The surface of the earth, if it would reveal its secret holdings and mysteries, would tell us so much about where we have been. Ive not visited the Holy Land. I know it is craggy and rich in caves. Its a place where settlements have been built and rebuilt. If only whole edifices could be moved out of the way for excavation to uncover secrets of antiquity.Those who paw around archaeologically in the Mideast and know the lay of the land and history will be key to affirming or debunking claims that residue of Jesus and his family were so tidily found in limestone boxes in a crypt in Jerusalem 27 years ago, although we are just hearing about it today, Skeptics smartly arent buying it yet. That this find comes as part of a ready-to-go documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus on the Discovery Channel for airing this Sunday is all too scripted. Its so conveniently on schedule to pick up where the controversial book and film, The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown has left off. Leave it to folks with secrets to commercially exploit them, from the outset.On Monday, cloth covers were removed from the boxes at a press conference at New York Public Library as parties showcased the find and the markings on the sides of the boxes, that finders say read like the names of the Christ household. Documentary producer James Cameron, who was instrumental in helping the world see recovered remains and sea bottom footage of the luxury ocean liner Titanic, is part of the team trying to sell the world on the incredible possibility that the holy family had their remains kept together in one place. The claim is that the burial boxes, or ossuaries, are marked to strongly suggest that they contain not only residue of Christ, but his alleged bride, Mary Magdalene; their young son, Judah, who is also being called Timmy; Jesus mother Mary; and Yose or Yosef or Joseph, presumably Jesus father. Skeptics say the names were common in those days, but that for all six famous names to appear in one place could be a once in a million statistical chance. Yet why have we not heard about this careful project of perpetual care before? Leave it to Camerons team to wait for the season of Lent to put out their story. I think this is the biggest archaeological story of the century, Cameron said. Its absolutely not a publicity stunt. Its part of a very well-considered plan to reveal this information to the world in a way that makes sense, with proper documentation.Add this to The Shroud of Turin, the so-called James Ossuary, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the litany of claims that many varied fragments of Jesus life were collected at the scene and brought to Rome in the first centuries and have been preserved in the vaults of the Roman Catholic Church. Its such a reach to claim with certainty that anything can be ascribed to Jesus. Of course, the very suggestion that living substance of Jesus stayed on earth runs completely against the New Testament story of the Son of God rising from the dead to heaven after his death, appearing various times to his followers during the 40 days after his death until his last ascendance. Some say if this preposterous story were true it would be a mortal blow to Christianitys fundamental claims about the son of God. Christian apologists have been fast to react and denounce it: Completely lacking in truth, theologically dangerous, insult our intelligence, recklessness, goes against all historical references and an attack on Christianity.Skeptics and the open-minded would be wise to watch the documentary, follow the debate and try to determined whether this is a hoax, wishful archaeology or possibly the Holy Grail itself. For progressive Christians, it doesnt make much difference. They dont need a virgin birth or a bodily resurrection to recognize that Jesus real worth was what he taught his generation and civilizations that followed — his revolutionary message about how human people should treat and interact with each other, his story of forgiveness, love and being there to comfort and support others.

