Ethel In Orange

Wow. I am so sorry it has been so long since I last updated. I had a very nice first week and a half at the new job and then one of my co-workers came down with bronchitis…and passed it right on to me. And mine turned into pneumonia AND I got an ear infection at the same time and I’ve basically spent the last six days in bed coughing and sputtering and just generally freaking out about the size of my glands,which have swollen to Michelin Man-sized proportions.

This is the first time in a week that I have been able to sit upright long enough to pound out a few words with my sweaty, shaky meathooks.

So please forgive me if it seems like I have abandoned this blog in its infancy. I just need a few more days to recuperate and then I’ll get back to writing.

I have to say that being sick has given me lots of time to contemplate God — and to be petulant and whiny about being sick. Seriously, phlegm? What gives, Lord?

I got a new job! It’s one I’ve been wanting for a long, long time — zero contact with the public (I am BURNT OUT), jeans and T-shirt uniform, straight Monday through Friday, good pay, good benefits (I’m finally going to have health insurance!) and it’s in an industry I’m interested in (the printing industry.) I start tomorrow!

This is the job I’ve been praying for and God led me right to it! I’m so, so relieved. I really disliked my last job and was convinced I would be doomed to working in customer service forever but that was not to be.

So about a year ago I gave up caffeine. This was a big step for me. I had been a caffeine junkie for a long, long time. I was having some problems with anxiety and a few smart friends suggested that maybe the giant barrel of Diet Coke I was drinking every day was contributing to that. I listened and switched to drinking a giant barrel of caffeine-free Diet Coke every day and what a difference it made! My overall level of anxiety dropped quite a bit. I started drinking more water. My skin improved. I felt better. I slept better. I had more energy. It was difficult at first. I really felt sluggish in the afternoons there for a while but overall it was a pleasant experience. And I felt stronger in my walk with God because I gave up one of my addictions (I’m still working on the other ones. I’ll get there.)

Once in a blue moon I’ll have a cup of hot tea in the morning but otherwise it’s none for me, thanks.

That is until yesterday. I was visiting with my mother and she offered me some iced tea. Without really thinking about it I had two large glasses. This was at about 8 in the evening. Big mistake. Later as I was trying to fall asleep I felt some of that old anxiety creeping back and nearly had a minor panic attack. I couldn’t figure out why it was happening. I prayed and held on and it slowly went away. I was so confused. Why was I so anxious? Why were these horrible old feelings returning when everything was going relatively well?

It wasn’t until today that I put two and two together and realized it was the caffeine in the tea. It’s amazing how much of an effect it had on me. We are so used to it. It’s everywhere. And we forget (or at least I forgot) that it IS a drug and a pretty powerful one at that. This isn’t to scold anyone who likes their caffeine. There’s nothing wrong with it if you have it under control. But I wonder how many of us are addicted to it without realizing it?

I attempted to add my Twitter RSS feed to the sidebar but for some reason the feed is broken. So if you are ever really, REALLY bored and wish to check it out, you can find me on Twitter here.

I had this:

which CLAIMS to contain shrimp. And I suppose it does, if this:

is what you think a shrimp looks like. I guess I shouldn’t complain considering the thing costs fifty cents but dang, might as well just leave them out. It’s not even really a shrimp, is it? I’m fairly sure that what I just ate was actually a styrofoam cup full of sea monkeys.

Check out this post on Metafilter detailing several different organizations committed to helping out individuals who are in need of single or differently-sized shoes. One of the organizations spotlighted is the National Odd Shoe Exchange which was started by a polio survivor and helps out those who need differently-sized shoes because of disability, injury or disease.

It’s one of those small but vital things that you don’t think about until you need it.

I change my desktop around all the time, usually about once per month. Here’s what I’ve got on there now:

Don’t get me wrong now. I am a Christian. I accept Christ as my savior and I do my best to follow him (though Lord knows I fall short on a regular basis) but there are certain issues that I hold dear to me that have led others to accuse me of not being a Christian at all. I thought it would be best to get them right out into the open here at the start of this journal so that people know what they’re in for when they visit.

1. I fully support the LGBT community. I believe that homosexuals/bisexuals/transgendered folk/whathaveyou have the right to be married both in the eyes of the government and the eyes of God. I believe that they have the right to be church leaders and should not have to renounce love or be celibate for the rest of their lives to do so. I do not believe that love between two consenting adults of the same sex is a sin (see #2.)

2. I’m not a literalist. I believe that the Bible was inspired by God but I also believe that it was written by fallible human beings living in a different time and cannot be completely divorced from its cultural context. I read the Bible. I soak up the words of God and if I come across something that seems difficult I pray about. I pray a lot. And then I wait for an answer. Sometimes the answer falls in line with scripture. Sometimes it does not. I live my life according to what he tells me. I cannot do otherwise.

3. I fully support the ordination of women all the way up to the highest offices of the church. This one isn’t so controversial among a lot of the Christians I know but there are those who would tell me I am disobeying God by believing it so I’m adding it to the list.

4. I believe that Jesus is male but I don’t think that gender labels can be adequately applied to big-G God. So sometimes I say “he” and sometimes I say “she” and sometimes I say “hers” or “Mother” instead of “Father”. Now, this shouldn’t be controversial at all. After all, almost every Christian I have met, even some that fall squarely in the fundamentalist camp, admits that God is beyond gender. It’s funny, then, that so many will get bent out of shape if you refer to God with anything other than masculine pronouns.

5. This is the big one; the one that nets me the most criticism. I do not believe that the organized religion we call Christianity is the only way to salvation. I believe that the way to salvation is to live the kind of life that Jesus calls us to live — a life guided by love for God and love for others — and I don’t think Christians have the monopoly on that.

So there it is. I’ll be writing more about each of the above issues in more detail somewhere down the line, I’m sure, but I feel better having it out in the open now.

Please go and read this article by Pat Buchanan. Every time you come across something racist, bigoted, ugly or just plain wrong, take a drink. See if you can make it through more than three sentences before passing out.

Via The Angry Black Woman

“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” — Yeats

I heard this quote the other day and it struck me. I started thinking about it and turning it over in my head and it slowly dawned on me that it applies quite neatly to my search for faith. I have spent most of my life filling buckets — taking in information, processing it, filing it away in the appropriate sections of my mind and then moving on to the next piece of information. I think I imagined that if I filled the bucket to the top that I would magically come to a place where belief took over. That if I knew enough about God and applied that information correctly, I would come to a place of knowing God.

It didn’t occur to me until much later that knowing about God and knowing God were two very different things. It wasn’t until God lit the fire in me that I realized the difference.

I was raised in the church (Baptist) but I was never on fire. The only thing I really got from my early religious training was a mild sense of frustration and confusion and a few drops in my bucket. I drifted away from the church as a teenager but kept searching. I looked again at Christianity. I researched Eastern religions. I looked into neo-paganism. I read a lot of Dawkins and called myself an atheist. I learned a lot and still value each and every little bit of knowlege I dropped into my bucket but I was never fulfilled. I was never turned on. When I came out of that long period of searching and assessed the situation I saw that I had not only filled one bucket, I had filled thousands of them. Thousands of buckets filled to the top and yet I was still cold.

I had learned. I had memorized facts. But I had not been educated.