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I never… not once… considered how I would deal with hate mail from this blog. I assumed, I think, that most people reading knew me personally and, if they had anything awful to say would say it to my face. Not to mention the fact that they would know me well enough to know my “tone” which is always hard to convey electronically.
So these few weeks have been a shock. The comments and emails I’ve gotten have affected me in a very weird way, physically and emotionally. I want to write to all of my favorite bloggers and ask how they do it??? And does it get any easier? It never ceases to amaze me what awful things human beings will do, say, write to one another… even to perfect strangers.
Of course I have options. 1) Close the bog down right away. 2) Start a new blog, giving the address to people I know I can trust to be, at the least, respectful of the medium and the messenger. 3) Practice censorship. Delete comments I don’t like, limit comments to people who give a valid email address or join the blog, moderate comments on a case by case basis. 3) Keep going as is, ignoring comments or emails rendered in a spirit of hate or disrespect. 4) Keep going as is, responding to everyone regardless.
It is all just to weird for me at the moment to make a good decision, but if anyone reading this has an opinion, FEEL FREE. Everyone else does. I’ve bumped the comments security level up one notch, and for that I apologize, but that’s the deal for now.
I need a distraction and I have been sitting on these thoughts for too many weeks now. Without further ado, I now commence to make this blog comprehensively offensive by covering both religion AND politics. Woo.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a Barack Obama fan. What you might not know is that I’ve been a fan for much longer than has been popular. I think it was a year and a half ago when I first took notice and started following his campaign/ideas. As more than one person has noted, one of the issues with Barack is whether or not he is too good to be true.
My problems with Hillary Clinton are these:
1) Dynasty. 4 years of one Bush, 8 years of one Clinton, 8 years of another Bush, 8 years of another Clinton??? What kind of democracy are we promoting with that kind of lineup? It makes me supremely uncomfortable to think of the most powerful position in the world being held in the hands of two families for (potentially) 28 years. We’re already at 20 years and that has caused more than enough trouble for me.
2) Clinton’s willingness to do anything for power. Granted this is a personal/personality issue. It’s my blog so I get to do things like that. To stay in a loveless marriage while her husband actively and continuously carries on extra-marital affairs… all for the sake of her political potential. This bothers me. As a friend of mine pointed out… what kind of person is it that wants to be the most powerful person in the world? Politics in the olden days was about service and sacrifice… whereas now it’s about power and influence.
3) No matter what anyone says, Clinton is NOT electable. A quick perusal of facebook makes this abundantly clear. None of the other candidates inspire such hatred and dislike. As much as I would like to pretend otherwise, the world is not ready for Hillary.
My problem with John Edwards is this. This is entirely personal and potentially unfair, but… you know… my blog. I just can’t get behind the man whose major platform is poverty living this kind of lifestyle. Not to mention the multi-hundred dollar haircuts. 
So what do I like about Barack? SO glad you asked!
When Barack said in one of the debates that “words matter” I actually flinched a little. Why?!?! If anyone believes that words matter it’s me, but I guess it seemed too poetic to be acceptable. But, it’s true. Part of my love for Barack is that I believe that he can use words to 1) restore our reputation with the rest of the world 2) unite enough people to actually get something accomplished and 3) restore HOPE. How cheesy is that? And yet I believe it. Barack is the only candidate that gives me hope and makes me think I can hold off on that long-awaited move to Canada.
Please please please anyone who reads this keep Alexa and her little baby girl in your thoughts and/or prayers.
Like any good fundamentalist child, when I was growing up I listened to Adventures in Odyssey every evening at 6.30. If pressed I am pretty sure I could recite for you their mailing address which was always stated at the end of every program. (For the heathens among us, Adventures in Odyssey is a radio show for kids put on by Focus on the Family. Characters include: Whit, the kindly old gentleman who runs the local ice cream parlor; Connie, the angsty older teen who works for Whit and was not born into the Christian faith; Eugene, the red-headed genius whom no one ever really understands; all the local townspeople, etc. )
One of the episodes I remember most clearly involved a made-up game that became part of my life. It was called right/right wrong/wrong. Whit, or one of the kids in the town, would tell a Bible story or story from real life and the listeners had to diagnose the story as right/right, right/wrong, wrong/right, wrong/wrong. As in:
- the right action/the right motive
- the right action/the wrong motive
- the wrong action/the right motive
- the wrong action/wrong motive.
I loved it.
My favorite story ever was a wrong/right story. I loved it because it was complicated and did not have any easy answers. What seemed right on the surface, was not right after all.
