Does your faith need strengthening? Are you confused and wondering if Jesus Christ is really "The Way, the Truth, and the Life?" "Fight for Your Faith" is a blog filled with interesting and thought provoking articles to help you find the answers you are seeking. Jesus said, "Seek and ye shall find." In Jeremiah we read, "Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall seek for Me with all your heart." These articles and videos will help you in your search for the Truth.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

As Melhores Coisas na Vida Tomam Tempo

Jesus, falando em profecia

Fiz com que a maioria das realizações na vida fosse fruto de trabalho constante e confiança em Mim para o resultado. Raramente realiza-se algo grandioso da noite para o dia. Quando isto acontece, geralmente ou é o ponta pé inicial de um projeto ou a coroação de um longo período de paciência.

Olhe só a Igreja Primitiva. Derramei o poder sobrenatural no Dia de Pentecostes, e dentro de duas semanas dei aos primeiros discípulos milhares de convertidos. Mas, depois disso, o progresso foi mais lento e constante, conforme avançaram gradualmente compartilhando a Minha mensagem em uma cidade de cada vez, ganhando uma alma de cada vez.

Em outros casos, o grande milagre aconteceu no final de um longo período de espera e perseverança, como o nascimento de um neném. É no trabalho de parto que as coisas se movem rápido em comparação com a demorada gravidez – e bum, um dia, de repente, você tem um neném. Mas passam-se meses e meses até isso acontecer. A a mãe e o pai esperam pacientemente o bebê crescer, aceitando o tempo que Eu determinei para as coisas acontecerem naturalmente e esperando os resultados no momento que Eu decidir ser melhor.

Assim como acontece com a natureza e o nascimento de um neném, colhe bom fruto aquele que aceita as tarefas que ponho à sua frente. A vida requer paciência, e as melhores coisas na vida muitas vezes levam tempo para dar fruto. Você precisa ter fé de que o trabalho consistente e diário que investe nos projetos e empreendimentos vai dar resultado, e que será bem sucedido no final.

É fácil ficar impaciente com a demora para fazer as coisas, tais como o tempo necessário para adquirir um novo hábito, treinar uma criança, montar uma boa equipe, ou estabelecer um trabalho duradouro. Tudo parece ir muito devagar e você é tentado a pensar, “Ora, se chegamos até aqui e ainda não conseguimos, será que um sequer conseguiremos?!” É uma tentação desistir por conta do desanimo ou buscar uma maneira mais fácil e rápida.

Quero encorajá-lo a perseverar em seja o que for que Eu tenha lhe mostrado ser a Minha vontade para você. Não sou um Deus impaciente. Não julgo o sucesso de um empreendimento apenas pelo fruto imediato. Minha medida de que algo vale ou não a pena todo o trabalho que está investindo é o potencial que tem, não necessariamente o que é no momento ou o que foi no passado.

Muitas vezes vejo que algo tem potencial para crescer e ser fonte de grandes bênçãos para você, se não desistir cedo demais por falta de resultados óbvios. Mas por favor, não perca a paciência e desista das bênçãos que estão por vir! Não quero que seu trabalho árduo seja desperdiçado! Em vez de julgar as coisas com pressa, buscando apenas os sinais óbvios de fruto para se encorajar, busque a Mim. Peça-Me para lhe mostrar o potencial do seu trabalho tornar, o que aquela criança pode ser ao crescer, quão forte e frutífero o seu casamento pode ser, ou como seria um trabalho frutífero e próspero em sua cidade, ou que aliança linda e duradoura sua equipe pode formar, se você apenas aguentar firme e tiver paciência.

As melhores coisas na vida tomam tempo. Você precisa de paciência para receber grandes recompensas. Se fizer progresso lento e sólido em direção ao que quer, terá êxito. E como os seres humanos parecem querer tudo “pra ontem”, a maneira de resistir à tendência de ficar desencorajado caso as coisas demorem mais do que esperava é apoiar-se na fé e nas promessas que lhe dou. Eu tenho a paciência que talvez lhe falte, e estou disposto a esperar e guiar você e seu projeto devagar e sempre, por passos certos.

Não tenho problema com os períodos de espera pois sei que o resultado final valerá a pena o tempo investido. E você pode ser fortalecido em fé ao se comprometer a seguir o Meu cronograma, mesmo que se sinta inquieto. Com a Minha ajuda, vai conseguir perseverar nos projetos que Eu lhe mostrar serem da Minha vontade, mesmo quando achar que não estão dando um retorno tão rápido como gostaria.

É preciso fé para confiar que estou em você e nas suas investidas. Requer muita fé, e sua tendência às vezes é desistir, dar meia volta, fazer outra coisa, ou simplesmente parar. É natural sentir-se assim, mas o natural e o normal não vão lhe dar os resultados sobrenaturais e extraordinários que busca.

Se desistir quando as coisas ficarem difíceis e progredirem lentamente, então estará limitado apenas a obter as vitórias ganhas rapidamente. O ouro depurado é resultado do processo de refinamento no fogo, e as maiores belezas da vida chegam quando se tem paciência para esperar por elas.

Deixe-Me encorajá-lo de que mesmo sentindo que não tem paciência ou forças para continuar fazendo algumas coisas na vida sem perder a visão ou se cansar, Eu tenho mais força e paciência para lhe dar. Se Me incluir na situação e Me pedir para ajudá-lo a manter os olhos na meta e encher o seu coração com a glória da vitória por vir, Eu o ajudarei a perseverar para não desistir prematuramente, antes da vitória ser ganha.

