Subject: Ben Stein's last column]

I didn't like Ben Stein very much before reading this email.
Now, I love him and what he now stands for. Read it, it is worth
your time.

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called
"Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of
Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people
from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move
on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a
few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...

============================================

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in
Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say,
which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it.
This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write
it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even
recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so
long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as
a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small
scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many
stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves
and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days
ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had
a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we
agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's
is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be
again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think
Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly
pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve
to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for
memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no
longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and
lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a
"star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role
model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines
or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating
only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes
to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry
Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit,
Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets.
Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all
of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb
next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb
went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is
the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a
piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding
a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it
exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl
alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who
have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of
Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their
bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect
Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the
covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape
by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and
on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous
as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has
such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by
pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American
firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South
Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies
and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible
accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who
throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the
kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs
at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you
have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only
one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can
put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great
an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin
Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or
Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close
to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife
and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for
me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well
with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my
parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to
them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got
sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered
immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of
the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to
realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters
and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has
devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is
my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God
will.

By Ben Stein

We truly take a lot for granted.

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon. As she laid her
pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest.

After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, "I'm so sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away."

The distressed owner wailed, "Are you sure"?

"Yes, I am sure. The duck is dead," he replied.

"How can you be so sure"? she protested. "I mean, you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room, and returned a few moments later with a black Labrador Retriever.

As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom.

He then looked at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the dog and took it out, and returned a few moments later with a cat.

The cat jumped up on the table and also sniffed delicately at the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100 percent certifiably, a dead duck."

Then the vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman.

The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!" she cried. "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead"?

"The vet shrugged. "I'm sorry. If you'd taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the lab report and the cat scan, it's now $150.

There was a professor of philosophy at USC who was a deeply committed atheist.
His primary goal for one required class was to spend the entire semester attempting to prove that God couldn't exist.

His students were always afraid to argue with him because of his impeccable logic.
For twenty years, he had taught this class and no one had ever had the courage to go against him.

Sure, some had argued in class at times, but no one had ever really gone against him because of his reputation.

At the end of every semester on the last day, he would say to his class of 300 students, "If there is anyone here who still believes in Jesus, stand up!"
In twenty years, no one had ever stood up. They knew what he was going to do next. He would say, "Because anyone who believes in God is a fool.

If God existed, he could stop this piece of chalk from hitting the ground and breaking. Such a simple task to prove that He is God, and yet He can't do it."
And every year, he would drop the chalk onto the tile floor of the classroom and it would shatter into a hundred pieces.

All of the students would do nothing but stop and stare.
Most of the students thought that God couldn't exist. Certainly, a number of Christians had slipped through, but for 20 years, they had been too afraid to stand up.

Well, a few years ago there was a freshman who happened to enroll.
He was a Christian, and had heard the stories about his professor.
He was required to take the class for his major, and he was afraid. But for three months that semester, he prayed every morning that he would have the courage to stand up no matter what the professor said, or what the class thought.

Nothing they said could ever shatter his faith...he hoped.
Finally, the day came. The professor said, "If there is anyone here who still believes in God, stand up!" The professor and the class of 300 people looked at him, shocked, as he stood up at the back of the classroom.

The professor shouted, "You FOOL!!!
If God existed, he would keep this piece of chalk from breaking when it hit the ground!"

He proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off his shirt cuff, onto the pleat of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. As it hit the ground, it simply rolled away unbroken. The professor's jaw dropped as he stared at the chalk. He looked up at the young man, and then ran out of the lecture hall.

The young man who had stood, proceeded to walk to the front of the room and shared his faith in Jesus for the next half hour.
300 students stayed and listened as he told of God's love for them and of His power through Jesus.

(You will never look at a cup of coffee the same way again...)

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how
things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it
and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed
as one problem was solved, a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and
placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she
placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed
ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word.

In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots
out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in
a
bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to
her
daughter, she asked, "Tell me what you see."

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did
and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take
an
egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard
boiled
egg. Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The
daughter
smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.

The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?"

Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same
adversity - boiling water. Each reacted differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being
subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.

The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid
interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became
hardened.

The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the
boiling water, they had changed the water.

"Which are you?" she asked her daughter. "When adversity knocks on your
door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?"

Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with
pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?

Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the
heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial
hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my
shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff
spirit and hardened heart?

Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the
very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it
releases
the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at
their
worst, you get better and change the situation around you.

When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate
yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot,
an
egg or a coffee bean?

May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you
strong, enough sorrow to keep you human and enough hope to make you happy.

The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they
just make the most of everything that comes along their way. The brightest
future will always be based on a forgotten past; you can't go forward in
life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling.
Live your life so at the end, you're the one who is smiling and everyone
around you is crying.

You might want to send this message to those people who mean something to
you (I JUST DID); to those who have touched your life in one way or
another;
to those who make you smile when you really need it; to those who make you
see the brighter side of things when you are really down; to those whose
friendships you appreciate; to those who are so meaningful in your life.

Psalm 23:4 "Your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

The shepherd's rod represents his authority and is also used to protect, rescue, guide, and count the sheep. The staff was used for support while walking.

In the midst of trying to perform our job, please our bosses, satisfy our customers, meet deadlines, etc., we can take comfort in recognizing that our Shepherd has authority over all. He will guide and protect us as we depend on and follow Him while facing life's demands and opportunities.

Our competent, caring Shepherd wants to be our comfort today as we deal with our hurt, disappointment, weariness, confusion, concern, etc. Let's seek His comfort from the Word and from prayer. He has something to say to each of us today that will give comfort if we trust Him.

Lord, thank you for always working on my behalf, for caring about what concerns me, and for guiding and protecting me each day. I want and need your comfort.

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dave@youronedegree.com