Tuesday, March 28, 2006

 

Just a thought

How is it that a nation that fought a revolution to be free of the whims of the ruling elite is now willingly submitting itself to the whims of a ruling elite? And could there be a connection between the lack of support for education on the part of said ruling elite and the knowledge that an educated populace might just make the above connection and turn them out on their elite heads?

Saturday, March 25, 2006

 

Old Friends

I had an incredibly vivid dream about an old friend last night. We were catching up on things and talking and having a great time. She had moved back to Georgia, but I'm not sure how we ran into one another.

I looked for her all day on the internet, but am not sure where she is now. I am not in touch with her family anymore. I just feel like the dream is still urging me to talk to her, but I've had to give up for today. She has a very common name, so google spit out so many results, my head is spinning.

I feel very silly for working on this for so long, and yet...

I still haven't found her.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

 

Creating an interesting life is possible no matter where you are

I left the following comment on Salon in response to another commenter bewailing the mind-numbingness of life in a boring town:

I have spent most of my 31 years on earth in small Southern towns. As a fairly interesting and brainy (IMHO) person, I had to create my own stimulating life. Here are the methods with which I have found success:

1) Help others, especially those deemed unworthy by the social norms: those with addiction, those living with poverty, those with no or unstable housing, the differently abled. People who are willing to work with those society does not see tend to be more interesting than most.

2) Teach or Take classes. Most interesting people in smaller or more rural towns continue to stimulate their intellect by teaching or taking classes. I have made some lifelong friends among professors and other students. Plus you get to talk about intellectual stuff, if you take the right classes.

3) Be a joiner. Join arts organizations, literary magazines, meetups, political groups, nature clubs, outdoor expedition groups, liberal churches (UU in particular) or at least attend their events. You will find the other interesting folks there. I promise.

4) Make your own organization and post announcements in the paper and on the community calendar. Literary club. Liberal religious thought club. Political Party chapter. Sierra Club chapter. The possibilities are endless.

5) Network with those with your interests outside your area. Go to conferences. Meet people on the internet and then have lunch when they are passing through your area. They may know someone interesting who lives in or is moving to your town.

6) Create a collection of the interesting people that you meet at these places and start inviting them to do things with you. Have dinner or coffee with them often. Introduce them to eachother at dinner parties. Go exercise together. Meet their friends. Soon you will have a whole mess of interesting folks and won't have time to be bored.

6) And most importantly...get over your prejudices. Bible College and believing dogs go to heaven are not mutually exclusive with an enjoyment of literature or the arts. That attitude will get you nowhere in creating an interesting life. You must be open to interesting people wherever you find them, even if they are seemingly very different from yourself. You are going to be astounded with the hunter who completely agrees with you on gun control and environmental protection. You will find yourself amazed by the country girl who is a pagan and creates her own altars in nature and also creates amazing photographs of nature which are exhibited in regional art shows. You are in for a big surprise at the Bible College graduate who has a tattoo you can't see and believes that heaven does not exist and that everyone should read Flaubert.

As my mama always said, "Only boring people are bored." We are now in a big city and the same skills have created a social network for us in less than six months that is so extensive that we have to turn down many invitations. You can cultivate this life for yourself. Please give it a shot.

PS Tell me your town and I will make you a list of how to develop an interesting network of folks, or at least how to get the ball rolling. 99% of the research for this type of endeavor can now be done on the internet.

 

Another liberal Baptist link

http://www.thinkingbaptists.com/

Description from their site:
"Thinking Baptists is a community of seekers, questioners, dissidents, and other folk from a variety of backgrounds. We began as a discussion forum created on a lark for liberal baptists, and continue to be a safe haven for theological liberals and expatriates of various stripes. We've grown beyond our roots, however, and have become a place where liberals and conservatives; atheists, evangelicals and Roman Catholics; and all sorts of other people can come together to ask serious questions without being ridiculed or labeled as heretics."

Monday, March 13, 2006

 

The Codependency Tree

A commenter on Hugo's blog says:

"I didn't whine about "Not having any "me" time" or "MY" goals, or what "I" would rather do. A good parent - the only people fit to be parents - get the "me" out of it, and put their kids at A-Numero-Uno priority, bar none.

