If you haven’t yet, please inform yourself about GMO and Monsanto. And if you’re available on May 25th of this year please come out and support us to March Against Monsanto, or contact your local organizer and see how you can help and while you’re at it help us spread the word. Thanks!
https://www.facebook.com/MarchAgainstMonstanto/events
this site is on hiatus until further notice….upon returning the site will be udated and i will possibly be switching to a ‘vlog’ format. in the mean time feel free to browse the site, share the posts, make topic requests, ask questions, (i will continue receive and respond to e-mail) but most of all whatever it is that you are climbing out of…….KEEP CLIMBING!!
Hello Friends,
I am writing to apologize for my absence. This time of year is always so busy. In lieu of a new article, I would like to take this moment to remind us to stop and re-examine how we approach the Christmas Season. I hope that you will visit The Advent Conspiracy (click here). May your holiday be filled to overflowing with joy and hope and peace……and loved ones.
God Bless and Merry Christmas,
Tracey
During Sandy there was a picture circulating of soldiers standing guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in a downpour (it turned out to not even be from this storm, but that is irrelevant and is just the nature of the internet). I made a comment that some found offensive. Now, this certainly isn’t the first time that something I have said or written has offended someone, but this time it bothered me. It bothered me because I have SO, SO much love, appreciation and respect for the men and women who serve in our military, and I felt like the way that my comment was interpreted implied that wasn’t true. Furthermore I was accused of not loving my country or appreciating liberty and of not understanding honor.
In a previous post I discussed the concept of Bibidolotry (found here: Bibidolotry); the idea that people are sometimes more reverent of the book than the God about whom it was written. It seems to me that with a bit of expansion this general concept applies in many other circumstances unrelated to religion, patriotism being one of them. Take, for example, the way people react to images of someone burning a flag. Of course it bothers me when I see someone burn an American flag, but mostly because it saddens me to see the hatred that it represents. The burning of the piece of cloth itself, likely to be ‘made in China’, does not stir some deep patriotic ire in me.
We are a nation of people who love pomp and circumstance. We profess such great respect for our military that we have military in dress uniform stand armed guard 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, over a marble tomb. Repeated hourly (or twice an hour depending on the time of year) there is a changing of the guard with a precise, well rehearsed, highly stylized ritual meant to confirm our respect for those souls lost to war and “known but to God”. To me, the reality of the problems faced by our soldiers and our veterans in contrast to this staged show of respect implies that those lost souls mean more to us, are more important than, our living veterans who all too often don’t even get the benefits (or respect) that they deserve. While we as a nation casually accept the “progress” of getting the number of homeless veterans DOWN to 60,000, I’m told that have no concept of honor because I don’t share their reverence for a stone tomb. I was told that I “just don’t understand” and that is correct. I do not understand a country where we gather our families to circle up and take pretty pictures of the changing of the guard, but where we ignore those who have put their life on the line for us while they suffer to the point of taking their own lives at a higher rate than the rate at which they die in battle……where’s the honor in that?
Few people know that the reason that a guard was originally posted (in 1925, became 24 hour guard in 1937) was largely to stop families from picnicking on the marble slab and that though the guards post is largely ceremonial their duty does include confronting anyone who crosses the barriers or is loud or disrespectful. I find it highly unlikely that the tomb was truly in danger, and my point was, and remains, that I don’t really think that errant picnickers were gonna be a problem during a hurricane. As so often happens, this tradition has taken on a life of its own: So much so that saying that I feel that putting the lives and well-being of our living soldiers at risk through a historic storm to protect a marble monument from a non-existent threat is silly equals I hate America. That gentleman was absolutely correct, I do not understand.
