Bleu Rhino Ravings

Ok, so I keep looking at this and it makes me fall out laughing everytime.  I wish there was a drumroll right before they show the mugshot of the murder suspect.

1) Schedule writing periods that, like teaching, are non-negotiable times that nothing else can encroach upon. I’ve been doing this for two weeks and have written 1000 words a session.

2) Do not give journal editors a week more than three months to respond to your work. Nag them, cajole them, but make them respond so you can move on.

3) Outline EVERYTHING you write. The best remedy for writers block is having a plan. Yes, that’s something they taught us in 10th grade, but it isn’t something I learned until recently.

4) Working with graduate students is fine, but work actually gets accomplished when you coauthor with people who have PhDs. Graduate students have other priorities.

6) Think of your colleagues the way you think of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson owned 175 humans when he wrote that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That’s how faculty are. We have lots of wonderful “values,” but self-interest and circumstances constrain our behavior. Trust, but verify.

6) Everything doesn’t have to be sent to AJS and Social Forces. You’re brilliant and all, but everything you produce doesn’t have to be read by everyone. Sometimes you’ll get more bang for your buck by sending it to that journal that sits on the desk of your intellectual peers rather than gets its dutiful skimming and placement in the bookshelf.

7) Datasets have intellectual shelf lives. Eventually people have to find SOMETHING to complain about when they review your paper. One of the easiest things is the age of the data you’re using.

8 ) Some projects can and should be abandoned. Just because you started it in grad school, just because you have the data and some charts, just because you think the findings are interesting does not mean you should spend lots of time writing, revising, and sweating over every project in your “Projects” folder. Let some of them go if they don’t fit the intellectual biography you NEED to have as a junior faculty member.

9) No one uses SAS anymore.

10) Be selfish about TA support. While your ability to inspire and inform matters a whole lot in how students and colleagues see you as a teacher, all of that time spent on assessment is like time spent coding datasets. Everyone claims it is important, but it is invisible and you get very little credit for the hours you spend on it. New graduate students can learn how to inspire and inform from senior faculty members. Juniors need people who can competently reduce our teaching (read: grading) responsibilities so we can focus on the stuff that counts in the all-important seventh year review.

Wait . . . Obama picked Rick Warren to do the invocation at his inauguration? Really?! Wow.

So, now that we’re past the amazing imagery of the first black man being elected president, I’ve been watching him steadily become Bill Clinton (who I sorta despised when he was in the White House).  Clinton gave us DOMA, DADT, NAFTA, Workfare, Three Strikes, Mandatory Minimum Sentences, the Omnibus Crime Bill (which expanded the death penalty), Rubin/Summers-style Banking Deregulation, and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA).

Is Obama going to be much better for his base?

For the peaceniks among us, he’s kept the Bush administration’s choice for Defense Secretary and is hiring a Secretary of State who promised to “obliterate Iran” if they attacked Israel.  It’s an open question whether or not Black people will get anything out of a president who only seemed to speak of race when it was a PROBLEM for him.  What will happen for Hispanic “America” with my former governor, an “immigration hawk“, as the head of the Department of Homeland Security?  Oh, and the gays.  Sigh, the poor gays.  It seems that every day we get someone new in this administration (president-elect obama, vp-elect biden, secretary of state clinton, secretary of commerce richardson, secretary of defense gates, secretary of hhs daschle) who is against gay marriage.  I’m not expecting to see much bully-pulpit talk about it from this white house.  Throw in last week’s news that Mr. Change isn’t even going to consider changing the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy until 2010, and I don’t see much more than lots of symbolic change embodied in the president-elect himself . . but not evident in policy so much.

In 1959, Judge Leon Bazile said the following words: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.”

The biblical condemnation of “such marriages” led to the expulsion of a newlywed couple (ironically named “Loving”) from the state of Virginia because it was illegal for them to be married there.  But let’s remember how this newlywed couple even wound up in front of a judge in the first place.  The police in their town raided their home, found them in bed together (which was the police’s intent), and charged them with having sex (yes, in the “hallowed”, “can’t be defiled”, “sanctified” privacy of their own bed).  When they pointed to the marriage license they received in DC, the police charged them for an even more worse “crime”: BEING MARRIED.  They could have gotten five years, but instead had to leave Virginia.

