An Atypical Christian

A Messiah for the Rest of Us

2013-01-11T14:20:00.000-06:00

I like Epiphany. One reason is obvious, it signals the end of HalloThanksMass.... Also known as the season of seasonal weight gain. The period between Halloween and Christmas is rough on a body. Literally... the body. The other reason is that the appearance of Magi in the Gospels is unusual. In a story full of Jews and Jewish things, some pagans wander in and claim Jesus for themselves.

They're usually depicted as wealthy foreigners in extravagant clothing. Gypsies, wise men in the traditional sense, fortune tellers, and in a tradition where everyone seems to magically be European in art, there's always a black guy. I love it. I love it because I don't fit in here either. To put it the way Father Bob did in his sermon this Sunday, this is where we come in. Jesus' birth is a Jewish event in a Jewish context to Jewish parents in an occupied but Jewish country predicted by Jewish scriptures as being a messiah for the Jews. These guys are like us.

They're the outsiders in the story. The flamboyant woman in the room full of ladies in gray suits. The homeless person who wanders into the back of your church on Sunday morning and actually stays for church. The elderly gay couple that comes in and finds they think they're embarrassing the pastor. They don't fit in, but they belong just the same. These three queens from Orient are, it turns out, a symbol of the circle being drawn ever larger to gather 'all nations to the light of his dawning'.

I feel pretty good about that.

Still not funny

2012-12-18T19:57:00.000-06:00

I'm not going to pretend I'm not still angry and broken hearted. I'm going to try and explain myself a little better though.   I was in high school when the Columbine shooting happened. I remember being a little scared, though, as is my fashion, mostly oblivious, and horrified at what had occurred. I also remember being upset at the nonsensical banning of trench coats and solid black clothing. We talked about assault weapons, and gun control, and who was to blame.

I don't remember coming to a decent conclusion on that end.   I do remember when some asshat whose name I do not remember decided to tie a fake pipe bomb to the third floor men's (Teachers) bathroom wall.   The fire alarm went off and we were all told to go outside to the track field. I didn't take my car keys or my purse, because usually, it didn't matter. We were back inside in five minutes. We got out there and instead of our usual stand around and pretend to take roll they tried to get us to line up alphabetically. That's when I knew something was wrong. We all kind of meandered around compliantly until some said it: This is a bomb threat. Then we realized that if it was more than a bomb threat, if there was a person with guns involved, Butch Lingenfelter had just put the entire student body in a slaughter pen.   The track field was fenced, you see, is fenced, and the annex building would, frankly, make an excellent place to shoot from.   Some boys tried jumping the fence, realizing this, and the more cynical among us starting talking about how we were going to beat the person who had done this (if it was a joke) to a bloody pulp.    Eventually, the principal saw what the rest of us saw and just let us all go home.   We couldn't go back into the building yet, it hadn't been cleared, so Brady gave me a ride back to the house.

It took me about fifteen minutes to wake my mother up and convince her of what had actually happened.    She thought I was messing with her until she turned on the radio.

A friend of mine told me later that she got sent home from school the next day because she was wearing black when she came in. She had just attended a funeral, even showed the principal the funeral program, but they still sent her home to change.   It turned out the boy who did it was playing a rather horrible joke, it was a fake pipe bomb, and he was not a goth or a member of any mafia or a wearer of trench coats. He was a jock.

I wasn't all that surprised. I was really pissed though, because it just wasn't funny. It still isn't funny.   It's been 13 years and I still want to slap him for it.   So let me say about all these stupid memes about how guns don't kill people, and people kill people and talking about God help us they're going to take our guns? It's not funny. It wasn't funny before this happened, and it's not funny now.

There's nothing about owning a gun that makes you 'free'. It's a huge responsibility. No, that pistol doesn't shoot itself, but it makes murder a whole lot easier.   Tim McVeigh did take down a building with fertilizer. Yes, he did. It's called a bomb. It's called chemistry. It is not called a mass shooting which is what we are talking about. McVeigh, by the way, was a bitter gulf war vet gun nut with serious mental issues as well.   It's really sad that he ended up that way, and it's even sadder that he bombed that building and killed all those people.   So tell me how having a stockpile of weapons makes you 'free'?   If someone steals them and kills someone, the cops look at you.   If you have a child, they have to be both trained about what to do and not do with them AND you have to keep them out of sight and out of mind so the kid doesn't hurt themselves.   If someone walks into a place to rob it and they notice you're packing before you notice them, they shoot you first.   If you really think it's going to help you defend yourself from the government, you are a stupid stupid person and should not own a gun anyway.

So why can't we talk about enacting sane gun laws?   I don't watch tv news, but I'm guessing some of those memes are created in the propaganda machine that is fox news and I'm taking a wilder guess that they're telling everyone that the liberals are out to steal your guns.    Well, folks, we're all adults here. We need to have an adult conversation about this. No sarcasm, no snark, no dumb tactless jokes on the internet.

It isn't funny. It never has been.

And the Christmas Douche Bag Award goes to....

2012-12-18T08:06:00.000-06:00

James Dobson.    I wasn't going to talk about this again, but a sinus infection has stolen my ability to function in polite society, or at least the office this morning, and I have lost the power of speech. Since I can't talk, I might as well type.   I don't know what parallel universe I thought I lived in when I didn't think anyone would go there except Fred Phelps. Maybe I had gained hope from the news reports about the teachers shielding their children during the school shooting. I under estimated the power of the douche-side...

And then here comes my old 'friend' James Dobson.   Dr. Dobson and I first got into a fight he didn't know about when I was unfortunate enough to come up on his radio program late one night after work. I listened to him berate some poor teenager for being suicidal and gay and came to the conclusion that he was a false prophet who needed to have his butt kicked.

Fred Phelps is like the crazy guy who used to stand on the street corner and yell at people as they passed by. Only he has a law degree, and he's conned his family into doing it with him.   You expect pure, unadulterated religious crazy from him.   He's made a living blaspheming the Holy Spirit.   Dobson is that guy who seems nice until you show up at church in a pair of slacks instead of a skirt and then he proceeds to go all condescending sexist religious crazy on you.   You half expect him to keep it in check until he opens his mouth and the mean comes spewing out.

I really thought that murdered children would be a line he would not cross until I saw Huffpost this morning.    I was wrong. From what I'm reading, "Dr" Dobson thinks that God killed 20 children to make a point about the gays Friday.

Really?

Congratulations, you get the Christmas Douche award.

Stuff your devil god someplace dark

2012-12-17T21:22:00.000-06:00

I'm going to have a moment here and say that if you believe in a god that would send a maniac to kill 28 people because he doesn't get his ego stroked by being mentioned in public schools, then you need a new god. The one you worship is an evil, underhanded, entirely imaginary, scary, insecure deity that has absolutely nothing to do with my Jesus. Think, really think, about what kind of a god you believe in if this even crossed your ever lovin' minds and whether you want to be anywhere near that kind of god. Check yourself before your wreck yourself, people.

What happened Friday happened because that man did not receive the mental health care he needed and because of our culture of violence. He did it more efficiently because we allowed him to have the tools he needed to do that much damage in such a short amount of time. We DO need to repent, as a nation, of this evil and do something to fix it, but propagating bad theology and worse politics is not the way to do it. It's ignoring the problem that got us here in the first place. Here ends my rant.

Hills and Valleys

2012-12-09T13:03:00.000-06:00

For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. ~Baruch 5:1-9

Building roads is hard work. Building roads over valleys and hills and mountains is harder. You have to blow up that mountain, level that hill, and make a raised highway through that valley. It's hard work. In the old days, it was dangerous work as well. Before explosives, it was so hard that God had to do it because we couldn't.

Bringing the mountains low is not an easy thing to do. Neither is crossing a mountain without it having been made low. I'm a little strange in that I believe that when Jesus said the time is coming and is now here when the Kingdom of God shall appear on the earth, he didn't mean blow the whole thing up and start over. I think he meant right here, right now, usher in the kingdom of God. We have to get ready to be able to do it, that's what Church is for, and we have to do it in the world in which we live right now because that's the Gospel.

