Get Her Words Out

Valentines, Choices & Brueggemann

I've been reading Walter's new book, The Word Militant and specifically the essay called "The Imaginative 'Or'".

In it he talks about how he sees that one of functions of scripture is to present us with an "or," a choice, when the culture surrounding us tells us that things must be "this way."  Scripture creates an either/or choice when the rest of the world tells us that there is only "either."

As I read that I was reminded of Freire's discussion of how the oppressor will try to convince the oppressed that all of their choices are life and death, while the liberator's job is to show the oppressed that the reality is that their choices are between life and more life.

Then came Valentines Day.  For years I have grumbled about how much I hate Valentines Day.  I even talked about it in a sermon last summer.  But lately I've noticed at least a little mellowing of my attitude toward my least favorite special day, and I think that mellowing has something to do with the imaginative or.

I think VD is one of the places where the culture presents us with an either without an or.  The ads, the store displays, the news stories and everything else tell us everyone should either be in one of these idealized romantic relationships or should be striving to get there.  It's a form of Freire's life and death choice, because when I was most miserable about VD it was because I was accepting the cultural message that there was truly something wrong with me, that I wasn't really fully human if I wasn't coupled off, or trying to be coupled of or if I really didn't think I was ever going to be coupled off.

But through the last few years through the study of scripture, the support of an amazing community of friends and a number of other things, I've learned that there is an "or."  I can have more life than what the purveyors of Valentines Day would offer me.  Just as I don't have to allow society's ideas of gender define my experience, I don't have to accept that my being outside the world of coupling and romance lessens my humanity.  And knowing that, I don't get nearly so angry about VD as I used to.

I don't know why. . .

. . .I thought of this, but at some point Tuesday night this question crossed my mind:

"How long would it take all the water in the world to flow past a given point on a river?"

So in keeping with the mongoose motto, I ran and found out.

Googleing "how much water is there in the world," led me to a site that gave me the rough number of 42 million cubic miles.  Then Googleing "flow rate of the Mississippi" gave me a range from 200,000 to 700,000 cubic feet per second.  For ease of calculation I picked 500,000 as a representative number.

So you take 42 million cubic miles and multiply it by 5280 cubed to get the number of cubic feet.  Then you divide by 500,000 to get the number of seconds, then divide by 3600 to get the number of hours, then by 24 to get the number of days and finally by 365.25 to get years (the .25 accounts for leap years).

I ended up with about 392,000 years.

So now you know.

(wasn't that interesting?)

Buffy Season Eight #11: A Beautiful Sunset

"And what have we learned?"

"Scotland is slippery?

Now Available at Target

The perfect bag for future ministers.