In 2 Samuel, chapter 6, David has just recovered the Ark of the Covenant: the most sacred relic in all of Christianity… the place where God dwelt and had his home. The Ark of the Covenant was (for visual purposes) a chest of sorts and it had disks on the sides through which long poles were supposed to be fitted, in order to transport the ark. NO ONE was supposed to ever touch the Ark of the Covenant. To do so was punishable by death. However, David, apparently not having access to the handy-dandy long poles he needed, outfitted a cart to carry the Ark back to Israel. HOW David got the Ark onto the cart without touching it, we are not told, but we are told that while the Ark was bumping along the dusty road the oxen took a fall, and the man Uzzah reached out a hand to stop the Ark from tumbling away.
Uzzah died on the spot.
2 Samuel 6: 7 “The LORD’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God.”
Wrong action. Right motive.
Now, leaving aside the many many many ways in which this story should give us pause… let’s assume that it is what it is and discuss the lesson it is supposed to teach.
There seems to be an idea floating around that as long as one does something with “the right heart,” their actual actions can be ignored, forgiven, blessed, supported, what have you… In other words, as long as my motives are good (not to say pure, which is an entirely different level of godliness), that should be all that matters.
The problem with that is… it’s not true. Leaving aside the story of Uzzah, even… how many times have you seen this work out well in practice? Isn’t this the entire basis for the romantic comedy??? Someone has a noble goal or a good idea or a sweet crush… and they go about achieving things in the entirely wrong way. Disaster unfolds. In the corporate world I can just imagine the collective bosses of the world responding to the earnest intern’s plea that “really! I meant well!” while the copy machine explodes into bits.
The other problem with this is that I am not God, nor am I someone else, and so it is no small thing to act in such a way… a way contrary to what I know is wanted from me… and to believe that my acting in opposition to someone’s desires is perfectly okay because I KNOW BETTER. I know what so-and-so really needs. Unless you are dealing with very very small children, this is a risky… not to mention arrogant… thing to do.
Religion seems to infuse many people with this kind of arrogance. The missionary to the savages believes that instructing the native woman to cover themselves will protect their souls and the souls of the men and children around them. The missionary ignores the fact that this has been the behavior in the tribe for hundreds of years and that it is stunningly practical. Families turn their backs on homosexual sons and daughters, believing that to fail to abandon them in this way is to endorse and support their “lifestyle.” Prayer groups gossip amongst themselves for hours, divulging the dirty secrets of their friends, neighbors, relatives, employers… under the false impression that such betrayals of confidence are acceptable and surely innocent.
The point is, I don’t know what’s best for your life. I don’t know your heart and soul and destiny. I certainly don’t have the authority to manipulate those things in order to bring about my own personal goals for you. No matter how much I might believe in my own cause, my own religion, my own ideas of how a person interacts with the world… I don’t have the right to interfere in your life in that way.
Getting back to our dead friend Uzzah. There’s a final twist to this story. Uzzah grabbed at the Ark because why? Because the oxen stumbled. But the Ark would never have been in danger had the Protocol for Acceptable Transportation of the Ark of the Covenant been followed. It should never have been on a cart in the first place. Does that make Uzzah’s actions…. wrong/wrong?
My great-grandmother passed away this morning.
Ada was 85 years old and loved desperately by many. Thinking about her I remember certain things very clearly.
She loved birds. She had several birdfeeders placed outside her trailer (yes, trailer) and her grocery list always included plenty of birdseed to fill them with.
Ada’s trailer smelled like kerosene because they kept a small kerosene heater going almost all year round. When her husband was alive the two of them would sit on their fifties-era couches under hand-knit blankets, attempting to keep warm in the 90-degree heat.
(The thing I remember most about Ben, Ada’s husband who died in my childhood, was that he chewed tobacco and smoked a pipe 24/7!)
Ada’s voice was the most refined Southern warble that I think I have ever heard.
Every birthday, Christmas, gradation… Ada sent a 50 cent card with a $5 dollar bill inside. Considering that I don’t even know how many grandchildren and great-grandchildren she had, and her life on a fixed income, this was no small sacrifice.
Whenever I visited Ada she would try desperately to get me to take reading material home with me. This consisted of decades-old Reader’s Digests and any number of age-weathered Guideposts.
My mom bought Ada’s groceries every week when she got too old to drive. Sometimes I or my brother and sister would take her if my mom couldn’t make it. Ada wanted so desperately not to be a bother… not to trouble anyone. Usually she would take us out for lunch at her favorite diner, but only if we “didn’t have other things we needed to do!” because she was so certain that we did.
Ada taught Sunday school for years at a tiny, geriatric baptist church near her home. When she grew to feeble to come to church her Sunday school class was so desperate that she continue teaching that they equipped her with a tape recorder. Ada recorded weekly lessons and someone from the church would drive out to her trailer to pick up the tape that could be played back to the class on Sunday.
Ada’s death has affected my mom deeply. When I spoke to her this morning she told me that she had been with Ada last night and she blamed herself for Ada’s death and was guilt-ridden for not staying overnight with her. Nothing Ada did or said yesterday could’ve indicated that she was near death, but of course it’s hard to convince my mom of that.
