The Just Right, Exactly Perfect Age

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I once asked a group of high school students at EMHS to write down what they felt was a truly ideal age. In other words, at what point would they feel they've reached a peak in their life, after which they would no longer be so eager for their next birthday?

Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at the result, but I was. The majority of these juniors and seniors chose an age somewhere between twenty and thirty.

I know our culture places high value on physical attractiveness and youthfulness, but demographically we are a society with a larger than ever proportion of older and retired people. So it seemed sad to have them see their "over the hill" point being even before mid-life. 

I'm sure most of these former students of mine have changed their minds on this and many other things since then, but wouldn't it be great to have our middle years, as well as our retiring and aging stages of life, be seen as looked-forward-to and truly blessed? 

Yesterday was my birthday. Alma Jean and I celebrated it with my next older sister Maggie and her good husband Alvin Schrock in their simple and hospitable home in a wooded area in Cumberland County. Maggie is the sister I was closest to, and she had just celebrated her 80th birthday eight days before.

To me, Maggie doesn't look a day over 55, and is still enjoying life as an active gardener and grandma. Much of our time together was spent in reminiscing and with catching up on our children and grandchildren. Maggie and Alvin's had just published an illustrated book for the family in honor of her birthday, complete with stories and photos of the families of each of their seven devoted children.

What better life could one hope for, I thought to myself. They have their share of some health concerns, thankfully none of them life threatening, but enjoy an unending supply of love from each other and from multiple offspring who adore them. 

So maybe 80 is just the right age, as long as ones health is still reasonably good and ones mind reasonably acute.

My own perfect age? I've decided that for the next 364 days my answer will be 77, in the spirit of the oft-quoted Robert Browning:

“Grow old along with me! 
The best is yet to be, 
The last of life, for which the first was made: 
Our times are in his hand 
Who saith, “A whole I planned, 
Youth shows but half; 
trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”

Virginia Inmate Advocates For Parole Reform

VPB contact page

“The traditional view of what should happen when a prisoner is released has it backward—that you get people to stop committing crimes so that you can reintegrate them. Actually, you reintegrate them to keep them from committing crimes.”

- University of Vermont criminologist Kathy Fox

The following is by an anonymous inmate at one of our Virginia prisons:

Many cases of error and confusion have surfaced in the activities of the Virginia Parole Board.

1. Parole-eligible prisoners have received a one-year deferral only to find out later that it had been changed by the VPB to a three-year deferral.

2. Some parole-eligible prisoners have received parole denials even BEFORE speaking to the parole interviewer. This suggests that parole NOT GRANTS are set to be sent by the computer automatically on a specific programmed date along with the programmed digital signature from the Parole Chairwoman, Ms. Karen Brown. It also seems that the reasons are routinely copied from the previous years Not Grant form letter.

3. Virginia Parole Board has been known to make clerical errors. Clearly, there should be no room for carelessness where the fates of real people are at stake. How many pages are misfiled? How do parole-eligible prisoners know that what is in their VPB files are accurate?

4. Virginia Parole Board has listed on its database names of prisoners who are not old enough to have been under the old parole law before parole was abolished (in 1995). Are the numbers being fudged? The Board should only have on that database those sentenced prior to July 1, 1995 or set up a column listing who are old-law and who are new-law or juvenile inmates.

Parole-eligible prisoners should be allowed to review their parole files and refute any erroneous information that could have been placed in their files by accident or by malicious intent.

VPB's examiners, Board members and staff have proven in the past to be biased, perhaps without even realizing it, especially if one of their family members or friends had been victimized by a sexual or violent person in the past. Also, they often become casehardened after decades of work and their dedication in the "war on crime" and tend to build up a hostile and cynical mindset that cannot be changed overnight.

Every board member, examiner and staff member of the Parole Board should be impartial and unbiased in order for fair and effective justice to be served. Many parole-eligible prisoners have come to the conclusion that, no matter what is discussed at the examination, the examiner's impact on the Board's decisions is negligible. Then why keep having the same costly and useless examinations year after year?

