As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I homeschool the LightChildren.  Well, a more appropriate description is … they engage in home learning and I throw books at their heads.  No.  That’s not right either.  But something happens around here and occasionally something like an education seems to sprout.

Well, we fell behind in history.  This is sorta bad since I’m just a hair shy of being a certified social studies teacher.  Three hairs shy of having a masters in secondary education with a focus in … history and social studies.  So you’d think that we’d just fly right through history.  Well, yes.  And, um, no … not so much.  You see, I have all these hang ups and pre-conceived ideas about how history has to be.  So we fell behind.  We’re scooting through the modern period this summer and starting over again with the ancients this fall.  It will be fun because now I’m finally teaching a teenager and all.

In very exciting news, LightGirl has decided that she’s going to work on her own theory of everything.  The books are spread out all over the sofa.  First, though, she needs to get over Lyme Disease.  It all began yesterday when she and LightBoy watched a documentary on the History Channel on the island of Atlantis.  They came up from the playroom and recounted the whole thing to me.  Silly mom … I thought they’d been watching cartoons and was plotting revenge.  In any case, as she watched the documentary, LightGirl began to notice that many of the stories from Atlantis bore a striking resemblance to all the myth stories she read when we studied the ancients several years ago.  Later in the day, she asked to go to the library so she can get some books on myths and Atlantis.  She is quite determined to find this “missing link” as it were.  She didn’t even realize that we’re getting ready to tackle the ancients again this year in history.  It was a pleasant surprise.  Her eyes were sparkling.  She’s busy plotting the next book she wants to write.

In the meantime, we’re just flying through modern history, giving it a lick and a promise.  The girl who lives in my heart and studied international relations twenty-five years ago is weeping with shame at the utter horror of raising children with so little knowledge of modern history and its importance to where we are now.  (Okay, weeping may be overstating it just a little … but … you get the picture.)  So, here’s the thing.  We have a family movie night tradition.  We love to watch movies together.  LightHusband makes delicious popcorn, we have a light dinner before hand, turn down the lights and snuggle in together.  It can be any night … but we watch the movie together and then talk about it for some time afterwards.  So I thought it would be a good idea to get some movies with historical content to watch for modern history.  But I’m running out of ideas.  I’m going to post my list below.  Please add yours in the comments.  I’m looking for any reasonable movies about history anywhere in the world from 1875 to the present.  Please remember the ages of my children are 11 and 14.  They’re used to some violence (we’ve watched BraveHeart together without the final death scene, and LightBoy has watched Saving Private Ryan) as long as it has purpose and context.  We try to stay away from sexual content … but well the Viv@ Vi@gra ads and KY ads on television these days leave little the imagination, so really … who cares.

Here are the movies I found:

Gandhi
Reds
Grapes of Wrath
We Were Soldiers
To Kill A Mockingbird
Judgment At Nuremberg

 … but I might revise it later

So, as you know I’ve been on vacation.  No television (thus no Olympics to squander my braincells).  Lots of porch time for pondering.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading.  I’ve been trying to catch up on my belated Ooze reading (and I have … sort of).  Then my brother came and landed a new book in my lap.  My mom insisted I read it … first … so I could send it on to my other brother and his wife.  Okay.

It’s an easy read.  Well, the reading is easy and engaging.  But it pulls you into some deep deep thinking too.  Dangerous territory.  The book is “In Defense Of Food:  An Eater’s Manifesto” by Michael Pollan.  You might recognize him as the author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “The Botany of Desire.”

As I’ve been reading this book, the Lakeland Revival and Todd Bentley have been unraveling rather publicly.  You can read blogger opinions about it in various places.  I (of course) have been following Kingdom Grace (start with Apostolic Bullshit and then read parts II and III), Brother Maynard, Bill Kinnon and iMonk (among others).  In a post the other day, Bro M asked the question whether or not Christians are more gullible than the rest of the general population.  And something that has been unsettled in my head clicked into place.  This post is a result of that click; perhaps it was an epiphany or maybe it’s just a rant … I’ll let you be the judge.

