Category Archives: Politics

White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Posted on by

**TRIGGER WARNING!!!! POSITIVELY-SPUN OBAMA CONTENT AHEAD!!!!**

Every so often, I like to irritate the staunch Republicans and Libertarians who read this blog and post Obama stuff. Tonight (well.. technically last night because it’s now Sunday) was the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the President was his usual witty self.

And then there’s this… which has to be the BEST. PERFORMANCE. AT. THIS. EVENT. EVER!!!! (Not from this year unfortunately.)

div style=”text-align:center;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:15px;”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxcuVlCuX9Y

7 Quick Takes: Fundraising, English Folk Songs, and Political Grumping

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Kaia’s Kindergarten Fund. We have a fundraiser starting today over at Saving Kaia called Kaia’s Kindergarten Fund. Click on the link for more details.

— 2 —

English folk music. Daniel was banging his snack container in a certain rhythm today and the English folk song “Dashing Away With the Smoothing Iron” came to mind so I looked up the words and sang it to him.

He managed to keep banging in almost perfect rhythm.

— 3 —

Dancers. For those of you who know Elizabeth Esther, her daughter Jewel and her ballet team made it to the finals for the Grand Prix in New York City. The team has to raise $15000 for the housing, fees, and transportation. They’ve currently (as I’m typing this) raised $2640 and they have 22 more days to do this. Can you spare a few bucks?

— 4 —

Lent Madness. I have to say that Lent Madness is amusing me greatly. It’s been enjoyable to see who wins each day. Granted, my bracket is screwed up because Ignatius of Antioch beat Ignatius of Loyola; but the parody account that it spawned is amusing. The post answering criticisms of the SEC (Super Executive Committee) is even well-done. Episcopal Church for the win!

— 5 —

The end of a era. I watched Pope (now Pope Emeritus) Benedict XVI leaving the Vatican today, getting on his helicopter, and saying “good night” to the people at Castel Gadolfo. While I wasn’t amused when he was chosen as Pope (he has a history of calling people like me “heretics” in his pre-papal life), I respected him because of his office and I will admit that I was watching all of this happen this morning completely stunned.

Thank you to Good Day Sacramento for showing all of it without making any snarky remarks and getting a *real* Monsignor to do commentary. Next time, however, please refrain from stalking the bishop while he’s celebrating Mass. 🙂 (They did refrain from actually bringing cameras in and interrupting.)

— 6 —

Fantasy Conclave. I did enter in a guess for Fantasy Conclave though I’ll be *incredibly* surprised if I’m right. There’s also an opportunity for people to adopt a cardinal and pray for them throughout the conclave. For my Protestant readers, it would be a nice thing to do, especially as the choosing of the new Pope affects us ecumenically. I got Cardinal Angelo Scola. Truth be told, I’d rather be praying for Jason Motte (closing pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals) but Cardinal Scola looks interesting.

— 7 —

Politics. If anyone needs suggestions for lay-offs for the sequester, I can think of 535 people to lay off first…

Seriously y’all in DC, I don’t give a rat’s behind who comes up with the best plan — pretend you actually meant all those promises you made about being bipartisan when you ran for election and COME UP WITH SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T SCREW OVER THE COUNTRY!!!!!!

*steps off the soapbox*

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

I Think We’re Missing Something Here…

Posted on by

Last week was the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade and I saw a number of blogs mentioning and quoting from the following Salon.Com article that I’ve printed in its entirety.

Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word ??life.?? Life! Who wants to argue with that? Who wants be on the side of ?? not-life? That??s why the language of those who support abortion has for so long been carefully couched in other terms. While opponents of abortion eagerly describe themselves as ??pro-life,?? the rest of us have had to scramble around with not nearly as big-ticket words like ??choice?? and ??reproductive freedom.?? The ??life?? conversation is often too thorny to even broach. Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that??s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn??t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.

As Roe v. Wade enters its fifth decade, we find ourselves at one of the most schizo moments in our national relationship with reproductive choice. In the past year we??ve endured the highest number of abortion restrictions ever. Yet support for abortion rights is at an all-time high, with seven in 10 Americans in favor of letting Roe v. Wade stand, allowing for reproductive choice in all or ??most?? cases. That??s a stunning 10 percent increase from just a decade ago. And in the midst of this unique moment, Planned Parenthood has taken the bold step of reframing the vernacular ?? moving away from the easy and easily divisive words ??life?? and ??choice.?? Instead, as a new promotional film acknowledges, ??It??s not a black and white issue.??

