TAGGED

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
Umm, Egg Nog in the middle of the day, hot chocolate at night and when it is really cold.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Wrap.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White, white everywhere.

4.Do you hang mistletoe?
Nope, stuffs poison. I do like to kiss in the doorway though.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
Some years never. Usually, a little each weekend from TGD on.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
Turkey and more turkey.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child:
Decorating the tree.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I don't really know, when I was fairly young, maybe 7.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
We open gifts at my Mother's on Christmas Eve then have just spouse and kids on the Day.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
Some years I don't. Some years I use a small tree and use peacock feathers or the the such, one year I used an old round mutli tiered stand and bedecked it with pink and white roses and ribbons. I gave everyone small gifts that year so I could tuck them onto the rack. Once in a great while I haul out all the old family ornaments and do a traditional tree.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
Love it when it falls, ready for it to go the next day.

12. Can you ice skate?
Never ever even thought about it until now.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
There never has been "a" favorite. I have recieved lots of favorites.

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Having everone together, feeding them, lighting candles and just enjoying the love. And when its all over, I love to sit in the living room with Cat and relish the memories.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
Pecan pie.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
I have two, Christmas Eve with my Mother and all my extended family and Christmas Day with spouse and my sons and daughter.

17. What tops your tree?
Ha, see #10.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
Giving, but I like getting things that I know mean the person who gave it to me really gets me.

19. What is your favorite Holiday Song?
Greensleeves.

20. Candy Canes?
The soft Leos in a can.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is nearly here. As I do every year, I have been
reviewing the things I am thankful for. Here is this years partial list.

1. No one in my family has died this year.

2. No one in my family has suffered a divorce this year.

3. This year, once again, my spouse is near the top of my list. He
was and continues to be the restoration of the years the locust has
eaten.

4. I am thankful for my sons and my daughter.

5. I am thankful that my youngest son has found love, and thankful
for the person she is.

6. I am thankful for opportunities to be with family.

7. I am thankful for my road trip with my sister, nephew, aunt and
mother to see my favorite uncle and his wife.

8. I am thankful for Smokey, and I hope that I have made his
remaining years sweeter.

9. I am thankful for my work at the museum.

10. I am thankful I still have my mother.

11. I am thankful for a few finished paintings and a handful of
satisfying photographs.

12. I am thankful to be alive.

Installment 2

It has been pointed out to me that my post (part 1)
is unfair in that it talks about religion in general but
uses Christian fundamentalism for the more specific
and more negative examples.

It is certainly not my intent to “bash” any group.
What I was trying, not very well, to get around to,
is the role that absolutism in religion plays in
political and social decisions and the calculated
use politicians make of the fundamentalist.

IT APPEARS TO ME that the constant insistence
in fundamentalism that members believe and behave
in certain fairly narrowly prescribed ways has created
a large body of people who relate to society and
politics in the same manner. If you have been trained
to believe a certain set of facts which are exclusive,
and one of those facts is in friction with other issues,
you are likely to make a decision that supports your
core belief, even if you cannot otherwise reconcile
that decision.

The easiest example is abortion. We have had
legal abortion in the US since Roe v. Wade. There is
almost no chance that abortion will ever be entirely
made illegal here. Fundamentalism teaches that abortion
is wrong. This belief, in various intensities, is shared by
a large numbers of non-fundamentalist as well. The
difference in the absolute nature of the fundamentalist
belief. Since abortion is wrong, it must, at any cost,
be made illegal. Persons who have abortions must
break the law to obtain one. The absolute belief that
abortion is wrong transcends the individual and creates
the belief that the system, in this case the US, that
allows abortion commits sin on a gross scale bringing
the displeasure and wrath of G-d not only on the
individual, who can be forgiven, but on the entire country,
which perhaps cannot be forgiven.

To the absolutist, no response to abortion short of
making it illegal is acceptable. Politicians tapped into
this absolute belief some years back. They can run on a
platform centered around the pretense of making abortion
illegal. They know there is no real chance that abortion
will be made illegal but they can be sure of obtaining the
votes of those who believe, in an absolutist manner, that
abortion should be illegal. The absolutist must, in order
to maintain his self identity, always vote for the party or
individual that states that he also shares the same absolutist
view of the issue. No other issue, unless it also part of
the absolutist view will trump this one issue. The only
danger the politician faces is if he supports a conflicting
absolutist issue which has equal intensity. The easy way
around this problem for the politician is to give lip service
to supporting an entire set of statements of belief and intent.
For this reason, politicians who use the abortion platform
almost always also use anti gay marriage language as well.

To an absolutist, abortion is far more of an issue then
the minimum wage, the environment or even ethics in
the public arena. In this respect fundamentalism, by
its absolutist belief structure has put its flocks in harness
and blinders.

Religion -1st installation

There are three sorts of religion.

