For many fantasy football owners this time of year is special not only because of the holidays, but because it’s fantasy football playoff season.  (Unfortunately for me and my co-owner, the season was lost on draft night).  Apparently Fidelity does not share the same appreciation for fantasy football – the company recently fired 4 employees who were involved in various fantasy football leagues.  Fidelity equated fantasy football to a form of gambling, which is prohibited by company policy.

Dan Schwartz of the Connecticut Employment Law Blog has the story and employment law analysis:

Fantasy football owners may complain about the decision or deem it to be overly harsh, but employers typically have a great deal of flexibility in setting rules of behavior in the workplace.

Where the company may have missed the boat is its designation of fantasy football as “gambling” in its purest form.  It’s not really betting or wagering – its mainly just a game. While the “owners” who were fired put up $20 each, it was part of a social relationship as well, which is typically another exception to the no gambling rule.

Click here to read the entire article.  Dan lists a number of “takeaways” for employers, but I think that this suggestion is particularly worthy of consideration:

Consider “blessing” such activities in a non-monetary fashion. Some employers have small office gatherings around some sports event to build morale and teamwork. 

On the surface this  case appears to be the classic scenario of legality vs. practicality.  Can Fidelity justifiably and legally take this action?  Of course.  Is it good policy or a realistic portrayal of fantasy sports as gambling?  Probably not.

Upbraided

How can a man my age,
with a head worn smooth by the vicissitudes of a lived-through life
be upbraided by two women?
Each grabs a rope of non-existent hair,
long ago fallen out and down
onto my hunched shoulders and filled up my half-deaf ears,
and me, the center rope bound between in my follies and ingratitudes.

The one young reminds me how great my accomplishments
in my youthful intelligence and drive gone past were.
How rare to sport a Greek-statue-body
of a man half my age
but past the point when any stroke of youthful pleasure can come from that.
Except maybe I could await the cold scrape of a gold digger’s claw.
And there can be no challenge of camaraderie of brothers at hunt or play
when three times as strong as any walking man.
There can be no hope of reinvigorated youth either,
erection rampant in abandon
while under these clouds of worries
about taxation, reimbursements, and equities,
mere black columns of ink of duties appropriate to my age.
There will be no thick white arrows of cum,
of a young man’s passionate hunt or wonder at a future unrevealed,
just an old warrior’s cunning steps
in measured paces over wet rock like a an old dark-eyed tiger
pacing out the ticking seconds of the clock of the world’s dying.

The other woman whose deft hands weave,
she is my life-blood,
she, who’s loved me every second, ever day,
her heart being squeezed of its last drop of blood
with her wringing hands of craft and caress.
She all along has smoothed every flaw and cradled every mistake ,
every slight of her endless devotion and beauty,
sipped like a cup of bitter tea.
Her hands are worn, but her heart un-cracked by callousness
though never repaid in adequate warmth from the cold stone of this warrior’s heart.
She is the mother of two jewels , my right eye and my left,
who reminds me of the thoughts, the song of the discovery we sang while young.
We were two night-birds calling out in woven counterpoint
the journey we’d share.
My tongue wrapped around her soul night after night
in non-stop caresses of cries for social justice, or odes to the unknown dark fabric of the sky
whose weave we’d someday pierce in understanding together.
The intricate textile of our souls threads we’d loom, our burgeoning love,
whose thick bolts we then lay out on tables or bare mattresses thrown upon the floor
while we shared teas and coffees until the sun rose.
Now words are merely wrapped in nutshells of obfuscating equations
impregnably rattled off at night before sleep has shaken off her last hanging thread of attention,
a duet reduced to a soliloquy of dryness and stripped to a lullaby,
a relief from a day’s fatigue and arthritic pain, another day worn down
by waiting for promised love to spring forth that never comes.
Each monologue another confession of my failure to release my heart,
a sin still un-atoned by the cold monotony of penance prayers.

With each hand passing passing one rope of my brain,
right lobe to left and back again,
I am left a wrinkled bald bald bound center cord
indicted by it’s loneliness and rage,
cinched in by it’s mistakes of selfishness and lack of gratitude for love,
lashed with helixed bloodied lines of tightness.
What good is sport without handshakes for the game?
What good are words on ears deaf with sleep or withheld from a hated mankind?
What good is it to turn to dust, trapped mid-action with a heart turned stone?
To comb and smooth and weave the silky strands of community
means nothing with ropes of hairless flesh twisted in the doughy isolation of a pretzel.
What is a warrior without prey, a teacher without a student,
an old man who can only acquire columns of black ink as
mere symbols of what could be a room full of family,
a court yard of open hearts, a warm garden of smiles of acceptance?
Why do birds, with wings spread wide with color
and heads crowned with a jagged palette of alarm
sounding to warn of the missed beauty crammed within every inch of space,
always come to rest on the statues of old stone men long dead to sense?
Why do they come to peck open these hidden hearts and braid them
and let them fly as flags in the open sky if they are not sent from somewhere else?
The stars are far away and cold
and look down in impotence on dying children
and rivers threatening to overflow the boundaries of a well kept land.
So the gods in their constellations do not send these winged angels of compassion.
The devil lies in the cracked dryness of withholding
or in waters that overwhelm their rightful courses
leaving the rotting dead to air their stinking protests to the sky.
The devil lies in flood and fire they say,
and the gods lay with them in complicity.
And so I adorn my hair in shame,
my bald flesh upbraided by deft female hands into a tight french braid
that demands I crack my seal and change.
For while the trees listen to my sermons, swaying in approval,
they hurl no insults, deny no loans,
do not laugh at my impudence, and let me shrink
without complaint from my warrior’s challenge.
This a woman will never do:
let me shirk from becoming a man full-grown,
to open up my mind and unfurl my tongue,
to unlock my heart and endure the pain of care for this world and its people.