It??s a move whose time is long overdue. It??s important, because when we don??t look at the complexities of reproduction, we give far too much semantic power to those who??d try to control it. And we play into the sneaky, dirty tricks of the anti-choice lobby when we on the pro-choice side squirm so uncomfortably at the ways in which they??ve repeatedly appropriated the concept of ??life.??

Here??s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That??s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She??s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of ??scraping out a bunch of cells?? and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of ??the baby?? and ??this kid.?? I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can??t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it??s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn??t the same? Fetuses aren??t selective like that. They don??t qualify as human life only if they??re intended to be born.

When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn??t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there??s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you??re born? Only when you??re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?

We??re so intimidated by the wingnuts, we get spooked out of having these conversations. We let the archconservatives browbeat us with the concept of ??life,?? using their scare tactics on women and pushing for indefensible violations like forced ultrasounds. Why? Because when they wave the not-even-accurate notion that ??abortion stops a beating heart?? they think they??re going to trick us into some damning admission. They believe that if we call a fetus a life they can go down the road of making abortion murder. And I think that??s what concerns the hell out of those of us who support unrestricted reproductive freedom.

But we make choices about life all the time in our country. We make them about men and women in other nations. We make them about prisoners in our penal system. We make them about patients with terminal illnesses and accident victims. We still have passionate debates about the justifications of our actions as a society, but we don??t have to do it while being bullied around by the vague idea that if you say we??re talking about human life, then the jig is up, rights-wise.

It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out of some lady??s vagina. That distinction may apply neatly legally, but philosophically, surely we can do better. Instead, we let right-wingers perpetuate the sentimental fiction that no one with a heart ?? and certainly no one who??s experienced the wondrous miracle of family life ?? can possibly resist tiny fingers and tiny toes growing inside a woman??s body. We give a platform to the notion that, as Christina Locke opined in a recent New York Times Op-Ed, ??motherhood had slyly changed us. We went from basking in the rights that feminism had afforded us to silently pledging never to exercise them. Nice mommies don??t talk about abortion.??

Don??t they? The majority of women who have abortions ?? and one in three American women will ?? are already mothers. And I can say anecdotally that I??m a mom who loved the lives she incubated from the moment she peed on those sticks, and is also now well over 40 and in an experimental drug trial. If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your ass I??d have an abortion. I??d have the World??s Greatest Abortion.

My belief that life begins at conception is mine to cling to. And if you believe that it begins at birth, or somewhere around the second trimester, or when the kid finally goes to college, that??s a conversation we can have, one that I hope would be respectful and empathetic and fearless. We can??t have it if those of us who believe that human life exists in utero are afraid we??re somehow going to flub it for the cause. In an Op-Ed on ??Why I??m Pro-Choice?? in the Michigan Daily this week, Emma Maniere stated, quite perfectly, that ??Some argue that abortion takes lives, but I know that abortion saves lives, too.?? She understands that it saves lives not just in the most medically literal way, but in the roads that women who have choice then get to go down, in the possibilities for them and for their families. And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time ?? even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.

I’m not going to deny that it chafes me that she speaks callously about the fact that she’s fully aware that life begins at conception and that it hasn’t changed the fact that she’s pro-choice. I’m not going to deny that she speaks derisively of pro-life people like me.

However…

I’m seeing things that were missed in the rush to mine the piece for sound bytes. For one thing, she’s asking her fellow pro-choice people to admit that they’re dancing around the question of what makes someone “alive” and that we need to all be on the same page. This is, at least to me, a positive step because we can’t have meaningful dialogue if one person just believes it’s a mass of cells and another person believes it’s a baby.

She also fails to mention why she would get an abortion if she got pregnant during the drug trial. Does it have something to do with the tetragenic effects of the drug? Would becoming pregnant prevent the drug from being effective? I know that these questions ultimately don’t matter to most people but I’m one of those special people who has actually been in the situation where prolonging the pregnancy put my life in danger. The only difference is that it happened to me at a point in my pregnancy where they could sustain Daniel outside the womb.

The author talks about Planned Parenthood’s current campaign being that “it isn’t a black and white issue”. I think that’s probably the most accurate statement I’ve heard. Don’t get me wrong — you do have the people who have an abortion because the baby is an inconvenience; but you also have the people who are doing it because they’ve been kicked out of the house, they don’t know that they have any other options, or because they’re terrified. Most of them regret their decision and have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives. These last reasons are why we need to better fund our crisis pregnancy centers — let’s give the women some other options.

