Respond to EJ's Blog, Gamer Grrl In Small Doses

[Admin]

Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:27 pm

Luz wrote:

Trinity: Three Trains of Thought, I Don't Want You, Rain, Skillz... You Gots 'Em, Cobblestone Symbology... The Secret Identity of Jackalopes... all my family has come together now on Sunday nights or Monday mornings to read your blog and discuss the issues on the screen, between the statements and in our own minds and hearts. It has become the closest my family has ever accepted as organized religion. An open conversation between peers, not parents and children. We come back to the blogs again over the week, finding new thoughts to share over dinner or coffee.

Then came your blog With This Ring. Right away we all saw the luck and fate that brought you to realize you needed more time and how that was a good thing. But we all saw and couldn't forget the pain and crumbling that you must have felt in those moments of being alone. This bought me back here to the forum. I was waiting for the completion of the sourcebook so that I could openly discuss matters and not be wrong on recent facts but I will not stay away any more. There are things I can do here now and I do not want you, EJ, to ever feel alone.

Then again. The blog. Everything to Me. My sister Estella always say to me that her favorite blogs are when you talk about dancing. This is, perhaps, the best of those blogs. To Estella and me it seemed not as polish and watered down, but passionate and living like a summer storm. I thought to myself that this is how you must truly be. Not so stayed as you sometimes present to the eyes of the world. This idea of different realities fit hand and glove with this revelation of you. The idea of overlapping realities and how the same issues and morals can change completely when crossing these realities is very thought provoking for me.

In the middle of planning for Mardi Gras 3000, thank you for taking the time to still be so intriguing for those of us who subscribe not just to your blog, but rather also to your reality.

Luz

p.s. Please pardon my post. I do not have my Estella to translate for me and no one else is available at the moment. ?Launa? Please correct any errors if I have made problems.

[Sunshine]

EJ... perhaps it's life that has taken you away from writing your weekly blog. Or maybe more life would push you back to it again and I'd rather you take time to breathe. But just in case the reason you have been quiet is that you don't think you're reaching the hearts of your real audience... nonbelievers who want to believe... believers who need to know they are not alone... and everyone in between who stumbles, tripping across the Internet to find your words... please know: I miss reading.

[Admin]

*quiet voice*

Me, too...

[Jennifer]

EJ, I don't want you overwhelmed. I don't want you to stress. But I miss your blogs. I never took them lightly. I never thought they missed their mark. If anyone ever missed your point, honey, they weren't reading with their eyes open.

Please believe.

Jennifer

[Jennifer]

ejangel.blogspot.com/2009/09/suspicion.html

Eliza... you're catching up on your missing September blogs and I'm buried in work and health care paperwork and appointments. I barely have a moment but here's my half-a-moment:

"Suspicion" was inspired. Brilliant even. Perhaps my favorite. I was half way through the penal code when I was struck -- a physical sensation -- with what you were saying. "403. Every person who, without authority of law, willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character (only in its spirit)..." Yes, you are guilty as charged. And God bless you for it.

Never stop blowing my mind, grrl.

Jennifer

[EJ]

You keep reading then, grrl. I promise I won't stop.

[Admin]

And you've kept your promise If anyone didn't catch it, there's been another catch-up September blog...
ejangel.blogspot.com/2009/09/impulse-control.html

And of course, a new Sunday blog....
ejangel.blogspot.com/2010/02/centered.html

And let me repeat... never stop blowing our minds

Brianne

[Cris]

Response to "Centered"

criskadimarco.blogspot.com/2010/03/centered.html

Cris

[Brianne]

"All the roles we play for others, for ourselves. As time passes and we grow (more complicated or) older, we tend to create more and more of these personas, these suits of armor, these veneers. Finally we have a wardrobe full of shades and variants of ourselves. None of them wholly us. None of them wholly not. A button from one shirt, a zipper from a boot, a pocket from favorite jeans -- little bits and pieces from each disguise is real, selected off that creature that is true. The real you, the real me."

Your words speak to me the way music speaks to me. The way I hear a song, a lyric, a verse, and I find my whole story written between those lines and meanings.

Thank you for blogging. It's good to have my pastor back.

Brianne

[EJ]

I'm sorry I was quiet for so long, B. I won't miss a Sunday again.

EJ

[EJ]

I did want to tell everyone that my schedule is this:

Sunday -- A classic MG3K blog in the style of "Gamer Grrl in Small Doses." I know a lot of you have come to call these sermons. That's cool

Thursday -- I'm going to welcome different guest writers to post. Right now I'm considering Alia Thomas. Alia is writing a book called "When JayZee Wrote the Word" and I'd like to see excerpts shared with all of you.

Other Days -- Whenever the mood takes me, I'll post other blogs. But these won't be like the Sunday blogs, okay? This is the warning or ratings block. These will be uncensored blogs and not really intended for family viewing Thanks for understanding, everyone.

EJ

[Brianne]

EJ,

This last Sunday, you said:

"My issue is this: Where is the right?

(oh, did you see that little r?)

And I don't just mean the far-right. I mean the middling-right and the gently-right, and the leaning-right. Where are the preachers and the conservatives and the pastors and the Sunday School teachers? What are they doing to make sure that those steady numbers of gay teen suicides actually drop for once? Where is *their* out-reach?"

They're here. No, they aren't our President. They aren't P!nk, Gaga, or Katy. They aren't famous. They're just real people. But they're here.

