Jots and Tittles

Really, really tempting...

2008-05-09T07:09:48Z

So, because I didn't write a formal research paper for my thesis, I get to instead write a formal reflection paper, reflecting on my experience writing the thesis. Seven pages, in fact, of reflecting on my experience writing the thesis.

It's 1 in the morning. I'm tired. My fingers hurt. I got to six and a half pages, and finally I snapped, and wrote the following.

Still, with as much of a struggle as it was, I am glad that I did it. I have learned how to play the game and tell all you silly university folks exactly what you want to hear, which I am sure will do wonders for me when I am someday trying to claw my way up the corporate ladder and have to bullshit my way though that like I managed to do for school. Hooray for the honors program which has taught me how to bullshit better than most. I am sure the skill will come in handy when I have to bullshit my way into a career I don't really want so that I can stay alive. Whoop de friggen do. Let's throw Brittany a party, because she has learned how to play the game better than anyone else we know! Some days I feel like Comicus from History of the World Part 1. I swear, that's my future. "Did you bullshit last week?" "No." "Did you try to bullshit last week?" "Yes." Only in my case I will have succeeded in bullshitting last week because the honors program did such a grand job at teaching me how. Well done, honors program! You have another little stooge to call your very own graduate! You must be so proud.

Of course, I didn't actually leave that in there, because it's not what they want to hear, and didn't I say that I'm a master at telling them what they want to hear? But it was tempting. Reeeeaaaaallllllyyyyyy tempting.

Like I said, I snapped! It's been a week from hell and next week isn't looking to be very much better. Thank goodness I have the ball this weekend or I might go bonkers altogether, and wouldn't that be fun?

-Jaya-

I love my little ThinkPad!

2008-05-08T05:27:30Z

So, I was running to the Weber building before Goddess Religions today so that I could print off the review sheets for the final, which we were supposed to go over during class (we didn't; I was mad). Apparently, however, I had not zipped up my backpack all the way, and it was hanging open. As I walked, I felt my laptop slip into an increasingly awkward and uncomfortable angle, and when I began to take my backpack off, the unthinkable happened - my laptop slipped out and before I could register what happened, it crashed to the sidewalk in the middle of the Oval. It seemed to happen in slow motion, the laptop slipping out, its corner hitting the sidewalk, the lid coming open, the aftermath of my poor computer sitting forlornly on the pavement, its lid half-open as though gasping for breath. I knew that ThinkPads are supposed to be tough, but I was still afraid that I had just ruined a new laptop and would be faced with the incredibly awkward situation of explaining to my parents why I needed either extensive repairs on my computer or a new machine altogether. Still, I was running late to class, so I scooped it up and shoved it back in my backpack, assuming I'd find out when I got to class whether it still worked.

I printed off my pages and made it to class with just minutes to spare, sat down and started setting up. I held my breath as I pressed the power button and waited for it to wake up (I don't shut it down before class, but put it to sleep because it's up and running faster on arrival that way) - and it was fine.

Yep, that's right. My laptop hit the pavement with enough force to embed a pebble into its casing (I have proof because there is, in fact, a pebble embedded in its casing and if I had a way to take a picture and upload it, I would), and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it except for the few scratches and dents on that one corner. I'd said before that the reason I got a ThinkPad to begin with is because I take my laptop everywhere with me and they are known for being durable, but this sucker is a friggen TANK. Jump on YouTube for a few minutes and watch some of the videos for stress tests of Lenovo ThinkPads - the one linked shows them crashing one into a wall at 35 mph, you can watch on the high-speed footage as the casing bent like a shirt blowing in the breeze, and they were still able to get the data off the thing. The keyboard is built so that spills go right through and come out through the bottom (which came in handy once...) and you can walk on the keyboard without doing irreparable damage - yes, there's a video of that, too). I wouldn't recommend abusing it that much, of course, but accidents happen, and this laptop is strong enough to handle them.

For those of you who are wondering, I have a Lenovo ThinkPad Z61m, purchased just this fall after my old Toshiba Satellite (the link takes you to a similar machine - I couldn't find the exact one but this gets linked for being closest and having an image from ANH on the screen) finally went to the digital version of the happy hunting ground - let me tell you, I was almost relieved when it finally put itself out of my misery! The ThinkPad is faster than the Toshiba could ever have hoped to be, weighs less, has more than twice the RAM, is more reliable, and (obviously!) is more durable. I would like to have one of those fancy touch-screen laptops like my mom has, but those things are notoriously fragile, and I need something that can withstand some punishment because with as much as my laptop travels, punishment is bound to happen, like it did today. Looks like I found the right machine for the job.

We - meaning Troy and I - are thinking of partitioning the hard drive this summer so that I can dual-boot Vista and Linux, probably some form of Ubuntu, and learn my way around it. I have wanted to learn my way around Linux for some time, primarily because it's open-source and often free, like most of the software I use (Firefox, Pidgin, and Open Office are the three big ones, though even the stuff I have that isn't open-source is free: iTunes, AVG, Spybot, Ad-Aware, etc.), and that often means that it's more customizable and more stable, both of which I like. While there might be some software I use that isn't made for Linux (RoughDraft and Q10 come to mind, which is sad because I've really enjoyed using them), there are almost always alternatives that will do just fine for me (YWriter4 is a program I have used and actually did like, though it is more practical for editing than the frantic drafting that comes with NaNoWriMo). The problem with Linux is that it takes some getting used to, and its users often are expected to know more about computers and programming than I do. (That is, of course, a generalization which is bound to be false in some cases... but still.) So, in order to learn my way around Linux, I'd have to learn a thing or three about computers - which is totally fine with me, and I'd like to know more, but it'll take some doing. Incidentally, that's why I'd like to start with a dual-boot of Vista and Linux, because that way if there winds up being something I can't figure out on Linux, I can switch over to Windows and do it there - and I can do NaNoWriMo in RoughDraft or Q10 as I would prefer to.

Now, partitioning my hard drive is kind of a big deal, and I'm CERTAINLY not doing it until I've graduated and can stand to lose use of my computer for more than five minutes in case something goes wrong (though everything is getting backed up in Gmail and on my external hard drive and my iPod, if there's room, because I don't want to lose it!). But it's a thought for the future. And, who knows? Maybe the next computer I have will be one I've built. Wouldn't that be sweet?

I never thought I'd turn into the computer-savvy geek that apparently I want to be. But working with Rosie has shown me that I've got a head for the basics of this stuff, and while there are some things that are beyond my ken right now, there are plenty of other things I can handle on my own perfectly well. Besides, building my own computer and running it with a free operating system using a bunch of free software is way cheaper than going the store-bought route, and I'll wind up with a better machine, customized for my personal needs. I'm all kinds of down with that.

Anyway, that was a nice little break from homework. And now, back to the papers! There are still plenty begging to be written! *frantically writing*

-Jaya-

So true...

2008-05-07T04:47:27Z

I think that speaks for itself.

Cinderella complex

2008-05-04T21:52:53Z

There's a ball next Saturday night. And I've talked Troy into taking me.

Now, I've known about this ball for more than a year. It's an annual event, put on by Colorado State and Friends of Traditional Dance, and last year a very dear friend of mine asked me to go with her, knowing that I would simply adore the whole thing, but I couldn't because I was going to the Loreena McKennitt concert with my dad. (Which was also fantastic and I don't regret for a second missing the ball for that.) This year, however, I had no such conflict, and I have a boyfriend who could be talked in to indulging my silly fantasy for a night. I've been going back and forth, trying to decide what dress to wear, how to do my hair, what shoes I'll want for dancing the night away, the whole nine yards. I've almost decided on the black empire-waisted dress from my senior prom, assuming it still fits properly. S'pose I should figure that out before too long. But if I wear that one, I can wear my favorite black heels (oh, they're so lovely!), and bring my little black purse. Yael agreed to do my hair like Jane's in Pride and Prejudice, and I bought some pretty fingernail appliqués from King Soopers (they're cheap, but it's only for one night anyway). Sure, it's the Saturday before Finals week, but you know something, I just don't care. This is my last semester of college, I've NEVER been to a dance with a date, and this one includes dance cards and live music by the Mostly Strauss Orchestra, also known as the Denver Pops. I can't begin to express how delighted I am at the sheer idea. I know that Troy can barely waltz, and honestly I'm not much better, but at this point that doesn't even matter. I'm just excited to be going.

Because of all this, lately Troy has affectionately and teasingly diagnosed me with a Cinderella complex. I'm not entirely sure he knows what that means, actually, because a desire to get dressed up in pretty dresses and go dancing has very little to do with a hidden fear of independence. It has a lot more to do with being a very girly girl, and loving every second of it.

I think it's been well-established by this point that I am every feminist's worst nightmare. And that I delight in being so. I simply love the idea of being a good wife and mother someday, and if I was required to wear a dress every day I would be first in line to burn every pair of pants I own. No higher compliment can come my way than to hear that I am considered a classy lady. Climbing the corporate ladder has never held any attraction for me, and honestly I don't much want a job if I can get away with it. (I probably can't, which makes me very sad, but if I could, I would. And I know some of you are thinking, "Jaina, you'll go nuts if you don't have any intellectual stimulation!" Which is true - thankfully, I have this fantastic internet contraption which provides more intellectual stimulation than I could ever need. And it's not as though I don't intend to have friends or anything. Everyone needs a break now and then. I just don't want a job like everyone seems to think I should.) I do want someone to take care of me, but it's less because I have some fear of independence and more because I want to have the time I would have spent taking care of myself to be spent taking care of others. I'm not saying I don't fear independence at all, because I do. I'm a college student for only a few more weeks, and after that I have to grow up some more, which frightens me a lot. But it's not the sort of paralyzing fear which forces me to seek out people who will take care of me because I can't function if I have to take care of myself. I'll do it, and I'll probably do very well at it, because I'm a smart young lady and - more importantly - I have an awesome God looking out for me and making sure that I am provided-for.

