Three weeks without griping?

Tom Heinen reported in Thursday's Milwuakee Journal Sentinel on A Complaint Free World, brainchild of The Rev. Will Bowen's Christ Church Unity in Kansas City. The church gives away purple rubber wristbands for participants. When one goes 21 days without complaining about anyone or anything, one switches the band to the other wrist. Rev. Brown reports that took him four months.

Under a sub-head "No snap judgments"

Milwaukeean Peter Isely, Midwest regional director and national board chairman of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, learned of the campaign a week ago and took up the challenge for Lent.

The article says people started asking him if he was all right. Sort of like the old joke that no one knew so-and-so was an alcoholic until one day he showed up sober.

Rev. Bowen was inspired by hearing that it takes about 21 days to make or break a habit. He was asked if his movement would interfere with the obligation to speak up.

"Somebody e-mailed me and said, 'The great things in our country were changed by people who complained. Look at Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King.' So I went back and read the Declaration of Independence and the writings of King. They were not complainers. They were people who painted a brilliant vista of what life can be like.

He's mistaken that they didn't complain; but he could cite their writings to show they weren't complaining out of habit.