The funeral will be on Monday, which means that I can’t go since I don’t have any time off of work left, but I will remember her from Raleigh and trust that the family will be comforted by the service.
I am angry. And because I am angry I should probably NOT post, but… oh well.
Normally a blog actually has to have an established readership and a fairly decent following before one has to start worrying about anonymous, hurtful comments and hate mail. But! Here just for you all I have found the super secret short cut. I give it to you now, free of charge, keys to receiving the same:
1) Live in the South
2) Hang out with people you can’t trust
3) Write about religion
VOILA! You’re done! Now just sit back and wait for the hate mail to start.
A blog is a very very very strange thing. It’s a new medium and the expectations of a blog are WILDLY different. I agree with Kyran over at Notes to Self about what a blog can be… with it might be. A blog is both public and personal and maybe my older friends are right to worry about that particular duality. I started writing for one reason only…. to write. I needed to write more and to have a blog is to have someone, anyone, even just one, to be accountable to for whether or not any writing was being done. When I chose to write publicly about things deeply personal and/or controversial I did my best to preface my thoughts with clarifications and explanations of where I was coming from and what my intentions were. Apparently sometimes that doesn’t matter.
In short, there has been a lot of drama over this “nutty blog” this week. And I won’t disclose the whole story, but suffice it to say that my inability to trust people? There is a reason for that.
*updated to add* One of the people involved has offered an apology, which I have accepted, though that does not mean that none of this ever happened or that I am not still working through my feelings on the matter.
I will freely and readily admit to not being an optimist. I would, of course, prefer to be a realist, but most of my friends are probably laughing already. Whatever. But I guess I am ok with that. However, what it is very hard not to be is cynical. It feels like a dirty word, sometimes. A negative thing that applies to the bitter and jaded emo types whom no one wants to hang around with. I do hope I’m not that far gone yet.
But in the meantime, a few things:
Yes, this blog has been kind of a downer in lots of ways. From the very beginning in fact. I’ve not admitted it publicly like this (and I honestly have no idea who actually reads this, but let’s hope it’s not my boss…) but I do experience depression. I do. I have. I am. And obviously that is going to influence much of what you read here.
Beyond that, I am not naturally a trusting person. There are a long litany of reasons for this, but I will not write about them here. Not anytime soon anyway. And I have often had to be talked into believing that a community is worth having. Worth experiencing.
Ever since Alexa shared her news I have kept the page open. All day long I refresh and refresh and refresh to read the comments. I hope to the-god-i-don’t-know-if-i-believe-in that she has been encouraged by this outpouring of support, but I also believe that she has, because I have been so strongly encouraged. It is not my loss to bear, not my grief to experience, but I feel it anyway and from the comments you can tell that we all feel it. We all are sharing in this loss with her, and in these past two days I have been realizing over and over again what a community is and what it means and why I still want one.
This move to Raleigh has been… difficult. My community here locally is two-people strong. Sometimes three or four, but mostly two. And it has been some months since I have sat down and ached for the real hugs I get from those hardy few who are patient enough to love me. It doesn’t happen quite as often now but there were so many times during the first year when I would go weeks and barely speak to another person. Work didn’t require it and even if it did that is not the sort of interaction that “counts” in my book.
I know what I am wanting to say, but I don’t know that I am doing the best job at conveying it. In short, I believe that for a little while, I am entering a time of mourning. I am choosing to mourn with Alexa. It’s the very least I can do. And I have my own mourning to do. In our sterile, pre-packeged, plasma and plastic world we aren’t supposed to mourn. Not really. We are supposed to move on, buck up, look on the bright side, count our blessings, cheer up, laugh so the world can laugh with us, get over it, smile when our hearts are aching, keep on the sunny side, clap our hands and say yeah.
Not to say that I will dress in black and weep and turn down invitations from friends. Just that I am giving myself permission to grieve for what I have lost… what we have lost… And not to say that I will dwell on the negative. I think it is time that I look into some things to be hopeful about, and I will write about them here. But I am not letting go of my season to mourn any longer. I honestly believe that the hardest part is just going to be taking the time. Time to reflect and be honest and objective when there will be so many other demands on my time. Are so many other demands on my time. But I think my hero would be proud of me, and it is her that I plan to spend the most time with regarding these things anyway.
I don’t really want to move on from yesterday’s post, but for various reasons I need to put something else up here.
