30 April 2010

Headlines that piss me off

"Michael Briscoe charged in prostitute's murder" (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/04/30/edmonton-briscoe-ellie-mae-meyer-charged-murder.html)

It never ceases to piss me off when a murder victim is referred to by her profession. Especially when it's a sex worker who has been murdered.

The douchebag who murders Ms Meyer is named in full, but she's reduced to "prostitute". Can you say 'sexist bullshit'?  I knew you could.

RIP Ellie May Meyer.

24 April 2010

Woof! Why do I get sucked into these arguments?

Well crap. I got sucked into an argument about abortion on Facebook with my moron bio-sisters. (Can I have a HALLELUJAH! that I wasn't raised in the same family as these fucktards?) Between them, they have an iq of 7 and it takes 8 to bark.

Gist of argument: Abortion is murder! *SQUAWK* Women are too stupid to know that what they're doing is the same as what Clifford Olson did! *SQUAWK* If only the stupid women knew the FACTS! They wouldn't do this!

Luna steps in and says: ORLY?

Incapable of barking 1: Yeah! Even rape victims shouldn't abort! Murder! *squawk*

Luna: *head explodes*

I've responded as politely as I can, but you know the forced-birth types. This should escalate to name calling shortly. Maybe then they'll remove me from FB or filter out this garbage from me.

I think I'm going to tell them that if God hadn't wanted women to be able to end their pregnancies, he wouldn't have created herbs with abortifacient properties. :D

Transcript anyone? :)

21 April 2010

church, business and the intersection there between

Okay, so I ramble, go off on a tangent and then stay there. Deal with it.

I work at a church. It's a very small church. There are five employees. Me (7 hours/week), another administrative assistant (call her Penny - also 7 hours per week), the custodian, the music minister, and the minister/pastor/priest/whatever you wanna call her. So most of the work that gets done around there is done by volunteers, and whoa, what a ride that can be.

If you attend any Christian church (or Unitarian, they're just as bad), you'll know that there are committees upon committees upon committees of volunteers who run the church. Of course, this results in about 6 people who do everything, and those are usually the people who would be better off as pew-sitters. You know, like government. Anyway, because churches are also getting older, the volunteers at my job are all over 65, and only one of them is under 75. My rep on M&P (i.e. personnel) is 83. I shit you not. So things are pretty old school around work.

Old school. You do know what this means right? Penny and I are "the girls in the office". Penny is a grandmother (I'm guessing she's about 55). And I'm 35. And some of the older men treat us like "the office girls", i.e. giving us their typing, flirting with us (A 91 year old man told me that I should get a job on a sex-phone line because my voice was very sexy. And yes, he called it a sex-phone, not phone sex).

So yeah, sexist. But I can deal with sexism. What I'm starting to really find appalling is the politics of money in the church. Churches are registered charities, and should not be making a profit. So charging rent for rooms and labelling it "donation for use of church" is so dishonest it's stupid. Fortunately, that's about to stop at the church I work at. But what I'm really finding sickening is the attitudes of the older folks who seem to think that the church is *theirs*, that it belongs to the people who go there. No. That is exactly the problem. For example, there is a group that underpays, by a lot. I don't particularly care, because I view the church as a community centre, a group of people who serve the community they worship in. However, what I'm running into is a capitalistic attitude. "They're taking advantage of us", I hear. Well yeah. They should. We're here to serve the community. To figure out what we can do for them spiritually, and if that means opening our doors for their use, well, so be it. But WOW am I running into resistance! They talk in business terms. They talk about profit.

Now, I know you can't run a building on prayers and faith. You need money. But I strongly feel that a church shouldn't be a business. We shouldn't be competing with the churches down the street. We shouldn't be setting our room rates at the same price as the school across the street. We should be serving the community meals (I work in an area with a growing homeless problem). We should be finding out what the community needs, and work with them to run the building. If we give them what they need, they'll give us what we do.