Why?  Because Judge Bazile and the people of Virginia hated Blacks?  That’s not what Judge Bazile would say.  He’d say that some of his friends were Black and they agreed with his decision.  He’d argue that he had nothing against Blacks as long as they didn’t act “too” black.  He’d probably say that Blacks still had the rights to vote, to work, and to go to school; what other special rights did they need?  But when it came to whom Blacks could fall in love with and build a life? That “decision” was to be as limited as the choice to use a water fountain or bathroom: keep your hands off what GOD INTENDED ONLY FOR WHITE PEOPLE.  His rationale for this wasn’t “racist” in his mind.  His rationale was spiritual and in keeping with what God intended, as evidenced by how God did things in the Bible.

So, what?  I’m not in one of those “un-Godly” interracial relationships; my husband/wife shares my race.  It’s not MY problem.  Hell, I’m not for interracial marriages anyway and would have probably agreed with Judge Bazile too.  Ok, I hear you, but the problem is that your support of Judge Bazile’s position on the right to marry emboldens other people to take even more dramatic steps (out of hatred, not some feigned religious necessity) to curtail other rights.  If people could argue that something as wonderful as “falling in love with someone” [of a different race] is UNNATURAL AND UNGODLY, you wouldn’t have to go very far to use the same rationale for broader public policies constraining people’s access to housing, employment, educational institutions, hotels and restaurants, and voting booths.  Of course, we know that that’s EXACTLY what people did.  They used the B-I-B-L-E’s eight or nine unapologetic prescriptions for slave behavior, the story of Noah’s “black” son Ham, Cain’s mark (black skin?), and the Tower of Babel story that Judge Bazile used as evidence of God’s stamp of approval for . . . not even FIFTY YEARS AGO . . . constraining our rights to live like the majority of Americans did.  And the rationale? Blackophobia? Noooooo, it’s not that.  We need to take away people’s rights and opportunities because “the Bible tells us so.”

Years ago, because “the Bible told them to,” people passed laws that would have made it illegal for our next President’s parents to have been married if they’d lived in one of TWENTY-TWO STATES in 1961.   In 2008’s historic election, Black people in historic numbers came out in droves to pass a law making it illegal for single people to adopt or even foster-parent children in Arkansas.

Wait.  Huhn?  I just KNEW you were going to start talking about that gay marriage thing in California.  While I’m hugely troubled by the fact that 70% of Black Californians came out and voted to help one Black man live out his dream while voting to kill the dreams of hundreds of other Black men and women, that’s the least of my concerns right now.  I don’t live in California and my state dealt with the gay marriage thing in the last election.

What has me depressed . . still . . is this Arkansas thing.  On January 30^th of this year, both a DEMOCRAT and a Republican senator in my state (Tennessee) filed bills that would prohibit “any individual who is cohabitating in a sexual relationship outside of a marriage that is valid under the constitution and laws of this state from adopting a minor.”  Obviously, this law is intended to stop gay men and lesbian women from adopting kids . . . but you can’t say that . . . so the bill is written to include straight, but unmarried, couples.  BUT SINGLES CAN STILL ADOPT!  Why would a law that deems it bad policy to allow for TWO (unmarried) PARENTS still allow ONE person to adopt?  That seems contrary to the supposed Biblical value that two parents are always better than one.  Yet this bill says that one parent is better than two if the two live together but don’t have a marriage license.

Now, remember, just a little over 40 years ago a Black woman in TN couldn’t GET A MARRIAGE LICENSE if the man she wanted to marry had White parents because “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Sheniqua” . . . .