Você talvez queira ver progresso e sinais de fruto para ficar encorajado, mas confie em Mim e que os resultados estão lá no futuro se você seguir em frente. Então, se conectar-se à fé e expectativa que tenho, terá mais confiança, e não vai fazer muita diferença como as coisas parecem no momento, contanto continue seguindo pelo caminho que determinei. Saberá que futuras recompensas farão com que tudo valha a pena.

Você muitas vezes não sabe quando está a ponto de colher os frutos de sua longa labuta, e seria uma vergonha desistir antes de conquistar a vitória. Talvez ache que está apenas na metade do caminho e que tem pelo menos ainda o mesmo tanto para seguir, mas a resposta pode estar a apenas mais um passo de distância, uns poucos dias ou horas, se você simplesmente aguentar firme.

Seja qual for o caso, e seja qual for a vitória, quer esteja próxima quer longe, tenho paciência para levá-lo a ela inspirado e cheio de coragem e visão. Não vou apenas ajudá-lo a suportar o período de espera até a vitória, mas vou ajudá-lo a desfrutar da jornada até ela e por todo o caminho. Posso ajudá-lo a ver o bem que já existe ao seu redor, as coisas que já estão se encaixando, e todos os sinais da Minha bênção, mesmo se a resposta principal, ou o resultado ou meta que busca só forem se concretizar no futuro.

Sempre há sinais de progresso se você buscá-los. Às vezes são pequenos sinais, mas estão lá. Você pode até ver a grama crescer se for fiel o suficiente em medi-la. E posso ajudá-lo a ver esses pequenos indicadores de progresso e ser encorajado por eles enquanto espera o resultado final.

A vida é assim—requer tempo. Leva tempo para Eu executar a Minha melhor obra na natureza, e requer tempo para Eu operar da melhor maneira possível nos corações e vidas das pessoas. Quanto antes você perder o hábito de querer tudo imediatamente e precisar de sinais visíveis e instantâneos de fruto, mais capaz será de relaxar e entrar em um ritmo mais segundo Deus, e confiar que sua labuta paciente está compensando, e até desfrutar das coisas como são no momento, neste estágio da jornada. Há muitas bênçãos ao seu redor no momento se você buscá-las.

Se fizer a sua parte trabalhando lenta e fielmente nos seus projetos e desafios de longo prazo, e tiver a fé de que cada coisinha que faz um dia virá a formar um grande todo, farei a Minha parte de dar o crescimento e a bênção. Quanto mais tempo levar para alcançar sua meta, mais doce será quando conseguir.

Se as suas metas forem as Minhas, quer leve pouco ou muito tempo, a resposta e a vitória valerão a pena, e as recompensas e a gratificação valerão cada empenho, esforço e paciência.

Publicado em Âncora em fevereiro de 2013.
Tradução Denise Oliveira. Revisão Hebe Rondon Flandoli.



Postado em: Fé, Paciência, Perseverança, Seguir a Deus

Love Is a Do Thing

A compilation

Download Audio (9.2MB)

Love is a do thing. It’s an energy that has to be dissipated.—Bob Goff1

*

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.—Howard Zinn

*

Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.—Mother Teresa

*

Service is love made visible. If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve your money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself, and you will have only yourself. … Instead, try to love others, and serve others, and hopefully find those who will love and serve you in return.—Stephen Colbert2

*

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.—Percy Bysshe Shelley

*

You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.—Zig Ziglar

*

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.—Mother Teresa

*

A particularly overlooked aspect of the art of gratitude is the habit of noticing. When we notice others and show our appreciation, it pays huge dividends. Additionally, by noticing others we become more attuned to life’s vitality, intensity, and diversity.—Michael McKinney

*

Like most of us, you can probably look forward to some extra attention on your birthday and certain other special occasions. But doesn’t it make you feel especially loved when, out of the blue, someone does some loving thing for you for no other reason than because he or she loves you?

Why not do the same for others? If you stop to think about it, you’d probably be surprised at how many thoughtful little things you could find to do for others that would cost almost nothing and take almost no time. Want to transform your relationships with family, friends, and workmates? Become a master of the five-minute favor.—Shannon Shaylor3

*

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.—Mother Teresa

*

I heard a self-help guy say once you could look in the mirror and give yourself something he called positive affirmations, like saying to yourself you are good or smart or talented. I don’t know if that works, to be honest. Maybe it does. But I do know one thing that works every time—it’s having somebody else say something good about you.

Words of encouragement are like that. They have their own power. And when they are said by the right people, they can change everything. What I’ve found in following Jesus is that most of the time, when it comes to who says it, we each are the right people. And I’ve concluded something else. That the words people say to us not only have shelf life but have the ability to shape life.—Bob Goff4

*

When you live on your own for years, you begin to think the world belongs to you. You begin to think all space is your space and all time is your time.

It is like in that movie About a Boy where Nick Hornby's chief character, played by Hugh Grant, believes that life is a play about himself, that all other characters are only acting minor roles in a story that centers around him. My life felt like that. Life was a story about me because I was in every scene. In fact, I was the only one in every scene. I was everywhere I went. If somebody walked into my scene, it would frustrate me because they were disrupting the general theme of the play, namely my comfort or glory.

[And then] a friend and I traveled to Salem to hear Brennan Manning speak. … He opened his talk with the story of Zacchaeus. Brennan talked about how an entire town, with their ridicule and hatred, could not keep the little man from oppressing them through the extravagant financial gains he made as a tax collector. Christ walked through town, Brennan said, and spotted the man. Christ told Zacchaeus that He would like to have a meal with him.

In the single conversation Christ had with Zacchaeus, Brennan reminded us, Jesus spoke affirmation and love, and the tax collector sold his possessions and made amends to those he had robbed. It was the affection of Christ, not the brutality of a town, that healed Zacchaeus.