(This one's out of Dallas, Texas. Yes, a red state.)
www.itgetsbetter.org/video/entry/lms8bcyvyi0/

www.itgetsbetter.org/video/entry/g1qagxqozv0/

www.itgetsbetter.org/video/entry/469zftcxqkg/

Brianne

[EJ]

Great links, B. Thanks! You're totally right. I should have been more clear. I suppose, to me, a congregation that's openly pro-glbt is left. Institutions that are "middling-right and the gently-right, and the leaning-right" are those not openly pro-glbt but not glbt-bashing. I think it is possible, with effort, for a person who truly thinks that a glbt life-style is wrong to do out-reach to questioning and gay youth. "I may not approve of your lifestyle, but I do respect your right to live. This is America. There is freedom of belief and freedom to peruse happiness. We can agree to disagree. I mean no malice to you. I will teach my children no malice for you." I searched all week before writing that particular blog for messages that weren't pro-glbt but, rather, pro-life. If you see what I'm saying. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear.

Thanks again for the links.

EJ

[artzygrrl]

You know, I think Fundamentalism dropped the ball on this.

I don't mean, the Fundamentalism that I know. I'm 23 years old, and mostly during my lifetime the "fundies" (a term I use with only mild sardonicism) have been going in mostly a scriptural direction. Part of the Fundamentalist movement has to do with the authority of the written Word, so there isn't much recognition of the, shall we say, "inner" Word you speak of, EJ.

I agree that there's a recent spin. Being pro-LGBT has never been so "hip." It's in the news, it's in books, it's all over the entertainment business, and possibly for the first time since Christ's life the spin is positive. (There was open homosexuality at that time in Asia Minor and Greece, and other places as well)

The Fundamentalism that dropped the ball was the Fundamentalism of the 1950s and 60s. The era of church-goers that got so wrapped up in their lives, in the externals of looking polished and shiny and outwardly "holy" that they forgot that Jesus commanded them to love. Do something sinful and disgraceful like get pregnant out of wedlock? Ohh boy, can't show love to you, that might be like condoning your sin. Are you gay? Well, God wanted gays stoned in the Old Testament, so we have to pretend like you don't exist. Or treat you like the scum you are, pervert. (It killed me to write that, but I am making a point. Sickening.)

This really, very deeply saddens me. This is why people assume that everyone who disagrees with homosexuality as a lifestyle is a homophobe who is stuck in the dark ages. But beyond that, this is one of the things that makes it difficult to reach out to someone who might be hurting, confused, needy, and (clearly, if contemplating suicide) depressed. They make assumptions about Fundamentalists and others that frankly are just as silly and archaic as people who assume that all gay people jump from partner to partner. (Though, plenty of heterosexual people do that, so I don't know why it's any different!) It all comes down to the past mistakes and "bad apples" that gave the entire group a bad name. Or even a movement. Within my own family (my husband's family, actually) I have had to deal with a degree of this mentality. It's frustrating, and saddening, to watch them estrange themselves from people they love because they still haven't begun to fully understand what love is - and isn't.

I think the balance here is to establish the basic views that Jesus had and wanted Christians to have about people: All sinners. So if someone else does something you believe is wrong, you should remember that you were that person too, before Christ. And if not for Christ, you would still be them. Also: God's love is unconditional. So is the love he commands us to have for others. Just because you disagree doesn't mean you have the right to deny them the love God wants them to have through you.

I agree, Edgy. A person has the right to live, no matter who they are, who they choose to be, or what actions they may take. I know there ARE people doing this. People who care. And I don't think, EVER, that we (Christians) should choose not to love someone because it's difficult. In fact we should embrace that, because Jesus loved us when we were the very definition of un-lovely. We have no right to deny his love to someone else who is a human being.

Being gay doesn't make someone any less human. I think the fundies (and others) are finally starting to get the picture. The old Jack Hyles, out-of-balance mentality is fading. And none too soon.

[EJ]

That was a thoughtful and really beautifully said post, Abbie. Thank you for that. This coming Sunday I wanted to write about modern-day missionaries (especially the married couple that just lost their lives to pirates) but I was really hitting a wall. I kept coming back to that very issue. The right to life. Though it's the right (pretty much all of the right, not just the fundies -- love that word, by the way) that tends to believe in the rights of unborn children (not to say no one on the left or left-leaning is pro-life) I wish that the fervor I often see the fundies address to that issue would be shifted to keeping our kids alive. I mean, not to be an ageist jerk, but people change and teens who seem to be torn up emotionally about their sexuality could, in the end, be dealing with a great number of things *other* than their sexuality. I knew *several* grrls growing up who questioned their sexuality just because they were tough, independent and had mind's of their own. And every single one of them grew up and married a man. I'm not saying "hey, the fundies should save the gay kids because they're not all gonna turn out gay," I'm just arguing that if the rights of an unborn baby are important, can be maybe try to save the teen-agers too? Like I saw this bumper sticker that said, "Are you still pro-life if your baby is gay?" And I felt this horrible cold through me. Because I have friends all the way from shudder-inducing far-right to shudder-inducing far-left but I'm just not sure how some of my buddies right of center would answer that question. It scared me.

Wow, that was a rambling jumble! LOL! I think your post helped me clarify a lot in my head. Thanks, grrl! Maybe I can write about missionaries now!

EJ