Anyway, I digress.  It’s pretty obvious then, that we’re not talking about principles of child rearing here or what’s TRULY in the best interest of the 10,000 children in foster care in Tennessee . . . a third of which are Black.  It’s about people’s irrational enmity towards gay men and lesbian women.  Which brings us back to last week.  The BLACK VOTERS of Arkansas–a state too close to mine for comfort politically–went even further than my state legislature tried to.  Like Tennessee, nearly a third of the children in Arkansas’ foster care system are black.  Black people turned out in droves to vote for Obama and then pulled the switch making it impossible for single people (gay or straight) to adopt OR EVEN BE FOSTER PARENTS for those 934 Black children.  Why did they do this?  Because they are planning to adopt them?  Because they are worried that straight people like our own cousin Cynthia might make crappy parents?  Of course not.  They did it for the same reason 70% of Blacks (far more than any other racial group) voted for 18,000 divorces in California last week . . . Black America is irrational in its hatred of gay people.

In spite of the fact that gays minister to us in multiple roles (not just the choir, I assure you) at our churches, Black America still believes that God hates niggers . . . i mean, fags.  In spite of the fact that gays work alongside us, live next door to us, serve us in restaurants and hotels, Black America believes the US would be better off if all gays vanished tomorrow.  In spite of the fact that gays are in all of our families, Black America votes to deny them the right to be happy as lovers, partners, and even parents.  In spite of our history of White religio-politicians getting race wrong (I Peter 2:18/Titus 2:9-10) and getting gender wrong (I Corinthians 14:34/Colossians 3:18) in ways that STILL limit the rights of Blacks and women, Black America marches right behind them now that they turn to address the issue of sexual orientation.

The Republican party fooled entirely too many of us (1.6 MILLION Black people) into voting for George Bush in 2004 AFTER he’d started the war, AFTER he made clear he was no “compassionate conservative”, and AFTER lowering taxes on his rich friends and giving the rest of us nothing. Really, MORE Black people voted for him in 2004 than voted for him in 2000.  Some of us argue that the SIXTEEN percent of Blacks who voted for Bush in Ohio (it was 9% in 2000) are to blame for the last four years.  Why’d they vote for him?  Because our Black pastors (TD Jakes, I’m looking at you!) got us all worked up over the dangers of gays having the right to visit their loved ones in the hospital, or come under their partner’s health insurance as they homeschool their kids, or be able to stay in their house if their partner died.  Again, it just seems our priorities are a little off.

So, I write this entirely too long diatribe to encourage you to think twice when ballot measures or politicians come before you, telling you that the scary “gay movement” is coming to destroy America and you, for God’s sake, need to stand up and be counted.  Many of us are familiar with the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller that ends with the line, “And then they came for me, but by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

I tend to think of this stuff even more basically: you’re either marching in Birmingham or you’re opening the faucets on the firehoses.

I’m in North Carolina meeting with folks at North Carolina colleges and just checking out Raleigh-Durham.  I’d love to have something interesting to say about this visit, but the most interesting thing just happened on the way to my room.  Anyway, I just got on the elevator to go up to my room and there’s this woman already on it.  She’s a Black woman holding a beer and some kind of dark red alcohol in a glass that she’s bringing up from the lounge.  She asks me how I’m doing.  I say “good, how about you”.  Her response?  “I’m blessed and highly favored, praise God”.  Haha.  I don’t know why that strikes me as so comical, but it does.

So, I’m learning Dutch and I’m really getting a kick out of how much I’m learning and how quickly I’m learning it. I know lots of vocabulary. People (man/mannen, vrouw/vrouwen, jongen/jongens, meisje/meisjes, baby/baby’s, en kind/kinderen), animals (kat, hond, olifant, paard, vogel, vis), vehicles (auto, boot, motor, vliegtuig), various other nouns (gatel, tafel, bord, huis, clown, bal, haar, raam, fiets, ei, vinger, oog), numbers (nul, een, twee, drie, vier, vijf, sez, zeven, acht, negen, tien, vijftien, twintig, en dertig), colors and other adjectives (rood, oranje, groen, blauw, roze, geel, zwart, wit, lang, kort, heel koort, oud, nieuw), and verbs (springt, loopt, leest, valt, rijdt, vleigt, rent, zit, en zingt), and how to tell time. Mind you this is only lesson 6 (of 11) of unit 1 (of of level 1 (of 2) . . but I’m making steady progress. Yeah for me and thanks to Rosetta Stone and Maurice!