Manning went on to speak of the great danger of a harsh word, the power of unlove to deteriorate a person’s heart and spirit, and how, as representatives of the grace and love of God, our communication should be seasoned with love and compassion.

While Manning was speaking, I was being shown myself, and I felt like God was asking me to change. I was being asked to walk away from the lies I believed about the world being about me. I had been communicating unlove to my housemates because I thought they were not cooperating with the meaning of life, that meaning being my desire and will and choice and comfort.—Donald Miller5

*

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’”—Matthew 25:31–406



Published on Anchor February 2013.



1 Love Does (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012).

2 Commencement speech at Northwestern University, 2011.

3 Love’s Many Faces (Aurora Production, 2010).

4 Love Does (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012).

5 Blue Like Jazz (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003).

6 NIV.

Better TV Habits Can Lead to Better Behavior Among Children




By Bonnie Rochman, TIME, Feb. 18, 2013
If parents can’t limit their children’s TV time, then they can at least try to improve what youngsters are watching.

That’s the if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them approach that researchers in Seattle took in trying to address the issue of how much TV children, including toddlers, watch every day. Despite admonitions from experts and an emerging body of research that suggests children shouldn’t be watching more than two hours a day, the typical U.S. tot spends about four and a half hours parked in front of a television daily. Campaigns to reduce this screen time have clearly been only minimally successful.

So by shifting the focus away from how much youngsters watch and concentrating instead on what they’re seeing, the researchers report in the journal Pediatrics on their success in helping parents to increase the time kids spent watching educational programming. The result? Better-behaved children.

“There is no question kids watch too much television at all ages,” says Dimitri Christakis, lead author and director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. “Part of the message is not just about turning off the television but about changing the channel.”

Kids are sponges who absorb their surroundings; it’s how they learn to develop the proper behaviors and responses to social situations. And they are not only parroting their parents and other family members, but mimicking behaviors they see on television or in movies as well. So Christakis, who has conducted extensive research on the effects of screen time on child development, explored ways to influence what shows children watch so that they’re more apt to imitate quality conduct. “We’ve known for decades that kids imitate what they see on TV,” he says. “They imitate good behaviors and they imitate bad behaviors.”

In the study, he and his colleagues tracked 617 families with kids between the ages of three and five. Half of the families agreed to go on a media “diet” and swap programming with more aggressive and violent content for educational, pro-social shows that encourage sharing, kindness and respect, such as Dora the Explorer, which teaches how to resolve conflicts, and Sesame Street, which models tolerance for diversity. The other families did not change their children’s viewing choices.

To help parents in the first group to choose appropriate shows, they received a program guide that highlighted prosocial content and learned how to block out violent programming. (The parents were so delighted with the guidance that many asked to continue receiving program guides even after the study ended.) They were also urged to watch alongside their kids. The researchers tracked what the children watched and also measured their behavior with standard tests of aggressiveness and sharing responses six months and a year into the study.

At both testing periods, the children in the first group watched less aggressive programming than they did at the beginning of the study compared to children in the control group. Both groups of kids upped their screen time a bit, but the first group saw more quality programs while the control group spent even more time watching violent shows.

Six months after the study began, the children who increased their pro-social viewing acted less aggressively and showed more sharing and respectful behaviors compared to the control group. They were more apt to compromise and cooperate than children who didn’t change their viewing content, and the effects persisted for the entire year that the study lasted. “There is a connection between what children watch, not just in terms of violence but in terms of improved behavior,” says Chistakis, who is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.

Who got the biggest boost in behavior? Low-income boys. “They derived the greatest benefit, which is interesting because they are most at risk of being victims and perpetrators of aggression,” he says


.

It Rots the Senses in the Head! ---TV of course!

“The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll & slop & lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out. (Last week in someone's place we saw A dozen eyeballs on the floor.) They sit & stare & stare & sit Until they're hypnotized by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keeps them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink -- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS & CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL & BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST & FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES! ‘All right!’ you'll cry. ‘All right!’ you'll say, ‘But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children! Please explain!’ We'll answer this by asking you, What used the darling ones to do? How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?" Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud & slow: THEY ... USED TO ... READ! They'd READ & READ, & READ & READ, And then proceed TO READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks! One-half their lives was reading books! The nursery shelves held books galore! Books cluttered up the nursery floor! And in the bedroom, by the bed, More books were waiting to be read! Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales Of dragons, gypsies, queens, & whales And treasure isles, & distant shores Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars, And pirates wearing purple pants, And sailing ships & elephants, And cannibals crouching round the pot, Stirring away at something hot. (It smells so good, what can it be? Good gracious, it's Penelope.) The younger ones had Beatrix Potter With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter, And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and -- Just How The Camel Got His Hump, And How The Monkey Lost His Rump, And Mr. Toad, & bless my soul, There's Mr. Rat & Mr. Mole -- Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, The screams & yells, the bites & kicks, And children hitting you with sticks -- Fear not, because we promise you That, in about a week or two Of having nothing else to do, They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something good to read. And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly-growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean. Repulsive television screen! And later, each & every kid Will love you more for what you did.” --sung by the Oompa-Loompas, in ‘Charlie & The Chocolate Factory,’ by Roald Dahl (1964)

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II





By Mike Dash, Smithsonian.com, January 29, 2013,
Siberian summers do not last long. The snows linger into May, and the cold weather returns again during September, freezing the taiga into a still life awesome in its desolation: endless miles of straggly pine and birch forests scattered with sleeping bears and hungry wolves; steep-sided mountains; white-water rivers that pour in torrents through the valleys; a hundred thousand icy bogs. This forest is the last and greatest of Earth’s wildernesses. It stretches from the furthest tip of Russia’s arctic regions as far south as Mongolia, and east from the Urals to the Pacific: five million square miles of nothingness, with a population, outside a handful of towns, that amounts to only a few thousand people.

