Wheat Among Tares

Withholding Approval and Same Sex Marriage

2012-02-01T10:37:00.001-05:00

I've been over at AVI's commenting on a post of his about Same Sex Marriage.

A couple of people made the point that SSM is about the gay community wanting validation and affirmation more than it is about obtaining specific marital rights.

I don't think that's a necessarily incorrect assessment. And, I think withholding that validation is a serious motive for opponents to gay marriage, who are comfortable tolerating gay people and acknowledging their existence, but don't want to be required to put their stamp of approval on gay relationships, elevating the status of gay relationships to those of heterosexual relationships.

Full disclosure. I don't know how comfortable I am, personally, with Same Sex Marriage. That's to say, while I don't harbor ill will towards homosexuals, I can also say that I have a hard time understanding homosexuality simply because I can't identify with it personally. I don't know or understand what it would be like to be attracted to the same sex, and because of that I can't un-self-consciously accept it in the same way that I would any other straight relationship. I actually have to consciously work on not making value judgements.

Those statements are not meant to be used as ammunition against me. I am merely trying to be honest about the thought process I have. Because I don't identify with or understand homosexuality in the same way that I understand heterosexuality....I am limited in my abilities to be as instinctively OK with it as I would be with other relationships. As such, I have to take what gay people say about themselves and their relationships at face value to some extent. If most of them feel as if this is something they were born with or something they have no power to change, then I have to accept that.

I have no basis to argue otherwise.

How valuable is this validation of SSM and what do opponents gain by not giving it?

For the gay population, I think the validation is extremely valuable. Having governmental recognition of SSM would allow them to feel accepted and as if their relationships were equal to heterosexual marriages and all that it entails. Living in a society that doesn't purposely and consciously exclude you and that doesn't merely tolerate you is definitely more appealing and freeing than living in a society in which you feel slighted.

Is it the government's responsibility to make sure that everyone feel more accepted and free? Is the government supposed to make us feel warm and fuzzy about all of our choices? Is the government supposed to be a hippie love-in organization making sure that everyone gets a hug and a flower in their hair?

Well....not exactly. However, the government isn't a separate entity that operates outside and independent of society. It is a representation of society and serves to enact laws that society considers just and good. Those laws are adjusted and added to as society adjusts and adds to its conception of "just" and "good".

Validating SSM is a way of declaring that society thinks it is more just and good to honor consensual, binding, relational agreements between two gay people than it is to not honor those agreements. While it is about making homosexuals feel openly accepted and equal, it is also about honoring the wills of individuals to live peacefully, according to their own consciences, without government impediments, a principle which is entirely American.

Very conservative Christians will never accept homosexuals in any way. The only option in their eyes is a fundamental denial of same sex attraction. Homosexuals are expected to repent and live as heterosexuals. The problem is that after many years of this approach, it doesn't seem widely viable or workable. Some of the founders of various ex-gay movements, after many years of working in those movements, have given up on the idea of thinking it's even possible to be "ex-gay".

Conservative Christians will characterize these people as giving up on God, or the faith, or surrendering to the devil and their lusts.

On the other hand, if someone so desperately wants not to be gay, founds an organization for ex-gays, and dedicates themselves to that movement for many years, and after all that discovers that their life's work hasn't been very effective and openly admits it...then I think Christians need to listen to what they have to say.

The average evangelical christian has historically taken the path of "loving the sinner, hating the sin" when it comes to homosexuality. I once thought this was a workable spiritual solution; tell homosexuals that we love them and think God loves them, but that their actions are not pleasing to God and we can't condone their behavior. In theory, the idea is that acting on homosexual desires is equivalent to acting on heterosexual desires outside of marriage. People make mistakes. God offers forgiveness. We simply can't condone the mistakes.

The problem is that it never really works that way in evangelical churches. No matter how open and loving an evangelical church can be, or how insistent that homosexuals are welcome to attend, they are not treated in the same way that heterosexuals are because an attraction to the same sex is not viewed equivalently to an attraction to the opposite sex, in the eyes of the church. Attraction to the opposite sex is seen as inherently natural and if heterosexuals stray then it is a matter of right desire, wrong timing or wrong relationship. With homosexuals there is never a right time, place, or relationship to express their sexual orientation.

What remains is the option of lifelong celibacy in an evangelical church. However, even if an openly gay person chooses to be celibate, there is always a lingering suspicion towards them and they will most likely not be given any visible leadership positions within the church.

Withholding approval/validation effectively keeps acknowledged homosexuals out of evangelical churches. It's not hard to see why. If desires that you have always had, desires that you can't get rid of, and desires that are an integral part of the framework of your self-conception are considered twisted and unnatural, even if you don't act on them, it would be difficult to feel loved, accepted and part of that community.

When a person latches onto the idea of withholding validation or approval from someone as a means of influencing them, they are operating on several assumptions.

Assumption #1 --They are in a superior position. Validation is theirs to give or withhold by fiat and natural authority.

Assumption #2--Their purposeful withholding of validation will influence the subject of it to submit and agree to the authority's position and discourage them from the subject's own position

Assumption #3--Giving validation to someone who lives and believes differently than they do is as bad as living and believing in the same way as that person. Validation=participation.

#1 is hard for anyone to prove. Justifying hierarchies and inherent authority is incredibly difficult when people begin to critically examine that hierarchy and the basis for the authority given to it.

#2 isn't effective. When you don't validate people they typically don't change, they simply continue being the way they are in a different location.

#3 Validation is not equal to participation.

I may write more about this when time permits.

Analysis on Florida

2012-01-31T10:44:00.002-05:00

This is pretty much spot-on analysis of Florida:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And then there was this article about Florida evangelicals which is also pretty accurate.

And another article about debunking myths about Florida voters.

Florida is an incredibly diverse state that can't be pinned down. Even its ethnic groups have sub-groups. Hispanic/Latino might mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican, or a number of nationalities from Central and South America.....and those groups often do not share political or cultural commonalities.

The same goes for African Americans. In Florida that term could represent people from Jamaica, first and second generation Africans, people from Haiti, Trinidad, and the Virgin Islands as well as the more traditional conception of "African American". The term itself is outdated and not entirely accurate here.

There is a large population of bi-racial and multi-racial people and those combinations may be black/white, hispanic/ white, black/hispanic, white/asian, black/asian, bi-racial/bi-racial.

I believe this is why Florida is so important during major elections, there is literally no portion of the American population that isn't represented here....not only in certain pockets, but throughout the state.

And that racial diversity is mirrored in religious diversity and age diversity in as complex a manner.

It's like a mini United States here.

Primary Day

2012-01-31T08:22:00.001-05:00

So, as a registered Republican, I get to vote in Florida's primary today. Romney, Newt, Paul or Santorum.

Those are my choices.

I will probably wind up voting for Romney, not because I love him as a candidate, but because I dislike him the least....or at least consider his flaws less repugnant than the flaws of the other candidates.

I told my husband that I think this will be my last election as a registered Republican. Throughout the long run-up to today, I spent time looking over the candidates and the positions they hold on various issues. What I discovered was that there wasn't a single one with whom I agreed on more than one issue. I like Ron Paul's bluntness about the war and his desire to avoid it.....but he has a lot of other ideas that are a bit crazy and the racist newsletters from his past make it impossible for me to vote for him.

Santorum has so much of his religious belief tied into his politics that I don't consider him an option. Going to his site and reading through his "issues" articles is like listening to the Family Research Council. Lots of bluff and bluster and ranting against the evil powers in the universe, but not many practical ideas about running the country.

Newt....well let's just say that I wouldn't trust Newt in any position. Besides his personal scandals, which could be argued to be irrelevant, the transparency with which he manipulates and speaks is off-putting. The constant reliance on invoking Reagan, calling the opposition "elites", and his downright outrageous claims about moon bases in 8 years is so over the top....I don't understand how anyone could really take him seriously.

"I declare that by the end of my second term that we will have light-speed space-ships and they'll be made in America!

I declare that by the end of my second term that there will be a chicken in every pot and a personal jet pack for every American!

I declare that by the end of my second term that we will be able to download our consciousness into biologically-based robots and live forever!

I will accomplish all of this because I am a man of BIG ideas!"

Well...you get the idea.

sigh.

I think this will be my last year as a registered Republican. While I can't see myself registering as a Democrat, I simply can no longer find a reason to remain Republican. I haven't seen a candidate in the last several years that I could get behind without holding my nose. It's time to face facts. As the Republican party now stands, it's clear that I am not a Republican any longer.

The truest representation of my voting preferences would be to register as an Independent, which, in Florida, means no longer being able to vote in primary elections. The upside is that maybe it will mean that we will receive fewer robo-calls during the week before primaries and general elections.

Old Soul?

2012-01-29T11:09:00.000-05:00

Heh.

Google is doing its job keeping track of everything you and I do in its systems.

You can check out what Google thinks of your demographics here.

Google seems to think I am a 65+ year old man.

I'm speechless.

Google as Revealer of Unpleasant Truths

2012-01-20T10:48:00.008-05:00

One of the things keeping me busy lately is soccer season.

This is the second year we have had the boys in soccer. They enjoy it. We enjoy it. It's a good way to spend time together as a family.

The fly in the ointment for me, this year, has been The Rationalist's U-12 coach. I have cultivated a general eye-rolling feeling towards him for several reasons, the least of which is related to his actual coaching. When we met him, I thought that he seemed familiar to me, especially once he mentioned he was a youth minister. Though I couldn't specifically place him, I had the sense that we must have glancingly met him at some point in the 12 years that we have lived here.

Curious, I googled him when I got home and realized that we had visited a church he was starting many years ago. We had visited just one time, so I doubt that he would have any remembrance of us as a part of a large group of people, but I remembered him because we gave him our attention for one full Sunday morning, even if it had been 6 years ago.

Googling someone, in some cases, can provide a key to their personality. It's not an exact science, but for those who have a heavy web presence, it can pretty much lay out their lives--good, bad, and curious--in a few seconds.

What I found on the coach was evidence of many start-ups of various churches, stints as a youth minister at various churches, several career websites where he hyped his motivational speaking skills and mentions of playing for the NFL.

Mixed in with that were a couple of links with questions about whether this man had ever actually played with the Dallas Cowboys. Apparently, someone didn't believe his resume and wanted to know more about him from an expert on all things Cowboy-related.

What came out on the website is that there was no mention of his name on any NFL roster at any time, for any game with that team. As far as the Dallas Cowboys were concerned, this man didn't exist. Searching a little bit further, the expert on the website found only one reference to him. Apparently, he had tried out for the Cowboys, had initially been signed as a place kicker, but then was dropped/waived after a couple of months. However, he never played a single game and it is unclear how much of those 3 months were actually spent with the team because he was signed in April and waived in July, presumably before the pre-season and definitely before the actual season which started on 9/13/87.

I had stumbled across an unsettling fact. The coach was an exaggerator, possibly a liar, depending on how you looked at it.

I wasn't sure what to think about the whole thing. It seemed too incredible to me to think that this man would blatantly misrepresent himself, but that is exactly what he did.

The coach had advocated we follow him on facebook for soccer updates and there was no mention of the NFL on his info/work page. Several of the defunct churches' websites that mentioned him didn't mention it either. Maybe, I thought, this was a brief slip-up by him. Maybe it was a misunderstanding by someone in the past, thinking he was claiming to have played as opposed to briefly being signed to the Cowboys.

Further googling turned up a couple of mentions of the pastor/coach and the NFL in personal blogs of people who were working with him or introducing him as a guest speaker. The term "former NFL player" was used as a credential for appealing to youth. Still, these mentions were several years old and very brief, no more than a sentence or two, not detailed elaborations. But now, instead of just finding references to the Dallas Cowboys, I was finding references to the New York Jets also.

Disturbed, I decided to do my own fact-checking, going to official NFL sites and the official Dallas Cowboys site and New York Jets site, running various searches to try and turn up any overlooked information, searching by year, name, position, etc. I found no mention of him anywhere on any of the official team rosters maintained by any NFL organizations.

It bugged me, but wanting to be charitable and give the benefit of the doubt, I pushed it aside thinking it was probably in the past, a minor case of braggadocio that had flared up and burnt itself out rather quickly.....until it wasn't anymore.

Not long after the soccer season started, the coach decided to give a pep talk about getting enough sleep, eating the right things, and drinking enough fluids the day before the game. It was at this point that he mentioned this was the advice given to him when played in the NFL.

A couple of kids gasped and exclaimed excitedly, "You played in the NFL?"

"Yeah. I sure did," he said.

"What team?" they asked.

"I played for the Cowboys and the New York Jets," he said confidently.

"Wow!" they said.

I stood there, silently thinking despicable thoughts.

Misunderstanding? No.

Exaggeration? Possibly able to be construed as such.

Outright Lie? In my book, yes.

Google had laid bare this man's lie before me. I knew something about him that no one else on that soccer field knew at that moment, that he was lying to our kids' faces and to ours.

Practice was over. We went home and I stewed, wondering how this man could so casually represent himself the way that he did...the same man who markets himself as a motivational speaker to teens in order to teach them not to smoke, drink or have sex before marriage...the same man whose facebook page was filled with mini-sermons about serving God.

ugh.

The awkwardness of knowing more about a person than I normally would, without them even realizing it, is pervasive. There's no way to reveal what I know without seeming creepy and stalker-ish as if I spend all my time researching the personal lives of those around me. And, there's no real point in revealing what I know because while it reflects very poorly on this man's character and personality it has absolutely zero to do with his soccer coaching. It's something he says to boost his own self-image and give him more prestige in the eyes of others, but after that brief moment it recedes in relevance.

Still, it annoys me. It is hard to listen to him speak without second-guessing everything he says as exaggeration and self-promotion.

Shift

2012-01-18T12:50:00.000-05:00

I've been incognito for quite some time. Time and again I would consider blogging, or putting my thoughts down on numerous subjects...and yet....shifting inside of me a growing resistance to all things blog-related would assert itself, saying "No...not right now."

So...I would let the days slip by, busy with real life and chores and Christmas and working on the house, all the while considering the possibility of simply shutting things down, or maybe restarting elsewhere.

I'm not sure where I'm headed. The internal shift I feel is one that I have had before in my life at particular moments when I suddenly change and go in a new direction.

A sudden revelation. An epiphany. A realization. An acceptance of something unpredicted.

I'm not sure which one of those things will come from the shift, or if none of them lay beneath the change working in me.

I'll let you know when I know.

2011-11-09T16:42:00.000-05:00

This whole Penn State sexual abuse story has my stomach churning as I try to understand how multiple men, both in leadership positions and non-leadership positions, could turn a blind eye to a child's rape.

It is especially gut-wrenching for me because the age of the boys who were raped is close to the age of my own two boys, and the association of knowing my boys and the unbidden imagination of what I would do if anyone ever harmed them in this way fills me with rage and disgust and makes my heart heavy for the boys who had no one to protect them.

I honestly don't know how any of these men live with themselves. How do you sleep at night knowing that this horrendous crime was not reported to the police and that the perpetrator is likely still raping children?

How can people disassociate from responsibility and justice so completely?

Musical Monday

2011-10-31T08:24:00.002-04:00

If that was too mellow and melancholy to start your Monday, here's another from Adele....with a little more of her personality showing through at the beginning.

What Influences the Influencers?

2011-10-27T10:13:00.009-04:00

Simultaneous with my reading of Confessions, I wandered off somewhere through hyperlinks and began reading through other early Christian writings. This happens to me frequently. I begin reading one thing which makes an obscure reference to something else, which leads me to look up that piece of writing, which in turn references another text etc., etc. Before I know it I'm chasing rabbit trails...possibly tangential rabbit trails, but still slightly off of my original path.

During this frantic, hopping process, I came across 1 Clement, an early Christian epistle believed to be written around the turn of the first century by Pope Clement 1. You can read the text, in full, here.

For the most part it's what you would expect from a church leader writing to a congregation of believers, exhortation, warning, encouragement, and the reiteration of doctrine and practices and the faithfulness of the biblical characters. In the middle of all this, though, there is this nugget:

CHAPTER 25 -- THE PHOENIX AN EMBLEM OF OUR RESURRECTION.
Let us consider that wonderful sign [of the resurrection] which takes place in Eastern lands, that is, in Arabia and the countries round about. There is a certain bird which is called a phoenix. This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years. And when the time of its dissolution draws near that it must die, it builds itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when the time is fulfilled, it enters and dies. But as the flesh decays a certain kind of worm is produced, which, being nourished by the juices of the dead bird, brings forth feathers. Then, when it has acquired strength, it takes up that nest in which are the bones of its parent, and bearing these it passes from the land of Arabia into Egypt, to the city called Heliopolis. And, in open day, flying in the sight of all men, it places them on the altar of the sun, and having done this, hastens back to its former abode. The priests then inspect the registers of the dates, and find that it has returned exactly as the five hundredth year was completed.

CHAPTER 26 -- WE SHALL RISE AGAIN, THEN, AS THE SCRIPTURE ALSO TESTIFIES.
Do we then deem it any great and wonderful thing for the Maker of all things to raise up again those who have piously served Him in the assurance of a good faith, when even by a bird He shows us the mightiness of His power to fulfil His promise? For [the Scripture] says in a certain place, "You shall raise me up, and I shall confess to You;" and again, "I laid down, and slept; I awaked, because You are with me;" and again, Job says, "you shall raise up this flesh of mine, which has suffered all these things."

I was not expecting an early Christian leader to use the phoenix as a proof of God's resurrection power. Clement speaks about the bird as a real, factual, natural example of resurrection. It's intriguing because it is so removed from the Gospel accounts, or even Paul's description of resurrection. Instead of directly appealing to the Resurrection story, or Paul's assurances that 500 people witnessed a resurrected Jesus, Clement is using examples in nature as proofs for the resurrection of Christ and resurrection in general. He discusses the renewal of the sun each day, or the growth of plants from "dead" seeds and ultimately goes on to this final example with the phoenix.

First, it's interesting to note that Clement doesn't reference the miraculous in any way. He's writing to the Corinthians, a congregation with whom Paul spends a lot of time discussing tongues and healings and miraculous powers. Yet, now, there is no whiff of the supernatural in this letter. The transition is being made from a belief system based on experiential, emotive, supernatural events to a belief system that is moving towards an authoritative, literature-based system. The text's subtle feel places it in a different category than Paul's writings.

I'm not sure what it means. It seems somewhat removed from the immediacy of the apostles even though Clement supposedly was alive when some of the apostles were still alive and is claimed to have been installed by Peter himself, though, as always, there is much uncertainty when it comes to dates and succession during this time period.

Second, it's always disappointing to come across these bizarre examples or reasoning in the founders of the Christian faith. Intellectually, I know that Clement believed that phoenixes were real and he was probably not strange in doing so and it shouldn't bother me. However, it does make the point that many of Christianity's founders were incredibly credulous, maybe no more so than the average person in their culture, but still.....the implications further erode my confidence.

I experienced a similar deflation when reading St. Augustine's Confessions. One of the many pivotal moments he writes about concerns St. Anthony and the book Life of Anthony, which Athanasius wrote. He and his companions are set on fire by the book and its tales of Anthony's battles with demons and the strong, radical faith which caused Anthony to seek a solitary existence in the desert.

Off I went to read Life of Anthony in order to get a better understanding of what was so moving for Augustine and his friends. What I read sounded like the ravings of a schizophrenic experiencing hallucinations. Demons spontaneously appear to Anthony and torment him, not only mentally, but also physically. It's one extreme episode after another.

Discovering this text as a seed of inspiration for Augustine is disturbing. What does it say about his mental state? About what motivates him? About the credulity with which he accepts these tales?

When you find that those who hold such prominent influence over the shaping of Christianity have faulty premises and facts at the inception of their faith, how do you walk with them further down the path and take what they say with unpolluted trust?

Reading the early writings has become an act of torture for me. I'm always finding stuff that I wish wasn't there, and I'm frequently appalled at the influences which guide the influential.

Was Augustine Bi-Sexual?, The Conclusion

2011-10-26T11:27:00.002-04:00

Probably.

What does it matter?

It doesn't, depending on what a person thinks of the implications. Because Augustine converted with a simultaneous vow of celibacy, all of his sexual activities are strictly pre-conversion. It would be hard for GLBT groups to use him as much of a poster boy for their causes considering he in no way condones his own sexuality, or hardly anyone's sexuality for that matter. In Augustine's eyes, sex is worldly, temporal and usually lustful, so any attempt at expressing acceptance of any kind of pleasurable sexuality is cut off before it even begins.

For some Christian groups, it might be unsettling to imagine their patron saint engaging in sexual acts with other men/boys and I would think many would resist any idea speculating about Augustine's bi-sexualty.

On the other hand, I can imagine that some Christian groups would gladly take Augustine as the prime example of an "ex-gay/ex-bi" person whose behavior was changed by belief in and commitment to the Christian God.

Augustine could be co-opted by either side of the divide.

Was Augustine Bi-Sexual?, Part 3

2011-10-26T11:17:00.002-04:00

I have mostly finished Confessions, and as of yet, haven't been swayed to think that Augustine was solely heterosexual. My reading of him is that early in his youth, upon moving to Carthage, he probably was involved in same-sex sexual relationships. He doesn't say it outright, which I don't perceive as unusual. Even when discussing his relationship with his mistress he doesn't go into much detail. He is much more descriptive about his feelings and perceptions of guilt rather than being descriptive about specific acts.

I think the strongest case for Augustine's early bi-sexuality still remains in carefully reading how he writes about women, in general, and, specifically, his most significant heterosexual relationship. I don't see how the passages I quoted in the original post could even remotely be applied to women by Augustine. Augustine simply doesn't describe his relationships with women, on the few occasions he mentions them, with any sense of love, or friendship, or emotional depth. All of these emotions he expresses quite freely towards his male friends.

I'm not saying that every male relationship that Augustine had was a sexual relationship. I'd venture that most weren't and that any affairs that he had were well in his youth.

This lack of feeling expressed towards women, combined with the fact that Carthage seemed to be known as tolerant place for homosexuality, and that Augustine directly connects his adventures to the city of Carthage, I find compelling.

After my first read-through of Confessions, I went back and read the Introduction. I don't like to read Introductions ahead of time because I find they color my reading experience. In the Introduction of the the translation of Confessions which I am reading, I found this:

There was however, a snag to baptism. Anyone who took it seriously knew that post-baptismal sins were unforgivable, if they were big ones, although most pre-baptismal sins would be wiped out by baptism itself. There was then room for calculation. If you delayed baptism and avoided the most unpardonable sins like murder (some writers included adultery) you could be baptized in old age and be destined for heaven in the life to come. If you were baptized too soon, you might damn yourself to hell by sinning badly later. Those who thought hard could see the attractions of remaining a "catechumen": Monica saw them and because she suspected that her son might sow wild oats and be a promiscuous young man, she preferred to keep him as a catechumen. (pp xix, The Confessions, translated by Philip Burton)

I found this intriguing because when Augustine writes about the death of his close, male friend, he mentions that after he fell sick, those who were taking care of him baptized him, assuming that he was going to die soon. His friend has a brief rally in his sickness and is coherent enough to talk to Augustine. Augustine relates the baptism in a joking way, assuming that his friend will laugh at the involuntary, unconscious baptism, and is surprised by his friend's response:

He, however, had learnt beforehand of the baptism he had received, and shrank from me as if from an enemy. In a remarkable and sudden burst of plain speaking he warned me that if I wanted to be his friend, I would have to stop talking to him like that. For my part, I was astonished and upset at this, and put all my own feelings on one side until he had recovered and had regained the full vigour of health; then, I thought, I would be able to deal with him as I wished. But he was rescued from my madness, so that in you he might be reserved for my consolation; a few days later, when I was away, the fever struck again, and he died. (pp 70, Confessions 4.3.8)

This is intriguing because of the change brought about in his relationship because of the baptism. If baptism was taken so seriously, then it would have natural repercussions in the relationship that Augustine might have had with his friend and the friend's response may not be one merely of annoyance at being mocked, but the realization that the relationship would have to change.

That's speculation, but I think it's fair speculation.

The delaying of baptism, and Augustine's vow of celibacy once he decides to be baptized, may make more sense if we realize that for Augustine the Christian life was an all-or-nothing prospect on the issue of sex. He would have to completely avoid sex of all kinds in order to live in way that he considered faithful. Any sexual pleasure, even within the bonds of marriage, was something he couldn't handle in combination with his faith. All non-pro-creational sex was giving into lust in his eyes, and perhaps, knowing his own proclivities, it was easier to go "cold turkey".

Let it Rip!

2011-10-24T08:52:00.003-04:00

That's the battle cry for playing BeyBlade, a game of dueling, adjustable, spinning tops which are launched into plastic "stadiums".

This weekend we attended a local tournament at a nearby Toys-R-Us that The Intuitive found out about from the website. We weren't sure what to expect. The event didn't seem to be advertised anywhere else and, other than my son, we didn't know many kids who were obsessed with BeyBlade.

Apparently, they don't need to do much advertising these days. By the time the tournament started, there were about 60 kids, almost exclusively boys, crowding around tables with stadiums set up for battles. They writhed with energy and excitement, opening their overflowing plastic carrying cases and carefully examining their stock, thoughtfully choosing their instruments of war.

60 boys, from ages 5 to 13, managed to behave pretty well considering the first hour was informal chaos with boys introducing themselves to each other and seeking out battle partners. The Intuitive glowed with enthusiasm taking his losses well, but taking his wins with victorious joy.

