The Blog: Laments From La Mancha

Many people across the country are racing out to Best Buys and Wal*marts to pick up a copy of The Passion of the Christ. I too am heading in that general direction. However, it’s not to grab a copy of The Passion. Instead, I am purchasing something greater, something more fulfilling…

Invader Zim 2: Progressive Stupidity

I can hardly wait to get home.

And, if that wasn’t enough, the new Terry Brooks book came out today. What a way to the end month. Now if only I could figure out how to get a vacation… man, that would be something.

Ah, I love the smell of board games in the evening.

Last night was another rousing E.B.G.G. at Casa Soulliere. Those attending were the ever on time Jon Adam, followed by the “we travel in herds” Joanna Robbins, her roommate Mark I have no last name, and the pontiff of gaming gatherings, Brian Stouder. While we were all certain that Ellen would not be able to attend (most likely caused by the onset of school, homework and her upcoming book tour), but we were confused on the attendance of Master Robbins. Brian and Joanna both thought that he might be coming, turns out, no. He wasn’t. The only comment that could be had on the situation was Joanna who asserted, “I’m not my fathers keeper.” Michelle showed up after her evening class, but had a headache and some homework and decided to sit out.

The evening began with a game that was new(ish) to most of us. I had played a two player game a LONG time ago, John had played a few times many a moon ago as well, while Brian and Mark I.H.N.L.N. were still confused about the beans.

Brian read over the rules, Joanna filled in the blanks, and the rest of us just made it up as we went along. Joanna had the clear lead in the game as she turned over bean fields like they were going out of style, and she had all the ones that made quick cash. Mark I.H.N.L.N. was a slow starter and turned over a lot of fields with no yield in gold. Brian made a few fumbles early on, but quickly turned into the man, as he often would have piles of beans in his fields and everyone was willing to pass them his way. He became the Don of coffee beans and several other varieties. The flaw in Brian’s plan was that his beans were low yield for his investment. Jon and I took baby steps, turning over fields as needed, but always certain we made a coin or two on the transaction. I caught on to the low bean/high yield that Joanna was doing and moved forward with all speed. Joanna would have most likely won the game is she hadn’t been the victim of all of our “donations”. It was clear to the rest of us that she was the biggest threat and so we made her a target. The game wrapped up pretty quickly. It was a bean biter to the end, but Jon and I tied with 18, Joanna had 14, Brian 11 (or 14) and Mark I.H.N.L.N. came in with 9.

Next Brian decided that we needed to jump into something with a bit more meat, we were torn between Alhambra, Union Pacific, and Amun-Re. Jon and I were secretly pulling for U-pac, but Brian thought it might be a bit long. So we settled on Alhambra.

Now Joanna had told me weeks ago that she didn’t have a long attention span for games and that she got bored easily. Her ADD showed its self during this game. Brian was the king of over spending, paying at one point a whopping 7 dollars more than he needed to for a tower to add to his Alhambra. The first scoring round came pretty quickly. Brian had the commanding lead as he had the longest wall and control of the towers. I got hosed. I had 3 points for my wall and that was the sum total of my scoring for the first round. Jon also seemed to do well and Mark I.H.N.L.N. seemed to be taking to the game well. The game progressed on and it became clear that for all future E.B.G.G. events we had to ban Mark I.H.N.L.N. from drinking Mountain Dew. As the hour grew later he got louder and more talkative, you would have thought we spiked it. But we could tell he was feeling comfortable and enjoying himself, so comfortable in fact he got into a discussion about his “tackle”.

Brian continued to dominate this game with his purchasing power. Jon was hanging tough with him, Mark I.H.N.L.N. and I were trying to keep in the game, and Joanna checked out somewhere after the first scoring round (though she continued to collect money). The game became very close at the end with Jon, Brian and myself all within a point of each other. Brian won the last tower and serval but due to poor building of his Alhambra wasn’t able to place them, he had walled himself in. This fatal error cost him the game and I was able to shoot out for the win with 106 points, while Joanna, longing for her gameboy brought up the tail end with 40 points (4 of those coming from her mighty wall).