When the warm days do arrive, though, the taiga blooms, and for a few short months it can seem almost welcoming. It is then that man can see most clearly into this hidden world—not on land, for the taiga can swallow whole armies of explorers, but from the air. Siberia is the source of most of Russia’s oil and mineral resources, and, over the years, even its most distant parts have been overflown by oil prospectors and surveyors on their way to backwoods camps where the work of extracting wealth is carried on.

Thus it was in the remote south of the forest in the summer of 1978. A helicopter sent to find a safe spot to land a party of geologists was skimming the treeline a hundred or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into the thickly wooded valley of an unnamed tributary of the Abakan, a seething ribbon of water rushing through dangerous terrain. The valley walls were narrow, with sides that were close to vertical in places, and the skinny pine and birch trees swaying in the rotors’ downdraft were so thickly clustered that there was no chance of finding a spot to set the aircraft down. But, peering intently through his windscreen in search of a landing place, the pilot saw something that should not have been there. It was a clearing, 6,000 feet up a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what looked like long, dark furrows. The baffled helicopter crew made several passes before reluctantly concluding that this was evidence of human habitation—a garden that, from the size and shape of the clearing, must have been there for a long time.

It was an astounding discovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement, in a spot that had never been explored. The Soviet authorities had no records of anyone living in the district.

The four scientists sent into the district to prospect for iron ore were told about the pilots’ sighting, and it perplexed and worried them. “It’s less dangerous,” the writer Vasily Peskov notes of this part of the taiga, “to run across a wild animal than a stranger,” and rather than wait at their own temporary base, 10 miles away, the scientists decided to investigate. Led by a geologist named Galina Pismenskaya, they “chose a fine day and put gifts in our packs for our prospective friends”—though, just to be sure, she recalled, “I did check the pistol that hung at my side.”

As the intruders scrambled up the mountain, heading for the spot pinpointed by their pilots, they began to come across signs of human activity: a rough path, a staff, a log laid across a stream, and finally a small shed filled with birch-bark containers of cut-up dried potatoes. Then, Pismenskaya said,

beside a stream there was a dwelling. Blackened by time and rain, the hut was piled up on all sides with taiga rubbish—bark, poles, planks. If it hadn’t been for a window the size of my backpack pocket, it would have been hard to believe that people lived there. But they did, no doubt about it…. Our arrival had been noticed, as we could see.

The low door creaked, and the figure of a very old man emerged into the light of day, straight out of a fairy tale. Barefoot. Wearing a patched and repatched shirt made of sacking. He wore trousers of the same material, also in patches, and had an uncombed beard. His hair was disheveled. He looked frightened and was very attentive…. We had to say something, so I began: ‘Greetings, grandfather! We’ve come to visit!’

The old man did not reply immediately…. Finally, we heard a soft, uncertain voice: ‘Well, since you have traveled this far, you might as well come in.’

The sight that greeted the geologists as they entered the cabin was like something from the middle ages. Jerry-built from whatever materials came to hand, the dwelling was not much more than a burrow—“a low, soot-blackened log kennel that was as cold as a cellar,” with a floor consisting of potato peel and pine-nut shells. Looking around in the dim light, the visitors saw that it consisted of a single room. It was cramped, musty and indescribably filthy, propped up by sagging joists—and, astonishingly, home to a family of five.

The silence was suddenly broken by sobs and lamentations. Only then did we see the silhouettes of two women. One was in hysterics, praying: ‘This is for our sins, our sins.’ The other, keeping behind a post… sank slowly to the floor. The light from the little window fell on her wide, terrified eyes, and we realized we had to get out of there as quickly as possible.

Led by Pismenskaya, the scientists backed hurriedly out of the hut and retreated to a spot a few yards away, where they took out some provisions and began to eat. After about half an hour, the door of the cabin creaked open, and the old man and his two daughters emerged—no longer hysterical and, though still obviously frightened, “frankly curious.” Warily, the three strange figures approached and sat down with their visitors, rejecting everything that they were offered—jam, tea, bread—with a muttered, “We are not allowed that!” When Pismenskaya asked, “Have you ever eaten bread?” the old man answered: “I have. But they have not. They have never seen it.” At least he was intelligible. The daughters spoke a language distorted by a lifetime of isolation. “When the sisters talked to each other, it sounded like a slow, blurred cooing.”

Slowly, over several visits, the full story of the family emerged. The old man’s name was Karp Lykov, and he was an Old Believer—a member of a fundamentalist Russian Orthodox sect, worshiping in a style unchanged since the 17th century. Old Believers had been persecuted since the days of Peter the Great, and Lykov talked about it as though it had happened only yesterday; for him, Peter was a personal enemy and “the anti-Christ in human form”—a point he insisted had been amply proved by Tsar’s campaign to modernize Russia by forcibly “chopping off the beards of Christians.”

Things had only got worse for the Lykov family when the atheist Bolsheviks took power. Under the Soviets, isolated Old Believer communities that had fled to Siberia to escape persecution began to retreat ever further from civilization. During the purges of the 1930s, with Christianity itself under assault, a Communist patrol had shot Lykov’s brother on the outskirts of their village while Lykov knelt working beside him. He had responded by scooping up his family and bolting into forest.