Ultimately, he didn't make it too far in the tournament. His collection of 5 or 6 BeyBlades couldn't compete with the serious challengers who seemed to have at least 20.

He still managed to have a great time.

Was Saint Augustine Bi-Sexual? Part 2

2011-10-21T09:51:00.011-04:00

The plot thickens.

Whenever something novel occurs to me about a text I am reading, novel enough to pique my interest, one of the first things that I do is try to see if anyone else has ever thought the same thing, or researched the idea. When I read Gilgamesh, I noticed certain images that reminded me of the book of Daniel. When I researched this further, I found that many people had already explored the connection and written obscure papers and books about the subject. It turns out my insight wasn't unique or incredibly insightful.

Oh Well.

The possibility of Augustine having had same-sex affairs was thought-provoking, in large part because the idea was totally unexpected. I had in my mind a rough sketch of Augustine's life and the purpose of Confessions through general exposure in my reading and miscellaneous passages which are frequently quoted, usually in theological discussions. I went into Confessions with pre-conceived ideas about what I was going to find. I decided to read it because it's one of those things that people use and refer to without actually having read the work, in full, for themselves.

So, what did I find out about this possible aspect of Augustine?

I discovered that very few people discussed this aspect of Augustine, or were even aware of the idea. I found a few GLBT sites which listed him as one of their own on the basis of some of the passages I have already quoted, but some of these sites also tended to have an agenda, trying to claim prominent Christians from the past as fellow homosexuals or bi-sexuals. It doesn't mean they are wrong, but it does taint their assertions with a self-serving motive.

One paper kept coming up as a reference in several books and articles; Correcting Some Misconceptions about St. Augustine's Sex Life, by Alan Soble. Although it was frequently showing up as a reference, I had a difficult time finding the actual text of the paper. It was listed in bibliographies and footnotes, but no one ever quoted it and every link I followed had only the abstract available to the public. Eventually, my husband got access to it through his university in order for me to read the entire article.

I was hoping for something more informative than what I got. The article goes into a lot of detail about what other historians and biographers of Augustine have said and even addresses the issue of the GLBT community trying to co-opt Augustine, something I had already come across. Ultimately, the author concludes that it is silly to think that Augustine engaged in same-sex relationships.

The author is wrong as far as his reasoning goes. His arguments rest on these points: that Augustine was an exaggerator, that Augustine expressed interest in women, and Augustine never clearly says that he has had same-sex relationships.

Claiming that Augustine was dramatic, and therefore we must take what he says about himself with a grain of salt, undermines any attempt at unearthing the truth from Augustine's own words. When Soble goes looking for evidence, he doesn't look for evidence in Confessions, he looks for evidence in what historians and biographers have said about Augustine and his sex life. This is a misstep. What do historians know about Augustine besides what he has said about himself in his own work? Ignoring the tone of Confessions, and going to second-hand interpretation from other authors will muddy the water on the issue rather than add clarity to it.

Soble acknowledges that some historians intimate that Augustine did have same-sex affairs, but he rejects these intimations out of hand. He believes that people are reading bi-sexuality into the text for their own reasons. I think Soble is reading Augustine's relatively chaste heterosexuality into the text. When Soble addresses the texts in question, he just baldly asserts that they refer to women. When Augustine talks about polluting friendships, Soble believes he's speaking about male-female friendship:

First, Augustine was looking for and talking about love with a woman for he immediately says that success in his search soon came and he was probably referring to the pact he made with his mistress. Second, Augustine speaks in this sentence only of desire, not behavior. Augustine knew Matthew 5:28 well, according to which Jesus said,"But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Augustine's taking Matthew 5:28 seriously might very well explain his critical remark in Confessions 3.1 that he "polluted" friendship with sexual desire, for the point of Matthew 5:28 is that mere desire by itself, without sexual activity, is condemnable. (pp 554 Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 11, Number 4, October 2002)

Soble's first contention is simply assertion and circularity. How does Augustine saying that he was successful in his search prove that he was looking of and talking about a woman? The text doesn't say that in any way. Soble connects what Augustine wrote to Augustine's mistress, but the information about Augustine's mistress comes much later in the text and isn't connected to Augustine's elaborate descriptions of his lust and pollution of friendship. What Soble says simply doesn't follow.

Sobles' second contention is just more of the same. There is no reason to assume that Augustine is speaking of desire and not actions. How could Augustine consider himself "successful" in obtaining love and consummating lust if he is only speaking of desire? Augustine makes it clear when he is talking about desires and when he is talking about actions. While he may be vague about the specifics of his actions, he is clear that there were actions.

Soble is inserting his own assumptions onto the text. Because Augustine declares that he was monogamous with his mistress, not knowing any other woman during his time with her over the course of 15 years, Soble assumes that means Augustine didn't have any other sexual relationships, which is not exactly what Augustine says. In fact, Augustine goes out of his way to say that he has not been with any other women, rather than saying that he has only had sexual relations with her. It may seem rather pedantic and persnickety to note this difference, but I think it is relevant to the context of Augustine's cultural surroundings. Same-sex relations were not viewed as unfaithfulness to wives and women. They existed in an entirely different class.

I have continued to read further into Confessions, wondering if I would come across material that would either strengthen or weaken my intuition about Augustine, and so far I haven't found much to change my leaning towards Augustine's having had same-sex affairs.

Augustine's attitude towards women was wholly utilitarian. Throughout Confessions, in the context of Augustine's lust, Augustine floats the possibility of marriage as a cure for his sexual wanderings. His parents don't want him to marry at a young age because they are trying to further his academic career and don't want him to be tied down, which is why his mother simply asks him not to commit adultery. They leave his libido unchecked rather than have him take on a wife as a "cure" for his sexual appetites.

At one point in Confessions, when Augustine is older and leaning more towards conversion, he considers the benefits of finding a woman with money to marry as a way to advance his career, there is no mention of love or companionship. When he considers creating a co-op with his closest male friends and colleagues, living together and sharing everything in common, the fly in the ointment is that several of his group have wives and this will ruin it:

6.14.24..But when we began to consider whether this life would be possible if our womenfolk were present (some of us already being married, and others, myself included, hoping to be), all our noble plans fell to pieces in our hands, and lay utterly shattered on the ground. (pp 129)

Just after this section Augustine refers to his mistress as his familiar bedfellow, certainly not a term of love or tenderness or friendship or any of the emotional connectedness that he relates with his male friends:

6.12.25...My familiar bedfellow was torn from my side as being an impediment to marriage; and my heart, to which she had fixed herself, was torn and wounded, and left a trail of blood. She returned to Africa, vowing to you that she would never know another man, and leaving behind the natural son she had borne me. But in my misery I could not even imitate her, a woman; although after two years I was to receive in marriage the girl for whom I had made my suit, and, being not a lover of marriage but a slave of lust, I got myself another--and not a wife--so as to maintain my soul's sickness as it was, or if possible to make it worse, and convey it, with an escort of enduring habit, into the realm of matrimony. Nor did I find any healing for the wound caused by the severance from my previous partner, but after the inflammation and the grievous pain, gangrene set in; it was as if the wound were numbed, but it was even more incredibly painful. (pp 130)

And, that's it. Notice how Augustine says that she had attached herself to his heart, placing the attachment under her power, not his. Also note his little jab that he couldn't do something that a woman could do. While he is certainly pained to see her go, he doesn't say much about his love for her and in fact never uses the word love in relation to her. He was also willing to dismiss her for the utilitarian marriage being secured for him. This is not a man losing the love of his life. This is a man losing access to a regular sexual partner who has become a part of his life through habit and no more.

Augustine was heartless when it came to her. There was no prestige or advancement to be made in marrying her. He lost her because she wasn't useful to him in his academic, financial, or social life, and the loss he feels for her is not rooted in his love of her.

I'll continue more of this discussion later......

Was Saint Augustine Bi-Sexual?

2011-10-20T11:24:00.010-04:00

I've continued reading The Confessions, by Saint Augustine, and part of the way through the first few "books" I began to wonder whether Augustine's references to lust and sin and giving in to low vices included a homosexual, or bi-sexual, element to them. He talks about an incident at a public bath that made his father recognize that he is coming of age sexually, but there is no mention of a girl or woman, or even much in the way of remonstrances about his sexual activities from his Christian mother other than a warning to not commit adultery. His social life seems to revolve around his boyhood friendships and the idea that being with this social group has induced him to sin in ways which he wouldn't have sinned individually.

From the beginning Augustine writes:

2.2.2 And what pleasure did I know except loving and being loved? But my love did not keep within the bounds marked out by the shining border of friendship, the affection of one mind for another. (pp 31)

He describes moving to Carthage and its effect on him :

3.1.1 I came to Carthage and a frying pan of sinful loves was spitting all about me. I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love; such was my inner need that I hated myself for not being more in need.
...Loving and being loved was sweeter to me if I could also enjoy my lover's body. So it was that I defiled the well of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and clouded its clear light with the infernal fog of lust; crude and boorish as I was, my vanity was so excessive that I longed to be smart and sophisticated. I rushed headlong into love, seeking to be swallowed up in it. O God ever merciful to me(Ps. 59.19 [Ps. 58.18]), what gall you in your goodness smeared over my sophisticated pleasures; for I was loved in return, and came secretly to know the chains of carnal enjoyment.(pp 45)

So far, Augustine has only used the word friendship in relation to his male peers. There is no indication that he had female friends, in which case is he defiling his male friendships with lust and sexual longing? Other than his mother, Augustine hasn't described any relationship with a woman in detail, or with the loving language he uses for his male peers.

Further on, he describes the death of a close, male friend in devastating terms, describing how inconsolable he was, how he had lost half of his soul and loved him as an immortal. The language he uses is very flowery and emotional and romantic.

I was astonished that other mortals lived, since he, whom I had loved as if he were immortal, was dead, and even more astonished that though he was dead, I, his other self, lived. He spoke rightly who said that his friend was "half his soul". I felt that my soul and my friend's were one soul in two bodies, and life filled me with horror as I had no wish to live on, a mere half of myself. Perhaps, too, I dreaded death for this same reason, fearing that he whom I had loved so much would die utterly. (pp 71-72, Book 4.6.11)

And later on, when analyzing the response to the loss of friendship and camaraderie when someone dies, he writes:

These and other such tokens, which proceed from the hearts of those who love each other and express themselves in the face, the speech, the eyes, and a thousand gestures of good will, are, so to speak, the kindling of the fire which melds minds together, making one out of many.

4.9.14 This is what we cherish in our friends, to the extent that a man's conscience feels guilty, if he does not love one who loves him in return, or love in return one who loves him, seeking nothing from his lover's body except these tokens of good will.(pp.73)

The use of the word lover in the midst of a treatise on close friendship jumps out at me. It seems very odd that so far in my reading of Augustine he's written less then a paragraph about his 15 year relationship with a woman, in terms of his sinful life, and yet carries on about the close friendships he has had for pages. He does mention lusting after women at one point, but even that is a cursory statement, buried in a list of the general misguidedness he felt ruled his life at that point in time.

It could be that I am simply misreading Augustine. Women weren't seen as emotional and intellectual equals in Roman times. Maybe the closeness with which Augustine described his friendships is simply typical for his culture. On the other hand, homosexuality and pederasty weren't unknown in Roman culture.

When I first started to wonder if other people had explored this part of Augustine, I came across the Wikipedia page here, which had a quote from Plutarch about homosexuality, specifically being the passive partner:

"we regard men who take pleasure in passive submission as practicing the lowest kind of vice."

This set off a bell in my head, because when Augustine first begins elaborating on his sinfulness in The Confessions, he mentions the low forms of vice in which he engaged.

More than once in my youth I burnt to satisfy myself with the lowest things; with reckless daring I ran wild, overgrown and overshadowed by my various loves. And all the time I pleased myself and sought to be pleasing in the sight of men, my beauty wasted away and I was foul(Dan. 10.8) in your sight

Plutarch, a biographer of many prominent Greeks and Romans, had written about Cicero, the person whose work Augustine credits for the beginning of his spiritual turnaround.

Coincidence?

Possibly.

Augustine was fully immersed in rhetoric, literature and philosophy and would have been exposed to a great many ideas and people which were all connected through the "canon" of his studies. The similarity in language may not mean anything. On the other hand, because Augustine places such an emphasis on Cicero, it isn't a stretch to imagine that Augustine would have read Plutarch's biography and other works and been influenced by what he had to say.

It's hard to judge with Augustine. He is frequently overly dramatic when describing any type of sin and knowing whether he really means it when he says he participated in the "lowest things", or if he is exaggerating for effect is difficult to sort out.

QOTD

2011-10-19T08:07:00.000-04:00

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

-Mark Twain

9-9-9 Example

2011-10-14T13:34:00.004-04:00

My mind was thinking more about Cain's plan, so I threw together this rough example from the statistics provided by the Consumer Expenditure Survey.

Assume a family of four with an annual income before taxes of $94,807 and the after tax income of $92,147. That's about a 3% tax of their gross income. Under a flat 9% their after taxes income would be $86,274. They would pay $8,532 in annual income tax. That's 3 times what they currently pay.

The average annual expenditures for this group is listed as $69,536.

Removing non-taxble expenditures for housing, food, utilities, and the cost of health insurance, etc.....which account for over 70% of the listed expenditures, that leaves about 30% of expenditures on things which would be subject to sales tax.

30% of $69,536 is about $20,860. 9% sales tax on those expenditures would be $1877 annually.

That is over and above the normal state sales taxes that everyone pays.

This particular family would be paying the federal government $10,409 in one year.

Under Cain's plan, this family would be paying $7,749 more than it currently does.

Cain's plan not only would hurt the lower and middle classes, it would hurt the upper classes even more.

Over 31%, and the top 31%, of the "consumer units" fall into the $70,000 and above income level, with the average(or mean?) income listed as $129,151. These households also make up to 52.4% of the annual aggregate expenditures for the country. A 9% sales tax would hit these more wealthy people as hard as it would the middle and lower classes because of their higher consumption of goods. Maybe they wouldn't feel it quite as hard as a family living on $40,000 would, but that is all relative.

Viewed in this way, Cain's plan is actually a disproportionate tax on "the rich" and all those "job-creators" Republicans keep trying to protect.

It's an awful, awful plan. Going over these numbers convinces me that Cain has no clue about how taxes work or the actual breakdown of how his plan would affect the country.

Update:

Here are a few articles that touch on the same things I've been posting about.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/oct/13/critics-contend-cains-9-9-9-plan-will-hurt-the/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/herman-cain-lashes-out-at-9-9-9-critics/2011/10/14/gIQA0aZPkL_blog.html

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/business-groups-blast-cains-9-9-9-plan-as-job-killer/1196763

P.S. I swear that I hadn't come across any of these things until after my posts. Most of these articles(there are more I didn't list) came out today or the day before. Things like that always make me wonder if there is some sort of meta-cognition process at work in the world. ;-)

Cain's 9-9-9 Plan

2011-10-14T08:40:00.009-04:00

Herman Cain, one of the Republican candidates campaigning for the Republican nomination, has what he calls the 9-9-9 plan. It consists of a 9% flat income tax on individuals, 9% flat tax on business income, and a 9% federal sales tax.

While I have heard some Republicans deride the plan as simplistic, there hasn't been much of an outcry about the idea of a national sales tax, especially a sales tax as high as 9%. The only state sales tax that comes close to 9%, actually over 9%, is Tennessee, and the only reason that isn't too awful is because Tennessee is one of the few states that doesn't have state, county, or city income taxes, except for tax on interest/dividends.

9% is high. 9% is even higher when you consider that it is only one source of income for the federal government under this plan. A 9% tax on income, which would probably be put in place with fewer deductions overall, plus 9% in sales tax would be an enormous amount of revenue streaming into the government.

Every time a person bought a pair of shoes, clothing, an appliance for their home, materials for running their businesses, supplies for schools, and so forth, the government would be getting a cut. Prices on consumer goods would experience a 9% increase from the perspective of the buyer. This would crush the economy more than a general increase in income taxes, or the removal of deduction loopholes. If the average person had to pay 9% more for their annual purchases, excluding food, it would put the brakes on consumer spending almost immediately.

Currently, a large portion of the population, once deductions and credits are taken into account, doesn't pay anything close to 9% in income taxes. Suddenly removing those deductions while simultaneously creating a 9% sales tax would decimate the middle and lower classes. Not only would people be bringing home less money, but when they went to use that money, it would buy fewer goods at a higher price. It would squeeze people at both ends.

This is a horrible idea and I don't understand why Republicans, overall, aren't taking Cain to task on this.

QOTD

2011-10-13T07:57:00.001-04:00

Keep two pieces of paper in your pockets at all times.

One that says, "I am a speck of dust."

And the other, "The world was created for me."

-Rabbi Bunim of P'shiskha

October's Overly Ambitious Reading List

2011-10-13T07:56:00.000-04:00

1. Gilgamesh, A New English Version, by Stephen Mitchell

I've actually finished this. It was an enjoyable read and easily finished in about a day or two. The Introduction took longer than the actual epic to read through, but it was very informative. There were some interesting images in the poem that I found to be echoes of images used in the book of Daniel, though I guess it would be more accurate to say that Daniel contains the echoes of Gilgamesh-ian images because Gilgamesh existed long before Daniel. I may have more to say on that later.

2. The Post Office, by Rabindranath Tagore

Another quick read. This short play about a young, sick boy longing to explore the world just outside of his window would be interesting to see performed rather than read. I picked this up on a whim merely because it was shelved in close proximity to Gilgamesh.

3. Yearnings; Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life, by Irwin Kula with Linda Lowenthal

I've only begun reading this and there are immediately some refreshing points made in the first chapter. On the other hand, this is more of an inspirational book and I might soon tire of being inspired! I can only handle a certain amount of encouragement at one time.

4. The Confessions, by Augustine.

This is a second attempt for me. The first version I picked up was translated into a KJV-type English and it was too much for me to slog through. This is a more contemporary translation and much easier to read without being distracted by the anachronistic English of the other version.

5. The Republic, by Plato

This is the truly ambitious part of my reading list. I have never directly read Plato, or any of the Greek philosophers. I have been made familiar with some of their ideas through other works, or in a general way, but I haven't taken the time to read the original material. I don't know if I'll get through it because I find reading philosophy boring and obtuse beyond a very general presentation. Diving into endless details and arguments about the preciseness of terms and the perpetual "if-then" soon tires me. We'll see if I actually complete it.

On a side note, it was very odd that Plato's Republic was shelved near current political books, most of which I wouldn't consider serious works, like a book by Pat Robertson and other "authors" of his caliber. It seemed out of place to have Robertson and Plato side by side. Poor Plato, unable to defend himself or request better quarters for his works!

14 Years

2011-10-12T11:44:00.000-04:00

Hard to believe, but DH and I have been married for 14 years. We celebrated yesterday with a low-key but special dinner with the kids, leafing through our wedding album and reminding them they wouldn't exist if we hadn't married each other.

I've got to use those parental cliches whenever I can!

My mother-in-law sent us this to mark the day:

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Wrong era for us, thank God. We don't make very hot hippies.

Romney's Mormonism

2011-10-10T09:42:00.007-04:00

In my Evangelical days, I would have been on board with Robert Jeffress assessment of Mormonism as cult and his urging to vote for a "Christian" candidate.

My, how my thoughts have changed.

Lurking behind Jeffress assessment of Romney's Mormonism and political candidacy is the assumption that having a "real" Christian in the White House will automatically increase the odds that the United States will be closer to God's will and favor. It won't be worded that way in the media, but that's what underlies Jeffress statement. All things being equal, a bona fide, officially approved Evangelical will always be better, in Jeffress eyes, because they have an inside line to God, while other candidates have to rely on their own powers and qualifications.

All things being unequal, even if Romney has better qualifications or better political ideas, the fact that he isn't a bona fide Evangelical just naturally means that he is more prone to being spiritually deceived and leading the USA down Satan's primrose path.

That seems over the top for me to write....but it is an entirely accurate portrayal of what Jeffress and those like him think. It has nothing to do with whether or not Mormonism is a cult. That's simply a way of phrasing things for the larger public. Even secularists and atheists don't want to vote for someone who might belong to a cult. The cult language is a way to sway those outside of Jeffress' particular version of Evangleicalism.

Jeffress doesn't need to invoke cult language in order to influence his followers, because his followers don't believe in a spiritually neutral universe. People who think like Jeffress will automatically infer that Mormonism is a false religion, probably started and sustained through demonic influence and ergo, its followers, who may seem moral, are the under the influence of demonic teaching and false beliefs. Even if they seem nice, they are deceived.

Rmmney is not alone in this classification. Obama, as a member of a liberal Christian denomination, doesn't qualify for "real" Christian status in Jeffress version of Evangelicalism, either.

Is Mormonism a cult?

No. At least, it isn't any more. It definitely may have originated as a cult, following the teachings of Joseph Smith and his "discovery" of the golden plates. A cult usually revolves around a single personality, or a very tight circle of authoritative leadership which is not open to the larger grouping of religious followers.

There are certainly splinter groups of the Latter Day Saints which would qualify as cults, Warren Jeffs group providing a prime example. And there are other groups like his, with compounds full of women and children dressed in pioneer-like clothing, separated and closed off from the world through purposeful self-isolation.

However, mainstream Mormonism has moved beyond cultism. Regardless of what a person thinks about the dubious origins of Mormonism, as a religion it has normalized itself to a certain extent. By abolishing polygamy and establishing broader leadership and openness it has done what all religions must do to move beyond cult status; it has compromised and changed what it could to fit within the larger culture surrounding it.

In fact, mainstream Mormonism looks quite similar to Evangelicalism. The average Evangelical could walk into a Mormon ward and hardly tell the difference between one of its services and a traditional Baptist service. Evangelical mothers could talk with Mormon mothers and discover that the same focus on being a good wife and mother, which prevails in conservative Evangelical culture, is virtually identical in Mormon circles. The same attitude and arguments for male-only leadership that the Mormon church espouses could have been written by any conservative Southern Baptist pastor. The same effort to engage youth groups, to encourage tithing, to require service to the ward....it is virtually identical to how many Evangelical churches work.

The reason that most Evangelicals don't realize this is that their only exposure to Mormons and Mormonism occurs when they hear a knock at the door and find two young men in black pants, white shirts and black ties patiently combing neighborhoods, handing out the book of Mormon and trying to convert anyone they can. That is no better of a way to know what Mormons are like than to know what Baptists are like through their evangelism efforts. It's only a small peak into their world.

Many Evangelicals would honestly be more comfortable with Mormon friends than they would with Catholic friends, they just don't know it. Behind the weird theories about Jesus, and the more sensational Mormon beliefs, the core of Mormon culture is made up of family, work ethic, and being willing to not conform to the world for the sake of God. The "feeling" of mainstream Mormonism is congruous to the "feeling" of conservative Evangelicalism.

That's why Glenn Beck can be so popular in conservative Evangelical circles. Even though his religion is not the same, the things he says, the views he holds, the way he comports himself is familiar and second nature to conservative Evangelicals. Listening to him is like listening to one of their own.

Will Jeffress' comments mean anything in the way the election pans out? Only if his comments influence those who are outside of his group and who take his comments at face value.

2011-10-09T20:47:00.000-04:00

james, from i don't know, but has a brief story that I found amusing. Google may not be happy, though!

Flashback

2011-10-06T09:18:00.003-04:00

Dr X, a psychiatrist, had a brief post after this video of Rumsfeld discussing the nature of Rumsfeld's attitude towards the interviewer. Watch the video. It's cringe-worthy.

My husband who was in the room while I was watching, but couldn't see the computer screen from his vantage point, exclaimed,"Who is that?!" Even he could pick up on the nasty tone of Rumsfeld without knowing who he was, or what the context of the video was. Rumsfeld is manipulative and downright mean, objecting not just to the interviewer's questions, but making some pretty nasty personal comments about the interviewer.

It gave me flashbacks to a co-worker with whom I had briefly worked. We had been thrown together for a couple of weeks in my last job as a puppeteer/public speaker at elementary schools. I was taking the position of her former partner in the next year and was merely filling in the last few weeks of the current year. During our program there were specific points at which each of us were responsible for addressing the audience and either introducing the program, or concluding it. Each time I would be in the midst of my concluding presentation, she would interject things out of the blue. It was very distracting to me, especially because there was no rhyme or reason to it. She never interjected at the same point in the presentation, and she never said the same thing. It kept me off-kilter.

After we concluded one of the shows, in which she really threw me off and I stood there dumbly for a moment trying to remember where I was, I tried to explain to her that I was having a hard time keeping track of things when she interjected. I had switched parts from the time I had previously performed in this position and all of the material was new to me. I wasn't quite comfortable enough with the new material to easily get back on track if I got distracted.

I tried to make it sound as if it were my problem and I needed her help with it.

What happened next was quite similar to that Rumsfeld video. You would have thought that I killed her dog. There I stood, in the middle of a school cafeteria, with this lady going on and on about me and how I was so confrontational and she couldn't work with people like me and she didn't want to hear anything I had to say and she was "done" and on and on and on.

It was the most bizarre experience and baffling personal interaction I had ever had.

She took my request and made it into a personal attack and then raised her voice at me, slandered me, and accused me of all the things she was doing to me.

This all occurred between two performances. She stormed off while I tried to assure the school counselor that everything was fine and we would be ready for the next show. I figured she just needed to cool off.

She came back and we icily performed our second show.

As we packed up, I made the mistake of trying to make peace with her or talk about what had happened. Worst. Mistake. Ever.

She just moved back into Rumsfeld mode with more personal attacks and over-reaction.