After I called Amber and talked sweetly from the heart and apologized yet one more time, she agree to come over and have pie and ice cream with me, us naturally skinny folk can eat all of that we want, thank god. That thank god goes for both the eating freedom and my woman coming over. Little did I know I would receive a somewhat tormenting lesson, but worth it.

I actually skipped the ice cream because I drink lots of beer and dairy doesn’t always work, but I ate the pie, she had both and beer as well, but not at the same time. She did make me get out and pick up some real beer, rather than the cheap shit I’m sadly getting used too. So I got us a couple of six packs of Sam Adams Cream Stout. My favorite actually and usually cheaper than her nationality’s favorite, we can go to her dad’s for that.

Anyway, after I thought I had it smoothed over, we sat on my comfy ass couch and I started playing her a power ballad that I wrote for her today. She moved in close, so much so that I got a little cramped for room to play the song, but I kept going until I lost concentration when she started to tongue my ear. The guitar shortly afterward was on the floor getting feedback from the amp as she started to make me feel like no one else can.

I thought everything was great as she got me fired up like almost never before. Then she stopped and pulled away. And started to quiz me on who I wanted. She tormentingly teased my for quite a while and finally told me, I she ever hears or finds out about me ever want a friend of hers or anyone else, I’ll never, ever have this again. I agreed, one out of pure lust and two from the heart, she is my woman and I am her man and I was an idiot for suggesting the thing with us and her friend. Never again, she is all I need for real, I just thought I saw an interesting opportunity. I was wrong and it will never happen again, too much to lose.

I’m going to add a romantic song from Jon Seceda(even though he’s associated with the anti-Castro Miami whack jobs) and drink the rest of the beers, then snuggle back up to her, my Amber, My Love.

BTW, I’m taking Amber and my mom to Red Lobster Tuesday night, they both have a disrespect for each other, I hope they can keep their crazy tiny Irish woman claws out of each other. Their both volitile. Mom’s 5′2″ and my Amber is 5′ and a 1/4, but I wouldn’t tangle with either of them, either one could rip a giant’s throat out in a heart beat, must be the Irish. That’s a joke, but I do hope they let go of their differences because one is my fiance and soon wife for life and the other is my mother they need to find a bridge, a tiny bridge built for tiny Irish woman feet, sorry another bad joke, I swear I’m sexist.

We can reconcile our relationship to God by the Word of God, who is the Bible and Jesus, but a person has to be willing to repent to achieve this reconciliation to God, but God is not going to accept partial repentance where the wife (you) is going to cheat on your Husband.  Since God knows every person’s thoughts, there is no way for anyone to fool God into believing you are not cheating on Him.

In such cases where a person attends church or synagogue and continues sleeping with a foreign god by the things they do and do not do, which things are contrary to God’s Word, such people are only fooling themselves and not God.  The result of this bad marriage is the people involved do not receive the blessings, but do receive the cursings we were warned about by Jesus in the Bible.

Since it was satan who induced Eve to break the commandment of God, which resulted in shame being implanted inside her and her husband’s brain, then shame is a thought projected into anyone’s brain when satan gets a person to break God’s commandments.  Since satan is the originator of the thoughts that give a person shame, then satan can also choose to withhold shame even if a person is breaking God’s rules.  (Breaking God’s rules are referred to as sin.)

Therefore, the absence of shame is not a sign that God agrees with your behavior, since it is not God inducing the shame in your brain, but satan.

This leads us to know that satan not only induces shame into a person’s brain as a result for doing his will by sinning, but that satan also uses shame, or the lack of shame, as a result of having done his will for a long time during your life.  This is why so many people during the 20th and 21st centuries have exhibited “no shame” even though it is easily seen that they are breaking the commandments of God in today’s society!

Therefore, it is no great surprise to find out that satan’s plan for the human race has been getting people to break God’s commandments during the first half of their lives, so satan can withhold their shame during the second half of their lives, in an attempt to keep people sinning until physical death takes them to hell.

Becoming immune to shame is not a sign of not sinning, but it is a sign that the person’s soul is very near death.  It is similar to a person dying from a terminal disease.  Only a miracle can save that type person, and the miracle is available to all people willing to repent according to the dictates of God’s commandments.  Not the commandments people wish to pick and choose for themselves, but every commandment God places upon a person’s heart (brain) as they journey through His Word as pilgrims traveling into unknown territory, who must face every peril that God sees fit to put them through.  Willingly accepting their perils, which is His way of proving the validity of each person’s own truthfulness, as to whether or not they really want to be reconciled to God their Husband in a truthful loving relationship to produce children for Him during their marriage.

Check yourself!  Have you been de-sensitized to breaking your Husband God’s commandments?  Any Church, Synagogue, Mosque, or place of religious gathering and teaching that does not teach its congregations this principle is actually working for satan to get you to fornicate or have mental sex with satan as your new god, to make you a person committing adultery against your Creator!

Since God controls satan and all his hordes of demons, then God alone can cause satan to give a person shame or withhold it.  This means God is indirectly in the equation of what is happening inside your brain.  God alone decides whether or not satan will test you by giving you shame or withholding it from you.  If God has given you shame, then you are only sick and need a physician; but if your shame has subsided and you have not stopped doing what originally caused your shame, then you are almost too sick to be saved and about to die spiritually.  The spiritually dead are known as reprobates.  God places a sign on all reprobates.  The sign of homosexuality!

“And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.” ~Luke 5:31

This defines homosexuality as a disease of the brain.  These type people have no shame and need help!

