How to Tell If Your Relationship is in Trouble
With all the dire international news in focus, let’s focus on our own relationships. 🙂 Found this on CNN News
By Leigh Newman, Oprah.com
updated 9:13 AM EDT, Thu September 13, 2012
(Oprah.com) — All marriages have problems: He gives you silent treatment instead of talking when he’s upset; you pay more attention to the kids’ school art projects than to the details of his day; neither of you can agree on the fate of Peggy after leaving Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce on Mad Men. This, you tell yourself, is just what happens after so many years together, right? Or…not right? Because, sure, you’re not fighting, and nobody’s having an affair. But at the same time, what if dangerous issues are brewing? How can you are you supposed to know?
William Doherty, PhD, the Director of the University of Minnesota’s Couples On the Brink project helps more than 60 exceptionally troubled couples a year. In his 35 years of doing this kind of work, he’s noticed a handful of almost imperceptible signs when two people are just beginning to splinter apart. He tells us what to look for—when it comes in your own thoughts and actions—that may signal a crisis to come.
1) You’re Doing a Lot of Cost-Benefit Analyses
Perhaps this is you. While walking home from work, you have a little conversation with yourself: “I make dinner every night, plus, I said sorry when he freaked about organic toothpaste—even though I love organic toothpaste and it’s not too expensive. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m usually the first apologize…and the first to stay home with the kids at night. I work so hard. And what am I getting in return? A hug before bed? The occasional bunch of flowers?”
What you’re doing here is a cost-benefit analysis. Corporations do this all the time. A company that makes, say, skinny jeans, compares the energy, money and time all of its departments put into producing them with the energy, money and time it gets out of selling them, to figure out if it should keep manufacturing pants—in a style that horrifies short, round women all over the world—or just stop.
People also use this technique to make decisions. “At the beginning of the relationship,” says Doherty, “this kind of accounting is natural and appropriate [for couples] deciding whether or not to commit.” But if you’ve already joined your life with someone else, you may not realize that by engaging in this kind of emotional inventory, you’re already seeing yourself as separate from your spouse. Your time, energy and resources are not his time, energy and resources. You’re one business, and he’s another, instead of the two of you being united for the profit of all.
2. You’re Conducting an Imaginary Marriage
Just to clarify, an imaginary marriage is not an imaginary affair, complete with dreams of secret rendezvous in obscure motels. It’s a more subtle and, at times, harder-to-recognize fantasy, says Doherty. What to look for? You sitting at your desk, watching Jeremy from production post yet another blissful photo of his wife and himself on Facebook—this time of their trip to Napa for her birthday. A thought crosses your mind: “Jeremy is so much more considerate than my husband.”
Pretty soon, you make the leap to thinking things like: “If I were married to Jeremy, I’d never spend another of holiday at home watching parades on TV.” In your reveries, you tell yourself you’d go to Paris with him. You’d come home at night to him in the kitchen making veal cordon bleu. The two of you would never argue about the cost of non-generic toilet paper or give each other lectures on how many squares you’re allowed to use. Because, in this relationship, you don’t have to deal with all those pesky details that challenge real-life marriage and that probably also caused you to invent Jeremy, the ideal hubby, with whom no man, not even your good, adorable, non-cordon-bleu-making husband can compare.
You’ve lost interest in you husband taking you to Paris or posting photos of you on Facebook. You’re not ready to leave him in reality, but in the vast and unchecked world of your mind, you’re looking for Mr. Anybody Else.
3. You’re building a second home
In a lot of marriages, there comes a time when you realize, “Hey, my husband isn’t meeting all my needs. And I just have accept that and start taking care of myself.” This can be a healthy decision. Let’s say you love all things literary, and he doesn’t. So you join a book group, and maybe make some friends on Good Reads or Shelfari. Metaphorically speaking, you’ve built yourself a little room in your life and filled it with not just with books but friends who love books. You have all kinds of wonderful conversations there.
Where things get dicey, says Doherty, is when you commit to more and more groups. As you get busier and busier, you build a room for each different activity, then fill that room with new intimates — now, you’ve built a gardening room and a PTA room, as well as a room for your weekly office drinks date. In fact, you have a whole house for your emotional life, and that doesn’t include a room for your spouse.
