Category: Uncategorized

Sorry for the lack of interesting thoughts this week, it’s been a “wow, pregnancy can suck” sort of week. Anyway, does everyone know about this –

On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund.

Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco.

We invite everyone throughout North America and around the world to turn off the lights for an hour starting at 8 p.m. (your own local time)–whether at home or at work, with friends and family or solo, in a big city or a small town.

For more info click here.

A bit of a weekend rant to follow.

I hate being pigeonholed. I hate people making assumptions about me because of their preconceived stereotypes about certain sorts of people. I’m sure I fit some stereotypes from time to time, there are reasons why stereotypes exist in the first place. But pigeonholing assumes a dichotomous black and white world that is often far from the way things actually are.

Molly over at Adventures in Mercy had a good post this past week on this very issue. She writes on the fallacy of assuming that there exist only two choices in any situation – one “obviously” right and the other depraved and wrong. Such dichotomous choices she finds dangerous include –

There are only two choices: You can either be a submissive wife and have a happy marriage, or you can be a conniving rebellious domineering woman and make your marriage miserable.

There are only two choices: You can either spank your children, rewarding every infraction with swift clear punishment, which we say will produce “godly seed,” or you can not spank and have sniveling brats who run into streets and throw tantrums every five seconds and will grow up to bomb schools and have fifteen illegitimate children before they run straight to the fires of hell.

There are only two choices: You can believe my denomination/group’s theological view (plainly taught by the Bible) and thus be a real Christian and please the Lord, or you can not subscribe to our particular theological view (er, do you even read the Bible?) and be a second-class Christian (if you’re saved at all, that is), and be outside the pale of God’s approval.

These black and white choices impose assumptions and stereotypes upon people and fail to actually become conversant with what a person truly believes. Such assumptions make it easy to dismiss people without engagement and to ridicule/destroy them instead of love them. And I admit to being guilty of falling into this trap from time to time which I need to work to overcome. But I still get fairly annoyed when I encounter such attitudes towards myself. To Molly’s list, I would add the following dangerous assumptions that annoy me –

• Being told that the only reason a person would vote for Obama is because we are young and don’t understand politics.
• Being told that voting for a Democrat means we are pro-baby killing.
• Being told that I ascribe to entire schools of theology if I happen to read a book by an author who does
• Being told that I don’t care about Jesus if I insist on serving people physically and emotionally and not forcing them to say “the prayer”.
• Being told that I am throwing out the Bible if I think women should ever have a voice.
• Being told that I don’t care for the environment or sustainability because I am having children
• Being told that I am rebellious and ungrateful because I strayed from the church tradition my parents raised me in.

I am sick of these assumptions and sick of the dichotomous thinking they betray. I am sick of being dismissed and rejected because of what others think they know about me. Reality is more complex than this.

So Sonja tagged me for this meme which was begun by John Smulo.

The rules of the meme:

1. Apologize for three things that Christians have often got wrong. Your apologies should be directed towards those who don’t view themselves as part of the Christian community. Alternatively, apologize for things you personally have done wrong towards those outside of the church.
2. Post a comment at the originating post so others can keep track of the apologies.
3. Tag five people to participate in the meme.
4. If desired, send an email with the link to your blog post at the Christians Confess site, giving permission for your apologies to be added to the website.

So my three things that I’ve personally done and am sorry for –

I am sorry for adding to the Gospel and forcing people to become Republicans, or accept creationism, or stop being homosexual, or alter their physical appearance before they can love and follow Jesus.

I am sorry for acting like I know-it-all and have the corner on truth while making fun of people who have actually devoted their lives to studying things like the Bible, or science, or history.

I am sorry for manipulating your children into saying the sinner’s prayer because I told them they would go to hell and be separate from you if they didn’t.

One Day Blog Silence

To file under things said by idiots…

I was in line for ice cream in downtown Naperville the other night. Behind me in line were a guy and a girl commenting about how hungry they were because they had not eaten all day (and so of course were out for ice cream mixed with cookie dough…). Then I hear the guy say – “so rural people when they’re hungry eat buckets of dirt.” “No way” says the girl, “eating dirt will automatically kill you.” “Its true” replies the guy, “I saw it on the Discovery channel.”

so this is the future of our country…

So I recently put that map thingy on my blog that shows where in the world the people who read my blog are. while I get a fair amount of hits on my oh so meaningful blog, its it quite sparse (especially in regards to the entire southern hemisphere) compared to other blogs I read (for example – Mike’s). I mention this to him and he accuses me of having red dot envy. So I’m wondering what sort of weird posts I need to have in order to have random people all over the world google and find my blog. According to my stat counter the most common searches that bring people to my blog have been my posts on vampires, American Idol, and the Seven Wonders project. So I guess cute pictures of Emma and my personal slanted ramblings on faith stuff aren’t that popular 😉 . Anyway – not that it really matters, just thought I’d share.

So I participated in the Warrenville library’s summer reading program this summer. I love doing stuff like that – read so many books, enter to win a prize. I did it for a few years in Wheaton and of course never won a thing – not even the crappy weekly flower arrangement prizes. But this summer I won TWO of Warrenville’s prizes. For writing reviews of the books I read I won the June drawing for an AMC gift card. Then I just found out that I won the grand prize for the summer of 4 Six Flags tickets. Crazy huh. We have never been to Six Flags Great America and are not real sure how it will work with a baby. I’m actually more excited about going to the new Hurricane Harbor thing, its been years since I’ve been to a water park. So anyway, I just thought I’d share that it pays (with crazy prizes) to read! 🙂