So, this weekend, we tried to have our final set of auditions. Chirelle and I were geeked because we were promised lots of support and, in the end, the auditions weren’t even advertised (in ANY format . . all of which we had submitted “on time”). So, after sitting through another service with no information in the bulletin, no powerpoint announcement during offering, no mention from the pulpit, we just decided there was no need for drama at our church and pulled the plug on the whole thing. Oh, that that would have been the end of it.

Can I just tell you how frustrating yesterday was for me? I totally experienced what it must feel like (to some small degree I’m sure) to have had a miscarriage. All day I had to keep reminding myself that the play and the drama guild were no more. I kept having to, literally, say to myself “stop thinking about that!”.

Walking past halloween stuff and reminding myself that we no longer need to stock up on makeup supplies. Closing down accounts for stores where we’d need to purchase/rent lighting, instrumentation, costuming, and stage construction materials. Erasing webpages and taking folder “shortcuts” off of my desktop. Moving all of the “how to do theater production” books back the basement. Trying not to thinking about staging or music when I put in my CD of “Spring Awakening” or “Color Purple” that I’ve been listening to all week (I actually had to stop listening to them). Crushing thoughts about the cast pictures, playbills, tapes of the music for the musicians, budgets, etc. that I’ve already spent hours working on. Feeling that weird sense of loss when I’m cleaning or straightening up and see one of those audition sheets or the tools I bought specifically to measure the sanctuary.

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt anything like this, but I’m also not sure anything I’ve planned to do was so soundly sabotaged (intentionally or otherwise) by other people. I’ve started things with very little early interest (the gospel choir at Arizona with 4 people showing up for the first rehearsal), but because I controlled how it was advertised and what not, I didn’t “give up” and things grew. But in this case, it really felt like someone else killed this dream/vision and that’s just weird. Mind you, as I told a friend of mine, I’m not experiencing “sadness” (and definitely not feeling any “repentance” or desire to take another stab at it) . . . I just keep feeling this weird sense of “loss”.

So, I watched the Tony’s last night and kept waiting and waiting for someone . . anyone . . . in their long thank you speeches to ever utter the words we laugh at when we hear it on music, television, and movie awards: “I’d like to thank God”. What in the world is THAT about?! Does anyone remember if past year’s black (there were NONE only Bill T. Jones last night . . . even August Wilson’s 10th play Radio Golf won absolutely nothing) recipients thanked God?! If you don’t believe me that no one thanked God, check it out for yourself in the transcripts of the speeches.

At a recent entrepreneurship conference hosted by Black Enterprise magazine, the Reverend Jesse Jackson stated that he’s “looking for a generation of young black and brown men and women to begin to study the science of capital because it is key to understanding what makes this system work.” At a Ford Fellows conference I attended, Dr. Shirley Jackson pointed out that there was some pressure for her to use her great intellect and major in something other than physics, something that would be more useful “down on the ground” where Blacks as a community would reap some benefit. I have faced relatives’ initial confusion with and later concern for my choice to become a sociologist, most of it revealing their mistaken idea that I was spending 6 more years in school to become a parole officer or a social worker.

These examples–and the hundreds more that I am sure my colleagues can add–may hint at reasons for the continued sidestepping of careers in academia that is now common practice among Black and Latino college graduates. Whether you call it rational choice, missed opportunities, or in the less formal jargon of our grandmothers, mother wit and common sense, young Latinos and Blacks are not choosing careers in higher education. In communities where our parents, siblings and children are statistically more likely to visit a hospital or courtroom than a laboratory or lecture hall, where the media lauds the accomplishments of a Michael Jordan or Ricky Martin and is silent on those of a William Julius Wilson or John Garcia, and where spending time on a college campus is valued only as a means to an end and never an end in itself, is there any wonder that young Blacks and Latinos are looking outside of the academy for occupational role models?

