Well, I'm just waiting for the reviews to start coming in on Wind Follower. In the meantime, I'm trying to finish Daughters of Men.
For some reason, DOM is perched very precariously. A part of it wants to be an erotic novel. Now, what to do?
On the one hand, I want to write a Christian novel...and it definitely is. And I don't want to alienate Christians by having a scene in the book which will upset them. (Although Wind Follower has a couple of sex scenes.)
But I want to write what I want to write. Of course, the question to ask myself is: does this erotic part of my story comes from a part of me that needs sexual healing? (and therefore should be explored) Or does it come from a part of me that is just plain worldly and which has watched way too many movies on Lifetime televion?
But I also don't want to force myself to write in a particular way if that's not who I really am. (Not that we Christians should go around worshiping "who we really are.) I don't want to get all rigid and too brainwashed by the rigid guidelines of the Christian market.
I tend not to get too graphic in my love scenes. But the eroticism is definitely there. I know a few Christian folks might have a problem with the sex scenes in WF. A graphic rape scene where she loses a baby, sex with her slave- owner, and the Loic-Satha pre-marriage dalliance. But the book needed it. So in it went. I felt right having those scenes.
In DOM, there is a real element of sexual need. I might even go so far as to say that sexual need is a main character in the book. So even if there isn't any sex scene (can't imagine this, but even if) there is gonna be an erotic quality about the book.
I don't know if you've ever seen DIVA (French movie) or Rebel without a cause. In Diva the guy woos the woman by taking her for a walk in the Paris rain. Nothing happens and yet there's all this eroticism. Just by them walking. Then there's the ferris wheel ride in Rebel without a cause. Again, nothing happens. But it is absolutely incredibly erotic. That's what I feel is happening with DOM. There might be a sex scene or two -- if the plot calls for it-- but whether there are or not, there's gonna be a heck of erotic tension.
I don't really think that eros and religion are in conflict. God invented sex. And eroticism.
The proverbs say that a true witness delivers souls. Many Christian fiction books just simply aren't true. If we are to be witnesses to a truth, we have to start out with the truth-- about our own issues. Christian books are often more legalistic than gospel. The main characters are good people who often are in conflict with some bad aspect of themselves...but the bad aspects are often not bad enough to make the characters real people. They often are temptations rather than incredibly deep character traits. By making the "evil" a character faces something which is a mere temptation, the Christian writer can simply separate the main character from the "evil" and have a nice legalistic happy ending. Person is good now, so person can go to church and be a good part of society. It just doesn't speak to me of grace, of God loving us even when we are evil. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
In a lot of my stories, characters do bad right and left. But they are loved by God because they love Jesus. That is the gospel. When we get caught up in good and evil and believe that making a character good is telling the story of the gospel, we are making a bad mistake. We're teaching the importance of keeping the law. We're writing about and spreading teaching about the knowledge of good and evil. What does it matter if we know what good is, and what evil is? It's grace -- God's love for us in spite of our behavior, and while we are still sinning-- that is the gospel. And when we start saying that sex is bad or that writing about sex is a stumbling block then we are in a hazy world of saying that God has made something that is evil. We also are in the old Augustinian mind-set that says sex is evil.
In this story, I've made Ellie a Creed believer who is loyal to God above else. But she has done a crime. (I don't know what the crime is.) She's real. In that way she'll speak to real people, unlike the Christian characters in much modern Christian fiction who don't speak to the really really unsaved person. For instance, I think more incredibly bad people could probably be touched by Angels with Dirty Faces or Prayer for the Dying or Festen or The Bad Lieutenant than they would be by Christy or a Jeanette Oke book.
God called me to write to the really really really bad unsaved people, and as such I have to be a true witness. I have to witness to what I see in life, to the goodness I see in bad people, and to the lostness I see in saved people. For instance, in WF I had the two young characters make love on the day before they were married. Satha (although she is virginal) did it because she feared not giving in to him would be disastrous and might make him not go ahead with the planned marriage. And her folks needed the dowry money. He did it because he was a spoiled kid who always got his way and he was using her fear for her mother to get into bed (the grass) with her. That was truth, as far as I saw it. It would've been good for me to write a story where Satha held out for one more day, and where Loic didn't have that selfish ability to manipulate a woman, but although it would have been "good" it wouldn't have been true. In the long run, that little bit of dalliance caused some trouble for them but they are human...not Christian cardboard cookie-cutter tereotyped "good"
main characters.
For me to write something that doesn't feel right to me is to go against the idea that "a true witness delivers souls."
In DOM, Ellie is facing death. She is also badly-scarred. A human male loves her dearly. But so does a demon prince. She doesn't want to marry the prince but at the same time the prince has power to kill
her and to force her. And there is a lot in the mix about her conflict. Women like strength. Ugly scarred women like attention, especially if they haven't been getting any. Women like powerful men (at least in romances.) A powerful man with telepathic powers is going to use it to seduce a woman who thinks he's demonic. And the human male is going to have much sorrow and conflict about what to do with a woman he loves who has seemingly given up her faith to save her life.
It's been said that a novel is a conversation about the conflict between the soul and the spirit. In Wind Follower, the conversation was: "would you give up your religion for the religion of your oppressors?" That echoed conflict in my life. Sometimes one's religion puts one in the company of people one doesn't really like. And giving up one's religion means giving up certain things you are attached to. So there is always conflict in novels.
In Christian novels the conflicts are pretty narrowly-defined within home, faith, marriage. Very narrowly-defined. So I don't write for Christians because they don't want to read about Christian racist character working against his racism. They can't handle that kind conflicted characters or plots that don't have easy answers. They really can't. But God has called me to write Christian novels for a secular audience who can deal with such conflicting stuff.
I mean...what a different world it would be if Christian writers dealt with the racism of Sarah (Abraham's wife) or even with the fact that Abraham probably slept with Hagar quite a bit. Or even the fact that according to the ancient Jewish rabbis, Keturah Abraham's third wife was really in fact Hagar. I love that kind of stuff. The man wasn't perfect. He was a conflicted human. And Christian writing has no edge and has lost its ability to be very complicated. I have no doubt that if the books of the Bible was being gathered together today, Christian people would leave out a lot of David's misdemeanors, all of Song of Solomon, most of Judges.
The Christians who have read portions of Wind Follower didn't stumble. So far as I know. But the book isn't for them. And considering how rigid the christian guidelines are...the CBA's attitude is that most everything can make their readers stumble. I mean...they don't want to talk about race because they say Christian
readers need something safe to read. By avoiding certain supposed stumbling blocks, they have enabled close-minded folks to stay close-minded.
That's just my opinion. Christian writers write about sex in non-fiction books. Why not write about the weird inner conflicts of sex in fiction books? What's the difference?
Yes, the truth is about letting our light shine: healing the sick, raising the dead, binding up the broken-hearted. We shine the word in dark places. But then we have to show the dark places also so people can recognize the darkness of it. Sex is also a wonderful thing. Why not spotlight it in a story? Christians won't be reading it, probably. But I suspect the non-christian who reads it will see much of the spiritual glory of sexuality. Just me. -C
-C
Friday, July 13, 2007
Friday, July 06, 2007
Interracial love stories and normalcy
I once had a white friend in my writer’s critique group ask me, “Why do you always write about mixed couples? That’s a very bad habit of yours. Can’t you write about normal couples in regular same-race relationships?”
I suppose I could, but I don’t want to. I want to write love stories that heal my soul. I am married to a white man and I want to tell love stories about black women and white men. The typical black woman has seen enough from the media to know that many folks consider black women the bottom rung of beauty and attractiveness and the white woman as the pinnacle. This can be very wounding to the soul. I'm pretty sure this lack of appreciation of our beauty certainly contributes to our habit of medicating ourselves with food. Racism is a cruel thing.
The white writer either did not want to see the importance of my life experiences, felt uncomfortable with interracial relationships, or perhaps (I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt) didn’t realize that by asking me to write in a “normal” way that she was trying to nudge me and my writing toward a little space she considered proper and appropriate.
Actually, let me backtrack a bit. I'm gonna be honest. She was plain racist and uncomfortable with my stories and she was trying to shame me. She belonged to that group of liberals who think they're non-racist and enlightened and deep ("spiritual") but who was really overflowing with all sorts of issues. There, I said it.
She was speaking from her privileged status as a “normal” person, someone who—like the “majority” of people in the world—are in same-race relationships. I suppose I should have challenged her, but the emotional fact is that when among the normal, the non-normal person often forgets how different he or she is. Because of the illness our son endured and other issues, hubby and I have slowly slipped into non-normality. The slippery slide was imperceptible but that's how these things happen. (Heck, I got used to seeing a naked teenager walking through the house!) Anyway, an accusation or call to normality does the trick of getting the non-normal person in line.
The non-normal will always interpret lives (real and fictional) differently than the herd; and the herd, because of majority privilege and because they hang around normal people and generally see normal things, will always consider the non-normal a bit paranoid, touchy, or contrary. But there are enough folks out there who have had life push them toward the abnormal. They will understand writers and mommies like me. And that alone enables me to speak, breathe, write, and interpret freely.
Unfortunately, in that small world (the writing group) that writer friend had a large say. She was quite a mocker and I quickly retreated and therefore did not challenge her interpretation of my “habit.” I kept quiet and seethed at her call to normalcy, knowing that—whatever her wishes—I would write what I wanted to. Being quiet was easy because in a world larger than that writing group I had allies. And I was writing for them.
Wind Follower is an interracial novel, among other things. The characters in the story aren't particularly upset by it. I'm working on Daughters of Men now. In this story, race and interracial marriage also play a part. There are so many different kinds of humans in the novel and yet...in some ways race does matter. After that there's Inheritance, a May-July Relationship between a bi-racial white/Asian young man and an African-American older woman. I'll see how that comes out.
But whatever happens, I won't be ashamed of my stories.
I suppose I could, but I don’t want to. I want to write love stories that heal my soul. I am married to a white man and I want to tell love stories about black women and white men. The typical black woman has seen enough from the media to know that many folks consider black women the bottom rung of beauty and attractiveness and the white woman as the pinnacle. This can be very wounding to the soul. I'm pretty sure this lack of appreciation of our beauty certainly contributes to our habit of medicating ourselves with food. Racism is a cruel thing.
The white writer either did not want to see the importance of my life experiences, felt uncomfortable with interracial relationships, or perhaps (I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt) didn’t realize that by asking me to write in a “normal” way that she was trying to nudge me and my writing toward a little space she considered proper and appropriate.
Actually, let me backtrack a bit. I'm gonna be honest. She was plain racist and uncomfortable with my stories and she was trying to shame me. She belonged to that group of liberals who think they're non-racist and enlightened and deep ("spiritual") but who was really overflowing with all sorts of issues. There, I said it.
She was speaking from her privileged status as a “normal” person, someone who—like the “majority” of people in the world—are in same-race relationships. I suppose I should have challenged her, but the emotional fact is that when among the normal, the non-normal person often forgets how different he or she is. Because of the illness our son endured and other issues, hubby and I have slowly slipped into non-normality. The slippery slide was imperceptible but that's how these things happen. (Heck, I got used to seeing a naked teenager walking through the house!) Anyway, an accusation or call to normality does the trick of getting the non-normal person in line.
The non-normal will always interpret lives (real and fictional) differently than the herd; and the herd, because of majority privilege and because they hang around normal people and generally see normal things, will always consider the non-normal a bit paranoid, touchy, or contrary. But there are enough folks out there who have had life push them toward the abnormal. They will understand writers and mommies like me. And that alone enables me to speak, breathe, write, and interpret freely.
Unfortunately, in that small world (the writing group) that writer friend had a large say. She was quite a mocker and I quickly retreated and therefore did not challenge her interpretation of my “habit.” I kept quiet and seethed at her call to normalcy, knowing that—whatever her wishes—I would write what I wanted to. Being quiet was easy because in a world larger than that writing group I had allies. And I was writing for them.
Wind Follower is an interracial novel, among other things. The characters in the story aren't particularly upset by it. I'm working on Daughters of Men now. In this story, race and interracial marriage also play a part. There are so many different kinds of humans in the novel and yet...in some ways race does matter. After that there's Inheritance, a May-July Relationship between a bi-racial white/Asian young man and an African-American older woman. I'll see how that comes out.
But whatever happens, I won't be ashamed of my stories.
Monday, July 02, 2007
thoughts on windfollower
Hi all:
In one of our emails together, Paula (the editor at Juno) said something to the effect of, "Well, don't get too worried about it. After all, this is not great literature we're writing. It's entertainment."
The funny thing is, I DO think Wind Follower is great literature. It's not a literary book, of course. But my heart is in it. It's an epic. It's got heart and depth and soul. All my issues...from Monua's lament about poverty to Satha having a messy house because one is too depressed and overwhelmed with life to fix it to Loic's miniature weepy fetal position breakdown when all the religious people are telling him what he should do (telling him who he is in fact) instead of listening to him to religious issues. All my soul is in this book.
As I work on DOM -- and don't get me wrong about DOM, I like DOM-- I feel lots of fun. But I don't have the sense of the beautiful permanent literary worthiness of the book. Of course all books feel differently to their authors. DOM will probably be a good book --even if it's not written from my soul's pain-- but I am so hoping the reception the book gets will challenge Paula's words (I wish I had challenged them, since lately I've been going through the decisions in life to Speak my mind because silence means assent.)
I see a lot of the synops for Juno books and I want to read many of them, but not because I think they speak to my spiritual or emotional condition. They just look like good stories. But the stories they tell are stories that aren't epics, stories that don't deal with large racial, religions, and emotional existential questions.
Anyway, I had to get that off my chest. I suppose there are many writers out there who want to write a permanently-loved classic. And being a lit major that's all I think about: great works.
Ah well, we will see. I'm hoping it speaks to a lot of people. It goes to printer around 7/23, I think. Maybe later. Due for release in October.
-C
In one of our emails together, Paula (the editor at Juno) said something to the effect of, "Well, don't get too worried about it. After all, this is not great literature we're writing. It's entertainment."
The funny thing is, I DO think Wind Follower is great literature. It's not a literary book, of course. But my heart is in it. It's an epic. It's got heart and depth and soul. All my issues...from Monua's lament about poverty to Satha having a messy house because one is too depressed and overwhelmed with life to fix it to Loic's miniature weepy fetal position breakdown when all the religious people are telling him what he should do (telling him who he is in fact) instead of listening to him to religious issues. All my soul is in this book.
As I work on DOM -- and don't get me wrong about DOM, I like DOM-- I feel lots of fun. But I don't have the sense of the beautiful permanent literary worthiness of the book. Of course all books feel differently to their authors. DOM will probably be a good book --even if it's not written from my soul's pain-- but I am so hoping the reception the book gets will challenge Paula's words (I wish I had challenged them, since lately I've been going through the decisions in life to Speak my mind because silence means assent.)
I see a lot of the synops for Juno books and I want to read many of them, but not because I think they speak to my spiritual or emotional condition. They just look like good stories. But the stories they tell are stories that aren't epics, stories that don't deal with large racial, religions, and emotional existential questions.
Anyway, I had to get that off my chest. I suppose there are many writers out there who want to write a permanently-loved classic. And being a lit major that's all I think about: great works.
Ah well, we will see. I'm hoping it speaks to a lot of people. It goes to printer around 7/23, I think. Maybe later. Due for release in October.
-C
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Tribal photo site
Some of you know how much I love tribal customs. I'm always watching Travel Channel Discovery Channel, etc. I started liking tribalism and anthropology when I was a kid and my mother was in college studying the Yanomamo Tribe...the fierce people.
From then on I was hooked. Marriage customs, courtship customs, death rituals, rite-of-change rituals.
Of course it slipped into my book, Wind Follower which is about four tribes..and which uses Christianity at its most primitive and Scriptural. The Christian mythos is obvious and yet not pushy or preachy. The book will be out soon. Those who love anthropology and folklore and speculative fiction (or weird missionary stories about missionaries battling with shaman) will love it.
In the meantime, check out one of my favorite sites on the internet:
Tribal Photo
From then on I was hooked. Marriage customs, courtship customs, death rituals, rite-of-change rituals.
Of course it slipped into my book, Wind Follower which is about four tribes..and which uses Christianity at its most primitive and Scriptural. The Christian mythos is obvious and yet not pushy or preachy. The book will be out soon. Those who love anthropology and folklore and speculative fiction (or weird missionary stories about missionaries battling with shaman) will love it.
In the meantime, check out one of my favorite sites on the internet:
Tribal Photo
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Wind Follower update
Hi folks:
Got this from the Juno author update:
*Windfollower, Carole McDonnell - is back from the copy editor; cover is being done now. This one will have an Advance Readers Copy. We will be going ahead and publishing the book soon after (July/August), but the ARCs will be dated officially as October. (This is in order to get reviews. You need a three month lead time.)
Remember also that pre-orders are important so you can go to Amazon or to Borders and pre-order. Those pre-orders help. Paula wrote that she cancelled some books or sent them to POD (instead of offset) because they had few pre-orders. So -- if you're inclined to like multiculti paranormal romance (or if you know someone who likes it) definitely go ahead. Again, it's rooted in the christian mythos but it's not really like much of the Christian fiction one sees. Think folklore/C S Lewis kinda thing. But waaay different. I can't explain it. It's just an odd little book. If you know anyone who might like it, pass the link along. Muchas, muchas gracias.
To buy Wind Follower by Carole McDonnell click here or go to Amazon
Thanks so much. -C
Got this from the Juno author update:
*Windfollower, Carole McDonnell - is back from the copy editor; cover is being done now. This one will have an Advance Readers Copy. We will be going ahead and publishing the book soon after (July/August), but the ARCs will be dated officially as October. (This is in order to get reviews. You need a three month lead time.)