Wilhelmina Elizabeth Jane, Kate Augusina, Monu Christina, Edith Isobel, Winifred Maude, Alice Maud,

Noeline Alice Mary, Clara Elizabeth, Adeline, Isabella Maude, Etta Florence, Alice Melinda May, Violet Naomi Lillian,

Asabella, Constance Mabel, Flora Emily, Lucy Elizabeth, Katherine Eliza, Grace Myrtle, Helen Fidelity,

Alford, Ian Francis, Barnabus Waugh, Enos Ivan, Bendix Hallenstein, Fritz Julius, Berkley Reginald, Frank Harvey, Julian David, Antonius Cornelius,

1 Kings 11:1-10

One of the most indispensable of all Christian duties, one of our most essential task, is seeking God. In order to know what we must or should do; in order to know God’s will for our lives we must seek God. We must spend time in prayer and meditation, time alone with God in order to understand what He would have us to do at any given time. If you’re not seeking God, you’re not doing what you know to be good (ref. James 4:17). Therefore seeking God is essential to our Christian experience.

Now it is not always the most delightful thing for us. We must be patient and sometimes it might take praying and fasting and perseverance, but this is what God requires of us and it is always worth it to have that blessed assurance down in our souls that we are in the perfect will of God.

The key to successfully seeking and knowing the will of God is in how you seek Him. You can’t come to Him with your own ideas and with your own desires in the way. Those things will hinder you from hearing the voice of God. You can’t come to Him with limitations on what you will and won’t do, that might cause you to miss out on what He’s leading you to do. You can’t come to Him with sin in your life or sinful desires in your heart because that will make your praying and seeking in vain (ref. Psalm 66:18). God doesn’t use unclean vessels and all He will show you is that you need to repent and come again when you’re able to stand before Him (ref. Acts 8:14-24).

In the above passage we see that Solomon did evil because he went not fully after the Lord. This was the chief of his sins. Yes he worshiped other Gods, yes he set up worship places for them, but those were symptoms of the disease and not the disease itself. Solomon’s idolatry lay less in the building of altars and worshiping false gods as it did in the worship of these strange women; this is where he transgressed God’s commandment and sinned. This is what turned away his heart.

Look at how his sin progressed. His first error was in involving himself with these women who God forbad the children of Israel to have anything to do with. He allowed them to affect his heart as we read in verse 2, he clave unto them in love. He loved pursing women more so than pursuing God. These strange women became more appealing to him than praying and seeking and sacrificing before God, at that point he committed idolatry. Not necessarily in the building of high places or the worshiping of the gods of other nations, but in the worshiping of something besides God.

Anything that rivals our affections for God is idolatry and is a great evil in the eyes of the Lord. If it causes you to stop seeking God with a certain abandonment and fervor then it is rivaling your affection for Him. It’s not what you worship or how, but the fact that it negatively impacts your relationship with God. Now when you realize that something is taking God’s place in your heart and mind and you yet continue to indulge in that thing it says something about your relationship with God.

You can’t possibly be said to love God with all if you are so caught up in something else. If you can’t put it down long enough to pray and get a hold of God or do His will then it’s an idol. It’s turned your heart away from God and you need to put it away, repent of your sin and get right with God.

“Cameron Pettigrew called himself the “Fidelity Man.”

Working as a relationship manager in the private client group at Fidelity Investments’ Westlake office, Pettigrew says he looked forward to work every day. He even remembers telling co-workers and friends that he planned to retire someday from Fidelity, the country’s biggest mutual fund sponsor and one of the world’s largest providers of financial services.”

Said Fidelity spokesman Vin Loporchio: “We have clear policies that relate to gambling. Participation in any form of gambling through the use of Fidelity time or equipment or any other company resource is prohibited. In addition to being illegal in a lot of places, it can also be disruptive. We want our employees to be focused on our customers and clients.”

The above is from the Star-Telegram in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Fantasy football. March Madness.  Both take up some time at work. Both are pretty much banned by most big companies from being discussed, accessed or thought about when on company time or using company equipment.

There are two basic reasons here for the way most companies approach these topics:

1)    CYA – The company is trying to minimize its exposure as it may relate to gambling taking place using their assets.
2)    Productivity – Companies are concerned that employees will waste company time on these pursuits.

We would like to address these concerns one at a time.

1)    Fantasy football by itself is not gambling.  If you pay to participate in a league, that is not gambling. For example, I participated in a league for several years where the cost of participation was $20 per year. This covered the league fee to the online service we used, beer and pizza at the draft, and maybe bowling at the end of the season.
2)    According to the article, Pettigrew worked as a “relationship manager.” This means he builds relationships with clients.  That was his job. I think it would be safe to say that many of his clients play fantasy football, and his pursuit gave him a common ground for discussion.

One of our investors, Elite Power, actually invested in Trench Fantasy FOR this reason.  See what our lead investor had to say:
“Sports provides a common ground for many businesses to develop strong relationships with customers and at Elite Power we connect with a lot of our customers through sports and fantasy leagues,” said Walt Zacharias, Elite Power’s president and owner. “Trench Fantasy is a perfect fit for us as our area of business is very important for our customers, but we aren’t always the ones in front getting the glory; much like the players celebrated in Trench Fantasy’s games.”

Walt sees fantasy sports as a way to connect with his customers. He trusts his employees to do good work and stay on task. Heck, his employees work with electricity every day. If he didn’t trust them, he’d be in big trouble.

So what does this come down to? If you can’t trust your employees to be able to know when to make phone calls, and when to find information to discuss on those phone calls, then you’ve got bigger problems than fantasy football.

And Cameron?  If you’re looking for an employer that understands how discussion of sports can build relationships, give Walt a call at Elite Power.

If you happen to be reading this sentence while sitting in your cubicle at Fidelity Investments, then you’d better stop. Immediately. We cannot guarantee your safety. You’re only one click away from creating a fantasy league, and that would be a serious violation of company policy. In fact, it’s a fireable offense.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fidelity recently axed four league commissioners in the Fantasy Purge of ‘09.

