10. Anglican Aerobics are good for you .... sit-stand-kneel, sit-stand-kneel, sit-stand-kneel .
9. We get to drink real wine at church .... even on Sunday.
8. Not only can Episcopal women wear pants ... they can be Deacons, Priests and Bishops.
7. We "proselytize" by serving our fellow man,not by assaulting him on the street corner and telling him that he is bound for hell.
6. You don't need a life guard on duty to be baptized ... a small measuring cup will do .
5. Our Bishops are real people ... they will sit on the ground and play "duck-duck-goose" with the kids at camp. (Diocese of Central PA)
4. We ""respect the dignity of ALL human beings" be they black, white, gay, or straight.
3. Our National Cathedral has a very cool Darth Vader gargoyle .
2. There has never been an "Episcopal Inquisition" .... God gave you a brain - we encourage you to use it .
1. Scripture ... Tradition ... and .... REASON !!!! Need I say more ??
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
One paddle short of a regatta ???
This little tidbit comes from the undeniably warped mind of fundamentlist parenting "expert" Mr. James Dobson in his book "The Strong Willed Child" . . .
"At eleven o'clock that night, I told Siggie (the family dachsund) to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed.
On this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater. When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. "Get lost!"
"I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me 'reason' with Mr. Freud. What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!"
What kind of neurotic control freak does this to the family pet ?? Wouldn't it have been much simpler and much more humane to pick up the dog and and place him in the kennel ?? So by his standards if a toddler gets comfy on the sofa in the evening and doesn't want to go to bed I should go and get my belt and beat him down the hall with it untill he crawles into the crib himself to get away from me and my belt . It would in my mind be much simpler and more humane to pick up the child and place him in the crib . I can only imagine the emtional state of this man's children. Did he 'reason' with them like he did Siggy every time they didn't want to eat their peas ? But wait... there's more ... not only does Mr. Dobson feel that the family pet should be beaten into submission , it seems he advocates the breaking and subduing of your infant's will ...
"[I]t is possible to create a fussy, demanding baby by rushing to pick him up every time he utters a whimper or sigh. Infants are fully capable of learning to manipulate their parents through a process called reinforcement, whereby any behavior that produces a pleasant result will tend to recur. Thus, a healthy baby can keep his mother hopping around his nursery twelve hours a day (or night) by simply forcing air past his sandpaper larynx."
Babies cry , that is their only form of communication , I suppose he taught his children from birth to come right out and ask for what ever it was that they needed , and not to bother him for anything so trivial as human company or comfort . My children were carried almost constantly from birth and they have yet to murder any one OR beat the family dog with a belt !!!!!
I do believe some one in this story of Mr. Dobson's should be living in a kennel and it isn't Siggy the dog !!!!
"At eleven o'clock that night, I told Siggie (the family dachsund) to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed.
On this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater. When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. "Get lost!"
"I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me 'reason' with Mr. Freud. What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!"
What kind of neurotic control freak does this to the family pet ?? Wouldn't it have been much simpler and much more humane to pick up the dog and and place him in the kennel ?? So by his standards if a toddler gets comfy on the sofa in the evening and doesn't want to go to bed I should go and get my belt and beat him down the hall with it untill he crawles into the crib himself to get away from me and my belt . It would in my mind be much simpler and more humane to pick up the child and place him in the crib . I can only imagine the emtional state of this man's children. Did he 'reason' with them like he did Siggy every time they didn't want to eat their peas ? But wait... there's more ... not only does Mr. Dobson feel that the family pet should be beaten into submission , it seems he advocates the breaking and subduing of your infant's will ...
"[I]t is possible to create a fussy, demanding baby by rushing to pick him up every time he utters a whimper or sigh. Infants are fully capable of learning to manipulate their parents through a process called reinforcement, whereby any behavior that produces a pleasant result will tend to recur. Thus, a healthy baby can keep his mother hopping around his nursery twelve hours a day (or night) by simply forcing air past his sandpaper larynx."
Babies cry , that is their only form of communication , I suppose he taught his children from birth to come right out and ask for what ever it was that they needed , and not to bother him for anything so trivial as human company or comfort . My children were carried almost constantly from birth and they have yet to murder any one OR beat the family dog with a belt !!!!!
I do believe some one in this story of Mr. Dobson's should be living in a kennel and it isn't Siggy the dog !!!!
Sunday, April 24, 2005
My english is tainted !!!
Your Linguistic Profile: |
| 60% General American English |
| 40% Dixie |
| 0% Midwestern |
| 0% Upper Midwestern |
| 0% Yankee |
What Kind of American English Do You Speak?
