Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in puckmeister's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, January 10th, 2006
9:27 am	Counselor I was bothered by something recently. A person I go to church with was relaying a story. She is working on getting her certification to be a pastor, and she's working as a chaplain at a local hospital. She saw someone today who wanted to see the chaplain. The woman was getting on in years I guess. She told my friend, "I don't want to go to hell. I want to be saved." In talking with the patient, the chaplain realized the woman hadn't gone to church and hadn't thought much if anything about the subject in her life. "We don't have time for that stuff." My friend made "stuff" the operative word in the phrase. The patient asked family members in the room if they were saved. From what I can tell they seemed a little taken aback and didn't know how to respond. Now, in North Carolina I'm guessing this attitude isn't atypical. "Baptist" is the default religion of choice here, and if you don't go to church but consider yourself Christian, that means your Baptist. Southern Baptist probably. Here's what bothered me. This is a woman who has avoided thinking, thinking about big weighty ideas for a long time. She probably has self-esteem issues and issues with denial and self-denial. I wanted to suggest that the chaplain ask the patient why she thought she was going to hell, and I did. This led to a very short conversation. Quickly the chaplain replied something to the affect of, "It's not my job to be her therapist or counselor." Now THAT bothers me. That kind of stung. (I'll use America as an example due to the proliferation of Christian churches and organizations) People all over America have all manner of personal problems. Abuse, alcohol, depression, anxiety, etc. This statement the chaplain utters tells me that the church has been replaced as a place of healing for these personal problems. The church isn't where you go to better yourself. I would ask what's the point of church. What are we doing? Some progressive churches are interested in justice and right issues, such as LGBT or death penalty issues. The whole motivation is not just to make society better or more equitable but to teach people that they are important. Today's sermon comes from Numbers 15 and John 5. By tradition that comes straight from the death of the man carrying wood in Numbers 15, the worst thing you could do on a Sabbath in the Jewish environment was to carry anything. In John 5 what we see Jesus doing is telling the man, lame and sitting in the same place for 38 years, that even he is more important than the holiest day of the week and the highest of high commands. Rules were meant to be broken, and people should feel they are above and more important the law. The corollary that bothers me even more so is the church isn't listening. I don't see a movement within any demoninational structure to take on this kind of work. That's a far reaching statement, but I'm not including AA and all of the spinoffs in that statement. AA meetings are often hosted at churches, but don't involve the church politic. Ministers offer counseling services but don't preach this message from the pulpit. It doesn't seep into every fabric of the church life. There is the great paradox that people can only help themselves. Still, I am left with the nagging feeling that there is some sort of corporate church viewpoint that is amiss. If we encourage people to have self-esteem, to love themselves in all of the things we did and all of our activities, would we see people that feel they are going to hell? Would we have more confident laity that didn't need to turn to a bottle to escape themselves? Finally, what is the role of the church? Sorry to say, I can praise God in my house and I can help society through other organizations. I go for community, which strikes at the heart of what AA is about, being open and developing trust, listening, sharing, and supporting. I don't believe that my friend could have done any counseling or psychotherapy work in the course of a couple of hours that would have made a huge difference. But maybe difference enough. What is our role as members of society? As humans? As Christians if that's what we choose to be? As Christians, aren't we supposed to teach the lame man he's important, the Samaritan woman at the well that she is important, the woman caught in adultery she is important? Is that what being Christ-like is all about? I think we need some answers soon, as the church is very much outdated in terms of its role in society if the ministers of this world don't feel commissioned for this work. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 2nd, 2006
12:52 pm	co-dependents In 1841 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay entitled Self-Reliance. There was a time when I vehemently disagreed with the idea of self-reliance. I think I was wrong. I had equated self-reliance with independence. Emerson meant something else. No one is at work today, so I'm wasting time checking left-wing blogs and watching clips and what not. Fun stuff. I have noticed a pattern. We are a nation that prides on teaching self-reliance in terms of what I can do. I can buy my own food, my own house, decorate my house however I want to, buy my own clothes, believe what I want, do what I want, waste gas, eat a steak, etc. For starters this is not what Emerson wrote about. Emerson did not define self-reliance as what we do or what we can do independent of others. He did not mean that we must rely on ourselves to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. In the end, he knew intuitively that at the end of the day I am the only person that can help me. Emerson was talking about emotions, psyche, the soul. I don't think a 16 year old reading Emerson in high school can grasp the depths of Emerson's thoughts and how true they are. These are thoughts that are restated in different ways in different cultures, from Jesus ("love yourself") to Paul Tillich, who taught us that our alignment with God is in being to every extent we can "be." "Be yourself." Or put another way, grow up and become and adult. Maybe I'm crazy for seeing this in Emerson's essay. Perhaps he didn't intend religion to be so directly aligned with his thoughts on self-reliance, but I don't see how they are separate. I started to write because what I see in society is chronic dependence and co-dependence. We are dependent upon talking heads to tell us how to think and feel. We were told this holiday season there was a war on Christmas. The only people that said there