The hour was getting late and we had considered calling it a night, but for good or bad, we wanted to let Joanna end on a good note and so we broke out killer bunnies. This might have been a bad idea as I’m not sure how it went over. But we pressed on, killed a few bunnies and Mark I.H.N.L.N. even broke out the dread Ebola virus into our bunny circle. Brian was the king of carrots and had secured 5 of the 12 total available. Joanna nabbed two, Mark I.H.N.L.N. two, and I had three. Jon, who had fought a good game didn’t have a chance to get one. Perhaps if his last bunny hadn’t been killed by the pizza delivery guy he might have had hope. In the end though, Rick, the sailor carrot was the magic carrot, and I stole the game from Brian. A good time was had by all.

The saying goes, “There’s no use beating a dead horse.” The problem is we assume any horse that doesn’t move because of our beating must be dead. Sometimes it just needs more encouragement.

I feel like some days I’m just saying the same things over and over again because no one is getting it. I feel like I am up against a brick wall and the only way through is the repeated pounding of my forehead.

Everyone has their soap box, everyone has their pet-peeves, everyone has their cause, their solutions, their answers to all the world’s problems, and I guess I’m no different (except of course that mine is right).

We all want our Utopia, where the world is perfect as we see it. I am a Dime Store Prophet selling my view along with everyone else.

To me, life shouldn’t be that complicated. The church shouldn’t be that complicated. That somehow if we could all just stop and listen, we’d see how simple things really are.

The Building of my Utopia

The foundation is love. Some might argue, that no, you’re wrong, the foundation needs to be truth, or something else. To them I say, “Go away, this is my Utopia, go build your own.” Love is the key to everything. From it, you can bring truth, you can bring healing, you can bring restoration, you can do anything. In my opinion the greatest issue facing the modern day church is its lack of love. It tries to do a lot of good and right things, but it’s motivation is all wrong. Many ministers and church leaders are motivated by ego, power, over inflated self-righteousness, and personal vendettas. Religion is nothing more than their club to swing at the masses and lift themselves up, while the entire time they are rotten on the inside. Love. Love. Love. Love. The gospel in a word is love…

My grass is understanding and open-mindedness (it feels great to walk in barefooted). The second biggest issue I have with the church (and most of this comes from my church background) is this pig-headed belief that they are right about everything. This concept comes mostly from the minister (whose egos are so big they had to make double doors in the first place) but it’s pretty common among the church in general. We are completely closed off to the idea that someone else might be right. How vain have we become, when we honestly believe that our interpretation is the only one? If we just open our minds slightly and understand the views of someone else, we might come to a different or truer understanding than we might have on our own. Plant your feet on a solid stance, but don’t cement them in place. Even people who are wrong are still your brothers.

Flowers of joy and happiness dot the landscape. Aside from lacking love, the church today has lost a lot of it’s joy and happiness. Christians seem so angry some times. They are mad at the world, mad at one group or another. They have their panties (oh and you can be your bippy they aren’t thongs) so far up their butts that they have this permanent scowl on their faces. Man, if I were a non-Christian I’d be dying to get my hands on that kind of joy. Where did the joy go? Why do we no longer enjoy living, let along living as a Christian? I though Jesus said he had come to give us life and life to the full? I miss the smile on their faces, I miss the song in their hearts, the spring in their steps.

Man there would be a lot of trees. Strong oaks of compassion with arms you could climb in and get lost. Willows of knowledge, blue spruce of humor, maples of wisdom that flow sweet in the fall. Pools of peace, clouds of hope, and the sun would shine warm in the day, and breeze would bring healing in the night.

When you stumbled, you would land on that grass of understanding, you could pull yourself up on the trucks of compassion, you could wash yourself in peace, and everything would flow from the heart of love upon which it was built.

In the end, we are all human. We are all frail, we are all broken, battered and bruised. We are all striving up the mountain to become more Christ like. We all hate sin, and yet we all stumble upon, we all harbor darkness in our inward places. We all have false motives, we all get mad, we all have our own agendas.

And I would like to believe that we all in our hearts want to do the right thing.

