October 1, 2011 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: October 1, 2011

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, videos, poems and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

20 Ridiculous Complaints Made by Holidaymakers. One of the funniest things I’ve read recently. Oh, the things people complain about!

Butterfly Surgery. I never would have guessed such a thing was possible. Hopefully the patient went on to live a full, happy life.

The Nuances of Deaf Culture. A fascinating post about some of the differences between deaf and hearing culture. If anyone reading this is deaf or has deaf friends/family members I’m incredibly curious to hear about your experiences.

Wild Geese. This is why I love poetry.

Dr. Seuss for grown-ups:

Oh The Jobs (Debt?) You’ll Create! from Marketplace on Vimeo.

If you like young adult, post-apocalyptic mysteries Ashes is the book for you. Alex is a teenage orphan whose brain tumour is slowly killing her. In an effort to come to terms with  this she heads out alone for a fairly impromptu camping trip.  And then the world ends.

Word is that Ilsa J. Bicks has two sequels to this book coming out in 2012. I look forward to seeing where she goes with the story!

What have you been reading?

 

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September 29, 2011 · 9:00 am

The Deconversion Guide: Illness and Death

Part four of the series. Click here for part three.

Today’s topic: chronic illness and death.

As I don’t have a chronic illness I’ve asked a few blogging friends for advice.  A little later on in this post I’ll talk about my experiences as a family member of someone with longterm health problems.

Chronic Illness

I asked Daphne Purpus, Bruce Gerencser and Trey Smith three questions. This is what they had to say:

Would you be willing to share your experiences with this [how Christians respond to your illness]?

Daphne:

I was having cataract surgery (2 different times with 2 eyes since they won’t do both at once) and the place my eye doctor wanted me to go to is first rate, but run by Seventh Day Adventists… As I am sitting in the chair and the surgery is about to proceed, the surgeon asks if I mind if he prays for this surgery.

Ok, now you have me over a barrel. Can I say no? If I do will that affect his abilities, consciously or not? I felt forced into saying it was ok, and in each case they put their hands on my head and went through a fairly lengthy audible prayer.

Bruce:

The last church I attended was a local church in Ney. My family and I attended this church for many months before we stopped in November in 2008.  I considered the pastor a friend and the church was very friendly towards me. (of course I was not a declared atheist at the time) From November 2008 til today I have not spoken to one person from the church besides the pastor and I have not talked to him since March of 2009. No care. No concern. If I wasn’t willing to attend their church there was no need to bother with me. (even though I had and continue to have great physical needs).

Trey:

Surprisingly, I don’t run into the issue very often.  Most members of my family are agnostic or atheist, so we rarely get into religious discussions at all!

What do you say when Christians offer to pray for you or say that their god can heal you?

Daphne:

 One doesn’t need a personal deity to subscribe to the idea that sending positive energies out into the world will have a positive effect…That being said, if someone says something like I know my god will heal you, then I start to baulk. The whole idea of prayer healing is a philosophical quagmire and even in my orthodox Lutheran days, I had problems with that. Why does god heal one person but not another. Is one more deserving?

Bruce:

Generally, if a Christian offers to pray for me I thank them and say nothing. I know they mean well and little is gained by entering into a debate with them about God or the efficacy of prayer. If a Christian asks to pray for me right at the moment were are talking I ask them them not to. It is one thing if they want to pray for me privately but I find people praying for me in my preserve to be offensive.

Trey:

From time to time, evangelists come knocking on my front door.  If it is in one of those periods in which I’m using my cane, I have been asked why and I tell them about my condition.  That’s when I get the “I’ll/We’ll pray from you” gambit.  My typical response is “If it makes YOU feel better, go for it.  It won’t make me any better, but at least you’ll feel better and isn’t that what praying for others is all about anyway?

What do you wish they would say or do instead?

Bruce:

I understand that many Christians feel a need to pray for the sick and I certainly don’t want them to stop doing so. That said, I would prefer that Christians try and help me rather than pray for me. The easiest words to say as a Christian is “I will pray for you.” It is much harder to enter into a person’s life and embrace them as a fellow human being…What I need is help when life is overwhelming or when I face difficult physical obstacles.

Trey:

Maybe, “gosh, that’s too bad” or “Hope you get to feeling a tad bit better in the coming days.”  I mean, there really isn’t too much a person can say.  It is what it is.

Trey, Bruce, Daphne – thank you so much for participating!

My Family’s Story

My sister-in-law has a neurological disorder that has yet to be officially diagnosed along with a few other health problems. Last year she suddenly became extremely ill, was hospitalized for a few weeks and didn’t fully recover for months.

It was terrifying. What is even scarier is not knowing what the future holds – will her health continue to slowly deteriorate? Will her symptoms eventually stabilize? Will she continue to be able to attend school and work? We just don’t know.

These are things I rarely discuss for a few reasons: it feels weird and invasive to talk about someone else’s health problems in such detail, there are so many unknowns in her future, I only recently learned more information about her and it’s hard enough to have a loved one suffer as is. The last thing I need is for this to be used as a witnessing opportunity.

A final link before I end this very long post: Grief Beyond Belief is an online support group for non-theists who have recently lost a loved one. It’s a truly excellent resource! I haven’t lost any friends or family members since deconverting but I’ll often read what Grief Beyond Belief has to say in order to prepare for that inevitable day.

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September 26, 2011 · 9:00 am

The Ethics of Being on Time

I’ve been having an internal debate about the intersection of ethics and culture.

Punctuality is something I take pretty seriously. 15 minutes early is on time, arriving on time is late for me.

