Three favorite clippings from the newspapers on our subject: The Ten Commandments.

The first is from Kansas City columnist Joe Brown, who shares this priceless story:

After discovering that he had lost his hat, a man decided the simplest way to replace it was to go to a church and steal one from the pews. Once inside, he heard a sermon on the Ten Commandments.

At the end of the service, he said to the minister, "I want you to know that you saved me from crime. I came here with sin in my heart.

"I was going to steal a hat, but after hearing your sermon, I changed my mind."

"Fine," said the minister. "But would you tell me what I said that changed your mind?"

"Of course," said the man. "When you got to the part about 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' I remembered where I left my hat."

The second comes from The Baltimore Jewish Times and ought to be filed under, "Best News, Worst News":

According a poll by the Gallup Youth Survey, four out of five teenagers feel the Ten Commandments are valid.
The same survey also stated that only three out of 100 teenagers can name the Ten Commandments.

"Dear Abby: I have a wonderful idea, but I need your help. We should go back to God's laws, so I thought up the idea of having the Ten Commandments printed on bed sheets and pillow cases.

"If all the people who are shoplifting were to see 'Thou Shalt Not Steal' printed on their bed sheets every night, they would quit stealing.

"Also, people need to be reminded that it is a sin to kill and to commit adultery and to covet another man's wife. They forget that it's God's law to honor their mother and father and to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. If we had the Ten Commandments on bed sheets and pillow cases, it could change the world.

"I wrote to two manufacturers of bed linen, and even sent them a sample sheet that I made up myself, and they both turned me down flat.

"What do you think of my idea?"-Signed, Great Idea in Washington.

To which Abby responded with the usual wit: "Send me a sample and I'll sleep on it."

Here we find a formula designed to create a new community, a design toward making a fallible nation chosen by God into a people worthy of that distinction.

The first three Commandments speak of the issue of God:

You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for me any graven images.
You shall not evoke the name of God in vain.

I was reading the other day how Wayne Muller insists on this idea of Shabbat rest:

Our willingness to rest depends on what we believe we will find there. At rest, we come face-to-face with the essence of life. If we believe life is fundamentally good, we will seek out rest as a taste of that goodness. If we believe life is fundamentally bad or flawed, we will be reluctant to quiet ourselves, afraid of meeting the darkness that resides in things-or in ourselves.

And, of course, the last five address crucial social issues: murder, adultery, theft, perjury, and covetousness.

Here we have a timeless prescription for responsibility. If there is no individual, no group, no authority to assume responsibility, well then, there will be no civilization.

We've given Dear Abby some attention. Now, her sister, "Ann Landers." In an old column, she published some statements from an insurance company of policyholders who were requested to provide brief descriptions of how their accidents took place.

• As I approached the intersection, a stop sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
• The telephone pole was approaching fast. I was attempting to swerve out of its path when it struck my front end.
• An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle, and vanished.
• The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran him down.
• Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have.
• The other guy was all over the place. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.

Pablo Casal lived well into his 90s. Though a renowned cellist, he was a perceptive philosopher, with an eye on the uniqueness of our human nature. I like what he said at the end of his long life:

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never happen again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two makes four, and that Paris is the capitol of France. When will we say to each of them: do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. And in all the world there is no child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you. And look at your body! What a wonder it is-your legs, your arms your cunning little fingers. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And, when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work-we must all work-to make this world worthy of its children.

And finally there is the theme of Reconciliation-with our fellow men and women, and ultimately with God.

How often we come to look at our lives as an "I'll do you before you do me" proposition. It's the law of the jungle, of course! I stood at Ground Zero this week and saw what that leads to.

We are living in a world which is increasingly small. To survive we need a recipe on how to get along with one another; a recipe that will demand responsible conduct, respect for one another, and compassionate restraint for the most vulnerable among us.

Someone came up to Mark Twain. He was a very prominent and prosperous fellow. The fellow announced to Twain and a group of people who were standing with him that-

Before I die, I will go to the Holy Land, climb Mt. Sinai, and read the Ten Commandments aloud from its summit.

"I have an even better idea," Mark Twain replied.
How about just staying home and keeping them?