16 April 2010

Getting all biblical instead of political for a change

Sure haven't had much to say lately. I get in these funks where I feel like anything I say has either been said before, or doesn't need saying. Depression, I guess. Plus, life in the FCS household has been more crazy than usual because I put my back out badly (thanks to the evil awful gluten hiding in lentils of all damned things), and Mr. FCS had to take three days off work to look after the kids for me. *sigh* I've also been dealing with more bureaucracy than I've ever wanted to, both at home and church. So I keep finding myself saying, "Ya know, when all is said and done, there had better be Answers!"

I don't pretend to have all of them, unlike some other Christians I know. Seriously, it's almost comical to watch them try to answer the big questions. But I do take solace in this: God acts through people. If people won't listen to God and do what God asks, we're fucked. Bad things happen because people don't listen to God. And sometimes bad things happen because they just do - like earthquakes that hit the poorest countries. God doesn't decide one day to decimate a country. I'm sure of it. Not my God. Maybe yours, but not mine. It happens, and we are given the opportunity to do God's work. That there is hunger in a world with more than enough food to feed everyone is not a tragedy of God's creation, it's a tragedy of human creation. People have the power to fix almost any problem. We really do. If we'd listen to the quiet voice that says, "Go, do my work". The atheists would call it our conscience - and maybe that's God, maybe not. I don't care.

I forget where I read this, but it's perfect for right now:
If a voice in your ear, speaks of faith, not of fear, and tells you to go be a do-er,
Give heed to the voice that makes love your first choice,
And throw protocol down the sewer.

When we put our money first, we're denying God. Remember the story of Jesus appearing to the fishermen disciples, and asking Peter if he truly loves him more than the food he's eating? Sure, it's a story of forgiveness (offering Peter the chance at redemption for previously denying him three times), but it's also a reminder that loving God is more important than the love of anything or anyone else. So when we won't help the least of His brothers or sisters, what are we saying? When we put our own comfort first, what are we doing?

It's why I refuse to even consider voting for a party who would imprison people who are harmless (dope smokers), who would leave the disabled to beg for charity, who would rather kill convicts than pay for them to be properly incarcerated.

And of course, I fail at it every day. Every day that I buy new clothes for my kids instead of used ones, giving the savings to the poor. Every day that I spend money on luxury instead of helping feed the hungry. I fail every day. We all do. All I can do is try a little harder tomorrow. Please try with me.

03 April 2010

Happy Easter!

It's the Easter season, and I have a few thoughts. Or is it that I have few thoughts? Anyway...

A revolutionary thought from my minister: What if it wasn't that Jesus died for our sins? That God didn't demand the sacrifice of his own son? But rather that Jesus died because of human sin? An innocent man tortured and killed because of human sin. And God's answer is Easter. Resurrection. Fantastic thought. (And no, it doesn't matter if one believes it to be literal resurrection - the power is in the story). The implications are phenomenal. And the metaphor is incredibly beautiful. Every day we, through our sin, kill, torture, persecute and harm innocent men, women and children, either directly or indirectly as a consequence of our indifference. And every day, God forgives, and gives us another chance. It's truly mind-blowing.

She also, most wonderfully, said of Christianity and its horrible past with Judaism (and I paraphrase): The biggest irony of Good Friday is that the torture and murder of an innocent man is used as an excuse to torture and murder innocent people. The Gospel has too long been used as an excuse for hatred and persecution. And it has to stop. How very true. The horrors that are committed in the name of Christianity, in the name of Jesus, are the saddest irony of all.

A recent example from the news: Bill Donohue, that blowhard, had the unmitigated gall to say that the pedophile priests weren't pedophiles, but rather, homosexuals, because most of the victims were post-pubescent. He's taking the horror of sexual abuse, and using it to villify and persecute homosexual people. In the name of God, he's spreading hatred of God's people. And what of the girls who were abused? They were sluts who seduced the priests? Or they don't exist? Or what?

Now, while I say, "HOW DARE YOU?", I'm trying to remember that even the people Jesus chose to surround himself with didn't get it, but damn, we've had 2000 or so years to get this right, and we're still missing the point a whole lot of the time.

Happy Easter everyone. And if you don't celebrate, just have a nice long weekend!