I spent the last two weeks of working with her trying to kill her with kindness and refusing to let her drag me into any more of her crazy-head-space.

Random Advice for Better Living

2011-09-29T15:40:00.002-04:00

1. Never use Lowe's Signature Valspar paint. It sucks. Period. The regular Valspar has never been a problem for me, but the more expensive, supposedly better Signature line made life a living hell when I was painting my front hallway red. The pain was thin, runny and kept leaving drip marks all over the walls. And the color comes off when you wipe it. After noticing a mark on the wall, I wiped a wet paper towel across it and it came back pink. This was a month after I painted it. It should have been cured by then.

2. If you'd like to download some free music, check and see if your library system is working with freegalmusic. You have to gain access through a library's website and have a library card number handy in order to use it. It's great. You get 3 free downloads per week from Sony-affiliated artists of your choice.

3. Have more than one e-mail account. I have at least 3. One is affiliated with my blog. One is an account that I use for joining websites or internet shopping. One is an old one from when I used to sell jewelry online.

The older one was originally my only account and is still the only one some people in my life have. The reason I never upgraded those people to my blog/official e-mail is because those particular people are always sending e-mail forwards, stories, cutesy videos, or chain e-mails. Once someone does that to me, I officially cross off the possibility of upgrading them to my "new" e-mail.

It's rude, especially when they forward the e-mail to 100 other people who now have your e-mail address in the long list of forwards.

The second e-mail address I use for my blog and for any official correspondence from schools, banking, insurance companies, etc. Organizations that aren't going to spam me or release my e-mail to spammers in Russia who want to sell me Viagra.

The third account is strictly for promotions and internet shopping. It's full of thousands of "free offers" and enticements to shop more. I also let my kids use the address when they sign up to play online games at cartoonnetwork, or nick.

4. Never assume that someone else is going to handle a problem for you. Someone else never shows up when you need them and rarely understands what the problem is anyway.

Evolution as Theology, Part 3; Calvinism's Twin?

2011-09-27T09:34:00.001-04:00

(I contrast Calvinism with evolution in this post...but any religious belief with a strong emphasis on a God who uses nature and events for some greater purpose could be interchanged with Calvinism.)

One of the most basic presuppositions of Calvinism is that God is sovereign and nothing ever happens without His direct knowledge and will causing it to happen. Whatever happens was meant to happen. The appearance of "free will" is just that, an appearance, not a reality. This applies to not only people but also nature. Earthquakes have a reason. Premature death has a reason. Coincidences have a reason.

Somehow, someway, everything works together to bring about what God wants and we are powerless to resist it, or exert our will upon it.

Taken at face value, this can be a comforting idea. If one surrenders to the idea, then every bad event has a good purpose.

Because a Calvinistic God is a constantly active God, guiding history and nature, there is a connection in how Calvinists use nature to uphold their doctrinal beliefs. Paying close attention to how Calvinism handles gender differences, it's possible to see how, besides Scriptural input on the matter, much is made of the nature of men and women. Arguments will frequently veer into the biology of men and women, emphasizing the hard wiring of traits and tendencies into the physical body/mind. Men are the way they are because God created them that way and set a universal pattern for them to be that way. Women are the way they are because God made them to be that way.

This is why conservative Calvinists get up in arms about masculinity, femininity, and gender roles. Stepping outside those roles is not only going against God's will, but it is denying the inescapable nature of biology. In Calvinist theology, one could say that we know God has fixed roles for men and women because historically, and naturalistically, those roles have existed for millennia.

In other words....If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The interesting thing about this framework is how it could be tied to evolution. We are the way we are because we could be no other way. We were formed by our world and selection pressures to develop into what we are. The environment, food sources, and our relationship/interaction with other competing animals formed us. Different pressures would have caused different results.

In this case, Nature made us and there is no resisting Nature.

In reality, Calvinists could readily incorporate evolution into their theology because it would allow for a portrayal of evolution as God's sovereign, guiding hand. They usually don't, not because it couldn't be done, but because it would have implications for how they read and interpret Scripture.

In Calvinism, everything has a reason. In evolution, everything has a result.

Calvinism assumes a purpose moving forward according to plan. Evolution assumes a purpose discovered through the past. Calvinism assumes an intentional progression towards a finite, determined end. Evolution assumes an infinite progression without an end, sprouting from a finite beginning.

They are mirror images of each other in a strange way.

Symbiosis

2011-09-26T09:58:00.001-04:00

Truth exists within a specific context. Outside of that context, the truth content of a particular claim or idea is decreased.

This is an idea that is not new, but is recent to me.

Terms like "conventional wisdom" and "subversive readings" get tossed about in the area of religious studies. While understanding them in their most basic sense is fairly easy, the terms have stayed with me for some time as I've tried to meditate on them.

Commonly, conventional wisdom gets a bad rap. Like a poster child for bourgeoisie values, "conventional wisdom" is visualized as the witless, dull wisdom of the status quo; terribly boring and unimaginative. Creative people aren't interested in conventional wisdom. No. They must all be ground-breaking rebels shaking the prison bars of conventional minds.

That's the stereotype anyway.

Yet, conventional wisdom is what guides our lives on a daily basis. It's what society depends on in order to be stable and peaceful, a collection of commonly held ideas and attitudes holding things together.

Inevitably, though, conventional wisdom either fails a large minority of the population, or directly undermines it. All of the people who don't fit into conventional modes can find themselves stuck and despised by the rest of their society. There is no place for them, no acceptance of the issues they face, no acknowledgment of how convention has contributed to their problems.

These people have no hope if they can't find an alternative means to live and think. They must find a way to validate their own ethos and being, a way to value their own history in the midst of the conventional majority, or risk living at the mercy of the group.

So, subversive wisdom is usually directly opposed to conventional wisdom and is formulated in direct response to it, answering specific questions and addressing particular differences created in the clash.

What does all of my word salad mean?

It means that religious teachings and claims are highly contextualized. They rely on the foil of the opposing viewpoint in order to become fully formulated. Take the foil away, and they lose much of their meaning.

*****

I often have had the experience, when reading the gospels, of siding with the Pharisees and Sadducees. They make a lot of sense in some areas. Jesus comes along and skewers them, overturning their traditions, undermining their authority, generally rebuking them. We are supposed to feel exhilarated by his revolutionary take on things.

And, we do in some cases. The value placed upon the poor, the sinful, the "less than" individuals that make up Jesus' followers is freeing. It gives hope to those who previously had none. It paces worth within people who were considered worthless.

Jesus' proclamation gives the individual a path towards redemption over, above, and apart from the community in which they had no path. Joining the invisible Kingdom of God meant cutting ties to the earthly community if necessary; hence all that talk about hating mothers and fathers, and giving up the world to gain one's soul.

In order to grant value to those deemed valueless, the entire system must be declared fraudulent. Value is gained by rejecting the core beliefs of the oppressive system. Freedom is obtained through rising above the system, refusing to be subject to it any longer.

Within that brief period when revolution occurs, subversive wisdom is at its peak essence. It is poignant and powerful.

However, inevitably, if the revolution is won a new kind of conventional wisdom is established. The system returns with a few tweaks and the roles of who is valuable, and who isn't, are switched around and dressed up a little differently.

The symbiosis continues with the roles reversed.

It reminds me a little of this image:

4 times less wise

2011-09-25T12:20:00.001-04:00

Expect my posts to make even less sense. I just had my wisdom teeth yanked. That has to have set my wisdom quotient back quite a bit.

That, plus the Vicadin they gave me, must account for my brain fog.

Evolution as Theology, Part 2

2011-09-19T10:42:00.002-04:00

I picked up Thank God for Evolution at a steep discount when our local Borders was going out of business. I'd read about it on other blogs and was curious enough to read it for myself and see what I thought of it.

I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting. The subtitle, How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World, should have given me a clue about the optimistic giddiness I would frequently encounter in the book. It was so overwhelming, that Pollyanna optimism, that after reading the first chapter or two, I put the book down and didn't touch it for several months.

Dowd's own description of himself and his mission in the prologue to the book made me roll my eyes:

Itinerant Evolutionary Evangelist

Since April 2002, Connie and I have been full-time "evolutionary evangelists." We live permanently on the road, offering a spiritually nourishing view of evolution throughout North America. In the tradition of traveling preachers we gave up our worldly possessions, left our home and now carry everything we need in our van. We go wherever we are invited. Our goal is to inspire people of all ages and theological orientations to embrace the history of everyone and everything in personally and socially transforming ways. (pg.4)

It goes on like that for a few paragraphs with the following graphic inserted into the text:

It was just too much for me. I have an instant distrust of anyone who describes their particular view, and themselves, in such glowing, self-promoting, pat-themselves-on-the back terms, followed by a cutesy picture.

The whole prologue rubbed me the wrong way in terms of its presentation. I wasn't looking for cutesy optimism. I was looking for serious engagement with the issues at hand. Disgusted and annoyed by the approach I practically gave up on the book.

A few months later, I decided to give it another go, moving past Dowd's personal commentary and into the heart of the book. What I found was sometimes interesting, sometimes very similar to thoughts I had already had about certain theological themes, and sometimes more giddy optimism.

In general, what Dowd does is re-frame traditional religious themes, usually Christian themes, in evolutionary terms. "Original sin" is a remnant of our reptilian brain, our base, selfish instincts which had their place at one point in our evolutionary history, but which are counterproductive now that we are social animals with higher cognition and desires which don't directly rely on simple instinct in order to be fulfilled. "Salvation" is an acknowledgement of the Whole of Reality and submission of our lower selves(reptilian brain) to our higher selves and the world at large.

Being "in Christ" and being " in evolutionary integrity" (or, deep integrity) are different ways if saying essentially the same thing. One uses night language; the other, day language. To speak traditionally, deep integrity is the way, the truth and the life that Jesus embodied. "Christian, : after all, originally meant "little Christ." When I trust like Jesus, love like Jesus, live my truth like Jesus, take responsibility like Jesus, and serve the Whole like Jesus, I know heaven--even in the midst of the chaos and crucifixions of life.(pg 184)

When Dowd analogizes this way, it leaves me with diverging reactions. One part of me essentially agrees with what Dowd is saying while another part of me feels as if he is trying too determinedly to make things fit within a Christian frame. It seems untenable to me, trying to shove new concepts into pre-determined shapes.

I can't help but think that Dowd has simply moved the conversation to a more abstract level without acknowledging what must be left behind once the move is made.

More on that later.

Evolution as Theology, Part 1

2011-09-16T12:48:00.003-04:00

(This is a brief intro to my thoughts about reading Thank God for Evolution, by Michael Dowd)

Accepting evolution within a Christian mindset isn't an easy thing to do. I have always suspected or believed in some form of evolution, or at the very least would have thought of myself as an Old Earth Creationist or maybe an Intelligent Design sympathizer. I don't think that I ever qualified as a true YEC believer.

I settled on an evolution-as-a-means-to-creation mindset for a while, with humans being perhaps the only spontaneously "created" creatures.

Eventually I had to face facts that, scientifically speaking, that idea didn't have traction. At this point, the theory of evolution is the best explanation we have for the existence of human beings. It's what fits the data we have so far.

The theory of evolution presents many problems for the average Christian. It means reinterpreting Scripture and it's themes, placing all references to creation by God within a mythical realm meant to propose a manner in which the present world could have come to be. It's possible to do that, to sift and measure theological approaches throughout Scripture and take a metaphorical slant; but it always results in trouble with clashing metaphors and themes.

Outside of the Scriptures, evolution presents other theological dilemmas. While it would be possible to think of evolution as the "how" of existence and Scripture as an attempt to explain the "why" of existence, thereby separating the influence of one over the other, it doesn't quite work.

Why not?

It doesn't work because theology and Scripture are actually based on what the theologian sees in the world around himself. Theology isn't created in a vacuum, meant to explain a non-material, unseen world. It is meant to explain the world we see around us every day. Whatever we learn about our physical world has to be incorporated into our theological world. Failing to do so creates a disconnect between what we can see and what we are supposed to believe. The more we retreat from the physical world, the more elaborate and confusing theology becomes. Eventually, it loses all sense and we wind up with mental gymnastics tying us up in knots.

If evolution is true, what does it say about the kind of God that might exist? This would not be a God who planned every detail. This would be the kind of God who was interested in unleashing life and seeing where it led. This would not be the kind of God who was worried too much about death. Death is a natural part of life and most creatures, especially those with the biggest brains and best cognition, can only survive by eating other living things. They only develop in symbiosis with their food source; other living creatures.

Cheetahs become faster in order to catch fast prey. Snakes become more poisonous in order to more quickly immobilize their food. Owls develop night vision in order to sneak up on rabbits, mice, and other animals.

These traits develop because they help animals survive. These traits are honed at the expense of other creatures. Inflicting death on fellow creatures keeps other creatures alive.....otherwise we would all be plants surviving on sun, water, and chemicals.

Well, that's very different than the God we have conceived of.

The God of evolution would also be a God whose work was never finished. Instead, there would be a constant, perpetual motion in all living things. There would be no day of rest, no period at the end of the story. If evolution is true, then we are not the end; we are only one form in a chain of possibilities, one step leading to who-knows-where in a million years, one permutation of sentience in the universe.

Evolution makes us small and fragile and not entirely sure of our own long-term survival. And that is vastly different from the type of God which Christians imagine.

Underneath the complicated theology of Christianity that exists there a couple of important points:

That we are important...the crowning, final achievement of Creation.

That we will live forever...that our survival is/will be eternal.

That the story ends with us...there won't be higher, better beings on Earth.

Evolution says "meh" to that....at least in the way that we think of it.

2011-09-15T10:43:00.001-04:00

One more by Weird Al:

Making murder, mayhem, and torture funny again!

Thanks, Al!

Weird Nostalgia

2011-09-15T09:09:00.001-04:00

The Dead Puppies video that my husband sent me yesterday reminded me of the Dr. Demento radio program, where I first heard that song. My older brother and I used to listen to Dr. Demento on the weekends. The bizarre, dark, demented humor was just funny enough to be appealing without going too over the top.

Wandering through Youtube reminded me of this bizarre song and video, which I recall MTV playing quite frequently.

the music starts around 2:20

The eighties fostered out and out weirdness...Devo, for example:

And then there was Weird Al:

Weird All still makes parodies. This parody of Lady Gaga's Born This Way is slightly disturbing, mainly because of the effect of Al's computer-generated head on a female body is creepy. The proportions are all off.

It's not hard to parody Lady Gaga. I looked up the original video for Born This Way and the sci-fi narrative intro is so dumb and pretentious that it made me laugh more than Weird Al's version.

I guess the weirdness of the eighties isn't any stranger than Gaga.

Keeping the Bar Low

2011-09-14T22:06:00.001-04:00

Ok....so I watched about 15 minutes of the Miss Universe contest the other night and couldn't stop the snarkiness pouring out of me. It reached a peak when one of the ditzy commentators said about Ms. Australia,"She likes to stay on top of her health and reads the newspaper's Health section everyday! She's not only beautiful, she's so smart too!"

Apparently, reading the newspaper puts one ahead of the pack for Ms. Universe.

Defensiveness

2011-09-14T21:38:00.003-04:00

Trying to analyze how exactly I have wound up where I am in terms of my current beliefs, I wondered abut a few things.

I started to think of my religious beliefs as a world that has been carefully constructed in order to be conducive to an altered state of mind. By altered, I don't mean crazy. I mean groomed to respond in a certain way. I mean trying to achieve a detachment, or peace, or serenity that belies the current circumstances in one's life.

Prayer, worship services, reading Scripture, listening to the right speakers, reading the right books, carefully checking one's conscience....these common religious practices are used to try and shape one's mind and character in the hopes that a person's mind and attitude will be transformed. It is a constant exercise in achieving a certain state of mind.

This is common in most major religions. Fashioning one's life along a certain path, giving it definite borders and limits and direction becomes a means to inner peace.

The pitfalls of this common approach is that it instantly puts religious practitioners on the defensive.

When I posted about belief a while ago, it was because I had wondered to myself why people become so vehement and hostile in the face of having their beliefs challenged or overturned. Why do we have such emotional, angst-ridden responses? Why does making sure that all of our beliefs are right become such a consuming driver for us?

I think, partly, that it has to do with our social groups, which I hinted at before. I also think it has to do with these meticulously crafted thought-worlds that we erect.

Once a person accepts a belief of any sort--and by belief I mean an idea that cannot be fully proved or disproved, a way of making associations in the world around us that may be plausible but is not airtight,--they are in a position of having to defend that belief, having to make data fit into the overarching belief, and having to justify to other people why they believe what they believe.

Why?

Partly because no matter what a person believes there is always disconfirming, contradictory evidence; ideas and events which go against the grain of a carefully constructed thought system. No system is completely airtight, and whiffs and breezes from other systems usually waft in unbidden and unwanted.

Defensiveness is a natural stance, an automatic response from an invested mind.

That natural defensiveness can become a barrier. It keeps us from seeing the other side of an argument. It keeps us from having open discussions....because once you start defending an idea you have committed yourself to it. You have already made up your mind and want only to convince other people to follow suit.

**********

Originally I was thinking that practicing the art of defenselessness was a Buddhist idea that was appealing to me, a sort of detachment from the emotional trigger that can set us off. Then, I was reminded of the portrayals of Jesus as defenseless, refusing to defend himself vigorously to current Jewish leadership, the emphasis he placed on non-retaliation, and the portrayal of him as taken to trial and crucified without a defense.

Defenselessness is just as easily construed as a Christian spiritual practice as it is a Buddhist one.

Is learning to not be defensive a key to either spiritual, or mental, maturity?

I believe it is. It requires us to not react emotionally when we feel threatened or fearful or angered.

Social Security...a Ponzi Scheme?

2011-09-14T20:04:00.001-04:00

Rick Perry made some waves recently by calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Others have called it a scam. It's popular right now to disparage the program.

John Stossel is screaming the same thing.

What I have realized, however, is that most people don't understand Social Security for what it is. Many average people think that Social Security is like a retirement fund that they are paying into, that somehow they will be getting back what they have put into it. If someone starts with that assumption, then the prospect of lower benefits, or no benefits, feels like a bait and switch. It feels as if they have been ripped off. They have invested in something that has been devalued or bankrupted.

It's not too far of a jump from that feeling to comparing Social Security to a Ponzi scheme.

Social Security is not an investment fund. It isn't even about saving up money for people. Social Security is a current benevolence fund run by the government for those who currently need it.

We pay into it to sustain the elderly and disabled in this day and age. The idea is that when we become elderly, or disabled, there will be other young people paying into the benevolence fund for us.

For churchgoers who have tithed, Social Security is like the tithe one pays consistently over time. You don't expect to get anything back from that tithe other than the continual running of your place of worship. And, when you are old and need the services of the church/synagogue more intensely, or have less income to give, you simply move along the continuum of giving.

In many ways, I would think that religious conservatives would "get" Social Security better than the secular public. They should be used to the idea of giving without future gain, giving to help out unknown people without seeing any return on the "investment".

Now, people may object to the idea that they bear any responsibility to elders and the disabled, collectively speaking, but that's an entirely different point. That has nothing to do with retirement, Ponzi schemes, or disappointing investments. Instead, believing that each person is responsible for their finances once they are elderly or disabled in the same way they were when they were young or healthy is an objection based in libertarian, self-sufficient values.

Some people argue that people need to fund their own retirement accounts, or have the government direct their taxes to private pension funds or investments. That sounds well and good until one considers how the stock market has played out in the last few years. Many retirees have seen their retirement investments tank because of the decline in stock prices and the volatility of the market. Combined with declining house values, leaving them little equity to tap for emergencies, many retirees who did all the "right" things face uncertain futures.

Additionally, as an anecdote, there is my mother who worked for a company for over 30 years. She works part-time now because of health reasons and is able to draw the pension she earned from a private company, supposedly one of those paths that conservatives hype all the time. Yet, she has received letters indicating that the company that she worked for all those years may declare bankruptcy, and if they do so she will lose the pension she was "guaranteed". Legally, if they go out of business, they can't be required to pay their pensions.

The question looms....what are people to do when facing retirement? There are no "secure" options for anybody. We forget that much of our livelihood can disappear in a moment, whether it is through losing a job during a recession, having a 401K, or IRA, dry up because of a down market, or having a pension fund disappear into the ether through no fault of our own.

Comment of the Day

2011-09-14T19:55:00.001-04:00

Read elsewhere on the interwebs:

I’m still reeling from the Tea Party debate. My favorite was Bachmann’s rant about all the innocent little girls who are now irreparably immune to a carcinogenic virus, because the government won’t allow them the freedom to get cervical cancer.

Oh, this made me laugh so wickedly!

So true, so true.

I don't know how Bachmann can go on about government mandated injections by executive order as if the majority of the nation's children don't already get those between the ages of 0 and 18. They're called vaccines and they have saved millions of lives over the years.

The objection about this vaccine revolves solely around the fact that it is for a sexually transmitted virus. That freaks people out. However, even if your daughter remains pristine and virginal, there is no guarantee that her future spouse will have remained that way, or that her future spouse won't cheat on her, or that she won't make a mistake and give into temptation at some point.

This is one of those times when people shouldn't let their worries and hang-ups trump the future health of their children.

My Husband's Advice for a Career Path

2011-09-14T13:13:00.001-04:00

Maybe I should submit to my husband's guidance for my career path like Michele Bachmann did.

After perusing my county's civil service board for employment opportunities, I mentioned to my husband that they're looking for someone for the animal shelter....to euthanize the unwanted, ferocious puppies picked up off the streets and to "Surgically prepare deceased animals for rabies testing."

In other words, the Animal Care Assistant gets to kill dogs and then cut them open to be tested for rabies.

Here's the e-mail he sent me this morning:

Your new career:

mmkay...thanks hubby. You, sir, are one sick puppy!

This Little PIggy said,"Wee, Wee, Wee", all the way to the ER

2011-08-19T11:13:00.001-04:00

Rushing madly through outside school hallways--which are open to the torrential, afternoon, Florida rain--a toddler darted out in front of me and caught my naked pinky toe, unprotected by my flip-flops, with his apparently steel-toed tennis shoes.

After limping around the elementary school, and then the middle school for two hours, while holding back tears towards the end, I realized that my toe was probably broken instead of only badly stubbed.

One trip to the ER, and a few X-rays later, I am the proud owner of shiny metal crutches.

My husband thinks I have become a self-inflicating injury hypochondriac looking for extra attention. I told him not to say things like that to a woman who has two new, long, metal clubs with which to strike him.

He's lucky that I can't chase after him! ;-)

Pale Blue Dot

2011-08-17T16:38:00.001-04:00

Last weekend the boys and I went to a planetarium and attended several of the shows offered. One of the presentations, Extreme Planets, explored the possible environments of planets that have already been discovered outside of our solar system.

This and the Live Star Talk by the Planetarium's astronomer were pretty spectacular.

The Rationalist said afterwards,"Watching those shows made me realize how small Earth is and how easily it could be destroyed."

I concurred. Imagining the immensity of space, the vastness of our galaxy and the prospect of billions of other galaxies, it does make a person seem pretty insignificant. It also makes me think that somewhere out there there has to be at least one other planet with life.

Functionally, it doesn't really matter. Even if there are thousands of planets with life, they are so far from us that they may as well not exist. Theoretically, though, how amazing would that be?

Why Belief?

2011-08-17T09:41:00.002-04:00

Why do humans believe things? Why do we venture into thought worlds that can only exist through exerting a high level of belief that can't be substantiated by materialistic, visible processes?

Because we evolved that way.

Part of what makes humans successful is the ability to teach and receive information and ideas without having personally experienced the knowledge firsthand. We learn from each other, not just through observing another person's actions, but through the other person recounting a lesson, or a bit of knowledge, or a new way of doing things.

We store up all this information in our relatively large brains and it gives us an advantage we wouldn't have otherwise. We survive because we are good at information storage, retrieval, and analysis.

A large portion of that information we must accept on faith. There's no way we could personally check every fact or idea for veracity. There must be a level of trust present in our learning; trust from our teachers, from our fellow humans, and in the process of learning itself.

This trust is self-reinforcing. When we receive a new bit of information, or advice about something, and we follow it and it turns out to be true and right, then we have strengthened the level of trust we have for secondhand knowledge.

Multiply this by a million instances and it's easy to see how trust and belief become natural human tendencies. Because we are social animals living in complex social hierarchies, it is a necessity that we trust each other and build upon a base of knowledge that is shared across our social group regardless of our ability to prove that the conglomeration of ideas that guides our lives is true in every detail.

Belief, then, is just a normal outgrowth of our development and survival as a species.

Of course, that's the positive side of belief and trust, but belief and trust can go horribly awry. It's possible to believe things which are false. It's possible to be manipulated and have belief and trust misused and abused by a devious person. It's possible for belief to become our main way of viewing the world to the exclusion of the reality around us.

In turn, it seems to me that belief--the acceptance of ideas that we haven't personally verified--is directly tied to our social groupings and loyalties. And, when our beliefs are challenged, the ramifications are enormous for us because of what it does to our sense of unity and trust in the larger system in which we exist.

Logically, it would seem silly to be so critically affected by an overturned belief. After all, everyday we have to adjust to new circumstances and learn from our failures. If I think the best way to get across town is route A and I've been going that way all my life, and everyone I know swears by that route, I don't get upset or feel ashamed if I learn that route B is actually faster and more convenient. I simply start using route B and wind up happy that I learned something new.