As I first jumped into the book I found it striking how closely it paralleled the Christian sub-culture.  Quotes such as this jumped out at me:

“The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutrition science, and – ahem – journalism, three parties that stand to gain much from widespread confusion surrounding the most elemental question an omnivore confronts.  But humans deciding what to eat without professional guidance—something they have been doing with notable success since comgin down out of the trees—is seriously unprofitable if you’re a food company, a definite career loser if you’re a nutritionist, and just plain boring if you’re a newspaper editor or reporter.  (Or, for that matter, an eater.  Who wants to hear, yet again, that you should “eat more fruits and vegetables.”?)  And so like a large gray cloud, a great Conspiracy of Scientific Complexity has gathered around the simplest questions of nutrition—much to the advantage of everyone involved.  Except perhaps the supposed beneficiary of all this nutritional advice:  us, and our health and happiness as eaters.”

Then there’s this:

The first thing to understand about nutritionism is that it is not the same thing as nutrition.  As the “-ism” suggests, it is not a scientific subject, but an ideology.  Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions.  This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it’s still exerting its hold on your culture.  A reigning ideology is a little like the weather—all pervasive and so virtually impossible to escape.  Still we can try.  (italics mine for emphasis)

Well, I won’t bore you with the quotes on all of the pages I’ve flagged, just tell you that this book looks like a veritable rainbow when you see the long page edge of it shut.

Michael Pollan does a masterful job telling us that it is highly likely that the source of many of our health ills (from diabetes to depression, heart diseases to hyper-activity) in the modern world is the so-called “Western Diet.”  That diet composed of refined sugar, refined grains and refined fats.  We have so depleted our soil that we are now both overweight and starving ourselves to death.  It’s the Modern paradox.

(Aside … I’m particularly fond of Michael because he outs soy as a modern evil.  I’ve been convinced for years that soy will be our downfall and refuse to consume it in any form if I can help it –I’m also highly allergic to it–but now you know what my tinfoil hat is 😉 )

So what, you would be correct in asking, does any of this have to do with Todd Bentley and the unraveling of the Lakeland Revival?  Nothing at all.  And … well … everything.

You see, a long time ago, and not so long ago when you look at it in the grand scheme of things, we humans relied on each other for advice.  We relied on our elders to teach us how to walk in the world, how to behave, what were good things to eat, what weren’t, who the charlatans were and who they weren’t.  We lived in close community with one another.  Sometimes that was painful and ugly.  Sometimes it was beautiful.  But regardless, the advice we got from each other was given by people who knew one another with some level of intimacy and (here’s the important part) the giver of the advice didn’t have a horse in the race.  In other words, the giver of the advice wasn’t going to receive remuneration or paybacks for any kind of change in the behavior of the receiver of the advice.

Things have changed rather dramatically in the last 100 or so years.  Now we pay for advice that used to come from the elders in our communities.  Not only do we pay for it, but in paying for it, we subsidize those who stand to gain the most from our receiving their words of wisdom.  We change, and they get paid twice.  Something is amiss.

Or this example:  meningitis.  A drug company has developed a vaccine for meningitis.  I know this because LightGirl recently went in for a physical.  She was offered a vaccination for meningitis.  We took it.  But I was blind-sided by it.  I’m not so certain it was necessary or right.  The doctor presented it as a good thing, the insurance company covered it.  So … no big deal.  Not really.  But she’s young enough that she’ll need a booster before college and no one really knows the long term effects of this vaccine.  Really.  And what is this vaccinating against?  What are the realistic chances that she’ll contract viral meningitis?  Uh … slim and none … realistically.  When I look at it, the doctor had every reason to “sell” this vaccine to me and the drug company had every reason to “sell” it to him.   I had virtually no opportunity to sit back and peruse the situation from a dispassionate vantage point and the doctor?  He had horse in the race.  I was not getting unbiased information from him.  Now he’s a good doctor, LightGirl is not disadvantaged by having this vaccine that we know of.  My point is … we don’t know enough.  I don’t have enough information to make an informed decision.  I only have enough information to make a decision that benefits the person giving me advice.

I can never have enough information to make that informed decision … because I cannot get outside the box of the medical ideology that permeates our culture to find that kind of information.

