I have believed, ever since the day I was a paralegal, that a lawyer without staff is much like a lion tamer without a chair, a bear trainer without a whip, and a race car driver without a steering wheel.  Pretty much pointless, and quite possibly dangerous.

Office staff to me, responding:

Behind every great lawyer is a worn-out staff.

You can trust me on this - it’s true on both sides of the equation.

“God bless you, my brother is among the persons arrested, how can you help?”

This was a direct message from a man I met via Twitter, and knew to be a Christian living in the Middle East.  And I knew instantly what story he was referring to - a story of the arrest of multiple Christian pastors in the country of Iran.

My first thought was to want to help, but how?  I indicated my willingness, waited, and prayed.  I received a phone call from Turkey, from my Twitter friend, updating me on the situation, on his brother, Pastor Behrouz, being held in an undisclosed location, for an undisclosed amount of time, for “crimes” that were undisclosed but easily guessed - evangelization and apostasy.

A couple of days later another direct message came:

“They have been sentenced Thursday for apostasy, it means to death according the shariah”

I will admit that I had no idea what to do.  One thinks of these things in theory, but when they arrive - what is the right course of action?  And yet, though I did not know what to do, I knew that I needed to do something.  So I began to e-mail - advocacy groups, news organizations, anyone I could think of.

And the amazing thing is this - when there’s a need, people respond.  I was, frankly, amazed at the response I got.  Now, I wish I could tell you that the story was over, but it is not.  Wheels are turning, but Pastor Behrouz remains in prison, subjected to immense suffering, and not to mention the threat of death.

I was asked to write an article for Assist News, which was published last night, and I share for you here.  What struck me as I wrote, though, was the hope embodied by this situation.  Hope not necessarily in staying alive, though there is hope for that - no, the deeper hope comes from the chance to die.  Philippians 1:21 drove this home, where Paul says, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.“

I ask not, friends, that you read this and weep.  I ask that you read it, and pray.

Fear Not them which Kill the Body

*****

Update:  This just in from Compass Direct News.

Iran Detains Christians without Legal Counsel

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I’m almost a week behind on posting these, but better late than never, eh?

The San Francisco Bay Area might be known for a lot of different things, but beauty should certainly be one of them.

I think it wonderful to live in a place that allows a day trip to the Yosemite Valley.  And I think it’s about time we took it.  We had a great excuse this weekend, because Katie’s sister is out to visit!

We lunched on the Valley floor…

The “Tunnel View” of the valley…

The viewers looking down on the Valley…

And then we timed it just right to see this as we came around the bend.  There was a turnoff - and we took it.

There was at least one similarity, though - the same guy was elected President both times.  I appreciated the vote of confidence and the many kind words.

Being re-elected also gives me the chance to look backwards and forwards at the Alumni Association.  In doing so, I discovered that the Alumni Association is at the same point that I am in my own life: We are at the spot where we need to turn vision into reality.  It’s a hard place to be, in many ways, but it’s sure an exciting one.  The foundation is laid, the vision is there, and now it’s time to make something out of it all.

Here are my thoughts for the Alumni Association blog - which manage to be similar to introspective musings in re: yours truly.

********************

Every organization starts with a vision of something great. For the Alumni Association, that was a vision of expanding, promoting, and growing OBCL’s unique calling. Even as a student, I could see the vision of those that worked to establish this organization. It was apparent, and it trickled all the way down to my study-swamped self. In the intervening years, the vision has been clarified and built.

And in every organization’s life comes a time in which the established vision must be put into practical reality by dint of hard work. And as I looked back on the last year’s work done by the Alumni Association Board and numerous volunteers, I can’t help but realize that we are at that point in the Alumni Association’s life. The vision is there, and it is clear - and now comes the time in which we must turn that vision into practical reality.

This past year, the Board worked to lay the foundation to build this reality on. So many “small” components go into effective communication, effective promotion, and effective fundraising…and this list of essentials could go on. Beyond those normal challenges, the Alumni Association faces unique challenges simply because we are scattered all across this nation! One thing that I have greatly appreciated about the Board of Directors of this association is their willingness to do things the right way. We’ve never taken an idea and gone off half-cocked; we’ve taken good ideas and made them better - those ideas and that work is the foundation.

But right now we have this chance to turn vision into reality, if we are willing to put our noses to their respective grindstones and do the work. It’s time to take the foundation and build on it, taking those ideas into reality. And that is our goal for this year.