Yet this doesn't happen when we experience it in our religious or personal beliefs. Changing or losing belief in these areas is monumental because of what it says about our trust and attachment to a particular group of people, people we feel close to and love and interact with every day. People who we used to listen to uncritically and trust implicitly.

Because what we have learned in life has always come down to us through our closely knit social groups, there is no way to overturn a deeply held, core idea without it appearing treasonous to the group, without seeming to undermine the authority of the very group which produced us.

more on this later.....

Comparison as Consolation

2011-08-16T16:13:00.002-04:00

My *extended family member's mother passed away this past weekend after suffering with Huntington's disease for years. She had spent the last 3 years in a nursing home, unable to talk, eat, walk, or communicate in any way by herself. See had been pretty badly off for some time before that.

I called to express my condolences and talked with my extended family member--a very gentle, sweet person--for a few minutes.

In the middle of that conversation I realized, once again, that people say all kinds of things without really thinking about them. In order to express her consolation that she and her brother and her father were all present when her mother passed, along with their families, she referred to my father's death, making a comparison about the comfort of one death over another. She went further bringing up the comfort that her mother was in Heaven while we didn't have that comfort about my father. We were left with "uncertainty".

My father died alone from what the medical examiner thinks was a massive heart attack, with the phone still in his hand. He never made the call that he was probably trying to make to 911. That's how instantaneous his death happened...not enough time to even press three numbers on a phone. It wasn't discovered that he had died until at least a week or two later.

He also died an atheist.

I didn't respond to my extended family member's comments. I know that she is hurting and has no intention to offend . I know that she is just expressing ideas that my own brother still struggles with. I know exactly what she meant by her comments, because I might have made those same comments a few years earlier.

So, this post isn't about ranting and outrage over my extended family member's comments. Instead, I wanted to merely mark down the idea that so much of our comfort comes from having a concrete example to compare things to. It seems as if we can only feel good about ourselves and our circumstances when we have other people and disasters to view as horrible examples.

It's as if goodness and happiness joy can't exist if it doesn't have an evil by which to define itself. We are "good" people because we are not like those "bad" people. Our choices are good choices because they are different than those bad choices...etc.

My extended family member found comfort that God had brought them all together to be present at her mother's death, as if it were some grand design that coincidentally happened when really, it was due to the nurses calling and telling them that her mother didn't have much time left and everybody should come if they wanted to say goodbye to her.

But we take comfort where we can find it and dress up the ugliness behind how we get that comfort. Most of the time we don't even see the ugliness because it isn't important to us. It's just a vehicle we use to move us along to a better emotional place.

The ugliness behind my extended family member's comment is the idea of my father being eternally in hell. From such a thing she stole a moment of consolation that her mother wasn't suffering the same fate.

It would be an easy thing to be upset about....except for the truth that we all function in this way at times.

* I edited this to remove some identifying information.

Stewart on Ron Paul

2011-08-16T15:42:00.000-04:00

Saw this somewhere and thought it was funny.

The Daily Show - Indecision 2012 - Corn Polled Edition - Ron Paul & the Top Tier
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

This is one of several videos lately in which Stewart spends most of his time aiming at the media instead of the actual politicians. Interesting change in targets.

Outrage All Around Us

2011-08-16T15:37:00.001-04:00

The Rationalist reacted strongly upon seeing a father with his two year old on the end of a leash:

(this is just an image pulled from the interwebs)

"I understand why that kid's on a leash....but that's just not right!"

His outrage has also been ignited by the idea of dog breeding. After watching a Dogs 101 DVD that talks about different dog breeds and crossing breeds, he exclaimed,"That's just wrong! Dogs shouldn't be forced to mate with other dogs...with total strangers!! How would those dog breeders like it if they had to mate with a total stranger!?"

I tried to convince him that animals frequently do such things in the wild, meeting up for brief periods with a heretofore unknown animal and then moving on.

He didn't seem convinced by my argument. ;-)

His main outrage has to do with the concept of "force" and animals or people being made to do things against their own will or inclinations.

Before I know it, he may become a member of PETA or decide to go vegan and I'll have to change what I feed and clothe him with.

I do admire his passionate conviction at times.

Doing OK

2011-08-16T15:24:00.000-04:00

I've been doing well the last few weeks and feel totally normal. I don't know if that's because of the low-sodium diet or mere coincidence. This whole Meniere's disease thing seems vague and mysterious enough that you could probably report any kind of regimen as successful at certain periods.

The placebo effect shall always be with us.

The major thing that has transpired is that I tearfully quite my job. The anxiety over whether I would have an episode of vertigo while driving around town every day, or in the middle of a presentation at a school was causing me too much turmoil.

It hurt to willingly quit a job in an economy that's so terrible, but I felt as if I had to.

Now. it's time to move on to something else.

August 2nd, The Government Hopes for The Rapture as Solution to Debt Crisis

2011-07-28T14:39:00.000-04:00

Not Really.

But that would be one way out, wouldn't it?

I watched the presidential address this week and Boehner's response to it. They both were nauseating, for completely different reasons.

Obama's portrayal of "fairness" and wealthy Americans paying their "fair share" falls flat for me. Wealthy Americans already pay most of the taxes in this country at a rate of 35% in comparison to the 15% that represents "average" household incomes.

Those percentages are on taxable incomes which are usually much lower than actual incomes by the time that most people take even standard deductions.

The whole "fair share" argument is a non-starter. Wealthy Americans already pay their fair share.

On the other hand, tax rates need to rise. It's simply unavoidable. We are too far into this mess to not suck it up and face facts. Cutting spending sounds great when you think it's all wasteful, but last time I checked we drive on federally funded roads, learn at federally funded schools, and our older population depends on federally funded health care.

We can make cuts in those areas, but we need to be conscious of the fact that when we say "cuts" we are also meaning that individuals will have to pick up the tab for these things on their own, which in certain areas will be nearly impossible, especially in a down economy with so many people out of work.

We need tax rates to rise in all brackets, even if it is only by 1% for each bracket. Working Class, Middle Class and Lower Class people need to contribute to maintaining all of the services that a federal government provides. We all use those services everyday and we all should have a hand in maintaining those public spaces and services.

This requires speaking the truth and explaining to all of us Less Than Wealthy Americans how little we contribute to the Budget compared to all those Wealthy Americans and Bad Corporations.

Boehner came across as an angry, defiant man in his rebuttal. I shook my head and thought, "Nothing good can come from this."

So far his plan is a drop in the bucket of what needs to be done, offering 1 trillion in deficit reduction instead of the 3-4 trillion previously offered.

I keep hoping to read the news and hear that both sides have compromised and finally settled on a plan, but so far it seems like we're watching a game of Chicken in which no one wants to blink.

Shrinking Life

2011-07-28T10:08:00.003-04:00

The summer's kind of been a bummer for me.

I got some of the painting done that I had planned, but not nearly as much as I had hoped by this point. The living room has multiple color splotches painted on the walls, like some sort of abstract color-blocking. Instead of painting the living room red, I opted to paint the front hallway red, deciding that a red living room would be more red than I could handle.

I haven't gotten as much done as I hoped because I have been battling episodes of vertigo and nausea. This is something that began very subtly about six months ago. My ears became congested and were causing me some faint dizziness. I chalked it up to a head cold that had moved into my ears and figured I would wait it out.

It went away after a week or so. Until it came back a few weeks later. Same thing. Congested ears. Reduced hearing because they were congested. Occasional moments of dizziness.

These annoying but minor symptoms seemed to come and go with no rhyme or reason. I wondered if I was developing allergies or had a lingering ear infection that my body couldn't quite kick.

Mid-April, while driving to see my father-in-law who was in hospice, I turned my head to check for traffic before changing lanes and the whole world went swirly. Luckily, I was almost at my destination. By carefully keeping my head straight, and driving extra cautiously, I was able to safely get where I was going.

I stepped out of the car and had a hard time walking a straight line without feeling like I was going to fall. I made my way inside and sat very still for about an hour until the vertigo passed.....and then I was fine.

It was very strange. Once again, I blew off the episode because it was isolated, seemed to magically resolve itself after a couple of hours, and seemed to be tied to my ears becoming congested.

Things went along smoothly except for minor moments of congestion/slight dizziness. Fourth of July weekend found me lying in my niece's room by myself, in the middle of a huge party, because I was experiencing so much vertigo and nausea that I simply couldn't interact with anyone. That was the first life-altering episode. It passed after an hour or two and I got up, feeling perfectly fine, and joined the party. Everybody around me was a little freaked out and worried about me.....but I truly felt OK once the vertigo stopped, so I tried to reassure everyone that I was fine.

Fast forward to one week later...I'm lying on the floor in the bathroom, unable to make my way back to the bed I had been hiding in for two hours, trying to make the world stop spinning around me. I was shaking, and on the verge of throwing up, and feeling so sick that I started thinking the emergency room was in my future. The only reason I didn't ask my husband to take me was because I didn't think I could stand up and walk to the car, let alone endure the ten minute drive without dying......that's how sick I felt.

The level of "unwellness" and the helplessness that I felt and the fear of what the heck was happening took me back to my days of chemo and emotionally crushed me. I hadn't felt this terrible and out of control of what was happening to me since then. And, the finger of fear, about whether this might be a recurrence or a metastasized brain tumor, poked around in my head.

It was frightening.

And yet....a couple of hours later.....I was mostly fine, though exhausted form the ordeal and worried about what it meant for me.

A trip to an urgent care later in the evening supplied me with a course of antibiotics and Antivert, although the doctor didn't see any signs of an ear infection or any inflammation, or any physical reason for my ear congestion and episodic vertigo. Still, I thought that maybe this would solve things. Maybe I had an infection in my inner ear that wasn't visible.

A week later, the antibiotics proved useless. Another episode of vertigo, and the loss of my entire day to laying still in a dark room waiting to feel normal again, motivated me to see an ENT specialist.

In the meantime, I scoured the internet for clues as to what might be wrong with me. My symptoms didn't seem brain-tumorish, but these events were so bizarre that I needed some kind of explanation.

Unfortunately, what I found wasn't encouraging. I happened across the term Meniere's Disease and when I investigated it found this.

The symptoms of Ménière's are variable; not all sufferers experience the same symptoms. However, so-called "classic Ménière's" is considered to have the following four symptoms:

1. Periodic episodes of rotary vertigo or dizziness.
2. Fluctuating, progressive, unilateral (in one ear) or bilateral (in both ears) hearing loss, usually in lower frequencies.
3. Unilateral or bilateral tinnitus.
4. A sensation of fullness or pressure in one or both ears.

Ménière's often begins with one symptom, and gradually progresses. However, not all symptoms must be present for a doctor to make a diagnosis of the disease. Several symptoms at once is more conclusive than different symptoms at separate times. Attacks of rotational vertigo can be severe, incapacitating, and unpredictable and can last anywhere from minutes to hours, but generally no longer than 24 hours.

Crap. That sounded exactly like what I was experiencing. And the good news? No cure. No understanding of what causes it, or why it happens. Once it starts, it doesn't stop....unless you are one of the few who might have spontaneous remission after many years.

I promised my husband that I wouldn't mention all of my internet research to the doctor in order not to influence his train of thought. I would just go, describe what had been happening, let him examine me and see what he came up with.

This was one of those moments when I wanted to be proved wrong. I wanted him to look in my ears study the results of the ear and hearing tests that he gave me and say, "Aha! I know what's wrong and it is easily solved! You have a giant ball of wax in your ear!"

Or maybe,"Yes...it's an earwig living in your ear!"

Or maybe,"Yes...it is an infection. You just need a different antibiotic than the one that you had!"

Alas, he merely looked at me and said, "You have a disorder called Menieres Disease."

Great. Tell me something I don't know.

At this point, the only thing that seems to help people with this disorder, sometimes, is a low-sodium diet. The idea is that the inner ear is overproducing fluid which cause a membrane in the inner ear to break, leak fluid into all the wrong places, and cause vertigo, aural fullness, tinnitus...yada, yada, yada. Keeping your body from retaining too much fluid by drastically reducing your sodium intake is supposed to help

Have you ever tried to eat a low-sodium diet? It's extremely hard. No pre-packaged foods, sauces, soups, restaurant food, soy sauce, ketchup, most salad dressings, definitely no shaking of salt over anything. It doesn't make for an easy adjustment.

Yet, I'm doing it. And...I resent it.

I feel like I'm a 75 year old person, accumulating sicknesses and conditions like some kind of weird collection. The list of things I have to do, and take, and watch out for is growing larger.

The list of situations in which I must be extremely cautious is growing. I have to evaluate before I get in the car how my ears are feeling. Do I think I might have an episode? Will one happen to me in the middle of the store? What would I do if it did?

To make matters worse, I'm really worried about whether I will be able to work. My job, which follows the school calendar, requires me to drive to and from locations every day. It requires me to be on my feet, twisting and turning and bending and rising up and down as I perform in front of hundreds of people. If an attack hit me in the middle of a show, I would be incapacitated. I wouldn't be able to finish and no one could fill in for me. I would have to lay down on the floor while making a spectacle of myself and my "condition".

Not Good.

And yet...I need this job. I need to work. The condition is wholly unpredictable. I might be perfectly fine for months on end and then get hit with an episode. Which would be OK as long as the episode happened in the afternoon or evening.

It's possible to work around it.....but I resent even having to.

I feel as if my life keeps shrinking. The circle containing future possibilities keeps tightening around me.

I guess I am mostly feeling sorry for myself and wishing that things would be easier, that there wasn't always some new obstacle on the horizon.

It's not even the obstacles, in and of themselves, that are frustrating. It's the feeling that my own body keeps letting me down...that the obstacles are intrinsic to my physical being, not some external problem that I could try and conquer.

Sigh.

Summer's Under Way

2011-06-27T08:33:00.002-04:00

Almost a whole month since I've updated!

It's been a busy month. The Rationalist finished fifth grade with a 2 hour long awards ceremony. Even though it dragged on, it was actually quite touching to see him and all of his classmates over the years, grown up, dressed up and being recognized for all of their achievements. Almost everyone received some sort of award and it was great to hear the PE, Music and Art teachers introduce the talented students they had worked with.

Afterwards, we all went to The Cheesecake Factory for a celebratory dinner, otherwise known as "the fanciest restaurant I've ever been to" according to The Rationalist. That tells you how frequently we eat out at a "real" restaurant!

I had decided that this summer was going to be the Summer of Home Repair and Maintenance. I spent the first week of the summer break painting our bedroom and trying to find a paint color that my husband didn't reflexively hate. That's not easy.

Eventually, I finished the bedroom and am now moving on to the rest of the house. I'm considering painting the living room a deep red...mainly because my natural inclination is to pick out something boring, neutral and bland. If it turns out like a French bordello I may have to repaint.

Last week, we spent the entire week at Anna Maria Island, one of my favorite places to visit the beach on the Gulf side of Florida. It's quieter, more family oriented and not totally bogged down with traffic, crowds of roaming teenagers, tourist shops or high rise condos. Plus, It's incredibly beautiful; fine, white, sandy beaches, blue-green water and gorgeous sunsets.

The boys had a great time swimming, trying to body surf on the tiny waves that the gulf usually provides. Outside of really bad weather, the Gulf tends to be very calm, which makes it great for paddle-boarding, or kayaking, or fishing....but not so cooperative for boys wanting crashing waves that propel them forward with powerful surges.

I've got a few things simmering in my head that I might blog about....but it's hard to promise anything during the Summer of Home Repair and Maintenance.

Death by Internet Searching

2011-05-31T12:46:00.005-04:00

The hot flashes I experienced from chemo a few years ago, and continued anti-hormonal therapy, caused me to develop rosacea. It may have eventually erupted on its own, but I primarily fault my cancer treatment for bringing it on.

I am probably predisposed to the condition.....it tends to hit fair-skinned women in their 30's with Celtic ancestry. That's me.

There is no cure for rosacea; it's a chronic condition that is managed, sometimes going into "remission" and then flaring up.

One of the treatments for rosacea consists of taking Doxycycline, an antibiotic, for about a month or two depending on how quickly symptoms subside. Doctors aren't quite sure why the antibiotic works for rosacea, because rosacea isn't exactly an infection.

Anyway, now that I've bored everyone with my medical conditions, the point is that I had some Doxycycline in my medicine cabinet from the previous time I had taken it a couple of years ago. My rosacea was acting up and I decided to just take it because I didn't have time to get to the dermatologist and just figured they were going to tell me to take Doxycycline anyway.

I noticed it was expired, but then recalled a pharmacologist I once knew saying that most medicines are still effective way past the expiration date. I figured the worst thing that could happen would be that I would take it and it wouldn't work in which case I would have to go to the doctor anyway.

***********

A curious mind is an infernal thing. It never knows when to stop. It's always asking "Why?". It's always wondering how things work. It's like a five-year-old child pestering their parent with a thousand questions a day, unsatisfied, always wanting more, more, more. More answers. More explanations. More understanding of generally obscure, not-very-useful facts.

Unfortunately, I have one of those question-generating-machines in my skull driving me to look things up. Curious about why medicines expire, or what could happen from taking expired medicines I used some free time to look it up.

This is what I found:

Store doxycycline at room temperature away from moisture and heat. Throw away any unused medicine after the expiration date on the label has passed. Using expired doxycycline can cause damage to your kidneys.

What??? Kidney Damage???

In a panic, I tried to find more information.

Everywhere I looked on general, medical, non-obscure sites I found this dire warning about doxycycline and the words "renal failure" used in conjunction with expired doxycycline and tetracycline antibiotics.

OK. I had taken 3 days worth. How much trouble was I really in? Should I let my husband know so that he could start planning my funeral? How quickly was I going to die? What symptoms should I look for?

So off I went through the inter-webs trying to find out more information, more details, more understanding of why this stuff is so bad for kidneys.

And what did I find?

Nothing really.

The first clue came from the wiki article on doxycycline.

In the case of doxycycline, the absence of an hydroxyl group in C-6 prevents the formation of the nephrotoxic compound.

Oh. OK. So maybe I wasn't going to die after all.

Now I was very curious. Which was it...Deadly Toxin, or Meh?

Eventually I came across the topic in this forum which seems to be associated with Rutgers University.

The forum administrator, while trying to answer a poster with the same question I had:

I tried to find the data behind the statement that "expired doxycycline can cause a dangerous syndrome resulting in damage to the kidneys" (Source (http://www.drugs.com/doxycycline.html)). I was unable to find a published study on the subject although there are many outrageous warnings of the dangers of expired tetracycline or doxycycline all over internet. Let me continue looking but this is making me very suspicious.

I followed the thread which I won't entirely repost. He listed some information and basically said that there have been no studies about expired doxycycline and the information he was able to find was based on some case studies over 40 years old.

He finished the conversation with:

I was quite surprised to find all these strong warnings all over internet, including statements that taking expired tetracycline and doxycycline can kill people. That is one of the problems with internet. All these people are posting and reposting information without critically evaluating it. Even reputable sites are reposting the information.

It turns out that tetracylines can degrade into a toxic substance, but so far there haven't been any concrete, documented examples of expired-doxycycline-caused renal failure.

Aacck.

I hate when I mentally bump up against this. It always shakes me up a little when I come across these situations.....situations in which normally reputable people and organizations turn out to not know what the hell they are talking about.

Received wisdom from a perceived, authoritative source can become so powerful that no one questions it. When we have a source that we have previously experienced as being smart, knowledgeable and useful, it is easy to assume that it will always be so.

It's uncomfortable when we realize it's not.

Anyway....turns out that I probably won't die... at least not from expired doxycycline.....but at the same time I don't think that I will take any more of it.

You know...just in case.

;-)

Who Said It?

2011-05-24T15:39:00.000-04:00

"A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty."

Over 1,000 Posts

2011-05-24T14:55:00.000-04:00

I realized that I have actually published over 1,000 posts on this blog. It's hard to imagine that I let that many mostly complete thoughts escape my keyboard and wind their way through cyberspace....or, perhaps more honestly, stagnate in this little corner of it.

hmmm.

How many "wasted" hours does that represent?

I don't want to know because for every post I have published there are several others that never made it that far.

Gandhi and Hitler BFFs?

2011-05-24T13:36:00.006-04:00

I was tracking down Gandhi's letter to Hitler, hoping to find someplace that had the actual text available after following some links to a site that was dropping the bomb that Gandhi called Hitler "my friend". The reference was so brief and interspersed with other personal failings of Gandhi that I was curious about how exactly Gandhi used the term.

I found the text at Letters of Note; Correspondence deserving of a wider audience.

Here's the post dealing with Gandhi's letter. It turns out Gandhi didn't really know Hitler and was trying to butter him up and ask him, oh-so-politely, not to start a war. Well...that didn't work out....although the post makes mention of the fact that Hitler never actually received the letter. Still, I doubt Hitler would have cared about Gandhi's opinion. The letter was written before the start of WWII as tensions were ratcheting up in Europe but before the scope of what Hitler was eventually planning on doing was fully understood.

So....it is factually true that Gandhi called Hitler "my friend" but not thematically true that Gandhi viewed Hitler as one of his best buds.

Just an interesting tidbit I ran across.

Camping Not Giving Up the Ghost

2011-05-24T07:37:00.004-04:00

Harold Camping just can't surrender the idea that he's right, even when the evidence that he is completely wrong is all around him in the presence of non-raptured human beings and in the earthquake-less, destruction-less world around him.

While I definitely have a certain mocking tone about the whole thing in my head, I do actually feel some pity for the man and especially for the followers who fervently gave all they had to support him. Discovering that your certainties are all wrong, and being able to actually admit it, is a spirit-breaking event.

If you learn that the way you thought about something was based on false presuppositions through and through it upends your whole world and sense of yourself.

You gotta love this quote from Camping, though:

"I don't have any responsibility. I'm only teaching the Bible. I'm telling ... this is what the Bible says. I don't have spiritual rule over anybody ... except my wife as the head of the household."

Yippee for her! What a lucky woman! I send her my condolences.

On a serious note, I do wonder how he can so easily make himself blameless in his own eyes. No responsibility? While he certainly didn't make anyone do anything drastic by physically forcing them to give up savings, cars, houses, and jobs, he didn't seem to have any problem accepting the proceeds from people. He didn't hesitate to hasten the drumbeat of doomsday in his followers' ears, encouraging them to sacrifice for his message.

And now....well if they have nothing left, that's their problem. Maybe it's true, but it's awfully heartless.

Anyway, what does he care? The world's going to end again, for like REAL....I mean really, really, REAL in 5 months. So, his followers just have to squeak by for 5 months before they truly won't need jobs, houses, cars, etc.

So why does it all matter? AVI thinks it's not such a big deal, and I would agree on a very basic level that he may be right. No one was physically harmed. No violent protests took place. No one died as a result of this end-of-days fiasco.

I would argue, however, that the harm done by Mr. Camping was/is psychological, spiritual, and relational. Families have been separated. People have been brought up short by the failing of their leader to instruct them. The world of those followers who now recognize Camping is and has always been completely wrong is in shambles.

It matters because these people will not simply have to square the fact that Camping, as a human being, was wrong, but that what they think about God, who He is, how He works, and what He thinks of them is all up for grabs.

Political Identity

2011-05-20T07:54:00.004-04:00

Leonard Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, wrote a column that was featured in the local paper a while ago entitled, The Civil War, 'A conspiracy of amnesia' contending that The Civil War was not about states' rights, no matter how frequently people say it was. I'd have to say that I largely agree with his column. Go read it for yourself to get a feel for it.

In response, the local paper printed a column by Al McCray, refuting Pitts' column and reasserting the states' rights argument. McCray is black/African American, so it goes against the conventional idea that his column flows from the mind of a white southerner defending the confederacy. Trust me, there are scores of those in the South. When I spent 5 years living in Tennessee that was one of my first culture shock moments, hearing people get worked up about a 140 year-old war as if it happened the previous week. It took some getting used to.

I suppose it makes sense for the South to hold onto the memories of War more tightly than the North; though both sides had enormous casualties, the war was fought in Southern lands with all the destruction and devastation that any war could bring. When it was all over, not only had the South lost the war, but they had lost entire cities and properties and infrastructure.

These two columns, juxtaposed against one another, made me reflect on how Americans view their identity.

In the South, particularly outside of its major cities, there is a strong attachment that people seem to have to their region or state. They think of themselves as Tennesseans, or Alabamans, or Georgians in a way that I never think of myself as a Floridian, or an Illini. I don't have a high degree of loyalty to any particular state. I think of myself as US citizen before I think of myself as a Floridian and that impacts how I survey the political landscape.

When the Right refers to Obama as a socialist, I think this phenomenon is coming into play. For people who have strong ties to a particular community or state, the idea of the federal government overriding that community or state seems like socialism/communism. The federal/national political urge becomes an enemy to the local/statewide political urge.

At this point, the conflict is probably unavoidable and inescapable.

Like it or not, our country's infrastructure and economy is incredibly complex, and requires so many resources, that believing that a single state can survive economically, largely on its own, becomes a near impossibility. We are entangled, one with another, in deeper ways than we were during the Civil War.

Political choices hang on these distinctions. For younger generations who have moved around more than previous generations have, loyalty to a particular region will be inevitably weaker. In areas where the population is more transient, or diverse, or there are large influxes of people from elsewhere, many people will have their first loyalty to the federal government rather than the state government. The particular region they settle in may only be a stopping off point for a few years. They may see the reliance on federal systems as more important if they are likely to relocate to another part of the country at some point.

I think this is why portraying the federal government as an enemy works well in several "red states". Most of the "red states" have a more stable demographic. They possess a strong sense of regional political identity and they recognize that the federal government does not share that specific identity.

