“A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue,
but the parent of all the other virtues.”

- Cicero

If you had purchased $1,000.00 of AIG stock one year ago you would have $44.34 left.

With Wachovia, you would have had $54.74 left of the original $1,000.00.

With Lehman, you would have had $0.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago…drank all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have $214.00 cash.

Based on the above, the best investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle. It is called "The 401-Keg" plan.

Have you ever struggled to do the right thing on your job or in your business while it seemed like everyone else was getting ahead doing the wrong thing?

Several years ago I talked at length with a man by the name of Ronnie Carroll who had an amazing story. In the late '80s Ronnie owned a satellite TV dealership in Tallahassee, FL. This is a great business to be in in that part of Florida because it is almost impossible to get TV reception there unless you have a dish.

Ronnie was having a tough time, however, because he was the only dealer in the area who refused to sell illegal decoders that allowed folks to unscramble HBO and the like without having to pay a fee. His potential customers would hear his policy and go on down the road and buy their equipment from a dealer that would also sell them the pirate decoders.

For months Ronnie watched business go out the door. He eventually had to close his shop and try to operate his business from his home. Ronnie prayed throughout the winter, asking God to "judge his cause" and seeking direction on whether he should find another line of business.

That spring a couple of gentlemen from the FCC showed up at Ronnie's door. They said that Washington had made it a priority to crack down on illegal decoders and they were starting in his area. Their investigation had already shown that Ronnie was the only dealer in the area who wasn’t selling the devices and they wanted him to be in charge of collecting the pirate decoders. All dish owners were being told they had a 30-day grace period to turn in their outlaw decoders and pay Ronnie a $300 "disposal fee" or face prosecution. Simultaneously many of his one-time competitors were facing prosecution themselves and were going to find it hard to stay in business.

It also turned out that the company that made the bootleg devices also made legal decoders. Since the dishes wouldn’t work without some kind of decoder the FCC required the manufacturer to provide Ronnie with a line of credit to buy legal decoders to sell to the people turning in their outlaw equipment.

"Overnight," Ronnie said, "I suddenly had people crammed in my living room and lined up down my driveway to turn in their devices and buy new decoders and subscriptions. There were judges, lawyers and police officers in line. I bought a sign that said, 'As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,' and put it by my front door." Immediately Ronnie’s business went from barely surviving to grossing more than $80,000 a month. Several newspapers and television stations interviewed him and he shared his story with all he talked to. When I last talked to him years ago his business was still thriving.

One moral to this story is that God doesn’t move quickly: He moves suddenly. It may not look like anything is going on, but His blessing is already on the way and in one moment to the next everything can change. Heaven forbid that the moment right before that is when we give in. When the FCC rang Ronnie’s doorbell he no doubt thought it was a bill collector, and not the answer to his prayers. We need to expect God’s faithfulness, and don’t let our actions or attitudes succumb to what appears to be reality.

What is the price you put on your honesty and integrity? Will you sell it – like Esau – for some piddling and short-term gain? We live in a world full of hustlers, always trying to shade themselves a little edge here and there. The dismaying thing to me is not that this happens, but for what little amounts people are willing to trade their name and integrity. The thing about a path that is straight and narrow is that there are no corners we can cut and still stay on it.

Proverbs 22:1 says, "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." Temptation is always around to provide opportunity and justification; when exposed to the light, however, these justifications are shown to be flimsy and selfish. Likewise, we may not see the true value of our reputation until we ourselves are exposed, and by then it's too late. What we get never seems equal to what we give up. Indeed, it is "too late" the moment we cheat, not the moment we get caught.

Integrity is not something that can be taken away from us -– we can only give it away. We need to be careful that in our efforts to make a name for ourselves that we don’t end up giving that name away.

...For virtue is the bond of all the perfections, and the heart of all life's satisfactions. It makes a man sensible, alert, far-seeing, understanding, wise, courageous, considerate, upright, joyous, welcomed, truthful and a universal idol. And three are the S's that make for happiness: saintliness, sanity and sapience. Virtue is the sun of our lesser world, the sky over which is a good conscience. It is so beautiful, that it finds favor with God, and of man. There is nothing lovely without virtue: and nothing hateful without vice: for virtue is the essence of wisdom, and all else is folly: capacity, and greatness must be measured in terms of virtue, and not in those of fortune. Virtue alone is sufficient unto itself: and it, only, makes a man worth loving in life, and in death, worth remembering.

"This is the end — but for me, the beginning of life."

Those were not the words of Pope John Paul II, but of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed 60 years ago today by the Nazis in the closing days of World War II.

I thought of these words this week as the world honored the Pope and I listened to commentators in every media try to put their political spin on what a life of faith should look like. And when I thought of their words in the context of this anniversary, I could only shake my head at the subtleties of God and offer a bitter smile. Bitter at the foolishness and presumption, but a smile nonetheless in order to share in the laugh God must have been having.

