This past summer, to research a Stranger story, I attended Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out” conference, devoted to the Christian cure and prevention of homosexuality, housed at Bothell’s Northshore Baptist Church. One of the ongoing rewards of the experience has been my placement on the Focus on the Family mailing list, which brings an array of James Dobson-approved propaganda into my life each month. Best in show: Focus on the Family’s monthly magazine, packed with content that makes “Ask Reverend Buddy!” seem perfectly sane.

The highlight of the October issue is “The Great Deception,” Susan Graham Mathis’s firsthand testimonial on the Satanic lure of yoga and its various new-age offshoots—tai chai, dream work, the concept of karma, etc. But Mathis’s scariest brush with Satan came via meditation:

"I was student teaching at a progressive middle school. Every day the kids went to the library for a 20-minute relaxation session—a thinly veiled time of transcendental meditation—with the librarian. It was called 'library time,' so neither parents nor teachers suspected a thing. Throughout the semester, I watched those children change from bright-eyed fourth graders to sullen, dark and sometimes mean children. I'd been noticing similar changes in my own life. What began as a seemingly good idea for relaxation and stress relief had introduced unwanted and scary changes in the children and in me. What was happening?

Second Corinthians 11:14 says Satan masquerades as an angel of light, and I met that awful angel on my journey of new age. Until I realized I was being deceived by false enlightenment, I was caught in its trap...Our children, young people and neighbors need to understand the deception awaiting them in their gym class or on their campuses, whether they be a fourth-grader, a collegian or an adult just taking an exercise class."

Thank you, Ms. Mathis. Everyone else can find further delights at the Focus on the Family website.