So, do I have a Cinderella complex? I don't know - whatever fear of independence I have probably isn't enough to warrant calling it a complex. And, honestly, from what I can tell, this particular "complex" has received criticism in recent years for oversimplifying matters too much. Besides, it seems to me that a fear of independence and a desire to be taken care of can be seen in a very good light - if I am afraid to be independent of God and want him to take care of me (as I know he will), is that such a bad thing? But I do know that, whatever I have, I'm very okay with it. I'm a very strange person, and I'm glad of it. I actually quite like the way I am - not that there aren't plenty of things I would change about me, but it's not like I wish I could just scrap the whole damn mess and start over. Who I am, fundamentally, at the core, I pretty much like. There's a lot of sin there and there's a lot of imperfections which drive me, God, and probably everyone else absolutely bonkers, but that stuff is the flesh, it's not me. I do it, and I struggle with it, but it's not me. Gah - Paul articulated this so much better than I could. It's in Romans 7. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Rom 7:15-17) Along those lines.

Anyway, the point is, God made me as I am, and I think he did a pretty good job - "Cinderella complex" notwithstanding.

Fuller!

2008-05-03T19:05:11Z

Got a letter from Fuller yesterday afternoon, which I didn't read until last night.

I've been accepted to Fuller Northwest! Hooray! So that means that I'll be in Seattle come the fall, unless I hear back from the housing folks in Pasadena and transfer myself down there. Honestly, I'd rather be in Seattle, but if I get housing in Pasadena I'll go there instead. Still, God has done some amazing things in the past few days. I heard back from Group and they want to pursue an internship with me, after I had given up all hope of that. Then I heard from my friend Rachel who might have a place for me to live this summer, meaning I wouldn't have to commute from Brighton, which seeing as how gas prices are so freaking high might well be more expensive than living here, especially if I take the bus and a bike to Loveland from Fort Collins rather than drive. And it means that I get to stay with my friends and don't have to go back to the boonies of Brighton where I'm not really friends with anyone anymore and I'd feel so dreadfully out of the loop and lonely. So that's happy. And now I hear back from Fuller, who is happy to accept me. Hooray, hooray, hooray! It's so nice to have things work out! Thank you so, so much, God, that things are working out! Forgive me for ever having doubted that they would. And please let me get the job with Group. I know that whatever happens is completely in your control - and you've brought me this far, which is AWESOME, so I have no doubt that you'll bring me the rest of the way to where I need to be. ^.^

-Jaya-

Spam revenge!

2008-04-29T21:20:11Z

So, I don't know about you, but I think the most annoying thing in the world is to open my mailbox and find nothing useful inside, yet nevertheless find it stuffed with junk mail.

These guys have come up with a clever way of fighting back:

http://www.dearbulkmailer.com/

Now, I know that some of you are going, wait, that's not very nice. Well, neither is wasting my life with piles of worthless junk which I will never use. I figure, if you're going to annoy me to no end, waste a bunch of resources, time and money to print and mail this crap out, well, you have obviously got enough money to pay the post office for your receipt of a brick, courtesy of the disgruntled consumer whose life is already more complicated than it needs to be. Here's the rationale from the site:

-Since these companies pay the post office, this lightens the load taxpayers need to pay to keep the post office operating
-This creates employment opportunities. The post office keeps cutting staff because of lack of business; this gives the post office a huge source of income from the credit card ~~scam~~ companies.
-This will lead to more cautious bulk mailing. Maybe these junk mailers simply don't know they are annoying people? Hopefully they will learn very quickly!
-This makes me laugh maniacally, like a cartoon supervillan.
-This saves trees. Once enough of us do this, the junk mail companies will stop sending us junk. Or at least they will be more discriminate about it. It will save trees and keep the landfills empty! Yay!
-If we do this enough, the USPS will make so much money, that they will lower postage costs.

Ok, that last one isn't very likely. But I especially like the third-to-last one - oddly enough, it has the same effect on me!

...Find me a box and a brick!

o.O

2008-04-25T17:28:25Z

Got the GR paper back today. A+. She LOVED it. Hooray for being intentionally vague. Now, maybe I'll be able to repeat that accomplishment with my thesis and be done with it. But I am shocked that she gave me an A+ because that paper was NOT that good. It was very rambling and pointless. But whatever. I'll take it. Takes some of the pressure off for the final, anyway.

At the moment, we're "discussing" Mark Twain's The Diaries of Adam and Eve (which means exchanging blasphemies). Woo. I guess I'll find a way to pull through, I've made it this far.

Wheee!

2008-04-25T08:34:09Z

I don't know whether I'm even coherent at this point. I watched "Chicken Chicken Chicken" on YouTube today and giggled for at least 20 minutes at the thought of doing it for my thesis presentation. It's not THAT funny... except it really is, in a completely ridiculous way. Actually, at this point, I could probably listen to freakin' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and understand the deep and profound meaning behind the lyrics. And I'm not even on any mind-altering substances, unless you count a severe lack of sleep and several weeks' worth of school-induced stress. So maybe I'm not the best authority.

Anyway, considering that, the following sounds pretty darn good to me. Perhaps I will view it in a month and realize that I might have unknowingly inhaled any number of mind-altering substances, because the only other explanation for my current state of mind is multiple alien abductions, and as much as I love the X-Files I don't really believe in alien abductions. ...Most days.

But I'm going to turn it in to my GR teacher tomorrow as my second-to-last journal entry, and it's going to be freaking sweet. Especially the part about abortion. I think I toned it down a bit, especially toward the beginning when I thought I might still care, but by the time I got to the abortion bit I pretty much decided, you know what, screw it, I'm right anyway so who cares what she thinks. And then I realized what I'd done and backed off toward the end. But still.

Well, maybe you should read it for yourself.

I suppose, since we didn't have any reading for this week and since I've read Twain's Diaries and was somewhat underwhelmed – much as I love Twain's sense of humor, I found it ran toward the tedious for my tastes in this particular piece, but that's purely a matter of my own preferences – I'll talk about my thoughts on completing the research paper.

One of the drawbacks to an academic paper is that it requires such a level of formality that I think some things which ought to be said, especially in the context of religion, are left unsaid. Religion is such a personal thing that it is very difficult to discuss without bringing into consideration the individuals whose lives are shaped by it, and when academia tries to do so it often winds up sounding stilted and dry. I was very afraid that my Sophia paper wound up sounding this way, but how can I fix that without making it entirely un-academic?

Part of my problem is that the way I process things is writing about them. In my psychology class we recently had to do a memory exercise that involved remembering all we could about the first day of class, first without our notes and then with them. My memory was rather dismal, honestly (which doesn't bode well for my future, but that's another story), but one of the things that I remember is sitting there before class started and writing about whether or not I was going to give up on the honors program and not mess with the whole thesis thing. I only sort of had an idea of what to do, I had a tentative adviser but nothing definite, and no committee member, and honestly I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the whole mess. Obviously, I stuck with it, or I would not have been doing this class as an honors option, but at the time I was seriously considering just dropping it and moving on. But the way I worked my way to a decision was through writing. Not always writing on a computer – sometimes a pen moving across a page is just a better way of processing things than sitting at a keyboard pressing buttons. But writing is the way I process the things that are happening to me, so I have scraps of paper and bits of files scattered around my room and my computer that are all me, processing whatever is going on in my life by writing it out. My boyfriend can attest to this, and I think it drives him bonkers, because he is very verbal and he would much rather talk about something whereas I would rather write it out. We also have an email record of all the difficult times in our relationship, thanks to me and my need to express myself through writing.

Anyway, the point is, because I use writing to process everything, it is difficult for me to do the processing before I do the writing so that when I do write, it expresses exactly what I want it to say. You'd think that, after four years as an English major, I'd have figured out how to do that, but actually I think it's worse now than it was when I started. Which made this paper a really interesting exercise, because on the one hand I found it incredibly easy. I've been researching this stuff for about 2 years now, because it interests me that much, so the only problems I had with length were deciding what really needed to be said, and what didn't fit in. But so much of this is personal. And as I looked into who Sophia was and her history in the church, my faith underwent one of its biggest and most defining changes. But that isn't the sort of thing you put in an academic paper. You don't say that you spent nights in tears wondering whether you'd been wrong all your life or why, when you had already been an outsider in that church, you discovered something that sent your family skidding out of the thinly-defined outer circle of acceptability into which it had finally been allowed. And you definitely don't mention that your entire future has been changed by that chance encounter with Sophia in the context of the church, that your world had been turned upside-down by one forgotten goddess.

And after all this research, and all the soul-searching and questioning that came along with it, the cap of it all is a very clean, neat, sterile paper. No wonder the divine, however it was perceived, has always been worshipped through song, poetry, and story! What academic paper could possibly capture my experience with Sophia and the new understanding of God that came to me as a result of it? Its very nature forbids such a thing, and it's ridiculous to try. I suppose it's not fair to call this paper the cap, because I am very certain that I'm not done with Sophia, but still, it does seem rather anticlimactic in a very unanticipated sort of way. The final product represents the tiniest portion of what I went through to get to it.