Remember also that pre-orders are important so you can go to Amazon or to Borders and pre-order. Those pre-orders help. Paula wrote that she cancelled some books or sent them to POD (instead of offset) because they had few pre-orders. So -- if you're inclined to like multiculti paranormal romance (or if you know someone who likes it) definitely go ahead. Again, it's rooted in the christian mythos but it's not really like much of the Christian fiction one sees. Think folklore/C S Lewis kinda thing. But waaay different. I can't explain it. It's just an odd little book. If you know anyone who might like it, pass the link along. Muchas, muchas gracias.
To buy Wind Follower by Carole McDonnell click here or go to Amazon
Thanks so much. -C
Monday, May 28, 2007
Etiquette, Assumptions, and Essentials
Hi all:
My present problem is this: I met someone on the internet who is part of an indie band. After going to his site, I liked his CD and asked if I could review it. He sent me the CD. I did an interview with him and got it posted on the internet. I figure he gave me the CD to listen to and to review it. So I accomplished my part of the bargain.
Then, because
1) we had developed a kind of friendly acquaintance and
2) because I had seen his work and
3) because he spoke of faith (Hinduism) and living by faith
I figured I'd send him to look at some of my writings around the web, including this site:
I also sent him to my angel story
angel story
And (SPOILER: TORTURE ALERT IN THIS FIRST CHAPTER) a link to the excerpted first chapter of my
soon-to-be-published novel Wind Follower
Interestingly, he did not answer my email. Not even a polite, "so that's what you write?" about my own creative efforts.
Okay, I feel that when someone doesn't say anything about one's work, it's because they are trying to be polite because they hate one's writings.
Now, I'll grant that we really had no bargain about him looking at MY work. I really am upset about this. I find myself saying "don't cross the line with anyone you're going to review." There is one zone...the public zone...and there is the social zone. He was someone I was doing a social thing for. He doesn't owe me to look at my writing. But I feel that etiquette demands that he at least should give a corresponding look at something I (another creative type) asked him to look at.
Interestingly, sometimes people of other faiths can talk about themselves living by faith but as soon as a Christian talks about living by faith or sends them to a site about their own faith experiences, the person assumes the Christian is trying to passive-aggressively save them.
I asked a cyber acquaintance and she said I was being hubristic to expect him to reply to me. Because I had sent him to my site and he hadn't asked to see any of my writing.
"expecting a response is hubristic" ??? That seems kind of harsh. I'd say I'm weak, or overly-friendly, or needy but not hubristic. An artist's desire to see another artists's response to her art is not hubristic. It's what we artist types live for. Plus it's the nature of human beings to start conversations with people expecting a response. And it's the nature of kind folks to give of themselves. Artists and needy types live to share. Yes, I wanted to share my writings...and what is bad about that?
In addition, the person who said I was hubristic also hinted that I might have been trying to "save" the guy and maybe he was offended because Christians are always trying to save people and non-Christians find that all so old hat after a while.
(Incidentally, non-Christians being easily offended by Christians is just as old as Christians trying to convert non-christians. )
Did I get offended when this person talked about his hindu spirituality? Did I even assume this person was trying to save me when he was talking about his worldview? No, I assumed the best of him. And even if he was trying to convert me, I took it well.
We humans live by assumptions. Much of life is lived by assumptions. The assumption of reciprocity for instance.
I think what I've learned in this situation is this:
A) some people like receiving but don't like responding in kind. They don't believe that one good turn (even a voluntary one) deserves another.
B) that I myself -- like many American women-- tend to assume that others will be kind or even polite.
C) that although I gave him the benefit of the doubt about possibly trying to convert me, that he didn't give me the benefit of the doubt.
D) that a simple act of friendship in sharing one's work with a fellow artist can be seen as insulting even though the fellow artist shared his work...and all art is about sharing. BECAUSE although you asked to see the artist's work, the artist didn't ask to see one's work. And BECAUSE you are a Christian and the other artist is not, although the other artist talked about his spirituality.
E) online relationships are interesting, especially online relationships between artists.
After my mother died i got some money from insurance. I gave 1500 to my cousin, 1000 to my friend and 1499 to my minister. I've since learned that they are not to be trusted. A hard lesson, but it made me realize that when millions start pouring in...I'll be careful about who i'm generous with.
This is a lesson i needed to learn. I just have to wipe away the shame and hurt i feel because i asked someone to look at my work. I mean...why should I be the one who feels shame for sharing my heart when the other person shared all his heart in his emails? The pain i feel in my heart is like the rejection one feels when one has had a story rejected. Very painful, very shameful. As if I am not only untalented, but psychologically sick and culturally "wrong" to ask someone to look at my writing.
We all want to be liked and I suspect there are boundary issues that wounded folks are likely to cross all the time. I think I'm learning how to be a little colder in life.
So, should I be so upset and get all cynical about human nature? Should I stop giving? Am I right to feel hurt? Although I gave without any desire to be reciprocated, it hadn't occurred to me that simply sharing my view of spiritual matters with someone (who had shared with me) and my own creativity (with someone who had shared with me) to be a kind of assumed reciprocation?
Do I have a right to be upset? Isn't it really my own assumption about etiquette that is getting my panties all in a bunch? This isn't heaven after all where we all live to give and live to share. It's just all very upsetting. Yes, yes, I know...we women are always mixing up things and taking things personally when to other folks it's "business." As they say, no matter when the houseseller or the realtor says, no matter what the cops say, don't assume it's personal -- even if they act like they're your pal-- it's all business.
My present problem is this: I met someone on the internet who is part of an indie band. After going to his site, I liked his CD and asked if I could review it. He sent me the CD. I did an interview with him and got it posted on the internet. I figure he gave me the CD to listen to and to review it. So I accomplished my part of the bargain.
Then, because
1) we had developed a kind of friendly acquaintance and
2) because I had seen his work and
3) because he spoke of faith (Hinduism) and living by faith
I figured I'd send him to look at some of my writings around the web, including this site:
I also sent him to my angel story
angel story
And (SPOILER: TORTURE ALERT IN THIS FIRST CHAPTER) a link to the excerpted first chapter of my
soon-to-be-published novel Wind Follower
Interestingly, he did not answer my email. Not even a polite, "so that's what you write?" about my own creative efforts.
Okay, I feel that when someone doesn't say anything about one's work, it's because they are trying to be polite because they hate one's writings.
Now, I'll grant that we really had no bargain about him looking at MY work. I really am upset about this. I find myself saying "don't cross the line with anyone you're going to review." There is one zone...the public zone...and there is the social zone. He was someone I was doing a social thing for. He doesn't owe me to look at my writing. But I feel that etiquette demands that he at least should give a corresponding look at something I (another creative type) asked him to look at.
Interestingly, sometimes people of other faiths can talk about themselves living by faith but as soon as a Christian talks about living by faith or sends them to a site about their own faith experiences, the person assumes the Christian is trying to passive-aggressively save them.
I asked a cyber acquaintance and she said I was being hubristic to expect him to reply to me. Because I had sent him to my site and he hadn't asked to see any of my writing.
"expecting a response is hubristic" ??? That seems kind of harsh. I'd say I'm weak, or overly-friendly, or needy but not hubristic. An artist's desire to see another artists's response to her art is not hubristic. It's what we artist types live for. Plus it's the nature of human beings to start conversations with people expecting a response. And it's the nature of kind folks to give of themselves. Artists and needy types live to share. Yes, I wanted to share my writings...and what is bad about that?
In addition, the person who said I was hubristic also hinted that I might have been trying to "save" the guy and maybe he was offended because Christians are always trying to save people and non-Christians find that all so old hat after a while.
(Incidentally, non-Christians being easily offended by Christians is just as old as Christians trying to convert non-christians. )
Did I get offended when this person talked about his hindu spirituality? Did I even assume this person was trying to save me when he was talking about his worldview? No, I assumed the best of him. And even if he was trying to convert me, I took it well.
We humans live by assumptions. Much of life is lived by assumptions. The assumption of reciprocity for instance.
I think what I've learned in this situation is this:
A) some people like receiving but don't like responding in kind. They don't believe that one good turn (even a voluntary one) deserves another.
B) that I myself -- like many American women-- tend to assume that others will be kind or even polite.
C) that although I gave him the benefit of the doubt about possibly trying to convert me, that he didn't give me the benefit of the doubt.
D) that a simple act of friendship in sharing one's work with a fellow artist can be seen as insulting even though the fellow artist shared his work...and all art is about sharing. BECAUSE although you asked to see the artist's work, the artist didn't ask to see one's work. And BECAUSE you are a Christian and the other artist is not, although the other artist talked about his spirituality.
E) online relationships are interesting, especially online relationships between artists.
After my mother died i got some money from insurance. I gave 1500 to my cousin, 1000 to my friend and 1499 to my minister. I've since learned that they are not to be trusted. A hard lesson, but it made me realize that when millions start pouring in...I'll be careful about who i'm generous with.
This is a lesson i needed to learn. I just have to wipe away the shame and hurt i feel because i asked someone to look at my work. I mean...why should I be the one who feels shame for sharing my heart when the other person shared all his heart in his emails? The pain i feel in my heart is like the rejection one feels when one has had a story rejected. Very painful, very shameful. As if I am not only untalented, but psychologically sick and culturally "wrong" to ask someone to look at my writing.
We all want to be liked and I suspect there are boundary issues that wounded folks are likely to cross all the time. I think I'm learning how to be a little colder in life.
So, should I be so upset and get all cynical about human nature? Should I stop giving? Am I right to feel hurt? Although I gave without any desire to be reciprocated, it hadn't occurred to me that simply sharing my view of spiritual matters with someone (who had shared with me) and my own creativity (with someone who had shared with me) to be a kind of assumed reciprocation?
Do I have a right to be upset? Isn't it really my own assumption about etiquette that is getting my panties all in a bunch? This isn't heaven after all where we all live to give and live to share. It's just all very upsetting. Yes, yes, I know...we women are always mixing up things and taking things personally when to other folks it's "business." As they say, no matter when the houseseller or the realtor says, no matter what the cops say, don't assume it's personal -- even if they act like they're your pal-- it's all business.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Angels
There are verses in the Bible about how the angels rejoiced at God's work of creation, and how the angels rejoice when a sinner repents and how the angels rejoiced to see Jesus's day and how the angels comforted Jesus in the garden. I thought of Isaiah chapter 6 where the angels forever praise God singing "Holy, holy, holy!" Someone once said that with each revolution around God the angels see something new and wonderful about God and that for all the ages they've been discovering God they are still startled with the wonder that is God.
I don't know what it was but last night I was overwhelmed with the feeling of the angels' love for humanity. It seemed so strange. There really was no theological benefit to think of their love.
I imagined them praising Him when he made the stars and all the sciences. But how delighted they were when God made man. How amazed they were when God showed them how our bodies worked, how our souls worked, how He had joined Himself to us in such a unique way. (Yes, i know...a few were jealous and rebelled but I'm talking about the angels who are sealed to goodness, those who can no longer sin or rebel against God.)
The angels saw how our bodies would work physically, sexually, intellectually, biologically, chemically. They saw how our souls would sing, design, command, and be like God.
When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, I saw how the angels came and held him tight and wiped his tears.
Luke (hubby) and I just talked and talked all night about that. I keep remembering the angel I saw and how sweet and witty and personable he was. That sweet conspiratorial smile that made me realize that angels have personalities too and that this odd being was my friend..and that he loved me sooo sooo soo very much. It just made my heart leap.
The upshot of all that was that I got up and decided that whether or not Gabe's diagnosis is autistic, he would learn about God. So I began reading the Bible to him. The word of God is alive and can heal him if he understands. When I told him about the rocks and the sun and all the speechless things praising God he smiled with such joy and when I told him about the sick little girl who was on her bed and couldn't move but Jesus told her to get up and she got up he seemed to understand.
I know Jesus gave us a great salvation, and there is no way I'm going to give up.
Carole McDonnell
Wind Follower June 2007 Juno Books
I don't know what it was but last night I was overwhelmed with the feeling of the angels' love for humanity. It seemed so strange. There really was no theological benefit to think of their love.
I imagined them praising Him when he made the stars and all the sciences. But how delighted they were when God made man. How amazed they were when God showed them how our bodies worked, how our souls worked, how He had joined Himself to us in such a unique way. (Yes, i know...a few were jealous and rebelled but I'm talking about the angels who are sealed to goodness, those who can no longer sin or rebel against God.)
The angels saw how our bodies would work physically, sexually, intellectually, biologically, chemically. They saw how our souls would sing, design, command, and be like God.
When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, I saw how the angels came and held him tight and wiped his tears.
Luke (hubby) and I just talked and talked all night about that. I keep remembering the angel I saw and how sweet and witty and personable he was. That sweet conspiratorial smile that made me realize that angels have personalities too and that this odd being was my friend..and that he loved me sooo sooo soo very much. It just made my heart leap.
The upshot of all that was that I got up and decided that whether or not Gabe's diagnosis is autistic, he would learn about God. So I began reading the Bible to him. The word of God is alive and can heal him if he understands. When I told him about the rocks and the sun and all the speechless things praising God he smiled with such joy and when I told him about the sick little girl who was on her bed and couldn't move but Jesus told her to get up and she got up he seemed to understand.
I know Jesus gave us a great salvation, and there is no way I'm going to give up.
Carole McDonnell
Wind Follower June 2007 Juno Books
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Jeanne Guyon
This morning while cleaning my bedroom I came upon a neat quote from Jeanne Guyon's book. It was mentioned in a book called Christian Maturity by Henry Riffle (I think that's the name. I didn't look at the author)
I opened the book to that page and it gave me such joy. She lived in France around 1600-1700 --something like that. I have her book --which was burned back in the day. Anyway, she was talking about commanding the word of healing. It made my heart sing. I like finding stuff like that in old books. Like Pastor Romaine from 1500. When you read stuff in books that are 400 or 500 years old and the christian writers from back in the day are writing the same things that folks like Andrew Wommack and Creflo Dollar and Reinhard Bonnke and Emily Dotson are saying...well it gives a bit of peace. It makes you trust that the present interpretation isn't an American spin/heresy but a truth that is being rediscovered.
Praise God. I feel he led me to it.
I opened the book to that page and it gave me such joy. She lived in France around 1600-1700 --something like that. I have her book --which was burned back in the day. Anyway, she was talking about commanding the word of healing. It made my heart sing. I like finding stuff like that in old books. Like Pastor Romaine from 1500. When you read stuff in books that are 400 or 500 years old and the christian writers from back in the day are writing the same things that folks like Andrew Wommack and Creflo Dollar and Reinhard Bonnke and Emily Dotson are saying...well it gives a bit of peace. It makes you trust that the present interpretation isn't an American spin/heresy but a truth that is being rediscovered.
Praise God. I feel he led me to it.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Christian worldwide gatherings
GLOBAL DAY OF PRAYER GATHERING IN VANCOUVER/PORTLAND
Third annual Global Day of Prayer.
It began on May 17 and culminates on Sunday, May 27. Christians from 220 nations across the world will be in prayer for missions to the nations. For more details check the website www.globaldayofprayer.com. Find out if there is a gathering in your city or area.
7th WORLD CHRISTIAN GATHERING OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
The 7th World Christian Gathering of Indigenous People (WCGIP) convenes in Israel in September 9-18, 2008. Delegates from hundreds of tribes from all over the world are expected and many of these tribes and languages will be represented in Jerusalem for the first time in history. E-mail: gavriel@shlichut.com www.wcgip.org
Third annual Global Day of Prayer.
It began on May 17 and culminates on Sunday, May 27. Christians from 220 nations across the world will be in prayer for missions to the nations. For more details check the website www.globaldayofprayer.com. Find out if there is a gathering in your city or area.
7th WORLD CHRISTIAN GATHERING OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
The 7th World Christian Gathering of Indigenous People (WCGIP) convenes in Israel in September 9-18, 2008. Delegates from hundreds of tribes from all over the world are expected and many of these tribes and languages will be represented in Jerusalem for the first time in history. E-mail: gavriel@shlichut.com www.wcgip.org
some christian volunteer writing projects
Am passing this along for a friend. I'll be doing the story of the gospel site. These Christian Projects are (Unpaid) Volunteer Work. There are other needs too up at the site. http://www.modernscribe.com/projects.html Those needs look pretty specialized but there is payment for them. -C
The following domain names are designated for non-profit use (no ads or outbound links). When you help develop one of these sites, you help others. How often do you have an opportunity to give a speech in front of 1,000 people who want advice? Develop one of these, and your words should reach thousands of people!
Contact Bill to get started at: http://www.modernscribe.com/contact.html
Moshiach.co.il - Jews who do not believe that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah are still waiting for the Messiah to come. Moshiach is one of the common spellings of the word Messiah in Hebrew. The .co.il extension is the Israeli equivalent of .com. This name receives a little bit of type-in traffic and it is currently forwarded to a Messianic site. I would like someone to write at least one page of content in Hebrew about Yeshua, the Messiah, for non-Messianic Jews.
Yeshua.org.il - Messianic Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah refer to him by the Hebrew name of Yeshua. The .org.il extension is the Israeli equivalent of .org. This name receives a little bit of type-in traffic and it is currently forwarded to a Messianic site. I would like someone to write at least one page of content in Hebrew about Yeshua for Messianic Jews.
Giexu.vn - Giexu is the word for Jesus in Vietnamese and .vn is Vietnam's country specific domain name extension. I would like someone to write at least one page of content in Vietnamese about Jesus.
Yesu.org.cn - Yesu is the pinyin word for Jesus in Chinese. The .org.cn extension is the Chinese equivalent of .org. I would like someone to write at least one page of content in simplified Mandarin about Jesus.
