In Matthew 8.23-27, Jesus wakes up in the boat to the cries for help of his disciples, chides them for their lack of faith, and then “rebuked” the wind and waves, who entered on a “profound calm.”

This is Jesus meek and humble of heart whom we prayed to as kids in the ’40s? Or is that Jesus the product of zealous preaching of one kind in reaction to another kind?

In either case, we have here Jesus as Matthew remembered him, speaking with authority, being anything but meek and humble in ordinary sense. He spoke and acted with authority, was a man of strength, a leader of men.

Personally, I’ve had enough of the meek and humble Jesus in my life as to make him inhuman and distant, which is why I find myself taken with him as, face it, an authority figure, which he was — someone I can…

Returning to the October 2013 gathering of eagles, at Oak Park’s Percy Julian Middle School . . .

A CLAIM mother asked about the funding of mandates, what the state requires and the district pays for.

“It depends on how you define mandate,” said Sen. Lightford. It had become “very popular” to refer to compulsory kindergarten as unfunded, for instance, she said..

(The Oregon School Boards Association and Confederation of Oregon School Administrators did so as recently as two and a half years earlier, favoring kindergarten but regretting it as unaffordable.)

She said she was “lukewarm” about the problem and preferred a “happy-medium” solution.

Wanting not to put the questioner “on the spot,” the Oak Park senator, our hero for this series, asked for examples of “significant” added costs of a mandate.

The questioner turned to ask the superintendent, who wasn’t there! It was an important gathering, he had said earlier…