That was in 1936, and there were only four Lykovs then—Karp; his wife, Akulina; a son named Savin, 9 years old, and Natalia, a daughter who was only 2. Taking their possessions and some seeds, they had retreated ever deeper into the taiga, building themselves a succession of crude dwelling places, until at last they had fetched up in this desolate spot. Two more children had been born in the wild—Dmitry in 1940 and Agafia in 1943—and neither of the youngest Lykov children had ever seen a human being who was not a member of their family. All that Agafia and Dmitry knew of the outside world they learned entirely from their parents’ stories. The family’s principal entertainment, the Russian journalist Vasily Peskov noted, “was for everyone to recount their dreams.”

The Lykov children knew there were places called cities where humans lived crammed together in tall buildings. They had heard there were countries other than Russia. But such concepts were no more than abstractions to them. Their only reading matter was prayer books and an ancient family Bible. Akulina had used the gospels to teach her children to read and write, using sharpened birch sticks dipped into honeysuckle juice as pen and ink. When Agafia was shown a picture of a horse, she recognized it from her mother’s Bible stories. “Look, papa,” she exclaimed. “A steed!”

But if the family’s isolation was hard to grasp, the unmitigated harshness of their lives was not. Traveling to the Lykov homestead on foot was astonishingly arduous, even with the help of a boat along the Abakan. On his first visit to the Lykovs, Peskov—who would appoint himself the family’s chief chronicler—noted that “we traversed 250 kilometres [155 miles] without seeing a single human dwelling!”

Isolation made survival in the wilderness close to impossible. Dependent solely on their own resources, the Lykovs struggled to replace the few things they had brought into the taiga with them. They fashioned birch-bark galoshes in place of shoes. Clothes were patched and repatched until they fell apart, then replaced with hemp cloth grown from seed.

The Lykovs had carried a crude spinning wheel and, incredibly, the components of a loom into the taiga with them—moving these from place to place as they gradually went further into the wilderness must have required many long and arduous journeys—but they had no technology for replacing metal. A couple of kettles served them well for many years, but when rust finally overcame them, the only replacements they could fashion came from birch bark. Since these could not be placed in a fire, it became far harder to cook. By the time the Lykovs were discovered, their staple diet was potato patties mixed with ground rye and hemp seeds.

In some respects, Peskov makes clear, the taiga did offer some abundance: “Beside the dwelling ran a clear, cold stream. Stands of larch, spruce, pine and birch yielded all that anyone could take…. Bilberries and raspberries were close to hand, firewood as well, and pine nuts fell right on the roof.”

Yet the Lykovs lived permanently on the edge of famine. It was not until the late 1950s, when Dmitry reached manhood, that they first trapped animals for their meat and skins. Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Dmitry built up astonishing endurance, and could hunt barefoot in winter, sometimes returning to the hut after several days, having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost, a young elk across his shoulders. More often than not, though, there was no meat, and their diet gradually became more monotonous. Wild animals destroyed their crop of carrots, and Agafia recalled the late 1950s as “the hungry years.” “We ate the rowanberry leaf,” she said, “roots, grass, mushrooms, potato tops, and bark, We were hungry all the time. Every year we held a council to decide whether to eat everything up or leave some for seed.”

Famine was an ever-present danger in these circumstances, and in 1961 it snowed in June. The hard frost killed everything growing in their garden, and by spring the family had been reduced to eating shoes and bark. Akulina chose to see her children fed, and that year she died of starvation. The rest of the family were saved by what they regarded as a miracle: a single grain of rye sprouted in their pea patch. The Lykovs put up a fence around the shoot and guarded it zealously night and day to keep off mice and squirrels. At harvest time, the solitary spike yielded 18 grains, and from this they painstakingly rebuilt their rye crop.

As the Soviet geologists got to know the Lykov family, they realized that they had underestimated their abilities and intelligence. Each family member had a distinct personality; Old Karp was usually delighted by the latest innovations that the scientists brought up from their camp, and though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of satellites. The Lykovs had noticed them as early as the 1950s, when “the stars began to go quickly across the sky,” and Karp himself conceived a theory to explain this: “People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very like stars.”

“What amazed him most of all,” Peskov recorded, “was a transparent cellophane package. ‘Lord, what have they thought up—it is glass, but it crumples!’” His eldest child, Savin, cast himself as the family’s unbending arbiter in matters of religion. “He was strong of faith, but a harsh man,” his own father said of him, and Karp seems to have worried about what would happen to his family after he died if Savin took control. Certainly the eldest son would have encountered little resistance from Natalia, who always struggled to replace her mother as cook, seamstress and nurse.

The two younger children, on the other hand, were more approachable and more open to change and innovation. “Fanaticism was not terribly marked in Agafia,” Peskov said, and in time he came to realize that the youngest of the Lykovs had a sense of irony and could poke fun at herself. Agafia was markedly intelligent, and took charge of the difficult task, in a family that possessed no calendars, of keeping track of time. She thought nothing of hard work, either, excavating a new cellar by hand late in the fall and working on by moonlight when the sun had set. Asked by an astonished Peskov whether she was not frightened to be out alone in the wilderness after dark, she replied: “What would there be out here to hurt me?”

Of all the Lykovs, though, the geologists’ favorite was Dmitry, a consummate outdoorsman who knew all of the taiga’s moods. He was the most curious and perhaps the most forward-looking member of the family. It was he who had built the family stove, and all the birch-bark buckets that they used to store food. It was also Dmitry who spent days hand-cutting and hand-planing each log that the Lykovs felled. Perhaps it was no surprise that he was also the most enraptured by the scientists’ technology. Once relations had improved to the point that the Lykovs could be persuaded to visit the Soviets’ camp, downstream, he spent many happy hours in its little sawmill, marveling at how easily a circular saw and lathes could finish wood. “It’s not hard to figure,” Peskov wrote. “The log that took Dmitry a day or two to plane was transformed into handsome, even boards before his eyes. Dmitry felt the boards with his palm and said: ‘Fine!’”