****Be forewarned, this post contains frank discussion about homosexual behavior that some readers may find offensive. If you are sensitive to such things you may not want to read on.****
I know that I have addressed gay rights before (most notably here – Plucking Splinters ) and I have addressed my interpretation of the beginning books of Genesis before (most notably here – In The Beginning ), but with Question 6 on the ballot this fall in my home state and my patience for the slogan “it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve: we can’t redefine marriage” wearing thin, I felt it warranted revisiting. While on the subject, if you are looking to further explore the idea of homosexuality amid a shifting Christian perspective I would encourage you to read this great article by Rachel Evans and watch this amazing video by Matthew Vines.
I will begin with a related conversation that I have had with many Christian friends. These people say things like “I would be okay with the idea of civil unions providing the rights gays are seeking, but marriage was established by God.” The battle that is currently raging and causing so much turmoil has boiled down to a resistance to changing what some people see as a Biblically established definition of the word marriage. The problem with that is this; the word marriage does not appear in the account of the Garden of Eden. In fact, it appears nowhere in the book of Genesis and only twice total in the entire Old Testament and in neither of those places is a specific definition provided.
Let’s take a look at the events just prior to the ‘establishment of marriage’ as presented in the second chapter of Genesis. If we take this account literally as some insist we must, and if we assume that the Garden account is a more detailed retelling of the creation of man in Genesis 1, then this story begins to unravel rather quickly. Let’s begin with the fact that it tells of Adam already in the Garden when God creates animals, which contradicts the order given in the previous chapter. Setting that aside for a moment, let’s take a closer look at the details of the story. God is in the Garden with Adam and says “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now I want you to read these next two passages carefully: “Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.” So let me translate to modern English: God decides that man should have a partner and proceeds to create every kind of animal he can think of and brings them to Adam to see if they work. ‘Hmm, nope, an elephant won’t work; nope, not a platypus either. Gee, I guess I’ll have to make a woman.’ This is the story that we are fighting over folks, the fact that a duck wasn’t a good life partner for a man has led to “It’s Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve.” Insisting that this story be taken absolutely literally not only makes Christians look foolish, it makes God look pretty silly.
I can’t leave this topic before I address the “abomination” conversation. I am somewhat puzzled by people who take a hard line about this issue based on a few passages in the Old Testament when there is SO much that we do not follow. In fact, if you’re from Maryland like me I can assure you that you have participated, regularly and enthusiastically in abominable behavior (See Leviticus 11:10-12). I am of the relatively rare opinion that God makes rules for a reason, not to randomly exert His authority. So with that perspective, let’s think about who the Israelites were. These people were nomadic desert dwellers with little means or methods of sanitation (that is why women had to leave camp for a week every month, etc) and that coupled with the lack of medical knowledge, being careful about what you ate and maintaining as much cleanliness as possible was fairly important to survival. Mishandled pork can kill you, the Bible calls pork and abomination. Mishandled seafood (would you buy crabs at a stand in the middle of the desert?) can kill you, the Bible calls it an abomination. Why should a man who touches an unclean thing be cut off from his people? Because he touched an unclean thing and, lacking hand sanitizer, is now a threat to the entire community. These rules were not about holiness, they were about sanitation and food safety.
Continuing in the same vein, homosexual behavior can be risky: specifically “lying with a man as with a woman,” i.e. having anal sex. There are two specific risks that I will address that I think were particularly relevant in the environment in which the people to whom it was called an abomination lived. The first is the issue of lubrication. One of the greatest concerns when participating in anal sex is that of anal fissures. The primary way to avoid anal fissures is proper lubrication; I will take this moment to remind you that they couldn’t just run down to the drug store for some KY. Anal fissures can lead to bleeding, pain and sometimes to serious infections which would likely lead to death in a pre-antibiotic society. The second concern is the inability in this environment to appropriate deal with the fecal germs that one partner would have all over his genitals. This to, obviously, could lead to infection and become potentially deadly. SO, having said that, in the same way that pork is a potential danger and crabs are a potential danger, homosexual behavior is a potential danger and therefore they are all called abomination, which is defined as “unclean.”
