‘You’ll shoot your eye out, kid’
I admit, while I’d like to start pursuing religion on a scholarly level, I’m way more interested in chick lit. (A la my latest read, “Chasing Harry Winston,” which hurts to read because it’s so me and, let’s face it, it’s a book I should have written as it is my life story and all.)
Anyway, for now I’m just counting on churchgoing to give me the Cliff’s Notes guide to all things biblical, since apparently masturbation DOES cause one to go blind and I can’t find a bible that has print big enough to keep me reading it. (And yesterday I did manage to sneak in a, uh, fruitful purchase at Forbidden Fruit. Do you think Lasik can reverse the damage I’m doing to myself? Carrots aren’t helping!)
ADD: I haz it.
OK, “anyway” again, today at church we talked about how Jesus said that you should poke your eye out if it causes you to sin, as pulling a Cyclops is clearly better than burning in hell for all of eternity. *shudder* So basically, if a body part is causing you to sin, you should amputate it? How many men in the audience were covering their crotches when that topic came up today?!?!
I left my notes on the sermon in the car (and I have wet toenails, so I’m trying to remember what I wrote down). The pastor said something about that’s why rules have been created — to keep us all in line. And we shouldn’t be tempted to tell white lies or circumvent rules or do anything to disrespect things that were supposedly created for our own good.
I take issue with that. I mean, yes, people do need rules/laws/codes of ethics/etc. Some people obviously don’t know how to behave unless someone is telling them the expectations of human nature. Whatevs.
But I take issue with it being a venial sin to circumvent rules — can’t we take into account the rule-maker? I mean, I can abide by rules as well as the next person (and will rebel against ones I find dumb), but my main source of rebellion is mostly taking issue with the who and not the what.
You’ve got corporate leaders who won’t let you expense a bag of peanuts from the hotel minibar but then they’re swindling money and funneling it into offshore bank accounts. You’ve got celebrities shooting anti-drug commercials while they’re riding a ski lift to the top of their own personal cocaine stash. You’ve got executives who marry their secretaries who come up with so-called sexual harassment rules to prevent anyone else from potentially meeting their own life mate the very same way. You’ve got the most-inept people on the planet harassing you for not doing their required shit-ton of paperwork hoops that they impose to stall you from achieving great things. You’ve got legislators impregnanting anything that walks and yet they don’t want women to have freedom of choice as to what to do in those unpleasant situations.
Pfft. Hypocrisy is unbecoming, to say the least. And no significant social change has ever been made without someone standing up to the system or, at least, finding a way to quietly bypass it.
I mean, I do get the point that it’s exhausting to break rules and keep your activities on the downlow until you can prove that you’re right. But I’m willing to do those sorts of things if it means things will work out in the end.
I know the “if it feels good, do it” attitude of the ’60s and ’70s basically just ended up in a whole lot of deadly STDs in the ’80s and beyond. But I also know that “it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission” isn’t a cliche — it should be a law.
We were each given a plastic fork and were asked to not poke out our eye but instead hold it against our closed right eyes and imagine giving up that eye for sins we’ve committed and temptations we’ve given in to. We were asked to think of something that has a hold on us, something that’s no good for us that we should give up, and take that fork up to these huge pots of dirt near where we took communion.
We were to bury our fork (i.e., sin/temptation that’s “not good” for us) in the dirt and then go cleanse ourselves with our wafers and juice. By their definition, I knew what I was “supposed” to give up. But forget it — screw all of you and your stupid rules; the bane of being born with a touch of psychic ability is that you see how things end up. And you do everything you can to “hang in there” in the interim. So no, I’m not giving that thing up.
However, I *did* have something that I’ve been battling forever. And ever. And I’ve been losing completely by choice. I’ve never blamed anyone for this *thing.* Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t thank my family for all the screwed-up bullshit they exposed me to, but I managed to turn out the complete opposite of them in most of the areas where it counted. But there’s one area that plagues me.
And that’s what I buried today.
I did it because it was right, it’s something I needed to do and it’s something I want to be free from.
I wasn’t kidding when I said 34 was going to be “my” year. I’m getting a late start, but I’m starting to realize that for God to work those much-longed-for miracles in my life, I have to do some serious housecleaning before He will be my guest.
To quote a line from “Practical Magic,” “All right, girls; let’s clean house!” And maybe — just like in the movie — what I’ve been wishing for, will have been wishing for me, too. …