It's actually happening.

Luke 3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

And the harbinger's mother is old and barren when she becomes pregnant, and meets her young cousin, the Messiah's mother, who starts talking about her unborn child.

He has mercy on those who fear him *
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

I'm pretty sure this is class warfare.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *

Yep.

and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

In plain English (translated from Aramaic to Greek to plain English)

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

This is the Kingdom of God. It works better if we all work together to fill the hungry with good things, so the rich don't necessarily have to go away empty, but that doesn't always work out. Right here, right now, this is actually happening... so we should do what we're told and get to it. God is going to make this happen... and he's doing it, right now, through us.

Rock Paper Scissors

2012-12-08T15:43:00.000-06:00

Luke 18:9-14 (NRSV)
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10'Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income." 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.'

I found myself telling my coworker the other day that I was awesome.    I had a customer call the office about a house he was buying that day that he thought he'd already gotten insurance on. He hadn't. We didn't even know he was buying a house. Fifteen minutes later, he had insurance, the bank had a binder, and, from what I heard, his closing went smoothly.    That morning, I was pretty awesome at my job. Several days later, however, in a moment of complete and total idiocy, I did rock, paper, scissor (No lizard or Spock) to see who would take the phone customer and who would take the one in the lobby at (not with) a coworker. Naturally, instead of seeing through this moment of total insanity to my good-natured awesomeness, our customer took offense and left. Even revved the engine on his truck. He came back, and told the personal lines manager (that person I had informed of my awesomeness not too long before) what had happened.

I have a thousand excuses for that situation.   The only one that makes any sense at all being that it was the stupidest thing I've done in a long time. Oh, I was overwhelmed and exasperated and trying to figure out how we were going to do everything all at once and I was at that point where you can either laugh or cry, but that guy did not deserve that.

Would I have walked out in that situation? Probably not, I probably would have laughed my butt off.   I'm a little different, though, as we have already established, and not at all normal.   I also found myself making excuses. He was high strung. The receptionist made it worse. The customer had terrible timing.   Just about everything but I was having one of the most unprofessional moments of my adult life.

I imagine the pharisee in the parable was having the same kind of day.   He found himself at the temple and instead of coming up with something meaningful to say to God he started declaring his own...awesomeness.   "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income." How precious! If you never do anything wrong, why do you fast twice a week? We're all suspicious of this guy having a body in his basement or the first century equivalent of a tax shelter in a Swiss bank account but he probably wasn't anything more evil than the rest of us.    Probably doing his best, coming along nicely even, and then he gets a little too confident.   Doesn't even realize that if it wasn't for the grace of God and even a little help from other people that he might have been a thief, a rogue or a tax collector.

Then he prays to God about how grateful he is that he's not somebody else. He plays rock paper scissors in the temple. He does something really really stupid.   We need to slow down sometimes when we get good at our jobs, or start doing really well, or get comfortable in the way we approach worship and shake things up a bit. Evaluate why we're doing well, why we're getting good at our jobs, and realize it's not because other people are losers and we're winners.   It's not even because God likes us and not someone else. Not at all.

I don't really have much of a point past that.   I don't know why some people win and some people lose. I know the reason I'm good at my job---which I'm not doing incredibly stupid things---is because I've been fortunate enough to have good bosses who helped me learn to care about what I'm doing by making me realize that it does matter. It mattered when I was clearing dishes from tables at the Sage Room at age 17 and it mattered when I was working at McDonald's in college. What we does matter, whether it's big or small.   I didn't learn that on my own. I had good people showing me how the smallest thing can turn someone's day around ---for good or ill--- and that anything from taking out the garbage to writing an insurance policy can done for the glory of God for the sake of the Kingdom.

Even if sometimes we talk to ourselves more than God in our prayers.

Prepare the way

2012-12-06T22:12:00.000-06:00

I was not ready for Advent this year.   My stuff wasn't out of the attic, I didn't have any candles, and the worst part--I was just not in the mood. I wasn't in the mood for blasting the word REJOICE across the church every Sunday, not in the mood for Rite I, and I didn't have a clue what to get everybody for Christmas.

Prepare the way of the Lord indeed.

For some reason, Advent happened anyway. The wreath went up in the church, the candles were purchased, I even procured a new "Advent Bush" that could withstand the ravages of my puppy by living on a table top. Rite I happened in church, and we belted those rejoices again like we do every year. Voices are missing and they are being missed, but Advent is happening anyway.

Life is hard sometimes. Preparing for Christmas, and by way of that preparing to usher in the Kingdom of God, isn't all chocolates behind numbered windows in an advent calender and haunting ancient hymns. It's getting up every morning in December, whether you want to or not, and saying "even so, come Lord Jesus" again.

Mary knew this. (We haven't even gotten to her in the readings yet. I think this coming Sunday we get to hear about John the Baptist.) Mary had her life disrupted by an archangel who appeared ill advised on mechanics of human biology.    I have my days when I think she must have been a little bit psychic because she was faced with an angel of the Lord telling her she's going to bear a son, the Messiah even, and she has the big brass lady balls to tell him that she can't be pregnant because she's a virgin.   It's the holy version of staring down your doctor when they ask suspiciously when your last period was and telling them you have to be exposed to be in that condition.   So either they'd chatted before, or the Lady was totally and utterly caught off guard to the point of reacting to this news with exasperated unbelief.

I LOVE this about her, by the way.   Very young, vulnerable, about to be exposed to a series of life threatening social situations that probably shamed her to her very core despite none of it being what people thought, and she's making sure the archangel Gabriel understands how these things happen.

Life is hard sometimes.   Life is hard but God makes beauty from ashes.

Even so, come...

Coming out of my cave

2012-11-18T21:49:00.001-06:00

I got reminded of something important today. For a long time we've had less butts in the pews on Sunday morning than we need. Less butts in the pews than need us. We had a guy come in from the diocese today to talk about congregational development and he explained to us how important the first five minutes after someone walks in the building are... and it occurred to me that I am not friendly and outgoing. Oh, I can fake it. I fake it fairly well when I need to. If I'm approached or want to approach someone it's no problem, but on Sunday morning I can turn into a icicle pretty quickly.

I come in late these days and sneak out after getting out of my choir robe. I've become socially isolated from our community. You know that awkward moment when you realize you're not Christianity's target market for congregational development? Yeah, I had that today. I'm not what they're looking for. I'm not married, I don't have kids, the only time my family comes with me is when I guilt them into it by telling them a Jew and a Hindu are coming to Midnight Mass and they're not. I'm not a 'young family with children'. That's not me.

I have noticed, however, that they do notice when I don't show up. I blame this largely on the fact that I am very loud and make up 1/3 of our soprano section. I do prayers, I host coffee hour, I read from the lectern. I participate. The one thing I seem to be lacking lately is love. Love in the sense that I need to be willing to step up and socialize with people even when I have a shopping trip to get out of the way, I need to say hello to people I don't know and impose myself on them more often, and let's face it, I could less of a clam up when it comes to passing the peace.

I suck at that stuff. I'm going to work at it. For my St. Matthew's people I'm going to ask that you accept this change in me and realize that it isn't easy for this Awkward Annie to pretend she doesn't want shirk away and hide in her cave after church.

I'm going to ask the rest of us to do something I'm actually good at: Show up. Come to church. Participate. Hang out. For God's sake, someone join the choir. I mean that literally. Please. Join the choir. Actually, showing up and breathing the same air as the rest of us on a regular basis would go a long way. I know we're all tired and nervous and very busy but this is important. Dean Kevin (who I am told we are forbidden to call Dean Martin, but it's funny so I say we do it anyway) explained our worship service as performance we put on for God as opposed to being a show God puts on for us. I don't believe for a minute that God needs our worship, but I do believe we need to offer it to God to maintain that life sustaining connection to our spirituality and each other. We have something beautiful going on here, and we need to fully engage in it.

I really do love you guys. Even on the days I want to crawl back in my cave and not talk to people any more.