Karp Lykov fought a long and losing battle with himself to keep all this modernity at bay. When they first got to know the geologists, the family would accept only a single gift—salt. (Living without it for four decades, Karp said, had been “true torture.”) Over time, however, they began to take more. They welcomed the assistance of their special friend among the geologists—a driller named Yerofei Sedov, who spent much of his spare time helping them to plant and harvest crops. They took knives, forks, handles, grain and eventually even pen and paper and an electric torch. Most of these innovations were only grudgingly acknowledged, but the sin of television, which they encountered at the geologists’ camp, proved irresistible for them…. On their rare appearances, they would invariably sit down and watch. Karp sat directly in front of the screen. Agafia watched poking her head from behind a door. She tried to pray away her transgression immediately—whispering, crossing herself…. The old man prayed afterward, diligently and in one fell swoop.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of the Lykovs’ strange story was the rapidity with which the family went into decline after they re-established contact with the outside world. In the fall of 1981, three of the four children followed their mother to the grave within a few days of one another. Both Savin and Natalia suffered from kidney failure, most likely a result of their harsh diet. But Dmitry died of pneumonia, which might have begun as an infection he acquired from his new friends.

His death shook the geologists, who tried desperately to save him. They offered to call in a helicopter and have him evacuated to a hospital. But Dmitry, in extremis, would abandon neither his family nor the religion he had practiced all his life. “We are not allowed that,” he whispered just before he died. “A man lives for howsoever God grants.”

When all three Lykovs had been buried, the geologists attempted to talk Karp and Agafia into leaving the forest and returning to be with relatives who had survived the persecutions of the purge years, and who still lived on in the same old villages. But neither of the survivors would hear of it. They rebuilt their old cabin, but stayed close to their old home.

Karp Lykov died in his sleep on February 16, 1988, 27 years to the day after his wife, Akulina. Agafia buried him on the mountain slopes with the help of the geologists, then turned and headed back to her home. The Lord would provide, and she would stay, she said—as indeed she has. A quarter of a century later, now in her seventies herself, this child of the taiga lives on alone, high above the Abakan.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Singapore In-Laws Rage as Women Spurn Lee's Babies Plea


By Shamim Adam, Bloomberg, Jan 22, 2013
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is cranking up a national debate on babies this month, with proposals to Parliament that would attempt to stem the country’s slumping birthrate. Penelope Sim isn’t listening.

“My mother-in-law hates me and she says I’m selfish, but I don’t really care,” Sim, a human resources consultant who’s been married for six years, said as she shopped for lipstick and eye liner. “Everything’s crazy expensive and life’s already stressful enough here without kids. If there’s no one to carry on the family name, then so be it.”

Sim, 33, embodies Lee’s challenge to convince Singaporeans to wed younger and procreate more, four decades after concern about overcrowding prompted his father to urge citizens to delay nuptials and have smaller families. The younger Lee is caught between a rock and a hard place. While the birthrate was about 1.3 children per woman in 2012—barely enough to replace one parent—a backlash against soaring immigration forced the government to curb the influx of foreigners, leading to labor shortages and slower economic growth.

Measures since 1987 to reverse declining fertility, including handouts of as much as S$18,000 ($14,600) and extended maternity leave, haven’t worked. The nation’s birthrate in 2010 and 2011 were the lowest in 47 years of independence. About 36,000 babies were born to residents in 2011, compared with nearly 50,000 in 1990.

The failure to encourage more births means the country will have to contend with a shrinking pool of workers and consumers, a deterrent to future investment. It will also increase the burden on younger employees to pay for an aging population. Lee has said higher taxes will be needed in the next two decades as the government boosts social spending to support the elderly.

The city state isn’t alone in struggling with falling birthrates. The level in the U.S. hit a record low in 2011, while Japan’s population is forecast to drop by almost a third by 2060 from 128 million in 2010. China’s three-decade-old, one-child policy is accelerating declines in its workforce, and Germany’s birthrate is among the lowest in Europe even as it spends billions of euros to encourage women to have more children.

Singapore, smaller in size than New York City, has few natural resources, and the government relies on a skilled workforce to sustain growth. The economy has expanded for all but four years since independence in 1965, bringing million- dollar high-rise apartments and shopping malls in place of pig farms and fishing villages.

Singapore’s home ownership rate is about 89 percent and the Boston Consulting Group estimates there were 188,000 millionaire households in the city state in 2011. The Economist Intelligence Unit declared Singapore to be the best place in Asia to be born in 2013. Gross domestic product per capita climbed to $50,123 in 2011, from $516 in 1965.

Back then, the country boasted a fertility rate of 4.7 and so many women gave birth in the national maternity hospital in 1966 that it entered the Guinness Book of World Records.

The so-called birthquake raised concern that the fledgling economy would be overburdened, and Lee’s father, Lee Kuan Yew, promoted family planning, legalized abortion and encouraged sterilization. A “Stop at Two” campaign in the 1970s and the natural decline in childbirth as the economy developed brought the fertility rate down to 1.82 by the end of the decade.

Last August, Lee Kuan Yew lamented that the number of births in the city has halved since he came to power in 1959, even with twice as many people.

“If we go on like that, this place would fold up because there will be no original citizens left to form the majority,” Lee, 89, said in a speech published in the Straits Times newspaper. “We’ve got to persuade people to understand that getting married is important, having children is important.”

Singaporean men and women are delaying getting married in part because they want to “concentrate fully” on their jobs or studies, a government survey of 2,120 singles showed this month. The median age for grooms has risen to 30.1 in 2011, from 26.9 in 1970. For brides, it has climbed to 28, from 23.1.

