Take Ken Pagano, for example, whose invitation to his parishioners to bring their guns to a special event at church tomorrow has made national headlines. Pastor Pagano, shown in The New York Times with a handgun in a holster and a submachine gun in his left hand, wants his church to celebrate their right to carry firearms.

“God and guns were part of the foundation of this country,” Mr. Pagano, 49, said Wednesday in the small brick Assembly of God church, where a large wooden cross hung over the altar and two American flags jutted from side walls. “I don’t see any contradiction in this. Not every Christian denomination is pacifist.”

The Times article notes that, in the interests of safety, Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies (who I am sure have better things to do) will check visible weapons to make sure they are unloaded. They will not ask the parishioners of New Bethel Church in Valley Station for any concealed weapons, however.

“That’s the whole point of concealed,” Mr. Pagano said, adding that he was not worried because such owners require training.

Not everyone agrees with Pagano’s gun-love. The church’s insurers, for one, have canceled the church’s liability insurance for the “Bring Your Gun to Church” event, and have advised him they will cancel the policy at the end of the year.

Maybe the insurance company has the same mental image I have. Instead of yelling, “Amen!” churchgoers will instead fire their weapons toward the ceiling and yell, “Yeehaw!”

Nothing like reinforcing the image that Kentucky is inhabited by a bunch of rednecks. Thanks, pastor!

Seriously, there is so much that is wrong with this event, and the motivation behind it, and it’s hard to know where to begin. [OK, I need to come clean. I've been a member of the Louisville Quakers since 1984, so I might be just a bit biased.]

Let’s start with Pagano’s statement, “God and guns were part of the foundation of this country,” which sounds suspiciously like Christian Dominionist-speak. The Dominionists believe that God especially anointed the 13 Colonies, and the USA, as His special people, and that the country was founded specifically on Christian principles. They believe the USA is a “Christian nation.”

Pagano is only partly right. His own church, the Assembly of God, would probably have judged most of the Founding Fathers as apostates, or at least un-Christian, since a fair number of them rejected the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus. The Declaration of Independence mentions God, but the Constitution does not. In fact, the Constitution and the Founders made a special point to separate religion and governance.

We did not seek independence from Great Britain for religious reasons, either. Revolutionary soldiers and sailors (I have a few in my family tree) may have been church- or meeting-goers, but the Revolutionary War was not a jihad.

Guns back in those days were single-load muskets, the kind that you had to pack with powder first down the barrel before loading the shot or musket ball. People kept them for hunting, not for target practice at the local gun range.

Shooting at the Redcoats may have helped win the war, but the Revolution was as much a war of words and politics as it was a war of military strategy and attrition. Furthermore, the Founding Fathers did not decide, “Hey! Let’s start a new country based on everyone packing heat! No one will mess with us then!”

Then there’s the religious question. I don’t find any references in the New Testament that would suggest Jesus would favor carrying a gun. He said, “blessed are the peacemakers,” and “blessed are the meek,” not “blessed are the sharpshooters” or “blessed are the warriors.”

We can argue the rights of citizens to carry weapons until the cows come home, but no one can deny that a gun is an instrument of violence. Should parishioners also be allowed to bring swords and nunchaku to services? Or should churches hold boxing matches just before the altar call?

I just can’t twist my mind around the inherent contradiction between packing a gun and going to church at the same time. Pagano, however, sees no problem in it. In fact, he apparently sees it as a battle against some formless conspiracy .. against what, I don’t know.

“When someone from within the church tells me that being a Christian and having firearms are contradictions, that they’re incompatible with the Gospel — baloney,” he said. “As soon as you start saying that it’s not something that Christians do, well, guns are just the foil. The issue now is the Gospel. So in a sense, it does become a crusade. Now the Gospel is at stake.”

Yeah, the Gospel of St. (Dirty) Harry.

Yesterday, we had to had to get up at 3:30 am to meet Darcy at the airport. Her flight to Paris via Houston left at 6 am. I didn’t bother going to sleep; I just stayed up getting myself ready for my flight out.

She will be working for a year as an au pair in Angouleme, near Bordeaux. After some quick shopping in the airport gift shop for suitable gifts for her French family, she said her goodbyes to us. There were some tears, but I suspect they were mostly because she was leaving her boyfriend behind. (No offense taken, cherie!)

I miss those halcyon days of accompanying your loved ones to the gate and waiting with them until they boarded. It was more civilized than these hasty goodbyes on the opposite side of the security checkpoints. Somehow (and it might just be me) saying goodbye at the gates is more personal than in the middle of the main concourse, even in Louisville’s small airport. It was busy Tuesday there (for Louisville), so there were lots of people coming and going.

Not so today, when I left. The Louisville airport was practically like a ghost town by comparison. Check-in went smoothly (e-tickets are next best thing to direct deposit), and surprisingly, so did the security check. Everybody was pretty laid back, despite those annoying public address announcements of “security levels are high” (which they seem to be all the time, for no apparent reasons). But then again, it’s Louisville. We’re all laid back here.