Don’t get me wrong — parts of the article disgust me but I think we need to look at the article in terms of the audience to whom it is directed: pro-choice people. If we read it in that light, the author is actually making some pro-life arguments.

I Don’t Want to Take Your Guns: A “Liberal” Discussing Gun Control

Posted on by

Most of my blog readers are too young to remember the 101 California Street shootings or maybe it didn’t register in your part of the country so I’ll fill you in: On July 1, 1993, a gunman burst into the Petit & Martin law firm and opened fire, killing 9 people and wounding 6. Among the dead were Jody Sposato, a young mother, and Michael Scully who shoved his wife under a desk and died shielding her with his body. The killing, at the time, was horrific and watching the people fleeing the building, police and ambulances coming, and people being brought out on stretchers is imbeded in my mind. It was the equivalent of watching the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 to my 13 year old eyes. It inspired some legal and legislative measures that led to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, H.R.3355, 103rd Congress (1994) which took effect in 1994. I remember watching Jody’s husband Steve (?) Sposato and his daughter on Capital Hill during the signing of this legislation.

The Federal Assault Weapon ban (Title IX, subtitle A) was part of it and the whole thing expired on September 13, 2004 through a sunset provision. I remember being livid in 2004 that it wasn’t renewed/reauthorized/whatever the term because I have that vivid memory of the carnage on that day. That kind of thing makes an impression on a 13 year old. In doing research on this act so I could sound reasonably well-versed, I discovered that it was actually written by then-senator Joe Biden. (Interesting how history repeats itself now that Vice President Biden was in charge of coming up with policies after the Sandy Hook shootings?) It prohibited the ownership of certain types of weapons and magazines holding more than ten rounds of ammunition. I have yet to hear a compelling reason for someone to own such a weapon from the many hunters and gun enthusiasts that I know.

Another part of the legislation is the Violence Against Women Act. We failed to re-authorize that in 2012 which irritates me to no end but is not pertinent to this discussion as much as the Federal Assault Weapon Ban.

The NRA is currently engaging in fear-mongering of the worst nature and claiming that the regulations proposed by Biden mean that “the administration wants to take our guns”. Let’s examine why this is erroneous. Quoth the Wikipedia: “In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm, unconnected to service in a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home within many longstanding prohibitions and restrictions on firearms possession listed by the Court as being consistent with the Second Amendment. In McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 3025 (2010), the Court ruled that the Second Amendment limits state and local governments to the same extent that it limits the federal government.” (HT: Wikipedia article on Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States) On other words, your right to own firearms is protected and has been upheld by the Supreme Court. President Obama cannot order all guns confiscated — he is limited by the decision of the judicial branch. (Do we need to review separation of powers and system of checks and balances?)

Another sign of fear-mongering and faulty reasoning is that they’re talking about arming teachers as a solution to preventing school shootings which is ludicrous. Why do I say this? Let’s look at a recent school shooting case that happened on January 10, 2013 in Taft, California. Instead of breaking out a weapon and shooting the student that had entered the class with a shotgun and had already shot one student, teacher Ryan Heber talked the student shooter into putting the gun down. A situation that could have resulted in 3 deaths ended with nobody dead with only one student critically injured. That would not have happened had the teacher been armed and forced to fire on the student shooter. It was the cool thinking of Mr. Heber that saved the day, not his ability to hit a target. The student shooter had been bullied by the students he shot so maybe the issue that needs to be tackled is bullying.

I have lived in rural areas of Minnesota and Montana where deer season is almost a state holiday. I fully understand people hunting to put meat on the table during the winter or as a rite of passage of sorts. I have family members who are hunters or who have hunted. For this reason, I am quite cognizant of the (unfounded) fear that people have of losing their guns. We had a parishioner who collected antique weaponry — while I’m a bit suspicious of having a halberd in the house with preteen boys, I would not support him having to give up his guns. These kids grow up with hunter safety being a rite of passage. I’m not worried about them or their parents. We have hunters in our congregation in northern California. I don’t support them having to give up their rifles.

The weapons in question are assault-style rifles that are made for the battlefield and magazines that hold more than ten rounds. Unless you are a soldier actively engaging in combat, there is no purpose to you owning one of those. As one of my snarky friends on Facebook commented, “Do you really expect the deer to shoot back?”