A heart of flesh

2012-10-21T23:11:00.000-05:00

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.Ezekiel 36:26

I saw a post from a new friend of mine today on facebook that made me think about what my life was like before I was baptized. I was a teenager. (that sucked) I had been a solitary practitioner of Christianity for about five years at the time and being baptized was the first step in learning how to be part of a community vs pretending to fit in just to blend in. I should explain that I was there at the church in the first place because a friend of mine had threatened to pick me up in my pajamas if I didn't show up on my own. I should also probably explain that I had started serving as an acolyte before I was baptized because the interim priest had no idea I came from an unchurched background and didn't think to ask. I should also probably explain that by the time Jerry Rankin brought it to my attention that I needed to do this I'd been taking communion for months.

And upon finding out I hadn't been baptized, that I wasn't actually Patty's kid (my friend's mother who is now my friend too), and that my parents were not members of the church, Fr. Jerry asked me to do something I found rather unpleasant. He asked me to get their permission to be baptized, either there or somewhere else, and to abstain from serving at the alter and taking communion until I did so. I didn't know it then, but that was the first thing in a long list of things that I would find unpleasant but see the value in during my life as a Christian.

I conned my parents into it rather easily. They were, at first horrified I wasn't going to be immersed, and suggested I go to their church. I countered that they didn't have one. I told them I would go with them on Wednesday nights after they picked one out provided they came with me on Sunday morning. I never set foot in "their" church. They ended up liking Fr. Jerry and my mother got baptized with me. It was about three months between the time I got found out and the time I was baptized. I found the whole process rather strange. I didn't feel like it was a big deal while it was actually happening. It was anticlimactic Church often is. I was nervous the night before, I felt like someone who had waited too long to marry their boyfriend. Snicker all you want---but I had been a believer for years and years--I had a healthy spiritual life. I loved Christ and I knew that he loved me. I didn't need that priest to tell me how to pray, or so I thought, because I already knew. Jesus and I were tight. We are tight. I didn't know back then how much I needed the beloved community.

I was sixteen years old. I had taken a class before the event. I had been a believer for five years. I also had no idea what I was getting into. I don't think anyone does. The Episcopal Church may not have introduced me to God, God did that on his own in a very real and tangible way years before, but the Episcopal Church taught me how to love him. I learned, through liturgy, how to put prayer into my every day life. Not just rambling on and on like a schizophrenic (who knows?) to the Almighty but how to actually pray. To the point where those prayers and creeds and songs are probably going to be the last thing to leave if I lose my crackers. I learned, from relationship with other people, just how wide a circle God's love draws around the human race. How much God loves everything he has made and has pronounced it good because of the lovely horrible wonderful awful group of people called The Church.

I'm not the first person who experienced something like this. It came up in the gospels today

. Mark 10:35 (NRSV) James and John, the sons of Zeb'edee, came forward to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." 36 And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?" 37 And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." 38 But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" 39 They replied, "We are able." Then Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

I don't think that conversation turned out exactly as they had planned. I thought I was joining a church, I was joining the Body of Christ. I thought I was going to finished after I did this. This is it, right? You get doused with water, make a few vows, and it's over, done, you're good, you're perfect, you're fit for heaven and you've got a ticket to ride the train to glory, right? Wrong. This is the beginning, it's hard work, it'll cost you tears, and fears, and change your life in ways you don't care for at the time. It will bring people into your life that you're afraid to associate it with. It will bring people into your life you would have never have had the clout to associate with. It will make you laugh, make you cry, make you tremble inside, make you do things you didn't know you could do and most of all, most of all, it make you more you. Who would James and John have been if they hadn't met a certain wandering Rabbi and kept following him? Who would we be if they hadn't had the big brass ones to ask the question they asked? Who indeed?

It isn't something to be entered into lightly. Think about it, long and hard, but know that you don't know what you're getting into. You don't know. Six months old or sixty, you don't know. That's okay. We'll be there for you.

A not so gentle reminder

2012-09-23T15:10:00.001-05:00

I've been running across a lot of examples of being just being .... well, assholes, lately so I thought I'd do a public service announcement or six.

1) If someone insults your religion, it's because they're an asshole. If they criticize your religion, listen, and then decide if they have a valid point. Learn the difference. If you're a muslim in Libya, the first step to living in a grown up democratic society is not to lose your shit and kill someone when another person halfway across the world makes a stupid video insulting your religion. The way to react to this is to call them an asshole and not watch their stupid video on youtube and give them tons of hits on it, giving them the delusion of popularity.

Seriously, if I reacted that way every time some dissed Jesus of Nazareth, I'd be in prison right now. I've already gotten in fights with some of my friends over it. Sometimes people forget that just because you think something's true or funny doesn't mean you should repost it. For example, reposting this would make you an asshole:

If you're wondering, no, my friend didn't repost this. I am guilty of reposting pictures that are rude about Republicans. I kind of draw the line between posting insults to Republicans in general, which is mean, and insults to Mitt Romney, which are, in my opinion, okay as long as it's true.

There's a line. Telling me that my mind looks like the inside of a brick wall because I don't share your views on religion is one of them. That makes you an asshole.

Which leads me to my next point, also known as 2) Being a Christian doesn't make you exempt from being an asshole. It doesn't even make it less likely. People are people and our temperaments are our own. Personally, I've mellowed with age. When I was younger, I lost my temper a lot quicker. In high school, I actually had to repeat the words "Jesus will be pissed" like a mantra to keep myself from shooting my friend's hubby in the head after he hit her. True story. That's gotten me through many a personal dilemma actually. Kept me from beating someone over the head with my high heeled shoe at diocesan convention in 2003. In those situations, religion, I shouldn't say religion, religion didn't have a lot to do with it, my friendship with Jesus, saved a couple of people from violence and me from doing prison time.

That's a good thing. I'm hideous in orange.

I ran into this truck at the doctor's office this afternoon.

This guy's a jerk. He probably doesn't even realize he's a jerk, though. I added my own comments while cropping the picture and hiding the license plate. Which I hid because I am nicer than him. He is threatening people with his tailgate.

I don't like that. Religion can be a beautiful thing. It can move a person to do good things. It can change a society's view on something for the better. Christianity brought about a shift in European society that made it a lot better to be a woman or a child. I know it's hard to believe, given the other things we've been told about women, church, and putting up and shutting up, but before Christianity in Europe the male head of household had total control over the women and children. If he chose, the child would live, and if he chose it would die. After Christianity started to spread, people started seeing women as something more and children as being valuable through the teachings of Jesus. Being a woman who was once a child I think this is a good thing. It's a positive thing. It's a gift to the world.

The image I'm getting from the back of this truck is that this guy has an understanding of God that my first grade sunday school class knew better than to buy. Believe this or God will beat you up!! Forever!!! Because he's full of mercy and compassion but he's also mad ALL THE TIME. I call bullshit.

Don't be cruel. Just don't.

I've never met that guy

2012-09-04T22:04:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking lately about what makes my sort of religion--the sort of religion I practice anyway--different from other peoples. I don't mean this in a superior way. I'm not sure what way I mean it in, actually. I just know it's different from the way other people approach it.

I'm not afraid of God. I'm just not. I'm afraid of being separated from God, I'm afraid of what I'm like when the connection gets shaky, I'm afraid of disappointed sighs from Jesus, but I am not afraid of God. I don't like it when I feel like God is angry with me, but not because I'm afraid God is going to make me pick my own switch and beat me with it. Don't get me wrong, God the Father has soundly, metaphorically, whipped my ass before. I deserved it. Deserved every single bit of bad karma that came down the pipe at me like a wave of pain in an ocean of 'you totally deserved that'.

But that's not what motivates me to do the things I do. I'm not afraid of God because I know he loves me. I know this because I've seen it. Time and time again, I've been blessed. I've also believed since I was teenager that perfect love casts out fear. I believe that God loves us. All of us. The whole of us. No reservations. During Holy Week this year I had a friend ask me what would happen if she missed Maundy Thursday at church. Will I go to hell? I was shocked. Go to hell? Over missing a service? Really?