Yesu.tv - Yesu is the pinyin word for Jesus in Chinese. I would like someone to find a short video clip about Jesus in Mandarin and then obtain permission from the owners for their clip to be made available for download on yesu.tv. I envision a one page site which has a Flash video player in the center of the page. When a visitor clicks the play button, the video begins to play.
StoryOfTheGospel.com - I would like someone to write at least one page of content about the story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This should be written in simple enough English for a child to understand.
WhyDoBadThingsHappen.com - On a daily basis, people search online for the phrase, "why do bad things happen". I would like someone to write at least one page of content about the biblical perspective on why bad things happen. This site should keep a positive tone and serve to comfort its readers.
NagHammadi.com - The Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in 1945 and it contained some Gnostic books which have been translated into English. I would like someone to write a few pages of information about the Nag Hammadi find as well as about the Gnostic Gospels. This site should offer a conservative overview which does not cause Christians to lose their faith or stumble into practicing gnosticism.
http://www.modernscribe.com/projects.html
The following domain names are designated for non-profit use (no ads or outbound links). When you help develop one of these sites, you help others. How often do you have an opportunity to give a speech in front of 1,000 people who want advice? Develop one of these, and your words should reach thousands of people!
Contact Bill to get started at: http://www.modernscribe.com/contact.html
Moshiach.co.il - Jews who do not believe that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah are still waiting for the Messiah to come. Moshiach is one of the common spellings of the word Messiah in Hebrew. The .co.il extension is the Israeli equivalent of .com. This name receives a little bit of type-in traffic and it is currently forwarded to a Messianic site. I would like someone to write at least one page of content in Hebrew about Yeshua, the Messiah, for non-Messianic Jews.
Yeshua.org.il - Messianic Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah refer to him by the Hebrew name of Yeshua. The .org.il extension is the Israeli equivalent of .org. This name receives a little bit of type-in traffic and it is currently forwarded to a Messianic site. I would like someone to write at least one page of content in Hebrew about Yeshua for Messianic Jews.
Giexu.vn - Giexu is the word for Jesus in Vietnamese and .vn is Vietnam's country specific domain name extension. I would like someone to write at least one page of content in Vietnamese about Jesus.
Yesu.org.cn - Yesu is the pinyin word for Jesus in Chinese. The .org.cn extension is the Chinese equivalent of .org. I would like someone to write at least one page of content in simplified Mandarin about Jesus.
Yesu.tv - Yesu is the pinyin word for Jesus in Chinese. I would like someone to find a short video clip about Jesus in Mandarin and then obtain permission from the owners for their clip to be made available for download on yesu.tv. I envision a one page site which has a Flash video player in the center of the page. When a visitor clicks the play button, the video begins to play.
StoryOfTheGospel.com - I would like someone to write at least one page of content about the story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This should be written in simple enough English for a child to understand.
WhyDoBadThingsHappen.com - On a daily basis, people search online for the phrase, "why do bad things happen". I would like someone to write at least one page of content about the biblical perspective on why bad things happen. This site should keep a positive tone and serve to comfort its readers.
NagHammadi.com - The Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in 1945 and it contained some Gnostic books which have been translated into English. I would like someone to write a few pages of information about the Nag Hammadi find as well as about the Gnostic Gospels. This site should offer a conservative overview which does not cause Christians to lose their faith or stumble into practicing gnosticism.
http://www.modernscribe.com/projects.html
Sunday, May 13, 2007
walking by faith
More and more it dawns on me how careless we Christians are with our words. We are always taking the Lord's name in vain, we are always spewing forth bitter and sweet water from the same fountain.
I used to wonder if God answered prayers but when I really consider what people do when they pray I realize that so few of us actually are praying the way Jesus told us, and few of us are actually doing what the Bible told us to do.
A friend of mine who always went to psychics was told by a psychic that some horrendous thing would happen. Of course she believed it, although she was a Christian. Her faith in her psychic was greater than her faith in the Bible's promises. Of course some bad thing happened. She had faith for it to happen.
Another friend, a sweet Catholic lady, was diagnosed with cancer. She had faith, her friends had faith. But how did she pray? Always by saying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and the Hail Mary and prayers to the various saints. Never once did she pray as Jesus told her to pray, "Speak to the mountain and tell it to pick itself up and throw itself into the sea." In the meantime, instead of taking heed to what she heard -- which Jesus told us to do-- she went online and studied every aspect of her disease. She trusted what man said about disease more than what Jesus said about health. Of course, we all trust what man says more than what Jesus says...but we are not supposed to. We must trust God and not lean unto our own understanding.
Then there were folks in my evangelical church who prayed all the while for God's mercy. Oh God, please heal your servant, etc. The entire prayer time asking for God's mercy instead of simply believing that God has already given mercy. Instead of saying to the sickness in the sick person, "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. By Jesus's stripes this person was healed! Therefore you have no right to bother
her. Leave her alone and take your symptoms and your roots and your seeds and leave this woman's body."
But in the meantime, although they kept praying to God to heal her, during coffee hour what do they say? "It's all in God's hand whether he decides to heal or not. I'll prepare myself just in case I hurt." Then when these folks die everyone said, "Look, they had faith and nothing happened." I just want to scream at the way people blame God for stuff when we humans are not doing what God told us to do.
Pray, water the word with thanksgiving, rebuke the sickness, see the invisible, walk by faith in God's love, power, and care.
I was just talking to some neighbors who just came from church. I so wish negative conversation wasn't a part of our "normal" conversation. I'm always hearing about how bad it is for black people, and when I look at what is happening in their lives I want to challenge them and say, "the Bible says 'you will have what you say!' Do you see that perhaps your habit of saying about your son 'if it weren't for bad luck, he'd have no luck at all' is not helping matters?"
God wants us to fly. The world weighs us down.
The Bible declares, "Let God be true and every man a liar." If we want miracles, that's what we have to do.
I know how tough it is to say things or do things that one's church doesn't do. But if you read the Bible and see what God demands of you, then you won't care what the people around you do?
Speaking is so important. Jesus said, we should have what we say. Not that we don't get what we pray for silently, but if speaking is a weapon, why not use it? We are told to speak to the mountain not to think to the mountain. We can talk to God about the mountain, but we must talk to the mountain about the promises of God and about the blood of Jesus.
So many places in the Bible talk about talking.
He who orders his conversation aright
I will say of the Lord He is my refuge and my fortress
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so
Let the weak say I am strong.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue.
In Revelations, the sword comes from Jesus' mouth.
The sword of the spirit is the word of God.
Jesus has chosen preaching which seems foolish to humans but which is powerful. Jesus wants us to preach to humans and to mountains and to demons. Tell every creature about the great gospel.
We must not be dominated by what we see, hear, taste and feel. We must know that God does things and we don't necessarily see it.
Just another point. Many of us are carnal Christians. And we have to learn that when we use spiritual weapons we aren't battling the air, we are actually doing battle. Most Christian people walk by sight and if they don't see what they're doing (or the effects of what they're doing), they think nothing is happening. Most of Christianity is carnal and hasn't learned truly that we walk by faith. When you speak Scriptures, you are slashing the demonic world -- sickness, debt, demonic, whatever-- with the sword of the spirit. Something is happening in the spiritual realm. When we praise God, something is happening. When we speak in tongues something is happening. We must trust that God wouldn't speak so much about speaking the word and meditating (in hebrew the word for meditating also means mumbling and speaking aloud to one's self) on the word .
There is a spiritual world around us and God's people should know that. Our faith creates a bridge which brings the spiritual blessings of Christ's cross into the physical realm. Speaking Scriptures show that we acknowledge that there is stuff going on around us and we are warring spiritually. We must acknowledge the spiritual realm. God is spirit and he works in the spirit and we must worship him in spirit which most of the time means we are to do things we may not understand yet believe that something is really happening. -C
I used to wonder if God answered prayers but when I really consider what people do when they pray I realize that so few of us actually are praying the way Jesus told us, and few of us are actually doing what the Bible told us to do.
A friend of mine who always went to psychics was told by a psychic that some horrendous thing would happen. Of course she believed it, although she was a Christian. Her faith in her psychic was greater than her faith in the Bible's promises. Of course some bad thing happened. She had faith for it to happen.
Another friend, a sweet Catholic lady, was diagnosed with cancer. She had faith, her friends had faith. But how did she pray? Always by saying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and the Hail Mary and prayers to the various saints. Never once did she pray as Jesus told her to pray, "Speak to the mountain and tell it to pick itself up and throw itself into the sea." In the meantime, instead of taking heed to what she heard -- which Jesus told us to do-- she went online and studied every aspect of her disease. She trusted what man said about disease more than what Jesus said about health. Of course, we all trust what man says more than what Jesus says...but we are not supposed to. We must trust God and not lean unto our own understanding.
Then there were folks in my evangelical church who prayed all the while for God's mercy. Oh God, please heal your servant, etc. The entire prayer time asking for God's mercy instead of simply believing that God has already given mercy. Instead of saying to the sickness in the sick person, "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. By Jesus's stripes this person was healed! Therefore you have no right to bother
her. Leave her alone and take your symptoms and your roots and your seeds and leave this woman's body."
But in the meantime, although they kept praying to God to heal her, during coffee hour what do they say? "It's all in God's hand whether he decides to heal or not. I'll prepare myself just in case I hurt." Then when these folks die everyone said, "Look, they had faith and nothing happened." I just want to scream at the way people blame God for stuff when we humans are not doing what God told us to do.
Pray, water the word with thanksgiving, rebuke the sickness, see the invisible, walk by faith in God's love, power, and care.
I was just talking to some neighbors who just came from church. I so wish negative conversation wasn't a part of our "normal" conversation. I'm always hearing about how bad it is for black people, and when I look at what is happening in their lives I want to challenge them and say, "the Bible says 'you will have what you say!' Do you see that perhaps your habit of saying about your son 'if it weren't for bad luck, he'd have no luck at all' is not helping matters?"
God wants us to fly. The world weighs us down.
The Bible declares, "Let God be true and every man a liar." If we want miracles, that's what we have to do.
I know how tough it is to say things or do things that one's church doesn't do. But if you read the Bible and see what God demands of you, then you won't care what the people around you do?
Speaking is so important. Jesus said, we should have what we say. Not that we don't get what we pray for silently, but if speaking is a weapon, why not use it? We are told to speak to the mountain not to think to the mountain. We can talk to God about the mountain, but we must talk to the mountain about the promises of God and about the blood of Jesus.
So many places in the Bible talk about talking.
He who orders his conversation aright
I will say of the Lord He is my refuge and my fortress
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so
Let the weak say I am strong.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue.
In Revelations, the sword comes from Jesus' mouth.
The sword of the spirit is the word of God.
Jesus has chosen preaching which seems foolish to humans but which is powerful. Jesus wants us to preach to humans and to mountains and to demons. Tell every creature about the great gospel.
We must not be dominated by what we see, hear, taste and feel. We must know that God does things and we don't necessarily see it.
Just another point. Many of us are carnal Christians. And we have to learn that when we use spiritual weapons we aren't battling the air, we are actually doing battle. Most Christian people walk by sight and if they don't see what they're doing (or the effects of what they're doing), they think nothing is happening. Most of Christianity is carnal and hasn't learned truly that we walk by faith. When you speak Scriptures, you are slashing the demonic world -- sickness, debt, demonic, whatever-- with the sword of the spirit. Something is happening in the spiritual realm. When we praise God, something is happening. When we speak in tongues something is happening. We must trust that God wouldn't speak so much about speaking the word and meditating (in hebrew the word for meditating also means mumbling and speaking aloud to one's self) on the word .
There is a spiritual world around us and God's people should know that. Our faith creates a bridge which brings the spiritual blessings of Christ's cross into the physical realm. Speaking Scriptures show that we acknowledge that there is stuff going on around us and we are warring spiritually. We must acknowledge the spiritual realm. God is spirit and he works in the spirit and we must worship him in spirit which most of the time means we are to do things we may not understand yet believe that something is really happening. -C
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Rational versus irrational
Okay, once again Law and Order has shown religious people as being irrational. I swear you can always tell who the baddie is in these episodes. If it's a religious person who reads his Bible he's got to be the villain. And Law and Order is not the only television show that's guilty of this.
Why do they think Bible readers are irrational?
The Bible is the best book in the world. And folks who judge Bible readers really should consider many things if they want to say the Bible stifles critical thinking.
Movies always behave as if Bible believers are an uneducated bunch. True, many Bible lovers are uneducated. But others are quite educated.
Look at me. I totally believe the Bible is the word of God. Totally. My house has about 2000 Bible study books. Hey, I'm a lit major. I love studying. I learned how to do reading comprehension. I learned how to deal with writers like the Bible prophets who spoke symbolically and who digressed then returned to a point. I learned to link things together. I'm educated. Somewhat.
But many Christians -- black and white-- were taught by sweet little old ladies who had a dream of stopping crime or of preventing girls from becoming pregnant. They did well -- wonderful and noble deeds. In fact, their place in our community as teachers was often all the respect they had. And wanting to read the Bible was one of the reasons they learned to read. Although I don't know why so many of them think they actually fully comprehend Elizabethan English. Many a weird cult has begun because someone didn't understand Shakespearean English.
So yeah, some folks just don't understand reading comprehension, some don't research, some don't aim to improve their knowledge. Human pride, what can I say? Just because they are Christians doesn't mean they are immune to vanity or idiocy. They don't want to realize that they might need to know more. Does that mean uneducated people can't think? Or that the Bible has stopped their brains? Or that everyone who reads the Bible is an idiot? No.
The Bible for one has taught me a kind of divine cynicism. It shows us how humans fool each other and themselves. It teaches us to distrust humans and culture. Always a good thing. And it teaches us to study. The Bible isn't anti-reason. It simply demands that we distrust our fellow man and trust God's view of things.
What's wrong with a little authority about spiritual things? Doing without Sriptural authority is like remaking the wheel. If everyone started on their own wisdom path from scratch without looking to the works of their spiritual ancestors, we would all be starting out as cavemen. Why not say: "It is written that such and such a course is not good to take." Why not believe what other people have said? If the Bible tells us for instance that women should really be married before sleeping with men, why not believe it? God knows men are selfish, will abandon women, women will be raising children in povery. Why not trust it?
Anyone learning to read the Bible learns how to compare word to word, thought to thought, verse to verse. Even uneducated poor black grandmas and little kids learn to do this. We see a verse about sexual purity here. Then we see a verse which says a divorced man is like someone wearing the coat of a bloodshed victim (Malachi). Then we read a place where God says we must be satisfied with the breasts of the wife of our youth. Or that young men should avoide strange women. Or that when a woman is raped it is akin to murder. And all these little old ladies --including myself-- study those verses and come up with a general meaning.
Rational vs rational
Something else has to be clarified here:
The word "Rational" (as used by most people) has two distinct meanings.
A) It could refer to a thought pattern that does not operate in a logical manner.
B) It could refer to a conclusion arrived at that does not fit in with the listener's worldview.
The first meaning -- having to do with manner and pattern of a person's way of thinking-- can be useful for judging the Bible reader. But it doesn't really judge the Bible. There are many logical thinkers who read and believe the Bible. And there are many illogical thinkers who read and believer the Bible. Also, there are many logical thinkers who do not believe the Bible and many illogical thinkers who believe the Bible.
In the second case where "rational" refers to the conclusion -- whether logically or illogically arrived at-- then personal prejudices and worldview issues often come into play.
Stephen Hawking for instance may not believe in the Bible but he is a theist. Carl Sagan -- just as logical and perhaps not as smart-- is not a theist and simply did not believe in any kind of God. In a situation where someone is judging someone's rationality all sorts of questions can come up. Is the person thinking irrationally because he is insane? Because he has a different path to follow? Because he is "misinterpreting" some of the evidence/clues he sees?
Many Americans think Christians are irrational because they think the Christian is thinking in an unworldly way. But in Africa where the average person (Christian or otherwise) believes in the spirit world much more than the average American (Christian or otherwise) there wouldn't be a question about irrational thinking just because someone believes something that doesn't jibe with the scientific model of worldview -- closed universe and all that.
I've done many a thing that seems irrational and yet God and the Universe have continually shown me that I'm quite right. Indeed, I suspect that many a little Christian old lady (educated or not) has had the same experience and that's why they trust and love Jesus so much.
Three examples:
I once went into a GNC at the mall. A man walked past me. I heard "in my spirit" a voice that said: "This is so-and-so. He's the general manager of such-and-such a radio station." The name of there person and his title and his workplace. I walked over to the man and quite irrationally said, "Hi, are you so and so?" He said, "I am." I did not behave irrationally, mind you. I didn't go over and tell him that the holy spirit had told me who he was. So I had some sense. But still, it is kind of irrational to believe some weird bit of information one hears in one's spirit.
Another time, I was working on my novel Wind Follower (to be published in June). I decided on a whim to make the main character an epileptic and needed a name to call the illness. I decided on "the falling sickness." Wrote a scene. Got up from my computer. On a lark I turned on the TV and flipped through the channel. I saw some guys in togas. Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar. As I listened I heard one character say, "well you know Ceasar has the falling sickness."
Another time, I finished writing a scene where a character tells another character he should change his name from Stevie to Steve because Stevie sounds so childish. I went upstairs and although I NEVER turn the radio on at night, turned it on for some strange reasons. A guy was calling in to the DJ. He said, "My girlfriend thinks I should quit calling myself Stevie because it's too childish." Kid you not.
I once had a dream in which two teenaged boys from up the road were beating my young 3 year old with iron pipes. Terrified I woke up. Around mid-day those two boys from up the road visited. They held up a little piece of yarn. "We want to play with Logan. We're playing cowboys and Indians." They let the yarn flow along my hand. "See it doesn't hurt. We won't hurt him." Needless to say although my son wanted to go out and play with them cause he was a lonely kid, I didn't. God had warned me.
