Ah, the holidays. It's always an interesting time of year, for varying reasons each time around. This year is probably the most non-"Christmas"-like, at least thus far. This year has been really different, largely because of my mom's health issues and her needing to spend a lot of money to get her prescriptions filled before the holidays, so that left us with minimal funds for Christmas. You may look at it and think, "Oh man, that sucks", but, really, I don't mind not getting gifts if it means my mom has the medications she needs to get better. Looking back on past years, what we're missing this year is the spirit of "Giftmas", rather than the whole idea behind Christmas. As most people know, or at the least my closest friends certainly do, my spiritual/religious beliefs have already changed a bit, and it has become an evolving issue for me, so, the notion of Christmas and what it should stand for has been something on my mind this year. I went along with my mom to church last night for the Christmas Eve service, and I ended up being annoyed by the people there (not suprisingly). My mom was up in the choir loft, but I sat back near the back of the church. Behind me was one of the church "elders", the church sexton, and next to me was a man and his wife who also help out at the church. Throughout the service, they're all talking--not whispering in the least--and carrying on like children. The kicker was the elder man, when we lit the candles and turned off the lights, he said out loud "Anyone have any marshmallows?", and the others around me laugh. WOW. What's sad about that whole scenario is the fact that they are all over 40 years old. It was ridiculous. On top of that, the same people, as well as the newest priest now, are giving my mom shit for anything and everything, yet my mom's the first person they call when they want/need something. I don't get how they honestly wonder why I don't go to church.

I just sat there during the service and let my mind wander, since the priest was trying to rush through the service so she could leave, and I had the geriatric children sitting around me. I was sitting there thinking about what Christmas is supposed to mean, and then thought of how December 25th is a Pagan holiday the Christians stole and called their own (amongst the multitude of other things that the old church took from everyone else to gain more power), how the tree comes from German traditions, putting presents in shoes/stockings comes from the Dutch, the lights come from numerous traditions, the greens also from Pagans celebrating nature and the winter solstice, and so on. So, since most everything that we have come to know as Christmas is a melange of elements from other religions and traditions that the church appropriated for itself, then what is truly Christian about the holiday? The birth of the baby Jesus, the wise men, the manger...not a whole lot, really. Thinking about that brought up some questions/points of interest; There was no such word in the hebrew language for "virgin" as we know/use it today, the word simply meant "young", so that makes you look at the whole "Virgin Mary" idea; The wise men took a long time to get to Bethlehem. No one actually knows the specifics, but the concesus among most scholars is that it took them anywhere from months up to as long as two years until they saw the baby Jesus; The whole notion of was Jesus the son of God or not.

Through my own soul-searching/whatever you want to call it, and through studying religion in college, my beliefs and ideas concerning all things religious and spiritual have changed and they continue to evolve. Honestly, I feel that that is how religion is to be treated. Things HAVE to change. When things do not change, they die--it's a law of nature. Everything that exists exists because it is changing. Be it liquid, solid, gas, everything that exists has molecules that vibrate (aka, change). Scientists that are trying to reach absolute zero are facing the arguments of existence in their work because if they reach absolute zero, all molecules cease to move, and if all molecules cease to move, then whatever object reaches absolute zero would logically cease to exist. Anyway, back to my religion topic, things have to change. For this very fact, that seems ridiculously obvious to me now, I cannot stand or fathom stubborn and/or fundamentalist religious people. Those people are hung up on the aspects of the faith/religion that best suits them, not the entirety of whatever religion it is. That's the key issue with all of the problems revolving around religion--everyone takes it upon themselves to only adhere to and follow (or even make up) the aspects of the religion they choose, and they hold everyone else accountable to their personal interpretation. We're a species of self-righteous motherfuckers. To make matters even worse, society has grown to embrace the freedom of individuals to decide things like this for themselves, but with that we allow people to hold everyone else accountable and point fingers. There's no simple way to fix the whole issue, especially because no one can say "I'm right, so everyone needs to follow my beliefs". The only way you could address the issue is to make people accountable for themselves, and have a neutral, unbiased governing figure punish those who hold others accountable.