I would like to say I was tempted to lie straight my teeth and tell her that little Baptist girls who miss Thursday night in Holy Week have a room reserved for them in the Seventh Layer of Hell but I was in too honest of a mood at the time. Truthfully I was horrified she even thought Hell was an option after taking a baptism and, being Baptist, having been 'saved'. How can someone's faith offer so little comfort? How can that be anything but a prison? How can that be anything but a heavy burden that someone tied up and laid on one's back?

Sunday's gospel lesson provides an illustrated point in this. The Pharisees point out, technically correct I'm sure, that the disciples didn't wash their hands that day before eating. I don't know what kind of grime they had on their paws, I don't know what cruel woman didn't put out a wash basin for them to clean up before dinner in, (Pretty sure first century middle eastern men could absolutely NOT take care of themselves in this regard) or what possessed them that day to dig in without scrubbing up. I have no idea. I do know that it's bloody nitpicking. In this case I actually mean nits. I mean straining out a gnat and leaving a camel in the stew. I mean, seriously, you guys called out their rabbi because they ate with dirty hands? That's like posting a photo shopped picture of the President of the United States supposedly flubbing up flag etiquette--- It's not important in the grand scheme of things and is probably bullshit.

In the case of the flag picture, I know it is, because that's a white hand on a brown body but I digress. I understand that ritual is important. I understand that the Law is important. I get it. You're reading the ramblings of a woman who has actually gotten down on the floor and picked communion bread crumbs up off the carpet before vacuuming a church. I fall down when a kid carrying a cross passes by. I don't enter a church for worship without praying first thing and I bow EVERY TIME I pass the alter. I get it. I'm high church with a capital HC and a charcoal incense burner in MY HOUSE.

Those things aren't the point though. In the grand scheme of things, they aren't even important, they don't even matter compared to this simple truth:

Mark 7:6 He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines. 'You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."

Why is he saying this? Is he angry about people washing their hands? Something tells me it's the picking of the nits...

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand:
there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile." For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

It's not the things you do! It's not the things you don't do! It's you! It's what's deep down in your heart. It's the coldness, the anger, the things that send you through the roof for no good reason. It's your INDIFFERENCE to the suffering of other people. That's what makes you cold to the love of God. That's what makes you cold to your neighbor.

That's what makes you worry you're going to hell for missing church. There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. It makes it go away. Love conquers all. It warms up cold hearts. Fear piles up rules and defenses. Fear takes things away because they aren't required. Fear frightens people into chanting an incantation to make the bad go away and cowering beneath the steel gaze of a preacher who wants to scare them into salvation. I don't want that religion and I've never met that God. I don't know that guy. I don't want to know that guy. I'm saying this out of love: God is not an asshole. You can quote me on that. You're not a rat in a cage he's set up so you can't ever get the cheese. It's going to be okay.

Without dragging

2012-08-29T22:59:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again. First choir practice of the 'year' tonight, which included the obligatory selections from the 1940 Episcopal Hymnal for our annual 1893 Heritage Sunday Church Service. In my wayward youth, I called it Hokey Hymn and Cowboy Boot Sunday, but I've since learned that 1) Some people like Hokey Hymns , 2) I like saying the words "He will come again to judge the quick and the dead" aloud in an acoustically interesting room and 3) Singing in that church is fun because the sound bounces off the walls like crazy and I'm easily amused.

Speaking of being easily amused, the paper version has something Oremus.org left out: HILARIOUS instructions:

This one tells the congregation to be sure and sing it "Without dragging". The category is a little bit un-ecclesiastical too: "Need". It gets better as you flip through, I just don't have it in front of me. My father (A backslidden baptist turned lapsed Episcopalian/Baptist whatchamacallit) says it's because they knew who they were dealing with. Indeed. Any "piskie" who sings loud enough to be heard without it being offensive gets drafted into the choir. I don't read music and I'm currently 1/3 of our soprano section. He went on to say that if we could sing we would be Lutherans.

Not to sure about that....

In fairness to our people we rather frequently put songs in our hymnal that one has to either learn by repetition over many years or be a musician to sing. Also, some of them are just plain hideous.

Don't look at me like that. You all have a hymn you hate.

You just don't want to admit it because it's a hymn.

Holy Hand Grenades

2012-08-27T21:03:00.001-05:00

My last non-you-deserved-to-raped-for-being-a-hoe related posted reiterated what most of my friends and family have known for decades: I am one twisted sister. This week's example comes in the form of my devotion to movies made before I was born, that are demented in ways I should not understand. I blame this squarely on my best friend, Christy Smith, who introduced me to the wild world of Monty Python. I can't remember if I was watching 70's horror movies before meeting her with such gusto, but I'm pretty sure she was involved somehow. Which came first? The references to the Exorcist in everyday conversation? Or me watching the Exorcist with Christy Lyn? I don't remember. Frankly, I've drank since then.

You think this was mean of me to put in your head? This isn't even the part we made jokes about for years. I AM being nice.

How could you laugh about something as serious as demonic possession, Leslie? Seriously? Have you seen it? The movie or someone possessed by a demon? Either one really. Take your pick. After you've seen it five or six times (the movie), that line is hilarious when brought up out of context. From a serious perspective, the only thing that movie really serves as is a training video of what all can go horribly wrong with an exorcism if you're dumb enough to send a faithless priest into the home of a family with no religious background after the situation with the child and the demon have gotten ridiculously bad. Lesson to take away? Interview your home-chicken BEFORE you go in there, Padre, and you're a lot less likely to die of a heart attack mid ritual.

Seriously. I digress.

The hand grenade situation. I absolutely laughed my face off the first time I saw that scene in that movie. The procession, the incense, the chanting, blessing the thing before tossing it at the 'killer bunny', it was all so.. something we would do. Episcopalians, high church ones in particular, would do something like bless a flipping grenade. In a procession, with incense, and frankly, I'm surprised no one has uncovered the Book of Armaments.

A break from reading my blather:

Night guys, sweet dreams.

Wearing the uniform.

2012-08-17T21:11:00.001-05:00

Pardon the look, today I'm ranting on video.

Internets are unreliable

I'm talking trash about David.

Here ends the ranting. Because I am tired of restarting my camera. I am also cold and I want to take nice hot shower and go to bed. .

I almost didn't post this stuff. Then I thought about it and I realized that the reason I almost didn't post these videos is because part of me still believes the lie that women hear that they have to babysit and manipulate men into behaving themselves to have good wholesome lives. I also don't like the way I look in my exercise clothes.

But this time I'm right. Femininity might be more attractive than feminism but if a man doesn't think that he's responsible for thinking about hurting me if I'm dress provocatively then he's a bad person that I don't want to find me attractive. Why don't we spend less time worrying about how to raise pretty but not too pretty daughters and start worrying about raising honorable sons?

A heart like mine

2012-08-13T22:25:00.000-05:00

Today's topic of discussion is me, facebook, and my twisted relationship with Jesus Christ:

It started last week, when I posted the following image with the comment that, well, he did lose his shit that one time and curse the fig tree:

I only got ONE like for that comment, ONE, which proves that my friends are either more devout and reverent Christians than I am or they're just not welling to admit that they're twisted enough to think that's funny. Cause if you think about it, making a tree wither and die because it wasn't bearing fruit when you wanted a snack?

Seriously?

I think I get to say that. Saying it on my facebook wall doesn't make it worse. He has met me. Kind of like my friend apologizing for complaining about his parent's behavior post divorce in the nave of our church-- really? It isn't like he doesn't know you're upset with her. It isn't like he doesn't know I swear.

And it isn't like cursing a fig tree because it doesn't have tasty figs on it isn't at least on the surface a bit much. I think I get to say this kind of thing by now. Especially considering I identify with this:

Sometimes kicking and screaming. And I don't think God hates figs. I think that was a case of 'whelp, might as well drive the point of that parable home a little hard today'. I'm cRaZY, yes, but Noah was a drunk, Peter was an impetuous ass who made promises he couldn't keep, Moses was a murderer, and David was a real jerk when he decided he wanted someone. My god ran around with whores, rednecks, crazies and government employees.