I remember one day about nine months after my older son was born. I was sitting in my room watching my son playing with blocks. I heard --in the way one hears these things-- in my spirit the clear words "rest." It was so clear that I looked around. I walked over to my son and he had taken the letters R E S T and placed them in perfect order forming the word rest. He was only nine months. I should have learned to rest. I didn't and not resting after childbirth proved to be very harmful to my health for about 20 years.
I remember once I got some money and I was wondering who to give my tithe to. I said a prayer, "Lord, who should I give this tithe to?"
Immediately the name of a friend across the country was impressed upon me. It was so strange to hear that name in my heart that I suddenly stood still. I thought, "that was weird!" Generally, guidance didn't come so quickly and the name had come so suddenly and so clearly after the prayer...I found myself thinking that the idea had come from my own mind. And yet, it was so weird to suddenly get this girl's name in my head. I decided to tithe the money to her.
Then, I said...I could send her a check...but I had bounced checks recently and I was bounce-wary. All I needed was to pay $50 to my bank for bouncing a check written as a gift to a friend, and then my friend's bank would also charge her for the bounce. So a gift check for $50 would cost $150 by the time everything was said and done. (Okay, I get nervous and like I said I was very nervous about bouncing a check.)
Then I thought I would send the money as cash. But then I got nervous about that. Cash might get lost in the mail. Then I thought about a money order. But I didn't want to go to the bank or the post office to write a money order. Hey, it's cold in winter in NY and I didn't want to deal with it.
I decided on pay-pal. But I had to wait until the check I had received cleared and went into my paypal account.
Anyway, one night about four days after this quandary and decision, I went online to check if my money was in paypal. It wasn't. Later that night, instead of going to bed, I went downstairs again and for some weird reason (thank you, God) turned on the computer and went online to paypal. The money was there!
I transferred the money from my paypal account to my friend's paypal account.
The next morning my friend emailed me. It seems that the night before -- the night i felt the need to as transfer the money to my friend's account -- my friend was driving home from the hospital with her sick husband. She was miles away from home. Maybe 40 miles. And had run out of gas. She had no money left in her checking account and on a whim (thank you, God) decided to check her paypal account. Voila, the money I had sent her was in it. She hadn't even expected it. But that money got her gas and got her home from the hospital.
I love when God does stuff like that. It makes me feel that yes I do hear from God. It makes my friend know that God is aware of her. It makes us both know that God is aware of the future and provides for the future in the present. Isn't our God good? IT just makes me so happy when stuff like this happens. And they happen all the time. Doesn't it just make you roll your eyes when some atheist says that only idiots think that God exists? Hey, if this kind of lovely stuff is what happens to idiots, may I be an idiot forever!
Thank you Jesus.
I cannot tell you the amount of times my life and my family's life have been saved or my children's life by trusting the irrational.
We Christians call that kind of thing "God winks." It the situation is death-defying, we call them "testimonies of God's protection." These events are odd and a Christian's trust in them is utterly irrational. But it gives us a feeling of being loved. And while everyone has some odd thing happen to them once in a while, these things tend to happen incredibly frequently to Bible-believers..
Why do they think Bible readers are irrational?
The Bible is the best book in the world. And folks who judge Bible readers really should consider many things if they want to say the Bible stifles critical thinking.
Movies always behave as if Bible believers are an uneducated bunch. True, many Bible lovers are uneducated. But others are quite educated.
Look at me. I totally believe the Bible is the word of God. Totally. My house has about 2000 Bible study books. Hey, I'm a lit major. I love studying. I learned how to do reading comprehension. I learned how to deal with writers like the Bible prophets who spoke symbolically and who digressed then returned to a point. I learned to link things together. I'm educated. Somewhat.
But many Christians -- black and white-- were taught by sweet little old ladies who had a dream of stopping crime or of preventing girls from becoming pregnant. They did well -- wonderful and noble deeds. In fact, their place in our community as teachers was often all the respect they had. And wanting to read the Bible was one of the reasons they learned to read. Although I don't know why so many of them think they actually fully comprehend Elizabethan English. Many a weird cult has begun because someone didn't understand Shakespearean English.
So yeah, some folks just don't understand reading comprehension, some don't research, some don't aim to improve their knowledge. Human pride, what can I say? Just because they are Christians doesn't mean they are immune to vanity or idiocy. They don't want to realize that they might need to know more. Does that mean uneducated people can't think? Or that the Bible has stopped their brains? Or that everyone who reads the Bible is an idiot? No.
The Bible for one has taught me a kind of divine cynicism. It shows us how humans fool each other and themselves. It teaches us to distrust humans and culture. Always a good thing. And it teaches us to study. The Bible isn't anti-reason. It simply demands that we distrust our fellow man and trust God's view of things.
What's wrong with a little authority about spiritual things? Doing without Sriptural authority is like remaking the wheel. If everyone started on their own wisdom path from scratch without looking to the works of their spiritual ancestors, we would all be starting out as cavemen. Why not say: "It is written that such and such a course is not good to take." Why not believe what other people have said? If the Bible tells us for instance that women should really be married before sleeping with men, why not believe it? God knows men are selfish, will abandon women, women will be raising children in povery. Why not trust it?
Anyone learning to read the Bible learns how to compare word to word, thought to thought, verse to verse. Even uneducated poor black grandmas and little kids learn to do this. We see a verse about sexual purity here. Then we see a verse which says a divorced man is like someone wearing the coat of a bloodshed victim (Malachi). Then we read a place where God says we must be satisfied with the breasts of the wife of our youth. Or that young men should avoide strange women. Or that when a woman is raped it is akin to murder. And all these little old ladies --including myself-- study those verses and come up with a general meaning.
Rational vs rational
Something else has to be clarified here:
The word "Rational" (as used by most people) has two distinct meanings.
A) It could refer to a thought pattern that does not operate in a logical manner.
B) It could refer to a conclusion arrived at that does not fit in with the listener's worldview.
The first meaning -- having to do with manner and pattern of a person's way of thinking-- can be useful for judging the Bible reader. But it doesn't really judge the Bible. There are many logical thinkers who read and believe the Bible. And there are many illogical thinkers who read and believer the Bible. Also, there are many logical thinkers who do not believe the Bible and many illogical thinkers who believe the Bible.
In the second case where "rational" refers to the conclusion -- whether logically or illogically arrived at-- then personal prejudices and worldview issues often come into play.
Stephen Hawking for instance may not believe in the Bible but he is a theist. Carl Sagan -- just as logical and perhaps not as smart-- is not a theist and simply did not believe in any kind of God. In a situation where someone is judging someone's rationality all sorts of questions can come up. Is the person thinking irrationally because he is insane? Because he has a different path to follow? Because he is "misinterpreting" some of the evidence/clues he sees?
Many Americans think Christians are irrational because they think the Christian is thinking in an unworldly way. But in Africa where the average person (Christian or otherwise) believes in the spirit world much more than the average American (Christian or otherwise) there wouldn't be a question about irrational thinking just because someone believes something that doesn't jibe with the scientific model of worldview -- closed universe and all that.
I've done many a thing that seems irrational and yet God and the Universe have continually shown me that I'm quite right. Indeed, I suspect that many a little Christian old lady (educated or not) has had the same experience and that's why they trust and love Jesus so much.
Three examples:
I once went into a GNC at the mall. A man walked past me. I heard "in my spirit" a voice that said: "This is so-and-so. He's the general manager of such-and-such a radio station." The name of there person and his title and his workplace. I walked over to the man and quite irrationally said, "Hi, are you so and so?" He said, "I am." I did not behave irrationally, mind you. I didn't go over and tell him that the holy spirit had told me who he was. So I had some sense. But still, it is kind of irrational to believe some weird bit of information one hears in one's spirit.
Another time, I was working on my novel Wind Follower (to be published in June). I decided on a whim to make the main character an epileptic and needed a name to call the illness. I decided on "the falling sickness." Wrote a scene. Got up from my computer. On a lark I turned on the TV and flipped through the channel. I saw some guys in togas. Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar. As I listened I heard one character say, "well you know Ceasar has the falling sickness."
Another time, I finished writing a scene where a character tells another character he should change his name from Stevie to Steve because Stevie sounds so childish. I went upstairs and although I NEVER turn the radio on at night, turned it on for some strange reasons. A guy was calling in to the DJ. He said, "My girlfriend thinks I should quit calling myself Stevie because it's too childish." Kid you not.
I once had a dream in which two teenaged boys from up the road were beating my young 3 year old with iron pipes. Terrified I woke up. Around mid-day those two boys from up the road visited. They held up a little piece of yarn. "We want to play with Logan. We're playing cowboys and Indians." They let the yarn flow along my hand. "See it doesn't hurt. We won't hurt him." Needless to say although my son wanted to go out and play with them cause he was a lonely kid, I didn't. God had warned me.
I remember one day about nine months after my older son was born. I was sitting in my room watching my son playing with blocks. I heard --in the way one hears these things-- in my spirit the clear words "rest." It was so clear that I looked around. I walked over to my son and he had taken the letters R E S T and placed them in perfect order forming the word rest. He was only nine months. I should have learned to rest. I didn't and not resting after childbirth proved to be very harmful to my health for about 20 years.
I remember once I got some money and I was wondering who to give my tithe to. I said a prayer, "Lord, who should I give this tithe to?"
Immediately the name of a friend across the country was impressed upon me. It was so strange to hear that name in my heart that I suddenly stood still. I thought, "that was weird!" Generally, guidance didn't come so quickly and the name had come so suddenly and so clearly after the prayer...I found myself thinking that the idea had come from my own mind. And yet, it was so weird to suddenly get this girl's name in my head. I decided to tithe the money to her.
Then, I said...I could send her a check...but I had bounced checks recently and I was bounce-wary. All I needed was to pay $50 to my bank for bouncing a check written as a gift to a friend, and then my friend's bank would also charge her for the bounce. So a gift check for $50 would cost $150 by the time everything was said and done. (Okay, I get nervous and like I said I was very nervous about bouncing a check.)
Then I thought I would send the money as cash. But then I got nervous about that. Cash might get lost in the mail. Then I thought about a money order. But I didn't want to go to the bank or the post office to write a money order. Hey, it's cold in winter in NY and I didn't want to deal with it.
I decided on pay-pal. But I had to wait until the check I had received cleared and went into my paypal account.
Anyway, one night about four days after this quandary and decision, I went online to check if my money was in paypal. It wasn't. Later that night, instead of going to bed, I went downstairs again and for some weird reason (thank you, God) turned on the computer and went online to paypal. The money was there!
I transferred the money from my paypal account to my friend's paypal account.
The next morning my friend emailed me. It seems that the night before -- the night i felt the need to as transfer the money to my friend's account -- my friend was driving home from the hospital with her sick husband. She was miles away from home. Maybe 40 miles. And had run out of gas. She had no money left in her checking account and on a whim (thank you, God) decided to check her paypal account. Voila, the money I had sent her was in it. She hadn't even expected it. But that money got her gas and got her home from the hospital.
I love when God does stuff like that. It makes me feel that yes I do hear from God. It makes my friend know that God is aware of her. It makes us both know that God is aware of the future and provides for the future in the present. Isn't our God good? IT just makes me so happy when stuff like this happens. And they happen all the time. Doesn't it just make you roll your eyes when some atheist says that only idiots think that God exists? Hey, if this kind of lovely stuff is what happens to idiots, may I be an idiot forever!
Thank you Jesus.
I cannot tell you the amount of times my life and my family's life have been saved or my children's life by trusting the irrational.
We Christians call that kind of thing "God winks." It the situation is death-defying, we call them "testimonies of God's protection." These events are odd and a Christian's trust in them is utterly irrational. But it gives us a feeling of being loved. And while everyone has some odd thing happen to them once in a while, these things tend to happen incredibly frequently to Bible-believers..
Monday, April 23, 2007
Politics of Autism
The Politics of Autism by Margaret Romao Toigo
Very timely analysis for Autism Awareness Month - please read and vote.
Thanks!
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/04/23/100422.php
http://digg.com/political_opinion/The_Politics_of_Autism
http://politics.netscape.com/story/2007/04/23/the-politics-of-autism/
http://reddit.com/info/1k853/comments
Very timely analysis for Autism Awareness Month - please read and vote.
Thanks!
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/04/23/100422.php
http://digg.com/political_opinion/The_Politics_of_Autism
http://politics.netscape.com/story/2007/04/23/the-politics-of-autism/
http://reddit.com/info/1k853/comments
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Media Racism and black beauty
There are two times in the Bible where God and Jesus became incredibly incredibly angry.
The first is when Miriam, Moses sister was prejudiced against Moses' Ethiopian wife. God was so upset with this bit of prejudice that he figuratively spat in her face. And he made a point of saying he was figuratively spitting in his daughter's face.
The second time was when Jesus threw out the money lenders. He made a cord and shouted at the moneylenders, "God's house should be called a place of prayer for ALL nations, but you have made it a den of theives!" He did this because he saw how the moneylenders were treating the foreign converts and proslytes. God truly does not like racism.
When I was about seventeen, I had a wonderful dream in which an angel was telling me how wonderful my hair was and showing me some wonderful hair styles. I will always remember the lovingkindness of that angel.
Lately, many media celebrities have gotten in trouble because of anti-Semitic or racist rants, jokes, or slurs. Many whites think the days of racism are over and so they think they can joke and make racial jokes. They consider these jokes harmless, but many blacks still remember grandmothers blinded by lynchers and uncles and grandfather’s hanged by racist bigots. It’s still not over for us.
The sad fact is America is still racist and that includes many liberals in the media including disc jockeys, editors, actors, and tv hosts. They just don’t seem to “get” us and this often has to do with the darkness of our skin and the quality of our hair.
Racism often appears as a subtle cruelty toward black women's beauty. This cruelty often seems to focus on dark skin and kinky, nappy hair. Other times the racists imply there is something vaguely immoral about us. They seem to imply that we are out-of-control gluttons who aren’t moral enough to know when to stop eating. In addition to assuming we are morally dirty, they also imply we are physically dirty in some way.
Dark-skinned prejudices
Okay, okay, hip hop lyrics and certain black comedians have contributed to a media atmosphere where people feel free to joke about certain black traits. But we have to focus on the brainwashing about beauty out there. Because of the power of the American media, and because of historical and imperialistic causes, everyone in the world thinks true beauty must come close to some Nordic Ideal. I recently heard that Cosmetic Surgery is on the rise. Up 70%. Among Asians (changing their eyelids) and Hispanics (changing their noses.) Folks, ethnic heritages are not beauty flaws.
Hip-hop videos have contributed to making certain black women sexy (and making others unsexy.) Movies too. We know a white character in a movie is hip and “edgy” if he’s got a gorgeous black girlfriend on his arm. Now it’s neat to have a nice bit of junk in the trunk, but when I was younger, the white kids mocked my ample buttocks calling it my “mumba butt.” In the old days, black lips were considered too big. Now many white actresses are getting lip injections. However, dark-skinned women still haven’t arrived at full beauty equality yet. Even on black-owned television stations and black-produced movies, light-skinnedness reigns. For instance, many black rap artists and actors are often teamed with light-skinned black women or Hispanic love interests.
Black Hair issues
Ah nappiness! White folks still have problems with black folks’ hair. Recently a famous white DJ called some black women athletes “nappy-headed hos.” For those who don’t know, “Nappy” means kinky and tightly-curled hair. Whether this man is prejudice is not for me to decide. Much humor nowadays is cruel and he might simply have been trying to be cool. Saying nasty cruel racist “funny” things about other people is very popular nowadays, and Americans still seem to think afros and natural black hair that has not been straightened is somehow incredibly humorous. Ah, the funny clown in the afro!!! Indeed, I remember one talk show where the elderly white host kept asking to “touch the hair” of her black female guests.
Cleanliness.
Racism towards black women also shows up in the way we are often deemed physically dirty, as if black women do not wash) and morally corrupt (as if we do not know how to be moral like fine-upstanding skinny white women.) I even stopped watching a weekend television show because many of their jokes about black shows seemed downright racist. For instance, although there are a lot of reality shows with skanky white folks having skanky sex , whenever this particular program talked about skanky black folks having sex, they got downright clinical and seemed on the verge of calling the Center for Disease control. They never did this with the white shows, yet on one of their shows, they did a skit about industrial cleaners coming to clean up the black show’s set and to remove disease.
Morality
I recently saw a news show on television in which the reporter stated that obesity was rampant in America, especially among black women. He pretty much hinted that black women were gluttonous and would die sooner than “their white counterparts.” White counterparts? I won’t argue that many black women are overweight. But that doesn’t mean we are morally-corrupt people who have no sense of self-control. Personally, much of my overeating occurs when I feel overwhelmed with powerlessness, isolation, self-loathing, and a feeling that I am being silenced because I live in a world where the powers that be are racist. But there are also genetic issues. The American diet evolved from a European diet and I suspect black genetics are not compatible with much of the diet. In addition, because of evolutionary climactic reasons the African body may have been trained to hold onto fat as a way to protect our ancestors in time of starvation.
Benefit of the Doubt
Black folks are used to giving white racists the benefit of the doubt. We humor people a lot. We are an understanding lot. I remember a time when I visited a white doctor and he called me morbidly obese (I was two hundred pounds and had just had my son.) I was very hurt and I went to my three-hundred pound white friend who had recommended him. Amazingly, he had never called her morbidly-obese.
In another instance, an editor from Kansas deigned to lecture me on how to write a proper essay. She knew I was black. I had to decide if she was as rude and as patronizing to all her writers or only to the black ones.
Recently I read a blog written by a black person in which the statement was made that certain black contestants on American Idol are just plain ugly.