The first is Mystic. It is not based on text or tradition.
Instead the mystic experiences the divine from within
herself. The mystic may see G-d in fluttering leaves,
sunshine or baby birds. Many mystics have had
experiences with the divine since childhood. The
experiences are so vivid and real that they can dismiss
text and tradition if it conflicts with what they know
first hand. There is a mystic strain in all established
religion. In the Christian world the Quakers are mystic,
in the Islamic world the Sufi’s are mystic and within
Judaism the Hasidic communities are mystic. But
mysticism reaches far beyond these bastions of
acceptance. There are mystics in every group of
significant size. The Roman Catholic church has
always had a large complement of mystic individuals
and numbers of them can be found in mainline churches
everywhere. With a few notable exceptions, including
the Hasidic communities, mystics are rarely members of
a fundamentalist group.

The second group, arguably the true bedrock of
organized religion is the mainline religious. There are
mainline denominations, including the major Methodist,
Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, and mainline
individuals within denominations and groups that are
predominantly mystic or predominantly Fundamental.
Mainline religious place tradition and positive texts
above personal experience and absolute interpretation
of texts. Mainline religious typically consider the
responsibility to feed the hungry and cloth the naked as
being more important than the duty taken on by
fundamentalism to convert the masses.

Fundamentalist groups, including most Baptist, most
Church of God, and independent Church of Christ,
place text before experience or tradition. Typically,
within these Christian denominations, Jesus has
replaced the G-d of the Old Testament as “Lord.”
Mystical experience is viewed with great distrust except
for conversion and healing experiences which are
encouraged and celebrated. Likewise, mainline religion
is often ridiculed by fundamentalist as lukewarm or
merely social religion. Historically, fundamentalist have
seen the missionary duty as primarily one of
conversion.

The knowledge most individuals have of the groups
they are not part of is very limited. Often intentionally
so. Some groups are proudly, and sometimes
belligerently, ignorant. Fundamentalist often home
school, not to provide a better education for their
children, but to insulate them from such things as
modern science and non-fundamentalist classmates and
instructors. Frequently the depth of their elected
narrow way includes embracing a particular version of
sacred text to the exclusion of all other translations.
Mainline denominations are viewed as of dubious
authenticity and members of mainline denominations
are often viewed as not fully Christian.

Mainline religious tend to embrace secular education,
including higher education for men and women.
Mainline religious often view fundamentalist with
either alarm or with blind acceptance of them as fellow
Christians with similar beliefs. Mainliners rarely
indulge in absolutism, which is the hallmark of
fundamentalism.

Mystics are more often a result of nature, as opposed to
nurture, and may find themselves in seemingly unlikely
places. The most beautiful of these unlikely places may
be the Hasidic community. Hasidic Jews are
fundamentalist (within their individual groups) in their
absolute rules and views of food, charity, observance,
ritual and practice. They also are mystical in their
individual relationships to G-d. Hasidic celebrations
have a palatable sense of the numinous and of joy
which I believe is the result of mystical experience
within the framework of fundamentalist life style.
Because they span the entire spectrum of religious type
they also include mainline belief and form, although the
middle ground is in this case, the least prominent.

Patriotic Chores, Mud and Ignorance

I went to the polls and cast my vote. Spouse went also. It has not
really stopped raining here since some time during the night.
Rossville is usually red, and if I had to guess today’s outcome in
here, it probably will be today as well. Maybe my bit of blue will at
least make it a little purple.

I wish I could have gone to Tennessee to vote AGAINST
CORKER. He was bad enough as a mayor, but in this campaign
he has really proved to be a weasely spoiler. Some of his ads were
racist, sexually loaded and just plain low down. And his mother! If
my mother looked as mean as she does I would certainly not parade
her around like I still lived under her skirt. He kept his sweet
looking wife under wraps until the 11th hour, wonder why?

Thank anyone who listens that tonight I won’t hear, “and I
approved this ad”.

Because of the rain, I took care of my pets this morning and got
good and muddy as my reward. The chickens don’t care about
weather, they just want grub and fresh water. My old hen, Betty,
was fussing around waiting on her clean water while Sarah, the
child of Betty, was anxious for some good organic sprouted bread.
Bentley, the old roo, was just strutting around. Bentley, is no brain
surgeon. Max Spangle, the half grown child of Betty and Bentley,
had already cleaned up the ear of corn spouse gave him last night
and was crowing and posturing and doing the head bob. Max lives
in solitary confinement, only temporarily until the new hens come in
the spring, because his father tried to murder him (after successfully
killing his oldest son). The dogs are always, without fail, horrified
and shocked that I FEED chickens. Clearly, they both think
chickens are low and meant only to be chased and eaten.

A client’s ex-wife came by to threaten me. I had to do a QDRO so
she could get some of hubby’s retirement account and she thinks
that because she does not yet have her check that I am “holding it
up for him”. Ha ha, nothing could be further from the truth. I had
dropped everything else to get her Order back out in the mail when
the revisions came in. See if I worry about it much now. She was
so abusive and threatening that I locked the door when she left. Of
course she was yelling all the way to the parking lot. People almost
never understand how long it takes to get Orders through. What
kills me though, is why they think any professional would “hold
their case up” for any sort of personal reason. WE DON’T CARE.
We want to finish the work in proper and orderly manner, close the
file and move on.