I don't think normal is normal in the Kingdom of Heaven. I think it's the one place my behavior would be considered toned down. I once had someone ask me what I would do if I was drinking alcohol and watching a horror movie and Jesus came to the door. I told her I'd do the only appropriate thing to do:

Invite him inside and offer him a glass!

Edit: In reference to how I think God sees people, good or bad, repentant or not, I believe with all my heart that God sees each of us and says "this is mine".

Or see below, thank you facebook:

To put it another way

2012-08-05T15:40:00.000-05:00

I don't usually write about ancient soap operas, but when I do, I write about the best. I was struck by this read in church today. How angry David was on the behalf of the poor man whose prized lamb had been taken from him. How remorseful he was when he realized the prophet was talking about him. I know this is long but context is important.

2 Samuel 11:26 - 12:13aWhen the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD, and the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, "There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him." Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, "As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die;he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity." Nathan said to David, "You are the man! Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more.Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the LORD: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun." David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD."

My first thought on this last week (when we heard the story of how David sees Bathsheba bathing on the roof and decides he needs to have her, gets her pregnant and calls her husband back from the front lines to see if he can get out of this by making it look he was around to conceive a child, and then, when all that failed, sends him to the front lines so he'll be sure and die) was that David was behaving like a real piece of shit. Yes, I said it, David, a man after God's own heart, was behaving like a real piece of shit. I have a history with this story. When I was 15 or so I heard my first real douche bag sermon I had ever heard in my whole life and it was on this scripture. The youth minister blamed the whole thing on Uriah's wife. It was her fault for looking good, you see, and David couldn't help himself. Really? Even as a teenager, I knew that this meant that this pastor was an idiot and a cretin. Call it my first clue that non denominational churches and I were not going to be friends..

So hearing this story as an adult, I think that David is far worse than a douche bag. He is behaving like a bad man. I was tempted to blog on it, but I changed my mind. Decided to let it go. After this week, I can't though.

The story that Nathan tells him enrages him. It's like someone holds a mirror up to his face and he's angry at what he sees. It's almost like he didn't see it before. He didn't really quite appreciate what he'd done. That he'd called this poor woman to his house, used his power and influence to take her to bed, given that he was the king I'd say it was coercion at best, then tried to trick her husband into coming back from the war and sleeping with her to cover up his crime, and when that failed, he'd had the man killed in a way that covered up who was behind it. It like he doesn't understand how hurtful what he's done is until he hears someone tell it another way.

Sometimes it takes that. Sometimes it takes telling the story in another way like it's someone else doing it to get someone to see what they've done. Being direct about it doesn't always work. It makes more sense to hurt someone while you're doing it. I want to be with that man, I want to be with that woman, and how I do it doesn't matter. Once I've done it, I don't want anyone to know. When subterfuge fails, the cover up is worse than the original crime.

Imagine yourself in a similar situation. I've been in one, actually. When I was in grade school, I decided I needed new friends. I wanted to be one of the cool kids. So I did something terrible: I ditched my two girlfriends because they were too nerdy. Little did I know back then that I was the geekiest of us all and just hadn't figured it out yet but I digress. It wasn't until after I did it that I realized what a horrible thing it was and what a horrible way I had done it. My response? Going to another elementary school the next year. I thought I was going to make friends. Instead, I mouthed off in the cafeteria one day and became a pariah there. I deserved what I got and then some.

I did learn a valuable lesson though. Being cruel to people to get something you want is a horrible idea. It hurts them, it hurts you, and the universe will get you back. There are lots of ways to be cruel to people to make yourself look good to other people. One of those ways is siding with a bully by choosing not to get involved. So you don't like gay people, or you don't like gay marriage, or think gay men are weird. So what? They exist. The groups Dan Cathy is funding is kicking it up more than a notch. They're behaving like pieces of shit and wrapping their cruelty up in righteousness and seasoning it with plenty of god-talk to make it seem irreproachable. So quit hiding behind free speech (feel free to tell the mayors of those cities that banning douche bag business owners is unconstitutional though) and differences of opinion and either admit you like greasy damn fried chicken so much that you don't care who you hurt to get it and you just don't care about other people who happen to be different than you, or take a stand and turn around.

Adult Conversations

2012-07-24T20:53:00.000-05:00

Picture it: Sitting my living room eating bourse on a bagel and drinking a glass of moscoto. Perfect picture of the quintessential freedom hating liberal, aren't I?

I have a favor to ask: Forget for a minute that I'm a registered Democrat, an Episcopalian, and friend of friends of Dorothy everywhere. Forget about that. I have a favor to ask. Can we have an adult conversation about guns?

I don't even remember how old I was the first time I fired one. I have no problem with law enforcement officers carrying them, even off duty and in church. I don't own one mostly because it's only in the last few years I could trust myself not to lose my temper and flat out murder some sumbitch that beat up my friend in front of her kid, or hurt their child or otherwise did something to inflame my sense of moral outrage and instinct for vigilante justice. That's the honest truth, I don't care if you own a gun. I really don't.

As long as it's just a gun. You know, the kind a civilian would have a use for. In the last few days I've been trying to figure out why that man in Colorado was allowed to buy a military grade assault rifle that could fire off 100 rounds in a minute. I know criminals gonna get guns for crimes, but it wasn't illegal for him to buy this thing.

Serious question: What legitimate use does a civilian have for a weapon like that?

Hunting? Are you mowing down an entire herd of rabid deer? Coyote that move like cheetahs? Mountain lions that "don't live in Oklahoma", en masse and heading toward your house in a giant pride? Preparing for the zombie Apocalypse? Do you think you're actually going to have a need to fight off the U.S. military? If you do think that, do you really think this is going to do something other than take more people with you?

I think the obvious answer for most people is because they can and they think it's fun to shoot something like that. I want a tank but I don't think it's legal for me to own one. I also can't imagine how pissed my uncles would be if I took one out to the farm and started blowing up open pasture. I would like a grenade as well, same premise. It would be FUN to throw it as long as my target wasn't breathing.

So can we have an adult conversation about guns? Mental health care? Access to it?

Why the hell I can't buy sudafed without signing for it, pulling out my driver's license and having my purchases tracked just in case I decide to cook meth with it but this guy had 6,000 rounds in his home and no one noticed? Why I can get a ticket for having a head light out and this guy can have ALL THE LIGHTS out in his frontal lobe where the part of his brain that told him this was wrong used to live and no one noticed?

I realize we don't know the answers to these questions yet. I realize this. Can we please have an adult conversation about guns?

Please?

I know guns don't kill people, but I'm having hard time imagining that pelting people with rocks or bows and arrows would have the same impact as the weapon this guy used. The weapon he had no earthly legitimate use for besides imitating a character in the movie and mowing people down. I guess the question I'm really asking is where to draw the line.

Note: Please comment on the blog. Yes, I moderate comments but it's mostly to keep creepy dirty spam off my blog. You don't need to post it twice. (I get my email on my phone so I'll see it several times a day.)

Good Fruit

2012-07-23T21:28:00.000-05:00

I'm a week or two late on this. Please don't hate me. Recently, I barely suppressed squealing in church. Yes, the woman who doesn't like to clap in rhythm during 'gospel' pieces for choir nearly burst out with a YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS when she found out her bishop voted to approve a resolution proposing tentative rites for a same gender blessing for the Episcopal Church. I stifled myself and settled for grinning like my dog when he's just discovered how to open the lid on a trash can filled with things I would prefer he not chew on.

I am reminded of the last time something like this happened in my church. I'm sure that was worse than this is going to be. I say that because I figure there can't possibly be anyone who is more offended by a rite for sex couples than the people who were so freaked out by a gay bishop in New Hampshire that they created a splitter denomination. I can't imagine it. I hope I don't have to. Just in case it turns out I do, can everyone who appreciates Bishop Ed doing this click on his name and send him an email telling him so? The news lightened my load considerably and gave me hope that this good news wasn't going to turn into a diocese wide fiasco.