Please proselytize Me !!
Lately I've spent a good deal of time trying to find the "please proselytize me " sign on my back , or perhaps it is on my front as they seem to get me coming and going . I have come to expect it when going into the local Christian Book store , they are very conservative and seem to equate being Episcopal to being demonic . I shudder to think what they would brand me if they actually bothered to ask me what I believe or feel spiritually instead of just lumping me in the pile as an "evil seed" . As I said I expect such treatment from the Christians at the bookstore , however now it seems that "they " are everywhere . When I come out of the grocery store there are nice little pamphlets stuck under the wiper blade on my van , I have found them stuck in my library books , not long ago I ordered some math books for the kids and each one had a pamphlet tucked into it . At least they are not those horrid hate filled tracts that I saw as a child in Alabama , but they are none the less a pain in my posterior . And lets not forget the couples who come to my door asking how I feel about God's plan for this earth !!! ( I'm not real clear on God's plan , however I do have my own plan if you don't get of my porch pretty darn quick !!! ) If I don't answer the door they leave me some light reading material about how God is going to destroy this earth so I had better repent . YUCK !!!! As a person who is not a believer in a literal Hell , I find this quite amusing . (except that they always seem to knock when I am trying to make dinner or something) If they were truly concerned for my eternal soul then they would stop knocking on my door and leaving me pamphlets so that when I do face my Divine Creator I won't have to try to explain why I clobbered those people who were trying to save my soul !!!
Sunday, April 17, 2005
I got "SAVED" !!!
Scared you there for a minute , didn't I . Not exactly something you hear everyday in the Episcopal tradition . That phrase is a throw back from my childhood spent in the most fundamentalist of enclaves ... South Alabama . What I really got was the movie "SAVED" . Our daughter came to us one day and said that we had to see this movie called "SAVED" she had caught part of it at a friends house during a sleep - over and insisted that we see it . All she said was that it was "a really cool movie" and for those of you who have never had the privilage of meeting the very enthusiastic soul who claims to be our child , she is in a word .... PERSISTANT !! So Big-Daddy-O ordered it from Blockbuster online , who delivered it right to our mailbox , you gotta love that !! I must say that I was more than just a little hesitant about this film , based mainly on the title and what little bits of vague info we could pull from the above mentioned girly-child (she is after all a twelve year old) . Having grown up in the King-James-Only, Full-Imersion-required , No-drinking, card playing, or dancing, "Chick Tract" distrubting portion of the Bible Belt , the whole concept of "being Saved" still makes me a bit queasy . (for those of you who haven't had the pleasure check them out ...http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractlist.asp ... I'm sure you'll be as thrilled with them as I was) The "GOD" of the Fundamentalist "Salvation" was never anything I wanted to have any aquantience with . He is not a God of love , but a God of fear ! I'd be willing to bet more than half of the "soul winning" (what an arrogant concept) that has happend has been out of sheer terror at the thought of burning in hell for all eternity rather than any genuine love for God . But ... I digress ... IMAGINE THAT !!! This movie is a must see , I haven't laughed so hard in quite a while . I swear that the writers of this script went to the same high school I did . It probably wouldn't have been quite so funny had I not have "known" so many of the characters personally, all I would have to do was fill in the blanks with familliar names . It truly is a dead-on portrayal of the fundamentalist mind set . Beware tho' there are few baudy scenes and more than a few "dirty words" so you might want to view it first to judge wheather it is appropriate for your kids . Mid- older teen is my suggestion . The underlying message of the film is that God's love overcomes all things and has no bounderies of "saved or un-saved" . If you are not easily offended by religious humor , check it out , it's a riot !!
Sunday, April 10, 2005
What do I want to be when I grow up ?
More to the point, what do I want to be when my kids grow up ? I've had lots of time to think about it , there have been times when it was an all consuming obsession . That's usually after a day spent teaching history , pre-algebra and all of the other things that come along with being a homeschool mom . I figgure I have about six more years to come up with a good plan . Or even a workable plan , which is harder than it seems being that we live in the middle of NOWHERE !!
Very few places to spend some interesting volunteer hours , no community college . I could just sit around and watch the grass grow , but that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun . Perhaps I should just have a few more children , then I won't have to worry about it for another eighteen years !!
Very few places to spend some interesting volunteer hours , no community college . I could just sit around and watch the grass grow , but that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun . Perhaps I should just have a few more children , then I won't have to worry about it for another eighteen years !!
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