was a war on Christmas were those defending Christmas. But, they said we are at war, and so we are. We rely and assume that our elected leaders and our news agencies tell the truth. Many times when we look under the covers we see something far more insidious. What if Fox News went off the air tomorrow? Would conservatives be comfortable as conservatives? It seems to me that the people that religiously watch Bill O'Reilly and the like are the type that need to have their thoughts, feelings, even existence justified. We live in a society where power is defined as much by trust and belief in those that hold power as in the power itself. We are dependent upon our religious leaders for telling us what to believe and how to act. Granted this is somewhat unavoidable given the amount of knowledge available. Someone has to filter things. In that respect none of us can ever be self-reliant. We are products of our environment, history, and culture as much as anything. The same goes with politics. We must trust someone for information. The difference is being defined by what I believe, what I do, who I listen to; or instead being defined by who I am. Yet the prominent religion in this country preaches overwhelming co-dependence. We are dependent upon God for sustaining us, forgiving our sins, saving us, dying for us. The popular yet heretical notion of "original sin" is such a concept. We are immediately dependent upon the church and clergy to change our condition immediately upon birth. Think of a prevailing notion in churches all over this country: We are children of God. We are taught to immitate Christ. But what does that mean? Are we to be a Christ-clone? Or are we to immitate Christ in terms of finding our individuality? Jesus to me above anything else was a person who was fully human. He was a person so sure of himself, so full of life, that he was able to share this with others. When we immitate Jesus, we focus too much on actions and not on the state of being. Does God want us to be children? Or does he want adults to worship Him? I speak with words I don't like anymore (worship, God), but they illustrate a point. As children we are reliant upon God. As parents our job is to guide our children to be their own person, not reliant upon parents any longer but able to be themselves as adults one day. This thought doesn't enter Christianity. It is a threat. As adults, are we reliant on God? If not, what is our relationship with respect to God? Perhaps the model of God as a person or adult breaks down, perhaps we need to rethink what God wants from us. Whether religion is the biggest manifestation of this insecurity or society influences religion more I don't know. They are forever tied in this country, and insecurity is the greatest product of commercialism, our government, and traditional religious beliefs. If only I could take this to heart more often... (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 4th, 2005
10:13 pm	Assumptions I'm a week behind on my Companions in Christ stuff (thanks work!), so here is a quick summary. I don't understand the assumptions. Week 3 wants to talk about renewal. I think the aim is self-renewal, perhaps a closer spiritual relationship with God. I don't know what these words mean. Let me take the example of having a relationship with God or being close to God. I don't know what that is, what it looks like, or anything related to it. I don't know how to strive for something that doesn't make any sense, has no examples, and has no definition. I'm not sure if the problem is the definition of the word "relationship" or the definition of the word "God." I know what a relationship is. I don't know much about this God. See, one exercise is to think about where God is opening new doors for journey or inviting renewal (you ever noticed how you can words like "journey" in different tenses and definitions than they were intended in a spiritual discussion, as if this makes more sense?). This assumes all kinds of things about the nature of God and how God communicates with us. It also assumes that we know to listen, to hear how God communicates, if indeed God does. I don't know what a relationship with God is because I don't know much about this God. I've tried to say hello. Repeatedly. If anything this God is more like a real parent, letting us as adolescent children feel our way to adulthood instead of being at our beck and call when we want God to appear, but I digress. Perhaps a different paradigm helps understand. If God really is a parent, we won't be children forever. We have to grow up. We will grow up even if we don't want to. We aren't Peter Pan, although Christianity does try and convince us we are all children all the time (great way to make us feel we can do things on or own and grow up, he says sarcastically). With all this emphasis on something on the outside we don't practice listening to our own mind, thoughts, feelings, impulses, and body. If the mythology of Christianity means anything, God created humans to appreciate and experience the world. However, the emphasis has always been on things on the outside, forgetting that we ourselves are part of creation, and the only person that can listen to ourselves is ourselves. Maybe our own desires mean something and shouldn't be discarded. Maybe that's where we can meet this God. Maybe through exploring these desires we can renew ourselves and learn how to grow. Or maybe that's how God interacts with us. (Comment on this)
Monday, November 28th, 2005
1:59 pm	Roger Waters, DO NOT TEASE ME LIKE THIS!!!!!!!!!!! http://www.wral.com/entertainment/5417670/detail.html (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 19th, 2005
10:55 pm	The Purpose Driven Life???? ( Mmmm...Beaujolais Nouveau...Costco has Dubeouf for about $8 a bottle ) Current Mood: mmm...Beaujolais Nouveau (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005
12:27 am	Discuss Religion is not a way to find salvation, nirvana, heaven, a higher caste in reincarnation, or whatever. Religion is another simple tool, along with support groups, psychotherapy, community, listening, etc., that teaches us to develop our attention to things inside our head and heart and not outside. This is the true purpose of fasting, prayer, meditation, eating together, talking, and community - to listen to ourselves, our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, and to share these experiences with others. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 15th, 2005
7:45 pm	This week's thoughts This is a crash course in my weekly thoughts for this class. ( day 1 - Friday ) ( day 2 - Saturday ) ( day 3 - Sunday ) ( day 4 - Monday ) ( day 5 - Tuesday ) (Comment on this)