It was terrific to see the excitement of the alumni at the annual meeting last week. Indeed, I found it impossible not to get excited myself! We have the skills and the desire to do the building - and we have the foundation to build on.

It is going to be a great year.

And I took the opportunity to try my hand at low-light photography.

I can hardly look at a map of San Diego without the childhood memories flooding back.  There’s Lake Murray, for instance, where Grandpa and I used to go feed the ducks - with an obligatory grocery store stop for bread (for the ducks) and M&Ms (for us).

But this I will say, nothing brings back the childhood memories like being able see the Padres play at home.

Last night, after I got home from work, I answered a call on my wife’s cell phone. There was a woman’s voice on the other end, asking for my wife, and indicating that she was calling in regards to Azure Standard.

I thought about that for a second, and gave the most brilliant, well-reasoned response my brain could come up with: “You’re calling about what?”

The reply came back, indicating I had heard correctly the first time - Azure Standard.  A bit perplexed at this bit of indecipherable code, I turned the phone over to the owner of said cell phone.  As I handed it over, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was Code Azure Standard, or Mission Azure Standard, or Operation Azure Standard, or what on earth I was dealing with here.

That line of thinking was magnified when my wife’s first question was “Can you tell me about the Fresno drop point?”

And was that just a hint of a Russian accent I was hearing?????

Well, as it turns out, I didn’t marry a spy.  I married a baker, and bakers need this thing called “wheat.”  Apparently it’s cheaper in bulk - enter Azure Standard.

Remember has a team leaving for the Middle East this month - pray for them!

But I want to talk about the one that scares me the most, my friends.   This is not meant to be a partisan rant, nor is it meant to be directed at the current Supreme Court nominee - what you see here is the thoughts of a genuinely worried common citizen.

This idea is the one that our judges should be governed primarily by “empathy.”  Merriam-Webster tells me that this word comes from the Greek for passion, feelings, and emotion.  The part of the definition that we are most familiar with says that empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another…”  If  judge is to be ruled by empathy, it is to say that this judge, when faced with a case, looks not to the law, but looks to his or her own emotions and discerns which party makes them say “awwwww…” louder.  That’s why I’m calling this the “rule of awwww” - and it can be easily distinguished from the rule of law.

But one cannot be bound by both the law and one’s emotion.  One or the other must reign supreme.  And if a judge feels that he or she must choose based on empathy, that judge must literally disown the rule of law.

I don’t claim to be an expert in the rule of law.  There are many who could expound the theory of the rule of law much better than I.  And yet, that’s the point.  You don’t need to be an expert to know why the rule of law is so vital to any sort of justice and freedom.  Our society is based on law.  The rule of law provides us with stability and expectability, giving us a cause-and-effect in societal interaction.  It serves as the great leveller, subjecting every person, great and small, to its universal principles.  Laws can be changed, certainly, and adapted, but not on a whim of some self-seeking person, and not only in subjective application to targeted individuals.  You don’t have to be an expert to understand the value of the rule of law - and you don’t have to look any further than wherever you’re sitting to see how valuable it is in everyday life.

And that is why judges unbound from the rule of law have been hallmarks of despotism for time immemorial.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I don’t mean to automatically equate an “empathetic” judge with the judges that executed “the people’s” whim in revolutionary France, Hitler’s whim in Germany, or Stalin’s whim in Russia, or Pol Pot’s whim in Cambodia (or countless other examples).  But once one looses a judge from the rule of law, you leave yourself open to that possibility.

A politician is necessarily bound by the will of the people, because he can be voted out.  But a judge is bound only to the law, and if you remove that mooring a judge becomes at very best a miniature dictator.  Perhaps that judge will use his dictatorial power for good, but that’s not a risk I am willing to take - and it is not a risk our Constitution was willing to subject us to.

And that is why the “Rule of Awwww” scares me to death.

And because we do debtor work, most of my motions are filed against some kind of creditor, and often mortgage companies.  In order for a motion to be effective, we must serve the papers on them in accordance with Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 7004.  Normally, this means I have to go dig through the bowels of the Internet to find out who an officer of the requisite creditor is - and in today’s world, that often means digging through records of who bought what company and what the new name is.  All this searching has taught me much about these corporate entities.

