On Thursday I am driving to Omaha Nebraska to hear Frank Schaeffer speak. Frank wrote the most excellent book, Crazy For God which I reviewed in a past post as well as a few novels that are currently on my favorite books of all times list. If you haven’t read his Calvin Becker trilogy, Portofino, Saving Grandma, and Zermatt, might I somewhat forcefully encourage you to do so? They are absolutely hysterical books and completely horrifying at the same time. His most recent book Sex, Mom and God is a non-fiction account that centers on his missionary mother’s preoccupation with purity in sex as well as policing the frequency of her adolescent son’s wet dreams.  I didn’t enjoy it as much as some of Frank’s other books – a bit too much pontificating on various topics such as abortion and parenting for me, but the parts about his mother are fun to read.

If you have enjoyed any of Schaeffer’s books, you will know that he often writes about his childhood, growing up in a Christian mission dedicated to saving the lost souls of all the European Catholics in the Swiss Alps.  His parents were evangelical fundamentalists tasked with the crazy job of informing the world of the life saving power of Jesus even though they wholeheartedly believed that God had already predestined all people to an eternity in either hell or heaven and therefore their “witnessing” was basically for naught.  But that did not stop them from doing it anyway!  In this regard Frank’s parents remind me of the Phelp’s family who form the notorious “God Hates Fags church” in Topeka, Kansas.  In some ways they share the same religious objective which is primarily to avoid the sin of blasphemy -  or infuriating a tyrannical God who is at all times poised to unleash all manner of plagues upon your head should you put one toe out of line.

Frank’s parents regarded everything that happened to them, whether it be a flower they found in the woods or a lack of meat at dinner, as a message from God.  So trapped were they in their superstitions, they could not see the damage they were doing to their children by ostracizing them from their community and poisoning them against anyone who had an even slightly different theology than they did. Frank grew up watching his parents attempt to convert anyone who came within shouting distance and as a result he learned at a very young age to deceive and manipulate his sisters and his parents in order to create a space for himself outside of their crazy belief system.  It is these attempts at deception by Frank that blossom into the crux of his stories.  In spite of the grim belief system of his parents, Frank’s stories are largely hilarious.  He frequently manages to circumvent the rules of his kooky parents and outwit his obedient and ever watchful older sisters to experience life on his own terms.

There is also a tremendous amount of violence in these books, especially in the fiction series.  Frank’s stories show the extreme cognitive dissonance of the Christian faith especially when practiced on a literal and fundamentalist level.  Frank depicts a religion that encourages parents to beat their kids, that regards sexuality as something to hide, that glories in self denial and demands complete submission to an invisible and tyrannical God.  The father in the Calvin Becker series regularly abuses his wife while the children are beaten with a belt in a detached manner that teaches them that violence can be a cold and calculating act.  The mother in these stories is highly manipulative, but couches the power she wields in her family as merely acting as an “instrument of God”.  To me, she is the true villain in these books, craftily caging her family in a belief system that she completely controls in spite of humbly playing the part of a help-meet and submissive, obedient servant of God.

Schaeffer’s book Portofino was turned into a film in 1998 starring John Lithgow as the half crazed missionary father and Dianne Weist as the simpering and calculating missionary mom who take an annual trip with their children to the Italian beach resort town of Portofino where they maintain their buttoned up Christian lifestyle, judge everyone who doesn’t and continue to witness for the Lord among the chain smoking, speedo sporting, slick and oiled Europeans who share the beaches with them.  Unfortunately the film has never been released.

Schaeffer upcoming lecture is entitled

THE CASE FOR SPIRITUALITY IN THE AGE OF DOUBT:
How Both Atheism and Christian Fundamentalism Miss the Mark on Faith

Afterwards there will be a question and answer session.  I have a few questions for Frank.  Mostly I want to know if the film is ever going to be released and what percentage of the Calvin Becker books are based on true events and if his mother was as horribly conniving as the character of Elsa Becker. I also hope to ask Frank why he, a man who has witnessed first hand the deprivations of religion, continues not only to believe himself, but to push the idea of belief on others through talks like the one he is giving in Omaha.