Good things are hard to do sometimes. People don't like change. Episcopalians in particular do not like change. You should hear what people say when we use other-than-what-we-always-use service music. I can't sing it, I don't know it, it sounds like a bunch of seagulls screeching in there and did we mention it's different and we actually have to pay attention?? We've always done it this way. We've always handling homosexuals by winking, nodding, and pretending they aren't there. We don't want to actually talk about it because then I'll have to confront my feelings on the subject.

I think that's the biggest problem we had when Gene Robinson was approved as the bishop of New Hampshire. People were forced to confront how they felt about homosexuality because it made the news. Fox News, in particular, made it sound like we had just approved the ordination of a dirty, overly handsy, parishioner molester priest to the bishopric. I heard the inside story: That was only inappropriate touching if the priest is gay. If that were inappropriate touching the rest of the time, I've been molested by an army of filthy dirty priests and and didn't even realize it. I suppose if I think back very carefully, a handful of them *might* be gay and I just wasn't paying attention. People were responding to the words Episcopal Church with: The gay church?

Never mind that we had two token gay people in our congregation at the time and even though we were small, we didn't even have 10% of our congregation made up of homosexuals, we were the "gay church". By this point in my life, I wasn't offended by this except by the inaccuracy of the statement. My best friend isn't straight. Many of my college friends were gay. Gay, and faithful Christians. I made a snide remark about only having two and answered the question with a yes.

I heard from other people that it was embarrassing. That they didn't know what to say when their business associates asked about it. They didn't know what to say? I suppose the words "Yes, that's my church and I didn't much like the decision but New Hampshire wanted him as their bishop and General Convention decided to give their consent." never popped into their minds. They had to confront their own feelings about something that happened in their denomination, and they didn't like it. We all had to think about what we believe.

I have been in their shoes more than once. I grew up being taught (though no one much dwelt on the subject) that homosexuality was wrong. I didn't know why, except that the Bible supposedly said so. God, finding my intolerance obnoxious I suppose, decided to show me otherwise. I was confronted, repeatedly, with good fruit from supposedly bad trees. I saw the Holy Spirit working through gay men. I saw it and I felt it. I had spent enough time with the Pentecostal types to recognize it. I wasn't stupid. I knew what I was seeing. I was being confronted almost daily with good fruit from people who were supposedly living in sin. People who were supposed to be intrinsically disordered to borrow a phrase from the Roman Catholic Church, and doing God's good work here on earth. It didn't make sense. Especially since Jesus was the one who put that phrase into my vocabulary:

Luke 6:43“For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit, nor, on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit. 44“For each tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a briar bush. 45“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.

The passage drives it home. They wouldn't be doing these good things if they were bad guys. I had to figure this out. These men weren't struggling with their sexuality. They weren't fighting the evil inside to keep from being attracted to other men anymore than I was fighting my own attraction to men. They weren't good trees fighting off a case of blight and producing fruit in spite of it. They were good, spiritual fruit producing fruits.

It took me a while to get it but I did. It wasn't easy. I didn't like it much. God won out. I finally figured out that my feelings, about other woman hitting on me, were misplaced. No, I didn't understand, but I'm not gay. I'm not supposed to. I don't have to. A friend of mine once told me a fellow parishioner told him that what goes on in his bedroom makes her sick and my response that he should asked her who in the church she enjoyed fantasizing about. I don't know about her, but I don't go to church to think about sex, and I laugh a little when it comes up because it makes me a little uncomfortable, but here's the thing: Every single time someone gets married in church, we're bringing God into our sex lives. Every single time. Sex is part of who we are. It's part of that nominally uncomfortable metaphor of the Church being the Bride of Christ. It shows up in the nativity story when Luke points out that Mary and Joseph weren't living together when she became pregnant. It's there. The assumption that there was sex when there wasn't gets made an issue. Your body is a temple, according to Paul, and a person should be careful what one does in a temple. How one does it to be specific and with whom.

So it makes sense that when homosexual people set out to create their own families with their partners they want the Church's blessing. They want an outward and visible sign of what God has already down in their lives and this is a good thing. It's a door opening. It's a way for aunties (me) and mothers and fathers to have something to tell their kids to cool it and wait for something more special and permanent. This is a good thing.

A very good thing. Yes, we're all going to have to confront our feelings about it. It might be painful. There will be hurt feelings, foot stomping, maybe even a little embarrassment. I would suggest not attending one of these rites if that is the case. I don't suggest leaving either. We already had a gay bishop in New Hampshire and a woman as our primate. If a liturgy you don't have an occasion to use being added to the list of things no one is asking you to use or attend or officiate over freaks you out, maybe you need to do some soul searching. We'll still love you.

The Right thing whether you like it or not

2012-06-28T08:17:00.000-05:00

Repost from two years ago:

I'm going to go off my usual topic and get political this morning. Turn away if that offends you.

I've been reading a lot of comments about the health care bill and why it's unconstitutional (I don't know about that--- a lot of things our government does could be considered unconstitutional but folks, I'm not a lawyer. I honestly don't know. I will leave that to the lawyers.) I'm going to offer my opinion as to why universal health care is needed.

I work in an insurance office for an independent agent. I don't sell health insurance because I'm only licensed for personal lines (as a CSR). I have noticed a few things about car insurance customers over the last three years.

1. A good portion of them don't understand why it is illegal for them to drive without car insurance.
2. The same portion are the people who couldn't afford to pay for the damage they did with said car to someone else's vehicle. They don't seem to have made the connection between the car being a rolling bomb (think about that tank of gasoline) and the fact that they take other people's lives into their hands every time they get into it.
3. If it wasn't illegal for them not to have car insurance, they wouldn't have it.

So why is it illegal to drive without car insurance? Since cars have been on the road people have been crashing them. Since Henry Ford invented the assembly line, you haven't had to be wealthy enough to pay for what you did to other people's property to own one. The states all noticed that this was a huge problem. People driving around tearing up other people's cars and injuring them and then not paying for it. So they decided to force people to carry insurance. If you wreck, you pay more for insurance because chances are you're going to be a repeat offender on that line. All those people who don't wreck? The money they pay into the system helps the insurance company pay for all those people who can't drive. Why do they have to pay too? Because even the safest driver on God's earth screws up once in a while. It's just that way.

In Oklahoma anyway, even if you are the worst driver ever, the most destructive weirdo in the whole state, DUIs, at-fault-accidents, speeding tickets, someone has to take you. It's called a high risk pool. The state takes these fools and assigns them to insurance companies. They may have to pay an arm, a leg, and their firstborn for it but someone has to give them car insurance. The same is true for house insurance. Up until this year, the same was NOT true for health insurance.

I know you don't have to own a car, so you don't have to buy car insurance. I know you don't have to have house insurance either. You should, but you don't have to. The difference with health insurance is that unless you die young everyone is going to get old. Everyone is going to sick. If you're uninsured and you get in a car accident, the ambulance is going to haul you to the ER and they are going to treat you and if you can't pay--they aren't going to get paid. If you don't have health insurance and you get cancer, you will get minimal treatment and you will probably die. Why? Because as much as the hospital would like to think otherwise on occasion, they're a business. A business must get paid for the services they provide to stay open. Who pays for the treatment the uninsured receive?

Everybody. You do. I do. We all do. Walgreens, for example, billed my insurance company for $271.07 for my medicine last month. Do you want to guess how much they got? $18.16. If I had been paying for the medicine out of pocket, I would have given them $250.00 more. The difference? The insurance company has a contract with the pharmacy. If the doctor or the pharmacy isn't guaranteed their money, they're going to charge more---which helps pay for all those folks who don't pay. The doctor's visit? They billed $150.00. How much did they get? Including my copay, $94.70. Once again, if I were a responsible uninsured person, paying that difference would help make up for some other person who wasn't able to pay their bill.