Cameron Pettigrew, who worked as a “relationship manager in a private client group” (which sounds a lot like the job description of a fantasy commish), was among those terminated:

“Firing a guy for being in a $20 fantasy league? Let’s be honest, that’s a complete overreaction,” said Pettigrew, who lives in Grapevine and has an MBA from the University of Texas at Arlington. “In this economic time, especially. To fire people over something like this, it’s just cold.” – Read full article…

Building Materials

You know I used to be very hard on construction crews, I still am really, but if you want to know why a house now is not like a house years ago you have to look a little farther than that.

You have to look at the building materials being used as well. A 2×4 now is not what it was years ago when houses were built to last and so even if construction crews were just as dedicated and just as determined to build a quality house they’d be handicapped from the start.
Well, it’s the same way with people. People aren’t what they used to be years ago either. They’re not cut out the same way, they’re not made of the same stuff they used to be. There’s something lacking in them and that’s why the country is not what it used to be and that’s at least part of the reason why the church is not what it used to be also.

What am I talking about? We couldn’t live like they did in the past, not speaking of the church or going through spiritually, I’m talking about just physical conditions and living situations; I’m talking about just on a regular everyday basis; not persecution, just normal everyday life for them would be too much for us.

I’m not advertising a trip back in time. I’m not saying we should endeavor to mimic their way of life, that’s not the key to it all necessarily. What I’m saying is that we as men (and women) have changed and it hasn’t been altogether for the better.

Let’s look at the 6^th seal reformers. Life for them was hard at the best. To be a man in those days meant something. They had to go through some things. They had to grind. They didn’t have a whole lot of technology doing things for them, they were forced to use force. They didn’t have machines to cut down trees for them, they had to use an axe. They didn’t have machines to dig ditches for them, they had to use a pick or a shovel or whatever. They didn’t have computers and printers to put out their publications, a lot of the papers and books and things they published they had to do hard manual labor just to get it printed out.

They had to struggle, to grind, to press. It wasn’t just a mental battle it was a physical one as well. They were poor… no not one car and a rental property poor, I mean barely a roof over their head poor. Walk wherever you went poor. So to be able to come to church and praise God meant something (I remember a brother telling me about another group of people who had to struggle and press and how they seemed to have great grace and strong faith because of it).

Yet all that did something for them… that struggle, that suffering, that hardness of life made hard people; people who could endure something; could go through some things. People who had some strong moral values and beliefs and who respected each other because they knew and understood life was hard and survival wasn’t guaranteed. They had to be strong just to make it therefore they appreciated everything they had including their salvation.

They had strong bonds to their families. They depended on one another. Everyone had a part to play. Everyone was important. They were taught to love and respect one another and that carried over into their church family too.

There’s something that you can only get by going through some things. There’s something that you can’t get any other way but by being ground and broken and put back together again. There’s a certain drive that you’ll never have unless you meet with some resistance.

That’s what I meant when I advertised the taking on of responsibilities. If you avoid all responsibilities in life then there’s no way God can give you any responsibilities in His kingdom because you haven’t been tested and tried. You’ve not been proved.

Just as David wouldn’t use the armor he hadn’t tested, God isn’t going to use you until you’ve been tested either. You’re going to have to go through something.

You don’t want to take on a job or a wife or this or that or the other thing, well if you haven’t been faithful in the unrighteous mammon who will commit to your trust the true riches (ref. Luke 16:11)?

There’s something else going through a hard trial does for you also. They strip you down; they cause you too lose some of that ole pride and selfishness that so hinders the work of God in this end time.

We can’t go back in time and deal with the situations and circumstances of that bygone time, but if we are willing there will be time and trial enough to make us even in these times.

Don’t worry either, God will find something to prove you with no matter what your state. You can be single or married, you can be employed or unemployed, no matter what when you enroll in God’s army you will have trials, the key is don’t bail out of your trial. Remember what James and Peter wrote as you’re going through your trials.

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. James 1:2-4

That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:6-7

Remember what Jesus said to this generation in Revelation, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold TRIED IN THE FIRE…” Revelation 3:18.

This is TOUGH!  My take on the situation at the bottom of the article.

Fidelity fires four for playing fantasy football

By DREW DAVISON

Special to the Star-Telegram

Cameron Pettigrew called himself the “Fidelity Man.”

Working as a relationship manager in the private client group at Fidelity Investments’ Westlake office, Pettigrew says he looked forward to work every day. He even remembers telling co-workers and friends that he planned to retire someday from Fidelity, the country’s biggest mutual fund sponsor and one of the world’s largest providers of financial services.

But that isn’t going to happen. Pettigrew and three other Fidelity employees were fired for playing fantasy football.

“Firing a guy for being in a $20 fantasy league? Let’s be honest; that’s a complete overreaction,” said Pettigrew, who lives in Grapevine and has an MBA from the University of Texas at Arlington. “In this economic time, especially. To fire people over something like this, it’s just cold.”

Said Fidelity spokesman Vin Loporchio: “We have clear policies that relate to gambling. Participation in any form of gambling through the use of Fidelity time or equipment or any other company resource is prohibited. In addition to being illegal in a lot of places, it can also be disruptive. We want our employees to be focused on our customers and clients.”

Pettigrew, who was the commissioner of his league, knew Fidelity had a policy against playing fantasy football at the office. But he said the policy was poorly communicated and ignored by leadership. Pettigrew said there were at least 10 fantasy leagues in which leaders and managers played.

Still, on Oct. 20, Fidelity officials investigated the matter after they intercepted e-mails exchanged in a different office league. After questioning the commissioner of that league, they discovered Pettigrew also ran an office league. Four league commissioners lost their jobs at Fidelity.

Pettigrew, though, said he never sent any fantasy football e-mails at work or using his work e-mail address. But the investigators found two instant messages that had fantasy-football-related material.

“One of my buddies sent me something about how bad Trent Edwards was playing or something like that,” Pettigrew said. “So they called me in and talked to me for about 90 minutes on everything I ever knew about fantasy football. They interrogated me as though I was some sort of international gambling kingpin. Then they released me for the day, and I was like, ‘OK.’ I never thought they’d fire me for this, but, the next day, I get the call saying I had been terminated.”

