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Earthbound
aaiiieeee.blogspot.com/2008/01/earthbound.html
Over my trip to DC I began reading Frank Schaeffer's Crazy For God. I can see why many evangelicals are angry at Schaeffer, not only for turning away from (and in some cases against) the religious right, but for his unflinching portrayal of his parents, warts and all.
While Schaeffer spends as much time dwelling on the good aspects of his childhood as he does on the bad, he does not sugarcoat anything. A reader can come away from the book still respecting the Schaeffer family and the work that they did, but one will never again place any of them (including Frank) on a pedestal. Given that the Bible itself sets the precedent for highlighting the flaws of even its greatest heroes, that seems to me to be a good thing.
[She does a great job explaining sexual identity for lay people]
Women’s sexuality- is it really fluid for most? « And this… is how AnJ ticks.
anjelico.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/womens-sexuality...
Here’s a problem- Your participants may not know how sexual orientation is defined [and hence discrepant definitions]. For most people, they make the error of defining it according to the gender of the partners they have been with i.e. the person whom they have romantic attraction towards. But being with a guy doesn’t make you a straight; just as being a woman doesn’t make you gay. And having been with members of both genders doesn’t automatically qualify you for the title “bisexual”... [And your sexual orientation is only part of your sexual identity. You can read about it here.]
[I was emailed this link - interesting story on a neighborhood that is courting the gays and lesbians to move there while struggling with it.]
What comes after coming out
wjinc.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&subsectionID=3&arti...
It's clear to me that all hands are not yet on deck, even in Oak Park, when it comes to our civil rights. These ethnographic interviews of Sophie and Bekah hint at the true make-up of our neighborhoods when they touch on their experience of canvassing for signatures to support Oak Park's domestic partnership registry, which passed in 1997. We have come such a long way, but without this transformation, Oak Park will never discover the difference between "being progressive" and actually progressing.---------------
bob.blog: Osteen!
bobhyatt.typepad.com/bobblog/2007/12/osteen.html
"He has not taken a salary from his Houston megachurch for two years. He owns one house — the same one he and his wife, Victoria, have lived in for 13 years — and until recently he drove a 9-year-old car he inherited from his late father. Osteen pays his own hotel bills, and there is no private jet...
Osteen refuses to condemn the targets of [Sen. Charles] Grassley’s inquiry, or Richard Roberts, who quit as president of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., amid charges that he used school funds and facilities for his family “While I never like to hear negative things about friends and other ministers, I choose to believe the very best in them,” Osteen said."
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[This was from a while back but I do dig this poem.]
In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,
there is a deafening alleluia
rising from the souls of those who weep,
and of those who weep with those who weep.
If you watch, you will see
the hand of God
putting the stars back in their skies
one by one..... - Anne Weems
[read the rest on the blog]
[I get my aptitudes tested next week so this was from my research on them.]
Aptitude testing purports to identify what people have a knack for, what they innately do well. These tests have always sounded like pseudoscience -- abstract exercises designed to measure the unmeasurable. My skepticism intensified when I learned the Johnson O'Connor process would take 9 hours of my time and 480 of my dollars. But I was in the thick of a genuine career moment: Should I move my speechwriting aptitude to another organization? Write a screenplay? Start a business? I figured a few tests couldn't hurt.
[My reminder that stereotypes about groups don't do me any good either! I am trying...]
Over the decade I’ve been out as a lesbian, I have learned a great deal about evangelical Christians...Stereotypes and groupthink have proven no good to me at all. I was told, time and again, that I could trust nobody on “the Religious Right.” They “all” hated us, I was warned, and therefore I had to be wary of them all. When it came time to begin coming out to the friends I’d made over the years, most of whom were religious conservatives, I was afraid. Surely to a one, they would dump me.Finally I came out to one of my best friends, Shawnee, a lifelong Southern Baptist. I hemmed and hawed while telling her, ‘til she became quite frightened herself. When I finally got the words out, I got a huge surprise. She was actually relieved!
“Is that all?” she asked me. “The way you built up to it, I expected you to tell me you were dying of cancer or something.”More at Whosoever.
[I like this blog and I liked the quote she found.]
Jung Quote of the Day
drybonesdance.typepad.com/dry_bones_dance/2007/12/...
"There are, in fact, many methods, standpoints, views and convictions which are all at war with one another - the main reason for this being that, since they fail to be mutually comprehensible, none of them can grant the validity of any other [...]"[...]When we find the most diverse remedies prescribed in a text-book of pathology for a given disease, we may confidently asssume that none of these remedies is particularly efficacious. So, when many different ways of approaching the psyche are recommended, we may rest assured that none of them leads with absolute certainty to the goal, least of all those advocated in a fanatical way. The very number of present-day "psychologies" amounts to a confession of perplexity."
[Things that are really good to know. :) ]
http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-gay-christian
For example, many Christians don't know that
- Jesus says nothing about same-sex behavior.
- The Jewish prophets are silent about homosexuality.
- Only six or seven of the Bible's one million verses refer to same-sex behavior in any way -- and none of these verses refer to homosexual orientation as it's understood today. [Read the rest there...]
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