And until people can do that, frankly, the world is better off that they don't breed. Show me a dysfunctional child, and I'll show you one which has to at least compete for being top priority in their parent's lives."

I thought codependency between children and parents was a bad thing. As a matter of fact, most of the jerky people I know in this world show no sign of the knowledge that their parents don't exist solely for their benefit, to enable them to do whatever dimwitted idea pops up next, and to rescue them from any negative consequences of their actions. I'll never forget when a teacher I once knew taped her students cussing at the teacher and other students, and when presented with the tapes, the parents of the children denied that the voices belonged to their children. I happen to know two of those children got into big big trouble (criminal type) later on and were bailed out of that too, with no time spent in jail or anything.

It's okay to consider your family your highest priority. But when kids understand that their parents will set aside anything at all, including moral convictions, in order to make them happy, that produces jerkiness. There is a place for balance, and I think they need to hear that their parents can't drop everything at any moment for them because parents have emotional, spiritual, and physical needs too.

See my previous post for a similar theme.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

 

Koinonia Dreaming

Scott has blogged Briars in the Cottonpatch, a film about Koinonia Farm near Americus, GA. There was a class at Candler last semester on intentional communities that used the film, I believe. There is also a good book I have read about it called Interracialism and Christian Community in the Postwar South: The Story of Koinonia Farm.

Koinonia's one of my favorite places on earth. We don't learn about it in school in South Georgia, in spite of growing up right down the road. In fact, for all I knew there was no civil rights movement below Atlanta, until I grew up and started exploring local histories on my own. When I found out about Koinonia, I just had to go see what that was about. This was during a very non-religious period in my life when I was very deep into exploring issues of race in the areas where I grew up. I took my much younger cousin with me, I think she was in high school and so not me, I don't think she gave a hoot about it, but wanted to ride around the back roads with me anyway. I met Ellie then, I believe, and watched a short film, and toured the exhibit on the history. I have since been to 2 GA Peace and Justice organizers retreats there and maybe one other drop in visit.

I feel so at home there, and have had fantasies of joining the community, but I have a deep and abiding attachment to a) my stuff and b) my internet. So it will have to wait until retirement so I can take my rv containing the aforementioned stuff and internet and be there as one of the community volunteers who come for a time in their rvs to help out, rather than a permanent resident.

And of course, the Cottonpatch scriptures just blow me away. I resonate so much because the places there are the places I knew growing up. I am still fuzzy on some biblical geography, but I know where Atlanta, and Valdosta, are with my eyes closed.

Scott also notes that the Americus Disciples Church was once a Universalist church! Next time I'm down there, I'll check it out. The thought that a Universalist conference took place at Koinonia! Now I love it even more...

Aside from Koinonia, Americus is a neat area of south Georgia. In addition to visiting Plains (Home of Jimmy Carter)and Andersonville (former site of Civil War POW prison) and the Habitat for Humanity Global Village two winters ago, my husband and I spent our wedding night, back in 2002, at the Windsor Hotel in downtown Americus--in the tower room. We drove the rest of the way to Atlanta the next day to leave for Maine. For South Georgia, that's high living and I felt like quite the princess! So if you've never been to the area and are heading down I-75, it's definitely worth the detour to spend a few days in that section of the state.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

 

The Glurging Tree

We had a discussion in class recently about the gender roles in The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and whether the book is of any value in teaching about love or Christ. I think it's terrible for any purpose. I compared it to glurge emails that make you cry through sheer emotional manipulation, but have no lasting value. I could be wrong, but my mom taught me that codependency is a bad kind of love, even between parent and child. I think that as a unconventional Christian I can follow my developing theology wherever it leads, but now I am going to be very careful that it doesn't lead down the road to some codependent model of Christ. Here's a similar debate:

Debate on The Giving Tree

 

One reason I don't like creeds

Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not confined to any one creed, for, he says, “Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah.”

-- the Sufi mystic Ibn al-Arabi,
quoted in The Spiral Staircase, by Karen Armstrong
Courtesy of Grateful Bear

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