We just forget to be loving, understanding, forgiving and patient. We forget what it feels like to hurt and fall. We forget to be open and bending. We forget who we are, what we are, and what we are trying to be.

Well all need to be reminded.

Stop being so hard, relax you’re too tense. You catch more flies with honey. Stop and smell the roses, breath. Smile, it might do your face good, it might do your heart good.

(An aside: The picture of the Intellivision game is of Utopia, one of my all time favorite Intellivision games [next to Tron and AD & D], the third picture had a butt in there so I included because my sister April said I had to stop posting nude pictures on my blog, so April, that one’s for you)

The following question was posed on the GLCCAlumni.com website, I posted my response over there, but I wanted to share it here.

“How involved in the political area should the Church, or an individual congregation, be?”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and be a voice of decent (I do that so well). As a corporate/universal church, I feel that we should not be involved in politics at all, it is not the job or goal of the church to dictate the political situation of any community that it is involved in. Why? First and foremost politics by their nature are divisive. Can you imagine driving into a new town and saying to your wife, “Hey hun, I wonder where the Republican Pro-Life, Pro-Environment Instrumental Church of Christ is”. You don’t believe me? When was the last time you looked at how many churches are in any given town? Now add political opinions to the mix.

So let’s take that a step down to the individual congregation, “Today’s sermon is ‘How no true Christian can vote for a democrat’, some how that seems to miss the point of what you are there for. In addition, let’s say I’m a member of your church and I think that John Kerry should be president, you’ve just isolated me from everything else you have to say because of a “political” opinion.

Let’s toss party affiliation aside, let’s talk about specific issues on the bill, say a new casino, legalization of marijuana, increasing school taxes, take your pick. Since when is it the job of someone from the church to stand up and tell its members what their view should be on any of these matters (I’ve seen it done in Churches of Christ that I’ve been in and frankly I was appalled)?

So then, what about an individual Christian? Absolutely. I think it is our job first as a citizen of this country to our duty and take part of the political process. As a Christian we should allow our personal believes to lead us in the direction to vote in on both leaders and individual issues.

Now, to the issue of legislating morality, I’m one of those who maintain that you cannot legislate morality. First of all, whose morality do you impose? Your own (some would argue, no God’s because they think God’s and their own are interchangeable)? What happens if my opinions on various moral issues differ from yours? How would you feel if my morality was imposed on you? Our laws are fundamentally moral in nature, but when you break it down to specifics like alcohol (recall that we tried at one time to ban it), marijuana for medical use, indecency, gay marriage or even abortion there is disagreement in the church as to which is the “right” stance on these subjects.

In the end, we want the rest of the world to agree with our personal opinions, we want leaders who agree with us (because obviously we are right), but we simply cannot. There are some things that we have a clear mandate on, others that we don’t, and because we don’t, we cannot presume to impose those on others. No matter how much someone thinks their opinions are right, it doesn’t make it so and we get into dangerous ground when start to dictate those opinions to others.

Because of the diversity of views even among Christians (unless you are so bold as to argue that all true Christians hold the same opinions), as a Church or as a congregation we cannot step into the realm of politics. That needs to be left to the individual Christian.

As Christians we need to set aside this unbending attitude that we are right about everything. That some how your view on baptism, the second coming, the tribulation, divorce and remarriage, [insert any one of a hundred topics here] is the correct and only opinion on the matter.

I think that we need to be a people of convictions, but our fist one should be that we can be wrong, or God forbid, that there might be two opposing views on the subject and both of them are right (more on this below). I disagree sometimes with Regan Clem (sometimes a lot, sometimes I totally agree), but I respect him. Why? First off, he will unashamedly state his opinions, but he is not so bold to think that he can’t be wrong, or that they might change. I think we need to challenge our views all the time, to expose ourselves to differing opinions if for no other reason than to check our own. What a boring world this would be if FOX News was the only game in town, if Rush Limbaugh was the only voice on the radio. We like to listen to people who agree with us, it makes us feel good, but folks, sometimes we are wrong. Heck, sometimes I’m wrong, but I’m open minded enough to admit that possibility exists (though not very likely ).