The biggest portion of what I gained is also missing from my paper. Sophia's history is one thing, but the way she is worshipped today, while it is interesting, seems like it's kind of missing the point of God. There is something very self-centered about the way people today view and relate to Sophia. Certainly, my idea of the divine is very obviously Christian, but it seems to me that the point of worshipping a divinity is to take part in something bigger than oneself. Yet that is exactly the opposite of what Sophia has come to be in modern worship. What was once divine wisdom is now someone you can tell that “with nectar between our thighs we invite a lover, we birth a child” as the prayer goes on the tape of excerpts from the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference. Sophia is not about being part of something greater than yourself anymore, but about being greater, yourself. Selflessness is entirely missing from the picture, which I think reflects our culture better than it reflects what Christianity in ANY form is meant to teach. I agree with Jesus' statement that “greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, ESV) – and while I think most people today would give lip service to the idea, I don't think that many would live it. I guess not many people actually lived it during any time, really, but then I think this is the most self-centered culture the world has ever seen. As if I have any way of knowing that. But from what I've read, that's the way it seems. Even the idea of laying down your life for someone else is not as valuable as it once was, or else abortion wouldn't be so popular as it is, because that's only laying down nine months of your life (or longer if you choose the not-adoption route but that's your call) and it's not like you're dying, you're just kind of inconvenienced for a little while, though even at that I think most moms would tell you that the benefits outweigh the inconveniences. If we (and by “we” I realize that I am making a huge generalization that cannot possibly be accurate, but I think it does give a representative image of those I have met who fit the category) can't even give up that much for our own kids, there's absolutely no way we can lay down our whole lives for anyone else.

That's not the sort of thing that one can really express in a formal paper. But what I learned from Sophia – the part that I'm going to take with me – is not that she was the low deity who created the God of the Old Testament without a consort and then had to work with the Father to create Jesus to fix the problem, like the Gnostic texts say. The part I will take with me is the reminder that Sophia – Wisdom – used to be a link from this world to the divine, and that is the Wisdom to be sought, not the “nectar between my thighs” or whatever other self-centered worship I might encounter.

So, there you have it. I'd like to say that it's pretty good but I'm really in no position to judge. When I first wrote it I thought, "Wow! That's really amazing! I'm going to post it on the LJ for all to see!" and now that I've posted it I'm thinking, "Hmm, maybe this was a bad idea..." but it's 2:30 in the morning and I still have reading to do before I can sleep. So I'm going to go ahead and post it, and we'll hash out the details of whether that was a good idea some other time, eh? All righty then.

Peace out.

-Jaya-

Movies!

2008-04-17T00:25:41Z

It's been a really, really, really, really, really long week, and I only have 4 pages of my Sophia paper written. You know, the one that's supposed to be 20 pages long.

So I was taking a break, because it seemed the logical thing to do at the time. Actually, it really was, because my brain was so fried that trying to work would have resulted in a bunch of gibberish that I would later have to cut out, anyway, and completely defeat the purpose.

Anyway, the point of all that is, I found these. And I thought I would share, because they are that awesome. Especially the last one. Bwaha.

ESB Sweded Even if you don't know what "sweded" means - you'll enjoy. And you'll know when you watch.
X-Files Movie Trailer leaked! The name might be lame, but the movie looks sweet!
Crazy lady thinks she deserves something other than a slap upside the head This one is more sad than awesome... but amusing.
Robot Chicken does Star Wars - the trailer Sometimes rude, sometimes crude, but I gotta hand it to these guys. It is funny.
3-Year-Old on ANH If I were there, I would be giving her the biggest hug EVER. She is ADORABLE. :D

And now, BACK TO WORK! *whips self*

-Jaya-

My thoughts on abortion

2008-04-14T16:48:43Z

I only have about half an hour to write this, so it won't be as in-depth as I would like. However, since my Goddess Religions professor was kind enough to attempt to indoctrinate me regarding her position on abortion, I thought I would air my own views on the subject. It shouldn't take long; they are quite simple.

If you're looking for a very long, in-depth, thorough and (in my own humble opinion) excellent defense of the pro-life position, I suggest reading Rebecca Kiessling's essay. I especially like her reasoning regarding partial-birth and other late-term abortions - at that point, it has NOTHING to do with the mother's body, as it's quite possible to deliver the child by c-section or inducing labor, and in many cases the child stands a chance to live. In those cases, is it not the obligation of the mother to attempt to preserve life where it is clearly possible to do so? What right does the mother have to dictate that this child be killed, when very little effort on her part will secure its survival (or at least make survival possible)? If she wants to avoid raising it, there are plenty of adoption agencies out there which would be glad to help her find a home for her child. At that point, it is nothing but sheer, selfish laziness that is prompting the mother to seek abortion.

My point of view on the matter is somewhat simpler. The only time in which abortion is permissible is when the mother's or the child's life is threatened by carrying the baby full term. In the case of the mother, she has the right to act in what is, essentially, self-defense, and save her own life at the cost of another's, assuming that is the only way she can save herself. I may not like it, but I will grant that right. In the case of the child, well, if it won't survive the birth anyway, why make the mother suffer through a pregnancy that will come to nothing? However, in all other cases - including that of rape - while the inconvenience of a nine-month pregnancy may be unappealing, that is absolutely NO reason to deprive an innocent child of its life. The child is not the guilty party in the matter, regardless of how one thinks of it. And honestly, the majority of abortions are done in cases where it was simply inconvenient for the woman to be pregnant, for whatever reason, and she puts her own personal comfort and ease ahead of another person's life, for which she is wholly responsible and with which she has been entrusted its sole care. That's not only selfish to the extreme, but it's quite sick. Kiessling gives an example of a man snowed in to a cabin with a child who is too small to reach any of the food stored in the cupboards, for nine months. If he were to refuse to get food for the child because it would inconvenience him (perhaps he has a bum shoulder which makes reaching up to the cupboards painful), and the child starved to death because of his inaction, would not everyone be up in arms? He has the means to provide for this child, and while it may have been inconvenient for him to do so, that does not absolve him of the responsibility to do it.

It frustrates me to no end to hear all these women saying that "it's my right to choose what happens to my body." What kind of selfish, unfeeling, stuck-up, evil person are you? How dare you? Nothing angers me quite like that.

But anyway. I should head to class. Just thought I'd get that off my chest. :)

-Jaya-

In relation to yesterday's post

2008-04-10T03:16:39Z

Momma, I Wanna Live

I think that speaks for itself.

Abortion makes me sick

2008-04-08T23:24:15Z

I can't believe it.

Wait - strike that. I can believe it, which makes it all the more depressing. While I was looking online for the rubric for an upcoming Goddess Religions assignment, I stumbled across another article posted on the class's electronic reserve page. This article is called "A Consistent Life Ethic?: Supporting Life After Birth" and is by Rosemary Radford Ruether, and can be found for free on this page. Considering that, on the class page, the article is referred to as "Abortion/Ruether," I of course was immediately curious, and opened it up.

Actually, the article itself is pretty impressive, when you consider that it manages to spend two pages critiquing the Catholic church without once even mentioning the Bible or anything even vaguely resembling God, AND that it covers almost every single one of the liberal hot issues: abortion, the war in Iraq (and with it the nation's completely failure to do anything good, in her not-so-humble opinion), global climate change, global disarmament, unfair distribution of wealth... am I missing anything? On second thought, it's not that special after all - she just shoved God out of the picture to make room for her pet issues. Typical.

I could spend a long time pulling apart her argument, especially her criticism that, because people will do it anyway, we should just concede that abortions are ok. That's very much like saying ,well, people will murder anyway, so we might as well make them legal, since it's not going to stop anything anyway. She cites some horrific case of a mother of three who was imprisoned for getting an abortion in some other country, and her three children were of course left completely helpless as she languished in jail. Depressing, certainly, and by no means is that the best way to go about punishing a woman for her bad decision - but does that mean that she is not in the wrong for choosing to end the child's life rather than seeking help? One of the girls who went on the Arizona mission trip with me shared her story - she was adopted, and her birth mother had had several abortions before becoming pregnant with my friend. She didn't say why her mother chose not to abort her, either, but she stated very clearly that she recognizes how easily she might have been aborted, too. No wonder she is against abortion.

But I digress. Regardless of whether or not I agree with a single word the Ruether says, what on earth is this article doing in my course reserves? Granted, it's not required reading - at least, not that I have seen so far. But, despite the fact that Ruether is a well-known feminist theologian, whose arguments I have encountered and refuted before, this article mentions nothing that is even vaguely related to goddesses OR religion. So, what is it doing on a list of offered readings for a goddess religions class? I'm no rocket scientist, but even I can clearly see that this article is way out of line. There is no reason whatsoever for her to post this other than to foist her own political beliefs onto us, her unwitting students. Never mind that most of the people in my class probably agree with the article. Never mind that it isn't required reading. This is WAY outside the scope of the class and has absolutely NO reason to be on that list. This sort of thing makes me absolutely livid. It's exactly what Indoctrinate-U is all about.

If I was not so close to graduation that I am scared of saying anything that would potentially jeopardize my chances of being done (I do need this class to graduate, sadly), I would try to do something about this. As it is, while I was already planning to give a scathing review on the course evaluations at the end of the semester, I now must remember to include this, as well. Perhaps I will included something to the effect of, 'Dr. Mitchell, I suggest you listen to the Right Brothers' song entitled "SHUT UP AND TEACH."'

It's almost too bad that I already have a calling. Otherwise, I might consider contacting Evan Maloney and seeing if he needed any help fighting the liberal indoctrination going on in our universities, because this is just plain wrong, folks. And it needs to stop.

-Jaya-

Suck Haikus!