Here’s where I find my theory of everything in the nexus between this book and Lakeland.  My generation (Gen X believe it or not) and Gen Y and Millenials and maybe even Boomers and really anyone alive today have been raised to be distrustful of their elders.  We’ve all … all of us … Christians, atheists, Hindus, whoever … religion has nothing to do with this … been taught to believe that only professionals can teach us what to do next.  That’s why we look to professionals in every area of our life.  We have professional Christians, professional nutritionists, professional child rearing experts (of every stripe) … you name the issue … we have professionals to tell us what to do.  Often confusing professionals who dole out conflicting advice which changes every few months or years.  So we must keep changing the stuff we purchase … the gadgets, gee-gaws and books … more and more books on every subject under the sun.

The reality is that most of us know … we know … what to do.  We know what’s best and good and right and true.  We know the right way to be and how to be that way.  Or maybe we don’t … but an expert is cannot tell us the best road to choose.  Only someone who knows us can give us advice.  Only someone who is intimate with what is important to us, can ask the right questions.   Sometimes we do know in our heart of hearts that when Sara Lee markets a loaf of bread as “Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White” bread it’s an oxymoronic crock of smelly dung so deep and wide that not even God’s grace can cross it.  We don’t buy it and we shouldn’t buy it … not literally and not metaphorically.

It’s not that we (Christians … or anyone else) are necessarily gullible.  It’s that we’ve been taught to suspend our native intelligence over and over and over again on so many issues.  We’ve been taught by our governments and our religious leaders; our politicians and our teachers to listen to the experts.  Listen to the experts and the professionals … they know what they’re talking about.

But they all have a horse in the race.  No one ever told us that part.  They all … every DAMN ONE OF THEM has something to gain by getting the lot of us to suspend our good judgment and believe their twisted un-truths.

So … are Christians gullible?

Not any more gullible than the Congress of the United States who believed George W. Bush when he said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, yet it patently did not … according to every single unbiased study that had been done.   Hell, I knew it didn’t … a stay at home mom in Virginia.

Not any more gullible than the hordes of people who believed Bill Clinton when he said he hadn’t had sex with Monica Lewinsky or hadn’t smoked marijuana because he hadn’t inhaled.

The problem is not that we’re gullible.  The problem is that we’re listening to the wrong “experts.”  For hundreds, even thousands of years we listened to people who knew us and were in relationship with us.  People who know, for example, that I get wigged out when faced with unexpected trouble (like a car breaking down on my way to college is likely to ruin my entire college career).  I have learned over time how to manage those issues better, but my elders who know me, also know to ignore some of my outbursts as, “she’ll get past it.”  Not, “let’s medicate that.”  Or they might ask a few pertinent questions, such as, “How important is this?”   Now we think we need to see an “expert” or a “professional” about the many different issues in our lives … these experts, these professionals have a vested interest in “selling” us something … a way of life, a medicine, a book, something …

So, the next time you get all hyped up about something, remind yourself that you live in a capitalist system.  You do.  Every thing.  Every damn thing costs.  So when you ask for or receive advice from an expert or a professional, ask yourself what does that person stand to gain from their advice … even if it appears to be as wholesome as a revival in a church.

I woke up this morning with these words echoing around in my head:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

They were spoken in a voice that is different from my voice. A rich deep baritone that is familiar to all of us. This clip is familiar to many of us. I have fuzzy, crackly memories of those words when they were first spoken, crackly and fuzzy on the radio in our house in Kansas. I was two and something. Those words were repeated over and over throughout my childhood.

Twenty years later when I was 22 and something I stood down on the Mall and listened as those words and that speech was re-enacted. I looked around at the poverty and disparity and dispaired of the words ever having truth.

Forty years later when I was 42 and something I listened to those words each year with my children and we talked about what they mean, and who this man was.

Now I’m 47. I woke up this morning and realized I’m watching this dream come true. On August 28, 2008 … 45 years to the day later, Barack Obama will accept the nomination for the Democratic Party.

This year. This election. We’re choosing hope. We’re looking at the content of someone’s character and not the color of their skin. Yes, Amen and all good things, we’re choosing hope. Let justice roll down like a mighty river and may grace abound …

I have three blood uncles.  Two on my father’s side and one on my mother’s.  That’s two brothers to my dad and one brother to my mom.  All three served in the military.  Two (my dad’s brothers) served in World War II.  Interestingly, all of my uncles (by blood or marriage) served in the military.  In my generation, I can only think of three or four cousins (out of about 30) who served.