People don't want health insurance when they're healthy. They only want it when they're sick. They want to wait until there's something that costs more than the coverage to get it. This is why that word "pre-existing condition" keeps coming up. On a car, no one pays for damage that was there before the policy was in place. That's common sense. It's common sense with health insurance too except for one little hiccup. People die from pre-existing conditions. I don't care how much you love your car, you're not going to die because of a dent in the bumper. If I come down with diabetes, it's only fair to ask the insurance company to pay for it if I was paying premiums all those years when I didn't need treatment. Right?

You know it is whether you like it or not. We all want to be able to get health insurance whether we're sick or not. The only way that's going to be fair to the insurance companies (who didn't want to take me two years ago on an individual plan because I'm too fat---nothing else wrong with me, mind you, and now I have medical proof that I'm a healthy fat person) to have to take everyone is if all these people who refused to take out coverage until they're sick are 'encouraged' to do the right thing and pay premiums while they're healthy. Otherwise, there won't be a health insurance industry to reform, because they'll go broke paying for all those people who won't pay for anything until they already have the medical equivalent of a house fire smoldering.

We've been requiring it for cars for years. Now it's time to start requiring it for bodies. We all have one. We'll be grateful when the decline in preventable diseases starts lowering over all costs.

Edit: Today the Supreme Court decided that the health care mandate is legal because the penalty is a tax. I can see that. Oh, and if you're wondering, I LOVE broccoli and the government doesn't have to force me to eat it. And my old car??? It's fuel efficient enough it wouldn't have qualified for cash for clunkers, so the petrol police wouldn't come after me anyway. I am an adult. I live in a society. I must do my part.

Inconceivable

2012-06-18T22:41:00.000-05:00

There is one thing I veer distinctly... away from the left on. I believe evil is real. I believe that very bad things do exist and that they do hurt people. I've seen real evil. I know what it smells like. The answer, if you're wondering, is fear. Fear and misery.

Matt. 17: 14- 21 (NRSV)
14 When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, 15 and said, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. 16 And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him." 17 Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me." 18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?" 20 He said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you."

I'm puzzled by this translation. He's an epileptic, but Jesus rebuked the demon and it came out of him, curing the boy. The NIV says "He has seizures", but there's still a demon. The New American Standard Bible calls him a lunatic (I think that's my favorite) but that pesky demon is still there. The King James also calls him a lunatic, but promotes the demon to a devil.

So are the bible translators schizophrenic or is the kid in the story?

That wasn't very politically correct, was it? The same story appears in Mark, and they describe the symptoms, which sound like seizures, so one can assume that's why they're calling the child an epileptic but not why they can't let that demon go.

One thing I've learned dealing with the supernatural is that it helps to know what you're actually dealing with. I'm taking a wild guess that on some level, conscious or not, Jesus knew that the child had a brain disease that needed to be healed. Did the disciples not understand what the child needed? Did they focus too much on power over the supernatural and not believe that God knew what the boy needed and provide it?

Don't you love how every one else jumps straight to the mustard seed? It's easier, isn't it, to go straight to moving mountains rather than dealing with the difference between evil spirits and mental illness. I don't have a good answer, I have complicated and convoluted answers. I'll look at one instance in the gospels of demonic possession and say "Yup, that was a demon" and then at another and say it was epilepsy. In any case, I don't blame Christ for not sitting everybody down and explaining to them that it was a brain injury causing behaviors x y and z and that it wasn't a demon at all in some cases because it wouldn't have done anyone a lick of good in that context.

Sometimes it's easier to just fix it. Sometimes it's easier to gloss over it. No matter how you slice it though, that word is in there. Should we talk about it?

Shadow days and Coming down

2012-06-10T20:51:00.002-05:00

Acts 9:26-31 (NRSV)
26 When he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples; and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. 27But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, and described for them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus. 28So he went in and out among them in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. 29He spoke and argued with the Hellenists; but they were attempting to kill him. 30When the believers learned of it, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. 31 Meanwhile the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.

They were afraid of him because they did not believe he was a disciple. I can understand that. He was, after all, the guy who had been roaming the land looking for followers of The Way to have drug out and murdered. He was Saul. Barnabas, (a name the apostles had laid upon him which means 'son of encouragement'), took him in. Paul immediately proceeds to make an ass of himself by running around preaching without a license (*sarcasm...or is it?) and they took him away and sent him off to Tarsus for seminary and to get his head on straight.

The Church hasn't changed much in 2,000 years, has it?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a bad thing. I remember what an insufferably enthusiastic lunatic I was in the early days of my faith. I remember all the things I thought I knew. I remember how ridiculously exciting it all was. I remember. I do. I don't think it was a bad thing. I just know that it's probably a good thing I didn't have regular internet access and a blog.

Why? I barely knew a single blessed thing about what I was talking about. Oh, sure, I knew the basics. The bare basics. I just didn't get it yet. I didn't know better than to run around right after having been converted from having murderous rage against this new sect of Judaism speaking boldly and arguing with Hellenists..

Oh wait, that was Paul. He stayed insufferably enthusiastic and was later crowned the king of run-on sentences but those years he spent away obviously did him good. He got less 'fraidy cat looks from everyone after a while and he became the apostle to the Gentiles we all love to read cold from the lectern at the last minute because someone didn't show up. That guy. He still had issues. Couldn't really decide whether sex was a good thing or a bad thing. He liked to self depreciate and then turn around and give his credentials. Made lists of all the people who weren't going to heaven. Jesus seems to have made a ...

Oh consider what he started with! You don't get over being a Zealot over night. Not without having a psychotic break. He had a lot to deal with. I'm not sure everyone liked him all the time, but they learned to respect him, and love him for who he was. It took God loving him before he was lovable, when he was a vile TV preacher type on steroids with connections in law enforcement, to make him that guy we name cathedrals after.

Be patient. Be patient and try to remember what you used to be like.

Who are my mother and brothers?

2012-06-10T15:07:00.001-05:00

I come from a traditional family. My parents have been married for forty years. My grandparents were married for longer. The only step anything I have are nieces/nephews, and one cousin, who I do not call my step cousin, just my cousin. I have seen--and benefited from--effects of a traditional two parent home. I know what it means to belong without actually fitting in to a family. I have also noticed that the older I get the more I realize how absolutely blessed I am to have been born to these people. We have our problems, same as everybody else, but at the core of it we still love each other and when it hits the fan, we back each other up.

I'm convinced that's what makes my family functional. Functional in the sense that at the moment everyone is speaking to everyone else and that we're all part of each other's lives. Today's gospel reading made me think today that maybe Jesus' family was functional in the same way. They may have thought he was nuts, but in the end, especially in the end, they showed up anyway. Jesus, likewise, seems annoyed but uses the moment to make a point:

Mark 3:31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.
3:32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you."
3:33 And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"
3:34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!
3:35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

Notice that the ties that bind could not have possibly been severed completely because we have his brother James showing up in the Book of Acts at the Council of Jerusalem and his mother follows him to the cross. No one is throwing anyone away here. He's just widening the circle. Widening the circle big time.

I once had the big brass lady balls to say at church that my family never shows up and I have no one to spend Midnight Mass with. I was immediately corrected. I say big brass lady balls because those people have been putting up with me since I was 15 years old. I should know by now that those people are my family. Put a qualifier of church family on it if you must, at this point, I think we're stuck with each other.

There's more than one way to be family. I saw La Cage aux Folles Friday night with my good friend and her fiance and saw that played out on the stage. The crazy maid, the straight son, the drag queen mother, and the father trying to play referee between his son's desire to get past his future in-laws and his partner's need for recognition for his role in raising the boy. What makes a family? Is it children? Long suffering each other's company? Who was more of a mother? We didn't see much of her, but I think Ann's mother was more interested in keeping that corn cob in its place than in making her daughter happy. I think in that family it was the mother. He wasn't just his father's partner, he was the one who turned their house into a home. That deserved respect. Jean Michael deserved respect too. He turned out different than his parents without turning his back on them, and dealt with all the trauma and drama that comes from the way people reacted to his family when he was growing up.

