Friday, December 6, 2013
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Day 3: Peace #lutheranadvent
Forgot to post this last night. I admit this might need some explanation for "peace," but I don't have that explanation. I was looking around for something that might represent "peace," had some things in mind that I might use, but then I looked down and saw this white feather (I'm guessing from a pigeon) sticking up from the gravel underfoot. It was some sort of intuitive "aha!" that has some leaps between the feather and "peace," but here it is. If you can explain it, you're welcome to do so.
Monday, December 2, 2013
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Hope on World AIDS Day
It only just occurred to me that the first day of the season of Advent (the church calendar "new year") fell on World AIDS Day this year.
Advent has become known as the season of Hope and the last 20 years has seen much change in the world of AIDS treatment. There's always hopeful news coming at us about advances in treating HIV, but there is not yet any cure.
Too many people are acting like the miracle drugs we have today are a cure.
I don't want to get into moralizing about safer sex. That's too easy to do and there are statistics that show that doesn't prevent anyone from being reckless anyway.
But the subject of hope has been on my mind the last few weeks as I've found, read, and am re-reading a slim book called Mystical Hope by Cynthia Bourgeault. There are things in this book that are reminding me of things I've sort of forgot or let go or lost faith in. I can't say it's telling me anything that I didn't know before, but it is definitely reminding me.
And while the book doesn't explicitly go into this, it reminds me of something I've said a few times about hoping and wishing. We often wish for things and call it hope.
But the world is woefully short on a supply of genies in bottles and wishing---no matter how much you pray, plead, believe that something must happen---is of little use against some harsh realities.
You can wish all you want, even call it hope, but believing you can fly will not keep you from plummeting to your death if you step off the roof of a skyscraper. It feels like there is something similar going on with people who want to deny the wisdom of safer sex, wishing with all their might that they won't contract the virus or if they do, wishing with all their might that life on the miracle drugs will be just like life before, only with pills.
As I said, its too easy and of no use to moralize about it. There's something in our species that has a little bit of a death wish anyway. Cigarettes continue to be manufactured and purchased and smoked despite good data that says it's a bad idea. I continue to eat a few too many carbs despite my doctor assuring me that only a certain level of consumption is safe for me and above that level they are a slow acting poison.
Sugar or sex. Something's going to kill you and we seem willing to risk playing with things that will get us there faster.
But hope is something else. It is the assurance that we are held by something bigger than us, that we have identity and ultimate safety that cuts through the dehumanization and deadly danger of real life.
I think I'll leave that right there for tonight. I'm holding some choice personal saints in memory and in hope tonight and pondering what that might mean for this season just begun.
Advent has become known as the season of Hope and the last 20 years has seen much change in the world of AIDS treatment. There's always hopeful news coming at us about advances in treating HIV, but there is not yet any cure.
Too many people are acting like the miracle drugs we have today are a cure.
I don't want to get into moralizing about safer sex. That's too easy to do and there are statistics that show that doesn't prevent anyone from being reckless anyway.
But the subject of hope has been on my mind the last few weeks as I've found, read, and am re-reading a slim book called Mystical Hope by Cynthia Bourgeault. There are things in this book that are reminding me of things I've sort of forgot or let go or lost faith in. I can't say it's telling me anything that I didn't know before, but it is definitely reminding me.
And while the book doesn't explicitly go into this, it reminds me of something I've said a few times about hoping and wishing. We often wish for things and call it hope.
But the world is woefully short on a supply of genies in bottles and wishing---no matter how much you pray, plead, believe that something must happen---is of little use against some harsh realities.
You can wish all you want, even call it hope, but believing you can fly will not keep you from plummeting to your death if you step off the roof of a skyscraper. It feels like there is something similar going on with people who want to deny the wisdom of safer sex, wishing with all their might that they won't contract the virus or if they do, wishing with all their might that life on the miracle drugs will be just like life before, only with pills.
As I said, its too easy and of no use to moralize about it. There's something in our species that has a little bit of a death wish anyway. Cigarettes continue to be manufactured and purchased and smoked despite good data that says it's a bad idea. I continue to eat a few too many carbs despite my doctor assuring me that only a certain level of consumption is safe for me and above that level they are a slow acting poison.