Pettigrew, who says he never had a warning in his 2  1/2 years at the company, said he would have understood a warning or a dock in pay. He says he also missed out on thousands of dollars because his 401(k) retirement plan was not vested. An employer’s contributions to a 401(k) don’t belong to the employee until a federally mandated period of service is fulfilled.

“It’s just hard because Fidelity was such a good company to work for,” said Pettigrew, who added that three weeks before he was fired he was offered a position with Fidelity in New York City but turned it down because of the area’s high cost of living.

This is rough!  Granted my job has many shortcomings, but I’m glad it isn’t this strict.  Sh*t, at my job, some people get to come to work only when they want to (well that’s because we’re sure this person in particular is sleeping with the boss – but you didn’t hear that from this guy).

I don’t play fantasy football because it requires you to focus to a certain degree and I just don’t have that kinda energy.  However, I’m a firm believer that littler inter-office fun is good for the soul.

But with Fidelity being a financial services firm, I can understand why gambling is a major red flag.  I don’t think the guys should have been fired though, that’s just cold.  Give them a written warning and put them on probation, but don’t fire the guys!  Heartless.

But if any of the four guys who were fired happen to come across YAKWII, here’s a little tip from me to help you get throu this jobless period:  Start a blog!

Seriously!  That’s what I did and now look at me!  People read my sh*t!  A blog is a great way to make you feel way more awesome than you actually are.  Sure, it doesn’t beat malt liquor and handjobs, but not much in life does anyways.

Start a blog fellas!

divorce: part 2

right vs wrong
right vs wrong
right vs wrong

stop. let’s leave this world for a moment.

don’t get lost.

instead, let’s talk about goodness and unity… because that’s a different conversation fromright vs wrong.

when people center on the rightness and wrongness of any situation (given, occasionally this is appropriate), more often than not, it polarizes people… leaving you on one side, and your opponent on the other side.

if you are right, then she is wrong… you win. she looses. you are triumphant. she has to apologize.

but what good has really been accomplished?? and what is the value in rightness??

why do we sacrifice unity for the sake of rightness??
why do we sacrifice unity for the sake of rightness??
why do we sacrifice unity for the sake of rightness??

WHY?? what is the good in being right??

i do not recall any scriptural virtue in rightness. no blessing from christ. no fruit of the spirit. no spiritual gift of being right. but unity and goodness are reinforced time after time. and we are so quick to sacrifice those authentic christian values, simply to avoid being wrong.

but we can do better… we can all do better. we can all take courage, step back from our battle stations and just admit it: there is some rightness in their wrongness… and there is somewrongness in my rightness.

and in order to move forward, what we really need is unity and goodness.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

divorce: part 3

do i love her? yes.
do i hate her? yes.
would i take her back? yes.
would i want to? i don’t know.

she is not with me… and she is not alone.

how do i do this alone? and how am i supposed to do good? …what does goodness even look like now? at what point do i stop holding on?? a man could go crazy over this. is goodnessholding on?? is goodness letting go??

…

deep breath…

the plunge…

…

goodness is letting go.

It’s almost four years, now, that I have been doing vocation work for my Province.  I LOVE this work; it’s challenging, but very, very encouraging!  The young people who are looking into religious life are like the “cream of the crop” among young Roman Catholics in America.  They are the finest young people, who, in searching for God’s plans, and often after years of pushing the idea of religious life away, have come to accept this call. 

The one thing they don’t yet know, though, is that  much later on, they will realize that this Vocation they so adamantly avoided, was in fact a huge gift.  The very thing they feared will, in fact, be their greatest blessing!  Some may have an intuition even now, but at one point, they will realize the call they so avidly wanted to bury was indeed a precious pearl!

Just recently, one of these young people searching for God’s call, and finding that perhaps she has a home with the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco, shared this poem she had written … it’s called VOCATION

It is not very quiet in her heart so full
There is this tug, this bit of a pull
Something calling to do a little more
Drawing her to see what is in store
Fear trembles from deep within
She has no idea where to begin
There was a visit to come and see
Leaving her now on bended knee
With all of this she is left to wander
Her friends give her much to ponder
In all the moments of her past
Maybe this is what will forever last

I’m sure you can only imagine the fear that inhabits every one of those words.  Mostly, this is a fear of the unknown.  So, I ask you, pray for them, that they can find the courage and faith to answer God with in the affirmative, and that they will one day know the joy of completely abandoning themselves to our God, who is Love.

***/*****

Julian Casablancas’ solo album sounds a lot like The Strokes, and since it’s been three years since their last studio effort, that’s a good thing. But the problem with The Strokes was that they arrived fully formed; any tinkering with the formula detracted from that perfection, so later albums felt like they were running to stand still. Ironic, really, for a band so good at floating gaily down a river of ennui.

It’s therefore somehow quite appropriate that Casablancas demonstrates a formidable breaststroke here, a meandering energy that battles against the current of his band’s utterly casual ethos. This is a good album, under the synths and solos and stumbling vocals, but in an effort to prove that there’s more to him than The Strokes, Casablancas has put kitchen sink, bathtub and firehose into each song.

That’s the problem with trying to sound effortless; all you hear is the effort. The result is an often glorious mess, proof that Casablancas is not short of ideas, but less sure of how to harness them – he hasn’t worked out that sometimes the point is not to accommodate every single idea, but to know precisely which ones to leave out.

The Star, 20 December 2009

Is Tiger Woods a philanderer, sex addict, or victim of the Western world?
 

Elijah’s 12-part series “Basic Instinct” reveals what may have driven Tiger Woods to his sexual exploits.

To read the section on monogamy and polygamy, click here Basic Instinct, Part 9: The western v. eastern mentality

To read the entire “Basic Instinct” series, beginning with Part 1, click HERE.