One way to tell the difference between nurturing your own interests and moving out of your marriage, says Doherty, is to examine how you talk about your activities. If you’re saying, “I’ve got to get my opera fix,” on the way to the opera guild, then you’re talking about your love of opera. But if you’re saying, “I’ve got to do what I want,” then you’re looking for something much larger and more perilous for your relationship.
4. You’re keeping coffee dates secret
After you’ve built the second home, there’s a often tendency to hide what happens there. Let’s say you and your friend—not your crush, not your secret love or your secret passion—from book club have coffee one afternoon. Over coffee, you two talk about the memoir Wild. You bring up your own mother’s death. She brings up her own experimentation with drugs. The two of you share some pretty heavy intimacies. When you come home, your spouse asks what you did today. “I worked,” you say. “And then I picked up the dry cleaning and called that guy about the car.”
The problem is not that you shared an intimacy with somebody else, says Doherty, “but that you edited the event out of the conversation.” In other words, you’re hiding a meaningful exchange from the person you supposedly most trust—and you didn’t give that person the opportunity to have that meaningful exchange with you. Another way to think about it? You took an emotional risk with someone, but you didn’t (or couldn’t or wouldn’t) take the lesser risk of telling your spouse about it.
In all these situations, says Doherty, whether you recognize it or not, you’re beginning to start a new life—as yourself, the individual, and not yourself, the part of a couple. At times, you may be convinced you’re just giving yourself some space or giving your spouse some time to himself. But all that space and time can quickly turn into emotional light years. Thankfully, this distance can also lead to some clarity on whether or not you want to return back to where the two of you started—over thousands of revolutions of the planet that mark the rest of your experiences on earth.
US Ambassador Killed by Angry Mob in Libya
Most people who die heroic deaths don’t wake up in the morning thinking “today I will do something heroic.” Most people who die heroic deaths end up dead because they make a choice to do the right thing.
Some minor film maker made a film mocking the prophet Mohammed. Under our system, it was his right; a man (or woman) can say what they think, even if another disagrees with it. It doesn’t mean the film is accurate, it doesn’t make it a good film; he had an idea and he made a film. The film – or even the idea of the film – is causing outrage, and attacks on US Embassies in Islamic countries. Ambassador Chris Stevens personally went to the consulate site to make sure his people got out safely while the consulate was under attack by an angry mob. He lost his life in the effort. May he rest in peace.
I’ve never liked crowds, and even less when a crowd is excited, or angry, and becomes a mob. There is something about doing things as a large group that anesthetizes thinking; mobs do horrendous things that any one individual acting within the mob would never do. Group-think is dangerous thinking; you need disagreement and dissent to rein in rash actions.
From today’s Huffpost:
TRIPOLI, Libya — The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three American members of his staff were killed in the attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi by protesters angry over a film that ridiculed Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, Libyan officials said Wednesday.
They said Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed Tuesday night when he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff as the building came under attack by a mob guns and rocket propelled grenades.
The three Libyan officials who confirmed the deaths were deputy interior minister for eastern Libya Wanis al-Sharaf; Benghazi security chief Abdel-Basit Haroun; and Benghazi city council and security official Ahmed Bousinia.
The State Department said Tuesday that one American was killed in the attack. It has not confirmed the other deaths.
The attack on the Benghazi consulate took place as hundreds of protesters in neighboring Egypt scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and tore down and replaced the American flag with a black Islamic banner.
The attacks in Benghazi and Cairo were the first such assaults on U.S. diplomatic facilities in either country, at a time when both Libya and Egypt are struggling to overcome the turmoil following the ouster of their longtime authoritarian leaders, Moammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak, in uprisings last year.
The protests in both countries were sparked by outrage over a film ridiculing Muhammad produced by an Israeli filmmaker living in California and being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States. Excerpts from the film dubbed into Arabic were posted on YouTube.
Stevens, 52, was a career diplomat who spoke Arabic and French and had already served two tours in Libya, including running the office in Benghazi during the revolt against Gadhafi. He was confirmed as ambassador to Libya by the Senate earlier this year.
Before Tuesday, five U.S. ambassadors had been killed in the line of duty, the last being Adolph Dubs in Afghanistan in 1979, according to the State Department historian’s office.
___
Michael reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
“I Am The Good Shepherd”
Every time I read those words from the Gospel of John, I am transported back to our first tour in Jordan, sitting outside our little villa near fourth circle, watching the shepherd and the sheep go by. Dusk is falling, you can hear multiple calls to prayer issuing from nearby mosques, and the shepherd is crossing back to their night time pastures.