Sometimes you can both be right even though you hold differing views. Want a good example? I got into a discussion with my boss at The University of Saint Francis. She had written down that we had bi-monthly meetings. I said, “Jane, my understanding is that our meetings are bi-weekly, when are they?” “Well, they are every two weeks.” “Well then they are bi-weekly, meaning every two weeks.” “No, they are bi-monthly, meaning twice a month.” “No Jane, bi-monthly means every two months.” “Are you sure, because I’ve always thought it was the other way around.”

So, I looked it up:

bi • month • ly ( P ) Pronunciation Key (b-mnthl)
adj.
1) Happening every two months.
2) Happening twice a month; semimonthly.

bi • week • ly ( P ) Pronunciation Key (b-wkl)
adj.
1) Happening every two weeks.
2) Happening twice a week; semiweekly.

So there you go. So perhaps a bi-sexual bi-weekly swings both days .

In other news, Michelle and I watch Johnny English last night. Oh my goodness! It has been quite a while since I laughed that hard (yes, I even laughed harder than Napoleon Dynamite). If you get a chance to catch this on HBO, you need to, it was great fun.

Tomorrow is game night, so I’m pretty excited about that, so you all are invited, it starts at 6:30 pm at my house (Eric, I cannot find your email address to add you to my list, but you are welcome as well). A good time will be had by all.

So I’m in my Saturday morning litany. I’m working in my little corner on something of minor importance, and watching VH1 in the background. The break hits and I hear a commercial for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (and this is complete aside, but I mention Reese’s enough that I think they should become either the official sponsor of The Blog, or at least it’s official candy). All these folks were talking about how they felt eating a RPBC, and the commercial ended with comments on how they felt in that space of time after they’ve consumed the first one, and before they started on the second one. The tag line was a close up of two PBCs, and the gap in between, with the tag line, “Life is good between the cups.”

I just sat there stunned. I didn’t know rather to laugh out loud or to be horridly appalled. Finally as I let the absurdity of staring at two peanut butter cups masquerading as breasts wash over me, I just laughed out loud. Another fine example of how a male dominated society controls every aspect of our lives.

Part of me is tempted to go into a discourse about breasts, but I think I might just get myself into too much trouble, instead I will just leave you with a little thought from Fatboy Slim, “Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, everybody needs a bosom.”

In other news:

For the first time in my life, I watched The Godfather yesterday. It was pretty good. I can understand why 30 years ago, it was quite the movie (man Robert Duvall had hair). What gets me is how so many of it’s famous lines come from 2 second scenes. The whole Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes, was just BANG, there and gone. I guess now I have to sit down and watch The Godfather II & III sometime soon as well. I will say this though, after having watched it, I’ve decided that I want to start my own crime family and become a Don. Looks like it’s time to start calling in some favors.

I had originally planed to follow The Godfather with Scarface (another classic I haven’t seen), but 3 hours of mobsters was a bit much even for me. Instead I busted (no pun intended) out The Girl Next Door. Now this movie is not for the easily offended as it’s partly about the porn industry (but not in the same way as say, Boogie Nights). Normally “teen” movies aren’t my thing, but everyone once and a while I get drug into them (Euro-trip) and I’m pleasantly surprised (maybe because I’m still that teen inside). This movie hadn’t caught my attention at all while it was in the theater, or even when I found out it was coming out on DVD, it wasn’t until they were reviewing it on CNN, that I thought, hmm, perhaps I should check it out. Wow, what an interesting movie.

No, its not on my list of top 100 movies, but it had some really good things in. It discussed personal identity, judgment, moral fiber, and several other neat things. All I can say (unless you want a more specific walk through of the movie), is that it was better than I hoped.

From around the net:

My buddy Gaines had a great thought from his blog the other day that I had to steal:

“We saw an ad on TV for the upcoming release of The Passion of the Christ, and apparently, the DVD ‘can be yours forever.’ Which raises the important theological question:

Will DVD players in the new creation be that back compatible?”

Jason Orton’s wife thinks he can get his butt kicked by gymnasts.