Random Bullets....

• I’m leading Worship the next two Sundays at my home church. (Our pastor is getting married and she insists on taking a honeymoon…sheesh!) The lectionary for the past month, and for the next two weeks, has us plodding through John chapter 6 with all its imagery of the ‘bread of life,’ 'bread from heaven,’ 5 loaves feeding 5000, and ‘eat my flesh, for those who eat this bread will live forever’ – what fun! Seriously, how many weeks can we talk about bread? It’s our congregation’s Anniversary Sunday (179 years) so I’m stealing the 1 Kings reading from next week and talking about God’s dwelling place. We’ll resume John’s Greatest Hits of Bread next Sunday.

• I still have one paper to write for my summer Christian Ethics class, and I have absolutely no ambition to write it. Perhaps the professor will accept a sermon on bread instead.

• The fall semester starts just over a month from now (Sept 14) and I’m looking forward to going back to school. This year I’ll be a “Middler” which is seminary speak for ‘2nd year student.’ This means I can attend orientation weekend events and stand around looking all cool and experienced while the newbies….errr…”Juniors”….wander around bumping into trees and asking questions like “Where is Upper Noyes?” (A: above the Fair-Trade vegan cafeteria), “Can I park on the quad?” (A: yes, if you have the prerequisite ‘Obama for President’ and ‘Love Makes A Family’ bumper stickers) and “What the hell am I doing here at this liberal pinko seminary and just how many gay people are here anyway?” (A: ‘I don’t know’ and ‘a lot’).

• The shuttle service between our house and the vet’s office is running once again as our older cat Katie has had trouble…errrr…..“doing number 2.” I swear if it’s not one orifice it’s the other, on both cats. They need special pills, special food - I know more about their bathroom habits then my own. While Katie continues to poop behind the front door (welcome home!) and pee on the living room carpet, the other one wolfs her food down so fast she leaves puke piles all over the dining room. We’ve gone through a forest of paper towels just cleaning up after them. We never had this problem with our outdoor cats. Probably because they went off and did their business in the bushes with out a silly human hunched over them saying “does it look like she’s straining?” and “that poop doesn’t look right.” Poor kitties. If someone threw me in a cage and whisked me off to the doctor every time I was constipated I’d pee on the carpet too.

• I’ve been home for three months and I’ve managed to lose not a single ounce of the 10 lbs. I gained while I was away at school. I’ve been walking and running, albeit sporadically and I’ve made a conscious effort to eat better – more salad, less bread. But still the weight doesn’t budge. I refuse to believe that it has anything to do with being over 40. I’m just not as active as I used to be. I blame too much time spent in a chair with a computer on my lap or a book in my hands. And weekly pit stops at Cold Stone haven’t helped. Sure, their “Gotta Have It!” size has 800 calories, but it takes me three days to eat it, that’s gotta count for something right? (me – straws – grasping)

• Finally, if I may get up on my soapbox for a moment….the fiasco that’s going on with the health care debate in this country right now is frightening. Our health care system is seriously broken. Poor people are dying. Old people are suffering. Medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy and financial ruin in this country. Something needs to be done. I don’t know all the specifics of President Obama’s plan (I’ve been too busy cleaning up after cats) but I do know that he’s proposing a solution that has worked in other countries. What ever he does is not going to be perfect and they’ll be a whole lot of people who won’t like it for a whole lot of reasons. But can we at least stick with the facts? Can we at least sit down like grown adults and have a conversation about it? Is there really a need for people to get agitated enough to stand up and shout “OBAMA IS THE ANTI-CHRIST AND HE’S TRYING TO TURN OUR COUNTRY INTO A COMMIE PINKO SOCIALIST NATION!!” And Ms. Palin….telling people that Obama’s plan is “downright evil” and it will lead to “death panels” that will decide who lives or dies (you mean kind of like the HMO’s and insurance companies do now?) is such a flat out distortion of the truth that is would be laughable if it weren’t so destructive. Is this the kind of Christian that you want to be? One that resorts to spreading lies and demonizing others in a misguided attempt to 'fight evil'? Really? ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ and ‘what you have done to the least of my brothers you have done to me’ – are these not in your version of the Bible? You remind me of the stereotypical busy-body, leaning over her neighbors’ fence to gossip about so-and-so down the street and “oh my god can you believe what I just heard!” You thrive on spreading fear and half-truths. Like the moms and the church lady’s I know who love to forward emails warning about ‘AIDS syringes left on gas pumps’ and fictitious parking lot abductions and Muslims who want to destroy our way of life (“oh my God! Look what it says in the Koran!”). The sad thing is that people look up to you. They look at you and see themselves – a conservative Republican Christian mom who’s just trying to raise her kids right and get by. They trust you. They believe you. They don’t fact check. Which is why they forward emails based on lies that have been circulating since 1995. You have the power to sway their opinions towards the truth or away from the truth. It’s just a shame that as a Christian you’ve chosen to do the latter.