Sex and Money

Randy said that we hear "most divorces are due to sex or money" but in fact, those are just the two venues in which the real, underlying problems are played out.

Examen

Pastor Randy touched on the Examen of St Ignatius of Loyola, and mentioned a number of questions which we might ask ourselves during a daily examination. Two of them in particular stood out for me:

• What, in the past 24 hours, am I most grateful for?
• When, in the past 24 hours, were you cooperating with God?

I'll have to add "not counting your wife" to the first, as otherwise it would get monotonously predictable; but with that added, it's a good question to answer daily.

Accessibility

We had the Christmas pageant this morning, and Randy's message was based on a couple of points I hadn't been aware of. The first thing is that, while we've all heard "there was no room for them in the inn", the word "inn" here doesn't mean "motel", it means "guest room." A peasant house typically had a guest room and a family room, and at the end of the family room there was a low wall separating an area for the animals. You'd keep the family cow and donkey inside at night, both for warmth and for protection from theft. Joe and Mary stayed with a peasant family who took in guests, but someone was already in the guest room so they had to sleep (well, go into labor, probably not much sleeping) next to the animal pen. The second thing is that shepherds weren't honored--nobody thought of David as "the shepherd king". In fact, the profession was listed by the rabbis as one of the unclean ones--you couldn't be a shepherd and keep kosher. And the third was that at the time of Jesus' birth, Augustus was propagating "There is no other name by which you must be saved but Augustus Caesar" and calling Julius a god, and therefore himself "the son of god." The difference is that Augustus was interested in power and prestige and if you didn't go along with him, you were likely to get crucified. When Jesus appeared, it wasn't in a palace, it was in a peasant's hut, and the ones he invited to come were the outcasts.

Quiet weekend

"Nothing interesting this weekend." That means:

Buffet lunch Saturday at Nawab Restaurant, including naan bread and lentils, chicken tikka masala, tandoori chicken, tikka chhole, and vegetable pakora. There were a couple of Buddhist monks at the next table, and it was a bit unexpected to see one reach into his robe and pull out a cell phone.

Saturday night was a session of the Stargate role playing campaign run by Tom Barclay. In this session, a creature came back through the gate with a returning SGC team, and the creature's pheromones caused allergic reactions, paranoia, and irritability in most of the people in the base. Some of the people in the base were irritable to begin with, and most of the people were armed, so fighting broke out quickly. I was one of the few who wasn't incapacitated, although I did get to--er, "have to"--shoot a couple of my teammates who were affected. I and one of our scientists tracked down and trapped the creature. With that, my job was done, so while the scientist figured out the problem and the cure, I led a quick expedition to the Planet of Viking Babes. Tough duty, but someone had to do it.

Our pastor is also a lawyer, so we got an object lesson on "My yoke (teaching) is easy." Randy preached while wearing a backpack with law books with thousands of pages on judicial procedure, contracts, property, criminal code, and such. The human law is interpreted and added to and parsed and propagated to the point where no one can possibly obey it; the law that the Anointed One gave us was "Love the Lord; love your neighbor."

This afternoon was kayaking, poking around a cove and annoying the waterfowl. Mallards have quite a steep takeoff angle, which would be impressive except that while the duck is flapping madly, his feet dangle as if he's forgotten what to do with them.

This evening I signed up for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. If all goes according to plan, I'll start November with a plot outline and some character sketches, and I'll end with 50,000 words of text. I'll also found one of the best pep talks on the subject that I've seen in quite a while.

And last but not least, I've started painting miniatures again, specifically 1:2400 scale ships from the 1780s. I've thought about also doing zombie ninja pirate sheep for next GZG ECC, but I am, thus far, resisting.

Identity and Essence

Randy Singer, our pastor, is also Randy Singer, the novelist. Last week he attended a Michael Hauge writing conference, and this morning he shared one concept from that seminar with us (which I'm paraphrasing heavily, so don't blame Michael or Randy for what follows): Identity versus Essence.
In the beginning of most successful films, you see the protagonist in his everyday Identity, just fitting in, going about their regular life. Wesley (the Man in Black) (Princess Bride) is a farm boy; Korben Dallas (Fifth Element) is a cab driver; Thomas (Neo) Anderson (Matrix) is a programmer; James (J) Edwards (Men in Black) is a cop. And then something happens--they meet someone, or learn something, which awakens a desire. At that point, the protagonist has to make a decision--is he going to hide in his Identity, or show his Essence? The Identity is safe, but unfulfilled; the Essence is unsafe, but fulfilled.
What would you do, down the Rabbit Hole? Who are you, really? If you didn't "have to" do what you're doing now, what would you be doing now?

Edit: every good story also has a villain--the one who, when given the opportunity, becomes a rapist or killer, a slanderer or adulterer, or just pointlessly self-destructive. But we're going to focus on the Good, so if you post an answer, let's assume you're going to be a hero.

Matthew 5:48

This is the verse that reads "Be ye therefore perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect." If you go to church more often than Christmas and Easter, you've heard it. Sounds like a high standard, doesn't it?

It's worse than you think.

First, it comes at the end of the section which I'll paraphrase as:

Everyone knows that you're supposed to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I'm telling you, love your enemy. Do good things for the people who're working against you. The woman who got you fired so she could get the promotion you wanted? Be nice to her. The couple across the street who're afraid of you because you're a pervert? Yeah, go out of your way to be nice to them. The foul-mouthed guy down the block who keyed your car? He's the guy you have to bless. The sister who's not on speaking terms with you? Call her. The people who are voting to mortgage your children's future, or take away your civil rights, or bankrupt the country, or deny health care, or ...yeah, those are the people you have to show love to.

Yeah, you can just look out for your buddies; you can be nice to the people who're nice to you. So what? Even traitors and criminals do that. Living up to that standard gets you nothing. Therefore, you need to be perfect ....

Wait a minute, we hit the really rough part there. The "you" Our Lord was talking to wasn't some "them" out there that I can ignore, that I can point at and say "Hey, you're not measuring up!" He was talking to me. I'm the one who has to be perfect. I don't get to tell other people that they need to live up to this standard; I have to live up to it myself. 

And the mind-blowing part? That verse finishes--again, slightly amplified:

Just the same way that our Father in heaven--who is constantly getting slandered and reviled and cursed and opposed--is perfect.

Today's sermon

Our teaching pastor is also a lawyer so "Thou shalt not bear false witness" was interesting. Apparently in the judicial system of the time, if you accused someone and couldn't prove it to the satisfaction of the judges, they let him go and applied the punishment for his crime to you.

Taking the general principle of "don't lie", he cited a study done at University of Virginia in which people reported their conversations. If I recall the numbers correctly, the study found that people on average tell a significant lie in 30% of all one-on-one interactions, and 50% of conversations which last 10 minutes or longer. Men tend to lie to make themselves look better; women lie to make other people feel better; but they both prevaricate at about the same rate. The type of conversation which had the highest rate? College students talking to their mothers.