I won't get too into it because I dislike talking about politics, but my train of thought segued right into it. What we need to restore is the separation of church and state. It needs to happen. What we're getting into and allowing is our elected leader to impose his views and beliefs into basically every aspect of America. If anyone doesn't agree that America is now essentially Jesusland, stop deluding yourself and sugarcoating the truth. It has crossed the point of people being allowed to have their own beliefs to where a man's beliefs are imposed upon and reflected in the actions of our entire nation. I personally find it highly disturbing that our conflict in Iraq and the whole terrorist deal is "justified" because our president prayed about it and it's what "God" wants our nation to do. Christ on a pogo stick. Some homeless guy can walk the streets of New York saying "God told me to pee on the cat" and he's labelled mentally insane, but a president can say he prayed about it and God want us to fight this war and he's praised. Doesn't measure up to me. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

Changing direction here, I got a bit nostalgic today when I was looking through my stack of pictures. I have pictures from back in high school up to this last semester. I need to get a photo album or two for the 158 or so photos I have. There are also some cool digital photos I'm thankful I uploaded to various websites since my computer kinda died twice (hmm, maybe it's taking after me). Speaking of digital photos, we managed to take some when we met Dennis Blair backstage before the Blair/George Carlin show at school. The one shot of Larry, Brian, Dennis, Brooke, and me came out pretty well:



While I'm talking about and posting pictures, I finally got out the camera and took a picture of my drawing I made for the next tattoo I want to get. I tried to describe it in an entry back when I made the drawing, but it's a hell of a lot easier to just look at the picture itself, so here you go:



I hope to get that tattoo soon. I'm kinda out of the piercing phase, at least for a while, so I'm onto to thinking about tattoos.

I'm excited about going to Brooke's house tomorrow to do our little gift exchange and just to see her for the first time this break and be able to chill and relax together for a bit. I'm only going down for an overnight, but she's coming up the 30th and staying until the 2nd, so it'll be good times. Ok, this entry is mamothly long, so I'm gonna leave it at this and go gorge myself on Christmas dinner part 2. Whatever you believe in and celebrate, have a good one.

p.s. - I made this entry open for anyone to comment, since I figure a lot of people will have something to say about the first 4 paragraphs or so, so do comment if you so desire.

two things
I appreciate you inviting comments on this, because I first wish to comment about the hotness of your girlfriend because she is hot, oooh. Second, every single word you wrote about America = Jesusland is true. Except Jesus would kick George Bush's ass for being in Iraq right now... you know, Iraq is where the Garden of Eden was. :)
» flanger001 on 2004-12-25 05:07:28

Hmm. Well, in response to your post, I particularly enjoy your comparison of our president to a crazy homeless person, because it's just so true. Honestly, I'd say the homeless have more direct contact with God than our wealthy, comfortable president, because honestly, what else do they have? Even in the Bible, which W is such a fan of (HA), God rarely reveals his truths to the wealthy and powerful. I find it very hard to believe that W was having a heart-to-heart with God, and God said, "Look, dude, I think you really need to go over to Iraq and mess shit up because it would make absolutely no logical sense since it wasn't Hussein but Bin Laden who attacked the US, but both of them like running around in caves, so please, trade in on the American people's thirst for justice right now and finish what your daddy started. And I'll give you my blessing." *thinks a minute*... Nope. Not a very likely scenario. Get our troops the hell out before it becomes another Vietnam, that's what I say. What are we going to do now, go around and play the "democracy police" for the entire world, once we get Iraq's highly unstable "new democracy" in place? And the phrase "geriatric children" is an excellent oxymoron. In response to Dave, was it the Garden of Eden that was in Iraq, or was it the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? I just read a book recently that made reference to the hanging gardens... As for my "hotness," i'll let that Thrad kid respond to your comment. *devious grin* Thanks though.
» Brooke (172.149.95.2) on 2004-12-25 07:32:33

squirrel
i'll break it down like this: i didnt bother reading everything to comment on the context, but that brian guy is goddamn sexy.
» bcmst3000 (68.36.101.13) on 2004-12-25 11:57:19