Yesterday Uncle Ralph, the younger of my dad’s two older brothers, came to town to visit the WWII Memorial.  He came with other WWII veterans in Connecticut and Massachusetts to visit the memorial.  It’s part of a private program that is working diligently to get WWII vets to the memorial before they pass on.  As Uncle Ralph told me yesterday, there are only 10% of the veteran’s left alive today.  One of my older cousins arranged to get my uncle in the program and was his guardian for the trip.

As a pacifist by nature and by choice, I struggle with war and the need for it.  I want to negotiate with evil and find compromises.  I’m not always certain that is possible.  Even though it is my choice.  When I heard about the building of the WWII Memorial I was saddened by the glorification of war.  When I heard about busing vets in to this mecca of war for one last visit, I was cynical.  But our visit there yesterday changed much of that for me.

It was chaotic and messy and slow and hot and beautiful and gracious and happy and the smiles that wreathed those old faces were glorious.  These men (and a very occasional woman) knew how precious life is because life had been lost.  The drums of war were silent here and water in the fountains sprayed and tinkled, reminding us of life lived and worth living.  These were the faces of determination and perseverance in the face of adversity.

Adversity which was not glorified nor was it depicted as something to be put aside.  It is and was a part of life which creates character.  It was that voice that I heard when Uncle Ralph kindly refused the use of a wheelchair, “I never fell out of a 25 mile march and I’ll finish today, thank you, though.”  In his 80’s and he still has something to finish and learn.

I hope I end like that.

Well … it sorta depends.

It depends on who you ask. It depends on the period of history into which you were born.

Then there are a whole category of men who think that women are definitely human, they are just not quite as good as men. Or they are as good as men, but not quite as advanced … sort of overgrown children. Why is this? Oh, because the men are afraid of the women. Now, the men have lots of very elegant reasoning … but the bottom line is … they are afraid. Men frequently establish second class status to things they are frightened of.
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Lemme ‘splain that a little bit. I’m no Biblical scholar. However, I play one on television.

Hah … as if. I wonder what a Biblical scholar would look like on television! All sarcasm aside, I’m no Biblical scholar, television or not. However, I’ve studied the question about women’s standing before God from a Biblical standpoint fairly extensively. I’ve read many pertinent books and studies. I’ve read all the pertinent scriptures in the original languages and with all the different interpretations you can imagine. In short, I’ve been there done that. Do I definitively know God’s heart on the issue? No. I do not. But I have what I think is a pretty good idea. Alot of people disagree with me. That’s fine. They’re allowed. I think they will be called to judgement for the damage that their misguided opinions are doing (otherwise known as sin). But that’s between them and God. It’s not my call.
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Here’s my theory … if you go all the way back to Genesis 1 you find this:

26Then God said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
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28And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Here we see the very first indication of people … created together. At the same time. Both given dominion over the earth and everything in it. Both given equal stake in creation. Both as equal beings. Two peas in a pod as it were. Yin and yang, male and female. Equal in being, status, everything … all the way down the line.
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Things are clarified for us in Genesis 2:

18Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper* fit for him. Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper* fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

*Briefly, the “helper” debate revolves around the idea that a helper must be in a subordinate position. I’m not going to get into a lengthy treatise here except to say that the Hebrew word (ezer – the root from which we get ebenezer, Israel and many other words, btw) which is used has many meanings which do not adequately translate into English. We have used a word which has very limited meaning to us … it might be asked why the translators chose that particular word and not another less loaded word? What cultural/societal needs were met by using this translation rather than another?

As you may or may not remember from Genesis 3 the male tendency would be towards domination. He must work to subdue the earth now … when we chose to be independent of our relationship with God, that was the evil that the male of the species would bring to the earth; dominance.

Here is the definition of dominance from Dictionary.com:

1. rule; control; authority; ascendancy.
2. the condition of being dominant.
3. the disposition of an individual to assert control in dealing with others.
4. high status in a social group, usually acquired as the result of aggression, that involves the tendency to take priority in access to limited resources, as food, mates, or space.
5. the normal tendency for one side of the brain to be more important than the other in controlling certain functions, as speech and language.