But there is a ditch, a deep ditch, for new sewer and water lines, and there is only a thin board by which to cross.
One by one, he carries the sheep across. It takes a long time. The sheep are restless, but with a few words, he calms them. They don’t stray, they wait for him to lift and carry them across. Once across, they wait for the rest to follow before they all head on their way. The shepherd is grimy and dusty, covered with mud from ferrying the sheep across the ditch.
The sheep know the shepherd’s voice, and when faced with a new threat, they trust that he will deliver them safely. Sheep are pretty stupid. On their own, they can get into all kinds of trouble. If they have a good shepherd, they are safe.
This is today’s Gospel reading from John:
John 10:1-18
10‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.’ 6Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
7 So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes* it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’
Ten Shot While Kuwaiti Youngsters Are ‘Just Having Fun’
As AdventureMan and I read the Pensacola News Journal, we often wonder if we knew what we were getting into. Shootings in Pensacola are frequent. Killings, by gun, by beating, by knife – are equally frequent. Pensacola has one of the highest violent death rates per capita in the nation. Just this week a 72 year old man shot a preacher at his church because he thought the preacher was having an affair with his 69 year old wife. He then tried to enter the child care center where she was caring for small children, still with his loaded weapon. The paper quotes his wife as saying he has mental health issues.
What are people with mental health issues doing with loaded guns???
My Southern friends ask me if we more strictly regulate guns, how will they protect themselves, that the ‘bad guys’ will still have guns. Right now, they can protect themselves, they also have the right to shoot to defend their property? I can’t answer. All I know for sure is that the more people who carry guns, the more likely guns are to be used when the instinct strikes, whether it is a real threat or a perceived threat.
And then – there are these Kuwaiti teens, shooting passers-by, and when arrested, still carrying the shotgun used, say that they were ‘just having fun.’
KUWAIT: Jahra detectives, in cooperation with criminal investigation detectives, have arrested two Kuwaiti 17-year-old juveniles on charges of misuse of a hunting gun, which resulted in the shooting and wounding of 10 people in Jahra area. Police received several reports of pedestrians being wounded after they were shot by unknown assailants. Following an investigation, the juveniles were arrested with the gun still in their possession. They confessed to the shootings, claiming they were only having a good time. The teens were sent to concerned authorities. Later, Ministry of Interior officials called upon citizens and expatriates to watch their children and prevent them from behaving in ways that might cause harm to others, as the parents could be held liable for their children’s acts.
By Hanan Al-Saadoun, Staff Writer
Kuwait Times
The link refers to ‘hunting gun misuse.’ Because they are Kuwaiti, and because they are young, they are unlikely to have any severe punishment. They are likely to be released into the custody of their parents. Where were these parents when their children wounded ten innocent people? What lesson do these young men, 17 years old, learn if they can shoot ten people and be charged with ‘misuse’ of a weapon?
The only good thing I can think of in this case is that these youngsters had so little self-discipline that they never learned to shoot straight, thus no one was killed. They weren’t just lacking in any compassion for their fellow human beings, they were also bad shots. (I’m from a hunting culture. That’s an insult.)
Blog Action Day 2012: Register Now!
I just registered for Blog Action Day October 15, 2012. Take part in a huge global discussion http://bit.ly/OtyYtE #BAD12
I love the theme they have chosen for this year: The Power of We 🙂
Hello Bloggers
Welcome back to Blog Action Day for 2012.
As previous participants of Blog Action Day, I am pleased to share with you three important announcements.
1. Blog Action Day will be held on October 15, 2012,
2. Our theme is “The Power of We” – you can use the #powerofwe hashtag, and
3. Registrations for Blog Action Day are now OPEN.
Why did we choose The Power of We?
We choose this theme for a few reasons.
Firstly, the popularity of the subjects Community, Equality, Transparency/Anti-Corruption and Freedom, in the theme poll we ran via Facebook and Twitter, over te last few weeks.
Secondly, we felt that Blog Action Day needed to reflect the ever growing movements of people working together for positive social change.
Whether using digital tools like blogs, social networks and mobiles, or meeting face to face in local community halls, neighbours house, andpublic streets. Greater numbers of people have been coming together to make change, either for their own communities or the world at large.