2008-04-04T17:11:08Z

I'll get to some substance later. Right now, I need some haiku-style complaining about Goddess Religions. We're a little bit behind in class, but the reading for today was about God and Genesis. The "tribal Yahweh," as Mitchell calls it.

The attacks are back
God is not respected here
they cut Him to bits.

Why is it so cool
to try to make God look like
a complete moron?

Or make Him a mean,
evil, corrupt, and worthless
patriarchal jerk?

That is not my God!
My Father is kind, loving,
majestic and good.

He is a savior,
extending His love to all,
who are unworthy.

He is vengeful, yes,
He has every right when His
perfection is wronged.

But we deserve more
than even the wrath we get;
His love protects us.

Just because His Book
reflects the myths of the
goddesses of old...

...this does not mean that
they are not true - they are
Truths behind the myths.

They can't both be true
but that doesn't mean that both
must be wholly false.

There is nothing that
frustrates me more than seeing
these dumb arguments.

In case you can't tell, I found the reading for this week very frustrating. It was all about how this stupid Hebrew god shows up and ousts all the goddesses, eradicating so much of the rich beauty of the previous religions and replacing it with the stark, ugly evil of Patriarchy. With a capital P.

Grr.

I really struggle with this crap. It gets to me on more than an intellectual level, and frustrates me to no end. Thank God that the moment I step outside, I can take a deep breath, revel in God's creation, and know that He is God, no matter what these stupid books tell me. Sometimes, I have to cling to a truth as though it was nothing more than dogma, not because it is but because that's the only way I can deal with it without losing my head. Only later, after the fact, can I look at the arguments being made and refute them logically. My first reaction is to freeze up and panic, and the only way I can save myself is to cling to what I know is true. So that's what I'll do when I get out of class today - I'm going to cling to the Truth and I'll deal with the lies later.

-Jaya-

P.S. As a rather irrelevant side note, what on EARTH is my teacher wearing today? That's got to be the most hideous thing I've seen in a long time. Shiny bronze MC Hammer-esque pants with a velvet-looking shirt that hangs down low and completely destroys any form she might have had to her body. Ick - looks like a wannabe Aladdin or... something. Wow. I'm quite at a loss for words to describe it.

Majesty, Glory, and Dignity

2008-04-03T06:08:27Z

I have been thinking about this particular subject an awful lot lately, as it seems to be cropping up everywhere. One of the biggest problems I see cropping up in modern Christianity is a desire to rob God of His majesty, His glory, and His dignity to make Him more "approachable." We see this in many modern praise songs, where the swelling tones and triumphant words of the old hymns are replaced with wimpy chords and repetitive dribble. When I was home this Easter, I got from my parents a copy of a CD set called "More than 50 Most-Loved Hymns," and have listened to it several times through while driving around. And I noticed that most of those hymns, familiar to me as they are, still managed to make my heart swell to bursting with the sense of majesty and glory they imparted. Think of singing "All Praise to Thee" or "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" - do you know the sensation I mean? It often comes with the last verse, when there's usually a key change, and the entire piece builds to this crescendo that just explodes with power and you're practically shouting instead of singing because it's that exhilarating. It even comes at the end of hymns like "Be Thou My Vision," whose last verse goes like this:

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

This is back before key changes had the cheesy connotation they do now, and instead denoted a climax to the piece that increased its intensity and majesty. Oh, I wish I could play some of it for you so that you would understand what I mean! I can only pray that you do. If you don't, spend some time on SeeqPod and see if you can find some of the music I'm talking about - usually it's accompanied by an organ or a full orchestra, though sometimes you'll get something with bagpipes that's pretty nifty. It's rather difficult to find if you don't know the names of the hymns you want (and even then, you go through a lot of bad ones before reaching a decent rendition) - I suggest starting with something really common, or something like the Hallelujah Chorus. This sort of music worships God in a dignified, majestic, even stately manner - yet the worship is no less fervent for that. Contrast this with the limp vocals of "I Could Sing of Your Love Forever." Need I say more? God is loving, and nice, and sometimes even sovereign and powerful, but no longer does he have the dignity afforded him in the old hymns.

This trend is not limited, however, simply to music. In books, too, I find it runs rampant. I recently reviewed John and Stasi Eldredge's Captivating, which is a perfect example of this sort of thing. Another is a book which I have not read myself, but judging by what people have said in reviews and synopses, it's a dreadful shambles of bad theology that aims to take from God all majesty and glory He has ever possessed. The book is called The Shack and represents God as three people: the Father has been replaced by "Papa," an African-American woman who, when not going by gender-bending familial names, goes by "Elousia"; Jesus, a Middle-Eastern man (though, by all accounts, a rather effeminate man), and the Holy Spirit, an Asian-American woman named Sarayu. Now, anyone with half a brain and the capacity to read can find out in about ten minutes of browsing the Bible that this is completely ridiculous. Apart from my usual complaints about God being portrayed as a woman (although, at least the book goes so far as to admit that this world is in need of some masculine role models and God provides that), with which we won't bother just now, here again we have this problem that God has been completely stripped of all majesty, dignity and glory to provide us with someone who is a little bit more manageable. This god is friendly, sweet, never gets mad, likes hugs, is kind of clumsy (Jesus is, anyway), and, while seems to be fun to hang out with, isn't exactly, you know, powerful or wrathful or even dignified or majestic or glorious.

I think the reason for all this is simple: it's way easier to deal with a really cool "Papa" who's hip six ways from Sunday and never wants us to be anything other than who we are. We don't want God to be majestic, dignified, or glorious, because that means He's better than us and that we need to treat Him with respect. Respect, for all it's tossed around these days, isn't something we much like to give to anyone. It's cooler to just slack off and diss everyone. Easier, too, because no one will listen to someone they don't respect.

God, however, deserves our respect, and He's not getting it. The symptom I've pointed out here may manifest itself in many different ways, but it points clearly to the loss of respect we have as a culture for God, and that's very frustrating to me. I'd much rather sing praises to God that fill me with awe at his majesty of which that music is only a glimpse, and read books that challenge me to think about a Being I can never fully comprehend, than to sing songs and read books that put God in a nice little box that I can carry around in my pill case and take it out when I need a fix.

-Jaya-

One more note. I was playing on SeeqPod and found a version of the Hallelujah Chorus by Dan Sindel which is just SWEET. DJ will love it. It's a little slow, and I'm not sure what it does for the dignity of God as portrayed in the original version, but it's STILL a darn sight more majestic and glorious than the "Jesus is my boyfriend" music. ROCK ON, JESUS! ^.~ And if you're looking for a good version of the original, look for the one by Drexel Choruses.

Update!

2008-03-30T20:10:00Z

Hello again! I feel like I haven't posted in ages. (That's probably because I haven't.) I suppose some accounting for the last couple of weeks is due. So, here goes.

Last week, that of the 17th, I was in Chinle, AZ. For those of you who don't know, this was the fourth year in which I went with the Source to Chinle, which is in the heart of the Navajo Nation and one of the bigger cities on the reservation. In a rather unexpected turn of events, I was the member who had been most often - not by much, but somehow that gave me the aura of having some expertise in all things Chinle, which was odd. It was a good trip, and I had a blast. The Navajo are wonderful people, and I got to work with the little kids (elementary-school aged), who are absolutely fantastic. I don't want to make it sound like they are any different than any other group of kids, because they aren't at all. But looking around the reservation, seeing the world into which they were born and into which they will someday enter, is rather saddening. The unemployment rate is around 80%. That's a LOT. And the reason is that, between welfare and charity, there's no need to get a job. You can rely on the generosity of others to support you, and you'll get along just fine.

Now, there is good and bad to this. The bad is obvious. The minute one drives onto the reservation, there's a noticeable differences. Houses shrink, businesses all but disappear, cows wander freely across the road, and there's a certain degree of culture shock that hits you, especially if it's your first time there. All that idle time leads to problems such as alcoholism and drug abuse, which have reached epidemic proportions. One must be 18 to purchase hair spray and can only purchase one bottle per day, because, in the absence of other drugs, people will take the liquid in the hairspray, mix it with water, and drink it to get high. In Chinle, there is one grocery store, Basha's, and a whole lot of gas stations and fast food restaurants that often go out of business as quickly as they come in. The Taco Bell that wasn't there the first year I came was closed forever this year.

And yet, for all of that, the families are much more familiar than the average in the rest of America. The old saying that it takes a village to raise a child is more than just a saying in Chinle, it's a way of life. If a mother can't raise her child, the rest of the family is there to help. Or, honestly, even if she can, everyone else still pitches in. There's a much more community-centered attitude, which is in sharp contrast to the rest of America's excessively-individualistic attitude toward life.

Our group this year was a lot of fun. There were 10 of us altogether, and only 3 of us had been before. Lots of new blood, new faces, and new friends. We did a daycare-like thing on Tues, Wed and Thurs morning with the kids, and Mon-Wed nights we did our In the Rock Nights, which consist of dinner, praise, and a time of Bible study for the adults, fellowship for the youth and crafts for the little ones (kind of like VBS, in fact). In the afternoons, we cleaned. And, as the past 2 years, we waxed the floors.