How could it? It is supposed to represent all states, not simply the desires of one or two.

As a result, the hard conservatives from these regions will only ever see any national program as an imposition on their self-rule....thus the vitriolic comments about socialism/communism/the dictator in the White House....etc., etc.

I'm not sure who is still reading, considering I haven't posted in forever, but I am curious and want to do an informal poll.

Do you think of yourself as a US citizen first, or as a member of a particular state/region first?

Tribute

2011-04-17T07:02:00.002-04:00

When I married my husband, I got the better part of the deal....at least that's what I always tell him. He married into my quirky, sometimes crazy, chaotic family and I married into a stable, loving, nuclear family.

That was almost 14 years ago.

Besides my husband, our marriage, and our two children, the next best thing I got from marrying him was my in-laws; generous, kind, loving people who welcomed me into their family. It's been a cherished gift that I have received through no effort of my own. For someone like me, who is always enforcing personal boundaries and consciously evaluating the level of trust that I imbue to people who are close enough to me to hurt me, it was a revelation.

I had nothing to fear from these people. No passive aggressive criticisms. No hidden agendas. No backstabbing gossip about me to others. No sudden changes in mood towards me.

This past weekend I lost half of that gift...which is nothing compared to what my husband, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law lost. My husband and his sister lost a caring father. My mother-in-law lost her best friend and mate of 42 years.

Needless to say, they are all devastated. I'm mainly numb except for the few moments when I think about the conversations that would spontaneously crop up with my father-in-law. Occasionally, when we would visit, I would find myself alone with him and by asking a few questions could get him to open up and talk about his past as a fighter pilot.

He would recount flying over the desert in the Southwest, watching atom bombs being tested, before everyone realized how dangerous that was, flying blind in bad weather, missing the opportunity to be an astronaut by a few years.

There are these little moments embedded in my psyche, some of which I am unsure of why they stuck. I remember one trip to an ice-cream shop with the entire family. We sat at a laminate covered table, with a fan whirring overhead in the thick Florida heat, while he reminisced about his mother's coconut cake, warm out of the oven, covered in melting icing and sprinkled generously with coconut. It was his favorite desert made by his mother.

I remember him handing off magazines like Discover or Neurology Now, telling me I should read a certain article. I remember political conversations, with him consistently representing the Republican side, except for the occasional stray, anomalous political idea. I remember him always asking if we wanted something to eat or drink, or waving a bowl full of candy corn, or nuts, or fruit gems before us as we were seated, looking for co-participants for his snacking habits.

I remember countless dinners at my in-laws' home. I remember countless dinners at restaurants....dinners which we were never allowed to pay for. Trying to get a dinner check and pay for it was an exercise in futility.

I remember a questioning man looking to me for an answer, quite out of the blue, about why his oldest son from his first marriage wouldn't visit him. We sat on the lanai as I struggled to come up with an answer, to reassure him that his oldest son didn't hate him....that whatever reasons he had for not coming, were his own. There was pain and longing in his voice and watering eyes as I fumbled for a way to encourage him, feeling as if I was failing miserably.

This past week that son managed to come visit his father on his death bed. His father recognized him and was happy to see him. It was a good moment. An unspoken reconciliation for both of them.

My father-in-law was a good man. He was never unkind. He was always magnanimous. He was open and friendly. He was a good husband, father, father-in-law and grandfather to us all.

He will be sorely missed.

Spiritual Motivation

2011-04-05T14:48:00.005-04:00

My son came home today and told me that he had done something wrong. The Rationalist has a very sensitive conscience, so this is nothing new. He frequently thinks he has done something wrong and will self-enforce his own confession and punishment. I actually spend a lot of time moderating his severe expectations of himself, reassuring him that everyone makes mistakes sometimes.

Today, though, he really had done something wrong. He had participated in a game that targeted a particular kid in school. This particular child has been bullied for a while and was the target of a fight I broke up a few months ago on the way home form school.

Kids apparently taunt him and avoid being near him. If someone inadvertently touches him, everyone says,"Oh no he/she's got the E--- touch. Don't let him/her touch you!" and they all scatter. The Rationalist was carried along in this game today.

He felt badly about it. Where I would normally reassure him and tell him he was being too hard on himself, I instead agreed that he was wrong. I pointed out how terrible it would be to go to school every day and not have just one or two kids be bratty to you, but to have whole groups of kids making fun of you over and over again...to be the object of a game....to be ignored and excluded by just about everyone.

"You're better than that," I said to The Rationalist.

The Rationalist declared he was going to apologize to E---. After probing a little more, I discovered that E--- was unaware of what was going on. I told The Rationalist that apologizing would probably cause more harm than good, because the only way to apologize would be to reveal to E--- that he had been targeted again.

"Sometimes, when you make a bad choice, there is no solution. There's no way to take back what you've done. Sometimes an apology can't make things right. The only way to make things right is not to do what you did again."

The Rationalist was not happy with this speech. He had hoped that he would be able to assuage his guilt with an apology and receive forgiveness.....because that's how we do things at home.

When one of us loses it and yells, or acts particularly obnoxious, or is simply grumpy and short-tempered(adults included) an apology and forgiveness is soon to follow....if not soon, then eventually. ;-)

In the rest of the world, without loving, established relationships motivating reconciliation, apologies can be weak medicines indeed, especially if they are not turning points towards new, better behaviors. Everyone knows what it's like to receive an apology as an insincere appeasement......as a placeholder stopping up the gap before the next offense.

Should I have told my son that he disappointed God, or that he made the baby Jesus cry? That he was in danger of hellfire?

No. It would have done no good.

He didn't need more motivation to know how wrong what he had done was. He already knew that. What he needed was a way forward, an acknowledgment that he was off the mark, but that it didn't mean that he had to stay there.

Is Sin What We Want?

2011-04-04T15:08:00.007-04:00

James McGrath linked to a post by Richard Beck on his blog, Experimental Theology. I wanted to quote a large portion of his post addressing universalism and the motivation for evangelism if there is no hell:

And this vision of things also helps address another common question asked of universalists: "If everyone is getting to heaven why not just live it up in this life?" Again, seriously? If you have to ask this question I have to wonder if you're even a Christian. Because you are basically claiming that the life of sin is "better" than the abundant life found in Jesus, that people would prefer sin, today, over the Kingdom of God. You are insinuating that the Christian proclamation isn't good news.

And I think that's really the heart of the issue. If you ever hear a person raise these questions about mission, evangelism or calling people out of a life of sin you are dealing with a person who doesn't really believe in the good news. Because hellfire appears to be the only motive for evangelism these people can imagine. They can't compute a proclamation of joy. Hellfire also appears to be the only motive for calling people out of a life of sin. No hell, no reason to give up sin. Sin, in this view, is the best! Sin is the party, not the Kingdom.

Maybe this is why people who believe in eternal torment are so grumpy, mean-spirited, and miserable. If hell is the only motive for coming to God, if sinners are the one's having the most fun, well, of course these "turn or burn" Christians are unhappy. They've been called out of a fun and joyous life into the Kingdom of God where all is proper, boring, structured, grey and lame. But hey, at least they aren't going to hell! So there they sit in their churches, jealous and grumpy that the world is throwing a party that they can't attend because they had to dress up and go to church on Sunday. No wonder these sorts of Christians want the world to go to hell. They are jealous.

I can't say that I agree with all of the imputed judgements made about people who believe in eternal torment. I think the reasons people cling to certain beliefs can have many roots and those roots can be very complex systems that reach deep beneath the surface of individuals.

On the other hand, I wholeheartedly concur with his criticism of common attitudes about sin. I have often heard Christians declaring that if they found out that the Resurrection never happened that they would lose all faith and live like heathens. They would see themselves as desperately flocking to sinful, hateful behaviors without the check of their Christian faith holding them back.

I don't know what to think when I read people make comments like that on blogs, as if living life in a sexual, drug and alcohol fueled fury would be some kind of awesome life.

To all of those who think that way, I have only two words....Charlie Sheen. Does he seem happy? Wait, you say. Charlie's not a good example.....after all he's probably mentally imbalanced, right?

Maybe. But think of all of the people in your life who are truly miserable. They are probably people who live selfishly, impulsively, and without regard for the consequences of their own actions.

"Sin" is not a party. Or, maybe it is. It's the party that the cops show up at, kicking drunk, vomiting teens out of a trashed house filled with beer cans, drug paraphernalia, and unconscious others who over-imbibed.

I don't think people ever stop "sinning" because they are afraid of eternal damnation. They stop because they realize that sin never gives anything....it only ever takes. It makes you into a person that you don't want to be. It doesn't give peace, it only disrupts your serenity.

If there is any good news it is in the fact that there is another way to live; there is hope; there are second chances; there is the possibility and realization of redemption.

There is no need to sustain the idea of eternal torment as a way to make living the Christian life more appealing.

***update***

I swung by D'MA's blog at Gullible Travels and thought her post was relevant and an example of how some Christians think of sin.

A quote from one of D'ma's fellow Sunday School attendees:

The teacher starts out, "For the believer God's commands are a protection from self-destruction. How do non-believers view God's commands?"

Other attendee: "Unbelievers reject God's commands because they don't want to be accountable. Men want to go out and party and have adulterous affairs and not feel they have to answer for it. Women want to drink and have one-night stands and not feel guilty."
Sin = having a great time.....Faith = missing out on all the good stuff! ;-)

Everyday Gender

2011-04-04T11:43:00.005-04:00

I recently revealed that I was coaching my sons' soccer team this season and discussed all of the trepidation that I feel about that, largely because I have so little experience with soccer. Still, I forged on ahead figuring that I would fake it until I make it. So far so good, but my internal dialogue has been going strong as I have introduced myself to parents and to the Director/Head Coach of the league.

It hadn't occurred to me that the Head Coach might not have known that I was a woman. All of our interaction had taken place through e-mail. When I showed up on Thursday night to pick up the uniforms for our team, he had this strange, bemused expression on his face. It took me all of three seconds to realize that he probably didn't know the rule that Terri-with-an-i = female version of a unisex name, and that Terry-with-a-y = male version of a unisex name. I pretended as if I didn't realize that he was surprised and picked up the uniforms, trading a little banter back and forth about hoping this wouldn't be a total disaster, and left.

Because my life is so isolated in many ways, I hardly ever think about the interplay of gender on a daily basis. My family life and work life keep me busy, and I don't really perceive any huge gender discrepancies. I work and live within a very comfortable, defined bubble that suits me well. I blog and comment with men and women all the time and don't ever feel ignored because of my gender....though that may be because I don't frequent blogs with audiences that would automatically disregard me because of my gender.

Picking up the uniforms in a crowd of uber-masculine, jock-type men and being the only woman there instantly brings gender self-consciousness to the forefront of my mind. It isn't because anything overt occurs. No one ever says or does anything to make it happen; it's simply thrown in stark relief....one of these things is not like the others. It's jarring to be the not like the others person in the room.

My general attitude about women stepping into roles that are traditionally masculine, or trying to make headway in groups that naturally exclude women from leadership in usually unspoken ways, is to simply move forward. Pretend as if you are unaware of the underlying mindset and just do what you came to do.

A sort of "it's easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission" motto.....though am I really ever going to beg forgiveness for being female? Uh...that's a big NO....not ever.

Saturday was game day. My team slowly straggled in while the opposing team was fully present and practicing 30 minutes before the game. I had wanted the same thing to happen for us...but we apparently have punctuality-challenged parents on our team.

The other team's coach introduced himself, wished us luck and the game started. They scored 4 times in the first ten minutes as I evaluated my players and figured out who was good at what, having kids switch positions, subbing them in and out, trying to find the right combination of players to fight the team who was killing us.

By the second quarter we figured it out. We managed to score a point, causing me to jump and shout "WooHoo!" in a very obnoxious way. We never scored again but we also completely shut down the other team. They never made another point against us and we were all over them as I shouted and gave instructions from the sidelines.

It was probably hilarious entertainment for anyone who knew that I was relatively clueless about what I was doing.

The Head Coach came up to me afterwards laughing and telling me that I cracked him up but that we did well. The other team had been together for the last 2 seasons and they were tough competition. I wondered if he would have told a male newbie that he "cracked him up". Still, I'll take my slightly condescending praise where I can get it.

The only problem with becoming self-conscious about gender, or any difference, is that it hovers in your mind, always present as you make decisions. Now, I am wanting to do well because I don't want our team to perform awfully and have it blamed on my gender. I don't want the parents to lose confidence in me and automatically assume that I won't do as well as a male coach. I'm investing too much psycho-drama into a kids soccer league.

I wonder if men ever think about gender differences in this kind of way. Do they walk into a room of women at work and wonder how they are being perceived? Do they feel as if they have to prove something to the other gender about unspoken assumptions?

I don't know. Do they?

I know there are a lot of male readers/commenters out there occasionally. Let's hear what you have to say. Do you ever have these inner gender dialogues going on in your head?

mmmmmm...

2011-03-30T17:29:00.003-04:00

I just finished melting 6 cups of cheese and 1 stick of butter...along with various seasonings and milk....to make homemade macaroni and cheese.

It's the first time I've ever made real mac and cheese. I'm testing it out on my family before I make it again tomorrow for my sick father-in-law.

I'm not sure what message bringing a sick person food that could spontaneously induce a heart attack conveys.

Maybe something like this:

"If you manage to actually survive this meal, I hope that you'll get better!"

The Power of Titles

2011-03-30T07:40:00.002-04:00

Somehow or another I let myself get finagled into "coaching" the Spring Soccer season.

My total experience with soccer consists of watching The Rationalist and The Intuitive play this past season. Frequent refrains upon my lips were "What just happened?", "Why do they have a penalty kick?", "What does offsides mean?", and towards the end of the season,"OH...that's what that circle in the middle of the field is for!"

Basically the soccer organization was desperate. The coach for my sons' team had a family emergency and had to back out and the director kept sending out e-mails looking for someone to "step up" and provide adult supervision and encouragement.

I wrote a reluctant, hesitant e-mail saying that if absolutely nobody else came forward that I could do it...but that he should definitely pick anybody else besides me if he had other options.

"You're the one!" was his reply.

His exuberant confidence in my coaching abilities was actually frustrating to me. It reminded me of the semester that I helped teach English as a second language at my university. It was a temporary gig. I was supposed to be assisting the professor who had a group from Brazil that was specifically at our college for this crash course in English.

I thought that I was a "helper". He decided that I was a "teacher". When I asked him what we were supposed to do for the classes, he said, "Just talk to them."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I don't believe in curriculum. They'll learn more if you just converse with them."

".....OK...but talk with them about what?"

"Oh, I'm sure you'll figure it out."

He refused to give me and the other student teachers any guidance. He had no plan. He had no formula. He had no specific method. His idea was that he could throw us into a class of 15 Brazilians who spoke minimal English and we would "just figure it out".

That was a disaster. An hour every day for a month is a long amount of time to fill up with unscripted, unguided, unfocused conversation. I was there when the "teacher" evaluations came back. It wasn't pretty.

Apparently, the Brazilian group expected much more for the money and time they had dedicated to coming to our school.....like actual teachers who would actually teach.

That was one of the most depressing semesters I had. There's nothing like failing miserably when you don't want to, and while those in charge of you simultaneously refuse to help you succeed in any way.

It was one of those lessons that I have learned many times. Just because someone has a specific title doesn't mean they know jack about what they are doing.

Now, I am being called Coach in the e-mails I keep trading back and forth with the director....which cracks me up.

Coach.

How about Adult who Stands Around and Makes Sure Everyone Stays Alive?

Book Bargains

2011-03-27T18:17:00.010-04:00

Borders is shutting down many of its local bookstores. Hoping to score some good buys we traipsed in to see what was left in their Everything-Must-Go-Sale.

Eventually, I settled on these:

Thank God for Evolution, by Michael Dowd. I bought this mainly because I have seen many people refer to it or engage with it on blogs, so I thought it might be worth it to actually read it for myself . Whether or not I will ultimately agree with it, I think it will be an interesting read.

The second book The Bible, by Karen Armstrong, I bought mainly because it was only a few dollars and I have read a little bit of Armstrong before and thought spending $3.00 on an unknown book was an acceptable risk.

The third book The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Eknath Easwaran, is a part of Hindu Scripture. A blogger referred to it in one of my recent blog conversations elsewhere, in a completely non-Hindu context, and I had recently caught the tail end of an episode about it on PBS in their World Literature series. It piqued my interest.

I had weened down my pile of books to just these three. Initially I had wanted to get a paperback copy of The Koran and a book called God is Everything: The Radical Path of Non-dual Judaism; The Koran simply so that I could familiarize myself with Islam in more depth rather than depending on things that are communicated third-hand and God is Everything because one of the things that set me on the path that I have taken in the last few years was the realization that Old Testament Judaism was quite non-dualistic. I was curious to see what a modern take from a Jewish writer might look like.

Alas....I couldn't justify spending that much even though the prices were steeply discounted. I had to set some limits for myself..

I'll post on each of these once I have a chance to read through them.

Afterlife

2011-03-25T14:52:00.008-04:00

One of the consequences of becoming an annihilationist, or a believer in conditional immortality, is that my sense of the certainty of eternal life has been diminished. By that I mean to say that as I gave up the idea of hell and the idea that our true selves are inherently immortal apart from our physical bodies, I eventually lost the certainty of Heaven. Heaven became replaced in my mind with a future physical resurrection of some sort, at which point I would be fully "alive" or conscious.

Now even that has faded somewhat and what I am left with is uncertainty. What does it mean for a person to die? What really happens to them?

Amidst all of the hell controversy spurred on by Rob Bell, who as a typical, high-profile, emergent refuses to be clear about where he stands, or to lay out with any certainty the path that he is on, I have revisited the idea of annihilation and universalism.

The chief flaw in universalism is the problem it has with evil within a "Christian/biblical" framework. Christian Scripture is clear that that there are people who choose evil and refuse to turn from evil to good. What happens to these people after death in universalism? Most Christian universalists consign them to a temporary hell in which they eventually see the error of their ways and repent and join the Kingdom of God.

Lately everyone is referring to C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, which portrays a hell whose gates are "locked from the inside" and populated by willing people. Evangelicals have latched onto Lewis' idea and it is frequently postulated as an alternative to the fiery versions of hell put forth by others. It's an improvement on the traditional doctrine of hell...but still not very satisfying.

In The Great Divorce those who are in hell remain mostly unconvinced by the inhabitants of Heaven despite the great lengths that the inhabitants take to persuade them. Though Lewis portrays the possibility that they can all choose Heaven, almost none of them do. This isn't very "universalist" in scope. The hell-dwellers don't seem to have any more access to the reality of God than they did in their earthly lives, which eliminates the idea that after death an encounter with the divine would be more tangible and easily understood than it is in ordinary, physical life.

Lewis writes a new story that is only slightly different than the old one....that those who are in hell want to be there and have chosen to be there on some level.

What are the options before us? Eternal torment, extinction, no extinction but the possibility of choosing to remain ignorant of God and live in hell...which is ultimately unsatisfying but also not fiery.

In my more evangelical days, I remember longing for Heaven/Resurrection as an event that would make me perfect and holy. I imagined how wonderful it would be to not be tempted to make bad choices, to always be loving and kind, to always know the truth in any given situation. It was a soothing idea.

However, even when I thought about this future me, I wondered how much of "me" would be left. In my mind, so much of what constitutes "me" and my personality are inseparable from the likes and dislikes and all-too-human tendencies, many of which would seem to melt away in this other-worldy perfection I was imagining. How "me-like" would I be?

Lewis plays with this theme a little in The Great Divorce when a painter is aghast at the idea that he won't be known by his painting, because there are many great painters in Heaven and all of them are there only to serve and not to worry about their own contributions or uniqueness. The painter doesn't like this at all and rushes back to hell.

Lewis' point is that concern for individual recognition is selfish and ungodly.

Yet...isn't that what the hope for an after-life is all about...that we will continue on in some way as individual beings recognized and reunited with those who are particular to our own lives and stories? We would be happy to see anyone in Heaven, but we most want to see our departed family members and friends. We want individual redemption and recognition, not universal, general salvation.

Lately, when I ponder what will happen to me when I die, I am left with much uncertainty. Unraveling how Scripture truly portrays the afterlife, and losing the sense of inerrancy of Scripture, has made me unsure of just about everything.

How can I know what happens when Scripture argues with itself? How can I speak of things for which I have no experience or evidence?

Honestly, I don't know anymore. All I have is a vague hope that God will remember me. That when my breath returns to God that there will be something worthy enough of me to be retained in His mind.

This is not a very "Christian" concept but one that makes sense to me.

At this point I hope that the good in me will be remembered while the evil in me is forgotten. Maybe those who cultivate evil in their hearts will be wholly forgotten. Maybe feeding our dark side ultimately erases the part of us that is worthy of remembrance.

Death, annihilation, being forgotten....isn't this what we want to have happen to evil?

Perhaps the idea of sanctification is a metaphor for making more and more of ourselves worth remembrance in God's eyes, keeping what is good in us and discarding that which isn't.

War and Peace

2011-03-23T08:55:00.002-04:00

One of the reasons I voted for Obama in 2008 wasn't because I loved him as a candidate. No. The deciding factor in my decision was the saber rattling in Iran's general direction that McCain started towards the tail end of his campaign. I thought even contemplating another front for our military forces to fight on was incredibly stupid and reckless, no matter how much we might dislike Iran and what they are doing.

Here we are, almost three years later, and we have stepped into another conflict in the Middle East while we are still heavily involved in Afghanistan and Iraq...wars that have dragged on for almost 10 years and 8 years respectively with no clear end in sight.

What are we to do?

Should the U.S. be responsible for enacting global "peace" through war? Should we assume the responsibility of always being available to stomp out fires?

I don't see how we can. We simply don't have the manpower or the money. This is one of those things that strikes me as odd amidst all of the talks of budget cuts by Republicans. No one ever seems to mention the fact that these wars, and the resources we need to fight them, are incredibly expensive. At some point we will simply have to acknowledge that we can't enter any more conflicts because we don't have the wealth to do it.

Going into debt to protect the world, and then having to pay the world(mostly China) back for our efforts seems like an illogical operation.

I was encouraged that France chose to intervene first in Libya. So often we are jumping off cliffs headlong into war and we have to drag our allies in through persuasion and arm-twisting. It's nice to see someone else diving in, taking on the role of enforcer, and intervening in a bloody conflict.

What do you think?

What are your feelings about our ongoing military conflicts and our role in Libya?

Persona Fail

2011-03-22T15:01:00.007-04:00

Paul was apparently the earliest "blogger" to be called out for his writing persona not matching up with his "real" persona:

For some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.” *

*2nd Corinthians 10:10

Donating to Japan

2011-03-14T11:22:00.004-04:00

You can make donations through the Red Cross to help the Japanese people affected by this past week's earthquake and tsunami here.

Although there are always worries about how much money actually makes it to people affected by disasters, even if only part of it gets there it is a help.

When disasters hit poor countries, like Haiti, the world responds quickly and generously with donations. When industrialized nations are hit by massive disasters they frequently are not seen as being in need.

Giving is a good way to help remind yourself that if these people lived down the street from you and you could see and experience what they had to deal with, you would be moved to help them, regardless of their income level.

Feeling Better

2011-03-13T09:26:00.002-04:00

I may be ready to blog again. It's been almost a month since I have blogged regularly and I have enjoyed not thinking about anything too heavily.

I tend to live so much within my head, that when I begin to blog and comment with regularity my mind becomes too crowded and furiously moving to give my inner self the peace that it needs.

I can care too much. I can become obsessed with a particular idea too easily.

I have to rely on the other part of me to pull in the reins and cut myself off from my neurotic tendencies.

Japan's Disaster

2011-03-13T09:22:00.003-04:00

Watching this disaster unfold is mind-boggling. I cannot imagine seeing my home washed away and the buildings around me crushed and the nuclear power plant in my town exploding and possibly poisoning everything I have ever known with radiation.

May God, and we, help the Japanese people.

When Words Reveal Too Much

2011-03-01T15:23:00.003-05:00

I stood in the bathroom, hair tied back, scrub brush in my hand, sweaty from cleaning all day and I cried. Looking out at my husband, in the middle of a conversation, I cried.

He had tried to be positive and encouraging as we talked about the next year and our plans as I contemplated returning to full-time work and finally finding a career path. He offered ideas, found positions he was sure I could succeed in, and all I could do was try to disabuse him of his optimism and his attempt to help.

"J--, I'm 37. I have spent the last ten years primarily being a mother. I have spotty work history, no "real" experience and graduated from college 14 years ago. We are in dire economic times and I will be competing with 22 year old kids with no responsibilities. No one will hire me for the types of positions you are suggesting to me."

"But I believe in you. I believe that you can do these jobs."

"I believe that I can do them too...but it doesn't matter what I believe....it matters what other people, whom I have no control over, believe...other people who look at me and sum me up as a stay-at-home mom with unrelated work experience who has never really utilized her degree, which is now 14 years old, in any concrete way. That is all that I am to them."

"I think you're being too pessimistic."

"Pessimistic? It's not pessimism...it's reality. I have sacrificed a large portion of my life to raise our kids and make a home and be available. I don't regret it. I chose this life and I wouldn't change it.....but there are very real consequences for my choices. If something ever happened to you, I don't know that I could earn enough money on my own to take care of our kids. If you died in a horrible accident, how could I afford to provide for them? An entry-level job would never pay enough."