Frankly, that blogger should examine his definition of ugly. I know this generation has been trained to mix lustfulness with admiration but shouldn’t this black blogger be more knowledgeable about how standards of beauty have been created and recreated by society? In some countries, a rounder woman would be deemed quite pretty, thank you! In some countries, a round face does not necessarily connote an ugly face
We black folks are always making excuses for white people. We always tend to divide our racists into ignorant ones and malicious. But what are we to do with the hurt feelings caused by people in power, people we would expect to be somewhat more enlightened? I mean: shouldn’t black men be less prejudiced in the way they depict black women? Shouldn’t liberals be less prejudiced than conservatives? Shouldn’t those in the media such as editors and DJ’s be more aware of the hurtfulness of their comments?
Of course, if I get so upset at the racism I see and experience, if I drown my self-loathing in chocolate ice cream in order to comfort myself because some racist white editor or racist white doctor or racist black producer has upset me, I only contribute to the stereotype by fattening myself up for the kill. Life is complicated. But we have to be strong, and we have to speak up. Hopefully, even the small things we do will change society.
Let us remember:
God has created from one blood all people.
God is not a respecter of persons.
-c
The first is when Miriam, Moses sister was prejudiced against Moses' Ethiopian wife. God was so upset with this bit of prejudice that he figuratively spat in her face. And he made a point of saying he was figuratively spitting in his daughter's face.
The second time was when Jesus threw out the money lenders. He made a cord and shouted at the moneylenders, "God's house should be called a place of prayer for ALL nations, but you have made it a den of theives!" He did this because he saw how the moneylenders were treating the foreign converts and proslytes. God truly does not like racism.
When I was about seventeen, I had a wonderful dream in which an angel was telling me how wonderful my hair was and showing me some wonderful hair styles. I will always remember the lovingkindness of that angel.
Lately, many media celebrities have gotten in trouble because of anti-Semitic or racist rants, jokes, or slurs. Many whites think the days of racism are over and so they think they can joke and make racial jokes. They consider these jokes harmless, but many blacks still remember grandmothers blinded by lynchers and uncles and grandfather’s hanged by racist bigots. It’s still not over for us.
The sad fact is America is still racist and that includes many liberals in the media including disc jockeys, editors, actors, and tv hosts. They just don’t seem to “get” us and this often has to do with the darkness of our skin and the quality of our hair.
Racism often appears as a subtle cruelty toward black women's beauty. This cruelty often seems to focus on dark skin and kinky, nappy hair. Other times the racists imply there is something vaguely immoral about us. They seem to imply that we are out-of-control gluttons who aren’t moral enough to know when to stop eating. In addition to assuming we are morally dirty, they also imply we are physically dirty in some way.
Dark-skinned prejudices
Okay, okay, hip hop lyrics and certain black comedians have contributed to a media atmosphere where people feel free to joke about certain black traits. But we have to focus on the brainwashing about beauty out there. Because of the power of the American media, and because of historical and imperialistic causes, everyone in the world thinks true beauty must come close to some Nordic Ideal. I recently heard that Cosmetic Surgery is on the rise. Up 70%. Among Asians (changing their eyelids) and Hispanics (changing their noses.) Folks, ethnic heritages are not beauty flaws.
Hip-hop videos have contributed to making certain black women sexy (and making others unsexy.) Movies too. We know a white character in a movie is hip and “edgy” if he’s got a gorgeous black girlfriend on his arm. Now it’s neat to have a nice bit of junk in the trunk, but when I was younger, the white kids mocked my ample buttocks calling it my “mumba butt.” In the old days, black lips were considered too big. Now many white actresses are getting lip injections. However, dark-skinned women still haven’t arrived at full beauty equality yet. Even on black-owned television stations and black-produced movies, light-skinnedness reigns. For instance, many black rap artists and actors are often teamed with light-skinned black women or Hispanic love interests.
Black Hair issues
Ah nappiness! White folks still have problems with black folks’ hair. Recently a famous white DJ called some black women athletes “nappy-headed hos.” For those who don’t know, “Nappy” means kinky and tightly-curled hair. Whether this man is prejudice is not for me to decide. Much humor nowadays is cruel and he might simply have been trying to be cool. Saying nasty cruel racist “funny” things about other people is very popular nowadays, and Americans still seem to think afros and natural black hair that has not been straightened is somehow incredibly humorous. Ah, the funny clown in the afro!!! Indeed, I remember one talk show where the elderly white host kept asking to “touch the hair” of her black female guests.
Cleanliness.
Racism towards black women also shows up in the way we are often deemed physically dirty, as if black women do not wash) and morally corrupt (as if we do not know how to be moral like fine-upstanding skinny white women.) I even stopped watching a weekend television show because many of their jokes about black shows seemed downright racist. For instance, although there are a lot of reality shows with skanky white folks having skanky sex , whenever this particular program talked about skanky black folks having sex, they got downright clinical and seemed on the verge of calling the Center for Disease control. They never did this with the white shows, yet on one of their shows, they did a skit about industrial cleaners coming to clean up the black show’s set and to remove disease.
Morality
I recently saw a news show on television in which the reporter stated that obesity was rampant in America, especially among black women. He pretty much hinted that black women were gluttonous and would die sooner than “their white counterparts.” White counterparts? I won’t argue that many black women are overweight. But that doesn’t mean we are morally-corrupt people who have no sense of self-control. Personally, much of my overeating occurs when I feel overwhelmed with powerlessness, isolation, self-loathing, and a feeling that I am being silenced because I live in a world where the powers that be are racist. But there are also genetic issues. The American diet evolved from a European diet and I suspect black genetics are not compatible with much of the diet. In addition, because of evolutionary climactic reasons the African body may have been trained to hold onto fat as a way to protect our ancestors in time of starvation.
Benefit of the Doubt
Black folks are used to giving white racists the benefit of the doubt. We humor people a lot. We are an understanding lot. I remember a time when I visited a white doctor and he called me morbidly obese (I was two hundred pounds and had just had my son.) I was very hurt and I went to my three-hundred pound white friend who had recommended him. Amazingly, he had never called her morbidly-obese.
In another instance, an editor from Kansas deigned to lecture me on how to write a proper essay. She knew I was black. I had to decide if she was as rude and as patronizing to all her writers or only to the black ones.
Recently I read a blog written by a black person in which the statement was made that certain black contestants on American Idol are just plain ugly.
Frankly, that blogger should examine his definition of ugly. I know this generation has been trained to mix lustfulness with admiration but shouldn’t this black blogger be more knowledgeable about how standards of beauty have been created and recreated by society? In some countries, a rounder woman would be deemed quite pretty, thank you! In some countries, a round face does not necessarily connote an ugly face
We black folks are always making excuses for white people. We always tend to divide our racists into ignorant ones and malicious. But what are we to do with the hurt feelings caused by people in power, people we would expect to be somewhat more enlightened? I mean: shouldn’t black men be less prejudiced in the way they depict black women? Shouldn’t liberals be less prejudiced than conservatives? Shouldn’t those in the media such as editors and DJ’s be more aware of the hurtfulness of their comments?
Of course, if I get so upset at the racism I see and experience, if I drown my self-loathing in chocolate ice cream in order to comfort myself because some racist white editor or racist white doctor or racist black producer has upset me, I only contribute to the stereotype by fattening myself up for the kill. Life is complicated. But we have to be strong, and we have to speak up. Hopefully, even the small things we do will change society.
Let us remember:
God has created from one blood all people.
God is not a respecter of persons.
-c
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
hunger gathering holy spirit conference
Join Exodus Media Group, Inc. and ABJ Consulting, LLC (BridgeBuilders) for
THE HUNGER GATHERING
The role of women as intercessors has been diminished by some of the apathy in the church. The part that this next generation will play in ushering in the true presence of God has been hidden from them.
We have gotten so distracted with ambition, societal and personal problems, and daily life issues till we have slowly and steadily veered away from true intimacy with God.
UNTIL NOW!
Join Women of God from across the nation who are hungering for something else, something more filling---THE HOLY SPIRIT. As we gather for a day devoted solely to praise, prayer, and worship, let us taste and see that the Lord is good. Let's go behind veil and seek the face of God in all ays.
The season for your deliverance is here but are you hungry enough to get up and gather your Manna? Are you hungry enough to receive a "I'm never going back" breakthrough?
MAY 19, 2007
11:30AM - 3:00PM
9821 Greenbelt Rd. Suite #207
Lanham, MD 20706 (Washington, D.C. area)
Hosted by Angela Johnson-Ayers and Tracey Michae'l Lewis
Facilitated by Our Father in Heaven
The Hunger Gathering (TM) will be coming to a city near you!
Registration is only $10.00 (to simply cover the expenses of the event) You can register at www.exodusmediagroup.com
For more information please contact Exodus Media Group, Inc. at (800) 683-9184 or via email at info@exodusmediagroup.com
THE HUNGER GATHERING
The role of women as intercessors has been diminished by some of the apathy in the church. The part that this next generation will play in ushering in the true presence of God has been hidden from them.
We have gotten so distracted with ambition, societal and personal problems, and daily life issues till we have slowly and steadily veered away from true intimacy with God.
UNTIL NOW!
Join Women of God from across the nation who are hungering for something else, something more filling---THE HOLY SPIRIT. As we gather for a day devoted solely to praise, prayer, and worship, let us taste and see that the Lord is good. Let's go behind veil and seek the face of God in all ays.
The season for your deliverance is here but are you hungry enough to get up and gather your Manna? Are you hungry enough to receive a "I'm never going back" breakthrough?
MAY 19, 2007
11:30AM - 3:00PM
9821 Greenbelt Rd. Suite #207
Lanham, MD 20706 (Washington, D.C. area)
Hosted by Angela Johnson-Ayers and Tracey Michae'l Lewis
Facilitated by Our Father in Heaven
The Hunger Gathering (TM) will be coming to a city near you!
Registration is only $10.00 (to simply cover the expenses of the event) You can register at www.exodusmediagroup.com
For more information please contact Exodus Media Group, Inc. at (800) 683-9184 or via email at info@exodusmediagroup.com
Friday, April 06, 2007
Could you not wait with me one hour?
Last night I woke up at around one in the morning..
I realized it was Good Friday. I realized that at that very moment – not just 2000 years ago, but in a timeless permanent eternity-- Jesus was being led from place to place in the three separate trials.
I felt so very sorry for him and all I could see was how lonely he felt. I said, “Jesus, I’ll wait with you one hour.”
If you’ve ever had a friend or family member in the hospital and had to wait, that’s what it felt like. I felt myself to be in a house knowing that my Lord had been taken away and was being interrogated and beaten and spat on, and mocked….how could I sleep? It would have meant leaving him to suffer alone and although I knew he would suffer in a way no man had ever suffered before – and I couldn’t really be with him in that kind of passionate suffering—yet I just didn’t want Him to think I was forsaking Him. I wanted Him to know I was thinking of Him, and waiting for Him.
Even so…it was tough because I’m such a day-dreamer. I kept trying to keep my mind on him but my mind would float over to my novel, to some television show, to my own problems.
Then in my imagination I saw Him entering Pilate’s palace. He was so bloodied and beaten up and humiliated and naked. And his head was pierced with all the marks from the crown of thorns. He smelled horrible and Pilate was so perfumed. He was sweaty and bloody and Pilate was so clean. He could hardly stand up and Pilate was Lord of all he surveyed. Then Pilate says, “Don’t you realize I could free you?” Then Pilate said, “Who do you think you are?” Then after Jesus answered him, Pilate said, “Are you a God then?”
And Jesus speaking with this terrible lower-class Galilean accent…and with mumbled words because he had been beaten across the mouth and his teeth had fallen out. And He said, “That’s your word for it. I am. And you will see me come with power!”
I was sooo proud of him. I can’t tell you how proud. Tears just rolled down my eyes as I lay on the bed. I love a strong soul, and yet…to be so beaten up, to be standing in front of so much earthly power and yet to be able to say in the face of all that mocking, “I am God.”
St Paul said, “Jesus Christ witnessed a good confession before Pilate.” Yes Jesus did.
The Bible tells us that “because of the joy that lay before him – the salvation of so many souls and the bringing of many sons to God—Jesus rejoiced at going to the cross.” The Bible tells us, “Let God be true, and every man a liar.”
I hope we all can have the power to stand in front of whatever earthly or demonic powers that seem to be more powerful than we are and to say the foolish, foolish, mocked, and denied truth that God has called us to declare.
I agree with Paul: “I am determined to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection power, the same power that raised Christ from the dead lives in us and perfects our human bodies even while we live.”
I realized it was Good Friday. I realized that at that very moment – not just 2000 years ago, but in a timeless permanent eternity-- Jesus was being led from place to place in the three separate trials.
I felt so very sorry for him and all I could see was how lonely he felt. I said, “Jesus, I’ll wait with you one hour.”
If you’ve ever had a friend or family member in the hospital and had to wait, that’s what it felt like. I felt myself to be in a house knowing that my Lord had been taken away and was being interrogated and beaten and spat on, and mocked….how could I sleep? It would have meant leaving him to suffer alone and although I knew he would suffer in a way no man had ever suffered before – and I couldn’t really be with him in that kind of passionate suffering—yet I just didn’t want Him to think I was forsaking Him. I wanted Him to know I was thinking of Him, and waiting for Him.
Even so…it was tough because I’m such a day-dreamer. I kept trying to keep my mind on him but my mind would float over to my novel, to some television show, to my own problems.
Then in my imagination I saw Him entering Pilate’s palace. He was so bloodied and beaten up and humiliated and naked. And his head was pierced with all the marks from the crown of thorns. He smelled horrible and Pilate was so perfumed. He was sweaty and bloody and Pilate was so clean. He could hardly stand up and Pilate was Lord of all he surveyed. Then Pilate says, “Don’t you realize I could free you?” Then Pilate said, “Who do you think you are?” Then after Jesus answered him, Pilate said, “Are you a God then?”
And Jesus speaking with this terrible lower-class Galilean accent…and with mumbled words because he had been beaten across the mouth and his teeth had fallen out. And He said, “That’s your word for it. I am. And you will see me come with power!”
I was sooo proud of him. I can’t tell you how proud. Tears just rolled down my eyes as I lay on the bed. I love a strong soul, and yet…to be so beaten up, to be standing in front of so much earthly power and yet to be able to say in the face of all that mocking, “I am God.”
St Paul said, “Jesus Christ witnessed a good confession before Pilate.” Yes Jesus did.
The Bible tells us that “because of the joy that lay before him – the salvation of so many souls and the bringing of many sons to God—Jesus rejoiced at going to the cross.” The Bible tells us, “Let God be true, and every man a liar.”
I hope we all can have the power to stand in front of whatever earthly or demonic powers that seem to be more powerful than we are and to say the foolish, foolish, mocked, and denied truth that God has called us to declare.
I agree with Paul: “I am determined to know Jesus and the power of his resurrection power, the same power that raised Christ from the dead lives in us and perfects our human bodies even while we live.”
Monday, April 02, 2007
Transcript of The View's Show on Autism
Click here to download the transcript. http://abc.go.com/daytime/theview/images/TheViewAutismTranscript.pdf
(Right-click on the link, choose "Save Target As" or "Save Link As" and Save to your Desktop to open the pdf file)
Autism Organizations and Foundations
Autism Speaks is dedicated to increasing awareness of the growing autism epidemic and to raising money to fund scientists who are searching for a cure. It was founded in February 2005 by Suzanne and Bob Wright. Bob Wright is Vice Chairman and Executive Officer, General Electric, and Chairman and CEO, NBC Universal. Autism Speaks and Cure Autism Now (CAN) recently announced plans to combine operations, bringing together the two leading organizations dedicated to accelerating and funding biomedical research into the causes, prevention, treatments and cure for autism spectrum disorders; to increasing awareness of the nation's fastest growing developmental disorder; and to advocating for the needs of affected families. To learn more about Autism Speaks, please visit www.autismspeaks.org
The Autism Society of America was founded in 1965 by Bernard Rimland, Ph.D. His book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, was written in late 1964 and was one of the first of its kind. In 1968, Ruth Sullivan, Ph.D. became the organization's first elected president. Over the last 40 years, the Society has grown from a handful of parents, into the leading source of information, research, and reference on autism. ASA is the oldest and largest grassroots organization within the autism community. Today, more than 120,000 members and supporters are connected through a working network of nearly 200 chapters nationwide. ASA membership continues to grow as more and more parents and professionals unite to form a collective voice representing the autism community.
ASA is dedicated to increasing public awareness about autism and the day-to-day issues faced by individuals with autism, their families and the professionals with whom they interact. The Society and its chapters share a common mission of providing information and education, and supporting research and advocating for programs and services for the autism community. For more information please visit: www.autism-society.org
Erin Is Hope Foundation, Inc. provides multi-disciplinary, INTENSIVE, SPECIALIZED medical therapies and educational services for children diagnosed with severe communicative disabilities including autism, apraxia and MORE. Our mission is not just to provide maximum outcomes for each child through multi-sensory, systematic and incremental teaching, but to provide these exceptional private special services at prices affordable to the average family budget. Amazingly, families travel across America to our clinic not because of price, but because of "Erin's" legendary success in teaching functional verbal grammatic speech and language to nonverbal children. Learn more at our website: www.erinishope.com
"Autism Every Day" is powerful new documentary produced by the organization Autism Speaks that recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by filmmaker Lauren Thierry, the film is a a truthful, unvarnished portrayal of the 24-hour-a-day challenges faced by families as they confront the heartbreak of autism with uncompromising hope and unconditional love."
Click to watch video clips.
AUTISM GUESTS
Dr. ANSHU BATRA
Ourspecialkidz.com
KAREN SIFF EXHORN
Author, "The Autism Sourcebook"
TEMPLE GRANDIN, Ph.D.