Eve was created out of Adam.  All human beings were created by God.  This is why Eve was Adam’s wife.  It is also why God is our husband.  In Isaiah 59:1-2, the Lord explains that it is not He that is causing a person’s loss of salvation or being saved from the terrible things that happen to people on earth and after death, but it is the person who is actually causing these things to happen to themselves.

“And the next sabbath day almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God, but when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spoke against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming (denying the Word of God). Then Paul and Barnabas became bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing you put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.” ~Acts 13:44-46

The Bible tells us, We are making the choice to lose our eternal life.  God is not imposing it on any person.  As our Husband, God is responsible for all our needs; but as adulterers, people lose those privileges provided by God because they have chosen another lover to provide for them.  It is not the mental choice of deciding whether God is the God you want to serve, but the mental choice of whether you will keep God’s commandments that makes God your god and husband.

There is no difference in the human event of marriage.  Any woman who keeps her husband’s commandments is serving her husband, whom God made her Lord and husband.  Any woman that does not keep her husband’s commandments is not serving her husband, and this marriage will perish.

“And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” ~Mark 3:25

Shame makes people hide from God.  Hiding from God keeps people from coming into God’s glorious light.  God’s light is the Word of God (Jesus and the Bible).  People seeking God, are actually seeking what God wants from them during their life on earth.  What God wants from people is written in the Bible.  Yet, just seeking what is written in the Bible is not what God wants from His Bride (us).  What God wants from His Wife is to keep His commandments, which is the act of doing what He told us we should be doing on earth during life.

Most people on earth have strayed from God to another god and are adulterers.  Being born makes you God’s wife.  Not doing things God’s way makes you an adulterer.  Everyone knows this, which is why everyone is seeking God, but not everyone knows how to find the God they are seeking.  Most people are sidetracked during their quest for their Creator.  They got involved in breaking God’s commandments.  Did they get sidetracked because they didn’t know His commandments?  No!

Everyone is born with a conscience, which is the voice of Jesus Christ living right inside every human being’s brain.  He has tried to gently guide us from birth, but He had to contend with satan, who has the ability to plant thoughts right inside every person’s brain.  Those thoughts from satan have caused people to be sidetracked during their quest to find their true God.  This resulted in shame and separation from God, because God cannot continue a relationship with a wife playing the Whore.

God is perfect and God cannot have a relationship with a Whorish wife; but God is merciful and through Jesus, God understands our shortcomings, and is willing to overlook our shortcomings as a wife, and is willing to assist us by letting Jesus help us get back to having a loving relationship with our Husband__God our Husband!

To be continued…

John Althouse Cohen goes there: the top 200 songs of the decade.

This list may not be your list, and some of his picks are, indeed unbearable. (“Fidelity” by Regina Spektor takes the whole enchilada? No-o-o-o-o-o-o!!!) But these are his stories. All 200 of them. And he’s sticking to them..

i haven’t written for a long time now. i can’t explain it any better than to tell you’ve that i’ve had a spot of ‘writer’s block’. its not that i haven’t felt like writing: on the contrary i think its exactly what i need.

there has been so much happening lately. and yet, nothing has changed. uni result were released – i did okay. i have to retake another first year subject next semester, but i should be ok to take my second-year law & sociology subjects.

i’m so tired today, i worked nine hours yesterday and six-and-a-half today. for another person this wouldn’t be an issue, but apart from the fact that i’m very lazy and don’t get enough sleep, i’m very much not used to working that much. plus its super busy and the moment, with christmas in less than two weeks. argh. so my body hurts, and i’m seriously thinking about finding a new job. i really can’t believe that its only ten past eight right now.

so what is it that i’m confused about? oh thats right, MY LIFE. i hate my job right now, my new boss is only giving me like 12 hours a week because we have so many new staff in frontend. if things don’t pick up after christmas, i’m seriously thinking that i’ll start looking for a new job. i don’t strictly NEED the money, but at the same time, if mum & dad really do go away for most of next year, i will definitely need money for petrol and food and electricity and internet… etc. plus, if i got another job, i might actually be able to make friends with the people i work with and generally enjoy my job. gawd, that would be nice.

why is it that i’m thinking so much about wanting to enjoy my job? well apart from the obvious fact that i totally hate my job and am always so grumpy when i go there that no one there likes me, boyfriend and i have been having some serious problems lately. for example, just a few days ago we almost broke up (again) for no reason that i can fathom.

if you don’t live in australia you won’t understand what i’m talking about when i mention youth allowance and centrelink, but basically if you’re a student and you fit certain eligibility criteria, you can get a welfare allowance from the government if you’re a full-time student. it’s meant to be to encourage young people from ‘disadvantaged backgrounds’ and regional areas to go to university/pursue higher education. anyway, thanks to Kevin 07, the rules about eligibility for youth allowance are changing on the first of january 2010. this means that boyfriend has to earn a whole bunch of money, before the rules change over, to be eligible to get paid a few extra hundred dollars of free money next year. so he just signed a temporary part-time contract with Myer, his employer, which means he works a minimum of 30 hours over 5 weekdays each week. however, because of a number of factors, most days he gets asked to stay later than his scheduled knock-off time. usually he takes these extra hours, because as mentioned, he really needs the money.

so we had this big fight the other day (which was conducted entirely via text-message) which started when i was feeling crappy and made a comment about how i don’t like that he works so much. (in case you haven’t heard, our relationship is mostly conducted within business hours in public places: he has a licence but no care and i have neither; we both live with our fairly conservative parents; and his family don’t even know i exist. mostly when we see each other, we hang out in coffee shops or public city parks.) anyway, i am upset that he works so much, but as he later pointed out to me i know the reason and its a good one. he took my remarks much more seriously than i had intended, and we ended up having a very large and complicated fight.