Now, as dearly as I loved my group and the work we did, I do have some problems with what happened. Chinle is, as I have explained, not a prosperous area. So there were plenty of things which could have been done. The roof of the church was missing some shingles, for example, and the flagstone path which we began to lay last year is still not set in properly. But we didn't do anything to fix these problems. Instead, we cleaned. What did we clean? Well, we did a little bit in the church proper - dusting, washing the little kitchenette, and the like. We did a little bit more in the fellowship hall where the In the Rock Night dinners and kids' times were held. And we did a lot in the manse, which is where we were staying, but as the church does not currently have a pastor, the only reason we cleaned so much in there was so we could live there - it wasn't exactly doing the Navajo a lot of good. The reason for this, I think (though I could be wrong) is that we would have had to go to Gallup, which is a drive of more than 1 hour, to get the materials we would have needed to do more. I don't think that we didn't have the time to do that, we just chose to use it differently.

Now, the one service project we did decide to do was to wax the floors in the fellowship hall and the sanctuary, as we have in past years. The first year we did it, DJ took charge and made sure that it was done well, with several coats, and in such a manner as it would last as long as possible (that it was mostly gone by the time we returned the next year is a testament to how much those buildings are used). The second year, as some of you remember, DJ was not there and the powers-that-be elected to ignore the directions on the bottle of wax, which called specifically for the use of a rag mop to apply the wax, and instead chose to use a sponge mop. Now, for those of you not familiar with this particular variety of wax, using a highly-absorbent material is not exactly the best method of application, because the sponge will absorb all the wax and stick to the floor as you try to spread it, making it really difficult to use. We only did two coats, and it was something of a mess. This year, I made sure to state several times that we had to use rag mops or the wax will not spread as it's supposed to. I offered to take charge of the operation, since the first year DJ had taught me what to do and I remembered pretty well (it's not terribly difficult, after all).

But, impossibly, this year went worse. The rag mops I bought to wax the floor were used to mop the floor, and for waxing, McKenzie purchased DUST MOPS. I kid you not. They weren't even the good kind of dust mops, with the rags, that might have been awkward but at least not so absorbent as sponge mops and would sort of work to wax the floors. These things were, essentially, glorified Swiffer dusters. Just when I thought last year's flub could not possibly be topped, it was. The mops didn't fit in the mop bucket, so we could only get 1 end in the wax at a time, and the fabric on the bottom must have been something akin to terrycloth - it was more absorbent than the sponges from last year. Let me tell you, trying to spread the wax with those things was like trying to run underwater - that's how much drag there was. Needless to say, the wax was not applied evenly. The end result looked hideous: patches of incredibly thick wax that must have taken forever to dry were followed by patches where hardly any wax at all was still making it onto the floor and dried before we were even finished with the next section of floor.

What bothered me most about this, however, was not that a mistake was made and someone got the wrong kind of mop to spread the wax. A quick run to Basha's would have fixed that problem with little to no difficulty whatsoever, and the dust mops could have been left for the Navajo to use on a day to day basis. But we didn't do that. Instead, the prevailing attitude was, "Well, it's better than what the Navajo would have had if we didn't come at all, so it's okay if we don't do a good job."

I have a problem with that kind of attitude. Just because a half-rotten apple is better than starving to death doesn't mean you give it to a starving child when you have the means to obtain a perfectly ripe, healthy apple to give them instead. What kind of servant's attitude is that? We came down here to give the Navajo a week of our lives in Christian service, and that "it's good enough for the likes of them" kind of approach seems rather insulting, if you ask me. Christ said that "whatever you do to the least of these, so you did to me." Does that mean we think so little of Christ that we serve him with shoddy workmanship that could have been fixed with one simple trip to the supermarket, if we'd been less lazy about it? What kind of service is that? We came down to Arizona to help these people, and they deserve our best efforts - an "oh, well, anything is an improvement over what they have now" attitude seems quite insulting.

I chose not to participate in waxing the Sanctuary. I didn't want to participate in that mess any longer. To the Navajo people, I am sorry. I wish there was a next time, so that I could (finally) stand up and really take charge of what I know how to do, instead of expecting others to be smart enough to figure it out on their own. As it is, I can only pray that future trips (if any) will take more time and more truly serve than the trips I have been on have done.

Well, not all the trips I have been on. The trip 2 years ago, when DJ first started us waxing the floors, was so wonderful. Our group was hugely productive: not only did we wax the floors, but we fixed the roof of the Fellowship Hall, fixed a gate, scraped and painted the picnic benches in the back as well as some of the playground equipment, and still did our In the Rock Nights and kept the Manse clean. Brian provided amazing food, Robin and I spent a lot of time cleaning, Troy and I spent a lot of time going to Basha's, and we did a LOT in service of the Navajo people, both in terms of their material and their spiritual needs. The work ethic on that trip was more than I have seen on a mission trip since the ones with Bonnie D in high school. I pray that future trips will recover that work ethic and learn the joy that can only be found in service - in hard work given selflessly for another.

And other than that, this past week has been spent playing catch-up. I discovered that NavPress is not offering any internships for Summer 2008, which is sad, but then Cindy Frost told me that I should check out working at Highlands to get some ministry experience, which is a really good idea because, while I will never be not practicing writing (I'd probably explode if I couldn't write), I can have too little ministry experience, and this would be a good opportunity for me to build up my experience in that area. So, while I'm still open to suggestions (and if anyone has suggestions or recommendations for internships for me this summer, preferably someone who would be ok with me going to the General Assembly for a week in June, let me know!), at the moment, I'm thinking I might wind up at Highlands.

Oh, one last thing. I read The Red Tent this week. I was disappointed, to say the least. Rife with goddess worship (and thanks to my class, I recognize most of the goddesses mentioned...), the book displays a sort of secret women's cult which centers around the red tent, and the men are portrayed primarily as boorish, overbearing, cruel and stupid - especially the men of Abraham's family. Rebekah (or Rebecca, as it is in the book, since the author has this odd need to spell EVERYTHING differently from the way it's spelled in the Bible) is a pagan oracle and her husband Isaac is a ridiculous old figure worthy of no one's respect. In fact, the only men who are worthy of respect are the Egyptian ones. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. This book was recommended to me by someone who was, in retrospect, almost certainly hostile toward Christianity and would have been delighted to read a story which demeans the Biblical men and their God.

If it had been a good story, perhaps I could have seen past these flaws and at least appreciated the storytelling skill of the author, but I really couldn't. Diamant's voice through Dinah is exactly that postmodern, pretentious, everything-I-say-is-this-profound-revelation tone that I absolutely loathe (and which, to a lesser extent, can also be found in Blue Like Jazz, which affected my fondness for that book, also), and I found none of the characters particularly engaging except Dinah's first husband, who of course was killed by her brothers shortly after we meet him. Go figure.

So, anyway, there is an overview of the past couple of weeks for you. And now, back to the thesis!

-Jaya-

C. S. Lewis is my Hero

2008-03-11T19:47:53Z

http://www.ldolphin.org/audio/agape.mp3

I've begun to rediscover my love for C. S. Lewis. It's funny - the last time I was at Barnes and Noble, I was thinking about getting another of his books, and Ashley told me to get something else, because I have too much Lewis already. But I can't help it! He and I are kindred spirits in some - many - ways. Right down to the quote I found of him last night saying, "You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me."

It's funny, though, because as many times as I have dreamed of having a conversation with the man, I haven't ever imagined him sounding anything like that. Especially not that accent - there's some stupid American prejudice saying that particular accent is very hoity-toity, very stuck up and pretentious. But I've come to enjoy it - he speaks very clearly and of course I love what he has to say.

This particular clip is about just that: love. It's challenged me to rethink my craving for love and what I really need, as opposed to what I think I want. I find that even Lewis is somewhat steeped in the mysticism tradition (no great surprise, considering his interests and profession), which is somewhat frustrating, but I have come to a point where I have to begin learning to look past the romantic mysticism and into the truth that might be lurking behind it. Lewis is good practice for that, because he has a lot of excellent thoughts and expresses himself very well. And he makes me smile. So that's good.

One not-terribly-related side note. I looked up my Media and Culture book on Amazon.com, to see what people had to say about it. One review contained this sentence: "The author doesn't always keep his liberal agenda well hidden, but that is perhaps forgiveable (sic) in an age of increasingly conserative (sic) media."

Wow. Can you say, deluded much? Have you read the news lately? Granted, on a college campus I'm in something of a liberal stronghold so maybe all I see is liberal media, but WOW. I know the politics of most mainstream media, and they are not conservative by any stretch of the imagination. Just, wow.

I repeat my emphasis of before. Watch Indoctrinate-U. The truth will set us free, if we can get enough people to listen to it.

-Jaya-

jainakay @ 2008-03-04T16:57:00

2008-03-05T00:10:17Z

Some of you will remember when I first posted about John and Stasi Eldredge's book, Captivating, which spoke to my heart in such a way that I was absolutely enraptured with their ideas.

Whoops.

As a reminder, the basic premise is that a woman has three major desires in her heart:

1. To be romanced/pursued
2. To be an essential part of a grand adventure
3. To unveil her Beauty, to be Beautiful

These three desires can be summed up in the simple Question, "Am I lovely?" And the only answer to this question can be found in God.

So far, so good - I can definitely say that I have a desire for all three of those things, and I can see how the Question sums up at least 2 of them (though I fail to see how being part of a grand adventure has anything to do with being lovely). And I definitely agree that the best way to answer the desires of one's heart is to look to God.

But the book goes so far beyond that. There are pages and pages about how God wants to have a romantic relationship with each individual woman. About how Song of Songs is from God to each individual woman. About how to be God's girlfriend, basically. And that, as I have come to see recently, is simply wrong. God does NOT want a romantic relationship with us, fraught with eros and sexual overtones. God does not have a hole in his heart which only I can fill, for that implies that God is not whole without me, and that's simply not true. While, in one sense, the Bible is the story of God's great love for mankind, it is not the story of God's eternal pursuit of romance with individual human beings.