If you enjoyed his books and have a question – leave it in the comments.  Maybe I will get a chance to ask him.  This presentation is also available via live streaming at 7:00 p.m. CST on Thursday January 26th Here’s the link for the video stream – www.darkwoodbrew.org.

I hope to get a few autographed copies of Frank’s books.  Look for a giveaway in the near future!

It seems like only three or four weeks ago that I posted a lengthy review of The Case for Christ and buried a fabulous giveaway in it.

Armed with fortitude, perseverance, and/or resourcefulness, reader after reader unearthed the giveaway and discovered to her or his delight that she or he stood to win …

a coupon good for a free Attune Probiotic bar …

which I had painstakingly cut out of this cereal box.

These are the actual scissors I used to cut the coupon out.

I just got my first digital camera.

You know how it is when you get your first digital camera.

All you want to do is take photos with it and post them on a blog.

You don’t even care too much what the subjects of the photos are.

Can you guess what this is? If you’re the first one to identify it, I’ll give you anything you want.*

(*Anything you want must be available for purchase for $30 or less. To win, you must be the first one to leave a comment correctly identifying [i] what the mystery object is and [ii] what it is meant to depict.)

But back to the matter at hand. To be eligible for the drawing for the Attune bar coupon, a reader had to leave a comment about an obscure debate that was mentioned in passing in an introduction to one of the chapters of The Case for Christ. I provided a link to the debate on YouTube but did not require commenters to watch it in order to be eligible to win the coupon.

As you can imagine, this giveaway was a huge success and generated lots of great comments about the debate, ranging from Amy Dodd’s succinct “DEBATE!” to various declarations of intent to watch the debate later or not at all, to a couple of thoughtful comments from PJCarz and Stephen, who actually watched the debate.

To pick a winner on the basis of comment quality would have been a maddening task, since so many of the comments were of such high quality. Fortunately, I had anticipated this problem and made the contest a drawing, which I conducted as follows.

Being a bit of an amateur conservationist, I resolved to use as much of the cereal box as possible for this project in order to save the energy it would take to recycle the unused portions of the box. Noticing that the box also included a coupon for 75 cents off a box of Uncle Sam cereal, I decided to cut that out as well and include it with the prize.

An examination of the remainder of the box revealed that a large portion of it could be used in the construction of a “mini box” per the instructions provided by the cereal manufacturer.

So I constructed it. This would be the box from which the winner’s name would be drawn.

I then cut a box top into pieces and wrote the names of the contestants on them.

But even after all this reuse, there was still a generous portion of unused box left. It occurred to me that maybe I could use it to make a papier-mâché hamster to include in the package that would be sent to the winner.

Pouncing on this unexpected flash of genius, I quickly assembled the ingredients and set to work,

only to discover that cereal box cardboard is not an appropriate material for a papier-mâché project. Since I had at least succeeded in making the remaining part of cereal box unusable for anything else, I turned my attention to the drawing. I put the box top pieces with the names on them into the mini box and shook it vigorously for a few seconds and then lethargically for another few seconds. Then, I reached into the box.

My hand emerged with this piece. Congratulations, Kitty! Please click “Contact Dear Charles” at the top of this page to let me know where to send the prize and then prepare to be engulfed in anticipatory excitement each time you hear the approach of the mail carrier for the next few days.

My gratitude goes to everyone who participated. You’re all winners in my mind, but there’s a weird disconnect between my mind and my actions, so I’m sending the prize only to Kitty.

It was a dark and stormy night…

No… wait.

Actually it was a dim and frozen morning.

Preceeded by a dark and stormy night….