College Professor who has authored six books and has Autism:
- Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships
- Thinking In Pictures: And Other Reports From My Life With Autism
- Emergence: Labeled Autistic
- Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism
- Animals In Translation: Using The Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior
- Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism
ELLEN SABIN
Author "The Autism Acceptance Book"
Work Education and Resource Centers for people with Autism
www.edenservices.org
Online communtity for people who suffer from Asberger's and Autism
www.wrongplanet.net
(Right-click on the link, choose "Save Target As" or "Save Link As" and Save to your Desktop to open the pdf file)
Autism Organizations and Foundations
Autism Speaks is dedicated to increasing awareness of the growing autism epidemic and to raising money to fund scientists who are searching for a cure. It was founded in February 2005 by Suzanne and Bob Wright. Bob Wright is Vice Chairman and Executive Officer, General Electric, and Chairman and CEO, NBC Universal. Autism Speaks and Cure Autism Now (CAN) recently announced plans to combine operations, bringing together the two leading organizations dedicated to accelerating and funding biomedical research into the causes, prevention, treatments and cure for autism spectrum disorders; to increasing awareness of the nation's fastest growing developmental disorder; and to advocating for the needs of affected families. To learn more about Autism Speaks, please visit www.autismspeaks.org
The Autism Society of America was founded in 1965 by Bernard Rimland, Ph.D. His book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, was written in late 1964 and was one of the first of its kind. In 1968, Ruth Sullivan, Ph.D. became the organization's first elected president. Over the last 40 years, the Society has grown from a handful of parents, into the leading source of information, research, and reference on autism. ASA is the oldest and largest grassroots organization within the autism community. Today, more than 120,000 members and supporters are connected through a working network of nearly 200 chapters nationwide. ASA membership continues to grow as more and more parents and professionals unite to form a collective voice representing the autism community.
ASA is dedicated to increasing public awareness about autism and the day-to-day issues faced by individuals with autism, their families and the professionals with whom they interact. The Society and its chapters share a common mission of providing information and education, and supporting research and advocating for programs and services for the autism community. For more information please visit: www.autism-society.org
Erin Is Hope Foundation, Inc. provides multi-disciplinary, INTENSIVE, SPECIALIZED medical therapies and educational services for children diagnosed with severe communicative disabilities including autism, apraxia and MORE. Our mission is not just to provide maximum outcomes for each child through multi-sensory, systematic and incremental teaching, but to provide these exceptional private special services at prices affordable to the average family budget. Amazingly, families travel across America to our clinic not because of price, but because of "Erin's" legendary success in teaching functional verbal grammatic speech and language to nonverbal children. Learn more at our website: www.erinishope.com
"Autism Every Day" is powerful new documentary produced by the organization Autism Speaks that recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by filmmaker Lauren Thierry, the film is a a truthful, unvarnished portrayal of the 24-hour-a-day challenges faced by families as they confront the heartbreak of autism with uncompromising hope and unconditional love."
Click to watch video clips.
AUTISM GUESTS
Dr. ANSHU BATRA
Ourspecialkidz.com
KAREN SIFF EXHORN
Author, "The Autism Sourcebook"
TEMPLE GRANDIN, Ph.D.
College Professor who has authored six books and has Autism:
- Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships
- Thinking In Pictures: And Other Reports From My Life With Autism
- Emergence: Labeled Autistic
- Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism
- Animals In Translation: Using The Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior
- Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism
ELLEN SABIN
Author "The Autism Acceptance Book"
Work Education and Resource Centers for people with Autism
www.edenservices.org
Online communtity for people who suffer from Asberger's and Autism
www.wrongplanet.net
Commanding versus praying
Hi there:
I really feel I have to share this. It really is dawning on me more and more how different Christendom is from what Jesus said. After all, Jesus said "Hypocrites love to pray to be seen" and so many times in churches I get the feeling the prayer is not praying to God but just showing how rhetorical he is. Jesus also said "People think they are heard by God because of their long prayers" And he also said "People shouldn't get into using vain repetitions" and yet sometimes we think saying a long prayer is better than a shorter heart-felt one. And, while it's good to pray certain wonderful prayers, we mustn't get caught up with praying the same thing over and over like a chant. Where's the relationship with God (or anyone, for that matter) if you keep saying the same thing over and over to him?
Anyways, Jesus said we must say boldly to the mountain, "Be lifted up by the roots and be cast into the sea" and it shall be done. Now, most of the time people "ask" God because Jesus also told us to ask and it shall be given. But we rarely command, which Jesus also said, "Speak to the mountain." Jesus said "pray for the sick" but he also said, "Lay on the sick and heal the sick by commanding the body to be healed." But we don't go around laying hands on the sick and simply commanding their body to be healed. JEsus said, "when you pray believe that you have received"..and yet we often pray as if God hasn't given it to us at all. Just because we don't see it doesn't mean we haven't gotten anything.
Well last night I was in horrendous pain. I got mad at the devil. Again. I screamed, "Jesus is Lord!" and you better accept it. I told the autism off! And I gave fibromyalgia a good talking to. Before I had been praying for that. Praying is interesting because even in praying there's a stressing part of me which says, "Is this rational, talking to a God? What if he isn't there?" I get that way sometimes.
But last night, going further and doing what Jesus said and ordering the illness to leave. Well, dare I say? After giving it this talking to...the pain subsided amazingly. !!!???!!! I was like: uh? Umhhhh, well this is proof that this is real.
Hubby and I were talking about what was tried and tested. Biblical Precepts we knew to be true so far because of external results we've seen. Sure, we should know these precepts are true simply because we believe in God but hey, we're not perfect yet.
We know that God protects us because he miraculously protected Logan. He also miraculously protected me, and GAbe.
We know he provides miraculously.
We know he guides.
We know that speaking negative things bring those negatives to us.
Now we know that shouting down a sickness and telling it off really works.
I want to trust all this by simply trusting God's word, and I feel I'm getting closer to this obedient trust in everything God says, even though my human understanding thinks it's all a bit flaky and irrational.
Anyway, I don't see --with my physical eyes-- the healing for Gabe and me yet. But I am thanking God because I know that JEsus healed me 2000 years ago on the cross. "By Jesus stripes we WERE healed." And I know that Paul said "everything we pray for is already answered as yes and amen through Jesus Christ." This life of faith is certainly interesting. It's not something I would have jumped into if life hadn't been so "interesting" but since I'm in this, I'll do what the Bible says.
-C
I really feel I have to share this. It really is dawning on me more and more how different Christendom is from what Jesus said. After all, Jesus said "Hypocrites love to pray to be seen" and so many times in churches I get the feeling the prayer is not praying to God but just showing how rhetorical he is. Jesus also said "People think they are heard by God because of their long prayers" And he also said "People shouldn't get into using vain repetitions" and yet sometimes we think saying a long prayer is better than a shorter heart-felt one. And, while it's good to pray certain wonderful prayers, we mustn't get caught up with praying the same thing over and over like a chant. Where's the relationship with God (or anyone, for that matter) if you keep saying the same thing over and over to him?
Anyways, Jesus said we must say boldly to the mountain, "Be lifted up by the roots and be cast into the sea" and it shall be done. Now, most of the time people "ask" God because Jesus also told us to ask and it shall be given. But we rarely command, which Jesus also said, "Speak to the mountain." Jesus said "pray for the sick" but he also said, "Lay on the sick and heal the sick by commanding the body to be healed." But we don't go around laying hands on the sick and simply commanding their body to be healed. JEsus said, "when you pray believe that you have received"..and yet we often pray as if God hasn't given it to us at all. Just because we don't see it doesn't mean we haven't gotten anything.
Well last night I was in horrendous pain. I got mad at the devil. Again. I screamed, "Jesus is Lord!" and you better accept it. I told the autism off! And I gave fibromyalgia a good talking to. Before I had been praying for that. Praying is interesting because even in praying there's a stressing part of me which says, "Is this rational, talking to a God? What if he isn't there?" I get that way sometimes.
But last night, going further and doing what Jesus said and ordering the illness to leave. Well, dare I say? After giving it this talking to...the pain subsided amazingly. !!!???!!! I was like: uh? Umhhhh, well this is proof that this is real.
Hubby and I were talking about what was tried and tested. Biblical Precepts we knew to be true so far because of external results we've seen. Sure, we should know these precepts are true simply because we believe in God but hey, we're not perfect yet.
We know that God protects us because he miraculously protected Logan. He also miraculously protected me, and GAbe.
We know he provides miraculously.
We know he guides.
We know that speaking negative things bring those negatives to us.
Now we know that shouting down a sickness and telling it off really works.
I want to trust all this by simply trusting God's word, and I feel I'm getting closer to this obedient trust in everything God says, even though my human understanding thinks it's all a bit flaky and irrational.
Anyway, I don't see --with my physical eyes-- the healing for Gabe and me yet. But I am thanking God because I know that JEsus healed me 2000 years ago on the cross. "By Jesus stripes we WERE healed." And I know that Paul said "everything we pray for is already answered as yes and amen through Jesus Christ." This life of faith is certainly interesting. It's not something I would have jumped into if life hadn't been so "interesting" but since I'm in this, I'll do what the Bible says.
-C
FaithWriters First Writer's Conference
August 10th through 12th, 2007
A Mid Summer's Daydream Come True
More than a year of speculation can now be put to rest. With more than 20,000 FaithWriters.com© members it has become clear that the time is right to announce plans for the first in what promises to be an annual conference event.
Much discussion has taken place on the FaithWriters.com© forum boards about a writer's conference over the course of more than a year. The original idea has gained enough momentum that an oft spoken dream is now a reality.
Those who choose to attend will be challenged, encouraged and informed through several planned events.
Imagine the thrill of meeting your FaithWriting friends face-to-face while enhancing your writing skills in the faith friendly surroundings of this first-of-its-kind event.
The Conference is at the Holiday Inn
17123 N Laurel Park Dr
Livonia, Michigan 48152
734-464-1300
This is the Detroit Metro Area
CONFERENCE COST:
GENERAL (March 1 - June 30): $75.00
LATE: (July 1 - August 10): $80.00
http://www.faithwriters.com/conference.php
FEATURED SPEAKER:
SALLY STUART
Sally E. Stuart is the author of thirty-one books and has sold over one thousand articles and columns. Her marketing columns for The Christian Communicator, Oregon Christian WRITERS, and The Advanced Christian Writer, make her a sought-after speaker and a leading authority on Christian markets and the business of writing.
A Mid Summer's Daydream Come True
More than a year of speculation can now be put to rest. With more than 20,000 FaithWriters.com© members it has become clear that the time is right to announce plans for the first in what promises to be an annual conference event.
Much discussion has taken place on the FaithWriters.com© forum boards about a writer's conference over the course of more than a year. The original idea has gained enough momentum that an oft spoken dream is now a reality.
Those who choose to attend will be challenged, encouraged and informed through several planned events.
Imagine the thrill of meeting your FaithWriting friends face-to-face while enhancing your writing skills in the faith friendly surroundings of this first-of-its-kind event.
The Conference is at the Holiday Inn
17123 N Laurel Park Dr
Livonia, Michigan 48152
734-464-1300
This is the Detroit Metro Area
CONFERENCE COST:
GENERAL (March 1 - June 30): $75.00
LATE: (July 1 - August 10): $80.00
http://www.faithwriters.com/conference.php
FEATURED SPEAKER:
SALLY STUART
Sally E. Stuart is the author of thirty-one books and has sold over one thousand articles and columns. Her marketing columns for The Christian Communicator, Oregon Christian WRITERS, and The Advanced Christian Writer, make her a sought-after speaker and a leading authority on Christian markets and the business of writing.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Subject: Compounding in Crisis
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:56:05 +0000
If this bill goes through, MB12, LDN, Transdermal Chelation, Glutathione,
Compounded Supplements, many anti-fungals, Secretin, etc. will become
illegal or extremely hard to get. Now it the time to call your representatives
and stop this bill.
http://www.iacprx.org/site/PageServer?pagename=P2C2001secKennedyLeg
I urge you to enter the link below and add your message; it will automatically go to YOUR Representatives. Limiting access to Compounded Pharmaceuticals will profoundly affect the successful treatments I need for my child and myself. The autistic children following the bio-medical treatment protocols also need this Bill stopped! Please help! It will take you maybe 45 seconds to complete this letter and it will automatically be sent to your representatives in Congress.
If this bill goes through, MB12, LDN, Transdermal Chelation, Glutathione,
Compounded Supplements, many anti-fungals, Secretin, etc. will become
illegal or extremely hard to get. Now it the time to call your representatives
and stop this bill.
http://www.iacprx.org/site/PageServer?pagename=P2C2001secKennedyLeg
I urge you to enter the link below and add your message; it will automatically go to YOUR Representatives. Limiting access to Compounded Pharmaceuticals will profoundly affect the successful treatments I need for my child and myself. The autistic children following the bio-medical treatment protocols also need this Bill stopped! Please help! It will take you maybe 45 seconds to complete this letter and it will automatically be sent to your representatives in Congress.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Judging ourselves
St Paul tells us that if we would judge ourselves we would not be judged. How true! The human ego is amazingly selfish and resilient.
The funny thing is that Christians should be as free from their egos as they are from sin and the devil but they are often as bad as the rest of the world. They (we) often disguise our stubborn refusal to be open-minded as "standing up for what's right" or some other excuse.
I'm going on about this because I'm an avid lover of American Idol and any reality show in which expertise (such as talent judges and judges of the law) encounter someone who is a novice or someone who simply doesn't know the rules.
The attitude of some folks never cease to amaze me. As I watch the way folks take criticism -- some of it often brutal-- and see the way their hackles come up when a judge tries to help, I think of a few critique groups I've been in.
I like critique groups. Don't get me wrong. I belong to a few and I have a yahoo group that shares writing information and also does crits: multicultigenrewriters.
1. What I've seen are
1) people who lurk and never crit or put stories up for crits.
2) people who generally lurk but who pop up only when they want something critted.
3) people who belong to other crit groups where everything they write is considered perfect
4) people who argue about the writing world's "stupid rules"
5) people who gossip about you behind your back with other groups (and post your crits to those group) when you challenge them.
6) people who aren't willing to learn because they don't realize they're beginners
7) people who think you're being unkind when you're honestly trying to help perfect their work.
8) people who are mimicking other great works (LOTR knock-offs) and don't have an original bone in their bodies but who think they are "following the rules of the genre"
9) people who are writing thinly-disguised memoirs and who are so personally involved in their stories that when you tell them a character is just too unrealistically evil (or good) you end up with a major meltdown.
10) good kind talented people
11) people who get spiteful when you crit them by giving you a very dismissive critique...just to show how good they really are...and how bad you are.
12) people who are better writers than I am.
The mix is tough and unpredictable -- writers are people-- and at a point in most people's life they simply don't want to grow or want to be told what to do. But there are some good folks out there...and truly I wouldn't have been published if it weren't for the good crittters.
Now, forgetting the way other people react for a minute -- because I can't help how other people behave-- I'lll only talk about the way yours truly -- MOI-- behaves whenever I get a critique on a work-in-progress.
I get into an inward struggle.
If the critique comes from an authority figure whom I respect I'll accept it pretty well. Hey, I have my good points...and listening to authority is one of them. Why remake the wheel? If we all tried to live an experiential life and only believed what we ourselves understood or had experienced we'd all start out as cavemen and forget the works of our forebears. So I'm cool with this kind of critique.
If, however, the critique comes from someone who is not particularly swift, I'll simply say thank you and ignore the critique...telling myself the person is not as published as I am so why the heck should I listen to her?
But even the most uneducated critter often has good points and there is where the inner battle begins. OOOOOOh, my friends! How difficult it is to say "thank you" to someone one does not respect.
And if the critique comes from someone who has a chip against me...wow, it really gets bad then. Because whether the critter is right or wrong, the very idea of giving in to him/her is like eating crow. And crow tastes like crap. I've eaten it before.
Ah well, we have to learn. The Bible warns us against not being able to take criticism. A noble heart is a teachable heart that thanks even its worst teachers. YEah, I just made that up.
The funny thing is that Christians should be as free from their egos as they are from sin and the devil but they are often as bad as the rest of the world. They (we) often disguise our stubborn refusal to be open-minded as "standing up for what's right" or some other excuse.
I'm going on about this because I'm an avid lover of American Idol and any reality show in which expertise (such as talent judges and judges of the law) encounter someone who is a novice or someone who simply doesn't know the rules.
The attitude of some folks never cease to amaze me. As I watch the way folks take criticism -- some of it often brutal-- and see the way their hackles come up when a judge tries to help, I think of a few critique groups I've been in.
I like critique groups. Don't get me wrong. I belong to a few and I have a yahoo group that shares writing information and also does crits: multicultigenrewriters.
1. What I've seen are
1) people who lurk and never crit or put stories up for crits.
2) people who generally lurk but who pop up only when they want something critted.
3) people who belong to other crit groups where everything they write is considered perfect
4) people who argue about the writing world's "stupid rules"
5) people who gossip about you behind your back with other groups (and post your crits to those group) when you challenge them.
6) people who aren't willing to learn because they don't realize they're beginners
7) people who think you're being unkind when you're honestly trying to help perfect their work.
8) people who are mimicking other great works (LOTR knock-offs) and don't have an original bone in their bodies but who think they are "following the rules of the genre"
9) people who are writing thinly-disguised memoirs and who are so personally involved in their stories that when you tell them a character is just too unrealistically evil (or good) you end up with a major meltdown.
10) good kind talented people
11) people who get spiteful when you crit them by giving you a very dismissive critique...just to show how good they really are...and how bad you are.
12) people who are better writers than I am.
The mix is tough and unpredictable -- writers are people-- and at a point in most people's life they simply don't want to grow or want to be told what to do. But there are some good folks out there...and truly I wouldn't have been published if it weren't for the good crittters.
Now, forgetting the way other people react for a minute -- because I can't help how other people behave-- I'lll only talk about the way yours truly -- MOI-- behaves whenever I get a critique on a work-in-progress.