For instance -

You’ve probably heard of Ditech. (If you have watched TV in the last few years, you will remember Ditech from ads where the evil fat local banker bemoans that he “Lost another loan to Ditech.com” while the blissful customer wallows in happiness.  Or the one where they try to convince you that “people are smart” before insulting your intelligence with a poorly animated professorial creature explaining the “advantages” of their rates.)  But did you know that Ditech is a business of GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors?

Incidentally, speaking of poor advertising, GMAC was recently forced to change the name of its banking arm to “Ally Bank” in an effort to improve its image.

Did you know that Wachovia was purchased by Wells Fargo?  That was in the news, of course, but it gets complicated - you see, Wachovia Bank, N.A., is not a part of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.  They haven’t finished that yet.  But Wachovia Bank, N.A. is a part of Wells Fargo Corporation, the mother company who owns an astounding array of entities.  And then there’s Wachovia Bank, F.S.B., which used to be World Savings Bank, F.S.B. and now has been almost sort of more or less phased out in favor of new and improved corporate structures.

Speaking of Wells Fargo, did you know that the company called “America’s Servicing Company” is actually just a DBA of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc.?

It’s nothing short of dizzying.  And I haven’t mentioned Citigroup, JPMorganChase, or Bank of America, and countless other entities.

But I digress.  All this to say that finding the appropriate contact information for Rule 7004 service can be a challenge.

But the federal government might be making it easier on me.  If this goes through, the United States government will own a majority stake in GMAC.  So I am given to wonder, will my service list look like this?

GMAC
Attn: Barack Obama, CEO
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500

Thoughts?

Go to CLE, of course.

I really like saying “we” and “our home.”

We had just a wonderful wedding, thanks to the tireless effort of my bride and countless willing and able helpers, and had an excellent trip home, managing to avoid a blizzard one day and survive 90 degree heat two days later.

But most importantly of all, my best friend is now also my wife.

(With a huge thanks to Kelly for these pictures and the ones we have yet to see!)

Increasingly high levels of impending joy have led to the significant possibility of flash-floods of happiness affecting all those that come in contact with the owner of this site. Please be on your alert for rising levels of joy, and brace yourselves accordingly.

In order to focus scarce resources such as time on best meeting this emergency, what little time has been devoted to blogging lately will be re-allocated to the emergency effort. Posting shall re-commence at such a time as the moon shall no longer be made of honey.

No apologies will be forthcoming for this prioritization of resources, but complaints may be made on congratulatory note-cards sent to Fresno, California. However, you are warned that such mailings may, in fact, increase the levels of impending joy and therefore be highly counterproductive to the resumption of blogging.

–The Management

***END EMERGENCY BROADCAST***

I’ve taken a variety of approaches to dealing with this pain.  I’ve hired accountants.  I’ve slogged through paperwork on my own.  I’ve contemplated moving to Andorra.  Long-time friends might remember the year that I actually threw an income tax party in an attempt to reduce the pain - misery, after all, loves company.

This year, I thought that I was going to end up doing them myself.  I’m not next door to my cheap Charleston accountant, and H&R Block is more expensive than I want to pay.  Online programs are expensive, too, and there’s always the fear of the unknown because I’ve never used one of them.  But then, then I found the answer - a tax program that is cheap, and just as important, does not make you pay until you are actually ready to file.  You can be sure that it is going to work for you first.  I don’t know why I didn’t find this sooner.

So I bit the bullet and tried it - and now, my friends, I am on the other side of the pain.  I am on the side of relief, the immense relief that comes from knowing that when April 15 rolls around I will have no worries, for I will not be standing in line or burning the midnight oil.

And finally, I would also note that this year, the relief is even deeper.  Normally, my relief is twinged with cynicism - that though I have done my duty, my duty to fund government extravagance is hardly a duty worth praising myself for.  This year, though, I can rest assured that my tax money has nothing to do with government extravagance, for government extravagance now revolves around spending money nobody has.

But my part is done for another nine months.

And I re-learned just why it is I hate Wikipedia - so many links to explore and be fascinated by, so hard to stop learning cool stuff (and incredibly hard to shake the feeling that I just don’t know enough about, well, everything).  Basically, there is so much to love I just can’t help but hate it.

With my Valentine around 2,000 miles away, today’s true task was to avoid thinking about how much I’d rather be somewhere else.  For those of you that know me, it’s probably obvious that a task like that would involve food.  And as I was running errands, I saw a Middle Eastern restaurant and began craving hummus.

But the whole “rich attorney” thing hasn’t kicked in yet, so I couldn’t justify a stop there, even to assuage the pain of 2,000 miles of space.  Plus, the idea of paying $10 for a plate of garbanzo beans seems weird.  And when I realized that, today’s project became apparent.