essentially what i was saying was this: he works a lot, but i can understand that. but at the moment he is very much ‘looking out for number one’ (himself) – what with the working, his immediate plans for the future (including uni, continuing to work and other various things like friends, involvement with youth organisations and the like) and his complete unwillingness to even tell his family that he’s dating someone. and so i said to him that i respect that what he’s doing is going to make his life better and easier in the long term, and thats fine, but if he is looking out for himself and putting his long-term happiness and success first, then i have to do the same for myself. and unfortunately, maybe that means not being with him.

what he said in reply was this: you’re not allowed to get angry at me for working so much, you know why i’m doing it. i’m looking out for my long term future, etc etc. (he also seems to have tentative plans to move out in the next couple of months, although i’m somewhat dubious about his commitment to this goal.) but somehow, he managed to twist this so it sounded like he thought he was doing this for me. like, moving out was my idea and he was doing it for the benefit of our relationship. and working so much was to get this youth allowance thing, so that he could work less and spend more time with me. one of his remarks was actually “i’m always looking out for you”. interesting.

anyway, this attempt to spin everything my way was interesting because of what followed. one of my earlier accusations was that he didn’t care at all that he barely ever gets to see me, and it doesn’t bother him at all. his response was somewhat evasive, saying that he spends heaps of time trying to work out when i’m free so he can spend some time with me. so as i said, this all eventually got very interesting…

i eventually, inadvertently made a remark which sounded very much like i was dumping him on the spot. i quickly backtracked and told him thats not what i had meant. however, after trying to convince him that i do in fact love him very much and i do want to be with him, i asked him what he wanted. he told me that me wanted me to be happy, and if breaking up would make me happy then thats what he wanted. i then told him that i would probably be approximately equally unhappy whether we broke up or stayed together, and if that was the case and he disregarded me for a second, did he want to be with me or not.

his response?

“i don’t know.”

fuck. shit fuck cocksucking motherfucking cunt what the hell has got into you? you loved me two hours ago and now you “don’t know” if you want to be with me??

after that, i just said “ok” and left him to think for a while.

unfortunately, that night was (one of many of) his end-of-year christmas work events. basically, it involved him going out and getting totally smashed with a bunch of under-30s who work at Myer with him. i, also, was going out and getting drunk that night with some girlfriends who had invited me at the last minute. so i went to predrinks with my friends (which took place in T’s car: very classy) and many hours after the last text message, i got another one from boyfriend.

it went something like this: “if you want a relationship then i honestly do too, but if you’re just going to be annoyed all the time about me working then i agree that its not going to work”.

simply thankful that he hadn’t dumped me, i sent a message telling him that i do want to be with him etc etc and i hope he was having a fun night with his “work friends”.

anyway, a few hours and a couple of drinks later, i’m sitting around with a few friends in a club, chatting to S, when boyfriend turns up. i was facing away from him at the time, but S told me when he walked in. however, as soon as he walked in, what did he do? oh, thats right. he goes right out onto the smoking balcony where the two (female) friends i had originally come out with were and starts doing what i only imagine is having a bitch about me. after ten or fifteen minutes, he comes inside, sits down next to me, and proceeds to pretend that absolutely nothing is wrong.

at the time i thought “this is cool, this definitely works for me, i can totally just go back to being all lovey-dovey and coupley”. now, i’m not so sure.

how can you just go right back to ‘normal’ after being told that the person who you love “isn’t sure” if they actually want to be with you?

in addition to this (just quietly i’m an avid Facebook user), a WHOLE bunch of photos have been put on Facebook with boyfriend tagged in lots of them – one particular guy’s album from boyfriend’s work party that i was telling you about. now, there’s nothing ‘incriminating’ in there – its not like i expect him to go make out with a bunch of chicks when he’s dating me (or a least not when there’s a camera around) – but there’s something else about them thats made me think long and hard.

he looks so happy.

has he ever looked that happy when he’s been with me? i don’t know anymore. things with us have been dodgy for so long that i don’t think i know what ‘happy’ looks like anymore.

but it occurred to me: work isn’t just taking over his days with its incessant shifts and constant demands of ‘more labour!’. its now started invading his social life.

this isn’t just about me and the fact that he LOVES being around his colleagues. (and he does love them. he raves about them whenever i see him. you can see it in his eyes, in his face, when he’s around them. he lights up. in every one of the pictures from that night, he has a grin on his face like a spoiled kid after gifts time at christmas.) its about the fact that his other friends, people that he’s known and loved for years, barely get to see him anymore. boyfriend used to love going out on the town, yet despite numerous invitations from a whole bunch of friends, the only two times he’s been out drinking in the last 5 or 6 weeks have been times when he has had a work event to go to. his work friends aren’t just eclipsing me, they’re eclipsing his entire social circle.

i can understand it, to a point. even if you just consider his unsure-ness about being with me. i don’t know what that was about exactly (i plan to ask him when i see him tomorrow), but according to someone who considers himself boyfriend’s best friend, it could just be the fact that when boys are surrounded by hundreds of hot girls, as they are when out clubbing, they kind of wish that they were single so they could go out there and try to plough that. when you add to the ‘hot girl’ fact with the fact that they all totally adore him (and they do: everyone at Myer seems to love him to pieces), i can probably understand that he likes the attention and wants it to go a bit (or a lot) further. its already been proven that at least one girl from work (who was there on wednesday night) is fully capable of seeing him as more than a friend (see previous references to Work Girl a.k.a. SlutFace a.k.a. Alex), why shouldn’t he go out there and seek the opportunities?

and then, if its not the whole ‘relationship’ things that scares him, then maybe its me. maybe he just doesn’t love me anymore.

now, call me naive, but i have never, ever doubted boyfriend’s feelings for me before. i have been jealous and i have been insecure, but never before have i actually believed that, when he says ‘i love you’, he might not mean it. so when he said he wasn’t sure about being with me, it definitely was a big shock for me. on the other hand, if he’s somehow fallen for someone else… i think maybe i could deal with that. obviously i love him and i don’t want to, but if he was keen on someone else maybe it would make it easier to get over him? if i didn’t keep wondering about whether we should just get back together because we really do love each other? i don’t know. i don’t want to break up.