I get into an inward struggle.
If the critique comes from an authority figure whom I respect I'll accept it pretty well. Hey, I have my good points...and listening to authority is one of them. Why remake the wheel? If we all tried to live an experiential life and only believed what we ourselves understood or had experienced we'd all start out as cavemen and forget the works of our forebears. So I'm cool with this kind of critique.
If, however, the critique comes from someone who is not particularly swift, I'll simply say thank you and ignore the critique...telling myself the person is not as published as I am so why the heck should I listen to her?
But even the most uneducated critter often has good points and there is where the inner battle begins. OOOOOOh, my friends! How difficult it is to say "thank you" to someone one does not respect.
And if the critique comes from someone who has a chip against me...wow, it really gets bad then. Because whether the critter is right or wrong, the very idea of giving in to him/her is like eating crow. And crow tastes like crap. I've eaten it before.
Ah well, we have to learn. The Bible warns us against not being able to take criticism. A noble heart is a teachable heart that thanks even its worst teachers. YEah, I just made that up.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Decisions, decisions
Well I’ve got to get some wisdom. Have been praying for guidance. I live in a 75 year-old house which needs a LOTTA work. It’s embarrassing to live in, cramped, and I just don’t like living in it. But I like the block and I like my neighbors. And it IS a house, after all. And we must learn to be grateful. But the house has taken a toll on my health, my son’s health, and my life because of mold issues, darkness issues, repair issues and a whole LOTTA issues.
If I had the money to do all the repairs on this house, I’d be doing something that would be good but also useless. The house would be repaired but it would still be cramped, might still be moldy, and all those repairs would not be recouped.
Truly, if I had the money to repair the house, I would probably knock down the house and build a new one on the spot.
In our town there is a non-profit fund that repairs your house for nothing. Did you hear me: nothing! But there is one catch: after they repair your house you must live in it for five years. If you move before the five years are up, you must pay them back.
But there’s also another catch: the emotional spiritual vampire catch. I simply do not like charity and I don’t like people involved in charities. They are like leeches who use your distress to feed their egos and they go about saying things like, “we helped her...her house was such a mess but...” At a Christmas party I met the woman who is in charge of doing this. Alas, she was everything I feared! A white liberal young type who talked a lot about the poor people she helped. I just can’t do it. I feel it would kill my soul to be helped by this woman. And it’s not even a black and white thing. There are black charity leeching types out there also whose souls are fed by humiliating people they help and who get some sick boost from being able to say to one person (or an entire community) that they are ever so helpful. Hey, as the prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
Anyway...so now here I am. In this fix...because the house has to be fixed. I’m hoping my book will sell a lot...but is there a chance to get a financial miracle THIS year? With God all things are possible. I just need prayers for guidance and financial reaping for the many seeds I’ve sowed. Trusting God.
If I had the money to do all the repairs on this house, I’d be doing something that would be good but also useless. The house would be repaired but it would still be cramped, might still be moldy, and all those repairs would not be recouped.
Truly, if I had the money to repair the house, I would probably knock down the house and build a new one on the spot.
In our town there is a non-profit fund that repairs your house for nothing. Did you hear me: nothing! But there is one catch: after they repair your house you must live in it for five years. If you move before the five years are up, you must pay them back.
But there’s also another catch: the emotional spiritual vampire catch. I simply do not like charity and I don’t like people involved in charities. They are like leeches who use your distress to feed their egos and they go about saying things like, “we helped her...her house was such a mess but...” At a Christmas party I met the woman who is in charge of doing this. Alas, she was everything I feared! A white liberal young type who talked a lot about the poor people she helped. I just can’t do it. I feel it would kill my soul to be helped by this woman. And it’s not even a black and white thing. There are black charity leeching types out there also whose souls are fed by humiliating people they help and who get some sick boost from being able to say to one person (or an entire community) that they are ever so helpful. Hey, as the prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
Anyway...so now here I am. In this fix...because the house has to be fixed. I’m hoping my book will sell a lot...but is there a chance to get a financial miracle THIS year? With God all things are possible. I just need prayers for guidance and financial reaping for the many seeds I’ve sowed. Trusting God.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Relief Writer's Network
Christian Relief Network
I've created a writing group on Christian Relief Network. It's for black and minority Christian writers. If you wish to join, do drop by. There are other groups out there...and you can also create your own group. -C
Dark Parables -- Ethnic Christian Writers
http://www.reliefjournal.com/rwn/node/78
or go here
Relief Writer's Network
http://www.reliefjournal.com/rwn/
to make your own group....or join one of the other groups there.
-C
I've created a writing group on Christian Relief Network. It's for black and minority Christian writers. If you wish to join, do drop by. There are other groups out there...and you can also create your own group. -C
Dark Parables -- Ethnic Christian Writers
http://www.reliefjournal.com/rwn/node/78
or go here
Relief Writer's Network
http://www.reliefjournal.com/rwn/
to make your own group....or join one of the other groups there.
-C
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Your Word is Truth
Spin
The Bible tells us that the world lies in darkness and cannot receive the spirit of truth. Sooo true. How many times has my head simply reeled when I hear someone doing a job of Scripture twisting! Especially when they're indoctrinated!How many times have I seen court trials or reality shows or even those times when I see something in person (Am not always in front of the tube) only to hear someone give a version of what supposedly happen. Like looking at Anna Nicole's trial and then hearing on the news how it went. I'm like: "Wait, were we watching the same program?" This is not just a matter of taste or of people not "getting" some particular issue or point? Sometimes it is -- no one is perfect and I and other folks can miss stuff-- but often it's just human issues coming in to cloud stuff up.But other kinds of deceptions pop up.
A very cynical friend of mine said, "if it's advertised on TV, it's not true, and it's on tv in order to make money." She included in that list of untruth: mammograms, commercials, etc. Hey it's good to be suspicious of mammograms, headache relievers, sleep aids, ritalin, etc. I mean, "Aren't there other cures out there? Aren't there other procedures?" God has made man upright, The Preacher says, but man has sought out many inventions. Perhaps the thermogram is better than mammos, perhaps not living a stressed life and drinking more water is better than all those over-the-counter or prescribed medicines.
Anyways, lately..there was this big advertising push to tell every woman about human papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer. I, of course, grew suspicious. Partly because mention was not made that HPV was also an STD. Next thing I hear: the makers of the drug were lobbying Congress to make vaccinating young girls with the anti-HPV vaccine mandatory! Ah life! But of course, that's why they were telling us all that lovely news about the virus and scaring us silly. Not because they want to save our lives so much...but because they wanted our money.
When we see a documentary talking about a specific disease we Christians must remind ourselves that the drug company is probably behind the documentary. The drug companies live on our fear. Ciba-Geigy, for instance, are the only company that makes Ritalin. They did a great job of getting parents, teachers and doctors to know about ADD-ADHD. Especially teachers. Why? Because they had to make you know about this "illness" -- an illness that only seems to affect school issues mind you-- that could only be cured by ONLY their medicine. So the search to cure ADD is now over with because well, the one medicine exists to cure it. There's a new film out there about Chronic Illness...and yes, you guessed it...it was made by the folks at Centocor, the folks who make the medicine.
Remember, too, that most drugs are researched by sick people who have seen advertisements for a particular drug...then they ask their doctors to prescribe it for them.
Whore
Another aspect of truth is how the definition of words change. There was a time when the word whore meant someone who had sex for money. But now it also means a girl who sleeps around. And yet, from the way it's used, the definition of sleeps around also comes into the mix. And it often means a girl who sleeps around more than the one who is calling her a whore.
Humans and their need to be self-righteous! Humans and their need to be good in their own eyes! So if a girl has two boyfriends a year and -- ten boyfriends in twenty-years...not to mention a few sexual dates and those friends with benefits, she feels quite right in saying that she is not a whore but that someone else who had three boyfriends in the space of three months is a whore. I swear...it would be funny if it weren't so scary and creepy.
It reminds me of the Book of Hosea where God tells the prophet Hosea to marry two women. One of the women represents Israel and the other represents Judah. Both women, however, are pretty whorish and Hosea thinks their infighting about who is a better wife is laughable.
Another word is "born-again." Jesus said anyone who believes in him must be born-again of the spirit. So why do certain Christians not like the phrase? Because to them it means a person who reads and believes the Bible.
Folks, in an age of media stuff we must learn not to be deceived. We must learn to discern. C S Lewis said it better in his fiction spec-fic books: Those who are the most educated are likely to be the ones most deceived.
Step Up Bring It
Wow, Lately I've really been understanding the meaning of the phrase: "step up" and "bring it."First, on I LOVE NEW YORK! I LOOOOOVED Rico. But he was so laid back. If you want to win the prize, you've got to step up. Then there was AMERICAN IDOL. What's with some of those folks? Are they aiming for the prize or just trying to kinda get in."Bring" all you have. You can't be laid back. You have to go all out.
Now, as a Christians, sometimes we have to not strive...we have to rest in the finished work of God. But at the same time, we have to push violently into the kingdom because the kingdom is not for the faint.If you want the healing given to us through the blood of Jesus to manifest in your life, if you want the gift of the holy spirit, if you want to receive a great reward in heaven, you've got to step up. Too many of us are satisfied with skin of our teeth salvation and with status-quo Christianity.
Don't you want to heal the sick? Raise the Dead? Then folks...READ YOUR BIBLE. BELIEVE IT. REST IN GOD'S FINISHED WORK. That's what you're called to do. The big work, Jesus said, is to only believe in HIS WORDS. That is how we rest. That is how we strive.
In all these areas: the problem of deception and the problem of being a lax powerless Christian, there is one answer: THE WORD OF GOD. Read it. Every day. Meditate on it. Believe it. Trust it. Use its definitions!
The Bible tells us that the world lies in darkness and cannot receive the spirit of truth. Sooo true. How many times has my head simply reeled when I hear someone doing a job of Scripture twisting! Especially when they're indoctrinated!How many times have I seen court trials or reality shows or even those times when I see something in person (Am not always in front of the tube) only to hear someone give a version of what supposedly happen. Like looking at Anna Nicole's trial and then hearing on the news how it went. I'm like: "Wait, were we watching the same program?" This is not just a matter of taste or of people not "getting" some particular issue or point? Sometimes it is -- no one is perfect and I and other folks can miss stuff-- but often it's just human issues coming in to cloud stuff up.But other kinds of deceptions pop up.
A very cynical friend of mine said, "if it's advertised on TV, it's not true, and it's on tv in order to make money." She included in that list of untruth: mammograms, commercials, etc. Hey it's good to be suspicious of mammograms, headache relievers, sleep aids, ritalin, etc. I mean, "Aren't there other cures out there? Aren't there other procedures?" God has made man upright, The Preacher says, but man has sought out many inventions. Perhaps the thermogram is better than mammos, perhaps not living a stressed life and drinking more water is better than all those over-the-counter or prescribed medicines.
Anyways, lately..there was this big advertising push to tell every woman about human papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer. I, of course, grew suspicious. Partly because mention was not made that HPV was also an STD. Next thing I hear: the makers of the drug were lobbying Congress to make vaccinating young girls with the anti-HPV vaccine mandatory! Ah life! But of course, that's why they were telling us all that lovely news about the virus and scaring us silly. Not because they want to save our lives so much...but because they wanted our money.
When we see a documentary talking about a specific disease we Christians must remind ourselves that the drug company is probably behind the documentary. The drug companies live on our fear. Ciba-Geigy, for instance, are the only company that makes Ritalin. They did a great job of getting parents, teachers and doctors to know about ADD-ADHD. Especially teachers. Why? Because they had to make you know about this "illness" -- an illness that only seems to affect school issues mind you-- that could only be cured by ONLY their medicine. So the search to cure ADD is now over with because well, the one medicine exists to cure it. There's a new film out there about Chronic Illness...and yes, you guessed it...it was made by the folks at Centocor, the folks who make the medicine.
Remember, too, that most drugs are researched by sick people who have seen advertisements for a particular drug...then they ask their doctors to prescribe it for them.
Whore
Another aspect of truth is how the definition of words change. There was a time when the word whore meant someone who had sex for money. But now it also means a girl who sleeps around. And yet, from the way it's used, the definition of sleeps around also comes into the mix. And it often means a girl who sleeps around more than the one who is calling her a whore.
Humans and their need to be self-righteous! Humans and their need to be good in their own eyes! So if a girl has two boyfriends a year and -- ten boyfriends in twenty-years...not to mention a few sexual dates and those friends with benefits, she feels quite right in saying that she is not a whore but that someone else who had three boyfriends in the space of three months is a whore. I swear...it would be funny if it weren't so scary and creepy.
It reminds me of the Book of Hosea where God tells the prophet Hosea to marry two women. One of the women represents Israel and the other represents Judah. Both women, however, are pretty whorish and Hosea thinks their infighting about who is a better wife is laughable.
Another word is "born-again." Jesus said anyone who believes in him must be born-again of the spirit. So why do certain Christians not like the phrase? Because to them it means a person who reads and believes the Bible.
Folks, in an age of media stuff we must learn not to be deceived. We must learn to discern. C S Lewis said it better in his fiction spec-fic books: Those who are the most educated are likely to be the ones most deceived.
Step Up Bring It
Wow, Lately I've really been understanding the meaning of the phrase: "step up" and "bring it."First, on I LOVE NEW YORK! I LOOOOOVED Rico. But he was so laid back. If you want to win the prize, you've got to step up. Then there was AMERICAN IDOL. What's with some of those folks? Are they aiming for the prize or just trying to kinda get in."Bring" all you have. You can't be laid back. You have to go all out.
Now, as a Christians, sometimes we have to not strive...we have to rest in the finished work of God. But at the same time, we have to push violently into the kingdom because the kingdom is not for the faint.If you want the healing given to us through the blood of Jesus to manifest in your life, if you want the gift of the holy spirit, if you want to receive a great reward in heaven, you've got to step up. Too many of us are satisfied with skin of our teeth salvation and with status-quo Christianity.
Don't you want to heal the sick? Raise the Dead? Then folks...READ YOUR BIBLE. BELIEVE IT. REST IN GOD'S FINISHED WORK. That's what you're called to do. The big work, Jesus said, is to only believe in HIS WORDS. That is how we rest. That is how we strive.
In all these areas: the problem of deception and the problem of being a lax powerless Christian, there is one answer: THE WORD OF GOD. Read it. Every day. Meditate on it. Believe it. Trust it. Use its definitions!
Sunday, February 18, 2007
But do we really want it?
I'm getting so upset about all this Anna Nicole thing. It's tough seeing someone going self-destructive in the public realm. But we often see this, don't we? Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole, others. We wonder about them.
Right now, though, I just keep getting annoyed at the way judgmental Christians are weighing Anna's worth as a celebrity. Christians, people, are not supposed to be judgemental!!!! None of us are good or perfect.
The thing that has been running through my head, though, is the cruelty of litigation. Folks, if you're in a lawsuit, get out! If you are tempted to be in a lawsuit, think twice! Litigation takes you from your path! It is a demonic distraction. And the human body is not made to be stressed day-in day-out year-in year-out by this kind of thing. I take Anna as an example of what celebrity does. I take her as an example of what fame does to people. I take her as an example of what long-standing mean-spirited litigation does to a human soul.
Lots of sad lessons learned here.
Right now, though, I just keep getting annoyed at the way judgmental Christians are weighing Anna's worth as a celebrity. Christians, people, are not supposed to be judgemental!!!! None of us are good or perfect.
The thing that has been running through my head, though, is the cruelty of litigation. Folks, if you're in a lawsuit, get out! If you are tempted to be in a lawsuit, think twice! Litigation takes you from your path! It is a demonic distraction. And the human body is not made to be stressed day-in day-out year-in year-out by this kind of thing. I take Anna as an example of what celebrity does. I take her as an example of what fame does to people. I take her as an example of what long-standing mean-spirited litigation does to a human soul.
Lots of sad lessons learned here.
Deceitful Bible Study
The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?
Most Christians will agree with Jeremiah’s statement that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and yet...even so, we often think we know our own hearts.
The Word of God states that the Holy Spirit came that the thoughts of many will be revealed.
We can often see when the thoughts of our hearts are evil, but when we read the Bible with self-serving interpretations – especially those interpretations which other Christians also falsely believe– that we are being deceitful and falling into Scripture Twisting.
One of the greatest delusions in Christendom occurs in the way we read into Bible stories things that are simply not there. Our human carnal and fleshly mind "sees" what simply isn’t there. Because our denomination, our preachers, our own mindset "understand" these verses in one way, we don’t really read what the Bible says.
Throughout the generations, false teaching has built upon false teaching and even now we Christians are allowing those false teachings to veil God’s words from us. The funny thing is that one really sees how attached people are to these false teachings when one tries to reason them out of their misguided selfish interpretations.
Often if a verse in the Bible conflicts with a reader’s life-style, the reader is faced with four choices.
(A) Believe that the Bible is the True Word of God and agree that the Biblical verse disagrees with her lifestyle but live unaffected by the Biblical prohibition.
(B) Believe that the Bible is the True Word of God and agree that the verse disagrees with her lifestyle and change her lifestyle.
(C) Believe that the Bible is the True Word of God but that the common interpretation of the Biblical verse prohibiting her lifestyle is the wrong interpretation and is being used by rigid judgmental people to make other people feel guilty.
(D) Believe that the Bible is not the Word of God at all but only a collection of sayings by wise but misguided people.
Racism, sexism, denominational doctrine, all contribute to these false "understandings" of Scripture passages:
For instance RACISM was responsible – IS STILL RESPONSIBLE– for some mis-interpretations:
I have heard many white Baptist ministers preach against interracial marriage when there is nothing in the Bible against it.