For the team at Blog Action Day, we see The Power of We as a celebration of people working together to make a positive difference in the world, and we hope you take part and register your blog for Blog Action Day.
Ideas for how you can discuss “The Power of We”
For Blog Action Day, you might profile a person or a group who inspire you, talk about your own efforts to make change, or highlight a cause that has been successful for using people power to make a difference.
There are hundreds of examples you could choose from such as; fighting for healthier meals for kids in schools, protecting people’s rights in countries far away, stopping practices in industries that hurt the environment and communities, challenging authorities to listen and act for the people.
Or, you may want to focus on historical social change movements such as the Suffragettes movement, campaigns against slavery or civil rights.
If you are active in a movement, you might even want to discuss the strategies and tips of how to organise to encourage other people to make change happen.
Getting ready for Blog Action Day
As Blog Action Day gets closer (just under seven weeks away) we will be sharing thoughts from our NGO partners, previous Blog Action Day participants and interesting individuals about our theme, and ask them to provide suggestions and materials that you can use for your blogs on October 15, 2102.
Also, over the next few weeks we will be increasing our communications with a weekly email, as well as regularly updates, content and opportunities via our website and social media channels.
The team at Blog Action Day can’t wait to see what you all blog about and we really hope that you enjoy taking part in Blog Action Day on October 12, 2012.
All the best
Karina and Jason and the rest of the Blog Action Day team
PS. Don’t forget to register for this year’s event via our website
Abstinence Only? Mississippi Has Highest Teen Pregnancy Rate Rate In the USA
Sex Education or Abstinence? Do you think there might be some connection between Mississippi’s highest state in the nation teen pregnancy rate and their policy of abstinence only? (For non-US people, ‘abstinence-only’ is code for NO SEX EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS. Some people think that teaching young people how sex works, and how to prevent pregnancy gives them ideas they might not try if you didn’t teach them about it or gives them tacit permission to engage in sex.)
* State has nation’s highest teen birth rate
* New law allows abstinence plus sex-ed teaching
* Studies show sex-ed works to prevent teen pregnancy
By Emily Le Coz
TUPELO, Miss., Aug 26 (Reuters) – Artasia Bobo, a 16-year-old Mississippi high school sophomore, was only 12 when she got pregnant and doesn’t recall receiving much in the way of sex education.
Holding her 3-year-old daughter, Annsley, after cheerleading practice recently, the honor-roll student said she’s now an advocate for comprehensive sex education offered as soon as possible.
“What I went through is nothing any girl would want to go through,” she said. “It changed my life. I love my daughter, but if I could go back in time, my life would be a whole lot different.”
Mississippi, the poorest U.S. state, has the nation’s highest teen pregnancy rate. Yet until this year, the state allowed schools to forgo sex education entirely.
That changed with a state law passed last year that mandated school districts adopt either abstinence-only or abstinence-plus sex education policies. Before the new law, any district that did teach sex education had to teach abstinence-only.
Under the new law, a majority of Mississippi’s public school districts this year adopted abstinence-only policies that avoid or downplay the issue of contraceptives.
Twenty other U.S. states and the District of Columbia also require sex education, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based non-profit organization focusing on sexual and reproductive rights.
After the law took effect at the beginning of July, 81 districts chose abstinence-only and 71 chose abstinence-plus, the state Department of Education reported. Mississippi kept no record of how many districts taught abstinence-only under the old law, department spokesman Jon Kalahar said.
“SERIOUS PROBLEM”
Mississippi reported 55 births per 1,000 teens aged 15 to 19 in 2010 – more than 60 percent above the U.S. average, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in April.
The state also has one of the nation’s highest infant mortality rates and among the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea infections among teens and young adults, according to the Mississippi Department of Health.
“It was obvious we had a serious problem in the state,” said Democratic state Representative Cecil Brown, who chaired the committee that championed the bill. “You can’t stick your head in the sand.”
Abstinence-only allows districts to teach about the benefits of avoiding sex until marriage, the consequences of bearing children out of wedlock and how to reject sexual advances. Such programs also teach that abstinence is the only certain way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Although a discussion of condoms or contraceptives is allowed under this policy, it cannot include demonstrations of use and must present the risks and failure rates of such devices, the law states.
Abstinence-plus must include all those topics and can also teach about the causes and effects of sexually transmitted diseases and how to prevent them, according to the law.