And then it came, a wave of sorrow and worry and recognition that threatened to overtake me. Speaking reality in cold, harsh words was too much for me to take. I had let the nervous words break free from my mind and enter into the world, filling the room with one of those secret worries that you try to crush when it first whispers to your consciousness because to let it grow and flourish would be too much to bear.

The words and thoughts were not new. They lingered in my mind occasionally as I lay in bed imagining what-ifs and what-would-I-do's, but now they had escaped and exposed my weakness.

Words are like that. I often don't know how strongly I feel about something until I have to articulate it, and once articulated, I face the effects of knowing what is truly within me.

For now, my words have become too much of a reality to me. They have created a world very different from the one in which I thought that I lived in, conceptually-speaking, and I feel caught between these two conceptual worlds, able to see into each of them, but not fully belonging to either.

I am going to keep my nervous words inside my head for a while, until I have decided whether I want to free them from their captivity.

If I decide to free them, I'll blog, though I may create a new blog.

Or I may stay in my self-imposed silence for a while.

I'm OK. There's nothing awful going on in my life. I just need to take a break from blogging and commenting and hopping from conceptual world to conceptual world for a while.

Rugby

2011-02-13T08:00:00.005-05:00

For some reason rugby was on TV yesterday, and DH and I watched South Africa slaughter the USA team.

After a while, I realized that rugby is sort of like football, except for the part in which you get to beat the crap out of whoever has the ball until they give it to you, or until your entire team has crashed down on them and they have passed out from their lungs being crushed and have reflexively released the ball into your team's control.

Brutal.

Ineffability

2011-02-13T07:42:00.001-05:00

This popped up in my reader from nakedpastor.com a while ago.

It made the rounds almost instantaneously in certain blog circles.

A couple of thoughts:

#1--I frequently feel this way. I'm in a place where it's easy for me to know what I don't think is true, but it is extremely hard for me to articulate what I do think is true. Negation is much easier than propagation. Whenever I want to put something forward about what/who God really is, I feel the limitations of my own words and thoughts. They're just not big enough. And even if they were, they are still bound by their own restraints.

#2--Even though nakedpastor hits it on the head with this one....as of yet I don't think that he, or anyone else who has posted it, has actually "shut up". So maybe we are good at ignoring the urge to simply be silent.

;-)

2011-02-13T07:16:00.003-05:00

Ugh.

Several more days of sick kids. The Intuitive was up all night emptying his stomach into a trash can.

Does it make me a terrible parent that as I took care of him, wishing that I could make him better, that I also was thinking, "Oh crap.....I really hope I don't catch whatever this is."

Probably.

Bringing My Work Home With Me

2011-02-10T11:43:00.001-05:00

I mentioned a while back that my job consists of performing and public speaking in elementary schools, a different one each day. The main topic that my co-worker and I address is bullying prevention. We present a puppet show in which a child is being mentally and physically bullied, and when the strict performance part is done, we move into a Q&A section in which we are still in character, but we are interacting with the kids, asking and answering questions.

So, everyday I discuss bullying with kids.

Today, as I was driving the kids home from school, I saw one boy tackle another boy, a boy whom The Rationalist has said is frequently bullied and ostracized, and slam him onto the asphalt road. I immediately stopped the car, got out, and broke things up, not physically thank goodness, but by telling them to cut it out. The kid who tackled the other kid said he did it because the other kid pushed him.

I asked them if they were OK and told them to go home once they said they were. The initiator's sister responded with mouthy, smart-alec comments aimed at the other boy. At which point I asked her if her parents were home and if I should go talk to them about the way she was treating people. She didn't say much after that.

I drove home in a deep funk.

The week before had incidents in which The Rationalist was called a "bitch" by his coach's son and had a teenager in our neighborhood pull out a small pocket knife and turn and walk toward The Rationalist, implying that he was going to do something with it.

He thought he was being hilarious.

In the meantime I had to talk to the teenager's father, who said that he knew that his kid had found a knife and that "it was like a tiny thing".

Yeah. Ok. Whatever. I don't care if it's a tiny thing. Your kid is a teenager and mine is ten years old. Your son looks like a grown up to my kid.

Then tonight I had to ask the soccer coach if his son had a problem with my son. He seemed surprised at my question. "What? No." I had to tell him that his son had called my son a "bitch" several times. Sitting off to the side was another mother who then spoke up and said that the coach's son was also mean to her son.

The cluster of these incidents in a relatively short period of time has thrown me into a concerned period of anxiety.

The Rationalist will be heading into middle school next year and, well.....middle school is middle school. It's probably safer to walk into a lion's den covered in hamburger meat than it is to walk the halls of most middle schools.

I'm seeing the tumultuous tween/teen years ahead and I am fearful....not so much at the thought of The Rationalist being a teen, but at all that he's going to have to deal with.

I'm also discouraged. Discouraged that kids can be so rotten and mean. Discouraged that parents are so out of touch with their children that they have no idea what their kids act like. Discouraged that I can't be there all the time, playing the part of neighborhood enforcer and self-appointed righter of wrongs.

In each instance, I have had stomach-turning anxiety about what the best thing to do was. Do I intervene and possibly embarrass a kid who is being picked on, who might not want my help? Do I talk to the father of the teenager, who happens to always have a group of thugs out in front of his house drinking in the middle of the day? Do I talk to my son's coach, risking the possibility that it might make soccer go sour for The Rationalist if the conversation doesn't go well?

At each point I had to take the time to consider the possible outcomes and the chance that by saying something, I might cause unintended consequences.

I forced myself to intervene, knowing that I might earn the title of over-protective mother, or annoying-lady-who-always-sticks-her-nose-in-everyone-else's-business. I had all of the awkward conversations. I ignored the urge to simply do nothing and take defensive measures, avoiding situations and hoping that everything would just work itself out on its own.

And the results?

Mostly positive. The coach had no idea that his son was acting that way. The father of the teenager at least knows that I am keeping close watch on my kids, and that I am not afraid(well maybe I'm a little afraid!) to get into things if I have to. The kids whose fight I broke up? Well, knowing kids, that will probably continue, but maybe next time they won't think that just because they are away from the school and adult supervision that they can get away with whatever they want to.

Still, even though nothing completely blew up in my face, it's made me weary. I don't want to have to have these conversations. I don't want there to be a reason to have these conversations.

sigh.

Catchy Songs, Dreadful Lyrics

2011-02-03T20:12:00.003-05:00

James McGrath tagged me in a meme about CCM Praise songs that we have trouble with.

The one song that immediately came to mind, which is not actually a "praise" song is the Newsboys' Wherever We Go. It's actually quite catchy and was played incessantly on Christian radio stations when it first came out.

I still listen to predominately Christian music stations, so I know most of the CCM bands out there, and this particular song always rubbed me the wrong way.

It's kind of cute, but the lyrics always make me cringe, especially this part:

Wherever we go, the dumb get wise
And the crime rates drop
And the markets rise
It's a curious thing
But it's just our thing
Bullies make nice, crooks repent
And the ozone layer shows improvement
It's a curious thing
And it's humbling
Wherever we're led
All the Living Dead
Wanna leave their Zombie Mob
It's a touching scene when they all come clean
God help us, we just love our job

Maybe it's supposed to be tongue in cheek...but I know the evangelical circus very well, and someone, somewhere actually believes this stuff, that by merely being Christians, their very presence will improve crime rates, economic troubles, and global warming.

shudder.

As far as praise music goes, most of the time I am not really bothered by lyrics that truly don't make any sense when you sit down and actually think about them, or which represent God in a way that I personally don't agree with.

I am much more forgiving with worship and praise songs because I kind of see them as "love" songs...which can sound insipid, schmaltzy, and downright co-dependent in nature when you're not in love with anyone.

I don't like to mock the truly earnest. Bad praise lyrics may make me inwardly turn up my nose, but taken as an inherently limited way to express the inexpressible, I'm willing to let a lot slide by.

Soccer and Sickness

2011-02-02T11:51:00.003-05:00

We've been busy this past week.

The entire weekend was consumed with soccer games. While watching the kids play and chatting with the other parents, I realized that I get as much out of watching them play soccer as they get out of playing it themselves. It's never a chore to watch their games. It's a family event, a way to spend time together in a fun setting.

After the soccer weekend, The Rationalist came down with a nasty virus, high fever and cold symptoms. I'm taking him in today to make sure he isn't harboring the next flu pandemic virus.

Although he's cranky when he's sick, he's also very sweet. He doesn't understand why we're letting him watch as much TV as he wants and letting him drink 7-Up non-stop accompanied by his favorite foods.

"You don't have to spoil me so much!" he says.

Very cute.

Parenting Your Mini-Me

2011-01-27T12:47:00.004-05:00

Having children can remind you of the "you" you used to be. This is not always a pleasant experience. While you might have the inside line to understanding you child, you are reminded daily what a huge pain you must have been as a kid.

Oh, my poor teachers. However did they put up with me?!

The Rationalist and The Intuitive both have characteristics from DH and me. The Rationalist truly is a mini-me of his father, so much so that it is hilarious to hear them argue with each other. It's like watching clones battle with each other. However, even though The Rationalist is a mini-me of his father, he has some of my traits also...traits which I share with his father. The poor child got a double-dose of certain personality traits from us, and not only just the good ones either.

The Intuitive isn't exactly my mini-me, but he thinks a lot like I do/did. I knew that I was going to have trouble with this one when at 4 years old I overheard him telling his older brother, who is a conscientious rule-follower, that they wouldn't get in trouble for what they were doing as long as I didn't know about it.

At 4 he had already gained the insight that it wasn't the breaking of the rule that was bad, it was the getting caught part that was trouble.

I still remember that and am keeping it on file for when he hits the teen years.

He got that from me. I was a skilled liar when I was young. I never lied to get things, or to make up outlandish stories about myself. I only ever lied to stay out of trouble.

Who broke the lamp? Oh, the dog was running behind the couch and got caught in the cord and pulled it off the table.

Who ate the strawberries that were going to be used for dessert? Gee. It must have been my little brother.

Why did you get a zero for your homework? I don't know. I turned it in on time.

Who called Japan? Japan, who's Japan? I don't know anyone named Japan!

The Intuitive's propensity for gaming the system with his intuitive grasp of how people work was simply me reaping what I had sown, I suppose.

Before the Christmas Break, both boys had to finish mandatory science projects which were very involved. They had to do multiple trials of their experiment, graph their results, write up their hypotheses, results and conclusions and assemble everything on a large tri-fold poster board. It was a lot of work for them and for me too because I had to supervise the process, showing them how to use the graphing website, how to use Word to type out their reports, how to adjust the font to fit on the paper, how to format the text....etc., etc.

I was very thankful when everything was done and turned in.

During that whole process, when I was talking to The Intuitive about his project and what he had left to work on he said to me,"I don't have to get a good grade....I only have to pass."

A Maternal Brain Aneurysm was only narrowly averted. After catching my breath, I asked, "What do you mean you only have to pass?"

"Well...I don't care if I get an A or not. As long as I pass, I'm OK."

I had to sit down for a moment. Who was this child who was happy with just passing?

Suddenly, I remembered my third grade year. Many C's and D's on my report card....because I didn't turn in a single stitch of homework...because I didn't want to. I remembered my junior year in high school when I got a D in Health class, one of the easiest classes in existence. Even though I had A's on all of the tests and quizzes, I had decided that I didn't feel like keeping a Health Journal through the semester. Too much work. Too annoying. Not big on my list of things to do.

I consciously chose not to do it and took the hit to my grade....which was quite substantial.....but I didn't care. I didn't need an A in Health class. I only needed to pass it.

Yikes!

The more I thought about it, the more I saw myself in The Intuitive's tendency to procrastinate, to become distracted, to get lost in reading, to amuse himself in his room for hours and his tendency to keep his thoughts and emotions to himself.

Many of those traits I have actively suppressed in myself, either out conscious choice, or because of being forced to by the demands of life. The Intuitive is helping me remember myself.

The Intuitive is very smart, but he also thinks differently and more intuitively and he can't always explain how he knows things, or understand what teachers want from him when they word things ambiguously. I used to think it was because he was a lefty and right-brained.

Now, I remember similar moments from my childhood. I remember infuriating my kindergarten teacher, a wrinkled woman as old as Methuselah who would grab children by the ear and pull them towards their mats when they were naughty. We were pretending to deliver Valentines under doorways while we sang some sort of Valentine's Day song. Each child would spot a door in the room and slip the valentine under it and come back to their place on the carpet before the song ended. WHen it was my turn, I went over to a table and chairs and stuck my card under there.

My teacher berated me, asking me what I was doing, why was I shoving the card under the table? I was confused. I thought we were pretending. I was pretending that there was a tiny house under the table and a mouse who lived inside it. I was putting the valentine under the mouse's door.

It made perfect sense to me. My teacher, on the other hand, thought I was incredibly stupid. I don't remember if she grabbed me by the ear, or not.

I remembered fourth grade when I was marked wrong on a comprehension test of a story that we read. The question I missed was--How do we know that the princess and prince lived happily every after? I answered that we knew they lived happily ever after because the story told us that they lived happily ever after.

My teacher probably thought I was quite dim when she marked the answer wrong.

As dumb as my answer seemed, I had actually thought it through very well. In my mind there was no way to know if people were going to live happily ever after simply because they had solved whatever current problem they were facing. There were always more problems right around the corner that they probably hadn't even thought of yet. I had no basis to say that they would live happily ever after. The only way I could say that they would live happily every after was because the narrator said that they would in the story. Anything else was pure speculation in my 10 year-old mind.

Even at 10, I was a slave to what the text actually said, rather than what it didn't. Reading my thoughts into the text seemed like a strange, unnatural thing to do.

As I parent my children I am often left wondering which methods would be most effective at reaching them. Now, realizing that some of the traits that pop up in The Intuitive are actually my traits, I am sympathetic, and also wondering what would have worked for me at that age.

I had very little active parenting when I was a child, so I muddled through on my own, mostly, and just assumed that when teachers and school didn't make sense, that it was because I was weird and there wasn't much I could do about it.

Would I have wanted a parent like me, actively pushing me to do my best? Should I let The Intuitive just pass every now and then in order to learn that it's up to him to set goals and priorities and to motivate himself?

I'm not sure.

Moral Law and Being Human

2011-01-26T19:08:00.000-05:00

Every once in while I want to knock C.S. Lewis around. He's quoted everywhere. He is the "go-to" guy in Christian apologetics. He's consistently relied on, too consistently in my opinion, by authors with an evangelical, intellectual bent. They like to pull him off the bookshelf to give themselves some intellectual street cred.

There is even a new C.S. Lewis Bible being sold. I shook my head in wonder when I learned that. Someone is finally publicly acknowledging Lewis as the fourteenth apostle.

I get tired of him after a while.

I guess I shouldn't blame them, because so far evangelicals have not managed to produce anyone like a C.S. Lewis in the last 50-60 years. He's all that they have.

Even though I get tired of hearing Lewis speak from beyond the grave through his fan base, I think I understand the fascination with his work.

Lewis was not a theologian, or a scientist, or a biblical scholar. He was first and foremost a story-teller. His life revolved around literature; teaching it and writing it.

A good story always takes place within a bigger picture. Grand epics are epic because they are about more than the individual; they involve a stream of action in which the individual is only one moving part.

Lewis, especially in his fiction, is always working within that larger view. His science fiction series begins with the idea that there is more beyond Earth and that a general system is incorporated in each planet. Earth's particular details only make sense in the grand scheme of the solar system. In order to understand what happens on Earth, Lewis tells us about what happens elsewhere.

He uses the general to tell us about the specific...and he is exceptional at it.

As with most of us, though, Lewis' strength is also his biggest weakness. Because he is not bound to the details of theology or biblical interpretation, or even evolution, though there were probably fewer details about evolution for him to address in his era, he slides past many objections and problems that might interfere with his big picture.

Perhaps, that is why he so often turns to fiction to express his theology. In fiction, he has the ability to fully convey themes in new worlds without having to account for the sludge and drek of this world, or deal with the annoying details that detract from the grand epic.

In recreating portraits of the Divine, he sidesteps the conflicting pictures we had beforehand. He boils mythological themes into an essence that can infuse his works. When Aslan is creating Narnia, or leading the children in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, we are not tangled up in trying to understand how God can be both a lion and God, or whether he is part of a trinity, or whether the earthly Christ we think of should be assumed to be like Aslan. Instead, we simply feel the force of his portrayal and don't bother ourselves with details.

It is just a story, after all. In reality, it is not Lewis' fault that he doesn't address the complications of interpreting "biblical" doctrine, because that is not his aim. He is trying to evoke a response in his reader, an emotional and psychological recognition of his themes.

Lewis' argument from Moral Law is one such successful emotional and psychological evocation. It succeeds because Lewis doesn't attempt to promote belief in God based on scientific proofs, or technically philosophical arguments. He uses a general philosophical and logical approach to communicate his ideas, but that philosophy and logic is firmly embedded in human nature, in the universal urges that humans have, and in the intellectual/emotional longings that humans express.

We should believe in God because we have an innate sense of right and wrong, justice and injustice. We should believe in God because every desire we have has something which will satiate, every nook in our being has a corresponding piece that will fit into it. We should believe in God because it gives us the best understanding of why humans are the way they are.

Those are my general impressions of Lewis.

In many ways, Lewis' approach is probably the best one that Christians have. In a world in which humans are noticeably more dominant, more intelligent, and more adaptive than most of the species on the planet, looking to ourselves for the answers to our questions is the probably the only thing we can do.

To postulate being human without morality is to postulate being inhuman.

It is one of our defining characteristics. We don't always respect the Moral Law, or always willingly acquiesce to it, but it is undeniably there.

What does it mean in the context of evolution and theology?

It means that we live within a human conceptual world, bound on all sides by our humanity. We can't escape it, or go beyond it. At every point in which we think we have, we have only expanded our own humanness in a particular direction, perhaps widening the dome we live under, but still remaining contained within that conceptual dome. Outside of the dome, things fall apart. There may be all manner of things outside the dome, but they are outside of our realm of comprehension. All that we can do is try to make our dome larger every now and then.

Moral Law, God, and religious experience live within that dome.

Moral Law and Evolution, Part 2

2011-01-24T10:38:00.018-05:00

I'm almost done with The Language of God, but wanted to jot a few thoughts down before I forgot them.

As I read further into The Language of God, my impression of Collins gradually improved. He is in his element when he gets down to details in his field and begins to argue against the YEC and Intelligent Design movements through scientific evidence and fact. The funny thing is that the very evidence he uses in his book is the very evidence that made me eventually come to accept evolution. I came across most of the examples he used while watching Intelligent Design on Trial, a NOVA special on PBS about the trial that took place in Dover, PA when the school board clashed over evolution and intelligent design.

The fact that there actually are transitional fossils, that Michael Behe's example of the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum has been proven incorrect, and that the human genome has a fusion of 2 chromosomes that are present, yet separate, in chimpanzees, giving us 23 chromosomes instead of 24 like other primates, showing a direct link and traceable mutation between humans and chimpanzees....well it all made me realize that most of the "scientific" arguments of creationism and Intelligent Design were simply false.

It was a huge turning point in my thoughts. I finally understood why evolutionists were so infuriated by Intelligent Design and Creationism and why even Christian biologists had no qualms about believing in evolution. Evolution wasn't an attack on God by godless atheists, it was simply making sense of the very good evidence that has turned up within multiple fields of science.

I couldn't deny evolution on the basis of counter-evidence....because there wasn't any counter-evidence.

Collins explains all of this quite lucidly.

Unfortunately, when he's done with "science-y" part, he immediately moves back to the argument from Moral Law and more quoting of C.S. Lewis. This is the weakest part of the book because Collins is out of his depth. It isn't that the argument from Moral Law can't be persuasive, but it has no grounding in all of his scientific points. What seems to happen is that Collins is melding two different magisteriums without acknowledging what he is doing, and he has slammed on the brakes and switched gears rather suddenly.

Collins, throughout the book, continues to make assertions about "godless materialists" and "unnecessary ultra-liberal interpretations of Genesis" and believing in the "God of the Bible" and much of Scripture as "eyewitness accounts of historical events".

His motives for retaining his faith are very unscientific. And that is my main criticism of the book; it is a bit of a bait and switch. It doesn't answer the questions that I think that most people who pick up a book subtitled, A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, are looking for. There is no "evidence", from a scientific perspective, for his belief. Instead, he provides a description of the personal synthesis of his scientific understanding and his religious beliefs.

Here is the dilemma that Collins misses, maybe because of his background and not coming from a seriously impassioned evangelical faith from youth: the crisis that evolution causes for many people of faith has nothing whatsoever to do with science. It is a crisis of epistemology, a crisis of knowing what information to trust and where to look for the truth.

Collins writes at one point:

I do not believe that God who created all the universe, and who communes with His people through prayer and spiritual insight, would expect us to deny the obvious truths of the natural world that science has reveled to us, in order to prove our love for Him.(pg. 210)

On the one hand, Collins keeps asserting that the "God of the Bible" is not denied by evolution, yet he doesn't define what his picture of the "God of the Bible" looks like. Is it the God of the Bible who commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Is it the God of the Bible who made the sun stop in the sky so that Joshua could win the battle? Is it the God of the Bible who killed a man for accidentally touching the Ark of the Covenant?

These are the questions about God that many fundamentalists and evangelicals struggle with. The Bible is replete with stories in which people have to act in discordance with what they see around them in order to please God. The Bible, the Old Testament in particular, is replete with stories in which God is portrayed as somewhat capricious and mystifying in his actions.

I will assume that when Collins refers to the God of the Bible, he is referring to a milder Christian version of a loving, forgiving, always benevolent God. A God such as that is compatible with reason, and curiosity, and human potential.

Collins gets it backwards. Christians are not in need of a scientist who can affirm theology; they are in need of a theologian who can affirm science. Those are strikingly different things. Collins can't give YEC-ers what they need, because theirs is not a position beholden to science, it is a position beholden to theological imperatives.

Collins simply doesn't have the expertise in the relevant areas to communicate a true synthesis of science and theology and how the two might work together. Even if he did, it would come at the cost of reshaping many of those theological imperatives that he so blithely brushes by without any good alternatives.

In trying to deal with the theological implications of evolution Collins quotes Lewis again:

For long centuries, God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of his fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all of the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed in this state for ages before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all its material and physical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say "I" and "me", which could look upon itself as an object which knew God which could make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past...We do not know how many of these creatures God made, not how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become gods...They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God,"This is our business, not yours." But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives. We have no idea what particular act, or series of acts, the self-contradictory, impossible wish found expression. For all I can see, it might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, but the question is of no consequence.(pg. 208) and also(C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pgs 68-71)

The message comes across as "Genesis 1 and 2 don't have to be taken literally. Adam and Eve don't have to be real people.....but The Fall...that is definitely real."

Ok...maybe that's a simplistic evaluation of what Lewis is saying. After all, he wrote that passage many, many years ago and there is no telling how he would contribute to the current conversation in the context of further evolutionary proof and development. He was already ahead of many other Christians during his own time, we can't expect him to answer questions that weren't even being asked in his own context.

There is a problem with Collins using this quote from Lewis. On the one hand, he is unhooking the Creation story from possessing any scientific expectations or content. On the other hand, he is trying to locate the human condition within a real, historical, literal event labeled The Fall. Lewis, strangely enough, also isn't helping Collins' attempt to remove God as a constant interventionist in the evolutionary process. Collins, in his discussion of evolution, has said that tying God to the evolutionary process, and special creative influence upon it, is a bad idea....yet that is exactly what Lewis is talking about in this passage--God intervening to shape humanity, not only into a particular, mental/spiritual shape, but also in a particular physical/physiological shape.

I don't understand why Collins doesn't see this. In one breath, he is criticizing Paley's watchmaker analogy and ID and creationism as forming their arguments on human intuition, and in the next breath he is quoting Lewis, whose entire driving force in his work is predicated on human intuition about the Universe.

Collins doesn't seem to recognize it in Lewis, or in himself.

I still have a couple of chapters to go, and I think that I have at least one more post that I want to get to.

Moral Law and Evolution

2011-01-23T12:49:00.006-05:00

In the midst of going back and reading my comments on AVI's post from a few years ago, I decided that I should read The Language of God, by Francis Collins because it was the focal point of AVI's posts and I never actually read the book.

I'm almost halfway through and I can definitely see what AVI meant when he referred to Collins as having used C.S. Lewis too much. The first couple of chapters are simply Collins rehashing Lewis' most famous apologetic arguments from Mere Christianity. I will assume that Collins does this because he thinks that his prospective audience is made up of those who have no knowledge of Lewis, or Mere Christianity, or the argument from Moral Law.

This is all well-traveled ground for me. Honestly, I'm at the point where when I pick up a Christian book and all it is is a rehashing of Lewis, or heavily dependent on Lewis' fleshed out fictional portrayals of the Divine, or simply dressing up Lewis' ideas and arguments, without even acknowledging that they came from him, that I seriously want to stab myself in the eye with a fork.

And it isn't even that I don't like Lewis. I have tons of his work on my bookshelves. It is simply that I expect more from a book than a reframing of someone else's work. I suppose that reframing is good every once in a while, but there are so many books out there reframing Lewis that I hardly see the point of why they continue to get published. How many do we need?

That's my little rant.

In one of the sections in which Collins interacts with Lewis, in the context of evolution and altrusim, Collins writes this:

Agape, or selfless altruism, presents a major challenge for the evolutionist. It is quite frankly a scandal to reductionist reasoning. It cannot be accounted for by the drive of the individual selfish genes to perpetuate themselves. Quite the contrary: It may lead humans to make sacrifices that lead to great personal suffering, injury, or death, without any evidence of benefit. And yet, if we carefully examine that inner voice we sometimes call conscience, the motivation to practice this kind of love exists within all of us, despite our frequent efforts to ignore it.