When you plug years of education into a regression equation, it becomes clear that encouraging students we encounter to pursue a masters, doctoral, or professional degree is certainly wise counsel. In the credential-oriented society that the US is fast becoming, more letters behind your name often equals greater income. In spite of the dire predictions about Black and Latino representations in the educational pipeline, some of us are pursuing and receiving doctoral degrees. But what are we doing with them? Are we choosing the path which ensures that future generations of minority college graduates are educated by people who look like them or are we taking those degrees into considerably more lucrative careers as entrepreneurs, businessmen and women, health and legal professionals, and private industry scientists? My research suggests that more of us are doing the latter.

Those Blacks who are teaching at the college level are well represented in the physical, biological and social sciences (60%) with few taking place in the humanities (9%). Latinos who are teaching are less well represented in the physical, biological and social sciences (49%); they are strongly represented in the humanities (33%). Compare these numbers to White (57% in the sciences and 13% in the humanities) and Asian (74% in the sciences and 6% in the humanities) students and it becomes clear that once we do make it to doctoral programs, we are represented in some of the fields where the greatest need seems to exist.

While Blacks and Latinos are as likely as Whites (30 and 34% compared to 34% for Whites) to use their doctoral degrees in colleges and universities, the remaining two-thirds in all of the groups do not. What they do with their degrees is not only valuable intrinsically, but it is especially more valuable extrinsically [read: economically]. Non-teaching Blacks are using their doctoral degrees in management, psychology and counseling practices. Non-teaching Latinos are using their doctoral degrees in science labs, engineering firms, psychology practices, and management positions. Our peers who choose these paths are by no means making a bad decision financially. For example, Black and Latino graduates who use their doctoral degrees in management positions rather than academic ones tend to make anywhere from $17,000 to $24,000 more than their colleagues who choose to teach future generations of doctoral students. The “problem” of their exits resides in the fact that their absence in the classroom is felt strongest in those areas where their presence as role models and mentors is most needed, namely in colleges of business and science.

We often hear the clarion call for diversity in the student body and the concomitant calls for similar diversity in the faculty, but the question still remains . . . should we take our place in the private labor market (or society) or should we use or degrees “down on the ground” as mentors in the academy. Is it our responsibility to stay back and help fix, simply through our presence, a system that allows us to finally attain some of the financial rewards that have been kept at bay in the past? Something to think about at least.

So, lately, I’ve been lamenting the fact that I can’t keep my mouth shut in Sunday School. Lots of friends think I think too much and, obviously, that can become a problem in a “Back To The Basics” Sunday School class. Given that I have just taught six semesters of “Christian Fundamentals” at Victory, most of the “basics” are VERY basic for me and so I sit there and my mind leaps forward when we discuss some of the basic tenets of Christianity. Mind you, I do learn in the class and leave energized, but this Sunday I had a lot of questions. I imagine by the last question (the teacher kept calling on me directly . . . “Richard, I think you have a question” . . without me even raising my hand), people were rolling their eyes and sucking their teeth. That does get kind of nerve-wracking. I’m not intentionally “raising the bar” . . it’s the teacher in me. I can’t help it.

So, last night I went to my last new members orientation class. I decided that I would write my questions/arguments down instead of asking them. My biggest fear in THAT class is that any one of my questions would stall us out. Mind you, some of the people in the class were very smart (this one young girl . . . amazing!) or churchie enough to know all of the usual church slogans, but I still knew that anything I’d ask would side track us. So, I decided to have self-control and write my questions down instead of answering them. I even plastered a silly grin on my face so that the teacher wouldn’t think something was wrong with me and ask me, directly, if I had any questions, comments, or observations.

I’ll put the questions/arguments here. I know the answers to a number of these (I think), but they did give me pause because of declarations made by the teacher or other students:

1. The teacher used the “turn the reins of your life over to Christ” when you make Him “Lord of your life . . and not just savior” metaphor. What does that mean in practice? I think about Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. Adam and Eve had few options for behavior. Moses had more than they did. David (the king) had even more. Now we have LOTS more. Are we supposed to “shake the magic 8-Ball of prayer” every single step of our lives? How do we know God’s will at every single decision we make? When you don’t ask, does He have you on automatic pilot (i.e., “steps of righteous are ordered)?
   