The Board's unprofessional actions include the following:

1. In denying parole, VPB routinely gives the following reasons, all of which have to do with past behavior no inmate can change:

a. The serious nature and circumstances of your offense(s)

b. Release at this time would diminish the seriousness of the crime

c. The Board has concluded that you should serve more of your sentence prior to release on parole

The General Assembly passed Code of Virginia § 53.1-151, "Eligibility for Parole". Lines 1-4 state how much time should be served by parole-eligible prisoners before being granted release on parole. Ironically it turns out that all first time offenders have served double the time mandated by the General Assembly.

2. Another reason often provided by the Virginia Parole Board in its "Not Grant" form letters is:

The Board considers you to be a risk to the community

Clearly, anybody can snap and commit a violent crime, not just paroled ex-felons (Look at the recent murders and assaults even by police officers). But unlike many young people roaming the streets, most paroled ex-offenders are no longer rowdy youths. Many have matured, have learned to control their anger and emotions, and have learned to adapt to their surroundings and to coexist peacefully in violent and drug infested prison communities where they have lived for decades behind prison fences.

3. The Virginia law that the VPB cites on the parole "Not Grant" form letters is Code of Virginia § 53.1-155, "No person shall be released on parole by the Board until a thorough investigation has been made into the prisoner's history, physical and mental condition and character and his conduct, employment and attitude WHILE IN PRISON [emphasis added]. The Board shall also determine that his release on parole will not be incompatible with the interests of society OR OF THE PRISONER [emphasis added]."

The problem is that the Board totally disregards the interests, and even the rights, of parole-eligible prisoners.

Virginia Parole Board's Mission Statement as formulated in its Agency Strategic Plan, proclaims that its goal is to "Contribute to a fair and effective justice system" and that "those who no longer present a risk are released to become productive citizens".

Why then are so many model prisoners still routinely denied parole release, while some who have had previous parole violations and frequent infractions in prison been granted release?

We suggest supplementing Virginia Parole Board's decision-making functions with computer software designed to help make parole decisions that would be consistent statewide and free of subjectivity, emotions and political motives. It is high time VPB entered the twenty-first century and started using modern information technology instead of allowing personal feelings to get in their way of sound professional judgement.

Most correctional professionals agreed that prisoners require a strong support network, both inside and outside of prison, to encourage positive change and keep them from relapsing into old criminal behaviors. This is particularly true of prisoners who have been incarcerated since their youth and have never developed life competencies. What often happens, though, is that VPB continues denying them parole grant until their loved ones have given up on them or have died, leaving no one to help them get reestablished in society.

In conclusion, the above facts demonstrate that VPB seems to be going to extreme lengths to avoid doing its job - namely, that of releasing parole-eligible Prisoners back into society. The Board's overly cautious and punitive approach is proving to be ineffective in combating recidivism.

Why Christians Should Still Refuse To Fight

“As disciples of Christ, we do not prepare for war, or participate in war or military service.”

        

This succinct statement taken from Article 22 of my church's "Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective"  sets us apart from all but a small fraction of other Christians around the world, although I am heartened by more and more individuals and denominations supporting this position.  

Yet the above was embraced universally by believers in the first and second centuries, and by most Anabaptist-minded (later Mennonite) Christians since the 16th century.

To cite two of many examples, Tertullian, a prominent leader and theologian in the early church expressed this vision when he described the church as a people who “join to beat their swords into plows, and their lances into sickles.”  Origin of Egypt, a contemporary of Tertullian’s said, “Nor do we ‘learn war any more,’ having become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus, our leader.” The best known example of a first century believer who refused to fight is Maxillian, who was martyred for not joining the Roman army and later canonized as a saint.

To early Christians, Jesus represented the final word from God on issues of war and peace.  War was simply over for them, a relic of the past. Menno Simons and other outspoken leaders and martyrs in Anabaptist and other renewal movements simply helped revive this conviction. Menno wrote, "True Christians do not know vengeance... their hearts overflow with peace... The regenerate do not go to war, or engage in strife...  they are the children of peace, who have beaten their swords into plowshares."