One thing is just so self-evident that we dont even have to express it. Like why the media tend to be liberal. Thats like asking why are university professors and scholars more likely to be liberal? Or asking why are clergy more progressive or liberal than those in their congregations. Even why most Jews are more liberal and open-minded. Its simple: information, ideas and education. Expose your receiving mind to concepts and it will never be the same. How delicious, how liberating, how natural to expand ones thinking and to freely discard faulty notions. It defies all logic to think media people would or could be exposed to so many ideas, yet remain personally indifferent. Still the mature journalist can and should stay neutral in the reporting role. It is a discipline. Give high regard for learning and reading and you are signing your warrant to change what you are and what you think. I remember spending a summer back home just before starting graduate school and feeling the great intellectual divide between my parents and me, partly due to my education, travels and diverse reading. In more than 40 years of writing for publication, I have come to honor, respect and admire intellect, reasoning and analysis. The tens of millions of words I have read in newspapers, magazines, books, web sites, letters and so many other sources have shaped my thinking as it has yours. I read my own school newspaper editorials and commentaries from 1964 and wince at the limits of their breadth, the naivet and cocksure ideas so lacking in life experiences. They were words without perspective. But, at the time, I was a farm kid going to a small-time high school with 47 in my class, all white kids of the same stock. I listen to erudite voices on National Public Radio or the Friday night news shows on Public Television and they tend to run liberal because they are educated people whose enormous exposure to information and so many forces of marketplace debate that they tend to be anything but reactionary. In 35 years of daily journalism, Ive been an observer of the people who choose this trade probably as many as a couple thousand people by now. They have gotten assaulted by ideas, made to report on societys way of working and seen powers way of dominating the agenda. With the refinement of judgment and sharper sensibilities, news people tend to grow contemptuous and skeptical of the status quo the conservatives treasured place. I watch reporters and editors mature, grow and change because of the avalanche of information that shapes their thinking. They dont tend to turn more conservative, from my experience. Discernment is a great thing. Making up your own mind, in spite of what someone tried to once tell you is necessary and noble. As a spiritual life editor, Im intrigued at those religions that work so hard to protect their followers from falsehood. Keeping the rank and file unwavering believers in their particular package of tenets is so essential to preservation of a particular faith. The healthy religions dont keep people captive or dependent. Nor do they profess an exclusiveness to truth. They dont run colleges that expel professors whose writings or teachings deviate from their sanctioned truth. At one time, wandering tribes in the Mideast were told that there were 613 rules that had to be observed. Not surprisingly most of them seem quaint absurdities, like not benefiting from an ox condemned to be stoned or offering two lambs of sacrifice daily or the rule to pay wages on the day they are earned. Or the king must not have too much silver and gold." Check out the 613 laws: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_mitzvot. Liberals have passed those by. As long as good ideas morph into better ideas, absolutists will be left behind in their dogmas and orthodoxy. Thinking and brighter ideas are the best way out of the darkness.

Each U.S. presidential campaign cycle is certain to find religion having a foreboding seat at the table. With about a quarter of the electorate identified as Christian conservatives or born-again Christians, candidates in both major parties usually try to tailor strategies to get some or most of their support or avoid offending them. Some religionists see elections as critical to their agenda to reshape the nation and society.The 2008 campaign is clearly setting itself up for opportunities and landmines for candidates as religious stances come into focus. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is being sharply criticized for speaking on Friday to the Discovery Institute, proponents of intelligence design, in Seattle. Free-thinkers warn McCain that the institute has led the way in discrediting evolution and promoting an anti-science agenda. McCain has been painstaking at trying to patch fences with religious conservatives like the Rev. Jerry Falwell whom he once called an agent of intolerance.Heretofore, the most common religion-related discussion has centered on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A generation ago, his Mormon father, the late George Romney, one-time Michigan governor, unsuccessfully ran for president. His Mormon faith was less an issue for debate back then, partly because conservative Christians were not then a unified and distinct voting block. George Romney, a six-year governor and a moderate, was leading in polls for the Republican nomination in 1968, but his political stock crashed when, in August 1967, he reversed his support for the war in Vietnam, having previously called it "morally right and necessary." These were the fateful words: When I came back from Vietnam (in November 1965), I’d just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get." His critics subsequently said no respectable candidate for president should fall to brainwashing and admitting to it is like writing stupid on ones forehead.Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza, the past week, set off a massive blog debate over Mitt Romneys electibility with a commentary: Parsing the Polls: Answering the Mormon Question. It got 192 reader responses running to 74 pages of text so far. Evangelical Christians, while they often agree with Mormons on numerous issues, cannot cozy up to them because they say basic Mormon teachings too sharply stray from orthodox Christianity, even if Jesus Christ is in their formal name. Cuillizza quotes a USA Today/Gallup Poll that among a Republican sample, 66 percent said they would support a qualified Mormon and 30 percent said they wouldnt. Seventy-seven percent of independents and 72 percent of Democrats said they could support one. In further analysis, it found that 54 percent of Republicans would vote for a Mormon without reservation, while 42 would not or would only vote after some level of doubt. He referred to a recent CBS News survey finding that 30 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of the Mormon faith, with 25 percent favorable. The same question was asked about other