2. The teacher asked us what we are being saved from? The class seemed to settle on “sin” as the answer. What does THAT mean? Are we saved from “sin” or are we saved from the “penalty of sin”? She said that Christ’s death has given us “options” and now we can choose not to sin. But what if we do? Do we suffer its wages again?
3. Why is the shedding of blood (originally lambs and eventually Christ’s) so important in the salvation process? What does blood have to do with whether or not God will accept you? This blood sacrifice thing (think of Apocalypto) seems to be pretty important in many religions . . we call it violent and evil in others . . . but why? Why is it that we don’t even blink at the thought the God told Abraham to take his son up to the top of a mountain and slit his throat? More importantly, why do we want to strap women to the electric chair when they say God told them to do that today? God can encourage filicide in Abraham and have a purpose, but He doesn’t do that anymore?
   
4. The biggest celebration of the Christian calendar is that cluster of days in the Spring when we celebrate Jesus’ death (on Good Friday) and His resurrection (on Easter Sunday). Which of those two events is the most important? Shouldn’t His death (while as depressing as any funerary event and another example of filicide, right?) be the thing we celebrate? Our salvation came because He died . . . not because He rose, right?
5. Romans 5:12 says that “by one man sin entered the world”. I know it’s pointless to question history, but I’m really very curious about what would have happened had Adam been obedient and not eaten the fruit. Did sin enter the world when Eve ate it or only when Adam did? I might argue that sin entered the world when Eve ate it because of the church’s (particularly today) belief that “married people are one body”. If Adam hadn’t eaten it, would life have gone on as usual and would God have just given Him a replacement and kicked Eve out of the garden alone? It seems to me that Adam HAD to eat the fruit once Eve did. And I get so aggravated when people say “Why wasn’t Adam there when Eve was off talking to the serpent”. Many of the preachers who say that couldn’t even tell you what their kids are doing in a 700 sq foot house, let alone know where their wife might be while she’s off doing her job. Eve had work to do in the garden too . . why would Adam have been with her every moment?
6. We read Romans 5:13 which says “for before the law was given sin was in the world, but sin is not taken into account when there is no law”. The teacher then explained that “the law” in this scripture is “The Ten Commandments”. That raised two questions for me. First, what is sin if not “disobeying the law”? So how can Adam and Eve be accountable to wrongdoing (and anyone else prior to Moses going up the mountain) if there’s no penalty for sin without a law? Wasn’t God’s command not to eat the fruit a “law”? Secondly, why is the law only (?) the 10 Commandments? Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy are jampacked full of commands and penalties for disobeying those commands; aren’t these laws too? In fact, our laws today only have an impact on us because they carry penalties . . otherwise we would disobey them. Many of the OT laws that we totally ignore today had very clear penalties. The 10 Commandments didn’t.
7. One of the basic tenets of Christianity is that we only get a chance to “get saved” on this side of physical death. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an explanation (other than “cause God said so, now shut up with your questions”) for why THAT has to be the point when the possibility for forgiveness, grace, redemption, or repentence stops. If our spirit never actually dies, the flesh is just a shell holding who we truly are. Why does the removal of that shell make “my living soul” incapable of reaching out to God?
8. I need people to stop misquoting the “absent from the body and present with the Lord” (II Corinthians 5:6-8) scripture. People insist it means that when believers die, we go to Heaven immediately. That may make us feel good and all at funerals, but how would you reconcile that with “the dead in Christ will rise first” (I Thess 4)? If you read the scripture in context, the part preceding this says that “while we’re in the body, we’re absent from the Lord”. The part we keep misquoting says that we would RATHER BE “absent from the the body and present with the Lord”. It doesn’t say that when we die, we go to Heaven. It says that we should prefer to be with God than down here in our earthly shell.
9. Part of the basic and oft-quoted mechanisms to receive salvation is to “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord . . . .” (Romans 10:9). What of the deaf and dumb? Should we take that seriously? Can people who cannot confess this ever receive salvation? Is “shaking your head” enough? Is “thinking a ‘yes’” good enough? Whenever I sit in the exit rows on a plane, the flight attendant says s/he must have a spoken agreement to open those doors in the midst of an emergency. A head nod won’t do. Will a head nod get you into heaven? This, of course, goes with my argument about “faith cometh by HEARING”. (Romans 10:17). Can the deaf gain faith? This is why I wish people with the “gift of healing” would get on the job!
10. The teacher talked about marriage and the the “fact” that all children need a father and a mother because men and women bring different things to the relationship that the other can’t possibly bring. I know that’s what religious people say. The Bible doesn’t say that and in those places where it seems to suggest that women are limited in their contributions to marriage, the workforce, church structure . . these same people would argue that women AREN’T limited because God “doesn’t distinguish between us based on our genitalia” (Gal. 3:28). Again . . God did not split Adam in half to create Eve, taking out his heart so she could be more loving, removing his hands so she could better comfort children, or removing his arms so only she would crave an affectionate hug. He took out his rib bone. Yes. That’s it . . a rib bone. If we are psychologically different, it is because we BECOME that way . . not because we are BORN that way. I need church women to make a choice. Either you believe you’re different from (and potentially weaker, less than, inferior to) men in important ways or you’re not. I prefer to think you aren’t. But maybe I’m wrong.
11. We got into the question of idolatry very briefly and the teacher (as many do) said that working on Sunday is only idolatry if you have a choice not to work on Sunday. Um, don’t we ALWAYS have a choice not to work on Sunday? It’s called choosing a job that doesn’t require you to work on Sunday. If someone believes that they MUST observe the Sabbath and MUST sit in church on Sunday morning in order to show that they serve God and aren’t serving mammon, it seems to me that that person should stop depending on mammon (i.e., their employer) to supply their needs, quit that job, and wait for God to provide either something that doesn’t require Sunday morning schedules or “supply their needs according to his riches in glory.” It seems like a cop-out to say “but my boss makes me work on Sunday” so you don’t look like you have any say in putting mammon first.

