Where are you on the curve?

Once again confirming how very marginal I am in my community...

Check out this absolutely fascinating look at your neighborhood through the lens of the census and other data: Zipcodestats. An amazing wealth of detail is available on all sorts of demographic information.

Faceblind

This article in Wired, about people who are developmentally incapable of recognizing faces (a condition previously thought only to occur in victims of brain damage) is fascinating. The best guess of these researchers is that two percent of the population is faceblind....

It's hard for me to imagine what a challenge it must be to go through life this way. If you, or someone you know, has a really hard time recognizing people, point them to faceblind.org.

Sleep? Sleep is for sissies!

We don't need no stinkin' sleep!

OMG, I once again yanked the poor, abused, metaphorical bunny out of the hat, finessing the equivalent of three weeks' worth of reading and writing in about 16 hours of sustained effort. Usually the procrastination is caused by my stupid adolescent psychology; this time I actually had circumstances that made it very hard to get anything done at all.

But I tell you: I am too damned old for this all-nighter crap. I am running on fumes right now, and worried that I've undone all the good antibiotic action that's pushed back my illness in the last couple of days.

Oh, and I've got to squirt out another quickie (ooo, that sounds nasty) in time for my Theology class tomorrow. Wheeeeee!

Oy.

Why don't the first three Gospels all agree?

Now that Essay 2 for my New Testament: Gospels class is in the professor's hands, I thought I would share with you my effort on Essay 1.

Here's the assignment description for Essay 1:

As you are about to begin an adult Sunday school class, one of the participants approaches you and says, “There’s something I don't understand. When I read my Bible I can see that the first three Gospels are a lot alike, but not exactly alike. Sometimes one of them has a story that the others don’t, or one seems to have left out things the others have. Or they tell stories in different order. How did that happen? We say the Bible is the word of God, but if these Gospels don’t agree about things Jesus said or did, what are we supposed to believe?” You are someone who never passes up a “teachable moment,” so you decide to scrap your plans for the class and address this question, drawing on the best of your wisdom from your introductory New Testament class. Write out your response to your questioner.

I responded to this assignment in two parts. Part 1 was a "handout" for the class in the form of a parable, and Part 2 was the "presentation" or actual essay. (Sorry about the PDF format, but I'm just too lazy to bring 'em into HTML.)

If Essay 2 turns out not to have been an utter fiasco, I might post it too, eventually.

Some things are more important than others

I am exhausted. Physically, yes, but even more so emotionally.

Is the life and death of a seven-month-old kitten more important than my second New Testament: Gospels paper? I don't know; but I do know that I haven't had even a scrap of the wherewithal to get going on it up to now, and that it ain't gonna happen tonight either.

That will leave me tomorrow to produce it in. Oh swell. Should I pull an all-nighter just when the antibiotics are starting to kick in? (I finally went to see a doctor; I now have pills that cost eleven dollars apiece, if you can believe it.)

See Pascale. See Pascale weep. See Pascale's academic reputation go down the tubes. Slide, Pascale, slide. It's a slippery slope, but going downhill isn't as easy as it looks.

Goodbye sweet girl

The best, most affectionate, most beautiful kitty in the world is gone. I had to say goodbye to her before she started to suffer.

She is buried in the back yard of good friends, under a young magnolia tree. There is a rose in the grave with her, and one on the fresh mound of earth.

I am so sad I can hardly breathe.

If Ariel does not run up to me ~ chirping a greeting and purring her wonderfully warm, loud purr ~ when I knock on heaven's door, then I don't want to go there. Send me to the other place.

Anonymous Kindness

Someone sent me flowers. There was no note, although a suspiciously New-Yorkish phone number appeared on the address label.

Thanks to whomever you are; I am grateful for your thoughtfulness. I'm trying very, very hard not to think of them as funereal.

Midterminated

Well, my Overview of Christian Theology mid-term exam is over. While not an utter debacle, it hardly represents my best and most shining self. And I'm afraid I abased myself to be one of those students who makes a special pleading for her inadequacies with the professor after it was over.

Gah. I'm embarassed to be me.

So, to summarize: still sick, still sad, still overwhelmed. And now feeling like an idiot too. Oh goodie.

And still she purrs...

She's eating very little, and isn't much interested in playing. But
she still purrs when she snuggles up to me in the morning. She purrs
when she sits on my lap. She purrs when I scratch under her chin,
usually.

Life is not what it was for her. But, today, I think it is still good
enough.