faiths: Protestants (61 percent favorable; 13 unfavorable); Catholicism (51/20); Judaism (48/13) and Christian Fundamentalists (35/26). Only Islam had less public acceptance 15 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable. Compare that to a Washington Monthly story in the fall of 2005: In the late 1960s, the percentage of Americans who said they would not vote for a Jewish or Catholic presidential candidate was in the double digits; by 1999, those numbers had fallen to 6 and 4 percent, respectively (roughly the same as the percentage of voters who say they wouldn’t vote for a Baptist). Compare that to the 17 percent of Americans who currently say they would have qualms electing a Mormon to the White House.Its commonly believed Romney will have to deliver a turning point, watershed speech directed to his party about his faith and put to rest fears that his religion of secret temple ceremonies and women denied parity in church leadership roles wont have consequences for the nation.They say that speech will need to parallel what Catholic candidate John Kennedy was able to tell pastors in Houston in 1960 that his faith was private and, in no way, would it give the Pope a place in government decision-making. Short of a strong, disarming speech, Romneys detractors will bring up those things that commonly raise eyebrows about Mormon: special holy undergarments, the churchs controversial history with blacks, the idea that Mormon men have the potential to become gods on their own and rule on other planets, and even polygamy, despite it being officially ended in the church in 1890.But Romney wont be alone. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani can be expected to face scrutiny about his practices as a Catholic. Whats being called the weirdness factor is his 14-year marriage to his second cousin that was annulled. U.S. News& World Report put it this way: Giuliani’s first marriage (of 14 years to Regina Peruggi) was annulled by the Roman Catholic Church because they had not obtained the required church dispensation necessary when second cousins marry. Critics say the ex-mayor, best known for his rallying New York after Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, has given assorted explanations for his marriage, even that he had always thought Regina was his third cousin, not his second cousin.

As a male, Ive never understood the grandiose way some men glare and gawk at women. On Tuesday night, I came to a stop sign. Coming from my right ever so slowly just creeping along — was a pickup. The other man had the right of way. Crossing the street on his right and parallel to him was a fairly average-looking young woman. The rubberneck driver, a Hispanic man, kept his eyes on that woman continuously as he slowly came even with her and then passed by her. It was only after she was far behind him that he looked ahead and then over toward my stopped vehicle, offering a well-a-guys-gotta-look shrug. His sluggish truck then picked up speed. So, was his ostentatious behavior a matter of giving that woman a true compliment by his undivided attention? Was he just manifesting a common cultural behavior? Was he rude, or should my reaction be disregarded as culturally insensitive? Was I, now married almost 34 years, just brain dead?It got me thinking of my days in South America during the 1960s. On three different group trips there, I became keenly aware of the serious practices of girl-watching. Whole groups of males whether workers at a construction site, men standing and talking together or male students lounging around collectively craned their necks to follow passing women and hurl catcalls. I first discovered the phenomenon during a summer in Uruguay with some American students in a YMCA work project.But it was more dramatic the summer of 1968 while I lived and worked in the southern Ecuadorian city of Loja where I lived in the home of the parents of the local newspaper publisher. For seven days a week for six weeks, I was given the rare chance to write a 1,200-word Spanish column, starting on the front page, called Un Visitante en Loja. We were five Iowa State University students (I had just graduated in journalism) working for the summer in our fields of training. The only other male was John Foreman, retired longtime Maricopa County Superior Court judge. His fiance and now wife, Sandy, a blonde, was another of our group.The blondes stood out on those Ecuador streets. Rubia! (blonde) was their constant shout as we walked down streets. The stares and glowering were relentless. But I got a lesson in culture just seeing how any of the three women were the focus of gawkers. About 10 years later, I sat in Campeche, Mexico, where I had a month-long newspaper fellowship to study news operations under the auspices of the World Press Freedom Committee and other sponsors. I chatted with the mother of a Campeche exchange student who had previously come to stay most of a year with us in Iowa. We talked about male habits in her city, and she asserted that men just naturally run free and that unfaithfulness was to be expected. She said it was culturally ingrained across generations. There was a fatalism about it.Oddly, the same thing had been told to me by a young Uruguayan teen I met in Uruguay in 1967 and fell in love with. Nahir, then 18, had just returned from a Youth for Understanding exchange program in Muncie, Ind. She knew five languages. I would correspond with her my last year of college. And that following summer, I took those last two weeks of my Ecuadorian trip to go to Uruguay to renew our relationship. But it dissolved not long after I was accepted to the Peace Corps for assignment in Paraguay, up river, and I never saw her after that. Nahir later married and had a son. Her husband died in a car accident and her son died of meningitis. She remarried, had a son, Rodrigo, and they moved to Rockford, Ill., where she became a language teacher in a middle school. Across those years, I had a couple phone visits with her, brief and cordial. In no way did I want to suggest a revival of old interests. A few days ago, I had the notion to Google her name online. I found it. It had appeared in a Uruguayan newspaper. It was an obituary. Nahir had died on Sept. 6, 2004, in Rockford. It led me to the Rockford newspaper and a death notice that she had died of cancer with her family by her side. She was 55 and had taught at her school for 10 years. She certainly must have been a remarkable teacher.I often tell people that everyone, early in their lives, ought to fall in love with someone from another country, another culture. It can leave a valuable mark on ones humanity and heart. Of course, I have no regrets that the love of my life, Patty, crossed my newsman path in 1972 and we married a year later. I have been blessed beyond words by what enfolded. I know loves grandeur in our faithfulness, our two grown children, two granddaughters, and our travels and adventures together.