“Before this year, not a single school district had adopted any policy on sex education,” said Jamie Holcomb Bardwell, director of programs for Women’s Fund of Mississippi. “The fact that 71 adopted abstinence-plus is one of the biggest victories for young people in Mississippi this year.”
Bardwell said she’s encouraged that many of the districts with the highest teen pregnancy rates adopted not only abstinence-plus policies, but also implemented sex education programs proven effective for changing teen behavior.
COMPREHENSIVE SEX EDUCATION
“Research shows that when young people have access to a curriculum that’s not abstinence-only … when it includes medically accurate information, they’re more likely to have lower pregnancy rates and lower sexually transmitted infection rates,” she said.
Studies published this year by the Guttmacher Institute show teens who received comprehensive sex education, including instruction on birth control, waited longer to have sex and had lower rates of pregnancy.
That might have been the case for Bobo, but such a course wasn’t offered when she got pregnant. Nor will it be offered this year, since her district chose an abstinence-only policy.
A statewide survey conducted in 2011 by the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University found most parents support comprehensive sex education in schools.
Among them is 40-year-old Renee Bobo, Artasia’s mother.
“They’re getting it from TV and from friends, anyway,” said Bobo, who works nights so she can care for her granddaughter while Artasia attends school. “They should get the straight facts from an informed instructor.”
The Lee County School District in northeast Mississippi adopted an abstinence-only program for the first time this year. Superintendent Jimmy Weeks said health classes had previously touched on the subject but this will be the district’s first dedicated sex-education class.
The school board picked abstinence-only because “we don’t want to come across as saying, ‘Hey, premarital sex is OK, let us show us how you do it without getting a disease,'” Weeks said.
Sixteen percent of Lee County births in 2010 were to teens, according to the Mississippi Department of Health. In Itawamba County, where Artasia attends school, the rate was 16.5 percent.
Coahoma County in the Mississippi delta, which at 23 percent had one of the state’s highest rates of births to teens, recently adopted an abstinence-plus program after four years of teaching abstinence-only, said Superintendent Pauline Rhodes.
“I’ve seen first-hand the devastation of children having children, and I have seen students on their way to a promising career have to drop out,” Rhodes said. “I’ve always felt that until we can get a handle on teen pregnancies, we will not be able to get a handle on juvenile delinquencies.” (Editing by David Adams and Jim Loney)
I believe abstinence can work – in a relationship where both people believe in abstinence. How do you apply abstinence to a multi-cultural society where religious, personal and moral values differ? Abstinence DOES prevent pregnancy – but even teenagers in the most virtuous families find the lure of sexual activity irresistible, and can end up pregnant. I like it that Mississippi is taking the pragmatic step of combining abstinence teaching AND sex education. Give them enough information to avoid bringing children into this world who are unwanted and born to parents not capable of parenting.
The Trials of Job
Today’s Lectionary readings feature the first chapter of Job, which is to me a very odd story, worth pondering. It is also interesting to me that this is a story that all three ‘people of the book’ share, and while I have met Moslems named Ayoub (Job) I have never met a Christian named Job.
I went to the Middle East with so many misconceptions. I believed the Moslems to be anti-Christian, and was astonished when I discovered that it was OK with my Moslem friends that I was a Christian. Like all the rest of us, they would prefer I share their beliefs, but they were happy that I was a believer, and that I practiced my religion. No, it didn’t stop them from trying to discuss religious matters with me – all in the goal of bringing me over from the dark side (LOL, i.e. clearing up my errors in thinking and believing), but in these discussions, I had a lot of surprises.
I have more Moslem friends with children named Jesus than I have Christian friends. One friend has a Jesus, a Mary and a Joseph. (She also has two Mohammeds 🙂 ) Noah is in the Quran, and Job, and of course Gabriel, who brought the good news to Mary, is also the angel who recited to Quran to the prophet Mohammed. How did I not know this? The longer I live, the more careful I become about what I take on as beliefs. I give thanks to God who sent me into the wilderness that I might have a better understanding of how things work in the world.
Today’s reading has some puzzles. The Lectionary defines the ‘heavenly beings’ who gathered as ‘sons of God.’ Satan is The Accuser, is in attendance, challenging God on Job’s faith – so is this before or after he has fallen from Grace? Does Satan still appear before God? I thought he was banished . . .