Now that my eyes have been opened to it, I'm astonished at how I'm finding this theology of romance everywhere I turn! It may have started with the medieval women mystics, but it never died. We are still trapped under this false doctrine of matrimony, that each individual soul is the bride of Christ. It would be much more Biblical to say that we are God's children, and encourage a filial love toward God, but that does not seem to be what we find. The ideal of chivalry, of a knight in shining armor rescuing the fair maiden who is unable to save herself and then riding off with her into the sunset to be his wife, has become somehow intertwined with our image of God - Jesus is now the knight in shining armor who rescues us, the lost souls, from the sin which has imprisoned us, and then he puts us on his horse and takes us to his castle where we will be his bride forever and enjoy all the bounty of his land. And you can see why this is such a tempting trap to fall into, because it's so close to the truth. But do you not see that marriage implies more equality with God than we can claim? Whereas marriage consists of a partnership, in a father-son relationship there is a clear hierarchy. The father, while he loves, respects, and enjoys the company of his son, is clearly his son's superior and has the right (and, indeed, the responsibility) of guiding and disciplining his son to be the best man he can be. And is that not closer to the relationship we should have with God? Yes, there is a deep love and affection there. Yes, there may be pursuit and there may be respect. But there is not equality. We are not God's equals. We may keep trying to put ourselves in that position, but it doesn't make us right to do so.

Indeed, I can see much in this book that appeals directly to the feminist movement. It is very much about self-worship, veiled in Christian terms. The claim that Eve is the pinnacle of creation directly contradicts what is later said in the New Testament by Paul, where it is considered more important that Adam was created first, and then Eve. The idea that Christ has come to set you free to be yourself is also not true - Christ has come to call us to conform ourselves to God. We will not lose ourselves in God, not become a drop of water returning to the ocean as in some belief systems, but we will be changed, and no longer the women we were. It's not like you can just chop off the sin part as you would chop the excess fat off a cut of meat. It requires a full-on transformation. And Captivating fails to emphasize that.

So, I confess that I have been misled. I confess that I was wrong to suggest this book to others (I once helped put together a women's retreat based on this book... ouch). And I confess that I have not always been critical enough in my reading to recognize false doctrine when I see it, especially when it's something that I want to hear.

-Jaya-

Dearest Jane!

2008-03-01T01:06:33Z

So, I finally got around to reading that Austenland book that I got for my birthday. It was a really short, easy read - just what I needed. Slightly under 200 pages of fluffy chick lit only takes me a couple of hours to read, as evidenced by the fact that I started it as I was waiting for the bus this morning, read it between classes, and finished it on the bus ride home - so it's not like this was a huge time commitment or anything.

Any of you who know me will understand why Austenland was the perfect fit for my tastes. The basic premise is that a woman, a bit too obsessed with the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice (and, more importantly, COLIN FIRTH as Mr. Darcy!), is sent to a vacation resort in England known as Pembrook Park - Austenland. Here she hopes to cure herself of this obsession that is ruining every relationship she has, and to get over Mr. Darcy once and for all. Now, of course this is chick lit. In this perfect world, she doesn't actually have to get over Mr. Darcy, because along he comes, complete with bad attitude and botched first proposal. And yet, somehow, I'm on the edge of my seat throughout the whole book, wondering whether Mr. Darcy will wind up being Mr. Darcy after all, or whether he's actually a Mr. Willoughby or Mr. Wickham in disguise. For, you know, one never can quite tell with these men. That's part of the fun of it.

That being said, this book was so much fun! I certainly wouldn't rate it anywhere near the perfection of Pride and Prejudice or even Jane Eyre - it's not masterful in that sense and isn't meant to be - but it's so adorable, and so easy for me to get into. While Jane (the MC) initially resists the whole world of Pembrook Park (something I would never do - were I to find myself inexplicably flung back to Regency England, I am not likely to question my great fortune - on the contrary, I would immerse myself as fully in the experience as soon as I was able!), she and I have a lot in common. Oh, except the ten million ruined relationships in her past. I only have 2 of those, and neither had anything to do with Darcy. But besides that, I can completely sympathize with her surreptitious adoration of the DVD, her frustration with her inability to get over a fictional character, and especially the comment she made that ran something along the lines of "All you have to do to explain this to a woman is say 'Colin Firth in a wet shirt' and she gets it right away." That made me laugh out loud... in the middle of the hallway between classes. Good freaking times. It must have been hilarious to watch me read it, because I couldn't sit still, I was so excited, and I was always gasping or smiling or flipping back to make sure that Mr. Nobley had really said what I thought he said... and I was so engrossed that I shudder to think what might have happened if the building had caught fire - I might not have noticed. Some people have this internal clock they can set so that they wake up after so many hours of sleep without the help of an alarm clock. I have a clock that I can set so that I stop reading when I have to go do something else without the help of an alarm clock - but I'm immune to interruption until then. Or, at least, mostly. :)

So, I think, provided that Troy is actually doing his boy's night tonight or whatever he had planned and Dana won't mind that I don't much want to watch scary movies tonight, I'm going to make myself a pot of tea, maybe some tea sandwiches for dinner, and curl up with Colin Firth - I mean, Pride and Prejudice - and dream.

And the beat goes on...

2008-02-27T22:55:46Z

I feel like I accomplished a lot today, even if I really didn't do much. I got my blood drawn at Hartshorne for all those tests Mom wanted to run, which wasn't particularly exciting. But it was also quite possibly the least painful draw I've ever had, which is good, because I HATE getting my blood drawn. I told the nurse I tend to get lightheaded when poked with sharp objects, so she had me lay down, which was good, because that's always easier. And she was very quick and efficient about it. Not like some people in the past who have poked and prodded and jabbed about because they couldn't find a vein. *shudder* She was just in, ouch, and that was it until she pulled it back out, which again didn't hurt much. And of course I wasn't stupid enough to watch. So I didn't get terribly lightheaded, and I got some juice at the end of it just in case. So that could have been way worse.

And, Marvin agreed to be my committee member, so that's a huge weight off my mind. I can finally get that stupid thesis proposal turned in and out of my hair. Thank heavens. Of course, no meeting with Marvin is ever short, so I spent like an hour and change in his office talking about it, which is cool on some levels but I really wanted to go home... he's the sort that will challenge you to actually think about what you're saying, though, which is really cool. I may not agree with him politically on everything, but he is the sort that will actually leave his politics at the classroom door, rather than give a speech about it, and he challenges you to think about what you're saying and doing in a way that most teachers just don't. The general consensus in the English department is (and I agree) that Marvin is the hardest teacher in the department - a B in his class is worth an A anywhere else - but he's also one of the best teachers, precisely because he is so difficult, and he forces you to learn (whether you like it or not). Besides, who could hate a guy with mutton chops and a waistcoat? Nope, Marvin is awesome.

So that's all good, but that's really all I did today apart from going to class. Oh, and I guess I did that assignment for GRs about the temple (such as it is - it's not like Sophia ever had a temple in which she was worshipped so I wound up doing Hagia Sophia in Istanbul since it's sort of close). That was nothing, though. But man, I feel like I got so much done! What the heck? That seems kind of lame, feeling like I accomplished more than I actually did. BOO. Oh well, I guess there's always tomorrow - though tomorrow is the first of the Arizona meetings. I'm glad I decided to go. I was kind of torn about it, but it just wouldn't be Spring Break without Arizona. Though this year Spring Break is also Holy Week, which will be weird, and we have to decide whether we're staying in AZ for Easter or coming back the night before. I'd have no problem with staying and celebrating Easter with the Navajo - that sounds like it would be really fun! But we'll see what happens.

And I think that's all the news from here. I bet you were all getting sick of my arguing posts anyway. ;)

-Jaya-

Which came first, the culture or the God?

2008-02-25T18:49:53Z

I was bored with the reading for class today, so I thought I'd skip ahead to the Sophia stuff. And within that, I found an all-too-common assumption about the early Jewish culture. The assumption is that Jews were patriarchal, therefore, their God reflected those patriarchal values. It is as though the culture came first, and then God developed from that. But if all the cultures around them were distinctly different, especially if they were matricentric as is argued in my GRs class, it makes no sense that the Jewish people would randomly develop into a patriarchal society for absolutely no reason, and then create a God from that.

What makes more sense, to me, is that the Jewish culture was and is "patriarchal" (though without the evil connotations that word has accrued in some circumstances - there is nothing wrong with competent male leadership and you can see yesterday's entry if you want more) because they were a closer reflection of how God wants his people to live. In other words, the patriarchal values of the Jews reflected their God.

Now, you have to be careful when speaking of this sort of thing, because patriarchy has taken on such negative connotations. However, as I've read more, I'm beginning to understand that, in fact, masculine leadership tends to be more beneficial for everyone, including women. This is not to say that all leaders must be male. However, good leaders will all employ tactics which are traditionally considered "masculine" (and yes, much of this comes from having read Why Men Hate Going to Church yesterday - it's on my mind), and those benefit both men and women. People need to be challenged, especially men, and sometimes they need to be thrown to the wolves because they're ready, even if they don't think they are. Traditionally, the masculine leaders are the ones who are willing to do this, whereas the feminine leaders are more likely to comfort and coddle. While that has its place, this constant emphasis on not hurting anyone's feelings and protecting everyone to the extent that no one can grow is hurting everyone.

Just something to think about.

-Jaya-

Thoughts on prayer

2008-02-25T06:17:11Z

I have a confession to make: I hate praying with other people.