Let me reiterate: I don’t want to take your guns away from you. All I’m asking is that we have a national dialogue on the words “well-regulated” in the Second Amendment. Should we require gun owners to possess a license that shows that they have been through safety classes and understand the laws just as we require drivers to possess such a license? Are we really checking backgrounds during that ten-day waiting period (which was a result of the 101 California Street shootings) or are we BS-ing it? Yes, guns find their way into the hands of criminals — my small town just had a police officer shot in the line of duty about 3 blocks from where I live by a suspected gangbanger who apparently panicked. This is about taking actual steps to prevent it instead of just paying it lip service.

I’m sticking my neck out here and keeping comments open. Can we have a meaningful discussion on this or are people going to just call me a “lib” and make assumptions about where I stand? All I know is that I don’t *want* another Jonesboro middle school shooting, Columbine High School, Pearl High School, Virginia Tech, or Sandy Hook.

7 Quick Takes: Making the Plates Stop Spinning

Posted on by

7 Quick Takes

It’s Tuesday the 15th and I was trying to come up with a way to describe how I’m feeling right now and it came to me that I feel like one of those plate spinners you see at the carnival. These are going to be written between now and Thursday night at 9:59 p.m. (the minute before the link-up goes live) and some of them might be pretty long.

— 1 —

#LiveLikeRick My friend Rick Stilwell was killed in a car accident on Friday morning. I spent most of Friday afternoon in a ball of shock until the weeping hit and I needed to get out of the house. I ended up at Starbucks because of the free wi-fi… which was perfect because Rick was a Starbucks junkie before he went local. I had a latté in his honor and tried to blog and journal everything out of my brain.

Here's looking at you Rick...

His public memorial service was livestreamed this afternoon and I watched it balled under a comforter. There are now some praise and worship songs that I will not be able to listen to for a while because they were sung there and it was totally the way Rick would have wanted it. He was all about community and connecting people which is why the people there (and the 100 of us watching on UStream) knew him in so many different ways. They had some of his action figures on the podium which was also fitting because he posted lots of Instagram pics of them.

It’s been an interesting grieving process because in the 10 years I’ve known him we have:
-talked by phone twice
-IM’ed a bunch
-tweeted/emailed a bunch
-never met in person

Yes… we’ve never met in person but he was as much of a part of my life as if he had lived down the street from me. When my insurance company decided to not pay for anything related to my ovarian cyst, he sent me a small check (I think it was $50 or $100) which took care of the ER doctor’s bill. In 2003, he got me through the ELCA denying me candidacy. He told me that “regardless of what others say, your call is never revoked (romans 11:29). i pray you find the direction over/around this bump in the road. really appreciate your heart and sensitivity being displayed here?? as always, when dealing with denominational leaders, don??t sweat the petty stuff, and don??t pet the sweaty stuff.” I think he now knows that he was right and my call to ministry looks radically different than anything of which the ELCA could have conceived. In 2004, he read through me ranting and screaming in an entry, leaving me the comment “read it all ?? still here. many prayers, much love and hopefulness to you all the way up in the tundra??”. He then took an hour out of his weekend to call me and make sure I was OK. When Twitter came on the scene, he signed up immediately and when his wife got an account, they used it as their personal texting service, even tweeting each other while sitting in the same room and getting all mushy.

If you want to know more about him, do two things: watch the video of his public memorial service and read 1 John 1:3. Seriously, when I met Rick, his blog and AIM name were “rick1j13”.

— 2 —

The Far Above Rubies Project. I’m going to have a series of posts starting February 1st on verses from Proverbs 31. I’m looking for women bloggers from all across the spectrum of Christianity so if you’re interested, please comment and let me know.

— 3 —

Forty to Forever. Brett is going to be part of a fundraiser this Lent called Forty Days to Forever. The idea is to raise $500 for forty kids and families that are adopting. Kara’s Nico is also part of it. I’m trying to put together a gift basket for a giveaway and I’ve also done the applications to be part of it. Right now, I’m figuring out the social media aspect of publicizing it and inviting people. With what hit on Friday for me, I felt like my head was spinning this weekend. Go to the website to learn more. Meanwhile, click on Brett’s picture to go check out his profile.

Brett

— 4 —

Fundraising for Kaia. Putting together fundraising for Kaia has been interesting.