and then, even if you take out the part about me vs. the other hot, adoring girls, you still have all the other adoring work colleagues. and yes, i’m serious. when i say they love him over there at Myer, i don’t just mean they think that he’s good at his job. i mean they love him. this might just be the way he tells it, but he seriously sounds like the most popular guy there. now for some reason, despite afore-mentioned years-old friends that boyfriend has, he thinks that he’s kind of geeky, that not many people like him, that he doesn’t have many friends, etc etc. so i can imagine that feeling liked, feeling popular, feeling like he belongs and that he’s a part of something would be something that he’s really into.

what happens when he moves on from his temporary part-time job to get a real job, or concentrate on uni, or go travelling? will these work friends be with him for the rest of his life, do you think? or do they just hang out for the good times to make fun of customers and each other and then go their separate ways when the time comes? i’m honestly worried that he will invest all his time in these work friends of his and, when the time comes that (god forbid) he really needs people to be there for him, he will have abandoned his ‘real’ friends that he’s known for years?

i know what you’re probably thinking: i’m just a jealous girlfriend who’s trying to find ways to justify her irrational anger, fear and insecurity. and you’re quite possibly right. but on the other hand, what if i really am looking out for him? just because i don’t dress mannequins with him for forty-plus hours a week, doesn’t mean i don’t absolutely adore him with every fibre of my being. quite the opposite in fact.

you know what else worries me though? the thought that this is how the rest of  my life is going to be.

i’m not working much at the moment (as previously mentioned, my new boss is a bitch), and i feel like i’m idling around, wasting my time, just waiting for boyfriend to come and pay attention to me. i don’t want to be putting my life on hold, waiting around for someone for the rest of eternity. yet i think this is what my mum does every day. in fact, i think a lot of women (and maybe men too) have this problem. they take time away from their careers to do the kids thing, and somewhere along the way their life gets put on hold. they wait and wait and wait, for their kids to wake up or go to sleep or be old enough for school or stop crying, for their husbands to come home from work or tell them they love them or take the kids off their hands for a day. i WANT to have a life. i want to be amazing, i want to make something of myself. i feel like i am constantly being overlooked. i have never really been selected for stuff, never been promoted, rarely praised. i don’t get good marks for stuff or win prizes. its always my friends who get approached by the guys in bars and clubs, regardless of how much effort i have put into looking good. i don’t want to be overlooked anymore, i want to be amazing.

i think that i am amazing.

why don’t you?

the answer to this question in my next post… keep reading.

This seems to be a pandemic in all age groups.  My sixth grade class revolves around a discovery learning concept in which the students are required to teach themselves certain topics in order to work through a packet on a given subject.  However, today it became apparent that the idea falls apart when the students refuse to read the directions.  Ugh.

But it’s not just my sixth graders’ problem.  I was at Blockbuster the other day (picking up MW2, but more on that later) and a woman was berating an employee because her movie was 37 days late and he wasn’t letting her return it.  Umm, lady… the store policy pretty clearly states that after 30 days the DVD is yours.  The employee was trying to explain that Blockbuster doesn’t buy back movies from customers, but the woman clearly wanted her money back.  Maybe if she had bothered to pay attention to either the due date or the directions on her receipt, this wouldn’t have happened.

And I will expand this to the recent idiotic actions of Tiger Woods.  Marriage comes with directions, right?  Like don’t have sex with women other than your wife?  Yeah bud, should have checked that ‘fine print’ before you did the back nine

I’ve been doing the whole lo-fi photography thing pretty much solo for awhile now and have only collaborated with one other photographer. My Italian lomo-friend Stiff and I created an excellent doubles roll last winter. It was great fun. I haven’t done any large or long-term projects but that’s all going to change thanks to Jeff Nachtigall a.k.a. Dirklancer.

He’s invited a group of analogue photographers to join him on a year-long journey to explore what it is to wait. Through written submissions and photographs, we will delve into a subject that I find quite pertinent to our modern-day world of instant-this and faster-that.

In fact, on the day I received his invite (though snail mail written in a font called ‘patient page’ no less) I was on my way home with the kids when traffic suddenly stopped. Two cars had skidded off the road about 5 car-lengths ahead of us. It was sleeting and we were on a two-way road that is the straightest way home, plus, we were all pretty miserable as we’d been in the car for the better part of an hour and 15 minutes.

[Quick sidebar: My husband and I refuse to buy a VCR for the car. We suffered through monumental car trips as kids and, as much as we both hated it, we agree that it taught us a lot about patience and entertaining yourself.  My older two children had their Nintendo devices to play with but my poor youngest son had nothing. Fortunately, he'd been asleep most of the time.]

Back to the story. The kids kept asking if there was any other way we could go: “Mom, why don’t we just go up and around? Why do we have to sit here in line?” My honest answer was that there really wasn’t a better way. Going around the accident would’ve meant tacking on at least an hour to the already long trip. Well, we sat and waited and waited and waited. For 45 minutes as EMS personnel extracted the passengers from their vehicles and cleared the roadway of debris, we drew on the foggy windows and watched the action. Then came the tow trucks haul what was left of the vehicles away. This was all extremely thrilling to my 3 1/2-year-old boy but my girls didn’t find it quite as much fun as car-dancing and requesting a change in music every 5 minutes.  It was an 45 extra minutes to goof around that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Pretty nice gift, huh?

I had been anticipating the arrival of Jeff’s invitation and had a good laugh when I opened up the mail that night and found it. It’s going to be a lot of fun thinking and creating on this subject. You can follow along at www.theartofwaiting.com, however you won’t see any of our photos until 2011. We’re waiting until the end of the year to develop our film.