However, if we read the first couple of lines of the “curse” on Adam we find something curiously interesting: “”Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ …” Recall for a moment, Adam’s response to God when questioned about how he knew of his own nakedness: The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Ahhhhh … ha. Adam (and his descendants) have never quite gotten past the idea that it was all Eve’s fault. God is allowing him/them to live in that. “Because you have listened to voice of your wife …”

Now. What is the rest of that sentence? It’s not that she doesn’t have anything good to contribute the relationship. The rest of the sentence is “…. and disobeyed Me.” That’s fairly key to the whole operation. It’s not that Eve is really the terrible person here. Or that all advice from Eve is to be ignored. Or that Eve was less advanced and did not know what she was doing (after all she was also punished), but that Adam willfully and with eyes wide open, upon listening to his wife, chose to disobey His Creator. Listening to his wife wasn’t the bad horrible thing that he was being punished for. He was being punished for disobedience. Ultimately, he, and Eve, were being punished for the same thing that got Lucifer thrown out … pride. Hubris. Not unusual, since Lucifer (Satan, the serpent) was doing the tempting.

Large groups of men (entire civilizations that occupy large portions of our globe) have been operating under the fear that women will lead them astray ever since. Now whether or not this is a story/myth that is descriptive or prescriptive is of little importance to this post.

Now there have been whole civilizations that rose up and were quite successful where the men were not afraid of women. Native American cultures, ancient celtic cultures, African cultures to name a few. But the predominant culture that has consumed the globe is one in which the dominant men were afraid of women. I realize I’m speaking in generalizations and broad brushes. I realize that not *all* men are afraid of *all* women. But, generally speaking this is the case. In terms of our general rules and trends in Western culture which has spread throughout the globe at this point, men are afraid of, and feel the need to dominate women. They must demean them. They must overpower them and keep them in a position of powerlessness.

Here is some history for you. Jesus was the first feminist. Jesus was the first masculinist too, for that matter. Jesus taught that all human beings had worth and value. This was an earth shattering principle at the time. At the time only men had worth and value. Women and children were chattel. Do you know what that word – chattel – means? No, I mean do you *know* in your bones, what it means? I didn’t think so. It means that you have the approximate value of a sick mule. Children even less. Women were worth the labor and potential of the sons they could provide. Children were worth-less until they were of an age to provide labor. I want you to take a moment and imagine the life you might lead if your value were tied to how much work you could do and how many sons you could push out of your belly (especially since you have no control over that … and we now know this is a result of the sperm anyway). What happened to infertile women? Do you begin to understand why adultery was such a big deal? It was important to know who’s son your wife was carrying …

So, unless a woman could work and provide children, she was a liability to her husband. This process began at about age 14 or 15. LightGirl is 14. I shudder when I consider this possibility. Men did not speak to women in public settings. Men carried on their commerce separate from women. There were separate spaces for men and women in the Temple and synagogues. Men and women were separate and unequal. Jesus ignored all of that. I could say he changed it, but he really didn’t. He set a new example by ignoring it. He went about his business and talked to people. Now the people who most commonly listened to him were women … because they had the least to lose. But go into any church today and take a head count … you’ll still see more women than men. Women still understand that Jesus has come to redeem them. Women are far more open to hearing His message of self-sacrifice. Women can speak that message too. Who better than a woman to talk about how lay down your life for someone else? I’m sorry to say, but there are not many men who can speak to that with the same personal experience that the vast majority of women have.
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In any case, Jesus ignored the cultural mores of the time and spoke to women. He healed women. He discipled women. He accepted support from women. Women were amongst his band of followers. This was unheard of. There were no other rabbis in the land who had done these things. No other rabbis who spoke to women. Or healed women. Or taught women. Or accepted support from women. Or had women in their band of followers. It’s not that Jesus elevated women above men. It’s that he accepted them as equal to men.