“We have to find effective ways to encourage Singaporeans to have more babies,” the younger Lee said in his New Year message. “We are not impersonal, calculating robots, mindlessly pursuing economic growth and material wealth.”

Pursuit of possessions may be partly to blame. Singaporean women are more materialistic than their American counterparts, which could explain a smaller desire for children, according to a 2010 study by researchers at the Singapore Management University and the Northern Illinois University.

In the 1990s, success in Singapore was measured by the attainment of the so-called five Cs—cash, car, credit card, condominium and country club membership. Now, there are 9.3 million credit cards in circulation on the island, private property prices are at a record, and a Volkswagen Golf can cost more than the median price of an existing U.S. home.

The role of women in the economy may also have contributed to the falling birth rate. They made up 44 percent of the resident labor pool last year as the government encouraged greater participation and offered larger tax breaks to working mothers. In 2010, female graduates outnumbered males in three of the five most common fields, including business and administration.

A survey by I Love Children, an organization that promotes a “children-plenty” Singapore, showed couples cited money as the top factor for not having babies. It costs at least S$340,000 to raise a child in Singapore from infancy to the age of 21, the Asian Parent website estimated last year. A middle-income U.S. family may spend $234,900 to raise a child born in 2011 to the age of 18, a government report last year showed.

US commandos boost numbers to train Mexican forces


By Kimberly Dozier, AP, Jan. 17, 2013
WASHINGTON—The Pentagon is stepping up aid for Mexico’s bloody drug war with a new U.S.-based special operations headquarters to teach Mexican security forces how to hunt drug cartels the same way special operations teams hunt al-Qaida, according to documents and interviews with multiple U.S. officials.

Such assistance could help newly elected Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto establish a military force to focus on drug criminal networks that have terrorized Mexico’s northern states and threatened the U.S. Southwest border. Mexican officials say warring drug gangs have killed at least 70,000 people between 2006 and 2012.

Based at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, Special Operations Command-North will build on a commando program that has brought Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officials to study U.S. counterterrorist operations, to show them how special operations troops built an interagency network to target al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and his followers.

The special operations team within Northcom will be turned into a new headquarters, led by a general instead of a colonel. It was established in a Dec. 31 memo signed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. That move gives the group more autonomy and the number of people could eventually quintuple from 30 to 150, meaning the headquarters could expand its training missions with the Mexicans, even though no new money is being assigned to the mission.

The special operations program has already helped Mexican officials set up their own intelligence center in Mexico City to target criminal networks, patterned after similar centers in war zones built to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq, two current U.S. officials said.

Mexican and U.S. military officials played down the change, and it’s unclear whether the Mexican government will agree to boost its training.

The creation of the new command marks another expansion of Adm. Bill McRaven’s special operations empire, as he seeks to migrate special operators from their decade of service in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to new missions, even as the rest of the military fights postwar contraction and multibillion-dollar budget cuts.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu´s Choice

By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, January 22, 2013
The Israeli elections delivered a blow to the conventional wisdom, always a welcome development: although widely expected to lurch rightward, Israeli voters surprised everyone by moving toward the center—and even giving a bit of a boost to what passes for the Israeli “left.”

While returns are still coming in as of this writing, it looks like the rightist bloc in the Knesset is on track to win 61 seats, while the center-left garners 59. The big winner: television personality Yair Lapid, whose newly-founded centrist Yesh Atid party is projected to rack up some 19 seats, ahead of Labor, with 17. The biggest loser: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud-Yisrael Beitenu merger won 31, eleven less than they had before. Another big loser: Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, who was expected to come in second. Bennett and his homies look to be winning a mere 12 seats, instead of the 17 or so projected earlier. Also: the “Strong Israel” party, even further to the right than Bennett, lost its two Knesset seats—in spite (or, perhaps, because of) their explicitly racist anti-African refugee campaign in southern Tel Aviv. The religious Orthodox parties—Shas and United Torah Judaism—apparently showed little movement.

While Bibi trained his guns on the threat from the ultra-right—Bennett and the super-nationalists on the fringe, supposedly on the upswing—Yesh Atid campaigned mainly on economic issues, most significantly against the privileges accorded to ultra-Orthodox Jews in housing, military service, and government subsidies. Indeed, the party’s campaign ads sounded like what one might hear from our own Democratic party: pious pledges of fealty to the sacred Middle Class, an assertive secularism, and shameless demographic demagoguery (not “enough” women were at the top of Likud’s party list).

Bibi, for his part, emphasized national security issues, pointing to his record as the one who kept Israel “safe” and trying to appease the ultra-rightists around Bennett by declaring he would build yet more settlements. In response to anti-African riots in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, he also pledged to crack down on refugees coming from Africa, and deport those who had already arrived.

This rightist strategy failed spectacularly: the great right-wing surge widely predicted—including here, I might add—never materialized. Instead, what we have is a walk-back to the center—although, when it comes to Israeli politics, this description may be a bit misleading. Before anyone gets too excited about the exact meaning of this “walk to the center,” they should understand that Lapid’s “centrist” views on the Palestinians are, um, decidedly non-centrist. As Arutz Sheva reported:

“‘I do not think that the Arabs want peace,’ he wrote on his Facebook page. Lapid said that he does not care what the Arabs want. ‘What I want is not a new Middle East, but to be rid of them and put a tall fence between us and them.’ The important thing, he added, is ‘to maintain a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel.’

“Lapid has said recently that the Left ‘makes the same mistake again when it negotiates the division of Jerusalem. The Palestinians must be brought to an understanding that Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty and that there is no point for them in opening negotiations about Jerusalem.’”