Miss Kaia

-I’m pondering a bottle challenge (filling up a juice or sports drink bottle with spare change) for April but I fear it would come too close to Easter and the Lenten challenge already going on for Brett and some of the other Reece’s Rainbow kids so I may aim it for August which is her birthday month.
-I’m crocheting 7×7″ squares of black and variegated yarns to put together into a “stained glass” blanket. My thought is that it will probably be auctioned off around November in time for Christmas shopping. I’ll have to come up with a Rafflecopter giveaway or something.
–Mandi, bless her heart, has offered to help if I want to put together an auction. This might be a possibility as well.

— 5 —

Abnormal weather in California. I’m totally aware that the rest of the nation is howling with laughter at California because we’re whining about temperatures down in the 20’s in the morning and in the low 50’s during the day. (That was a Chinook winds day in Montana when I lived there.) There is some deserved ribbing of southern Californians because anything under 60F is scary. However, if you consider that one of our industries is citrus and this is a big time for it, you might understand why people are flipping out about the temperatures. In some cases (i.e. mandarins), a bit of a freeze is good because it increases sweetness but in other cases, orange grove owners are lighting bonfires to warm their fruit.

— 6 —

The bear child. Daniel lasted about 10 minutes at preschool today (Wednesday the 16th) before we were called to bring him home because of explosive diarrhea. He wasn’t running a temperature but something was definitely up because he felt hot to me. I ended up changing him into shorts because his pull-on pants were in the laundry shed and I was too cold lazy to go get them. He’ll be out of school on Thursday as well until we can get his lower GI back to normal. We’re doing the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesause, and toast) with him and it seems to be helping. He’s also extra cuddly because he’s not feeling well and I was actually kind of hoping he would go down for a nap in my lap today. No luck in that area but he woke up in his pack n’ play very grumpy so after a diaper change, he was tucked into the recliner with me under a comforter with his blankie (this child gives Linus a run for his money), a sippy cup with Pedialyte, and some Cheerios. God willing, he’ll be back to school on Friday.

— 7 —

Gun control. Most of my blog readers are too young to remember the 101 California Street shootings or maybe it didn’t register in your part of the country. A gunman burst into the Petit & Martin law firm and opened fire, killing 9 people and wounding 6. Among the dead were Jody Sposato, a young mother, and Michael Scully who shoved his wife under a desk and died shielding her with his body. The killing, at the time, was horrific and it inspired some legal and legislative measures that led to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, H.R.3355, 103rd Congress (1994) which took effect in 1994. The Federal Assault Weapon ban was part of it and the whole thing expired on September 13, 2004 through a sunset provision. I remember being livid in 2004 that it wasn’t renewed/reauthorized/whatever the term because I remember watching the people streaming out of the building and people being wheeled out on gurneys on TV. That kind of thing makes an impression on a 13 year old. In doing research on this act so I could sound reasonably well-versed, I discovered that it was actually written by then-senator Joe Biden. Interesting how history repeats itself now that Vice President Biden was in charge of coming up with policies after the Sandy Hook shootings?

Lest someone decide to call me a “lib”/claim that I have a skewed understanding of the 2nd Amendment/claim I hate the NRA, I should point out that George H.W. Bush resigned from the NRA in 1995 because they were being lunatics. The NRA is engaging in fear-mongering of the worst nature and claiming that the regulations proposed by Biden mean that the administration wants to take our guns. They’re talking about arming teachers as a solution to preventing school shootings which is ludicrous. Why do I say this? Let’s look at a recent school shooting case that happened last week in Taft, California. Instead of breaking out a weapon and shooting the student that had entered the class with a shotgun and had already shot one student, teacher Ryan Heber talked the student shooter into putting the gun down. A situation that could have resulted in 3 deaths ended with nobody dead and only one student critically injured. That would not have happened had the teacher been armed and forced to fire.

I’m taking a rare political stand here and asking that people divorce their hatred of the administration and actually focus on what is being asked here. The banning of weapons that belong on a battlefield and the ammo to go with them is what is being proposed, not the seizure of the rifle someone uses to go deer hunting or the pistol used in target practice. I’m asking as a fellow American, a sister in Christ, and someone who almost lost her twin brother in a planned school shooting — please put aside your political biases and reject the fear-mongering of the NRA and let’s work to fix the gun laws in the land. I would be the first to protest if the administration does anything unduly rash.

