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

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

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

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

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?

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

Over 1,000 Posts

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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...

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

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?