Get Her Words Out

Of course we love them...it's a commandment

Yesterday, Soulforce did a march at Focus on the Family's headquarters in Colorado Springs.  I know a couple of people who went and said it was an amazing experience.

On the Denver news last night there was a talking head from Focus on the Family who explained how he didn't want anyone to think that they didn't love them, "we love everyone, we're commanded to do that."

My first thought was that he next sentence was going to be, "of course, if God hadn't ordered us to love them, we would hate everybody who disagrees with us."

My second thought was that, in the light of total depravity, they probably don't do any better at following that commandment than they do any of the others.

A Job

A part-time, temporary job, but at least I'm going to have some income, and I can work from home since it's all done over the Internet.  I'm going to be doing data scrubbing for the company that my sister works for.  (I signed a non-disclosure thing so I don't know if I should even say the name of the company.)

This company contracts with other companies to scrub their sales data and match it up to the Dunn & Bradstreet database.

It's not even vaguely ministry related, but it's something.

My letter to the Motley Fool

In today's (July 16,2006) Greeley Tribune, there ran an article under the Motley Fool's masthead titled "Putting lottery odds in perspective."

At the end of the article, the author discusses a survey that showed that in a certain low income Chicago neighborhood people spent an average of three dollars a day on the lottery.  The author pointed out that if those people were to take that three dollars a day and invest it in the stock market, in 25 years they would have $100,000.

This struck me as incredibly unrealistic.  First, where is the stock broker where someone can walk in after a day on a construction site and say "I've got three dollars, put it on Microsoft?"

Second, I don't think it is realistic to think of the three dollars as money that would have been saved if it hadn't been spent on the lottery.  I think closer to the truth is "I could have bought a six of Sam Adams, but I bought a six of Bud and three lottery tickets instead."

Even if they get to Friday with their $21 that they haven't spent on the lottery, they are not going to give a to stock broker (who still won't take that measly sum) in the hope that in 25 years they might have $100,000. (if someone like Ken Lay doesn't defraud them out of it between now and then)  No, their going to take their 21 bucks and go to Appleby's and have a nice dinner instead of McDonald's again.

I don't think your advice has any meaning for the people who are spending three dollars a day on lottery tickets, because the stock market is not a realistic option.

----I wonder if I'll get a reply

The end of the sticky

The last thing on the sticky (other than a note to myself to find a copy of The Secular City) is the simple question, how do you learn to want the possible?

The clearest example of this is my weight.  Sure I would love to lose a lot of weight, 100, 150, even 200 pounds.  But I would just as much like to lose eight inches of height, six shoe sizes, and my penis.

The thing is that because I know the other things are impossible I don't care all that much about the first thing.  (Yes, I know, it also has to do with my being lazy and eating too much, but those are different topics)

It comes up in other places, too.  There are so many things I want that I can't have, that it keeps me from reaching for the things I could have.

Sticky 3 & 4

I have been struggling with how to write about the next two lines on the sticky, because they deal with, if you’ll forgive the pun, a sticky subject:  sexual orientation.

Three years ago, I would have told you I was a straight man.  A year ago, a gay woman.

Now, while I’m still sure of being a woman, I’m not so sure of the lesbian thing.

I’ve always been more or less obsessive about looking at women and I have always assumed that meant that I was sexually attracted to them.  But the truth is that I almost never think about actually having sex with women.

What I am usually doing when I look at them is what I think of as “cataloguing,” looking at what they are wearing and what they are doing so that I can later imagine that I am wearing and doing those things.

Even with the woman that I have talked about here as being my “limerent object,” I’ve come to realize that it is less about wanting to be with her and more about her being the kind of woman I want to be. (Sticky line 3)

On the other hand, I have always ignored men; they have been pretty much invisible to me, because I was so focused on women.  But, I have realized lately that I do think of them sexually.

My obsession with my limerent object began when she and her current boyfriend began dating last fall.  What triggered it was seeing them being publicly affectionate with each other.  The image that comes most clearly to mind is of the two of them on one of the benches that dot the Columbia quad.  He would be sitting up, she would be laying with her head on his lap, and his arm would be draped over her chest.

For some reason it was terribly painful for me to see them like that, and because of what I had always thought about myself, I assumed it was because I was in love with her and jealous of him.  I think know that something like the opposite is probably true, I was jealous of her, and infatuated with him.  I really wanted to be the small, pretty girl who gets to be held and protected by the big handsome man.

The next question is, am I really attracted to him of my own accord or because he’s the kind of man that the kind of woman that I want to be wants to be with? (Sticky line 4)

I don’t know the answers to any of this, but it does seem that I am becoming much more susceptible to gaydar lately, to the point of old gay men hitting on me in supermarkets.  (I don’t think it would have surprised me as much if it had happened in Atlanta, but I wasn’t expecting it in Greeley, Colorado.)