— Bonus —

Flu shot and vaccinations in general. I know that some of my readers are anti-vax and there are times I have had to bite my tongue as people talk about the dangers of them, the use of stem cells from aborted babies used in some of them, etc. As someone who is immunosuppressed from asthma and an auto-immune disorder and as the mother of an immunosuppressed child, I am asking you to please get your flu shot. Yes, it’s only a 62% effectiveness but as Leah explains in her piece, it means you are 62% less likely to have severe complications. It is also beneficial in our society to have “herd” immunity which protects the elderly and people like me and Daniel. Because we vaccinate at a fairly high level, we don’t have diseases like polio, measles, or diptheria which ravage the Third World. If you don’t believe me, I’d be more than happy to direct you to an office of a company whose work is outsourced to India where it is quite probable that at least one person has a deformed limb from polio or who has had a family member die of a disease that we don’t think twice about here. I *know* at least two of these people.

So please, get your flu shot. I will thank you, Daniel will thank you, and Paula, whose daughter just got a liver transplant and is super-immunosuppressed, will thank you.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com. Say a prayer for her as well as she’s dealing with double pulmonary emboli while pregnant.

The Simple Woman’s Daybook: January 14, 2013

Posted on by

Simple Woman's Daybook

FOR TODAY January 14, 2013

Outside my window… dark. Today had a high of 48F and we’ll get down to 29F tonight. I’m aware that the rest of the country is laughing at California whining about these temperatures but it’s actually not a good thing for our citrus industry.

I am thinking… about Vicki, Trace, and Cammi as well as the rest of Rick’s family as they bury him today.

I am thankful… for Rick’s life and the way he blessed mine, especially in the first couple years of Jon’s ministry when I needed a friend.

In the kitchen… I need to go grocery shopping.

I am wearing… charcoal grey shirt and fleece pajama bottoms. If only I could go to the grocery store like this. #firstworldproblems

I am creating… plans for Reece’s Rainbow fundraisers and patches for a stained glass blanket to auction off for Kaia.

I am going… to the store eventually tonight.

I am wondering… if people realize that if the science teacher at Taft Union High School had been armed on Thursday, there would have been one more casualty — the teacher disarmed the gunman by talking him down. The student that was shot is recovering.

I am reading… The Buzzard Table by Margaret Maron.

I am hoping… to get back to my normal self soon.

I am looking forward to… Morning Prayer tomorrow.

I am learning how to use Scrivner.

A favorite quote for today… “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” — Martin Luther

One of my favorite things… purring tabbies.

A few plans for the rest of the week: Morning Prayer (hopefully) tomorrow and WIC on Thursday.

Hosted by The Simple Woman’s Daybook

Because Bloggers Get Nothing Done…

Posted on by

Rage Against the Minivan: dear pastor mark: pontificate this.

Back story: Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church decided to mouth off via Twitter and claim the following:

Mark Driscoll's tweet

Kristen Howerton of Rage Against the Minivan excoriated him in this post and one of my Twitter buddies (whose name I am forgetting at the moment — sorry!) listed off a whole host of things with the tag #bloggersgetthingsdone.

By the way, have I mentioned that Mars Hill Church sues other churches that try to use the name Mars Hill? I hadn’t realized that they had copyrighted Acts 17. Huh. [/sarcasm]

My take on all this: I will readily admit that I do a fair amount of pontificating — I blog to get the unhealthy crap out of my head and sometimes that means that I blather about how the world should be. However, it’s not all I do. Kristen listed the things she’s been part of as a blogger so maybe I should do the same. 😉

[+] Raised money for Afghani women and put together an afghan to send over there. (2005)
[+] Raised money for Lutheran World Relief (2006), International Justice Mission (2007), First Book (2008), the Preeclampsia Foundation (2009), Direct Relief (2010), and Reece’s Rainbow (2012).
[+] Discussed the issues involved with food stamps/WIC/being part of the 47% and worked with blogger Thomas Fuller Jr to think of solutions.
[+] Raised awareness and advocacy for preeclampsia and HELLP Syndrome so that other moms won’t have to go through what I did.
[+] Worked to get two special needs children (Brett and Kaia) adopted through Reece’s Rainbow.
[+] Raised money for sex trafficking victims.

These are just the things off the top of my head. Whether you want to argue that *I* personally got those things done is irrelevant — I feel like it’s a team effort and there are so many bloggers that contribute. I participated in Blogathons for 5 years and saw people raise awareness of resources for rape victims, make schools safer places for GLBTQ kids, and put their health/bodies/minds on the line to stay up for 24 hours because they had something to say.

I will readily admit that my faith in Jesus Christ is what motivates me to do all these things but there are bloggers who aren’t religious that do the same things. All of us understand that we have voices and that these voices when combined can change the world.

So tell me, Mark Driscoll, what have YOU accomplished today?