Well, that's not entirely true. Sometimes I really love having the opportunity to pray with someone else. But there are things about the modern idea of "prayer" that drive me ABSOLUTELY BONKERS. Troy can attest to the fact that I am exceedingly reluctant to pray out loud in the presence of other people. For a while, I struggled with this, especially when we first started dating, because he was always wanting to pray together, and my version of praying together was: he prays, I listen, and when he stops saying words I pray silently. Thankfully, that has changed, but I am still uncomfortable praying in a group with other Christians. Why? It's not like I have a problem praying when I'm alone, at least not most of the time. I can just pour out my thoughts in whatever jumbled manner they come to mind and talk through whatever is troubling me - it's a good conversation, except that sometimes I forget about the listening part... but while I have trouble listening, I never have trouble speaking, until you get me in a group. Then I'm tongue-tied and silent.

It took me a long time to figure out why, and I didn't discover the reason completely by myself. In fact, it's best articulated in a book called Why Men Hate Going to Church, which is quite possibly the last place I would have expected to find such clarity into my own feelings (more about that in a minute). In it, at the end of Chapter 20, there is a section on Christian "prayer-speak." This is what Murrow has to say about it:

[Some Christians] repeat God's name again and again in prayer, like a mantra. "Lord, we just thank You, Lord, for this day, Lord, and Lord, we just ask You, Lord, to bless us, Lord." Would you call a friend and say, "Helen, how are you, Helen? Helen, would you like to go to lunch, Helen? Okay, Helen, see you at noon, Helen"? Helen would think you were nuts.

YES. Yes, yes, yes, and lest I've been unclear about this, YES. That's exactly what bothers me about the modern version of prayer! Rather than just saying your say and moving on, like you would in any other conversation, there's this weird need to obsessively remind everyone that you're speaking to GOD. Because we might somehow otherwise forget... or... something. Not only do people repeat "Lord" or "Father God" or, like one girl I knew, go for the combo shot and pray to "Lord Father God" every third word (you have NO IDEA how annoying that was after about, oh, thirty seconds), but then there's this need to repeat the word "just" prior to everything you say to God. We "just" want to thank you for this time together. We "just" ask you to bless our gathering. I "just" ask that you would be with Sue as she goes through this trying time, Lord Father God. And by the time you're done praying, you've gone through "just" thirty or forty requests! Look, people, you don't say "just" unless you're going to get in and get out in a very short time. If you call someone without much to say, you might tell him that "I just called to see how you're doing." That's fine. But no one calls and says "I just want to thank you for what you did for me, and I just want to ask if you would do this next week, and I just wanted to say this and I just want to do this and I just want that and I just, I just, I just"! Quit lying to God. "Just" implies ONE OR TWO things. And repeating it throughout a prayer, however long it might be, makes you sound like a broken record.

Jesus gave us a model for prayer, and in it he does not repeat God's name at the end of every line, nor does he ever use that loathsome "just" word. His prayer is simple, short, and to the point:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for yours is the kingdom, and the glory, and the power forever. Amen.

How many times does Jesus call on God's name? I count a total of ONCE. After that, he uses these nifty things called PRONOUNS, and he doesn't feel this odd urge to throw in "Lord" after every one. If we were to pray the Lord's prayer the way most people tend to pray, it would look more like this:

Our Father God, in heaven, we just ask that your name would be made holy, Father God. And we just ask, Father God, that your will would be done, Father God, on earth as it is in heaven, Father God. We just ask that you give us our daily bread, Father God, and we just ask, Father God, that you would forgive us our debts, Father God, as we forgive our debtors. And, Father God, we just ask that you would not lead us into temptation, Father God, but that you would just deliver us from evil, Father God, because yours is the kingdom, Father God, and the glory, and the power, forever, Father God. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

You're laughing, I know, but it's true! I wish I were exaggerating, but I'm not. That's what prayer has become! Jesus would cry. Okay, maybe not quite, but sheesh. GOD KNOWS YOU'RE TALKING TO HIM. You don't have to repeat his name every time you finish a thought. It's okay to treat him as an intelligent member of the conversation, rather than speaking to him as though he were a child with ADD whose attention needed to be constantly pulled back to what is going on. That sort of prayer is so stylized it sounds fake, and quite honestly it makes me want to go shake whoever is praying like that until they snap out of it.

I have no problems praying with people when I know there's no expectation on me to pray like that. But when that's how everyone else is praying, I tend to slip into it, too, and I HATE sounding like that. I have a deep respect for language, being an English major, and it hurts my heart to hear it mutilated like that. Really, it's pathetic! People who have no problems conversing in day-to-day situations suddenly become stuttering morons when it comes to speaking to God. Why do we feel a need to treat God like he's a two-year-old with the attention span of a gnat?

I don't think this is conscious in most people - they just pick it up from the people around them. I don't know where it started or who started it - if I did I'd go back in time and throttle them until they started speaking like normal people (okay, not really, but it's tempting). But it's time to stop it. If you're one of those people who pray that way, STOP. For heaven's sake, stop. Become aware of what you're saying, and that you're speaking to God. Treat him as one worthy of your respect and of a real conversation, rather than all this stylized mumbo-jumbo. See if removing this kind of language from your prayers doesn't encourage others to jump in on group prayers where previously they were silent.

This isn't the only thing in David Murrow's book which really resonated with me. The vision he paints for the church, one in which masculine leadership is valued and masculine needs are met sounds like a church that would meet my needs, too. If that's what men need, count me in! I totally agree that those sorts of things would be great for women, too. Something I have been struggling with lately is my need for a spiritual leader, and what I need from said leader. I know that I need to be led, because I'm burning myself out running on the way I am now, and I feel like I'm doing all the leading and never doing any following. But what form that leadership should take, how I need to be led, is harder to figure out. But the picture painted in the books I've read about the masculine leadership so badly needed in the church sounds like exactly what I'm missing. I'm already something like the antithesis of a feminist: I like to be dressed up and treated like a porcelain doll, I don't particularly want a "career" and my highest aspiration is to someday be a good wife and mother. And now we can add to that, I long for masculine leadership. That isn't to say that I want someone to be my own personal dictator, because I do want to have some input into where my life goes and how it unfolds, all that sort of thing. It's just that, I'd like to find someone who can ask me, "This is where I'm going with my life, and I would be honored to have you join me. Interested?" That sounds fantastic right now. Maybe it's because I've been watching too much Driscoll and thinking too much about the gaping hole of uncertainty which looms in front of me, after May 17, but that would be SO nice. Some days I feel like I'm surrounded by boys, and I need a man. But who's up for the challenge?

-Jaya-

PS. For those interested, a more formal collection of my writing can be found at www.vow.org - look for articles written by Brittany Dowdy.

I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Athiest, Part 3

2008-02-23T02:09:54Z

Our next post in the series against IDHEFTBAA (which is an incredibly annoying acronym to type out, but at least it's shorter than the title of the book) can be found here, and it takes a step back into the foreword of the book, written by David Limbaugh. In it, Limbaugh speaks out against the hypocrisy of the "tolerance" preached by the left, claiming that it is not, in fact, tolerant at all, but often downright hostile toward Christians. And, this time, our Professor actually has a very good point. If Christians are going to claim tolerance for their views, they're going to have to tolerate other people's views as well. In other words, if we demand tolerance for ourselves, we must be prepared to tolerate other views that conflict with ours. Both Limbaugh and the Professor agree that tolerance does not necessarily mean accepting other beliefs, but allowing others to believe them without fear of harm as a result of that

Yet the Professor misses the point of LImbaugh's argument. The point, which is clear to any Christian reading it, is that Christians are not always welcome, and their beliefs are not always tolerated. While lip service may be given to the idea of tolerance when speaking of Christian views, because Christians are called to spread the Gospel and preach the Truth and therefore cannot simply "live and let live," often our views are not tolerated. Ask any Christian you meet, and they will tell you that there have been times when, realizing that the Truth would not be tolerated, have kept silent when we should have spoken. It's a common failing - and while the early Christians were willing to be ridiculed and even killed for these beliefs, we in America have become so complacent, so isolated from the war which Christianity is fighting against Satan, that we are not willing to suffer a little bit of humiliation because of our beliefs. I'm as guilty as anyone else. As vocal as I am here, in the safety and distance of the internet, I'm a wimp in real life. If someone confronts me on my beliefs, I tend to back off and be submissive, not wanting to start a confrontation. It's one of my biggest failings, and as much as it bothers me, as much as I struggle with it, I can't seem to do anything to change it. I know that's something I need to work on. But part of the outrage that we feel at being labeled "intolerant" is because, in the act of labeling someone thus (in the context of the connotation that word has taken on in our modern culture) is rather intolerant, and hypocrisy bothers us just as much as it does anyone else (unfortunately, it also infects us just as much as it does anyone else, but that's another story altogether).

Actually, though, Christians are intolerant, when you think about it. There are some things which should not be tolerated, and those are the things that are sinful. Murder is one of them, and one on which everyone agrees (until you get so far back into the life of a person that he's not born yet - then for some reason people get this "out of sight, out of mind" mentality and assume it's suddenly ok to kill him... but again, that's another argument for another day). And then there are things like homosexuality, which, according to the Christian world view, is sinful, and therefore should not be tolerated. So of course we are against tolerating homosexual marriage. It's sinful, and sin is not to be tolerated. The problem I have with tolerance is not so much that Christians are not tolerated (that's to be expected) but that people actually think that tolerance is a viable way to run a society.