7:11 pm	Thoughts on prayer I'm supposed to spend about 30 minutes praying for someone in the Companions in Christ group (Wednesdays) and meditate and journal on a thought. But first some thoughts on prayer. Part of my bias is that I don't know where God is sometimes. A broad statement that requires explanation, but I'm not sure how else to put it. The Rev. John Spong raises a hard question to deal with. His wife was diagnosed with a serious illness. I believe it was cancer. Regardless, the church started praying for her and credited the prayer and God with much of the healing. Now, before any criticism, this is the "normal" reaction that most people have. Churches have prayer lists, prayer teams, etc. Spong had a problem with this attitude towards prayer. His question asks whether God plays favorites with people that can get more people to pray for them. He was a bishop in the Episcopal church at the time. Because of that, his family got the attention of many people in the region. Did his wife get better because he was a notable enough figure to get more people to pray for her? Does God deal with volumes of prayer? If a person isn't prayed for, how does God deal with them? So I'm supposed to pray for someone else in this class. I'm not certain what the effort is intended to do. To develop discipline and make spirituality a part of every day? That's good. To ask God to influence their life? See, I don't know if God does that. I don't know if God does that in our personal life. I have found recently that my spiritual life is stronger the less I ask God for help. Instead, I look to wise people, people full of love and grace. They mirror God more fully than I could find God in the sky or my holy book. This would support the argument I don't fully agree with that God is in each of us. Perhaps we reflect God, but I'm not convinced we are all God, all have God living in and part of us. I think people wonder if there is a God for some of these reasons. We've asked God for relief from natural disasters, war, etc. And God doesn't necessarily intervene. Is that evil causing these things? Or is this outside of the realm of God? Of course, then one of these wise people mentioned something I haven't wrapped my mind around yet. If we take God to be a parent, a popular figure in our country ("Our Father, who art in heaven..."), maybe God teaches us like we are teenagers and full grown children and lets us learn our own lessons. Does God intervene? Maybe, but I do think it's less than we have traditionally wanted. I do have some ideas of what God does and where God is, but that would take me too long in this post. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 10th, 2005
11:44 pm	grace and growth I'm going to blog more often because I'm in this new weekly thing at church called Companions in Christ. There is a long 28 week thing, but the one I'm doing is 8 or 9 weeks. All participants are encouraged to journal. I type really fast. My mind thinks really fast. This works a little better for me. Each Wednesday we meet, and on Thursday we will be asked to read an article and think about it. This week was kind of an introduction. Tonight's article tried to connect grace to to growth, our spiritual journey. We all have a spirtiual journey. We can call it athiesm or whatever, but we all have one. For those that don't think we do, read The Road Less Traveled. I thought this weeks article was good. I didn't know if I would like it or not. I thought it was going to discuss a lot about God's grace. The article didn't specifically link grace to God a lot. Which I think is good. My experience over the past year is what Christians call "grace" isn't necessarily something from God, some mystical feeling of forgiveness. I have a hard time believing in a God that hands out grace to anyone and everyone. For starters, I was searching for it for 28 years, and found it more recently from people. I mean, what do we get with grace? Grace is unmerited favor, but what is the favor? To the homeless person who is looking for God, what is grace? An extra dollar or two with which to buy some food? A ride to the homeless shelter? And what God gives grace? Does one religion have a strangehold on this concept? India haunts me in many ways, and one way is religion. I spent time in a society that is clearly Hindu, more so than America is Christian. Do these people get God's grace as we think of God's grace? I'm really struggling with what I think God is and what God does. But I do think I know this. We put a whole lot of emphasis on God and the grace he gives, and this is to our detriment. I have found the more power, authority, knowledge, and specifically action we give God, the more dysfunctional we tend to be. That's my experience over the last year. Me personally I'm torn, because I think there is a spiritual plane and a God of some sort, but I don't know what this God does. Perhaps this God does guide us, but I don't think it's a direct hand that talks to people and inspires people. No, I think grace and God is seen in other people. Grace is a gift not from God but from another person. Grace is a person that listens, a compliment, a smile, a thank-you card, a gesture. Grace is the ability to listen and care. A digression I will have to rant about one day is that we don't teach people how to care for others properly because we don't teach people how to care for themselves. Teaching people how to care for themselves, to "love yourself" so they can "love their neighbor" is grace. Unfortunately so many religions (Hindu, Christianity, etc.), emphasize doing things for and asking things from a God or gods. I guess one way to say all of this is that God is more internal than external. And this does go to the heart of my struggles in understanding God. But that will be a theme for the next few months. You'll hear about books I've read and experiences and things like that. It's late. These thoughts will make more sense in future postings. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
10:45 pm	resurrecting the blog Our church has recently started a new Wednesday night group called Companions in Christ. They encouraging journaling. Who has time to write when you can type nearly 100 wpm? Lots of spiritual thoughts will come down as I go through this class, hopefully daily. Although this weekend I'll be out of town. Maybe I'll save up postings. Anyway, the blog has been resurrected. I have lots of thoughts I need to work out. Hopefully this is a tool I can use to discuss them. We'll see if I actually do post more often... (Comment on this)