And what awful awful calamities befell Job because of this cosmic wager – imagine, not so much the loss of wealth, although his wealth was vast, but imagine the loss of all your sons and daughters, the loss of everything you cared the most about. And Job, righteous as he is, says the Lord gave it to him and he can take it away. Wow.
Job 1:1-22
1There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. 2There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. 4His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another’s houses in turn; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.
5And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt-offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, ‘It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.’ This is what Job always did.
6 One day the heavenly beings* came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan* also came among them. 7The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan* answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’ 8The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’
9Then Satan* answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? 10Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.’ 12The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!’ So Satan* went out from the presence of the Lord.
13 One day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, 14a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were ploughing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, 15and the Sabeans fell on them and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.’
16While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; I alone have escaped to tell you.’
17While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.’
18While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, 19and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.’
20 Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped. 21He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’
22 In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.
The New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition), copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
That Cheeky Woman At The Well
Today’s Gospel reading from the Lectionary is one of my favorites, and every time I read it, I am amazed. Amazed that this good Jewish boy would speak to a woman who cavorted with men, having five husbands, and being with a man now who was not her husband. It’s the middle of the day, and he is sitting by a well having a conversation with a woman most good Jewish boys would run from, a woman of ill-repute!
She must have had a rough life, five husbands, etc. but it hasn’t broken her spirit, and she is joking around with Jesus. She knows something about Jewish traditions, but has no idea who Jesus might be. Then, oddity of oddity, he reveals himself to her as the Messiah – to this woman. He reveals himself to a woman at the very lowest end of the social scale, a woman barely tolerated in her own society. This woman believes him; for all her sins, she ‘hears’ the truth of what he is saying in her heart.
John 4:1-26
4Now when Jesus* learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— 2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4But he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)* 10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’
13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’
16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you* say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’
21 Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ 25The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,* the one who is speaking to you.’
God Speaking – Are You Listening?
Last week I read an article about a correlation between having more friends and social connections and living a long life. Part of me thought “but what if you are sort of stuck in one place and some of those relationships are toxic?” Doesn’t the nature of the relationship matter? But the study didn’t comment on unhealthy relationships, just that having long standing relationships with people you could go to and trust was a healthy thing.
Then I started to feel a little sad, thinking how many times I have moved and how hard it is to build long-lasting healthy relationships. I thought of how little I participate with the social networking sites, and how my preference for privacy impacts on my socializing. Would this have an impact on how long I will live?
Then, some surprising things started happening. One far-away friend called, just to hear my voice. She had broken her leg, just after unpacking from yet another move, and had been incapacitated. Very shortly, I got a call from another Doha friend, and a chatty e-mail from another. We all lead busy lives; how was it they all thought of me the same week?
My best friend from college e-mailed me, and a friend from long-ago times in Germany e-mailed me to set up a telephone date. A newer friend called to ask us if we’d like to hit the Shakespeare Fest with them. I started to realize that I DO have a lot of healthy, loving, long-term relationships, some with people a lot like me, who have moved a lot and not lived too long in any one spot, and some just the opposite, with people who have lived lives entirely unlike mine, in one spot most their lives.
It made me laugh. Sometimes, God answers prayers you don’t even know you’ve prayed. If you keep your eyes open, if you pay attention, you can see the pattern. It’s one good reason to keep a prayer journal, because so many times our prayers are answered and we forget even to say thank-you; once the prayer is answered, we move on, forgetting even how important our request once was. God spotted my little pity-party and gave me the gift of a little shift in perspective. Thanks be to God.
On a similar train of thought, as I read recently a book on Eleanor of Aquitaine, I think of how incredibly wealthy we all are, living in this day and age, and we live blithely on, unaware how very blessed we are. We worry about having ‘enough’ in terms of material comforts and goods, and never give a second thought to how good we have it.
I think of growing up in Alaska, where my Mother always had to order our annual snowsuits from the catalog so that they would arrive before the last boat could get through. I remember the pipes freezing up, and being sent to the creek to haul water into the house. I remember going with my Dad to the cold-storage locker, where they kept the frozen fish and meats from fishing and hunting season. (I also remember hating Moose-burgers, they were so game-y, but it was what was for dinner.)
AdventureMan laughs and says people were never intended to live in Florida, that Florida is a swamp, but with air-conditioning, it is bearable.
