Prayer for Those Living in Fear of Terrorism

O God of mercy, bless all who live in the face of acts of terrorism. Grant them courage to go about their daily living. Give them hope that one day the hostility will cease. Guard the defenseless, especially the children and the elderly, the infirm and the weak. Bring peace to their homes and faith in their hearts. Amen. [Vienna Cobb Anderson]

It’s time to go public with some of this crap:

These are emails that once passed back and forth between my ex and me. Yes, they’re legit. Unedited. Obviously, names removed.

(Background: I informed him that I was upset by his extremely misogynist comment about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, as well as his sexist comment that one of his friends had gotten a job, an apartment, and a car, and all he needed now was a wife–the last possession to make his life complete, as well as his sexist comments about me, my friends, and women in general)

Ex: “i’m standing up for myself now,
its bs that you want me for who i am,
you may like somethings but its not enought of me to matter,
and i’m not going to speek to you one way because you want me to,
your going to have to want me becuace of the way i am, got it?”

Me: “lol. I’m standing up for MYself now. You don’t get to make decisions about Talia. You get to make decisions about [ex]. If you want to even be friends, you cannot say that again. If it does happen again, that is the end of any possibilities you could have ever had with me. There isn’t a way I want you to talk to me, except civilly, which so far you have failed ta. If you can’t even refrain from making destructive comments that I have asked you I don’t know how many times not to say to me..because they hurt me..then close the door behind you on your way out. I believe I’m worth more than the way you treat me and the garbage you talk. If you don’t like that, fine. If you don’t agree, fine. If you think you haven’t been treating me like crap, fine. But I do, and I’m making the decisions and the rules about me, NOT you and not anyone else.”

Ex: “did you get what i said or no?
i’m going to talk to you the way i know how, if its destructive and if its not what you want then, maybe its how i talk, and its apart of me, yes i dont want to hurt you,  but maybe you need someone else who can talk better then me, okay?”

Me: “Apparently you didn’t get what I said.
In case you didn’t, let me run it by you one more time.
What happens now is up to you. I made the decision that if you continue to be a hurtful person to me, the end of the friendship. Now it’s your turn to make a decision: you can either shape up or keep going. You can do whatever you want. Nobody’s trying to make you do anything or CHANGE FOR THEM, but you will have consequences no matter what choice or non-choice you make. You will always have consequences–stop trying to blame them on me.
I am not saying, “Stop hurting me.” I know better than that now, because it’s clear you couldn’t stop now even if you wanted to. I AM saying that you will either stop or you will not be a part of my life.”

Ex: “why dose there have to be consequences?”

…He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Damn. The best thing Rick Warren ever said, and the fundies jump him.

Of course it had to happen!

“The last thing many believers need is to go to another Bible study. They already know far more than they are putting into practice. What they need are serving experiences in which they can exercise their spiritual muscles.” -Rick Warren

According to the silly website Slice of Laodicea, Warren is “propounding his Martha-style Christianity and works righteousness theology.” Their response? “At a time of unprecedented biblical illiteracy and rampant carnality among evangelicals, the last thing they need is to be told not to study the Bible. But if you aren’t working, you’re just a useless feeder in Rick’s world. And besides. If you actually do read your Bible, you’ll figure out pretty quickly just how off base Rick Warren’s social gospel really is.”

How absurd! Makes me laugh. I’m now going to quote someone even more radical and totally impractical than Rick Warren. Are you ready?

“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit–but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock. But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.”

I can’t believe Jesus had the nerve to propound such a works-based theology. Didn’t anyone ever tell him that being “saved” has nothing to do with doing at all?! And here he goes, misleading who knows how many people! Oh well, at least he didn’t try to push that horrible social gospel on anyone! Ewww!

 

 

 

 

Something refreshing! “Murder has no religion”

["Murder has no religion" by Arsalan Iftikhar, international human rights lawyer, founder of TheMuslimGuy.com, contributing editor for Islamica magazine in Washington]

Washington (CNN) — Most of the world’s 1.57 billion Muslims know that the Holy Quran states quite clearly that, “Anyone who kills a human being…it shall be as though he has killed all of mankind….If anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he has saved the lives of all mankind.”

Accordingly, it should come as little surprise to any reasonable observer that when Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan recently committed his shocking acts of mass murder at Fort Hood, Texas, America’s Muslim community of over 7 million felt an added sense of horror and sadness at this senseless attack against the brave men and women of the US armed forces.

True to form, many conservative media pundits wasted little time in pointing to reports that Hasan had said “Allahu Akbar” (Arabic for “God is great”) at the start of his murderous rampage. News coverage continuously showed the looping convenience store black-and-white videotape footage of Hasan wearing traditional white Islamic garb.

First of all, someone simply saying “Allahu Akbar” while committing an act of mass murder no more makes their criminal act “Islamic” than a Christian uttering the “Hail Mary” while murdering an abortion medical provider, or someone chanting “Onward, Christian Soldiers” while bombing a gay nightclub, would make their act “Christian” in nature.

Simply put; murder is murder and has no religion whatsoever.

Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan once wrote that, “One most certainly does insult Muslims by tying their religion to movements such as terrorism or fascism. Muslims perceive a double standard in this regard: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols would never be called ‘Christian terrorists’ even though they were in close contact with the Christian Identity Movement. No one would speak of Christo-fascism or Judeo-fasicm as the Republican[s] … speak of Islamo-fascism….[Many people also] point out that [it was] persons of Christians of Christian heritage [who] invented fascism, not Muslims.”