For the most faithful Christian, the time to celebrate is over at midnight this Fat Tuesday. Lent is at hand, and Christendom goes into its annual season of somberness and introspection, much in the same way that Jews start their new year with their Ten Days of Penitence between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Or Muslims during their month of Ramadan, Self-denial and fasting are traditionally part of all three traditions.Ash Wednesday ushers in the Lenten season, and many churches hold services where pastors and commissioned lay people smudge foreheads in the sign of the cross, using black ash traditionally from the burned palm fronds of the previous Palm Sunday. Its a practice that goes back to the 12th century.During the ritual, pastors and other leaders with the authority state, Thou art dust and undo dust thou shall return. Grim words of mortality. Or they may say, Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel. In homilies, pastors remind them that the cross of ashes is a sign of their salvation if they receive and embrace him, so they need not feel the hopelessness of inhabiting a body with finite years. Catholics and Episcopalians are traditionally the most observant with Ash Wednesday. It typically is a practice of many non-liturgical faiths, including many evangelical Christian groups. Yet is common among mainline Protestant faiths.Catholic parishes traditionally hold several Masses during Ash Wednesday for the rite and often step up their daily Mass schedule during the sacred 40 days of Lent that lead up to Easter and includes Holy Week, a time for special prayer and the re-enactment of the last week of Christs life, from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday, through his betrayal, arrest, trial and crucifixion on Good Friday. Easter is April 8.Fat Tuesday pancake suppers in churches and the Mardi Gras in New Orleans are the last hurrah before Lent. Several years ago, movie director Mel Gibson used Lent to turn loose his film, The Passion of the Christ, which almost seem to overwhelm the season. This year, Amazing Grace, in a different way comes forth to deepen ones faith during this season. Some congregations have used the mega-bestseller A Purpose Driven Life by Pastor Rick Warren to stir a new birth of faith in people. My own church sent me an e-mail Tuesday urging me and others to be on hand for Wednesday night Ash Wednesday services. And it carried the question: Why come to Ash Wednesday services. Six reasons were given: — To participate in one of the oldest Christian traditions– To join with thousands of other Christians around the world.– To confess your need for life transformation.– To make a commitment to begin a season of study and reflection.– To consider what you can do to change your life for the good.– To express your desire to be more like Jesus.I have another reason to there. I am in the choir and we are assigned to sing.