Think about it. There are some things that are simply intolerable. Murder, rape, theft, and arson are among them. Society is worse off if those things are tolerated, and not even the tolerance advocates would disagree with that. And yet, if you subscribe to the theory that individual preferences should be tolerated, who is to say that those things are exempt? That's a very arbitrary distinction that you seem to be making on personal preference, and arbitrariness is not a good base on which to build society. In fact, tolerance is something of a cop-out. Rather than undertake the difficult process of discussing alternatives and deciding what is tolerable and what is not, or what a society can permit and what it cannot, people would rather take the lazy way out and "tolerate" all sorts of conflicting opinions. It's an excuse to be lazy, quite simply - a way to escape thinking about difficult subjects, instead of tackling them.

So, I suppose my objection is to both the Professor and to Limbaugh - both are operating on the assumption that tolerance could somehow work as a viable means of running a society. And, in the long run, it simply can't.

-Jaya-

Indoctrinate-U!

2008-02-22T00:17:17Z

All right, folks, it's time - time for my review of Indoctrinate-U! I know you've all been looking forward to this, and I'm going to try to strike a balance between giving you an idea of the things that are discussed and not spoiling the whole film for you.

The basic premise of the film is the suppression of intellectual diversity on college campuses. But the stories that come out of it are incredible. A boy who spends 18 months and is threatened with expulsion for hanging fliers advertising a conservative black speaker. A conservative professor who lost her position as head of the department for being a Republican. A group of five white boys from Jackson, TN who dressed up as the Jackson 5 - complete with blackface - for a Halloween party which resulted in their fraternity being suspended (yet, a student who said of a conservative on that same campus, who wears a turban, "shoot that f****ing raghead in the face" received a token "talking-to"). A Kuwaiti student who wrote a pro-American essay being compared to suicide bombers and Hitler, as well as being threatened with being deported from the country.

The number of times that Evan Maloney gets shut down for trying to find out the truth of what happened on campus. Not only are people not allowed to think for themselves, they're not allowed to figure out why. He has more people call the cops on him for simply wanting to talk to various people than I would ever have imagined.

There's a clip that especially disturbed me: mobs of angry students shouting at military recruiters, vandalizing military institutions on campus and driving military recruiters off campus. Yet the official spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan was invited to come study at Yale. Never mind that the military are the ones who fight for your right to come and shout them off your campus, or invite terrorists to come teach students or to learn with them. Or ban the display of the American flag after 9-11.

None of this should come as a surprise. But I want to encourage every single one of you to watch it. It's good to know just to what extent the persecution is being taken.

Make no mistake. Persecution is rampant on the school campuses - not of races (except those damn whites), genders (except those damn men, of course), or religions (except those damn Christians) - but of people who think for themselves. People who disagree with the dominant viewpoint. In fact, so often do we learn about various groups who have not been allowed to speak out against the dominant ideology (read: conservative views) and how wrong that is, I find it incredibly ironic that students who don't agree with the dominant (liberal) ideology are being expelled and harassed. Anyone who reads this blog can see that - just take a look at my most recent post about Goddess Religions. This is sick. And it needs to be stopped. The first step to doing that is to spread the word -and this film is a great way to do that.

If you can afford it, consider purchasing a copy and supporting Evan Maloney's effort. Sign up for a screening to come to Fort Collins and hold up a mirror to the university campus. Spread the word. I have a copy of the movie - if you want to see it before you buy it (I'll do everything I can to convince you to buy it... but you know) let me know, and we can see my copy. The most important thing is to get the word out.

And, on that note, I'll leave you with the lyrics to the song that plays during the end credits. It's called Shut Up and Teach, and it's by the Right Brothers.

Shut Up and Teach
Nowhere in this textbook does it say Bush equals Hitler
Nowhere in this chapter does it claim we had it coming
No way in this room can you blame Capitalism
No way on this earth will I be swayed

Chorus
Shut up and teach
Don’t give a speech
Keep your political beliefs
All to yourself until the bell
Your job as far as I can tell
Doesn’t include indoctrination so could you please
Shut up and teach

I will not be force-fed any more of your liberal garbage
And I will not write down what’s on the board cause it’s so stupid
I can’t just sit back and ignore your biased grading
This is not what we all came here for

Repeat Chorus

It’s called a textbook, why don’t you read it
You’d be amazed at what you’d find inside
It’s nothing like what you’ve been feeding
I guess you must’ve thought we were blind

Just keep ranting while I sit in here with my recorder
I’ll see you at McDonald’s next school year and you can take my order
Cause you might lose your job if you can’t learn to stick to the curriculum
You had your say now I think it’s our turn

Repeat Chorus
Just show up, do your job, I know it sounds extreme

Spread the word, and stop indoctrination!

-Jaya-

The Intolerance Demon strikes again!

2008-02-21T05:15:34Z

So, Goddess Religions today was really tough, for a couple of reasons. First of all, we have the one that REALLY bothered me. In the course of discussing the difference between polytheism and monotheism, Dr. Mitchell made the point that polytheistic religions are more tolerant of other faiths, since they already have so many gods (an addition of one or two isn't a big deal), whereas monotheists tend to be less tolerant of other religions because the believe that their god is the only one and everyone else is just wrong. To illustrate this point, she claimed that initially, Christians were not persecuted by pagans "for a long time" because they worshipped "just another god."

Um, I BEG your pardon, but Christians have NEVER not been persecuted. I will grant that Stephen's martyrdom was at the hands of the Jews, a monotheistic people, so it doesn't count for this argument. But then we have people like James the brother of John, killed by Herod, a pagan. Peter and Paul, killed by Nero, a pagan. Actually you can take any of Nero's victims - there were certainly enough of them. Only one of the disciples, John, was not martyred, and that wasn't for lack of trying - the story goes that they boiled him alive, and the Catholics still celebrate his mass as though he had been killed (the theory is, he underwent an experience which would have led to martydom if God had not intervened, so that's close enough). The Jews certainly weren't happy with the Christians, but it was the pagans who carried out the majority of the persecutions against the band of Christ's followers. This is WITHIN ONE GENERATION of Christ - these are the men who traveled with Jesus during his earthly ministry. By historical standards - indeed, by just about any standards - that is anything but a "long time," thank you.

Her next claim is that , even when the persecutions began, they weren't that bad. She says that "what the Christians did to each other a little later is far worse than what the pagans ever did to them." Hmm, that's funny, I must have missed that part of the church history. When did the Christians start boiling each other in oil? Or feeding each other to lions? Or hanging each other on crosses and then setting those crosses on fire to light the streets of their cities? Or dragging each other through the streets tied to rampaging horses, then thrown off a cliff? Seems to me those were all PAGAN punishments for CHRISTIANS, and simply running a guy through with a sword or smashing his head in with a mace seems almost humane after that. I mean, that was really sick stuff!

Ah, but the worst is yet to come. For her next statement is that "the Christians probably deserved it."

*blinkblink*

I'm sorry, can you run that by me again? The Christians probably DESERVED IT. They deserved to be hung on crosses and set on fire, to be boiled in oil, to be beaten and humiliated and killed for simply preaching that Christ was God and that he was the only way to heaven. They weren't forcibly dragging people off to become Christians. They weren't rampaging through the streets and killing people. They were just teaching, like plenty of other people did every single day. Yet they deserved the persecution they received. Wow.

What's her justification for this? "I mean, they were so intolerant - some of them - so fanatical - some of them."

I'm sorry, did you say intolerant? Did you say fanatical? Can you say, the pot calling the kettle black? Because, whoa. I seem to recall, from my reading of Acts (granted, Troy and I are only halfway through, but still, I've read enough of it before to be relatively certain of this), that the apostles were preaching very peacefully. They were doing exactly what Christ had instructed them to do, namely, to preach the Truth in love. Who were so intolerant as to refuse to allow them to preach whatever they wanted, even when others were allowed to teach in the forums (remember, this is Rome)? Who were so fanatical about the supremacy of the Emperor that they hunted down and killed all those who taught that the Emperor was not a god? Was it the Christians? No, it was the pagans. And who is so intolerant as to be using her position as teacher to indoctrinate the class against Christianity? Who is so fanatical about feminism and relativism that she can't imagine any reason for Christianity to continue teaching that it is the only way to God? Is it the Christians? No, it's you.

Okay, that was harsh. Obviously, for a woman who grew up in a Methodist church, something has happened to hurt her and turn her against the Truth. Maybe it was only a perceived hurt, something she learned to perceive as painful during the feminist movement in the 60s, but that doesn't make it any less painful and I need to recognize that and remember to be compassionate toward her. But when she treats Christians, my family, with such flippant derision, it's kind of hard for me to keep my temper.

And that's not even touching on the whole evolution part. That doesn't bother me quite so much, though there are some things which are really frustrating. Like how she talks about the Scopes "monkey trial" and suggests that the book and the play are accurate representations of what actually went on (they're not - many thanks to the wonderful apologist grammastola for that explanation). Or how she claims that, not only was Darwin a Christian, but he saw no contradiction between his theory and Christianity (on the contrary, he recognized that it would be a blow to Christianity and by the end of his life had abandoned all religious beliefs). Or how she says that "since then, of course, there has been an incredible amount of evidence to fill in all sorts of gaps that were still there when Darwin did it" which is simply false and I'm not going to bother going into it AGAIN, especially considering that a future installment of "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist" will cover that.

So, yeah. Today was incredibly frustrating. I just have to keep reminding myself that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and that's a fact. Christianity is the Truth. It is. I've proven it to myself and to others countless times and I'm going through it again with IDHEFTBAA, and no matter what they throw at me, it doesn't change a thing. The Truth is a precious, precious thing.

-Jaya-