One final thought, in a nod to Westboro Baptist Church, let me close with this little tidbit. The list of things that God hates, found in Proverbs 6, doesn’t include gays.
Fall is my favorite time of the year. I love the cooler weather and huddling around a campfire to stay warm. I love the intensity of nature’s beauty as she takes one long, last deep breath and expels it in an emanation of resplendent color before she surrenders to winter. And then, of course, there’s my birthday; for me, a time of reflection.
As we live more life and have more experiences we change and those changes color the lens of how we view everything. And, much like the exploding colors of fall, they change the view and alter our perceptions. The same landscape, viewed from the same perspective can suddenly look drastically different. And so, periodically, I try to take a look, slowly, deeply, intentionally, and re-evaluate where I am, who I am, what I believe, what I have learned and where I want to go from here. As someone who writes a great deal, it is often fascinating to look back at thoughts I wrote years ago and see that some remain unaltered as strong as ever, but some have grown and changed in ways that I could not have foreseen. There is beauty in growth, but there is beauty in the underbrush of the Amazon that will never be glimpsed by man and, if you live an unexamined life, so too will there remain unglimpsed beauty hidden away in you.
Upon reflection, I discovered that the greatest gift of the last year has been a lesson in patience. Now, as the mother of three you would think that I would have already learned all a person could ever want to learn about patience, but this was different. I had long since learned patience in chaos. A screaming baby in a car seat in the grocery cart with wheezing toddler on the floor while people huff as they try to get around you…..no problem, but learning patience in the quiet and solitude of this new life as a writer, learning patience with and for myself, THAT has been quite a journey. Hidden in the freedom of this self-imposed seclusion lurked a myriad of unforeseen fears and temptations. I have had bouts of fear of failure and even more paralyzing bouts of fear of success. I have confronted and overcome, with varying degrees of success, temptations ranging from the box of cookies in the cupboard to internet porn. I have had out loud arguments with myself about how to find the balance between being real with my readers and maintaining some sense of privacy. For instance, it took about 2 hours, several deletes and some pacing around the kitchen to decide if I was going to share that last bit. All of that is okay, all of that is part of the journey, all of that is part of the process and all of it is part of the story of who I have become in these 43 years. So it took me nearly a year to work out the kinks, to figure out how to operate in this new arena, how to be a writer, that’s okay. For much of this year I have felt like an adult splashing around in the kiddie-pool, but it’s time to climb out. I think I’m moving on to the big pool friends and I’m working my way toward that deep end. All in due time, and therein lie the lesson.
A friend recently posted this article to her Facebook wall. It was an interesting read and, if we’re going to speak in broad-stroked generalizations, it’s true enough. The point of the article is that conservatives understand liberals positions better than liberals understand conservatives positions because in most social situations conservatives spend more time listening than speaking because they understand the public perception of conservatives and don’t want to get into a confrontational situation. What I found most interesting as I read it is how familiar it sounded. I do have very conservative personal values.
For instance, I hate abortion. Where I seem to differ with my hyper-conservative counterparts is that my hatred is for abortion, not for the doctors who perform them or the women who have them. I hate that abortion exists, I hate that any woman ever found herself in the position to have to make that decision. I do know a woman who has had several because she doesn’t seem to be able to figure out how to keep it from happening, but I also know that she is the exception and not the rule. If you say that you hate abortion in a social setting you are faced with being labeled as anti-woman. Here’s the irony, what bothers me most when I see a statistic like 1.3 million abortions performed annually in this country is the women. 1.3 million Abortions annually represents how many acts of unprotected sex do you suppose? Sure, some were medically related, some were birth control failure, but the majority were failure to use protection. That represents millions and millions of women not taking control of their own sexuality and not taking responsibility for their own bodies, and thereby their own futures. I don’t say that to be judgmental; I say it because, particularly as a mother, that scares me to death, and it saddens me deeply. I tell every young person I come in contact with, while we’re all arguing about abortion we tend to forget that an unwanted pregnancy is not the worst thing that can come from unprotected sex and you can’t abort AIDS. Now take a second, go back to the first sentence of this paragraph. Remember how you felt when you first read that, most people in conversation won’t give you, or simply can’t afford you in their busy life, the time to fully explain yourself so the headline becomes “she hates abortion, she hates women, she’s a bigot.” I almost said that’s why conservatives tend to keep their opinions to themselves, but I guess what I should say is that’s why every day people with conservative values tend to keep their opinions to themselves in everyday social situations.