According to Pentagon statistics, there were over 3,400 American Muslims serving in the active-duty military as of April 2008. The Wall Street Journal reported that many officials believe “the actual number of [American] Muslim soldiers may be at least 10,000 higher than the Pentagon statistics.”

Thus, with thousands of patriotic American Muslim women and men proudly serving in our United States Army in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps it would behoove our army leaders to consider sending a strong message of American unity by appointing an American Muslim to be a part of the prosecution team against Hasan.

This would help show that the mass murders allegedly committed by Hasan have nothing to do with the teachings of our religion.

The United States Army can send a resounding message to all Americans and the rest of the world that the social fabric of our country will never become unraveled by murderous (and irreligious) gun-wielding felons–whether it is a Muslim in Fort Hood, Texas, or a non-Muslim on a shooting rampage in an Orlando, Florida high-rise less than a day later.

By appointing a multicultural (and multireligious) legal prosecution team made up of military lawyers of all races and religions, we can set a good example to show the rest of the world that our American legal justice system is truly equal for all people, regardless of their race, religion or socioeconomic status.

The larger point is that Muslims in America completely disavow and wash our hands of any acts of murder (or terrorism) claimed to be performed in the name of our religion. Acts of mass murder, regardless of their time or place, are simply ungodly criminal acts that have no religion whatsoever.

Those of you who also started listening to Christmas music before Halloween, or just never stopped from last season:

Stay tuned, I’m working on compiling a master list of the ultimate Christmas mix cd collection. No, it will not include every Christmas song ever written and/or recorded, but it will include all the besties. :)

I’m also making myself a nice Halloween mix cd collection, and I’ll be posting my preferred Halloween playlist up shortly. Better late than never! And it’s good listening allllll the time! Savvy?

The awesomest thing I’ve done in quite a long time

The other day I was listening to the radio and I reached across the desk to grab a pair of scissors, and all of a sudden, the radio went completely to static. I thought it was weird when it didn’t bounce back. So I flipped the little dial button up and down, and every. single. station. was all static. I tested the entire length of the spectrum about three times and basically gave up in despair.

I was just coming to the conclusion that a zombie attack must be underway when I noticed I’d accidentally bumped the AM/FM button. Hahaha.

Are we “less happy” because of feminism? Not a bit of it.

["Women, if you're happy and you know it..." by Ellen Goodman]

Not long ago a group of writers decided to publish a book of essays we called “Feminism Made Me Happy.” It was an in-your-face title, a deliberate attempt to counter the narrative we all knew by heart. The one that kept describing how the women’s movement had left us stressed out, discontented, wrenched from home, hearth, and motherhood to struggle and fail at doing it all.

Life and writers being what they are, we never did the book, but we have had some terrific lunches. Now we are due for another one, because we are in the midst of another dust-up over research published under the (too) provocative headline: “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.”

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, partners in marriage and research, dove into the data and came up with numbers suggesting a decline in women’s happiness or, to be more precise, in their “self-reported subjective well-being.” In 1972, women were four points more likely than men to describe themselves as “very happy.” Today they are one point less likely than men to check that box.

This is hardly proof of a mass depression, but the story fueled the predictable debates on websites and talk shows. The controversy pitted those who blame declining happiness on too much change against those who blame it on too little change. And those, of course, who just blame the  messengers.

Stevenson and Wolfers should have known they were walking into this propeller when they linked the women’s movement and happiness together. The paradox, as this pair framed it, was that despite all the improvements in women’s lives during the last 35 years, despite barriers that went down and opportunities that went up, women weren’t “self-reporting” greater happiness.

Our lunch group could have warned the researchers against one sentence that truly raised hackles. “As women’s expectations move into alignment with their experiences,” they speculate, “this decline in happiness may reverse.” Oh, goodie, lower your expectations and get happy, gals?

In fairness, the researchers didn’t pin the decline in happiness–oops, “self-reported subjective well-being”–on any specific ideology or social change. It affected married and single, parents and nonparents, working and stay-at-home mothers alike.

Indeed, Stevenson, a new mom, says she was surprised by the paradox. “I look back and think, ‘Oh my God, I have to be happier than my mother. I have so many more choices,’” she said. She and her husband pulled many strings to unravel the happiness conundrum. Have we doubled the areas in which women are expected to perform brilliantly? Are women now given more permission to express rather than repress unhappiness?

Women aren’t nostalgic for the old days. If anyone is, just watch a few episodes of “Mad Men” as an antidote, with its suffocated Mad Wife Betty Draper and its slapped-down Working Woman Peggy Olsen. If you prefer nonfiction, leaf through the early chapters of Gail Collins’s history of “When Everything Changed” to those magical yesteryears when a flight attendant was weighed, measured, and hired to be a flying geisha.

Going forward to the past won’t bring a grin to our lips–excuse me, a self-reported sense of well-being to our database. Happiness is a pretty elusive state and an even more elusive research subject. We are, as they say, happy as our least happy child and insecure as our retirement fund. As for linking happiness and social history, today’s flight attendant isn’t going to wake up every morning and assess her own well-being in comparison to her 1970s predecessor any more than I wake up grateful not to walk 4 miles in the snow to school. It doesn’t work that way.

Feminism made me happy? Not, I assure you, in a permanent state of good cheer. It opened doors. It opened our eyes–to everything including what still needs to be done. The women’s movement never promised us a rose garden or a warm bath of contentment. It offered a new way to understand the world, a lens on injustice and a tool to use in the pursuit of happiness. It’s a work in progress.

That’s happiness? Close enough.