I'll second that.
» Brooke (172.159.67.14) on 2004-12-28 08:03:54

We are so fighting!@
» LimberFingers53 on 2004-12-29 10:20:18

uhm
Well I disagree, Not with all of it obviously as we tend to think along the same lines but some of it definitely. First off...i'm fargin pissed that the church continually uses your mom RAWR...one of these days.... Yeah we stole a lot of things from other religions as we felt we were the most superior...the whole convert or DIE theme wasn't pleasent. It would be too simple to say it was completely a need for power. Clearly many of these people believed in what they were killing for...regardless if was right or wrong. heh but don't limit stolen ideas just from christmas, let us not forget the Easter Bunny. :o) As far as the Relgion needing to evolve this got me riled up earlier this past semester. I took the class "the science of evolution" and the beginning of the class we looked at different creation stories and then made a lil chart on the board using words to describe religion and words to describe science. The teacher and some students believed that religion was static and i'm like NOOOOOO! If it were static it would not have the following it has to day. Sure the fundamentals may stay similiar but NOOOO. Hell we elected a gay bishop :::gasp::: dont' get me started on fundamentalists but well it's not all fundamentalists it's those who are extremists. Perhaps living in conservative country/going to school/working with various fundamentalist mennonite etc people i don't think they are necessarily bad. Also considering my father side of the family is plain brethern wooo prayer bonnets it's been a part of my life. I believe they have the right to be conservative and have their views it's when they take it to the next level (and this goes for anyone) rather that's violence or what have you there is a definite line that should not be crossed. People become so riled up in their beliefs they forget the whole respect/love they neighbor stuff. as I like to talk about politics, as I am a nerd, I will. Seperation of church and state was never meant to be what we the people of today believe it means. The founding fathers (sorry for the history babble) were all religious in one way or the other even if they were diests and not christians but ANYWAY. They saw the effects of state religion throughout all of Europe. If the State choice the Religion for the nationthere would be many many unhappy people. So seperation of church and state was to allow for the practice of different religion but religion was always intended to be a guide for the goverment. i have no comment about bush...(grumbles) okay this is really my point of contention. I don't see america as "Jesusland" America is far to complicated intellectually and socio/culturally for that. The "Jesusland" that america is or attempts to be (compliments of bush) goes back to the whole Winthrop - City on a hill- ideal. -which we will never achieve- the strong ideals in the country are considered those Protestants ideals ie work ethic...yet based in the old testiment uhm yes the Jews and Catholics would have a similiar ethic. Novel Idea i know. Also America being the mishmash of people makes it very difficult to be Jesusland. The only Jesus that americans wanted for the longest time is oh Protestant Jesus. Catholic Jesus not so much, catholics just as bad as the Jews...JFK,as the first Catholic president, actually while he was campaigning actually had to had to give a speech saying that he held greater allegiance to the USA than the Pope. sigh. Also with the influx of Catholic immigrants, sorry to be stereotypical for one sec but a lot of latinos are catholic, and in the not so different future our WASPy selves will be the minority in this country. This could play out in a very interesting manner. Also, to call us Jesusland would completely wipe out the contribution of say the Jews who did have a fundamental impact on this nation...for example Hollywood. As all the major studios were founded by Jewish men. Actors and today there is a strong jewish standup comedian contingent. Yet they had many other impacts on this nation. Yes I believe people would distinctally not vote for a jewish candidate for say President because he was Jewish but i think on a american Culture as a whole, great impact. Not to mention all the other cultures, ideas, religions or nonreligion, that are great forces in this country. The rise of fundamentalism in this country was caused largely due to EVOLUTION :::gasp::: sigh. so in conclusion of this uh essay heh I can see your points but I think that it is to easy to sum us up in that manner. Yes there is those that hold those beliefs but i think a strong majority even those who symapthize with some of those fundamentalist ideals don't limit themselves to that category. It's a the beauty of america. Another beauty is that we are freely allowed to discuss this. so yes. talk to you soon - if you don't expire from reading this :oP
» Ce (172.161.39.26) on 2004-12-29 11:15:46

it could be said
There are a lot of people who agree with pretty much every idea that's ever been conjured up. That's no big surprise. The thing about this country right now is that while there are a lot of very moderate people who stand up for the right things and know what to take seriously, they are a quiet minority when you compare them to the vocal Bible thumpers and regressionists that pushed and shouted their way into power. Force will always win even if it shouldn't.
» flanger001 on 2004-12-31 11:12:21

:o( i agree. unfortunately it's always about power, money, and connections...and UBERunfortunately the people that have the best things to say are never heard...
» ce (172.163.8.138) on 2004-12-31 03:11:39

I agree that Brooke is hot!
» amy on 2005-01-02 12:21:08

I think Amy is hot!
» flanger001 on 2005-01-03 02:20:08

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