IF YOU HAVE RESPONSES OR COMMENTS TO THESE . . . COMMENT TO THE POST HERE WITH THE NUMBER OF THE STATEMENT YOU’RE RESPONDING TO.

. . . and I forgot to tape it. I suck.

My best bud won Jeopardy today and it was great fun watching him play. Things were a little shaky there in the beginning because he wasn’t answering any questions. Then he got the question for “Also found between your vertebrae, this flexible tissue is what shapes your nose and ears” (the answer is “cartilage”) and that’s when we got cracking. As you can see, in the end, he had amassed nearly $22,000.  If you would like more details about Martin’s performance, the questions, even a little graph showing how he did from beginning to end, you can go to the J! Archive Webpage for more information. Congratulations Martin and I look forward to seeing how you do on Monday. The big question is . . will I remember to tape it?

I loved that he didn’t buckle under Giuliani’s bullying.

The man is unflappable. Splendid.

Is Al Qaeda Iraq not listening to our news media and what our politicians are arguing over?  I have to admit that I’m at a loss for why Al Qaeda would attack and capture three of our soldiers and then brag that they, AL QAEDA, did this.  If the argument in the US is if “this war in Iraq has little to do with Al Qaeda and is just a civil war between two religious sects” and the answer to that would be “leave Iraq”, why would Al Qaeda give those who believe we should stay in Iraq to DEFEAT THEM (not stop a civil war) more ammunition in the debate we’re having?  It seems that the smart enemy would do everything they can to increase the idea that there is no Al Qaeda in Iraq and that every act of violence there is done at the hands of Shiites or Sunnis.  Then we’d leave.

Apparently, there must be something to the charge that we’re still fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq.  They’ve popped up more than a couple of times in past weeks taking the credit for some of the biggest problems our soldiers have had to resolve there.   If the Democrats are going to be honest, they really should start to argue that we’re fighting TWO wars in Iraq: the civil war that we’re smack in the middle of (and shouldn’t be) and the continuing war against Al Qaeda terrorists embodied by our battle with the Iraq branch of that murderous organization.  The problem is our involvement in the first war creates civilian casualties which cause angry Iraqis to join our enemy in that second war.