post -non-rapture rant

 started this as a reply to a post on fb this morning  – got a little long winded, so now it's here.

Yesterday we “survived” another end of the world. Once again someone promised the world a get of out jail free card and people ate it up. It was wrapped up (as usual) in a pretty package of religion, but rooted (again as per usual) in a pretty bow of non-responsibility. Too much debt? No problem. Life not what you thought it would be? No problem. Job suck? No problem – it's all out of your control! The global lottery is on the way to take away all your issues! One wave of this mystical wand and you get swooped away to heaven or nirvana or valhalla or your cosmic vestal-virgin laden harem. That is not how it works, people. There is no fairy dust to be sprinkled. Ignoring personal responsibility is not a viable solution to the problems in our world, it IS the problem in our world. So many folks listen to what jesus had to say about four horses and totally miss the bits he says about feeding the poor, protecting the weak, accepting the outcast. In some twisted horrible irony most seem to want to sit together and hear about these things while simultaneously dreaming up ways to avoid doing any of them. I don't recall any of the stories about his 33 years where he passed on an opportunity to be a part of helping someone in the “here and now” because he thought it would be okay if me made some grandiose gesture later on. To quote Don Henley (yes, I'm that old.):

“ To this garden we were given, and always took for granted
-It's like my daddy told me, “You just bloom where you're planted.”
Now you long to be delivered From this world of pain and strife
-that's a sorry substitution for a spiritual life”

Now, lest anyone be confused, let me say very clearly that I by no means think I have this figured out. Believe me, if I thought for a second that yesterday was actually going to be the end of the world I would have begged the powers that be for more time, not less. I have way to much crap left here to be sorted out. I want to see my children grow and learn their part in all of this.

Life isn't easy, but quitting sounds boring.

(I also want to be around when The Cults finally release their album next month.)

Department of Morons and Vitirol

So I went to the dmv today. Nothing super exciting there, but it did provide me with an hour and a half of mingling with a people group that I otherwise wouldn’t normally associate with – oh the humanity (if you can call it that)… The one constant that I experienced there and pretty much everywhere I have turned today is the incredible amount of hatred people seem to harbor.

Bin Laden is dead. It was bound to happen sooner or later – that in itself doesn’t phase me much, its one more life lost to add to the thousands who have died in these attacks and retaliations. I would have hoped that people were going to react somewhat differently. The cheering, the demonstrations, the mass display of bloodlust has been staggering. I actually sat and listened to a woman today say that she felt “cheated” that he had been killed. Cheated. In her words, he should have been “put in a cage so the public could watch him suffer”. Why? How does anyone derive pleasure at watching someone’s destruction? Don’t get me wrong, I am not writing this in support of his actions. He was an evil man who was responsible for a great deal of suffering. I just cannot understand this mob mentality that seems to have gripped the nation… it disturbs me at my very core.

I want to believe we are better than this. As campy as it sounds, I want to believe we can forgive, that we can heal. That somewhere in this mess the human race can find a common thread and move forward. If we continue to fuel ourselves on hatred and ignorance, we all lose. It’s not sustainable – it is the cancer that eats away at us; and yet here it is, celebrated in our media and embraced by our nation.

To quote Jane Porter, “The best manner of avenging ourselves is by not resembling him who has injured us”