Perhaps the reason the article felt SO familiar is because I feel that way on both sides of the divide. I do have conservative personal values, BUT I have liberal social sensibilities. My views tend to upset people on both sides so I tend to keep my opinions to myself in social situations. I hate confrontation, I hate arguing, but most of all I hate walking away from a situation with the feeling not that they didn’t agree with me, but that they didn’t even completely understand my position. I guess that’s why I blog. ☺
I was standing in my kitchen washing dishes when the phone rang. Recognizing the number as my sister-in-law I answered with a cheerful, “Hey girl!” I had barely gotten it out of my mouth as she interrupted me with “TURN ON THE TV!” Rushing to the living room I asked “What channel?” “Any!” she said, “a plane hit the World Trade Center. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” I located the remote and pushed “on.” Immediately the image of smoke billowing from the tower appeared on the screen in front of me. “How?” I asked. “They don’t know what happened; maybe the pilot had a heart attack or something.” “The co-pilot would have taken over if something happened to the pilot, how could this happen?” We stared at the unbelievable images before us, as we listened to commentary and postulated theories. Everyone was asking the same question; “how could this happen?” but no one had any idea. Moments later, as the second plane struck the second tower, shock became horror and “how?” became “why?”
I stared at the TV screen: I listened as consummate professionals struggled to maintain their composure; and instinctively, I drew my daughter, just 1 ½, near to me. I rubbed and patted my pregnant belly as if he was already here and I was attempting to comfort him. I wondered if my 10 year old had heard, at school, what had happened; I wondered if he was afraid. And as a plane slammed into the Pentagon I called my husband. “Baby, please come home.” “I’m not leaving work, everything’s okay.” “David, you listen to me. They are hitting money and they are hitting government and they think there are still planes unaccounted for. Social Security is money AND government, GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THAT BUILDING!!” I could feel the panic rising up in me as I spoke the words, and he could hear it in my voice. “If they thought there was a real threat they would evacuate the building. Everything’s fine.” I hung up the phone with a sick pit in my stomach which didn’t fully go away even after the building was evacuated and he came home, even after Tyler came home from school, even as the normalcy of a hungry toddler demanded my attention, even as we all sat down to dinner that evening, together, safe, still that pit remained.
I’m sure I am not the only American who found that sleep eluded me that night. I’m sure I am not the only American that spent an inordinate amount of time in front of a television that day, and in those that followed. I’m sure I am not the only American that found that their world felt a little less secure than it had when we had awoken on that beautiful fall morning. Something changed that day, something deep within me, something deep within all of us. We had seen things we wouldn’t have imagined that day, and they frightened us. However, we also saw beauty rise out of those ashes. We remembered what was important. We ached for those lost, and for those found. We saw incredible acts of heroism and kindness. We experienced a unity that I have never seen among Americans before, or since. And in a moment I think no one could have, or would have, predicted, members of congress who just a day prior had been at each other’s throats, stood side by side in a moment of silence which was spontaneously followed by singing “God Bless America” (watch here).
We hear it a lot this time of year “Never Forget.” It’s kind of silly really; I don’t think anyone alive that day ever could. Most of us can tell you details about that day that we don’t remember about yesterday. Sadly, as time has passed and the wounds have healed, the flags have disappeared and that sense of oneness has dissipated. The differences and disagreements that had previously divided us returned, stronger than ever, and though we have not forgotten the events of that horrific day, tragically, i fear we have already forgotten its lessons.
