There’s still time — but not much.
3/25/07
We have recently updated the about joe section on the website. Note: Please consider putting up a homemade: “average Joe” Schriner for president sign in your front yard, now. And if you would, send us a picture of it for a section we’re developing on the site. Thanks. –Joe
3/23/07
Our family went to a “Thirsting in the Desert” Lenten prayer service at the Catholic Worker House in Cleveland. One of the readings was about Jesus fasting in the desert and then being exposed to a series of temptations by Satan. At one point, Satan takes Jesus to the top of a mountain where, in “an instant,” they look out at at all the kingdoms of the world. Then Satan says: “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want.” During a discussion that followed in the prayer service, I said that while you don’t hear this much from the pulpit, doesn’t the passage indicate Satan can “bless” people (“…and I can give it to anyone I want.”)? So often you hear American Christians these days say that God has “blessed” them with the big house, or the nice car, or… But has He? Or rather, has God “blessed” someone with, say, a good income? And then this person takes most of the money and is enticed (by Satan, through modern advertising, etc.) to spend it on the big house, or the nice car for: themselves. Just like Satan tried to entice Jesus. Meanwhile, 24,000 people currently starve to death every day in the world and scores of little children sleep on inner city streets. What Satan has done with many an American Christian is: He has taken them to the top of a mountain and has shown them a glamorized version of: “the American Dream.” An Economics Professor at St. Mary’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, recently said to me: “Satan will give us anything we need — to go to Hell.” But if you really think about all this spiritually, it’s not our money in the first place, it’s God’s money — that is on loan to us. So, in line with the God’s gospel message, we can live very simply and invest a good portion of the money into God’s kingdom by trying to end hunger, poverty, and the like. Or, more in line with Satan’s ‘gospel,’ we can invest most of the money in the big house, nice car (nice furniture, expensive entertainment, nice clothes…), for ourselves. And oh yeah, if there’s any left over– give a little bit (percentage-wise) to the poor. Note: There’s another Bible story about three servants who are given money by their master before he goes away for awhile. Upon his return, he finds two of the servants have invested his money, and both show good returns. (Year 2007 corrolary: These servants have invested in programs to financially adopt Third World children. They have invested to subsidize mentoring programs for inner city youth. They have invested in outreach programs to impact rural poverty in Mississippi… And the “return” has been an end to some of this abject poverty — and, ultimatley, more souls for God. Then there’s the “worthless servant” who has “buried” the money he was given in a big house, nice car, IRA account… It doesn’t bode well for him.