A subtle anti-semitism is seen in the Roman Catholic understanding of the Bookf of the Revelation. In Roman Catholic paintings the woman crowned with twelve stars who escapes into the desert represents the Virgin Mary. It is not. The woman represents Israel. And the Roman Catholic notion that the Roman Catholic church is God's first Church is also wrong because the Christian church first consisted of many home churches made up of Jewish and Gentile believers.
Many preachers preach as if the problems between the Jews and the Arabs came about because Ishmael was born. First let’s begin with the very strange assumption that all Arabs are descended from Ishmael. Before Ishmael’s birth, Syria, Egypt, and countless cultures existed. Did these cultures simply disappear and get swallowed up by Ishmael’s descendants? But one can argue that Abraham had other children (Keturah’s children) and grand-children (Esau and the Edomites) who also turned against the Jews. In fact, Esau’s descendants and Ishmael’s slowly merge and it is perhaps the prophecy of Esau’s enmity against Israel that is the major cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
SEXISM is also responsible for folks reading things into Scripture that just isn’t there. Not only sexism but, I dare say, prurience and male wishfulfillment. The interpretations of many stories would be vastly different if we allowed the influence of women preachers more often.
Male preachers have preaches as if the story of Esther is a romantic love story. Why? Because Esther is obedient and beautiful. Many preachers preach about Esther as if she is their true love. When they do this, I can only think they’re in some masturbatory dream and I consider them almost as bad as Xerxes who was nothing more than a rich powerful shallow man who wanted an obedient submissive wife he could show off. Esther was chosen for "such a time as this" because having lost her parents and been raised by her Uncle, she was not the type to challenge anyone. I have no doubt that, unlike Vashti, Esther would have removed her veil and let all the drunken princes of the kingdom look upon her. A perfect trophy wife whose needs are unmet, she marries a man who sees her once a month if that – and who has other lovely women in his harem to deal with. Christian preachers have turned her into a fantasy figure, not the tragic living sacrifice that she is.
Sometimes sexism and racism work together to create misreadings. Sometimes they are even joined to a kind of favortism. Consider the way preachers treat Hagar, Delilah, and Job’s wife.
Hagar is a married woman who is divorced and sent out into the desert with her small child to die because the first wife says in a very racist manner, "Divorce her! I don’t want this slave woman’s child to be heir with my son." I have yet to hear a sermon which addresses Sarah’s racism. Why not? Because many preachers have a childlike attitude that turns some Bible characters into sacred cows who never do wrong, and scapegoats who are always wrong. In this way, although ministers are against divorce and Hagar is a married woman, they are unable to identify with her and see her only as an uppity slave. (They forget that she is a slave who was probably given to Sarah because of Sarah’s and Abram’s lie to the Pharoah – something that would make me not respect Sarah much either. ) In the Bible Ishmael is shown as being a decent fellow. The one possibly questionable act he does –when he was a little kid, mind you– was teasing baby Isaac. And this word is translated as mocking in The King James Version of the Bible. But in other translations it is translated as playing with. Sarah could have been angry because her son was being teased but she would have been just as angry that her son was playing on an equal footing with a half-brother she considered racially and socially beneath him. But ministers never question this.
What ministers do to Job’s wife is equally obnoxious. Just as they –being men– completely ignore Hagar’s pain, they also ignore the pain of Job’s wife. Because they consider Job a prophet, they consider her comment to him, "Curse God and die" as an insult to a prophet. I often want to say to them, "Wake up and smell the coffee, guys. I know men are always ignoring women, but get real here. The woman has lost all her children in a single day, has lost all her property, and is preparing to see the death of her beloved husband!" Male preachers, show their utter lack of understanding of grief by their insistence on thinking Mrs Job was trying to get rid of her husband. Folks, she lost her children. It is very possible she is talking about both of them committing suicide and just giving up on trusting a God who has destroyed them. Which is understandable. T D Jakes even goes so far as to say that when Job is blessed in the end, God gets rid of Job’s wife and gives him a new wife so he can have new kids. But, where in the Bible does it say that? And truly if God did such a thing, it would show that he was concerned only with caring for a man’s pain and not for a woman’s.
As for Delilah, the carnality of preachers, their dislike of "impure races" and their need to be on the side of the favorite is very evident here. True, Delilah is a betrayer. But why do so many preachers want to see her as a prostitute? And why do they see her as a Philistine? This is all misreading, and second-hand readings. Nowhere does it say Delilah is a prostitute or a Philistine. She could be a simple Israelite country girl, or a simple Philistine farmer’s daughter, who gets caught up in powers greater than she can handle. Actually, her name seems more an Israelite name than a Phillistine one. The preachers often forget that the Philistines were threatening to kill her parents. Hey, if one has a choice between betraying one’s lover or betraying one’s parents, what would one do? But there is such a xenophobic mentality in the Christian church, and such a dislike of the "foreign tainted woman" that we can't help but slip in our own racism and sexism when interpreting this story. As in the case of Job’s wife, we have never experienced Delilah’s situation. And yet we feel free to judge these people.
Lord Jesus, you said, "If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit." Jeremiah tells us our heart is deceitful. Help me to see and read what the Holy Spirit and your prophets have written. I want to live an honest life. Amen.
Most Christians will agree with Jeremiah’s statement that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and yet...even so, we often think we know our own hearts.
The Word of God states that the Holy Spirit came that the thoughts of many will be revealed.
We can often see when the thoughts of our hearts are evil, but when we read the Bible with self-serving interpretations – especially those interpretations which other Christians also falsely believe– that we are being deceitful and falling into Scripture Twisting.
One of the greatest delusions in Christendom occurs in the way we read into Bible stories things that are simply not there. Our human carnal and fleshly mind "sees" what simply isn’t there. Because our denomination, our preachers, our own mindset "understand" these verses in one way, we don’t really read what the Bible says.
Throughout the generations, false teaching has built upon false teaching and even now we Christians are allowing those false teachings to veil God’s words from us. The funny thing is that one really sees how attached people are to these false teachings when one tries to reason them out of their misguided selfish interpretations.
Often if a verse in the Bible conflicts with a reader’s life-style, the reader is faced with four choices.
(A) Believe that the Bible is the True Word of God and agree that the Biblical verse disagrees with her lifestyle but live unaffected by the Biblical prohibition.
(B) Believe that the Bible is the True Word of God and agree that the verse disagrees with her lifestyle and change her lifestyle.
(C) Believe that the Bible is the True Word of God but that the common interpretation of the Biblical verse prohibiting her lifestyle is the wrong interpretation and is being used by rigid judgmental people to make other people feel guilty.
(D) Believe that the Bible is not the Word of God at all but only a collection of sayings by wise but misguided people.
Racism, sexism, denominational doctrine, all contribute to these false "understandings" of Scripture passages:
For instance RACISM was responsible – IS STILL RESPONSIBLE– for some mis-interpretations:
I have heard many white Baptist ministers preach against interracial marriage when there is nothing in the Bible against it.
A subtle anti-semitism is seen in the Roman Catholic understanding of the Bookf of the Revelation. In Roman Catholic paintings the woman crowned with twelve stars who escapes into the desert represents the Virgin Mary. It is not. The woman represents Israel. And the Roman Catholic notion that the Roman Catholic church is God's first Church is also wrong because the Christian church first consisted of many home churches made up of Jewish and Gentile believers.
Many preachers preach as if the problems between the Jews and the Arabs came about because Ishmael was born. First let’s begin with the very strange assumption that all Arabs are descended from Ishmael. Before Ishmael’s birth, Syria, Egypt, and countless cultures existed. Did these cultures simply disappear and get swallowed up by Ishmael’s descendants? But one can argue that Abraham had other children (Keturah’s children) and grand-children (Esau and the Edomites) who also turned against the Jews. In fact, Esau’s descendants and Ishmael’s slowly merge and it is perhaps the prophecy of Esau’s enmity against Israel that is the major cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
SEXISM is also responsible for folks reading things into Scripture that just isn’t there. Not only sexism but, I dare say, prurience and male wishfulfillment. The interpretations of many stories would be vastly different if we allowed the influence of women preachers more often.
Male preachers have preaches as if the story of Esther is a romantic love story. Why? Because Esther is obedient and beautiful. Many preachers preach about Esther as if she is their true love. When they do this, I can only think they’re in some masturbatory dream and I consider them almost as bad as Xerxes who was nothing more than a rich powerful shallow man who wanted an obedient submissive wife he could show off. Esther was chosen for "such a time as this" because having lost her parents and been raised by her Uncle, she was not the type to challenge anyone. I have no doubt that, unlike Vashti, Esther would have removed her veil and let all the drunken princes of the kingdom look upon her. A perfect trophy wife whose needs are unmet, she marries a man who sees her once a month if that – and who has other lovely women in his harem to deal with. Christian preachers have turned her into a fantasy figure, not the tragic living sacrifice that she is.
Sometimes sexism and racism work together to create misreadings. Sometimes they are even joined to a kind of favortism. Consider the way preachers treat Hagar, Delilah, and Job’s wife.
Hagar is a married woman who is divorced and sent out into the desert with her small child to die because the first wife says in a very racist manner, "Divorce her! I don’t want this slave woman’s child to be heir with my son." I have yet to hear a sermon which addresses Sarah’s racism. Why not? Because many preachers have a childlike attitude that turns some Bible characters into sacred cows who never do wrong, and scapegoats who are always wrong. In this way, although ministers are against divorce and Hagar is a married woman, they are unable to identify with her and see her only as an uppity slave. (They forget that she is a slave who was probably given to Sarah because of Sarah’s and Abram’s lie to the Pharoah – something that would make me not respect Sarah much either. ) In the Bible Ishmael is shown as being a decent fellow. The one possibly questionable act he does –when he was a little kid, mind you– was teasing baby Isaac. And this word is translated as mocking in The King James Version of the Bible. But in other translations it is translated as playing with. Sarah could have been angry because her son was being teased but she would have been just as angry that her son was playing on an equal footing with a half-brother she considered racially and socially beneath him. But ministers never question this.
What ministers do to Job’s wife is equally obnoxious. Just as they –being men– completely ignore Hagar’s pain, they also ignore the pain of Job’s wife. Because they consider Job a prophet, they consider her comment to him, "Curse God and die" as an insult to a prophet. I often want to say to them, "Wake up and smell the coffee, guys. I know men are always ignoring women, but get real here. The woman has lost all her children in a single day, has lost all her property, and is preparing to see the death of her beloved husband!" Male preachers, show their utter lack of understanding of grief by their insistence on thinking Mrs Job was trying to get rid of her husband. Folks, she lost her children. It is very possible she is talking about both of them committing suicide and just giving up on trusting a God who has destroyed them. Which is understandable. T D Jakes even goes so far as to say that when Job is blessed in the end, God gets rid of Job’s wife and gives him a new wife so he can have new kids. But, where in the Bible does it say that? And truly if God did such a thing, it would show that he was concerned only with caring for a man’s pain and not for a woman’s.
As for Delilah, the carnality of preachers, their dislike of "impure races" and their need to be on the side of the favorite is very evident here. True, Delilah is a betrayer. But why do so many preachers want to see her as a prostitute? And why do they see her as a Philistine? This is all misreading, and second-hand readings. Nowhere does it say Delilah is a prostitute or a Philistine. She could be a simple Israelite country girl, or a simple Philistine farmer’s daughter, who gets caught up in powers greater than she can handle. Actually, her name seems more an Israelite name than a Phillistine one. The preachers often forget that the Philistines were threatening to kill her parents. Hey, if one has a choice between betraying one’s lover or betraying one’s parents, what would one do? But there is such a xenophobic mentality in the Christian church, and such a dislike of the "foreign tainted woman" that we can't help but slip in our own racism and sexism when interpreting this story. As in the case of Job’s wife, we have never experienced Delilah’s situation. And yet we feel free to judge these people.
Lord Jesus, you said, "If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit." Jeremiah tells us our heart is deceitful. Help me to see and read what the Holy Spirit and your prophets have written. I want to live an honest life. Amen.
Monday, February 05, 2007
BLACK CLASSIC READING LIST
Angelou, Maya.I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)Armstrong, William H.SounderBaldwin, JamesGo Tell It on the Mountain (1953)Another Country (1962)Going to Meet the ManBambara, Toni Cade.Gorilla, My Love (1972)Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones).The Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones Reader (1991)Brooks, Gwendolyn.Blacks (1987)Butler, Octavia.Kindred (1979)FledglingWild SeedChildress, Alice.Trouble in Mind (1955)Cooper, Anna Julia.A Voice from the South (1892)Cruse, Harold.The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967)Cullen, Countee.On These I Stand (1947)Delany, Martin R.Blake; Or the Huts of America (1859-61)Douglass, Frederick.Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an AmericanSlave (1845)The Heroic Slave (1853)Dove, Rita.Thomas and Beulah (1986)Du Bois, W.E.B.The Souls of Black Folk (1903)Due, TananariveMy Soul to KeepThe BetweenDumas, Henry.Play Ebony, Play Ivory (1974)Ellison, Ralph.Invisible Man (1952), selected essaysEquiano, Olaudah.The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, orGustavus Vassa (1789)Evans, Mari.I Am the Black Woman (1970)Fuller, Charles.A Soldier's Play (1982)Gaines, Ernest J.Of Love and Dust (1967)Bloodline (1968)Lesson Before DyingThe Autobiography of Miss Jane PittmanA Gathering of Old MenGrimke, Charlotte Forten.The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke (1988)Haley, Alex.Roots (1976)Hansberry, Lorraine.A Raisin in the Sun (1959)Harper, Frances E. W.Complete Poems (1988)Harper, Michael.Images of Kin: New and Selected Poems (1977)Himes, Chester.If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945)Hughes, Langston.Mulatto (1935)The Big Sea (1940), selected poemsThe Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." Nation 23 (June1926): 692-94The Best of Simple (1931)Selected Poems (1959)Hull, Gloria T., Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds.But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (1982)Hurston, Zora Neale.Mules and Men (1935)Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)Hughes, Langston.Jacobs, Harriet.Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)Johnson, James Weldon.The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)God's Trombones (1927)Kennedy, Adrienne.Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964)Larsen, Nella.Quicksand (1928), Passing (1929)Lorde, Audre.Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)McKay, Claude.Home to Harlem (1928)Morrison, Toni.The Bluest Eye (1970)Beloved (1987)Sula (1973)Song of SolomonTar BabyNaylor, Gloria.The Women of Brewster Place (1982)Petry, Ann.The Street (1946)Sanchez, Sonia.I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems (1978)Shange, Ntozake.for colored girls who have considered suicide /when therainbow is enuf (1977)Toomer, Jean.Cane (1923)Walker, Alice.The Color Purple (1982)Walker, David.David Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles (1829)Walker, Margaret.For My People (1942)Jubilee (1966)Washington, Booker T.Up from Slavery (1901)Wheatley, Phillis.Selected poemsWideman, John Edgar.Brothers and Keepers (1984)Wilson, August.Fences (1986)Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988)The Piano LessonWright, Richard.Native Son (1940)Black Boy (1945)Wheatley, Phyllis.Complete Works (1988)X, Malcolm & Alex Haley.The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Christian and Black
Sometimes, as in my forthcoming novel Wind Follower, all things work together wonderfully. Sometimes I'm pretty conflicted. I mean: Am I a Christian or am I black? Of course the two shouldn't be opposed to each other. But many African-Americans find it problematic to be both Christian and black. Especially because of the history of white Christian slaveholders. Many Blacks have become Muslims. Which is weird because Islamic Slavery existed before the atlantic slave trade...and still exists along with racism in many Islamic countries. Indeed, when people talk about slavery, they often talk as if it ONLY existed in the US and ignore what is happening in Sudan and other places.
But back to me.
When I think of myself as a black woman, I want to talk about Justice ... and the modern folks in Christianity want to talk about other issues. Although Christianity is about justice, and mercy and grace, and equality. I often find myself with strange bedfellows. Such as victims of cruelty and discrimination who may not be Christians, and who may hate Christians. Of course, on the other hand...often the folks who said they were Christians were affected by some other philosophy, religion, or world mindset. For instance, nowhere in Christianity is racism affirmed. Quite the opposite. And if we think of the Crusaders, they picked up their idea of "holy war" from the Islamic idea of holy war. We Christians never cared much for a holy kingdom on earth. But you know what I mean.
When I think of myself as a Christian, I remember that evil is in everyone and I can't take sides...although I really, really, really want to. What to do?
I'm very pleased with Wind Follower. In that book (coming June!) I show that sexuality is healing, that racism exists, that there are issues of injustice. It comes from the part of me that is very black, and very Christian, and very woman, and very screwed up. It's a lovely, lovely, book. I'm hoping the rest of my works will be as balanced, and as lovely, and as evangelical.
But back to me.
When I think of myself as a black woman, I want to talk about Justice ... and the modern folks in Christianity want to talk about other issues. Although Christianity is about justice, and mercy and grace, and equality. I often find myself with strange bedfellows. Such as victims of cruelty and discrimination who may not be Christians, and who may hate Christians. Of course, on the other hand...often the folks who said they were Christians were affected by some other philosophy, religion, or world mindset. For instance, nowhere in Christianity is racism affirmed. Quite the opposite. And if we think of the Crusaders, they picked up their idea of "holy war" from the Islamic idea of holy war. We Christians never cared much for a holy kingdom on earth. But you know what I mean.
When I think of myself as a Christian, I remember that evil is in everyone and I can't take sides...although I really, really, really want to. What to do?
I'm very pleased with Wind Follower. In that book (coming June!) I show that sexuality is healing, that racism exists, that there are issues of injustice. It comes from the part of me that is very black, and very Christian, and very woman, and very screwed up. It's a lovely, lovely, book. I'm hoping the rest of my works will be as balanced, and as lovely, and as evangelical.
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