He goes on to dismiss evolutionary explanations for the conscience on the basis that sacrificing oneself denies one the privilege of furthering the individual's direct genetic line. It is not advantageous, evolutionarily speaking, for a person to die for an altruistic cause, so therefore the conscience that we have must be inexplicable in biologic terms. He refutes an example of worker ants sacrificing themselves in order to protect the queen because all ants from a colony carry the same exact genetic code, meaning that the worker ant is somehow involved, indirectly, in the propagation of its genes.

This is a weak argument.

Attempts to explain human altrusim in terms of evolutionary behavior that has a single individual's desire to reproduce will definitely seem strained. Many altruistic soldiers lay dead on the field of battle, cut down in the prime of their lives, no children, no contribution to the gene pool. The high death rate among altruists would seem to prevent altruism from developing as a beneficial, evolutionary trait.

On the other hand, many of the traits that humans possess, supposedly as a result of evolutionary selection, would seem to me to be directly related to a sense of altruism. Certain genes have a trickle-down effect and cause changes in the next generation, not only in one area, but in multiple areas at the same time. One example that comes to mind is the experiment done with silver foxes in Russia in which, by selecting for tameness and breeding only the foxes that seemed least fearful of and less aggressive towards humans, the experimenters wound up creating animals that were more like proto-dogs. Not only did the successive generations become more and more tame, but the coloring of their coats changed, they acquired the ability to make dog-like noises, their tails changed. In short, one selective pressure had a domino effect on their physical and social characteristics.

Isn't it possible that any number of evolutionary steps could have given humanity a radically different social and mental orientation?

One of humanity's unique cognitive traits is the ability to imagine: the ability to imagine the future, the ability to imagine what might have happened in the past if things were done differently, the ability to imagine what it would be like to be someone else, or what it would be like to experience what other people experience. It is the human imagination that allows planning and mental leaps of understanding and gives us an evolutionary advantage over other animals.

Because we have this imagination and are more prone to thinking beyond the simple individual urge to procreate, it would only be natural for humans to be altruistic when it came to the survival of their species as a whole. Humans are altruistic because they are socially tied to other humans and have the ability to see beyond themselves as individuals and to imagine the negative consequences for survival of not being altruistic.

We can recognize the value of altruism even as many altruists die. Because we can perceive how the sacrifice of one can save the many, we mentally reinforce the value within ourselves. Not all altruists die, either, and those who do may do so after already reproducing.

Also, we are the only species that has the ability to purposely direct our own evolution. At this point, purely biological/"survival of the fittest" evolution is a thing of the past for us. We influence our own biologic make-up, for good or ill, all the time.

We are more like those worker ants than we care to admit.

Does this do away with Moral Law? If we assume that conscience is the result of highly developed, constantly selected, evolutionary traits does that mean Moral Law has no merit?

I don't think that it does, necessarily. I do, however, think that it changes shape.

That's up next.

John's Gospel Demonless?

2011-01-20T16:37:00.005-05:00

Just jotting a quick note to myself.

After the conversation with James on one of my posts where I mentioned not really believing in "spirits", I said that I should check out how each gospel portrays the activity of the demonic in the ministry of Jesus. I wondered if there was a difference between how the individual gospel writers portrayed demons and what they did and didn't do....and what Jesus claimed they were responsible for.

I haven't thoroughly checked all of the gospels or made any in-depth readings on the subject at this point, but in a quick word search for "demons" or "unclean spirit", and simply "spirit" I couldn't find one verse in the Gospel of John that refers to demons, or spirits....they're completely absent from the Jesus story.

The only time demons are brought up is when the Pharisees accuse Jesus of being possessed.

This strikes me as quite strange. I have read all of the gospels many, many times and never did I notice this before.

Anyone out there know of any resources that address this?

The Importance of Being Wrong

2011-01-19T11:30:00.008-05:00

In my last post, I emphasized that humanity must be able to objectively look at the world around it and piece together some basic truths about how the world works. We can't live in a veiled universe that refuses to let us access it; which is not to say that it is possible to know everything.

On the other hand, people are wired to see what they want to see. Many people only read books, or listen to speakers, or pundits, or politicians who already agree with their own preconceived ideas. When we do that, it makes us confident that we have a grounding for our particular pet ideas. Consensus, especially within a group of people whom we admire, makes us secure in our own positions.

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

--Oscar Wilde

I wish that quote wasn't true....but it is. When we find someone who can communicate ideas effectively and is charismatic, who appeals to our own emotions and intellect, who speaks and we simultaneously nod our heads, that person can pass on their ideas in a rapid way throughout a community of similarly oriented people. If one trolls the internet long enough, you'll see this in every quarter of it. There are a few wave-makers who write opinion pieces who are then quoted and linked to by hundreds and thousands of other people. You can go from site to site and read the posts and comments, in whatever niche of the internet which you are exploring, and you will inevitably hear the same ideas, talking points, even identical phrases used over and over again.

If it's the lefty blogs, there will always be someone referencing Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck as troglodytes, or tearing them apart. If it's the right-y blogs, Obama will surely be called a Kenyan Socialist trying to destroy the country with Obamacare. Every. Single. Time.

Perhaps this has been made worse by the sheer ease of transmitting ideas through the internet. Anyone, anywhere has access to almost any site. The opinions of a few can easily be disseminated and easily be repeated. For better or worse, the internet can operate as a Hive Mind, communicating with all the worker bees without even consciously trying to.

Keeping that in mind, and seeing the evidence all around us that people have a difficult time stepping outside of their own subjective, conceptual worlds, then wouldn't it be true to say that people, in general, are not objective, that we truly are blinded to opposing views and reality in some ways? Or that we are easily led and influenced?

Yes. That is true. The difference is that there is hope that we can overcome that subjectivity, that with enough information, and exposure and experimentation, we can learn a few things and maybe even change our minds.

I have personally come to suspect that the only way to begin trying to be more objective is to be completely wrong about something; wrong in an area that you never questioned, wrong in a way that you wouldn't have predicted, wrong in a significant way. Of course, being wrong isn't enough. You have to experience and recognize that wrongness for it to do any good.

"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong."

--GK Chesterton

When you have the experience of realizing that you were flat-out wrong about an issue, or a person, or your own chosen actions you have a transformative moment....or you should have a transformative moment! ;-)

This is what is called repentance--recognizing your own proclivities for sin, or bad choices, or pride, or misunderstanding. People who understand the depths of their own failures and limitations are people who can excuse the same in others. People who never consider how similar they are to their foes are people who will never be objective.

These are two cornerstone concepts in Christianity; repentance and empathy.

Repentance provides a way of orienting yourself in relation to yourself and God and others and empathy is a way of recognizing that everyone else is in the same boat.

Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us....

With the measure you use, it will be measured to you...

Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy...

Identifying our own blind spots allows us to try to work around them, and knowing that we have them brings us a step closer to a type of objectivity.

In order to spiritually mature, we have to be willing to admit defeat, admit the possibility that we can be wrong.

If we can do that in our relationships with the help of our religious beliefs, then we should be able to do it politically and scientifically. When the world proves out pet ideas wrong, the correct response is not to fight harder against the possibility but to simply admit that we were wrong and try a different way.

My point is not that we need to repent, repent, repent. My point is that Christianity has an expectation that we should be able to see the world around us and incorporate new information to further our understanding. The criticisms aimed at the Pharisees and Saducees in the gospels frequently revolved around their inability to let go of particular views and be open to what they saw around them.

The principle is still solid. It isn't enough for us to know what we think and why and be able to explain it. It is a necessary aspect of life that we need to to be able to re-evaluate our stances in light of what we see and experience.

Answering AVI on Evolution and Belief

2011-01-18T08:42:00.008-05:00

I took the time to go back and re-read the posts and comments that AVI asked me about last week. I was actually surprised because I thought I was going to cringe while I re-read my comments. I assumed that my thoughts were going to be radically different than they currently are.

They weren't...not really. In fact, you can see what I was struggling with even then, almost 3 and 1/2 years ago. I realized the implications of certain propositional beliefs and where they might eventually lead in terms of my evangelical version of Christianity.

So...what has changed?

I think the most fundamental change in me has been an epistemological shift. What I was wrestling with in my comments on those posts was, by and large, directly related to how I viewed Scripture. Even though I was never a complete, credulous literalist, and I understood that many things in Scripture were figurative, I still fundamentally believed that Scripture was divinely inspired and a reflection of God's revelatory interaction with humans. I acknowledged intellectually that the Bible had "errors" but saw those as insignificant in the grand themes of Scripture. I still took Scripture very seriously and was looking for a way to hold on to it and also be honest about what science had to say.

I wish that I could say that after 3 years I have figured out how all of this fits together, but I can't. I still have the same thoughts, although I have moved considerably to the theological left in my attempt to reconcile a semblance faith and belief with an acknowledgement with the facts on the ground...otherwise known as "reality".

Any belief system that requires people to look hard evidence in the eye and deny it for the sake of epistemological certainty is fundamentally lacking integrity. If something is true, then it must be true in more than the realm of personal belief. It must, at least in part, show up in reality occasionally....maybe not every day, maybe not dramatically...but it must be present enough that it doesn't require only faith to exist.

Many conservative Christians would decry that assertion, such as Al Mohler did in his recent essay that wound its way through the religious and evolutionary blogosphere with this quote coming to the forefront:

As I have stated repeatedly, I accept without hesitation the fact that the world indeed looks old. Armed with naturalistic assumptions, I would almost assuredly come to the same conclusions as BioLogos and the evolutionary establishment, or I would at least find evolutionary arguments credible. But the most basic issue is, and has always been, that of worldview and basic presuppositions. The entire intellectual enterprise of evolution is based on naturalistic assumptions, and I do not share those presuppositions. Indeed, the entire enterprise of Christianity is based on supernaturalistic, rather than merely naturalistic, assumptions. There is absolutely no reason that a Christian theologian should accept the uniformitarian assumptions of evolution. In fact, given a plain reading of Scripture, there is every reason that Christians should reject a uniformitarian presupposition. The Bible itself offers a very different understanding of natural phenomena, with explanations that should be compelling to believers. In sum, there is every reason for Christians to view the appearance of the cosmos as graphic evidence of the ravages of sin and the catastrophic nature of God’s judgment upon sin. [emphasis mine]

Ultimately, Mohler--a significant voice in conservative, evangelical Christianity--rejects evolution purely on an epistemological commitment to the Bible as the last word on all matters. If observable reality contradicts his interpretation of the Bible, or impinges on a dearly held theological view, then he makes the choice to reject that reality, or come up with scenarios in which "observable" reality isn't "actual" reality.

He safely insulates himself with those prior commitments. Reject observable data because it undermines the Bible and its theology on the basis that the Bible, in Mohler's view, goes against observable data. And we know we can prioritize what the Bible says because the Bible tells us we should.

It's like the telling question asked by the man caught in the act of infidelity, trying to defend himself:

"Who are you going to believe...me, or your own lying eyes?!"

The truth is that the worldview that Mohler espouses, by its very definition, must be predicated on the supernatural. Yet, it isn't just run-of-the-mill supernaturalism--the idea that there is something more than the material world that we see and understand--it is a supernaturalism which includes the concepts of supernatural evil and the impossibility of trusting one's own, or any human's, opinion on the matter. In a cosmos populated by Satan and demons, and man's own inability to know the truth, hard-core scientists and naturalists are the devil's pawns, leading the masses away from the true knowledge of God and reality.

There is no amount of arguing that can convince a person who is committed to this particular combination of propositions that they might be wrong. It's a trifecta; supernaturalism, active, unseen forces purposely trying to deceive us, and our own moral and intellectual deficiencies preventing us from being objective. At any point in which you might make some headway, one of these propositions will pop up and undermine any progress towards accepting anything other than what that person believes is Divine revelation.

If any one of those propositions are removed, then there is the possibility of beginning to accept scientific theories on evolution, or any number of things. A world in which supernatural beings aren't trying to mislead us at least gives us the chance to think things through without manipulative interference. A world in which humans can objectively, to the best of their ability, evaluate evidence and think theories through, is a world in which we can trust much of what we learn. We wouldn't second-guess every motivation in this search for truth, wondering if we're simply looking for the easy way out, or the theory that makes us feel more in control of our world. A world in which supernaturalism is absent is a world in which all we have is the attempt to understand the world around us, even if we are bound to viewing things through strictly human eyes which may misunderstand the world. Even if we have humans with prior epistemological commitments who purposely try to manipulate, or deceive others, we have the possibility of overcoming that as an obstacle.

Having enumerated a few of the obstacles to a conservative, evangelical acceptance of evolution, I will admit that the beginning of changing my mind about these things was in the dropping of two of the three propositions of the trifecta. I rejected the idea that Satan, or demons, had any sway at all in the visible world around me. Having been exposed to many instances of people trying to identify the "demonic" it became clear to me that every instance I encountered was simply psychological manipulation and suggestion. And most of the things that my fellow believers listed as the devil's schemes, or demonic activity, were simply instances of bad luck, or misunderstood mental states. I never once saw or heard of anything that was remotely "demonic".

The fodder for "spiritual warfare" ideas were almost always attributed to what can only be called Christian urban legends.....or unbalanced people trying to sell books or get paid to speak at church events. So...I stopped even considering evil, spiritual forces as something I needed to take seriously. At the time, I probably wouldn't have worded that quite so strongly. I would simply not dwell upon it or worry about it. After all, if there really were evil forces trying to manipulate my thinking, then what hope would I have that I could ever accurately identify them anyway. By very definition they were unobservable and more powerful than me.

Next to be eliminated from the trifecta was the idea that it was impossible to objectively know things. I rejected this because if we can't objectively know things, then life is utterly absurd and meaningless. At any point something which we think might be "good", could be displeasing to God, or very "bad". And how would we know the difference? The conservative answer is that God would reveal it to us. Yet, how can we trust what it is that we think God is revealing to us if we are hopelessly unable to know things objectively?

We can't. When Christians put forth this argument they are sowing the seeds of their own epistemological undoing. If you can't trust yourself, or humanity, you can't trust anything. Our own striving to understand is all that we have. Take that away and you have no way forward in faith, or science.

More later....

Redaction and Control

2011-01-13T11:59:00.006-05:00

I have changed quite a bit over the years. Maybe I haven't changed, but what I think about things has changed...drastically in some areas. This is something of which I am constantly aware.

Assistant Village Idiot/AVI, while posting some of his older posts from previous years, which I happened to have commented on, realized that they provided a history of my thoughts.

He writes:

I hadn’t realized that one of the functions of my "Best of” series is to trace the development of terri’s thought. Almost four years later, terri, where do you stand on these two related posts now?

Great. The internets are in my head! ;-)

I won't answer AVI's question in this post, because I would rather spend some time thinking about it and how I will reply, but I will address a topic related to the question; self-redaction.

People change. Their opinions change. Their confidence level changes.

As they change, the need to overturn previous ideas and reformulate their identity comes to the forefront. Normally, this is not a public transformation. People familiar with "the changer" may decide that they no longer have anything in common with them. They may slowly pull away, or "the changer" may naturally drift in a different direction. It usually is not an event that is documented, or perhaps even understood by the people around them, except for maybe their closest relationships.

That is not the current case for anyone who blogs, or for anyone who has any sort of public life, or public stance. Now, anything you have written, or spoken out loud is recorded somewhere, whether it's in the basement archive of the internet, or posted as a video on youtube, or distributed through Facebook profiles. The amount of readily available information on any person who has had any online presence, no matter how minuscule, is staggering.

The only comfort is that there is so much information online that only people who are actively trying to find you, and information about you, will come across the outline of your life.

So, try not to attract stalkers! ;-)

What should bloggers do when they change? I have known some who actively go back and delete previous posts, either out of embarrassment, or a desire to present their current persona as unified.

I have purposely resisted that urge. If I started going through my archives, deleting posts that I wrote and no longer agree with 100%, I would see it as a kind of cannibalism and the worst type of self-deceit. I have the luxury of feeling that way because my blog and readership are pretty small, and I don't plan on running for public office any time soon. I can afford to leave my life and thoughts up, warts and all.

On the other hand, I have severely limited the personal topics which I write about. Only when I need to vent my spleen, do I venture into that territory. I have censored myself because I realize that it is only a matter of time before my blog will be found by someone, somewhere who I know and interact with in real life.

As such, I don't want to write things that I would regret. I also am very aware that as my children grow older and more cognizant of "the blog" that at some future point they will probably read through it. I used to pore over my mother's high school year book and read all of the notes that people wrote in it. It was interesting to think of my mother as a separate person and to peer into her high school relationships in such an innocuous way.

Considering that nothing ever truly disappears on the internet, I choose much more cautiously the things which I write about my experience of motherhood and my relationships with my children. I am always aware that my kids may choose to bore themselves to death, at some point in the future, by reading what I write here.

When I first started blogging, I thought that I was going to be a "mommy blogger" writing posts about the battle of parenthood and how my kids were driving me crazy. I definitely have some of those posts, but I soon realized that I didn't want to write about my daily existence as a mom. That was my 24-7 real life.

I much more enjoyed, and do enjoy, writing about things that had/have little to do with what I spend most of my time doing, managing a family. I know that what I do is important, but I need a slice of myself to not be determined by that role.

I am more than a mom and wife, so I write about everything else that interests me.

About once a month, I have a desperate urge to wipe this blog out....to just stop blogging....to erase as much of my online existence as I can. This usually happens when I have an uptick in traffic.

When someone links to me and actually takes anything I said seriously, it startles me. I want to shrink back and withdraw and ask,"You're listening to me? Really? Are you sure you want to do that?" Because even though I am narcissistic, in the way that all regular bloggers must be in order to think that anyone cares what they have to say in the first place, I am also uncomfortable with being scrutinized. I like to be in control of who knows me and how well they know me. I like to have a sense for who's reading and why and what the likely reaction will be.

The longer I blog, the more open I leave myself to being mentally dissected by anyone who chooses to spend the time dissecting me. My safety lies in the fact that most people are not all that interested in the task. So...Yay for that!

Even though I have the urges to delete and redact and be in control of my online persona, I resist that urge because I think that it's bad for me to give in to it. Keeping the ugly parts, and the not-so-coherent parts, and the parts I would rather forget, and the earnest, innocent parts is important. It causes me, most of the time, to speak/write with some humility...because I am sure that somewhere, someone could find something I wrote and throw it right back at me. At least in keeping all of what I have written, it's possible to trace where I started and how I got there.

When we essentially erase our history and rewrite a better, more pleasing(to ourselves) version of it we lose touch with reality and present a reality that doesn't quite adhere to itself. We put forth a history which isn't true or real...at least in the sense of "history".

Unfortunately, the common impulse is to do just that. History is replete with empires and religions and movements which have, upon coming into power, tried to erase all mention of previous empires, religions, and movements.

I think of the biography I read about Henry the VIII's wives, and how when he moved on to a new wife, he would try to erase any mention of the old one. One, in particular, had been so thoroughly erased that there was only one spot in the royal house which had her initials, an overlooked artifact that had been missed in the "cleansing" of her memory.

Self-redaction is a mild form of self-destruction and denial.

I am trying to look at myself unflinchingly...though I do sometimes flinch at the sight of myself and what the changing appearance means for me. Yet....I won't completely break the mirror and pretend that I don't see myself for who I am and where I came from.

Puppets For the Win!!

2011-01-11T15:09:00.009-05:00

My gainful employment consists of performing a Bunraku-style puppet show for 4th graders at a different elementary school each day.

My job is a strange mixture of performance, improv, and public speaking. Most of the time it is a lot of fun, especially during the Q and A session in which the kids get to ask the puppets questions, or offer solutions to them, directly. You never know what a kid is going to say and you have to find funny, entertaining, affirming ways to acknowledge them while also directing the conversation where you want it to go.

To the kids...I am a rock star. To adults, it's slightly embarrassing to list my occupation as Puppeteer. However, the laughter I can elicit from a bunch of fourth-graders is a boost to my self-esteem even though I have a very low-paying, low-prestige kind of job.

While driving through downtown Tampa on my way to a show, I saw this guy walk through the busy traffic in front of me:

I had spotted a fellow puppeteer! In public! Unashamed!

He walked across the intersection and was gone before I could really get a good listen to what he was saying. He held his puppet in front of him, speaking with it, and had a huge sign strapped to his back that seemed to reference God. All I could read from my vantage point was PoorPennyCarson.com. So, intrigued by a street preacher with both a puppet and a website, when I got home later that day, I tried to look up the website. It didn't exist, but I found tons of hits and a few youtube videos about Poor Penny Carson.(that link has a brief video in which Carson explains himself)

From everything I could gather, Poor Penny Carson and his puppet, Sweetpea Johnson, have been doing this for years...preaching about God and the end of the world, throughout Georgia and Florida for the last few years.

Even the "end of the world" is appealing when you talk about it through a puppet, right? ;-)

On the serious side, I wondered how Penny Carson has managed to survive all these years doing this and how he provides for himself and if he has any relatives who wonder where he's at and what he's doing and how he's doing.

It's alternatively funny, sad, and worrisome to think about a guy spending his whole life doing this.

On a happier note...Puppets + Queen = Awesome!

The Tower of Babel and Heaven's Staircase

2011-01-09T20:23:00.007-05:00

Last week was the first week that I ever told my children that a story in the Bible wasn't true, in the sense of historical, literal fact.

We were actually on the way to church and DH was trying to see if they noticed that one of their Yu-Gi-Oh card references, which was a power called babel, was actually a biblical reference. The power of the particular game card caused confusion for your opponent.

Genesis 11:1-9

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people werebuilding. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel--because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Eventually, we had to make the connection to the Tower of Babel for them, at which point they said, "Oh....yeah!" Reminding them of the story led them to speculate about what the first, original language was

This was when I broached the idea that some stories are meant to explain ideas and may not be literally true....that there may never have been one original language, but that the story was a way to explain the world as the writer saw it.

What's funny is that, by complete coincidence, DoOrDoNot has a post up about the Tower of Babel right now poking fun at taking it literally. She quotes a parody of "All True Bible Stories for Children". It's funny but also irreverent...so beware that you may be offended by the parodist's parody, not of the text, but of the simpleton attitude portrayed by the literal interpreters of the text.

As a literal story, the Tower of Babel makes no sense to most of us. Why does God care if we cooperate? Why does he want humanity to be confused and separate? Why does he seem afraid of what they might be able to accomplish?

It doesn't make sense. Isn't God the one who wants to live in peace? Isn't God the one who wants us to cooperate within our communities?

Why would he do such a thing? Why would the author of the story cast God in such a light?

The book I am currently reading, Joseph's Bones, by Jerome M. Segal, proposes that God is fearful about man's accomplishments and development of technology; the ability to make bricks and mortar rather than having to rely on stone. They have learned to create things:

...Mankind has an awareness of danger, senses the importance of being unified, and successfully carries out a breakthrough project of technological and social accomplishment.

God experiences the power it represents. He projects it forward, saying that if this is what mankind can do at this early stage, then ultimately nothing, "will be out of their reach." Such a belief is not unlike the belief that if mankind does not blow itself up first, through science, we will will ultimately be able to conquer every constraint.

In the Babel story God expresses a fear of an ever-expanding human capability, a fear of human reach. He envisions that humans will develop powers that will make them godlike, able to achieve whatever they desire.(pg. 88)

I think Segal is right that the story portrays a God fearful of humanity, but I think he gets the motivation slightly wrong. The goal of humanity, in the story, is to build a tower that reaches up to the heavens.

The "heavens" as we think of them today, are simply what we would call stars, or the space filled with the sun, moon and stars. We know what stars are. We have some sense of distance, and matter and the meaning of their movements.

Now imagine a world in which you knew nothing about space, or stars, or celestial phenomena. You would see these incredible lights in the sky, moving predictably for the most part, except for the occasional eclipse, or comet, or meteorite. You wouldn't know what the movements represented, but your culture may have realized that certain heavenly bodies had cycles, like the phases of the moon, or that the sun shone less in winter than it did in summer. You would think that these celestial movements meant something. You might even ascribe personalities to them, or associate them with gods or powerful beings.

Whatever the case, the imagination could populate the heavens with power and beauty that was out of reach, yet somehow also a part of the Earth.

You would have no conception that there were other planets...or even what the word "planet" meant. You wouldn't imagine that there were other "earths" out there with other "suns". The universe was probably a single connected place in your mind.

And the heavens...well they must be where God, or the gods, lived. Because no one ever saw God, or gods, on earth. And....the night sky instilled such wonder in people. Just looking at it can give modern people chills, how much more wondrous did it seem to ancient peoples?

So, assuming that an ancient people believed that "heaven" was where God lived, and that it was a physical location directly above earth, what would it mean for people to build a tower to the heavens?

Could it be that they imagined that they would be able to enter the place where God dwelt? That if the tower was high enough they could knock on his front door?

This conception of God being "up there" wasn't far-fetched in ancient cosmology. When Jacob has a dream/vision at Bethel, he sees angels ascending and descending a "ladder" that reaches from the earth into heaven.

So, when the people decide to build a Tower to heaven, this is a direct threat to God. They will soon be on his doorstep. They will be powerful. They may war against him.

In that context, one in which Heaven is a physical place that could be reached if humanity had the resources to get there, the story of the Tower of Babel makes sense. It is comprehensible. It holds together.