History is full of great writers, artists, composers and brilliant creators who poured their superb talent into their work only to find the public did not discover their genius or the splendor of what they produced. Many died without due recognition only to have their works hailed by following generations. Heres hoping Eugene D. Andersons work, The Wager gains the acknowledgement that this original musical is due.The Apache Junction composers nine years of sweat and passion were eminently showcased in the two-act musical on the Book of Job, told in a modern setting and given its world premier on Saturday. The final of six shows in three days is this Monday night (Feb. 19) at 7 p.m. at the Ikeda Theater at the Mesa Arts Center. Anderson, 63, put nine years into writing the music and arrangements, as well as the contemporary story of the Old Testament character whose prosperity was turned into overwhelming suffering. When I interviewed Anderson Feb. 2 for an article in the Tribunes Spiritual Life section, he exultingly hailed his work, The Wager as the first musical ever done on Job. He agonized that its premier was so near, so few tickets were sold and this monumental moment of his musical life would take place before limited audiences. He likened that to Jobs own suffering.Alas, scarcely 300 of the 1,600 seats of Ikeda were taken Saturday night, with still fewer folks at other performances. It is disappointing we didnt get the attendance that we expected, said marketing coach Mike Shubic, who handled the shows public relations. Terrible was his one-word description for the crowds. Though Anderson has spent a half century in music, with 150 compositions published and university training in writing and arranging music, the former Apache Junction High School band director is a veritable neophyte and unknown in live musical theater. Shubics press kit cites Anderson as responsible for bringing the story to the stage. Single-handedly, he developed the script, created the musical composition and score, all dialogue and even background scenery and marketing. Hes also financed the production of the musical himself.Such full ownership of a production carries, perhaps, a one-man show onus — a single persons relentless, uncompromising mission to guarantee success by doing everything himself to ensure exactness and quality. This a very rare event that a musical of this caliber and this size is produced, Shubic said. Originally tickets were set at $55 to $75, but were lowered before the opening to $35 and $55 to spur attendance. Realistically, I dont think the ticket prices had anything to do with the turnout, Shubic said. Folks will pay $95 to $100 per ticket for Les Miserables or The Phantom of the Opera performance, Shubic noted, but obviously potential theater-goers know those are proven and tested classics of modern theater. I know attendance is certainly a disappointment if for nothing else but financially, Shubic said. It’s just a huge hit. I think long-term he is going to be just fine. A performance DVD and recordings will get into the public domain and perhaps lead to the right people discovering and recognizing its considerable merit.From the long, dramatic overture to the finale featuring The Great I Am, Anderson, himself directing the 30-member orchestra, delivered a sweeping production of songs that tend to stay on your mind. The Wager follows the main character, Jonathon Oliver Brytson (J.O.B.), as his Godlike mentor J is forced into a 30-day wager with Lou, a demonic character. Jonathon watches his multi-millionaire life unravel death of his three children and then his wife, the dissolution of his import-export business and disillusion in himself.High marks go to the characters, especially in their singing roles, to the assemblage of lithe and strikingly costumed dancers and to the special effects. The Ikeda Theater proved itself again as a incredible place for stage excellence. Standing out were the saucy performance of Maile Hernandez singing The Losin Blues and the brother-sister act, Kathy Trujillo and Isaac Lundgren, singing Missing You after their younger sister, Rebecca (Kaitlyn Jetz) dies in a horse accident to launch the litany of tragedy for Jonathon. Eugene Anderson has three more musicals in him. Hes calling them Grandpas Greatest Gift, which is a Christmas musical; Saul, a look at Saul who had a radical conversion and became Paul; and Whos Land Is This? Whether his experience with the The Wager will impact his plans to bring those to the stage, as well, remains to be seen.I was taken aback when he told me this two weeks before the opening: If this thing fails, it will cost me everything I have and Ill feel like Job — everything at risk. I am like the Job character God is testing me. Yet he said he didnt believe God would abandon him. A miracle is going to happen. I dont know what it is, he said.This gifted man and his Wager team delivered their best at the Ikeda, and now we wait for Andersons miracle, but that may not come until after we are gone. Art has always been for the ages. But to just have such hard-birthed work out there is anyones envy.