So you think of how the kings and emirs and caliphs and chieftans of old – even a hundred years ago – lived, and you look at how we live, and take it all the way down to border-line poverty. What I’m about to say does not apply to the homeless, or the transient homeless, sleeping in family basements or on friend’s couches. There is a strata of the poorest poor to whom this does not apply.
For the most part, we all have shelter, and most of it is climate controlled. We have some heat for when the temperatures are chilly, and some kind of fan or air conditioning to mitigate hot weather. We have windows with glass that can be opened and shut, and we have coverings for those windows. We have multiple changes of clothing that we can wear in various combinations.
We have toilets, and running water. We have ways to heat that water and to chill it. We have ways to heat food, and to keep it from spoiling. We have entertainment, books, televisions, phones and tablets to amuse us. We have exposure to places and ideas without ever leaving our homes. We can experience the athletes ordeals, frustrations and exaltations in London as they compete for medals. Ordinary people can train and compete on the world stage for these medals.
We have roads which stay stable in rain and heat, not bogging us down in mud and muck or snow, becoming impassable for months at a time. We can speak to friends and family anywhere in the world for a pittance. Anyone can; it’s affordable.
We have, most of us, enough to eat. Our problems are more those of excess than of want.
If Eleanor of Aquitaine were to come visit me, the Duchess of Aquitaine, the wife of the King of France and then wife of the King of England, she would be open-mouthed with astonishment at the luxury of our lives. She lived in palaces, places of great luxury for the times – for a very few. Even so, the palaces had no running water, nor bathrooms. No electricity, no heating other than fires in hearths or stoves. She would think our modest houses with our indoor bathrooms and cooking facilities and gathering spaces were miraculous, and she would be even more astonished that we common folk had such amenities. She would marvel at the privacy we have, rooms in which only one or two people sleep. She would look in our closets and be boggled at the amount of clothing we own which we never even wear, and the quality of the seams and stitching. She would look in wonder at our transport, and how the most common of people have cars, can fly to another city, or across the wide oceans.
She would be astonished that even the very poor and us commoners have rights, and judicial procedures protecting our rights against the rapacity of the nobles. She would marvel at our medical care, and that so many have access to it. I’m certain she would find us cheeky, and lacking in a humble acceptance of our station in life. I suspect she would be appalled at the idea of a person having the freedom to pursue an education and an idea, to create their own wealth by the work of their minds and hands.
She was an enormously capable and talented woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine, but once married, while she maintained ownership of her lands, her husbands controlled their use and revenues. If she could see women today, able to choose their husbands, able to attain an education and earn a living wage, supporting children, sometimes parents, and saving for retirement, controlling their own wealth and choosing their own destiny, she would blink in disbelief.
I would enjoy showing her modern life, the bad along with the good, and telling her about our trips to Africa, and our life lived in many countries in the world. I would show her my treasures gathered from here and there (and everywhere! 😉 ) and maybe take her to Pier 1 or World Market where she could pick up a treasure or two for herself. I would show her my fabric collection and watch her swoon with pleasure, and some of my perfume bottle collection, collected with glee from tiny stores in the Middle East. I’d take her to church with me, and out to lunch at Five Sisters. She could sleep in the guest suite, in a great big bed with soft covers and a walk-in closet and her own private bathroom with hot and cold running water and a jacuzzi tub and a shower. I would show her how the refrigerator works, and the microwave, and the oven, and the outdoor sprinkling system. She would absorb it all, and be full of wonder.
And yet every day, we get up and we live our lives oblivious to our riches . . .
Ramadan Statistical Anomaly
Ramadan Mubarak! May God Almighty bless your sacrifices and lighten your burdens during your holy month of Ramadan. May you love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. 🙂
Because I’ve been wishing you well for six years, I had a surge in stats this week, climaxing with what will probably be my all-time high for one day, even if I blog until I am 104 years old, which could happen; my grandmother lived to be 104. Only God knows. 🙂
Here is what my stats look like:
And here are the primary posts:
WordPress gives you an hourly count indicator; the highest was 778 per hour. There have been Saturdays when I would have bee thrilled with 778 total for the day, LOL.
I try not to live by stats. I try not to pander to ratings. I try to write this blog with integrity, focusing on issues and news and goodwill to all. There is a little part of me, however, who stayed up late last night to see if the statistical count for the one day would top 10,000 . . . not a part I’m proud of, but hey, I’m human.
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