I am traveling with three bags: one checked bag, a carry-on and a small camera bag for my Nikon FM and accessories. While United allows two checked bags on international flights free of charge, the Chinese train system allows only one. Extra bags are assessed a fee. Originally, I figured I would take two checked bags, my big duffle-like thing on wheels and a garment bag, and pay the extra fees. But then I decided that carrying four bags was not all that appealing, despite the possibility of taking more stuff. More bags means more weight, more effort and more things to worry about juggling and/or losing. So, I settled on taking one checked bag, figuring I could compact my stuff down into the big wheeled duffle.

Well, it took four tries to get it right. Following the guidance of the packing expert at www.onebag.com, I learned how to pack my clothes into bundles, instead of just folding them individually, to minimize wrinkles and creases. (Bundling means you place your shirts and pants, for example, in a plus-sign pattern, with a small bundle (toiletry case, first aid kit) in the middle. Then you fold the legs and sleeves over the central bundle to make a larger bundle. Pretty cool. You end up with a flat, rectangular kit that is easy to pick up and insert into your bag. I made two, to stack on top of each other.

United allows 23 kg (50 lbs) for each international passenger’s checked bag, but the Chinese rail system allows only 20 kg (44 lbs). Getting that one bag down below 20 kg was a trick in itself. I wanted to bring books, both to read and to use in class, important financial papers, and of course clothes. Including all the books I wanted to take, my camera tripod, shoes, toiletry kit, and clothes pushed the load up over 25 kilos. So I had to jettison the tripod, a few not-so-important-I-won’t-die-without-them books, and scale down my selection of clothing. After four trials, I managed to get the duffle down to 19.5 kilos (43 lbs).

Here’s what’s in it, in case you care.

The books include the Oxford American Dictionary, an English grammar book I found a few days ago at Carmichael’s, The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway), The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), A Christmas Carol (Dickens), The Call of the Wild (London), short stories by O. Henry, Cryptonomicon (Stephenson — I love his similes and metaphors), and a guide to Chinese customs and manners. I may have also packed, but now have forgotten whether I set them aside, Como agua para chocolate (Esquivel), Cuentos de Eva Luna (Allende) and a Spanish-English dictionary. (Yes, I know, reading Spanish movels in China … what am I thinking?) All other my other selections were available on-line, so I decided the physical specimens could stay in Kentucky.

Clothing: navy blue blazer, two pairs of khakis, three dressy shirts, three polo and/or T-shirts, several neckties, one belt, swimsuit, shorts, lots of socks and underwear, fleece jacket, nylon windbreaker, down jacket (compressed in one of those spacebag thingies), pair dressy shoes, a hand towel, facecloth and small bath towel. Minimal, but clothing in China is inexpensive, so I can buy anything else there.

Miscellaneous: a Centre College acrylic plastic coffee mug, a St. Francis High School plastic cup, two Swiss-Army knives (one a penknife), U.S. Army exercise book and rubber tubing (courtesy of my eldest son), toiletry case, two rolls of toilet paper (Chinese loos do not usually have it), a wall calendar, some financial records, a couple of USA maps and a few assorted computer-related oddments I don’t need straight away.

My carry-on doubles as my laptop bag. Besides the laptop and its power supply, the bag also contains an external USB-powered hard drive with a crap load of music on it, a digital camera, a USB cardreader, a webcam, all my China-related employment and visa documentation, eight rolls of color film (bought on sale at Meijer), TSA-approved toiletries in a TSA-approved ziploc bag, a notepad (for those times when the laptop has no power available), an emergency set of clothes (less the pants), The Rough Guide to China, The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood), and a few other miscellaneous items.

The camera bag has a Nikon FM body, a 35-80-mm zoom lens, a 200-mm telephoto, a motor drive and a speedlight. (The replacements for what got sucked out of the back of my car two months ago.)

As I sat in the plane at the Louisville airport awaiting our departure, I had a fleeting sense that I was doing a potentially stupid thing. After all, I am leaving a comfortable job, which to be fair was getting a little old after 23 years, a support system consisting of a bucketload of friends and family members, and the security of having lived in the same place for half my life. Instead, I am flying clear across the world to do something I have never done before (teach English as a second language to more than six people at a time), in a place where I know exactly one person fairly well and a few others only electronically, to live there for a year, maybe two. Holy shit! What have I done?

The feeling passed, fortunately, or I’d be a basket case right now, instead of calmly sitting on the floor at gate C22 at the O’Hare Airport typing this into my laptop. I set this whole process in motion a year and half ago when I inquired about teaching English at Jishou University, knowing that the following year would be my last at St. Francis High School. Everything that has happened since has fallen into place so effortlessly, that it seems as if this major life change is the right thing to do. (The Chinese believe 8 is a lucky number; August is the eight month of 2008. So there.) It is a bit scary, I will admit, but one cannot grow without change and challenge. It sure beats being stale.