Sugar or sex. Something's going to kill you and we seem willing to risk playing with things that will get us there faster.
But hope is something else. It is the assurance that we are held by something bigger than us, that we have identity and ultimate safety that cuts through the dehumanization and deadly danger of real life.
I think I'll leave that right there for tonight. I'm holding some choice personal saints in memory and in hope tonight and pondering what that might mean for this season just begun.
+ + + + +
On a lighter note, this was being passed around on Facebook:
I'd been thinking about ways to observe the season and this struck me as just the thing, so I'll be doing this on Facebook and Twitter (where the hashtags work) and here as well. Will I get a picture posted here each day? We'll see, but I will be doing my very best to get 'em on FB and Twitter. (I don't do Instagram.)
Here is my first entry for PREPARE:
Friday, November 29, 2013
The Day After Giving Thanks
Doesn't it seem a waste to be sick on a holiday? I mean, beside missing the chance to call out sick to work, I also had to call out of two thanksgiving dinner invitations.
On the bright side, other than a low-grad fever on Wednesday evening and coughing fits the last 3 days, I haven't really felt that bad, I just am not good company. No ones the green bean casserole passed to them by a phlegmy, hacking anyone.
So the cat and I had a quiet Thanksgiving Day together here in my cluttered apartment. Honestly? I think the cat likes me best when I'm sick and lying around a lot. He would also rather I not be coughing all the time and I understand. I wouldn't want to sleep on a convulsing bed, either.
Last night, I slept over 12 hours. I'm thankful for the opportunity to do that and I guess I needed it. Today, I didn't do much but I did get out for a walk. It was a beautiful day here in Houston, on the upswing from a few cold, rainy days. I'm thankful that was the most pressing thing on my agenda today, a walk.
Despite my better judgment, I decided to walk into the epicenter of Houston's Black Friday. I live a 30 minute walk from the Galleria and I was surprised to find it not nearly as crowded as I expected it to be. I suppose most of the nonsense happened earlier in the day and maybe the epicenter these days is really a Walmart or something. I honestly don't know. I'm thankful I have a life that doesn't require me to keep up on Black Friday deals. I don't know if anyone has a life that requires that, but apparently, some people find the crush of mad crowds somewhat . . . fulfilling? Exciting? What do people get out of it? Being an introvert, I can only assume most of these people are extreme extroverts, but maybe I'm being uncharitable to extroverts.
More and more, I find myself slipping out of mainline culture, if that's what it is. I find myself more and more looking around me and seeing extravagant luxury, wonders that just 3 or 4 generations ago would have been unthinkable, treated as necessities.
Or if they're recognized as not necessary things, we're told we're somehow deserving of it. And so I guess we advance bravely into the maelstrom of commerce, fighting for our right to . . have.
I have a lot. I mentioned my apartment is cluttered. And really, I'm thankful for the opportunity to have a cluttered apartment. I also know . . .
I don't know what I know. I feel the world, or maybe just this country, or maybe just some aspects of this country's priorities are gravely out of balance. I don't know how to right it. It may not be my job. Maybe my job is, in part, to sit here quietly blogging about how unhealthy it all looks to someone on the outside of it.
Here's what it looks like: It looks like peer pressure of the worst kind. To be "normal" and "acceptable," one should have X, Y, and Z and the latest upgrade to them all. I was born late into my parents' generation, so I'm maybe among the youngest people on the planet who had Depression era parents, but I definitely grew up with an attitude of using things until they were worn out and not working. I gather not everyone with a flat screen TV got it because the old TV quit working. I'm guessing, but that's my general understanding of how this economy works.
And that's what's on my mind this Black Friday. I worry how our economy depends on people purchasing very few things they need and a whole lot on things that are, simply, new. And advances in technology come so quickly these days that my 5 year old cell phone---a marvel to people only 10 years ago---is obsolete. It was a discontinued model when I bought in in 2009. And it does what I need it to do, but it doesn't give me directions to the movie theater or restaurant. If I ever upgrade on it, the next iteration is going to be so advanced I'll need a class to use it.
Maybe. I probably exaggerate. But . . .
Yesterday, we all gave thanks. Today, businesses were counting on madness in their aisles to keep them open another year. Thankfulness and greed? Something is out of whack.