Sadly, few followers of Christ over the centuries have maintained such positions, which has resulted in Inquisitions, Crusades, multiple wars among so-called Christian nations in Europe and elsewhere, and Christians defending and participating in every kind of military adventure imaginable, all in the name of God and country, and each case defended as a "just war." 

There has been a gradual erosion of anti-war conviction among Mennonites as well, members of a small “peace church” that has maintained for most of 500 years that military membership and church membership are incompatible.

To me, a weakening of any church’s position on this kind of witness represents a crying shame.  Surely there is a need for at least a remnant of people in our blood-stained world who consistently teach and demonstrate that Christians, by definition, are people who will not harm or kill under any circumstances. Not even in a time of war, not even their enemies (and certainly not their fellow believers), anywhere in the world.

I see this as not about some sectarian “peace position,” but about an “agape position,” about Jesus's followers being a people defined by their passionate love for God above every other love or allegiance, and by a compassionate love for neighbor--friend, foe and foreigner alike.  

And lest we reduce agape to being a mere sentiment, an attitude of niceness, or as simply a benevolent feeling toward others, the New Testament makes clear that God's kind of unconditional love is defined by its actions, not merely its motives or emotions.  Thus Jesus, in explaining what loving ones neighbor actually means, tells the story of a Samaritan binding up the wounds of his mortal enemy, a Jew.  And Paul, in Romans 13 (the very passage that urges respect, rather than armed resistance, toward even the occupying, crucifying, terrorist Caesars) makes it clear that love will "do no harm to a neighbor." Period. 

As Ghandi once observed, Christians seem to be the only ones who believe Jesus and the New Testament are not absolutely clear on these points: Do no harm.  Return good for evil.  Take up the cross, not the sword.  Follow Jesus’s personal example of a completely nonresistant life, who taught, "My kingdom (government) is not like those of this world. If that were so my servants would fight."

If in our baptism we receive a missionary commission to evangelize and reconcile God’s enemies to God and to each other, how can we accept a military commission to harm them?  And if we are convinced that in Jesus God’s future kingdom has already been inaugurated, how can we also pledge, under oath, to become a part of an enterprise committed to harming or coercing others “in the national interest”?

Clearly, most decent people, Christian or not, would renounce the following as immoral and unacceptable:

breaking and entering

lying and other forms of deception

physical, psychological, or other forms of torture and abuse

armed robbery

malicious wounding

organized acts of terrorism

using racial or other demeaning slurs 

using explosives to destroy people or property

destroying land or other natural resources

stabbing or strangling 

forcing people from their homes or communities

committing mass murder

Without question, most believers would speak out against members of churches engaging in such behaviors--and would disapprove of their supporting or belonging to any groups or organizations that do so. Yet we tend to raise no objections when military forces routinely encourage, train and/or command people to do all of the above and more.  

Thus we are in danger of accepting, on a mass and organized scale, what we could not accept or allow on any other basis. Unlike legitimate police force, necessary in human societies to maintain order within national boundaries (and intended to preserve life and bring individuals to justice under laws designed to protect individual rights), military forces have a long history of plundering and destroying without benefit of such civilized restraints.

True, we pacifist Christians must repent of the many "beams" of self righteousness, materialism, and cowardly indifference that are inconsistent with our moral vision. Because of these we may not always “see clearly” to lovingly help remove any specks of militarism from another’s eye. 

But remove them we must, all of us, lest history write off the church as having been irrelevant and mute in one of the most pressing moral issues of all time.

This is an edited repost from January 21, 2011.

After 62 Executions: "I Will Never Do It Again"

AP Photo/Pat Sullivan

Virginia re-instated the death penalty in 1978 but did not resume executing death row inmates until 1982. Overall the Old Dominion holds the record of being third in the nation in total number of executions (after Texas and Oklahoma), but put only one person to death in 2015.

Jerry Givens was the state's chief executioner from 1982-1999, responsible for 62 state-sponsored deaths during that period. Near the end of his career with the Department of Corrections Givens had two experiences that led to his eventually opposing capital punishment.