People bristle at labels. They say they dont want to be boxed in by the limits that come with identities liberal, moderate or conservative, for example. Being a political independent gives them more latitude. They even say they are spiritual, but not religious. That is one reason why in 1998, we change our weekly Tribune section from Religion to Spiritual Life.Religious identity is coming to be problematic for a lot of reasons, including peoples own unfolding, evolving spirituality that may stray and drift from what they have been taught by organized religions and are expected to accept as the gospel truth. But free will and widespread ideas undermine that. People start to get outside the lines in their thinking, sort of like errant floodwaters that dont want to follow the channels of a stream. When faith groups themselves are split over what their tenets are or should be, followers become conflicted and take sides. Often some bail out altogether and find something else or stay clear of established religions lest it crimps their spirituality. Certainly the community churches benefit immensely from organized and denominational religions too bent on over-defining their doctrines and tenets, often to their detriment. Andrea Useem, writing for the Religion News Service this week, cites findings that the era when religion was determined solely by accident of birth is over. She spoke to Peter Berger, professor of sociology and theology at Boston University, who said, People are making more choices in everything from lifestyle to sexual identity. Its not surprising if they are making more choices in religion. Religious exploration, of course, carries great risk for faith groups. Let the young, especially, experiment and explore, and there is a very good chance theyll not be back. Thus the pains some faiths take to denounce the relativism and apostasy in all other traditions. Thus the strong investment in religious education, schools, catechism and youth groups and encouraging them to find life partners of their own faith traditions. Useem points to Barry Kosmins recent book, Religion in a Free Market: Religious and Non-Religious Americans. It is based on a large 2001 American Religious Identification Survey. Kosmin notes that family and ethnic loyalties the old glue that maintained inter-generational religious identification has weakened. He said that mobility stirs up and scatters families, allowing members to explore and search for religious truth outside their own traditions. That 2001 study, Useem explained, found twice as many Americans left Catholicism as joined it, while evangelical Christianity showed a net gain with more than three times as many people joining that leaving. The biggest change, however, was registered among Americans who said they had no religious identity at all, increasing from 8 percent of the U.S. population in 1990 to 14 percent in 2001, she wrote. Love and marriage start many folks scrambling. In mixed religious marriages, all sorts of things happen one accepts, or goes along with, the others faith; each continues to practice his or her own faith; they find a compromise; they start over; they become inactive altogether; or they embark on endless faith-seeking. Often one discovers something long missing from his or her own journey in the spouses faith and things click. Useem quotes Kosmin in saying that while religious switching may bring satisfaction to the individual seeker, the phenomenon can be unnerving for clergy who are competing for customers who are keenly aware of the many options that they seekers have. We have a supply-side religious market with more competing firms each year, Kosmin said, noting that giant churches are partly successful because they actively reach out to potential members of which there are many in the high-mobility suburbs. Moreover, their smorgasbord of lifestyle opportunities, from gyms to travel to book groups, create inviting club-like enclaves. But recruitment can just be an in-the-front-door and out-the-backdoor activity, said Daniel Olson, a researcher of religious competition and a sociologist at Indiana University South Bend. He cited the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Buddhists and Jehovahs Witnesses as faiths especially prone to getting lots of converts but losing them in due time. He said smaller religious groups may tend to have better retention because they may be able to cement closer relationships and tend to be invested in the friends who brought them in. A Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in December in Florida included a speaker who said mere modernity translates into choice. It empowers people to make new religious choices that may fly in the face of the wishes of family and friends. As people no longer expect to get and keep the same job for a lifetime, they arent as apt to stick with the church or theology they started with. The ease of being exposed to outside ideas and a pervasive drumbeat to question authority and challenge conventional teachings make it harder for houses of worship to foster deep loyalties and make followers want to claim a denominational identity. Aloof, no-strings-attached spiritual grazing spells trouble organized religion with mortgage payments and staff salaries to pay.

Ive lost track of how many years ago they started talking at my church about fair trade coffee, and I didnt have a clue of what they were saying. But they began selling the bags of coffee on the patio on Sundays and now it brings in a tidy sum for maximum benefit for native coffee growers enrolled in Just Coffee. Even the coffee regularly served on campus is Just Coffee, and some feel their coffee habit is helping Latin American farmers. The idea is that growers will get a just price for their beans, and economic justice is the end product. Now fair trade products are all the rage in faith communities as they become sensitized to Third World agriculture and industry. They are being taught that they can change their own routine buying habits and make a difference. They can purchase products through channels that bypass corporate American giants who otherwise would pay growers the minimum to get maximum profits for companies and stockholders. On Wednesday, for example, Lutheran World Relief announced it is now an investing partner in Divine Chocolate Inc., which is the sister company of British-based Divine Chocolate Limited. It is described as a pioneering farmer-owned fair trade chocolate company. Among its missions will be building still greater support for the fair trade movement in the U.S. Its goal and that of the wide movement is to ensure that farmers are fairly compensated so their families can experience true gains in their lives and even taste prosperity. Expect Lutherans to feel better about their chocolate addiction. Lutheran World Relief explains that in most chocolate