There's more to raising kids and living right than being in a traditional relationship and having the equipment to produce offspring. I know families that are incredibly dysfunctional that are not broken homes in the sense that the parents are divorced. They are broken in the sense that the love just isn't there. The father tries to kill the daughter and no one, especially not the mother, calls the cops. The daughter doesn't think she has any business getting angry about not being protected. It's just broken. Never mind that there's not a divorce decree involved, that family is broken.

So what makes a family? Blood? Affection? In the case of Jesus, whoever does the will of God?

Intentions

2012-06-10T09:26:00.000-05:00

Does this look familiar? If you've been to St. Matthew's Episcopal church, it should. It's one of the cushions at the alter rail. It's a triquetra, in this case, a symbol of the Christian Trinity.

For those of you who enjoyed the show attached to this guilty pleasure, this next image should also look familiar.

In this series, it's an occult symbol, and it symbolizes the three sisters the plot is centered around.

So who does it belong to? The Christians? The Pagans? The ages? I'm going to go with humankind.

It means what we intend it to mean in a given context. No more, no less. It isn't copyrighted. Just because someone assigns a new meaning to something, or digs up an old meaning through research, it doesn't change what a symbol means in the context it was used in.

The alter cushion predates the series Charmed. That doesn't mean that the witches in Charmed are Christians, unbeknownst to themselves. The neopagans didn't steal it back from the Christians, and the Christians didn't steal it from the Germanic pagans in the first couple centuries of Christianity. It already belonged to them. It was their culture that produced the symbol and not the other way around.

It means precisely what we intend it to mean, no more, no less. Paranoid folks would like you to believe otherwise. They want you to believe that you can unintentionally worship another god. They want you to believe that by donning that adorable ring your boyfriend gave you for your birthday with this thing on it, you can unintentionally become a witch and an idolator.

I think that's only true if you believe it's true. St. Paul describes this strange little problem in Romans: As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. If you think you're sinning by having something in common with that delightful but silly little tv series but you do it anyway, you are. But if you've gotten to the point in your relationship with Christ (and it's okay not to be there yet, just don't stay there) where you realize that nothing is unclean in itself then it isn't "unclean".

Making it so

2012-06-02T22:01:00.000-05:00

“When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.” ~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

I hear a lot about what things really are, and what they really mean lately. I've heard this all my life. Easter is really a pagan holiday because it's English name is similar to a pagan goddess's name and the eggs have nothing to do with Jesus and the chocolate has even less and what's the deal with the rabbits? It all ends with "and if you celebrate it, you're basically worshiping Satan". I have three words to say about that, and one of them would embarrass my mother, HINT: initials are WTF. One of the things I've learned over the years from being in church more often than any normal human being is that a lot of things have multiple layers of meaning. Easter is a great example. To the untrained, unread eye that tends to swallow things as long as they're laced with a spoonful of God-talk sugar to make the *cough* medicine go down, the Easter legend seems sensible.

Here's the problem, it's not. The date of Easter, far from being determined by proximity to Beltane, is determined every year by the date of Passover, a Jewish festival being celebrated to this day in the same fashion (and therefore the date being determined in the same manner) just like it was that week when Jesus, Yeshua to his friends, was crucified around the same time. It happens to occur in the spring. The eggs? A symbol of new life and fertility. The bunnies? That one is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and I think it's kind of stupid. Why do we call it Easter when everyone else calls it Pascha? English is weird. You want proof? Go to an Episcopal church for the last five days of Holy Week. If you still think it's all of a bunch of hidden worship to devil gods I don't think I can help you.

There are a lot of unhappy people in this world who want to take whatever joy other people have away from them. Unfortunately, someone gave them internet access. So we are bombarded constantly with messages that the things we love are really things we hate in disguise and that we shouldn't trust them. I think a lot of them write for Chick Tracts. (Scroll down a little bit on this one and check out the fine print on "Wassup" It's "Hi there" 'adapted for black audiences'.) The thing is, even the symbols that have been co-opted for evil in varying ways really mean something else, so you can take it all with a grain of salt.
Example:

The inverted cross was co-opted by devil worshipers for their "Black Mass", probably somewhere in the 16th and 17th centuries (I can't find a date on it, this is my suspicion only, it may only stretch back as far as Anton LaVey and his cohorts.) but it was originally, and when I say originally I mean the thing dates back to 200 A.D., the Cross of St. Peter. Legend has it that when Peter was martyred he asked to be crucified upside down because he didn't feel worthy to die in the same way that Jesus did. I guess someone should rethink the nursery theme for Rosemary's baby, right?

Anybody want me to do more of these?

Building Barns

2012-05-14T22:03:00.001-05:00

Luke 12:13-21 (NRSV)
¹³Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." ¹⁴But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" ¹⁵And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." ¹⁶Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' ¹⁸Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' ²⁰But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' ²¹So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

I said to myself, I said, Self, sit back, relax and watch the show begin. We've got this all figured out. Everything is going according to plan and the money's rolling in like waters. There's too much of it, so we shall proceed to buy a bigger house in which to put more crap. Because we can buy a bigger house in which to put more crap. Why? Because...we can. Because next year, the housing market might crash and the only thing that's going to help me drown my sorrows is booze with gold flecks in it. The house that's too big to clean might make me feel better. Six dollar beers at Applebee's are a non negotiable part of of the budget. Every.night.they're.part.of.the.budget... because this marriage works better with alcoholism coupled with consumerism. Because everything's going to keep going our way.

How long can grain keep? A couple thousand years, if you have an airtight tomb to put it in. Unfortunately for King Tut, right now there's a debate going on about where his mummified penis ended up (at least on the Colbert Report there was) and he's not doing any drinking or eating. He was only 19 when he died. His grave goods? Still tasty if I remember correctly.

It's been a while since I studied up on the mummy's curse. I'm sure there are a number of ways to interpret this parable. Especially if we stop where the lectionary does with the line about being rich toward God. Storing up treasures for ourselves without being rich toward God? Generous with God?

(I've always wondered how a person can generous to God with money or goods or time. If we're doing it for praise, we're idiots. "All things come of thee, oh Lord, and of thine own have we given thee." Do what you feel called to do or even just what needs to be done and get over it. Quit keeping score, you can't keep up.)

²²Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. ²³For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. ²⁴Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! ²⁵Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life^[b]? ²⁶Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?²⁷“Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ²⁸If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! ²⁹And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. ³⁰For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. ³¹But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

Seek first the Kingdom. Whatever you do, do it well, and to the glory of God. Don't exploit people for your own profit. Make a profit, but benefit other people while you're doing it. Be generous with what you have. Be kind. Let it pinch a little. It won't kill you. You might even find the experience of not having to keep up with the tags on eight cars liberating.

I sell insurance for a living. My paycheck depends on people worrying about tomorrow in a way. In another way, it depends on being able to sell a contingency plan for what happens if tomorrow comes and you end up with your car in a ditch or sitting outside your home waiting on the fire department to get there. Insurance doesn't make your car being in a ditch or your house catching fire not hurt. It just takes the edge off. There's a reason we call insureds and their homes "risks" in this business. The way we make money is figuring out who is more likely to cost us how much money and charge and appropriate amount of money for a promise that we'll be there to help pay for it if something bad happens. Life is a risk. With most people, it's not if something bad is going to happen, but when and how bad.

I've had a lot of people sit at my desk. I can tell you something about every last one of them: Absolutely none of the really bad stuff that happened to most of them in their lives could have been prevented by worrying. The couple who pulled out in front of a semi truck? That job was actually a boon for them, financially speaking. It was a good thing. Nobody could have guessed it would have put them in the wrong place at the wrong time. The poor kid driving the truck is never going to quit asking why he was there. The lady whose husband choked to death on a sandwich? I'm sure she never saw that coming. The relationship doesn't work out, the job gets eliminated, the car breaks down and the washing machine craps out the same day. Bad things happen. All the time. There's a lot of good things, though, that won't happen if you never leave your front door because you're too afraid of what's coming next. Money's no fun unless you can do something good with it. It's just there.

So do something good with it. Do something good with your life. Quit worrying about tomorrow, but buy insurance. I need new tires.