The first had to do with the case of Earl Washington, Jr., who had an IQ of 69 and was scheduled to die in the electric chair in 1995. Just days before his execution, his attorneys were able to secure a stay, and subsequent DNA testing resulted in his being proved innocent. 

That was very disturbing to Givens. "If I execute an innocent person, I'm no better than the people on death row," he said.

Meanwhile he learned that there had been 325 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States, including 15 in Virginia. Some of them were capital cases.

The second experience, this one personal, resulted in his becoming even more mistrustful of the criminal justice system. State prosecutors charged him with conspiring with a friend to launder drug money. Although he has always maintained his innocence, he was nevertheless convicted and sent to prison for four years.

According to a Washington Post article, Givens said God asked him if he would have executed his Son if he were on death row (which Jesus once was), and Givens realized he could no longer support the death penalty.

Since then Givens has been active in giving anti-capital punishment speeches across the country. He also testified against a bill introduced in January 2014 to restore the use of the electric chair if the state found it necessary due to problems getting proper lethal injection drugs. After his testimony, in which he described how electrocutions often left prisoners' bodies with severe burns and blisters, a legislative committee failed to agree on the bill, dead locking in a tie vote.

According to the Post, Givens continues to wonder if any of the people he executed were innocent. "The only thing I can do is pray to God to forgive me if I did." he said, "but I do know this - I will never do it again."

For more detail, here's a link to one of several Washington Post stories: 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ex-virginia-executioner-becomes-opponent-of-death-penalty/2013/02/10/9e741124-5e89-11e2-9940-6fc488f3fecd_story.html

Proverbs 24:11-12 New Living Translation (NLT)

Rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to die;

    save them as they stagger to their death.

Don’t excuse yourself by saying, “Look, we didn’t know.”

    For God understands all hearts, and he sees you.

He who guards your soul knows you knew.

   He will repay all people as their actions deserve.

"My Name Is Nina"

Nina, now 49, with her adopted mother

It was November of 1968.

The note left with the premature infant abandoned at the entrance of an Asuncion hospital simply read, "Mi nombre es Nina", and identified the baby's mother as Mara Dielmans.

That's all. No one knew where the baby came from and apparently no attempt was made to make connections with any family she may have had.

My older sister Fannie Mae Yoder, who ran a maternity clinic in Paraguay, was first introduced to Nina, then 6, at the Government Children's Home in Asuncion that cared for abandoned children up to 8 years of age. Some of the staff there asked my sister, an RN and a certified midwife, if she knew of any place in the US where she could be cared for, knowing that otherwise she would likely spend her entire life in an Asuncion mental hospital.

Nina, diagnosed as severely autistic, was unable to talk, was still being bottle fed and had the appearance of a three-year-old. Fannie Mae, ever the compassionate nurse, was due to return to the states in just a few months, and agreed to check with folks she knew at the church-run Faith Mission Home in Greene County, Virginia, to find out if they might be able to provide for her.

After some correspondence, Faith Mission Home agreed to accept her into their program, but said they had a waiting list and that she would need to have some other place to live for up to a year. Meanwhile, Paraguayan officials worked with my sister to arrange for Nina's emigration.

My dad was a very supportive father figure for Nina 

After considerable correspondence and many conversations with family and church members, Fannie Mae agreed to have Nina live with her at Stuarts Draft until there was an opening at the Home. Not everyone was in favor of her taking on this responsibility, but my father, remarried after my mother's passing in 1971, was among those who supported her choice.

During the eight months Nina lived with my sister she made remarkable progress, was taught to feed herself, eat solid food, and be toilet trained, all of which helped her in her transition to Mission Home.

There Fannie Mae visited Nina regularly and brought her home some weekends and holidays. Unable to express herself in words, Nina would typically clap her hands in delight on the way to my sister's, whereas she began to cry whenever they drove back onto the Mission Home campus, even though it is one of the finest facilities I know of for developmentally challenged children and young adults.

Fannie Mae said she will never forget the time when, at her church, autistic Nina, for the first time, looked into her adoptive mom's face and gave her a warm smile. There was a special though unspoken bond between them.

