Archive for March, 2014

Book It

Friday, March 28th, 2014

The message from God this week is pretty simple: If the posts you see in your Facebook news feed don’t make you appalled at how horrible humanity is and also amazed at how wonderful humanity is, you probably need to adjust your list of friends.

Hot Water

Friday, March 21st, 2014

While I was eating my corned beef and cabbage this week I remarked to God that there wasn’t a lot of things that I cook by boiling. There’s corned beef, there’s pasta, and then there’s… well nothing else.

So she asked, me what about chili, and I had to give her that. I mean I don’t really boil chili, I just simmer it, but then, I really only simmer the corned beef too. And she asked me about soup, but I wasn’t willing to concede that one. I haven’t made soup myself since I was a kid and I don’t count heating something up out of a can as cooking.

But I do like soup. Maybe I’ll have to revise my cooking habits. Even if it does lead to God acting all smug around me.

In the Name of Pride

Friday, March 14th, 2014

Sometimes God acts as my psychotherapist. She asks gently nudging questions and gets me to think about things that I wouldn’t otherwise have been thinking about. It’s not that these questions lead to earth-shattering inner revelations but sometimes it’s nice to keep nibbling at an aspect until I figure it out.

This week she was goading me about things I do in the name of pride, but for things that I’m not specifically proud of. The impetus was St. Patrick’s day being just around the corner, but we also discussed Gay Pride events. Both of these are things in which I join in the celebration, but they’re not actually things I’m proud of, in that they are not things that I accomplished. I was born with an Irish heritage and while I don’t know if I was actually born Gay, I do know that it was not something I ever chose, it just turned out to be who I am.

So I’m not proud of being these things, but being these things, I’m proud of things that have been accomplished by these groups. Not everything of course, but enough.

But as we kept pushing at the edges of the subject I figured out something else: Life is hard enough that we need to take the time to celebrate whenever we can. So really I just want to party, and if being Irish or being Gay is a reason to party, then hell yeah I’m proud.

Just Eat It

Friday, March 7th, 2014

There’s old advice that says, “never eat anything bigger than your head.” Now obviously that’s meant to be humorous, but like a lot of humor, that advice is built on a solid core or truth. God pointed out to me that we do break the rule, and all the time, in that we eat cows and watermelons and various other things that are bigger than our heads, but we only eat small bits of them at a time. Still, there’s really not all that much that we eat, outside of meat, that comes from something bigger than our heads.

But for ants, it’s a whole other world. I was watching some ants go to work on an abandoned pastry the other day and it occurred to me that for ants, harvesting food is less like picking fruits off a tree, or catching a ruminant on the run, and more like working in a mine. In fact, where ants live is kind of like living in a mine, and then when they “go to work” it’s often like heading off to the giant pit of a strip mine.

Just imagine toiling away with pickaxe and shovel, loading loading up a wheelbarrow full of bavarian cream filling. What would your lunch break be like?