companies, the farmers who grow the cocoa are anonymous players in the chocolate equation. They sell their crop to a middleman, have no say in how their crop is used, receive little benefit from the billions of dollars in global chocolate sales and have never tasted chocolate themselves. It says that Divine Chocolates model gives farmers a voice. A cocoa farmers cooperative in Ghana called Kuapa Kokoo also is part owner in the company and have a voice in the entire process besides benefit from the sale of their beans. As a result, some members of Kuapo Kokoo have been reinvesting their premiums from the fair trade operation into their community through the building of wells and supporting schools and health clinics, according to Lutheran World Relief, which got into fair trade coffee in 1996. They expanded by adding partnerships with native crafts people to find markets for handcrafts. On the U.S. end of things, Lutheran churches are able to carry out fund-raisers with coffee, chocolate and crafts . Coffee fair trade groups have had some success in getting giants like Starbucks to purchase fair trade coffee. In October 2000, Starbucks, the worlds largest specialty coffee chain, introduced whole bean fair-trade certified coffee at the more than 2,300 stores it had at the time. Starbucks reports buying 4.8 million pounds of certified fair trade coffee in fiscal year 2004 and 11.5 million pounds in 2005. Starbucks calls itself the largest buyer of certified fair trade coffee in North America, with 10 percent of the global market. Much of that can be credited to aggressive campaigns by groups like Global Exchange and other consumer groups. Coffee is said to be the second most valuable world-traded commodity after oil, so the stakes are high. Organized religious groups have been successful over the years in grape boycotts and the 30-year boycott against the Nestle Company for sale and promotion of baby formula in the Third World as an alternative to breast-feeding, which leads to unintended consequences. Voting with ones wallet is often the most effective way to bring about change. Faith communities can provide useful forums to learn how and where to do that.

The Valleys Jewish community is giving the cold shoulder to the controversial Body Worlds 3: Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies currently at the Phoenix Science Center in downtown Phoenix. Cadavers and body parts preserved through plastic technology run counter to Jewish teachings about the body after death. The latest issue of the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix devotes its front-page lead story and two commentaries inside to the issue surrounding German anatomist Gunther van Hagens exhibit through May 28. The many interviewed were generally repelled by the concept of the exhibit. Rabbis were invited at the outset of planning to offer comment, through panels, to help engender respect and sensitivity in the presentation, but prominent East Valley leaders like Rabbi Andrew Straus of Tempe Emanuel of Tempe declined to have anything to do with it. I chose not to be part of the panel because I knew they were going to go forward, and I knew there was no way to do this in a way that represented Jewish value, morals and ideals, he told the Jewish News. Jews explain that the human body, a creation in Gods image, is always to be treated with respect, and that upon death, it is not to be left unattended, and that funerals are to take place quickly. Embalming is rare, and Jews take a dim view of cremation. Very specific rules govern the preparation of the body for rapid burial.Writer Deborah Sussman Susser found out that American Indians were also invited to comment on the exhibit as it was being proposed for Phoenix. Arizona Native Scene editor Loren Tapahe told readers that it was a done deal, that the exhibit was coming when he was invited to comment. We were told the Science Center has already decided to have this exhibit and (they) were asking those Native Americans in attendance for their advice on how to present this to the Native American public. He said it was like someone asking him how to tell my children to go see something I dont want them to see.This exhibition teeters on the edge of dishonoring the dead, wrote Rabbi Rafael Goldstein, vice president for Jewish affairs of the Jewish Family and Childrens Service. He calls on visitors of the exhibit to ask themselves three questions in advance of possibly going: 1) Would viewing it teach you something that might save your life or the lives of other human beings?; 2) Would viewing it in some way enhance your understanding of the way the body works?; and 3) Would viewing it inspire you? He said it would be OK to go if a person can say a yes to one or more of them, but do so in a way that honors the dead, including following a Jewish custom that goes with leaving a cemetery: washing ones hands.Goldstein did his own investigation and found that one rabbi who sat on the ethics committee for the exhibit in Denver let his teens see it. They benefited from viewing lungs of smokers. As a result, he said, there is merit in it helping to save lives. Some people see the exhibit as amazing art: To them seeing the insides of our bodies is almost holy to recognize how fragile, amazing and beautiful our inner parts are. They leave the exhibition in awe. A German studies professor at a Minnesota school, Lind Schulte-Sasse gives the other commentary in the Jewish News (it first appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.). She calls the exhibit horror. She labels Body Worlds voyeurism and an example of how one person can be capitalized on by another. The exhibit, she asserts, literally solidifies the bodys place in consumer culture, assuring us that nothing is left that can escape becoming a commodity. Gunther von Hagens has insisted that all bodies used came from people who consented to what he had planned. Critics say he comes out of a German society that once so devalued humans that the Holocaust resulted, but von Hagens says he has taken special pains because of this historic burden.All that said, I find the Jewish objections truly underscores the reality that religious teachings powerfully govern fundamental issues of life and death. I havent decided whether to take in Body Worlds. Given how common it has become to transplant a range of body organs and trade blood, how common it is for cadavers to be donated to science for laboratory training, how common autopsies are, I think the body once life is gone has become more demystified. It will always be of infinite interest and fascination.At 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 17, the Arizona Chapter of the American Jewish Committee, with the Science Center, is hosing a panel, Cultural Perspectives on the Human Body at the IMAX Theater of the Science Center, 600 E. Washington St., Phoenix.

