That should worry you… not that I am too busy but that I say "I am too busy."  Or I feel I am too busy. Everybody these days says they’re too busy. Have you noticed? If someone doesn’t reply to an email or participate in a school meeting, their excuse is invariably “Sorry, I am just so busy.”

I get that even more now that I have several clients, I am fundraising for, you know asking for money, prayer, help. Even though I have worked hours making it as easy as possible to give [example: find six others who will give $70 three times a year with you – oh – and pray. It doesn’t get any more simple than that!] and they will quickly tell me they are "too busy to find six people" then talk to me about themselves for the next 20 minutes!

The problem is, as an excuse, it has gotten old. It is the adult version of “the dog ate my homework”! To beg off something like, say, returning a phone call – I usually hate to do that if I don’t want to talk anymore that day, but the value you give someone is the value to call and even arrange another time to talk. Sorry, I gave a solution. 

 You think in your mind, oh well, "I am too busy." Because you’re too busy is like not brushing your teeth because your gums hurt. (I have no idea, by the way, if that sentence makes sense. You think you’re busy? I am too busy to check my similes for logic J.)

You know I have come to the sad conclusion what the “Too Busy” is. It’s the new inconsideration of the brush off mostly… that’s all it is.

My bride is very legitimately busy very busy: Youth Performing Arts Exec. Director, Assistant Director for Enclave of the Arts, Teaches elementary (K – 5^th) Cottage School for a Charter School program – Musical Arts and is the Language Arts teacher for 8^th grade an all day program on Friday’s.

PLUS does: Community Theatre at least once a year, Avon, Creative Memories (kind’a) is a NEW GRANDMA and spends time with them, hugs me a lot because I need it and I hug her a lot because she needs it. BUT… she gives "with the right back up... me" -  responsible no’s and try’s hard not give irresponsible yes’. She returns phone calls and emails even. Now I know some of these activities she is doing will go away in a few months (thankfully) but I haven’t heard her use the response “I'm just too busy" to someone”. You see she values others and has their interest at heart… and I know she feels guilty if she thinks she slights someone.

This is what I take from that: If my bride can do that (because she can do all things through Christ who strengthens her) and she succeeds then you can too, you may not look as good as she does but you can succeed and break the bad habit of "I'm just tooooo busy."

The other problem with “I’m busy” is that nobody believes it anymore.

Not accepting falsehood imperils the social order. That’s because the basis for civilized society rests in allowing for acceptable fabrication. People don’t leave dinner parties because they are deadly boring, but because “Whew, look at the time – we have to get up early in the morning tomorrow.”

Polite mendacity lubricates the machinery of human interaction. Without it, we are no better than most animals, well maybe (don't let PETA know I said that they'll want donations from me or my popper scooper).  

So in a bid to help us as a society maintain civility and thus our position near the top of the animal kingdom. I want to help develop a few new, believable excuses.

Here are some ideas:

1. “Sorry, but you’re just not important enough to quickly respond to.”

2. “I’m so, well, self-absorbed to call you back or to help out, you know.”

3. “I generally figure if you want something done, let somebody else do it, so I was releasing you to use talent you didn’t know you had.”

4. “Give them money, they will probably spent it or something.”

Oops, sorry. Those aren’t excuses, they’re the real deals. Let me try again…

· “I wish I could help, but the ISP ate my hard drive.”

· “You e-mailed? You know my BlackBerry has be on the fritz again.”

· “I was on my way to the meeting, but my Prius had a short.”

I’d have thought of more but I was just too busy.

Hey, I have an ideas. How ‘bout if we all forget that we’re busy? That way, maybe this year we’ll really get something done that last beyond us.

They might have Islamic names like Mohammed or Ali, but every Sunday these Moroccan converts to Christianity go discreetly to “church” – to the ire of Islamic militants and under the suspicious eye of police. “There are about a thousand of us in around 50 independent churches across the big cities of the kingdom,” explained Abdelhalim, who coordinates these evangelical Protestant groups in Morocco.