When Nina was 11, steps were taken to gain permanent immigration status for her rather than their having to apply for annual renewals of her visa. In order to gain this status it was recommended that Fannie Mae formally adopt her, after which Nina's sponsorship at Mission Home ended.

So as my sister retired from nursing, Nina moved back to live with her now adoptive mother on a permanent basis. She was enrolled in a special education class and learned more life skills and became able to communicate more of her needs non-verbally.

Nina remained at what she considered her real home until it became necessary for my sister to apply for adult foster care for her a decade ago. She is currently being cared for by a wonderful set of loving parents.

I am proud of my sister for investing so much of herself in making a difference in one very special person's life, my adopted niece Nina Ruth. And on this Father's day, I commend my late father for supporting her in doing so.

Note: The photo above is of us running into Nina recently when I took Fannie Mae for a medical appointment at Stuarts Draft. Nina, not having seen her mother since her recent hospitalization for a heart condition, at first seemed shocked to see her in a wheel chair, then quickly walked over and placed her hand on the person to whom she owed her life. A touching moment.

Here's a link to another post on my sister's story 
http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2016/04/some-home-health-care.html

Allegations Of Murder, Rape, Conspiracy, Lying And Cover-ups

Wikipedia 

If we think the accusations and mudslinging going on in today's political campaigns are bad, we should listen to the rhetoric associated with the 1800 presidential race between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. 

Here are two examples of charges and counter charges that were made, not by the candidates themselves, but on handbills circulated by their surrogates and campaign managers:

“John Adams is a blind, bald, crippled, toothless man who secretly wants to start a war with France.” 

“If Thomas Jefferson wins, murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced. Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames? Female chastity violated?” 

But is all of this new? In one of last Sunday's lectionary texts we were reminded of charges of a scandal 3000 years ago that rival the worst of any we see today. And the national figure facing the hot light of public blame and exposure was none other than the beloved King David himself.

Had David been running for another term in office back then, we can only imagine the vitriol that would have been leveled against him--with lurid details of adultery, murder, conspiracy and worse. He was in fact guilty of secretly conspiring with his army commander Joab to have his illicit lover's husband killed by putting him in a defenseless position in battle, all in a shameless effort to have his wife Bathsheba for himself.

The major difference between David and most politicians today is that when he was confronted with the awful truth of what he did he acknowledged his wrong, repented of it, and accepted the judgment he deserved.

God's response to his prayer of remorse and lament (as found in Psalm 34, one of the other lectionary texts for last Sunday) was to both punish David and to graciously forgive him, honoring him for not resorting to denial, rationalization, defensiveness and blame.

Imagine candidates of either party today being willing to simply take responsibility for past wrongs and to make an about face in their behavior.

A President Speaks Out To Fathers

Wikipedia photo

Regardless of how we may feel about President Obama's political leadership, he and Michelle have set an above average example as parents, as did George and Laura Bush before them.

In a Father’s Day message to the Boys and Girls Club organization in Washington early in his first term, Barak Obama said, "We can talk all we want here in Washington about issues like education and health care and crime; we can build good schools; we can put money into creating good jobs; we can do everything we can to keep our streets safe -- but government can’t force a kid to pick up a book or make sure that the homework gets done. Government can’t be there day in, day out, to provide discipline and guidance and the love that it takes to raise a child. That’s our job...." 

He went on to add, "Too often when we talk about fatherhood and personal responsibility, we talk about it in political terms, in terms of left and right, conservative/liberal, instead of what’s right and what’s wrong. And when we do that, we’ve gotten off track. So I think it’s time for a new conversation around fatherhood in this country." 

On a more personal note, he stated, "Even when we give it our best efforts, there will still be plenty of days of struggle and heartache when we don’t quite measure up. .. I’ve made plenty of mistakes as a parent. I’ve lost count of all the times when the demands of work have taken me from the duties of fatherhood. And I know I’ve missed out on moments in my daughters’ lives that I’ll never get back... But I also know the feeling that one author described when she wrote that ‘to have a child ... is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.’

"I can say without hesitation that the most challenging, most fulfilling, most important job I will have during my time on this Earth is to be Sasha and Malia’s dad."

Good words for Father's Day.