I see a lot of people on Facebook urging one another not to shop on Black Friday. Is that the answer? Maybe the start of one, but only if it's not a delay to eventual consumerist madness.
It's going to take a lot to change this culture. I find it a little scary to consider what could do it.
Need, want, entitlement. My place in it, my desire to get out of the cycle.
Not the usual Thanksgiving weekend thoughts, maybe. Maybe I wish more people had them.
Blame it on being sick . . .
On the bright side, other than a low-grad fever on Wednesday evening and coughing fits the last 3 days, I haven't really felt that bad, I just am not good company. No ones the green bean casserole passed to them by a phlegmy, hacking anyone.
So the cat and I had a quiet Thanksgiving Day together here in my cluttered apartment. Honestly? I think the cat likes me best when I'm sick and lying around a lot. He would also rather I not be coughing all the time and I understand. I wouldn't want to sleep on a convulsing bed, either.
Last night, I slept over 12 hours. I'm thankful for the opportunity to do that and I guess I needed it. Today, I didn't do much but I did get out for a walk. It was a beautiful day here in Houston, on the upswing from a few cold, rainy days. I'm thankful that was the most pressing thing on my agenda today, a walk.
Despite my better judgment, I decided to walk into the epicenter of Houston's Black Friday. I live a 30 minute walk from the Galleria and I was surprised to find it not nearly as crowded as I expected it to be. I suppose most of the nonsense happened earlier in the day and maybe the epicenter these days is really a Walmart or something. I honestly don't know. I'm thankful I have a life that doesn't require me to keep up on Black Friday deals. I don't know if anyone has a life that requires that, but apparently, some people find the crush of mad crowds somewhat . . . fulfilling? Exciting? What do people get out of it? Being an introvert, I can only assume most of these people are extreme extroverts, but maybe I'm being uncharitable to extroverts.
More and more, I find myself slipping out of mainline culture, if that's what it is. I find myself more and more looking around me and seeing extravagant luxury, wonders that just 3 or 4 generations ago would have been unthinkable, treated as necessities.
Or if they're recognized as not necessary things, we're told we're somehow deserving of it. And so I guess we advance bravely into the maelstrom of commerce, fighting for our right to . . have.
I have a lot. I mentioned my apartment is cluttered. And really, I'm thankful for the opportunity to have a cluttered apartment. I also know . . .
I don't know what I know. I feel the world, or maybe just this country, or maybe just some aspects of this country's priorities are gravely out of balance. I don't know how to right it. It may not be my job. Maybe my job is, in part, to sit here quietly blogging about how unhealthy it all looks to someone on the outside of it.
Here's what it looks like: It looks like peer pressure of the worst kind. To be "normal" and "acceptable," one should have X, Y, and Z and the latest upgrade to them all. I was born late into my parents' generation, so I'm maybe among the youngest people on the planet who had Depression era parents, but I definitely grew up with an attitude of using things until they were worn out and not working. I gather not everyone with a flat screen TV got it because the old TV quit working. I'm guessing, but that's my general understanding of how this economy works.
And that's what's on my mind this Black Friday. I worry how our economy depends on people purchasing very few things they need and a whole lot on things that are, simply, new. And advances in technology come so quickly these days that my 5 year old cell phone---a marvel to people only 10 years ago---is obsolete. It was a discontinued model when I bought in in 2009. And it does what I need it to do, but it doesn't give me directions to the movie theater or restaurant. If I ever upgrade on it, the next iteration is going to be so advanced I'll need a class to use it.
Maybe. I probably exaggerate. But . . .
Yesterday, we all gave thanks. Today, businesses were counting on madness in their aisles to keep them open another year. Thankfulness and greed? Something is out of whack.
I see a lot of people on Facebook urging one another not to shop on Black Friday. Is that the answer? Maybe the start of one, but only if it's not a delay to eventual consumerist madness.
It's going to take a lot to change this culture. I find it a little scary to consider what could do it.
Need, want, entitlement. My place in it, my desire to get out of the cycle.
Not the usual Thanksgiving weekend thoughts, maybe. Maybe I wish more people had them.
Blame it on being sick . . .
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