So to answer my own question. Yes, women are human. Yes, we are equal in all ways to men. Men have nothing to fear from us, IF they will choose to follow God’s voice when it’s important rather than ours. But then we also have to be discerning about their voices as well. All of us are responsible to discern the call of God on us from the cacophony of other humans in our lives. Ultimately, that is what we are each called to … a loving dance with the Creator Herself. And anyone who attempts to interfere in that is just asking for trouble.

**************************************************************

Read these other outstanding posts by women bloggers on women’s issues:

igniting the ember: emerging women finding their voice by Kathy Escobar
the world handicapped by half by Makeesha Fisher
The Voice by Makeesha Fisher
International Women’s Day by Julie Clawson
I Don’t Have the Balls to Be a Leader by Kingdom Grace
Complementarianism Sucks: Telling Women to be Quiet in the name of Jesus by Pam Hogeweide
International Womens Day by Minnowspeaks

I still remember the first ever election I voted in. It was 1980 and I voted by absentee ballot because I was away from home in college. Jimmy Carter was president and running as the incumbent against Ronald Reagan and John Anderson. hehehe … yeah … nobody except political science professors and poli/sci majors remember that. And the 763 of us who voted for John Anderson; we also remember. Those of you who are so enamoured of Ron Paul … you need to take a good hard look at that race. And the race where whats-his-name ran … you know? The guy who was a software engineer and put all his own money into the campaign, he used to own EDS and has a head shaped like a turkey. He was mighty entertaining, but …

There are at least 87 excellent reasons for a more than two party system in this country. However we won’t have one by starting with the presidential campaign. It will begin by organizing a new party or parties at the local level and electing officials down low and moving them up. It’s a process that will take decades. For the record, many libertarians are nuts. Wackos. A group of them voted to secede from Vermont and join New Hampshire, from the middle of the state … led by my cousin, so I can say this. There is more to good government than low taxes and low level anarchy. If Libertarians cannot win their case at the local level, they will not win at the state and national level … no matter how winsome their candidate appears.

On to more pertinent matters.

I’m not voting for Hillary. If the Democratic party has so lost it’s mooring as to nominate her for it’s presidential candidate come it’s convention, I will vote for whoever the Republican nominee is … or I won’t vote at all.  I’m not going to settle for a vote between the lesser of two evils anymore. I’m not going to do it. I refuse. I’ve only had one election in my life where I felt an honest choice between candidates … and it was the first election I voted in. 28 years is a long dry spell.

I don’t vote with my breasts and I’m a little put out that it seems a lot of my fellow women are. It’s interesting to me that many of my family, friends and colleagues assume that I am going to vote for her … just because I’m a woman and she’s a woman, so they assume that I will take this ground-breaking opportunity to vote for the first woman president. No, actually … I have a little more integrity than that. I don’t like Hillary and never have. I have felt empathy for her. I have despised the manner in which she was pilloried when Bill was in office. I have admired her courage under pressure. But when the chips are down I do not trust her and I really think that she has an unseemly lust for power. To put it quite bluntly, I do not trust her character. In much the same manner as I never trusted the character of George W. Bush. To be fair, at least she is no fool.

I’m not going to vote for Hillary, because despite her protests to contrary now, she supported the war in Iraq when it was expedient to her to do so. I’m not going to vote for Hillary because she does not have a consistent ethic of life. I’m not going to vote for Hillary, because her husband was president 8 years ago and that makes him a loose cannon in the White House … with no restraints. I’m not going to vote for Hillary because if she were to become president that would give us 32 years of essentially the same style of leadership (Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton?) and it’s time for something new. I’m not going to vote for Hillary because she does what is politically expedient to gain votes, not what she feels is best or morally right for the country or her state.  Tom D’Antoni put words to my underlying suspicions in yesterday’s Huffington Post.  I’m not certain I’d go as far as he does, but I suspect it’s true and this is why I don’t trust Hillary’s character:

“‘I will work my heart out for you every single day!’ These are the incredible words of Hillary Clinton, who arranges for a cute little Mexican boy in a sombrero to bring her flowers onstage in Texas. What a pitiful and despicable show.

If you ever see a Latino near her multimillion-dollar house in Chappaqua, New York, he’ll likely be on his knees in the dirt with a gardening trowel.