An inmate at the Arizona State Prison in Florence recently wrote the Tribune to say. I really love the religious section, as well as the rest of the paper. He signed up for a subscription in January and has devoured it. And he wanted us to maybe some day take time to do an article on prisoners serving Christ in prison.An inmate at the Arizona State Prison in Florence recently wrote the Tribune to say. I really love the religious section, as well as the rest of the paper. He signed up for a subscription in January and has devoured it.. And he wanted us to maybe some day take time to do an article on prisoners serving Christ in prison.Vic Shocinski said that during his incarceration, he has lost his parents and two brothers, but I will not lose my faith in God! Sure I failed in society, and Im so remorseful. He asserted that those who truly find God in the turmoil of prisons insanity are those that are likely to succeed! Vic says he has chosen to not lose in life anymore. Seeing prison life, he said he would like to be an instrument to make sure other dont make the wrong choices of coming in here. He said he got his prison sentence because of selfish desires and wants others not to make such a wrong choice.Actually, we have plans to follow an East Valley Catholic man who regularly goes into the prisons to minister to inmates, share his faith and nurture personal transformation. I hope it will be an article that will underscore Vic Schocinskis applause for this section.Matthew 25:36, of course, speaks directly of the noble work of paying prison visits:I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me. Over the years, I have written about those who take on the daunting work of prison ministries. Some faith communities do remarkable work, while most are unable to develop a ministry or foster the people to sustain the work, which can involve long drives, navigating through many layers of prison security, traversing intimidating environments and risk being taunted and verbally abused. Often it is just one or two from a congregation who have made it their mission to take their faith to jails, share tenets of their religions and try to offer hope Through films and the media, of course, we have certainly seen countless prison and jail settings. I have done only a few visits to people behind bars for articles, always finding it surreal and disquieting. Whoever has toured old prisons like Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay finds it unnerving how cells are like rows of cages, ever under surveillance, dingy and forsaken. When I was a boy, my father took me to the county jail to bail out a farm hired hand who had been arrested for driving while intoxicated. It was not unlike the setting of the sheriffs office and jail setting in Andy Griffiths Mayberry.We know, of course, that environment pales to hellhole prisons across this planet where humans are dumped, given the minimum of care, hardened into bitter and beaten shadows of what they were and often violated in numerous ways regardless of what human rights provisions may officially be in force. A powerful book of my boyhood, The Count of Monte Cristo, by Andre Dumas gave me my first chilling descriptions of imprisonment for seven years and its life-draining experience.. More than 15 years ago, I interviewed Charles Colson, the convicted Watergate scandal operative, who founded Prison Fellowship, which quickly grew as result of his books and advocacy for the redemption of inmates. Colson explained that prison creates a true captive audience for transformation of a person. In materials he gave me and are still filed away, noted that reform of the offender is central to society. The orientation of punishment toward reform and rehabilitation of offenders is found throughout the Bible, as in Ezekiel 33:11: As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.And it further quoted Isaiah 42:6-7: I am the Lord I have called you in righteousness,I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you.And I will appoint you as a covenant to the people, As light to the nations,To open the blind eyes,To bring out prisoners from the dungeon,And those who dwell in darkness from the prison.In the newspaper business, oddly, we never know who may read what we write a prisoner or a governor, a multimillionaire or a poor single mom. And since Vic Shocinski may not have access to the Internet to read this blog, I herewith am sending him a copy of it by mail. May he find wealth in what we write and some assurance that we seek to even reach the hearts of those imprisoned.