“As we are tolerated, but not recognized (by the state) we must, for security reasons, conduct ourselves as a clandestine organisation,” said the 57-year-old, who preferred to use a pseudonym.
“As soon as a church has 20 worshippers it splits in two,” said Abdelhalim, a doctor who converted to Christianity 16 years ago when he was living abroad.

Islam is the state religion in Morocco, a country of 30 million people that counts only 5,000 Jews and 1,000 Christians, according to figures given by the two groupings. Although you cannot be sentenced if you convert to Christianity, it is illegal to proselytize under Moroccan law. And while official Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches are recognized by Morocco, they are only for foreigners living in the country. Moroccan Christians have no right to pray in these churches.

However when Abdelhalim returned home seven years ago, he said he was astonished by the growing number of converts to Christianity. “At the beginning of the 1990s there were 400 of us, four years ago around 700 and today more than 2,500 that I know” he said. Most of the converts belong to the middle classes and work in the private sector or as engineers. But these new evangelical Christians also count among their numbers craftsmen, housewives, students and young unemployed people. Christianity is also grow among the Berber people thanks to radio and English langauge schools.

Christianity was established in North Africa in the third century AD but was supplanted which is a nice way to say convert or else... by Islam in the seventh century. In the early 1990s, Christianity started to get a new foothold when foreign missionaries passed on the word to Moroccans. As for Morocco’s main cities, seven of these “free churches” – not linked to any international Protestant church – are in Marrakesh, six in Casablanca, five in Rabat and even one in El Ayoun, the regional capital of the western Sahara.

“Television and the Internet are very efficient methods and in our church a soldier became Christian through the Al Hayat channel,” said 30-year-old Youssef, who also preferred to use a pseudonym.
“For many of us, Islam is perceived as a social straitjacket and not as a real faith, and Christianity as a religion of tolerance and love,” said the businessman, who converted at the age of 19 and was later followed by his family. Yet in the eyes of the state they remain Muslim.

“Officially, my son and I are Muslim,” said Abdelhalim. “We hold Christian marriages and bless the young couple but this is not recognized by the state. They must go before the Muslim clergy and marry according to Sharia (Islamic law). If they don’t do this, they can be charged with adultery.” The same goes for death. “I cannot be buried in a Christian cemetery, only in a Muslim one,” he said.

Jack Wald, 55, an American and pastor of the Rabat International Church – one of the “official” Christian churches – who has lived in Morocco since 2000 also cites the role of technology. It “means that a country or religion cannot isolate itself from the rest of the world. This happened in eastern Europe and is happening in China and North Korea. The same is true with Muslim countries,” he said. “Radio, television and the Internet have opened up doors for people to hear a different message than the one the imam preaches on Fridays.”

Youssef estimated that 60 percent of the Moroccan converts became Christian through personal contacts, 30 percent via television or Internet and 10 percent via missionaries. Three evangelist Christian satellite channels which are beamed into Morocco in the Arabic language give witness accounts, hymns and prayers: Al Hayat and Sat 7 from Cyprus, and Miracle from Canada.

Discretion is the order of the day for Morocco’s Christians, with the faithful holding services in their homes, against a background of suspicion from the Islamic world. “We have to be careful because ordinary people cannot understand that we can be Arabs without being Muslim. For us the biggest danger is ignorance,” Abdelhalim said.

The Christian converts also have article 220 of the penal code hanging over their heads, which provides for prison sentences of between six months and three years for anyone who tries to undermine a Muslim’s faith or to convert him to another religion. “I have been summoned to the police station dozens of times,” said Youssef. He nonetheless says that Morocco is considered more tolerant than other Muslim countries thanks to King Mohammed VI, who has encouraged reforms to fight poverty, boost women’s rights and thwart any slide towards Islamic extremism in the kingdom.

Radouan Benchekroun, the president of the council of Muslim scholars in Casablanca is, however, unaccommodating. “To deny one’s religion, it is the biggest sin that a Muslim can commit,” he said.
Islamic militants insist these conversions “are not accepted by the population,” according to Lahcen Daoudi, a deputy for the Islamist Justice and Development Party. “As long as it remains at the individual level we can turn a blind eye. The problem is on the social level. If there is proselytism or if children or teachers come to school with the Crucifix, we cannot tolerate that,” Daoudi said.