Since I already knew the basic structure of hummus, a quick trip to Google was all I needed to figure out proportions, and I was off to the store.

I generally tend to avoid meatless meals whenever possible.  To that end, it strikes me as weird that I enjoy Middle Eastern food so much - it tends to be low on the meat side (though when they add meat, it is superb).  But Middle Eastern food is delicious and rich and satisfying even without meat.

And in spite of guessing at a variety of things, today’s project was not a disappointment…

Later on, for the record, I fully intend to make up for a meatless lunch by making chorizo/bacon/monterey jack quesadillas.

In other news, don’t use cheap forks to juice limes.

Ah, DMV!  That giant among bureacrats, patron saint among inefficient morasses, guardian angel of all drab waiting rooms.  And when the little mechanical voice said, “A023 at Window Number 9,” our hero knew that every weapon at his employ would require the most skillful of weilding.

And each, one by one, was taken and assimilated by DMV.  Each accomplished its purpose, but none could deal the deathblow.  In the end, it came down to one weapon - the debit card.

Our hero begged.  He signed over a lien on the house he does not yet own.  He promised to donate his wavy locks to the California Department of Aid for the Hairless.  He spat upon signs that said “Threatening a State Employee is a Felony” and demanded justice and freedom.  All to no avail.

But in the end, debit card prevailed.  It was bereaved of its motive force, the green energy that powers its economical workings, but it prevailed, and our hero emerged with a small piece of paper broadcasting to the world that he had an Interim License to Drive.

–From A Pointless Oral History of One of Mankind’s Dimmest Luminaries

I didn’t bother, I’m afraid, studying the California textbook on driving.  Perhaps it was naive, but I assumed that since I had been driving for quite some time with a clean record, I’d be able to buzz right through a written test.  (Though the inner man chafed at having to take a written test, I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal.)

But when I sat down and started reading I was worried.  I didn’t know the answers.  I discovered, though, that the questions I didn’t know the answers to were based entirely on the fact that I’m just too good of a person.  I don’t drink, so the BAC limit just doesn’t matter to me.  I don’t smoke, so regulations on when you can smoke and drive just never entered my mind.

And as I sat there, thinking to myself that if I failed this test because I don’t drink and smoke, I was going to be rather put out.

It turns out, though, that California is strangely predictable on how it regulates drinking and smoking.  I found it rather ironic, though, even in my relief at passing, that while I got the questions about smoking and drinking correct, of the three I missed one involved a blind man in a crosswalk, one involved talking on a cell phone without a hands-free device (it’s more legal than I thought!), and the third involved how much information you have to give the imbecile that smashed his car against yours.

But this I can say, with a highly genuine sigh of gratefulness - it’s done.  I’m licensed and registered.  I need not darken the door of a DMV for a long while yet.

My goal is quite simple: work as hard as I can to get as much of the bankruptcy learning curve under my belt before I get married.  I can spend these last months where 60-hour-weeks only effect me working, well, at least 60-hour-weeks.

So far, I’m doing good at accomplishing that practical aspect of my goal!  Combined with a head cold, a chest cold, and an ear infection (and yesterday, all three at once), there are times I have felt utterly overwhelmed.  And yet, I must admit that I’m having fun learning this whole “practice of law” thing.  It is highly satisfying to be able to put so many years of education and hard work into practice.

I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.

Psalm 13:6

I had big plans to give gas mileage averages and gas price comparisons from all sectors of I-40.

But when push came to shove, I just drove - long and hard.  And by the grace of God and the help of my family, I made it to a new home in Fresno, California.  With a trailer, it took a bit longer than the 40 hours estimated by Google maps, but my brother David and I made it in three and a half days, spending the latter half of today emptying truck and trailer and piling up stuff in the living room.

We had a few moments of teeth-gnashing right at the beginning before the trailer settled down, one stop in Nashville that was fast enough to be terrifying, and a few moments of terror as my gas gauge rode well under “E” for miles in Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico.  But God is so good, and none of those led to the problems they could have - and the rest of the trip was uneventful, and as enjoyable as such interminable travel can be.

This weekend is for unpacking, and on Monday I add a new job to the new home…thank you for your prayers.

So I have been mercilessly hacking my subscriptions in Google Reader.

Four days of hacking, and I’m down to 164 subscriptions.

*sigh*