You are to her a vote, nothing more. It is not you who matters to her. It is your gullibility that matters to her. Her goal is not to serve you. Her goal is to con you and use you to become president, and that is all. You are to her expendable, a mere means to an end that does not involve you or your concerns or your welfare.

But most of all, I resent Hillary.  She brings a bitter gall to the back of my throat.  Like Hillary and many women, I sacrificed my dreams for my husband and my children.  I do not have such a glamorous husband, he does not have such a glamorous job as Bill.  So perhaps the parallels end there.  However, I cannot go out into the workplace now after 14 years of not being paid for the grunt work I do, and claim that I have “experience” for a glamorous and powerful job that I would like to have.   People would laugh at me if I put 14 years of experience on my resume that looked like what my husband does.  People would laugh at any woman who did that.  Even if her college experience equalled that of her husband’s.  It galls me that politicians, the media, and people in general are buying into Hillary’s experience as if it were true … but for the rest of us women … well … we have to start all over again when we go back to work after raising our families.  I know … life ain’t fair.  The rules are different for those who rule.  But here’s the thing.  Our country is founded on the idea that the rules are not supposed to be different for those who rule.

So … who am I going to vote for? Well, the primary came to Virginia last Tuesday (February 12). I voted for Barack Obama with joy and glee.  He won by a landslide.  For the first time in 28 years I think we have candidate who is a voice for change. Not change for the sake of change, but change in how we think about ourselves. I think Mr. Obama will bring back respect to the position of President. Respect that it began to lose even under President Nixon in the early 1970’s.

I’m very excited about his campaign.  I just hope the pols in the Democratic Party have the smarts to listen to the people.

Jemila just hit me in the latest game of tag. This one is particularly fun. Here are the “rules.”

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

I can do this. However, most of my books are in the “other” room as I do most of my blogging/computing in the family room on my trusty laptop. My books are either on my bedside table, or on the bookshelf in the bedroom. But there was one peeking out at me here in the family room … so you were not treated to odd sentences from Drawing for Older Children & Teens (at the top of my current reading pile -in the school room- as I am prepping to teach LightGirl and a friend). And the book which peeked out at me?

Saints & Sinners In the Early Church: Differing and Conflicting Traditions in the First Six Centuries, by WHC Frend. I haven’t forgotten it, but it was in my bag to read on our ill-fated anniversary get away. I’m on a quest to learn more about Pelagius (or here or here or here) and this book was recommended by a trustworthy friend. Without further ado, here are the three sentences:

“He would be rewarded or condemned accordingly.

On the practical side, the Pelagian was a social reformer — in this he would contrast with the follower of the Western ascetics Jerome and Paulinus of Nola and with Augustine himself. Three quotations of a Pelagian Briton(?) living in Sicily: “

Here are my tags …

Peggy – the Virtual Abbess

Janet – Secret Women’s Business

Cathy – Sharing Information

Patrick – Dance of the Spirit

Maurice – the Sinister Minister

Jeremy – the New Light

I’ve had another theory about war and killing knocking around in my head for a number of years now about the difference between the army of empire/invasion and the army of defense. Take a look at the following images that I’ve taken from around the web (I’ve given credit for them) and I’ll explain my theory at the bottom.

Roman Army invading Britain – ~55 CE

The Celts who defended Britain ~55 CE

Battle at Bannockburn – June 1314

Bannockburn Re-enactment-Scottish Army

British Army in American War of Independence

Militia in American Revolutionary War

American soldiers in Iraq

Iraqi Soldiers Defending Their Country

I could have found and used a lot of other images from many other times in history, but these will do. You can do your own GoogleImage search for your favorite wars/battles and you will likely find similar results. Notice the similarities in the invading armies of empire.  Notice the similarities in the defending armies of the indigenous people.  There are many reasons for this.  Empires are well financed and can afford to outfit their soldiers well.  Their soldiers are much safer, have better equipment and arms than the soldiers of defense, for the most part.  It is in the empire’s interest to keep the indigenous people poor and ill-equipped.

Here’s another thing I don’t understand though.  The armies of empire almost always lose.  Oh, it takes a long, long time.  Sometimes longer than others.  But empires always crack and fall; indigenous populations survive.  It may take generations, but over time it is the indigenous people who will overcome the invaders.  There are very few cases where this has not been the case … but the reach of empire becomes over-extension.  The strain of maintaining force in too many places eventually cracks the foundations and the empire breaks apart.