Such views are hardly a cause for celebration among those who hope for a more reasonable Israeli approach to the peace process: however, Yesh Atid did not emphasize these views in its election campaign, at least from what I can tell. Insofar as this election reflects the electorate’s evolving views on national security issues, one can look at what didn’t happen—Jewish Home’s expected rise to the nation’s second largest party—as the big take-away. Bennett campaigned, in part, on the strength of his plan to annex most of the West Bank—a proposal that would have isolated Israel even more than it already is, and which is now dead in the water.

This election, it turned out, wasn’t about national security but about the quality of life in Israel: the secular middle class had its revenge. The rise of Yesh Atid augurs a backlash against the privileges of the haredi—ultra-orthodox “scholars” who don’t get drafted and get preferential treatment in housing—and also against the ideological and religious concerns that were the focus of the rightists’ election campaign strategy.

This election was also about Barack Obama, and Israel’s increasingly strained relationship with the US. In the last days of the campaign the White House “leak,” via Jeffrey Goldberg—that the President thinks Bibi hasn’t a clue as to what’s best for Israel—apparently really hit home: the Israelis know, even if Bibi often seems to have forgotten, how dependent the Jewish state is on America’s patronage. Goldberg’s reportage was seen as payback for Bibi’s brazen interference in the American election, during which the Israeli Prime Minister allowed himself to be weaponized by the Republicans (albeit not to any discernible GOP advantage). The lesson here: the Americans have more electoral clout in Israel than vice versa—that is, if the White House chooses to exercise it.

Netanyahu will form the next government, but clearly he is in a much weaker position, particularly vis-à-vis the US. If Lapid joins the governing coalition, the Israelis will be more open to re-starting negotiations with the Palestinians, and more amenable to American pressure—this in spite of Netanyahu’s implicitly anti-American campaign rhetoric. For Likud, and Bibi, this election is a slap in the face, and the sting is not likely to wear off any time soon.

The humiliation of the Israeli right is conditional good news—conditional, that is, on the assumption that Netanyahu will seek a coalition with the centrists, as in this scenario, rather than with Bennett and the religious bloc. While this would seem to make the most sense—there is reportedly a lot of bad blood between Netanyahu and Bennett—when it comes to Israel’s fractious politics, you never know. It is perfectly possible Bibi could put together a right-wing coalition with a one-vote majority in the Knesset, in which case all bets are off.

The new government, whatever its composition, will face the bleak prospect of Israel’s increasing international isolation—and stepped up pressure from the US to re-start the peace process and let Obama earn his Nobel peace prize.

It’s Bibi’s choice. As he struggles to put together a government, the longest serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history stands at a crossroads: he can build a coalition committed to putting the two-state solution back on the agenda—and take the nutty notion of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran completely off the table—or he can march off the ideological cliff with Bennett and the rest of the crazies.

Evidence grows for narcolepsy link to GSK swine flu shot


By Kate Kelland, Reuters, Jan. 21, 2013
STOCKHOLM (Reuters)—Emelie Olsson is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she’s often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Emelie is one of around 800 children in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe who developed narcolepsy, an incurable sleep disorder, after being immunized with the Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu vaccine made by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in 2009.

Finland, Norway, Ireland and France have seen spikes in narcolepsy cases, too, and people familiar with the results of a soon-to-be-published study in Britain have told Reuters it will show a similar pattern in children there.

Their fate, coping with an illness that all but destroys normal life, is developing into what the health official who coordinated Sweden’s vaccination campaign calls a “medical tragedy” that will demand rising scientific and medical attention.

Europe’s drugs regulator has ruled Pandemrix should no longer be used in people aged under 20. The chief medical officer at GSK’s vaccines division, Norman Begg, says his firm views the issue extremely seriously and is “absolutely committed to getting to the bottom of this”, but adds there is not yet enough data or evidence to suggest a causal link.

Others—including Emmanuel Mignot, one of the world’s leading experts on narcolepsy, who is being funded by GSK to investigate further—agree more research is needed but say the evidence is already clearly pointing in one direction.

“There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Pandemrix increased the occurrence of narcolepsy onset in children in some countries—and probably in most countries,” says Mignot, a specialist in the sleep disorder at Stanford University in the United States.

In total, the GSK shot was given to more than 30 million people in 47 countries during the 2009-2010 H1N1 swine flu pandemic. Because it contains an adjuvant, or booster, it was not used in the United States because drug regulators there are wary of adjuvanted vaccines.

GSK says 795 people across Europe have reported developing narcolepsy since the vaccine’s use began in 2009.

In his glass-topped office building overlooking the Maria Magdalena church in Stockholm, Goran Stiernstedt, a doctor turned public health official, has spent many difficult hours going over what happened in his country during the swine flu pandemic, wondering if things should have been different.

“The big question is was it worth it? And retrospectively I have to say it was not,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Being a wealthy country, Sweden was at the front of the queue for pandemic vaccines. It got Pandemrix from GSK almost as soon as it was available, and a nationwide campaign got uptake of the vaccine to 59 percent, meaning around 5 million people got the shot.

Stiernstedt, director for health and social care at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, helped coordinate the vaccination campaign across Sweden’s 21 regions.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the 2009-2010 pandemic killed 18,500 people, although a study last year said that total might be up to 15 times higher.

While estimates vary, Stiernstedt says Sweden’s mass vaccination saved between 30 and 60 people from swine flu death. Yet since the pandemic ended, more than 200 cases of narcolepsy have been reported in Sweden.

With hindsight, this risk-benefit balance is unacceptable. “This is a medical tragedy,” he said. “Hundreds of young people have had their lives almost destroyed.”

Copyright © Fight for Your Faith