So hi! Was anyone else out there aware of how much the legal system sucks? Har har. For the few of you who are interested, here is why my case was dismissed:
The man I assumed was my “landlord” was, in fact, merely the “agent”… actually it was his company who rented the property and they were considered the agent. The “landlord” was my agent’s father, since it was the father who actually owned the property. So the father can’t be held legally responsible because the father (who is ancient and enfeebled) could claim no knowledge of any of the problems I experienced… because all of my documentation and emails and such were with the son. I asked repeatedly for some sort of documentation of the contract established between father and son/landlord and agent so I would know who was responsible for what, but I was told that “no such document exists.” Further… all of my paperwork…. emails, letters from my doctor, medical tests done to prove my allergy to the mold, the official mold test to prove the presence of mold, my documentation for the hundred hours of sick time, etc… all of that is worthless in court. It’s no good. I now know that for anything to stand it has to either 1) be documented by a government agency or 2) proceed from the mouth of an expert witness who is present and sworn in at the trial.
This is NOT how they do it on Judge Judy!!!!
So. Here, in brief, are the “two worst things.” #1 – The son knew ALL OF THIS. From day one. And could have emailed me two months ago when I first asked him to settled this outside of court. Rather he chose to humiliate me and go to court twice over proving his point. #2 – I did initially attempt to procure a lawyer. After my first visit she told me that yes, I had a case and that I needed to invest the money in a professional mold test ($500) in order to pursue my case and she could help me. I did. Then she changed her mind. All told I lost almost $1,000 in the false belief that I had a case to pursue (mold test, court costs, medical testing/records, etc.)
It all sucks but I have no choice but to move on. The positive things are that I am healthy. I haven’t been sick once since I moved out. A DRASTIC change for the better. And I like living where I am now. It works for me. And I have a fireplace.
My heart is still very very heavy for those who are experiencing unimaginable loss this day, this week, this month. I dreamed last night about my friends and I dreamed that all of their bad news was just a bad dream. But it isn’t. It wasn’t. It should be.
One happy story: Tonight I was unloading a bag of groceries and I dropped the paper bag onto the kitchen floor for the kitty to play with. She crawled into the back of the bag, making sure I couldn’t see her, and waited patiently while I walked back and forth until that perfect moment when BANG!!! Kitty explodes from the bag and catapults (heehee, a pun) herself onto my leg.
I love that cat.
My favorite blogger of all time… a woman I have come to consider something of a virtual friend, has just today suffered a heartbreaking, unbearable loss. And I have no words with which to comfort her.
Several weeks ago I started to feel deeply and inexplicably the somewhat random tragedies of the world. Meredith Emerson, the pregnant Marine, the five children thrown from a bridge, the four children found dead in an empty apartment… to name just a tiny handful. And, to be perfectly honest, I am tired of the explanations given for this sort of thing… why does evil exist in the world? Because humanity is fallen? Why is humanity fallen? Because God let them fall? Why did God let them fall? To give them free will? REALLY? Is that free will? To borrow from Neal Donald Walsh: if a judge gave a prisoner a choice between jail or freedom… is he actually giving the prisoner a choice? If you gave your child a choice between a spanking and an ice cream sundae… is that a choice? For it to be FREE will shouldn’t we get to choose the outcome? The religious so no, of course not! God is being gracious to even grant us the opportunity to redeem ourselves…. redeem ourselves from the position he created us into. Really?! In short, if I am to continue to believe in the existence of a loving God, I need something better than this. I am not looking for an argument from anyone who reads this. I am only expressing my thoughts and feelings and looking for a way to get these things out of my head. I KNOW the religious argument because naturally I used to be the one giving it! I am not asking anyone to argue me back into faith.
What I AM saying is… the current state of the world… the mindless loss, the inconceivable suffering happening to untold numbers of people on any given day.. this makes me second-guess what others would have me believe. That argument I used to give… I’m not sure I buy it any longer. What kind of God allows this much dysfunction, this much loss and pain and hurt and misery and sickness and disease and evil. What kind of God would allow those who claim to be his representatives on earth to molest children? What kind of God wouldn’t step in to say: “ENOUGH!”
Another argument is that God feels just as sad and broken by evil as we do… and yet he allows humanity to self-mutilate in this way because of free will. At this point I would want MY God to be willing to cross that line. Would I, or you, allow someone to suffer when we had the power to prevent it because of our principles? Because to intercede would be damaging to their independence???
A bit of an aside, but still related: A couple of weeks ago I saw The Kite-Runner with Jessica. And that thing that possibly struck me the most was when the main character, in utter brokeness and despair, with no other recourse, walks into a mosque, kneels, and begins to pray. A gorgeous hymn plays in the background. And as far as I could see… it’s the same motion. It’s what any Bible-believing Christian is claiming and doing for themselves Sunday after Sunday. The hymn expressed the same ideals, the prayers express the same longing and hope.
So I don’t know. I don’t know what I think. I know what I FEEL but I am, as always, hesitant to embrace a feeling. I guess time will tell…
I lost my court case. Actually, it was dismissed. And no, but thank you, I don’t want to talk about it just yet.
Soon. Promise.