For I was seated in my usual spot, the perch in our home described as the “brown chair” a heavily padded wingback which is the most desirable seat in the house. I had the laptop on my lap as I earnestly scanned the headlines for news of the latest protestations to emerge from either Bachmann or Santorum, my two favorite right wing nut-jobs.  When into the house burst the CD!  He was in the midst of a night of call and had spent most of the evening at the hospital attending to patients as they arrived in our small town ER. However at around eight-o-clock, there was not a patient in sight and he drove home to eat a bite of supper.

And that’s when he veered.

And this veering is where our grim mystery begins…

Because it was raining outside.

And very cold.

And the freezing rain was rapidly turning everything it hit into a sheet of ice.

But the important part of this story to the CD is not the ice…

But the rain.

For we have been in the midst of a drought in this part of the country.

A severe drought.

A drought that had shrunk our pond to half it’s normal size causing the dock that the CD built this summer to display more than a decent portion of it’s unattractive underpinnings.  But the steady rain fall of the past few days had vastly improved the appearance of the CD’s new dock.  It now sat on top of the water in the exact manner he had intended and he felt compelled in spite of the sleety rain, to get a closer look at his creation.

“I’m going out to see the dock!” he announced as he ambled out the front door into the rain.

“Okay” I replied to his back and then went right back to scrutinizing the internet for the latest intel on the GOP.

And that was the last I saw of the CD that night.

Later, when I went to bed, I wondered briefly where he was.  I contemplated giving him a call, but his phone doesn’t get reception in the lower level of the hospital where the ER is located and I figured he had just been called in and I had missed his departure due to the general hubbub of our house.

The next morning I woke up alone.

The house was very cold.

I shivered, pulled on a heavy sweater and turned up the furnace.

I got the boys up, stumbled downstairs, put on a pot of coffee and set out a few breakfast items.

And that is when I saw it.

Exhibit A…

The Country Doctor’s stethoscope.

It was lying on the kitchen counter.

Hmmmm… That’s strange, I thought. I had not heard the CD come home last night and trust me, the man can’t take six steps without waking the dead. He’s not exactly a creature of stealth.  Still – I thought maybe for once he had re-entered the house in the middle of the night without waking me up.

So I checked to see if possibly he had slept in the guest bedroom…

Exhibit B…

But no.

The guest bedroom had clearly not been slept in.

It was then that I noticed his briefcase was leaning against the fireplace.

His briefcase.

His briefcase…

His stethoscope…

His briefcase…

The stethoscope…

Briefcase…

Stethoscope…

The empty beds…

Briefacse…

Stethoscope…

Empty bed….

What was the last thing he said to me…

Something about the dock?….

“Going out to see the dock… going out to see the dock…  the dock… the dock… the dock… dock… dock…..”

Fearing the worst, I ran to look out the front door…

Exhibit C

In the night, the pond had completely frozen over.

Everything was slick with snow and ice.

What if the unthinkable had happened!?!

What if the CD had slid on the ice as he walked across the dock, hit his head on the wooden planks and then  slid silently into the freezing waters of the pond?

I crept out to the dock, terrified of what I might find.

I could see his footprints where they had walked around on the dock, but from the yard I couldn’t tell if they went up to the edge.

I needed to get a closer look…

Just a little closer.

I folded my hands inside the sleeves of my sweater.

The cold air sliced through my thin pajama pants.

The icy grass stabbed my feet.

It was about here that I decided a phone call might be a better way to solve this mystery.

Besides!

What if I unintentionally disturbed the evidence???

So I jogged back into the house and called the CD’s cell phone.

CD – Hello?

Me – Hello!

CD – Hi.

Me – HI!

CD – What’s up?

Me – You haven’t drowned in the pond!

CD – What?

Me – You’re not dead!

CD – What are you talking about?

Me – I thought you were trapped under the ice!

CD – What?

Me – I didn’t want to disturb the evidence.

CD – I have no idea what you mean.

Me – I’ll explain when you get home.  Just please come in the house before you go out to the dock.  I don’t want to have to search for your blue and frozen remains again. It’s too freakin’ cold outside!