God is keeping humanity from cooperating together in order to prevent a physical intrusion of his dwelling place. He is preventing that in the same way he prevented Adam and Eve from returning to the Garden of Eden, through a physical guard; cherubim and a flaming sword.

If taken in that context, God's move to confuse humanity with different languages and cultures is not arbitrary. He is guarding his home and pre-empting an unwelcome invasion of his space.

The problem that anyone trying to interpret the story literally will have, is that a story which made sense 3,000 years ago, makes no sense today. We know, now, that no matter how high the Tower of Babel became, they were never going to reach Heaven's doorstep....and because we know that, we also know that God would have no reason to fear a million such towers...and because we know that the motivation imputed to God in the story is based on a conception of the world which was based in ancient, incorrect cosmology....the story has lost any sense for us.

This particular story is so reliant upon ancient, cultural context, that to take it literally in our modern times, is to make God an arbitrary trickster. Wouldn't he have gotten a bigger laugh by letting humanity build their towers and discover that...no...they couldn't reach Him that way?

What's the old proverb?

Man plans, God laughs.

Games and Word Play

2011-01-04T13:24:00.005-05:00

I mentioned in my New Year's post that my mother's side of the family always plays games on Christmas Day...once everyone is hopped up on turkey, mashed potatoes and seven-layer salad.

Their favorite game is Guesstures, which is kind of like charades with a time limit. It moves quickly and is fun with large groups of people. It's hilarious watching people trying to act out words or concepts while everyone on their team is shouting out random guesses. It's a lot of fun.

Another game we played at my aunt's house was Buzzword. It consisted of trying to identify particular phrases or sayings that used a particular word. You would receive clues about the phrase which explained the meaning of the phrase, but in a very different, often unnatural way.

One of the games that we got for Christmas was Catchphrase, which is a lot like Password. You can use any words you want to explain what the catchphrase is without actually using any part of it.

So, other than listing a bunch of games that we have played, where am I going with this?

Well, I began to wonder about games throughout history and what made something an entertaining game. Most of the ancient games I know of are strategy based games like chess, checkers, or mancala. There are games which rely on strategy combined with trickery/bluffing, like certain card games..Poker, for example.

While those games are still very popular, I wondered at how different modern games are from those games. So many of the games that we play and know are directly related to language and words, or communicating concepts, or associating what seem like disparate concepts with one another as in the game Tri-Bond, in which you have to discern what the common theme running between three words/ideas is.

It's all very language-based fun.

You don't actually prove yourself in "battle" as much as you show your superior communication skills.

It reflects some sort of a shift in our human priorities.

While we still have sports games, and strategy games, language-based games seem to have commanded a large market share of what we think is fun. And considering that "fun"can usually be a dress rehearsal for real life, it points to an emphasis on the importance of effective communicators, and the admiration we have for someone who is really good at using and mastering communication.

Those are my random thoughts. If anyone knows of ancient language and communication games, leave a comment. I'd like to know if I have grasped something real or am just making stuff up! ;-)

Evangelical Egalitarianism

2011-01-03T10:05:00.001-05:00

A good essay on egalitarianism from an evangelical perspective by Professor John Stackhouse.

Pew Sitting

2011-01-02T21:25:00.000-05:00

Our family has continued to regularly attend the local ELCA(Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) congregation in our area, and I must say that I have felt more comfortable at this particular church than I have in years. I say that with some trepidation, afraid that I might "break the spell" and suddenly reverse my opinion on the matter.

I've tried to analyze what it is about this church that makes me feel welcome, or slightly relieved, when I walk through the doors. I'm not sure that I can completely quantify how I feel, but I'll try.

Lack of politics mentioned in the service/sermon: Neither conservative, nor liberal slants have seemed to surface in the actual services. I'm sure that doesn't mean that the congregants don't have opinions, but they remain just that...opinions held by people attending the church, not opinions held forth as truth from the pulpit.

The service is liturgical, but with contemporary music....which is contemporary while also being simultaneously reverential, as opposed to full-on rock band mode that I've been used to in non-denominational, evangelical churches. This has been good for the kids, because they have known several of the worship songs and it has eased them into this different type of a service.

There is also a lot of singing.

Typical evangelical churches have a strict 3-4 song structure to the service: Welcoming song, announcements, worship song, sermon, closing song. There may be a "special" song thrown in there by a vocalist or group. But, the actual singing by the congregation is frequently broken up, or made difficult by churches using music which is not meant to be sung by large groups of people....making half of the congregation unable to participate because the key is too high. Male, tenor, worship leaders are notorious for this. They pick the songs they like, which show off their range but which also exclude everyone who isn't a tenor or soprano from doing a halfway decent job singing along.

The worship leader at this church has done a good job of picking songs that are meaningful and using them in the appropriate key for congregational singing.

So...right off the bat...the church does several things that appeal to me emotionally. That probably seems superficial, but I don't care. ;-)

Most importantly, I think one of the main reasons I like the church is the way that following a liturgy nips certain practices in the bud. Because communion is the climax of each service, the altar is always reserved for the bread and wine. The worship leader and musicians are off to the side, instead of occupying the space as a stage. There are also no "specials". Everything in the service is directly tied to congregational participation. After the Scripture reading, the congregation replies with "Thanks be to God". After the pastor says "Peace be with you" the congregation says "and also with you." If there is a prayer the congregation responds with an "amen".

The creed is sung together and the Lord's Prayer is sung with the congregation holding hands, and with a nice musical arrangement.

Aesthetically speaking, it appeals to me.

The pastor does brief sermons, but he does them well and is generally a good speaker. His points are always relevant to the text and generally encouraging, even while exhorting people to be more faithful in their relationship with God.

Every time I leave the service, I leave feeling more uplifted than when I went in. Every time I leave the service I have some hope that I will be able to maintain my faith somehow...no matter how bleak my heart might feel before the service.

At this point, I am forcing myself to attend church, hoping against hope that I will find a way forward, while also knowing that there is no returning to certain paths for me. And, at this particular church, "forcing" myself has been easy. I don't feel pressured. I don't feel as if I am surrounded by people waiting to dissect my thoughts and show disapproval.

On the other hand, we haven't made any real effort to dig deeper into the church. I'm not even sure if I am capable of it right now. I can't teach Sunday School as I used to because I can't teach the Bible stories with the credulity that most churches would want. A literary, critical, anthropological approach isn't going to fly with the elementary students...or even most adults.

Being honest that it is easier for me to state the things I don't believe rather than the things I do believe would be another obstacle for me.

Every Sunday in which we attend, we participate in communion, except for our children. Coming from a Baptist background, infant baptism was something we didn't believe in or practice. In this Lutheran church baptism is required to participate in communion, and also a brief class or two is taken by children before their first communion. Our children haven't been baptized and when they walk up with us to receive communion, they instead receive a "blessing", which is a quick prayer said over them. I know the pastor is always perplexed when we show up and tell him to "bless" the children who are much older than the usual first communicants, but we haven't actually spoken with him.

Today, as we approached the altar he reached for the communion wafer and I had to explain that the children weren't baptized. He replied, "Well, we should probably talk about that." He said it with a smile, not in a particularly stern way. I simply answered that it was a long story.

Truthfully DH and I have talked about wanting to speak with the pastor about many things, but we have always been busy or hesitant.

Honestly I am slightly afraid to have the conversation that I need to have. Afraid that revealing all of my doubts will not be met with understanding and compassion, but disapproval and trite answers.

How do I tell a pastor, "I may not believe half of what you do, but I still like coming here."? How do I reveal that I am agnostic about many things of which I used to be so certain, and I am OK with that?

And if this revelation of my inner thoughts is met with rejection...then where do I go?

Most of what I think, I keep to myself. I don't want to disturb the faith of others. I don't desire to cause anyone to go through what I am going through.

I also won't stay at this church, or any other church, under false pretenses. When we have a conversation with the pastor, it will be with brutal honesty from me. If that means that I simply attend and never participate in any leadership position...then that is what it will be. If even that is untenable....then I guess that I will be on my own, though that isn't what I want.

Entitlement and Women's Work

2011-01-02T13:18:00.004-05:00

A couple of weeks before Christmas I participated in some troll-baiting at Assistant Village Idiot's blog. One of the links he put up led to an article in which a blogger, towards the end of a post on various topics, declared that 70-80% of entitlement spending programs, like Social Security and Medicare, are simply transfers of wealth from men to women.

Men pay into the system, women reap the benefits.

I made some mild comment about the post needing a warning label that certain people's heads(mine, in particular) might explode upon reading such a post. That was all an anonymous commenter and aforementioned troll needed to begin personally insulting me. And, knowing from the outset the type of person I was dealing with, I engaged in some rhetorical, obnoxious troll-baiting. At times, I tried to comment fairly and seriously....but, as anyone who's been using the internet for more than 20 minutes can tell you, it was all for naught.

It's impossible to talk reasonably with unreasonable people.

I won't go into the entire discussion because I tediously repeated my points ad nauseum already on AVI's post.

However, the discussion did spark some more reflections on the nature of the relationship between men, women and finances.

My troll conversation partner stated that most wealth belonged to men. I asked how those men's wives and daughters would feel about such a statement, and he, in the midst of other things, glancingly referred to the sense of entitlement that my comment implied.

I had to think about that for a minute. Do I feel that women are entitled to the wealth their male partners produce? In today's day and age, many women work and have their own assets. They are not necessarily beholden to men for their financial well-being.

On the other hand, a woman like me, who has stayed home for many years raising children , or worked part-time in order to facilitate the family's needs and provide stability and a constant parental presence in the home, depends greatly on her husband to provide for her and the family.

When DH and I had children we had already decided that I was going to stay home in order to take care of them. This was a mutual decision. At first it was very uncomfortable for me. I was used to paying my own way for things and contributing financially to our marriage/family. I paid my own way through college, bought my own car as a teenager, and had been providing for myself since high school. Learning to be financially dependent upon someone else was disconcerting to me.

And it showed. I felt very constrained about spending money. DH and I are not big spenders anyway, but I still felt self-conscious, at first, about buying a new shirt, or a pair of jeans, or a book at the bookstore. In the beginning it felt as if all the money was DH's money and I was some hanger-on asking, "Please, sir...can I have some more?"

DH never made me feel this way....it was just how I felt because of not feeling as if I had any control over the situation and thinking that I wasn't making a real contribution to the family.

I knew that what I was doing was important, but I hadn't yet realized my worth.

I no longer worry about those types of things. When you have been married for a good length of time and have raised your children together and been through family and health crises together....you realize that marriage and family is all about partnership, working together to build something of value.

In the midst of this partnership you come to the realization that "equality" does not mean that at any particular point in time in a relationship that both parties have completely equal burdens and responsibilities and benefits. There is no such thing as a 50-50 relationship. Life precludes it. Many times it is an 80-20 relationship, or a 0-100 relationship. The hope is that those times of inequality flip-flop and the partner who has formerly contributed "more" will be on the receiving end.

To be comfortable with the inevitable inequalities in relationships, you have to trust the person with whom you are in partnership. They have to be reliable and responsible and aiming for the same goal, one that is larger than one person's particular satisfaction. In the context of such a relationship, "mine" and "yours" fades away. There is only "ours" or "the family's".

In that vein...I do feel "entitled"(though that word has negative connotations for me) to my "husband's" wealth...because I don't see it as his. We are working together. He brings in the most money....I provide our family a maternal glue that holds us together. The loss of either of us would devastate our family.....financially and emotionally.

When my husband gives up "his" wealth and I give up "my" opportunities to get my own wealth, we all benefit.

Dying to self, in the service of something greater than oneself, inevitably brings oneself something even better.

Self-sacrifice is ultimately self-serving...in a good way.

maybe more on this later....

Happy New Year!!

2011-01-01T15:40:00.007-05:00

Trying to expose our children to new, exotic experiences, we drug the family up to Illinois for an extended family Christmas and the children's first sighting of some strange white powder that the natives call "snow".

Our little Florida Corolla Before the Christmas Eve Blizzard:

And After:

The Rationalist desperately worked to make a snowman, but the snow wasn't quite wet enough and Frosty was only about 12 inches high

A good first attempt.

The Intuitive tried catching snowflakes on his tongue.

We all prepared for the snowball battle...except for DH who was being the camera man.

We had great fun and the boys spent hours freezing their fingers off playing in the snow. However, The Intuitive suddenly changed his tune about wanting to move to Canada when he's older. After a week of temperatures in the teens and twenties, he's decided that he might stick around Florida after all.

Besides the first sighting of snow, the boys were able to meet many of their cousins and great-aunts and uncles for the very first time and take part in the giant family gathering that happens every year at Christmas. They pack about 75 people into my aunt's house and fill it with food and general revelry...and serious board and card game competitions.

I spent almost every Christmas in the same way when I was growing up.

Later in the week we traveled up to Chicago and took the boys to the Field Museum of Natural History, where they house Sue, the most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever excavated.

They weren't as impressed with the Egyptian mummies as I thought they would be. Those always fascinated me when I was their age. They enjoyed the meteorite exhibit and the gold and gem exhibits, but the 3D movie about Sue was probably their favorite part.

After the museum closed, we met my youngest brother near his tiny apartment in Chinatown and took him out for dinner. He's 22 now and noticeably more mature than the last time we saw him a few years ago. He's got a good job, some career goals and surprised us with gift cards for Christmas.

Even former selfish, surly teenagers grow up to be decent people!!

I told him that I was proud of him, and I think it meant a lot to him.

We had a really good visit with my mother, and as we left The Rationalist said that he felt sad that we were leaving Grandma Jan's.

Other than the colds that we were all fighting during our visit, there were nothing but positive experiences. No family drama. No grumpy children. No car problems.

A Norman Rockwell tableau if ever there was one.

It's funny how you never know when those will occur. You can never summon them at will. They just magically emerge for a few moments to be enjoyed and make fond memories to return to again and again.

Christmas Break...from blogging

2010-12-14T20:02:00.002-05:00

Things are super-busy for me right now and probably won't let up until the after the New Year.

So, I am simply going to take a break from reading, commenting, and blogging for the most part.

Be well and have a Merry Christmas!!

Soccer Pics

2010-12-13T15:02:00.004-05:00

The Rationalist is the furthest kid on the left in the orange Jersey. His team was so evenly matched with the opposing team that the entire game went by with no goals on either side.....several near misses for both teams...but no points. They each had good goalies defending the goal.

The Rationalist, while being much smaller than everyone else on his team, always makes a few good strategic moves in getting the ball away from the opposing team. He is a good support member and always gives it his best shot.

The Intuitive got to try his hand at being goalie for the second half of his game. His team is a lot like the Bad New Bears of the soccer league.

However, even though his team lost by several points, The Intuitive did make several important saves that kept the defeat from being even worse.

He was very pleased with himself.

The Fourteenth Apostle

2010-12-12T15:52:00.003-05:00

I have become convinced that as far as Evangelicals are concerned, C.S. Lewis is officially the Fourteenth Apostle of the Christian church, St. Paul being the thirteenth.

Countless conversations that delve deeply into theology that I have been involved in will inevitably have someone bring Lewis into the picture, with a quote from one of his essays, or more commonly a reference to one of his novels, be it the space trilogy, or the Narnia series, or The Screwtape Letters.

He has affected the way modern, Protestant, Christians think and express themselves so deeply that most don't even realize the debt that they owe him.

Most interesting to me is the way that Lewis' stories have resonated with Christians and, sometimes, seem to carry a general authority in their portrayals. Conversations about hell will have someone quoting The Last Battle or The Great Divorce. Discussions about temptation or spiritual warfare will have someone referring to Screwtape and Wormwood.

Lewis' work has become so absorbed that there is no self-consciousness in even mentioning it within the context of theology and practical church matters. No one seems concerned with the fact that these concepts come from fictitious fantasy novels.

My point is not demote the stories' importance....but to turn that observation to something else.

Lewis' work successfully captures the imagination because he has taken our sacred stories and made them bigger . He has expanded ideas about God, mankind and salvation and sewn them into other dimensions and worlds. He has left the door open for a future that might indeed be perplexing to us; worlds with sentient, alien life, worlds with talking beasts, and dimensions of a reality just outside of our senses.

Whether those worlds do, or even could, exist is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he provides a way for us to imagine how it might be, or could be...and that speaks to people in powerful ways.

Jeff Dunn, over at internetmonk.com, has a post up about his disappointment with the newly released Voyage of the Dawn Treader. His disappointment is almost completely tied into his assessment that the theology of the book was somehow lost in translation in the making of the film. In a strange way his severe reaction highlights the weight given to Lewis' work, because although most book-lovers are frequently dissatisfied with movie renderings, few are so upset at the loss of meaning that he attributes to the rendering. He even goes on to discuss how a portrayal from the book has changed his life, or given him hope.

This jogged my memory of another post at internetmonk in July in which a father recounts reading a passage of Lewis to his children, barely able to keep from breaking down at the emotional impact it had on him after he had received bad news about his daughter's health. His post so closely identifies Jesus with Aslan, that I found it startling.

Part of my former evangelical self read his post disapprovingly. The more liberal part of me recognized that what this man was doing was what all people in all times do...they use the stories that convey deep meaning to their lives...stories that may, or may not, be literally true, factual stories.

This is a strange mixture of things. In circles in which people feel the necessity to defend the literalness of the biblical stories, there are also people who are incredibly touched by a modern fictitious story which they know is not true, but which has been equated as a valid representation of the sacred story.

This is how cultures incorporate and systematize their symbols, through the broad acceptance and reliance on particular distillations that speak to a particular group.

In my fanciful moments, I wonder if 500 years from now,--after more authors have continued to study and read Lewis and write books about him, and his influence continues to grow within Christianity--Lewis' work and symbols will be so ubiquitous that Jesus will be represent as a lion with a full mane.

And...I wonder what future generations would think of such a development.

DH's Links

2010-12-10T13:43:00.003-05:00

DH sends me links all the time. I keep telling him he needs his own blog to feature the things he sends me...but he hasn't taken me up on the idea.

Here are a few links from him:

Dr. Seuss animates Star Wars

Cool, witty, still life photography

Freaky, amazing storm photo

TSA uses unwise tactics for children's pat-downs

Tax Cuts and Unemployment

2010-12-07T08:14:00.004-05:00

So...let me get this straight. Republicans and Tea Party members who were overwhelmingly elected on a platform of cutting spending because of the doomsday scenario of our debt and deficit....are OK with extending unemployment benefits with money that we don't actually have.

And...Democrats are willing to not raise taxes, or revert them back to pre-Bush era rates, even though they know there is no way to dig ourselves out of debt until we bring in more income into the government in order to pay for things that we have already bought.

This is the worst of both worlds and part of why our country is so screwed up.

Politicians are not capable of unflinchingly doing what needs to be done. Either keep the tax cuts and don't continue to spend money we don't have....or spend money to alleviate the financial woes of the citizenry and raise taxes to help pay for it.

This makes Republican leaders look bad because it seems as if they are really only concerned with saving people within their own tax brackets from paying into the system.

It makes Democrats look bad because it seems like they are willing to just spend and spend and spend money that we don't have.

I don't think this is what "bipartisanship" is supposed to look like.

Instinctual Response

2010-12-02T14:53:00.004-05:00

ugh.

Today, as I was walking to pick up the kids from school, I encountered a little, blond hellion of a boy who had just spit on another child and was inciting general violence. It wasn't his first time. I've caught him kicking and hitting at the same group of kids in the past as the sidewalk streams with kids on their way home.

This afternoon, without thinking, I caught him right after he had spit on another child and was dashing away.....and by "caught" I mean that I swooped my arms out and physically stopped him.

Automatic reflex. I didn't even think about it.

He began talking about how the other kids had said something mean to he and his sister on the "first day"...whatever that meant. I replied that it's not OK to spit on people, or hit them, or kick them just because they say mean things. I told his sister, who was older, to take him home and make sure that he stayed away form the other group of kids.

They left, and I finished walking to the school thinking to myself that I had done a really stupid thing by physically stopping the boy. I didn't grab him, or roughly handle him, but I did stop him. And....it's never a great idea to touch another person's child, no matter how completely awful they're being or how gentle the touch.

As I wondered whether or not I had made a huge mistake in intervening in the situation, I figured that I had better talk to one of the teachers and let them know what has been going on for some time.

This is when things get slightly worse. I approached the PE teacher, "Coach", and asked if he knew these children, who I described as a short, little, blond boy and went on to describe his older sister as taller, with blond hair and who is a little bit chubby.

Let's see...how could this go wrong?

Well, in the midst of my description, I hear a woman from about 5 feet away say, "Those are my children!"

Open mouth, insert foot. I hadn't said anything horrible, but who wants their child described in terms of being a "little bit chubby"?

I told the mother what had happened and she left pretty quickly, saying that she was looking for her children anyway.

Later, I went to the office and spoke with the Assistant Principal and told her about the escalating incidents and she took some notes and said that she would work on it.

Now I am sitting here wondering if this is all going to backfire on me and if I am going to have an irate mother in my face tomorrow.

Hopefully, she won't spit in my face and run away.

The Meaning of Jesus..some thoughts

2010-11-30T16:51:00.003-05:00

I finished reading The Meaning of Jesus; Two Visions, by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright.

Readers will remember that this was one of four books that I added to an impressive reading list. I have yet to finish, or even start, the other three, though I did renew them. Hope springs eternal, I guess.

The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions is a point/counterpoint book compiled of essays from Borg and Wright addressing Jesus' view of himself, his birth, his death and resurrection, the Second Coming and what it means to live a Christian life.

They mostly disagree, except when they don't. ;-)

I should end the review thusly.

Except, I won't because although the point/counterpoint did get a little tedious and bogged down sometimes, the book provoked several reactions in me.

I will admit that I am generally sympathetic to Borg's views and I anticipated that I would read his thoughts and find what I was looking for, a way to keep Jesus even as more and more of what I used to think of as literal truth seems to be slipping through my fingers. For the most part, I liked what he had to say, though there were times when even I couldn't take the vague, wishy-washy stances that would pop up. Even as I drift toward Progressive(?) or Liberal(?) Christianity, I still get irritated at the lack of conviction and certainty that I encounter. It's part of my make-up. I want to know what THE TRUTH is and plant my flag there. However, everyone has a different map and idea about where that location is, so I just wander around hoping that I am at least in the general vicinity.

It bugs me to no end.

I had previously tried to read N.T Wright's Surprised by Hope, but could never get past the first few chapters. He simply couldn't hold my interest in that book. I think that was partly due to the fact that I was very busy during the time that I was trying to read it. One other reason was that I couldn't read Wright without hearing C.S. Lewis. I've already read much of Lewis' work, so the unmistakeable voice echoing in Wright was quite familiar. The points about "chronological snobbery", the criticism of Enlightenment thinking, the reliance on Lewis' apologetic moves, they all seemed to be Lewis simply refitted and fine-tuned. I guess that's fine, but if I wanted to hear Lewis' point of view, I would read Lewis.

Curious if I was spot-on in my estimation of Wright, I decided to see if I could find out more about whether Wright credits Lewis as an influence and came across this article in which Wright both praises and criticizes Lewis. (I'm always surprised when I am right about something that I guessed intuitively.)

After finishing the book, I pondered an idea that has occurred to me before but I have had difficulty formulating into words.

Wright works mightily to put Jesus in a historical, literal, very Jewish context. He attempts to situate Jesus as a faithful Jew going against a corrupted form of Israel and Jewish religion. His interpretation is that Israel's desire for a national redemption, not unlike previous ones they had experienced through exile and return, was the wrong desire. Then, he claims that Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God were meant to portray a new way for Israel to "be Israel".

As Wright goes through his argument, I feel this version of Jesus who is concerned about "Israel" and who is trying to get Israel to become the light of the world by supplanting the current Temple and its administration with subversive truths, to be lacking appeal and cohesion for me, personally.

Why?

A Jesus who is trying to get Israel to "be Israel" in a new way, or what I think Wright implies, in the real way it was always intended to "be Israel", is a Jesus who ultimately failed. After the first wave of Jewish conversions, Judaism and Christianity split apart and Israel, as a historical, physical people, does not decide to take Jesus up on his offer.

Wright's literal, historical, mostly orthodox view of Jesus completely undermines any sense that Jesus accomplished what he wanted to accomplish.

In addressing the divinity of Jesus, Wright writes:

I do not think Jesus "knew he was God" in the same sense that one knows one is tired or happy, male or female. He did not sit back and say to himself,"Well, I never! I'm the second person of the Trinity!" Rather, as part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized over in further prayer and doubt, and implemented in action, he believed he had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to scripture only YHWH himself could do and be.

This ties in with my previous thought. Does presenting a Jesus who doesn't "know" that he is God help or hurt Wright's orthodoxy? I mean, he's presenting a Jesus who seems to be interested in getting Israel to behave and act in a certain "true" way, one which is quite different than the way Israel had seen itself throughout Scripture and history, and yet he seems to not "know" that he is God in the trinitarian sense with which many orthodox Christians are familiar.

It's unsettling.

Borg, on the other hand, presents Jesus as a Jewish mystic who was more connected with God than the average person, while simultaneously denying the literal resurrection, as it is normally understood and presented. Borg's Jesus seems bigger than Wright's Jesus even though Wright represents traditional Christian doctrine far more closely than Borg.

It has a strange effect upon me, this idea that tying Jesus into a very specific, historical mode, complete with a representative, 1st century mindset, somehow makes him less "real" to me than Borg's ethereal, metaphorical understanding of Jesus.

I'll post more on this later because I'm not quite done thinking it through.