One definition of insanity is repeating the same pattern of behavior over and over again, expecting a different result.  Yet, as a species, we do this.  We continually raise up empires and their armies, send them into foreign lands.  Then wonder why we cannot make the center hold.  What is wrong?  Why does our collective head hurt so badly?

I wonder what would happen if we tried something new?

Instead of sending armies of empire to quell unrest, tax, rape and pillage and behave brutally badly, I wonder what would happen if we simply decided to live well where we are?  What if all the countries did that?  I am aware that this is naive.  We are, however, at a rare point in history, with a rare confluence of circumstances.   What would happen if we decided to be good neighbors, instead of the mayor, police force and justice system all-in-one?

What if …

I don’t understand the taking of life.  Honestly, I don’t get it.  I become nauseated when I have to squish a spider or an insect … unless it’s a mosquito; mosquito’s get no quarter.  I’ve been wrestling with this lately.  Here’s how it’s been moshing around in my brain.

We watched Braveheart together for the first time as a family about a week ago.  The LightChildren did not see the end.  We stopped the movie at the scene in which William Wallace is captured.  That’s where it all ended for them.  I cannot even stomach that final scene, I was not going to visit it upon my sweet kids.

I was fascinated by the Battle of Stirling Bridge.  That’s the big battle between the Scots and British … the battle everafter referred to as the “Butt” Battle by the LightChildren, because it is the one preceded by a mooning of the British by the Scots with a salute by raising of the kilts and posteriors in such a way as to mock the British.  We all had a good laugh as we were intended to.

As the battle is filmed the camera cuts back and forth between the British soldiers and the Scottish warriors.  Here are some things I noted about the differences in the armies.  It’s something I’ve often pondered and when I think about it these are “rules” that go back to the dawn of time almost.  The British army (the invaders) were uniform.  They all wore the same thing.  They were heavily armored and protected.  Notably they were also cloned.  They weren’t actual clones, but their armor made them all look alike.  You could not tell one from another; they were faceless, nameless units of destruction and killing.  They operated on command and as a unit.  They did not move or react unless told to do so.

On the other hand the Scottish army was at the other end of the armed spectrum.  Every soldier was different.  They all carried different weapons; whatever they had in their home at the time they left.  The same for their armor, what little they had (hand shields for the most part).  Their primary source of energy was their wits.  They operated on a whim and on their hearts.

Now, here’s the meat of what I don’t understand.  The Scots were fighting to regain control of their land, lives and their freedom.  Those are things worth sacrificing your life for.  They are worth fighting for and risking your life for.  But I have never been able to understand how men (and now women) march into battle without those things at risk.  The British Army were not defending anything.  The men on the ground fighting risked punishment if they didn’t and dying if they did.  But, really, I’d take the punishment over dying.

I’m not saying this very well.  The powers that seek to gain empire are never the schmucks who do the actual fighting or take the actual risk.  The powers must seek out others to do their dirty work for them.  But there is nothing to be gained for those doing the dirty work, because the prize goes to the powers.  So, I’ve never understood how they go about getting the battle fought for empire.  I just don’t understand …

The other day I retold the story of a conversation between LightBoy and I about the difference between freedom and justice.  He’s still mulling that over.  In the meantime, I gave him an assignment (LightGirl too).  They have to write a paper every two weeks.  Their current assignment is to write about William Wilberforce.  They can pick anything about him that they want.  Their last assignment was the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  LightBoy’s paper morphed into Benedict Arnold, but that’s okay.  Now they are researching the famous liberator.

LightBoy, “Dad, what’s hersey mean?”

“What?  How do you spell it?”

“h e a r s e y … I think.”

“Oh, that’s hearsay, and it means to overhear something and repeat it.”

LightBoy went back to the encyclopedia.  Pretty soon he came back, with the encyclopedia and a very dire look on his face.

“Dad!  I don’t think that’s what it means.  LOOK!”

LightHusband looked at the picture and the word in question:

H E R E S Y.

And promptly explained the difference.