Bonhoeffer is one of my heroes. Supremely talented and perceptive, he saw spiritual truth in a clear light and threw himself into writing it down and vigorously living it out in total commitment to the lives of those around him, yet he was also capable of the loneliest touch of inner doubt. He was one of the earliest and most unyielding voices in opposition to Hitler as far back as 1933 and struggled to shine a light on Hitler's co-opting of the German church and to reconstruct Christian ethics.

Fearing for Bonhoeffer's life, his friends arranged a position for him in America ahead of the coming war, only to have him turn around and return to Germany almost immediately, saying:

I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.

A pacifist, he ultimately saw the need to try and throw a spoke into the wheel of the Nazi war machine and was arrested in 1943 and accused of being part of a plot to kill Hitler. Over the next two years Bonhoeffer wrote prodigiously and powerfully, cramming each paragraph with stunning clarity and revelation almost as if he sensed his time was short (he was 39 – younger than I am now – when he died). As he watched the German church crumble around him and embrace the unbiblical tenets of Nazism, he exhorted his followers and his country that obedience and belief were bound together, saying "Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who obeys, believes."

You can find out much more about his incredible and courageous story here on the pages hosted by the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, but let me return to the present and the spirit of our age so much in evidence the past few weeks, and what Bonhoeffer might wryly refer to as another example of:

...the vigilant religious instinct of man for the place where grace is to be obtained at the cheapest price.

What he meant was that we all too easily fall into iniquity by trying to determine for ourselves and by our own standards what pleases God. Today there is a lot of easy talk about spirituality as we boomers age and find that our first commandment – "Love thyself" – doesn’t sustain. Christian or otherwise we seek to set our own standards for what is "good enough," forgetting what it cost those who came before us to raise God’s standard. Journalist David Brooks calls it "building a house of obligation on a foundation of choice," or, "orthodoxy without obedience."

You can be thought to be spiritual merely for acknowledging there is a need for spirituality without admitting that you have any responsibility to live up to it in any way. It is a spirituality that honors teachers but not a Messiah. It is what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace" and described as being the greatest threat to the Church. The threat, however, wasn’t from the world but rather from within the Church.

The complacency of cheap grace allowed Nazism to subvert the gospel in the German church, and the spiritual complacency of America in the 50s and 60s germinated the seeds that bear so much bitter fruit in our culture today. (Btw, you might find it an interesting study to compare the origins, thinking and actions of the original Nazis with the origins, thinking and actions of those who are the first to label others as Nazis today.) It is this "cheap grace" with which we try to cover a multitude of sins while projecting a rich aura of tolerance and enlightenment. As Bonhoeffer wrote in his classic, "The Cost of Discipleship":

This is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without Church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without contrition. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows Him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His son: 'ye were bought at a price,' and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

In what I have read of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and - though I am not a Catholic - what I have seen in the life of Pope John Paul II, I sense they both understood that their own lives were not too dear a price to pay for the sake of future generations. As Bonhoeffer wrote in one of his letters from prison:

The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live.

Rolf drew her to him. Though his embrace was tender, his arms around her were like the branches of the mightiest oak; she marvelled that the giant could be so gentle.

“I would do anything for you,” he breathed. His voice was sunlight through the trees, falling on her in a forest clearing. His scent was of exotic spices and of the tradewinds that had first brought him to her. She looked into the eyes that were as blue and cool as a spring-fed mountain lake. They were still waters, yet she could see the leviathan stirring in the depths, sense it rising in passion. Her lips parted almost of their own volition. But no…

She tossed her head, shaking her titian hair and put her hand to his broad chest, as if to push him away. Instead it lingered. Looking to her hand, she whispered, “Would you climb the highest mountain?”

“Aye,” he said, “and reach up and bring you back a star as well.”

“Would you swim to the bottom of the deepest sea?”

“Yes, and bring you the brightest pearl, though Neptune himself hold it in his briny hands.”

She felt a shiver from the very core of her being. “Would you...would you pick up your socks?”

“Actually,” he said, “Mom’s always done that for me.”

Roy Blount has been a freelance writer for more than 100 different publications. He has written profiles, essays, sketches, verse, short stories, and reviews. And he's written about politics, sports, music, food, drink, gender issues, books, comedians, language, travel, science, animals, economics, anatomy, and family life.

To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. … We're in the midst of a bunch of letters, and if you're like me, you feel like a pig in mud. What a great word mud is. And muddle, and muffle, and mumble. … You know the expression "Mum's the word." The word mum is a representation of lips pressed together. … The great majority of languages start the word for "mother" with an m sound. The word mammal comes from the mammary gland. Which comes from baby talk: mama. To sound like a grownup, we refine mama into mother; the Romans made it mater, from which: matter. And matrix. Our word for the kind of animal we are, and our word for the stuff that everything is made of, and our word for a big cult movie all derive from baby talk.

What are we saying when we say mmmm? We are saying yummy. In the pronunciation of which we move our lips the way nursing babies move theirs. The fact that we can spell something that fundamental, and connect it however tenuously to mellifluous and manna and milk and me (see M), strikes me as marvelous.