In front of and behind the big belly, she is getting very skinny. I
hope I will be brave enough to recognize when that "good enough" is
no longer true.

Ariel has FIP

It's quite certain now.

FIP is pretty much invariably fatal. Perhaps Ariel can be a miracle kitty and survive, but I must expect that she will not.

Now I have to decide how long she will live and how she will die.

She has the "wet" version of the disease, which tends to progress quite quickly. At the moment she doesn't seem to be unhappy or uncomfortable, although she's not eating much and is sleeping a lot. I don't want her to suffer, and so it seems it would be better for her end to come earlier rather than too much later. I have no idea how to make that decision, but I don't want my fear and anxiety to cause her pain that could and should be avoided.

Friendship Hospital gave me the numbers of a couple of vets who make house calls, and who might be able to provide the good death here at home. I think we would both prefer that.

My heart is breaking for the little girl who is so sweet and good.

Beyond Price

My heart is breaking. The little girl has developed a bulge in her midsection. This is a very bad sign, as fluid in the abdomen is one of the major indications of FIP.

I'm taking her to the vet tomorrow late afternoon. Please pray for us.

Philosophy/Retro Comic Mashup

This site combines a random Family Circus cartoon with a random Nietzche quotation, to fantastic effect. Very postmodern, and yet so apropos!

What has God done? (Creation)

Overview of Christian Theology: Assignment 5

God is timeless, humanity is time-bound. God is perfect, humankind is imperfect. God speaks and acts, and we — in all our contingency and immaturity — must offer a response. The God of creation is a parental God, who makes us in God’s image in expectation that we will grow in loving response into a worthy conversational partner, speaking the language of love. The model of panentheism, where humankind is nurtured and protected in womb-like embrace of God’s creativity, is powerfully appealing.

In our contemporary context, where literalists and fundamentalists have laid the strongest and most reactionary claims for the nature and deeds of the Creator God, I think it might be helpful to speak rather of the Creative or Creating God. Rather than describing an atavistic white-bearded Patriarch in the Sky who separated the heavens and the earth six thousand years ago, we can speak with enthusiasm (and I choose the word deliberately) about a Creative God who inspires (also), who brings and sustains life, and who, as Guthrie says, “is continuously making new beginnings, opening up new possibilities, initiating new events.” Liturgical language refers to God as “the author of our salvation;” I would also like to see God as the ultimate Artist, whose creative genius is perpetually the source and sustenance our being.

We, and indeed the whole universe, are wonderfully made. As human beings we are siblings not only each of the other, but also, in a profound way, of all material reality: animals, rocks, water, and stars. We may learn one day that our vaunted human consciousness and the God-seeking nature of humanity are not in fact unique to us. (Our history is a long and mostly shameful record of our belatedly having to widen our understanding of to whom it is that we must accord the dignity of humanity.) I hope that if that day comes, we will have the courage to embrace it as yet another gift of the God of abundant life.

Just as the Godhead is community of persons, so we human beings are only fully human in communities that protect and enhance the individual’s personhood while fostering mutuality. When we seek a model for how to live as a God-centered person, made in God’s image and dwelling in community with others, we are called to follow the example of Jesus. It must be a way of life to which anyone can aspire (else we are not all equally human before God), so it cannot depend on varying gifts of intelligence, physical attributes, social circumstance, or will-power. This way of life is shown to us in the human life of Christ, and is characterized by obedience to and love of God, and self-giving service to others, and best summarized in the Great Commandment.

As an aside, I have to say that I wonder whether, in fact, this is something that every human being CAN actually do. It wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if we one day discover that there is a congenital, genetically-caused form of sociopathy, such that an individual simply cannot ever desire to or in fact truly love God or neighbor. What are we to make of a form of “natural evil” that leads inevitably to moral evil: the killer, for example, who is neurologically wired from birth to derive pleasure from the pain and suffering of others? How are we to respond to such persons? Are they still human? What does it mean to say ‘God made them that way’ or should we find another way to talk about it? Christianity is at its strongest when it affirms the goodness of the world and human material life even in the face of suffering, evil, and death. This is a very hard word indeed, and I can’t say I can fully claim it as yet.

It seems, however, to make sense that if God has the first word (in creation/creating), then God must also have the last word (in salvation/saving). It is this perspective that can keep us from fearing that the powers and principalities will have final dominion over us, and from being seduced into worshiping anything in the world rather than its one Source.

How Much Is That Kitty in the Window?

NOT FOR SALE at any price!