A few minutes here or there isn’t a big deal but being chronically late eventually says something to me about how much the other person values our relationship.

This is where my self-argument begins:

“Ok, but what about people who live in cultures where time is more fluid? Do you really think they are all horribly rude?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Cultural expectations matter. I grew up in a culture that believes that being habitually late is incredibly rude. Ignoring that rule over and over again eventually says something about your character.”

“Why?”
“Because getting along with other people is part of living in a social group. There are rules we all must follow in order to facilitate this. Purposefully breaking them like this sends a pretty clear message:
I don’t care how my actions affect the people around me. My habits are more important than your time, our relationship or anything else.
And that’s a pretty unkind way to live. “

“Ok, but what if you wake up tomorrow and decide to dress up like Bilbo Baggins? Most people don’t wear costumes every day – is breaking that rule rude?”

“No. Rules that don’t actually harm others are negotiable. People might stare or wonder why I decided to dress that way if it isn’t Halloween but no one is actually going to be hurt by a hobbit costume. ”

 

There does come a time when even small annoyances like being constantly late negatively affects your relationships. If I can’t count on (general) you to be on time when we decide to meet for dinner or a movie how can I depend on you for far more important stuff?

What it boils down to is that how you treat someone in the small things is how I’m going to assume you feel about the big stuff. Anyone can say that they care but what shows how someone actually feels is in how they act when it would be more convenient to do something that helps them but harms someone else. (Yes, this applies to me, too. 😉 )

Respond

What do you think? Am I being too harsh here? Can you think of other examples of behaviour that is acceptable in one culture and rude in another?

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September 24, 2011 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: September 24, 2011

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, charts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Functional. Imagine an entire television channel devoted to emotionally healthy, loving and accepting families. It might look a little something like this.

Kittens and Death. How to say hello knowing you will one day say goodbye. Thanks to Daphne for sharing this link!

Success. Most of us think of it as a straight line. Start here, end there. This picture shows how it actually happens.

Texas Drought Exposes African American Burial Site. This article is a few weeks old but I just recently stumbled across it. Once again I’m torn – while I completely understand why archeologists and historians would want to study the bodies buried in this long-forgotten cemetery I would be pretty angry if these were my ancestors being dug up (unless I was contacted first and had final say in how they were treated.)

The World’s Rudest Hand Gestures. I accept no responsibility for how you use this information. 😛

 

The Stoning of Soraya M is the sobering true story of an innocent woman’s death in Iran in the early 1980s.

What have you been reading?

 

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September 22, 2011 · 9:00 am

The Small Talk Chronicles: Good Questions

Part one in this series.

One of the most difficult things about small talk (at least for me) is figuring out what sort of questions are both appropriate and interesting for the setting.

Inquiries like where do you work?, are you married? or do you have kids? seem to be fairly common. There’s absolutely nothing impolite about asking any of these, of course.

The issues I have with these questions are as follows:

  • They’re a little boring.
  • They can easily lead to conversational dead-ends if someone doesn’t have a job or family or isn’t happy with what they do have.
  • If you don’t have the “correct” answer some people will proceed to tell you exactly what you’re doing wrong with your life. :O

This isn’t to say I never ask these types of questions, only that it’s good to have a back-up plan.

So far I’ve learned that I prefer open-ended questions that can be scaled to include more or less personal information and that I already know how I’d answer.

For example I love asking, “what do you like to do?”

Everyone has something in his or her life that brings a spark to his or her eye. When you figure out what that something is – often even if it isn’t necessarily something you’re knowledgable of – it breathes new life into the conversation.

It’s such an open-ended question that someone who loves her job could mention that while someone else who is passionate about his kids, her hobby, his volunteer work, her spiritual awakening would be free to talk about those aspects of their lives as well.

This is also a highly scalable question. By that I mean that it can be adapted to fit any situation – work parties, family gatherings, wedding receptions, or job interviews. How much the person who answers this question decides to reveal can expand or contract as well.

 How did you meet our host?

Or, alternatively, how did you decide to volunteer or work with this organization?

I like this question because it so easily leads to stories. Was your new acquaintance once set up on a hilariously doomed blind date with the host? Did he or she first become interested in the organization because relatives worked there? There are so many possibilities.

Are you planning to attend event X?

One of my favourite things about living in Toronto is that there’s always something free to check out on the weekends, from festivals to parades, rib fests to art fairs.

Not everyone plans to check out events like The Pride Parade, Buskerfest, or the Toronto Jazz Festival, of course, but enough do that it’s worth it to ask if there’s a particularly well-attended event coming up in the near future.

Respond

What are your favourite questions to ask when you don’t know someone well?

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September 19, 2011 · 9:00 am

Forgotten Heroes:Fred and Cela Sloman

Forgotten Heroes is a series of posts about extraordinary men and women who are (probably) not remembered by the average person.  Previous heroes include Josephine Butler,  John Howard and Alvin Ratz Kaufman. 

If you know of a forgotten hero who should be included in this series let me know about him or her in the comment section or via my contact form. 

Forgotten Heroes: Fred and Cela Sloman

Time: September 20, 1926

Place: Northern Ontario

Fred Sloman was worried.

A dedicated teacher, Sloman knew that there were many children in Northern Ontario who did not have the opportunity to go to school because they lived in such isolated communities.

Photo by Addy Cameron-Huff

Winters in this region are long and bitterly cold. The climate is sub-arctic and there is usually some sort of snow cover between October and May. Even in 2011 travel can be dicey at certain times of the year.

Sloman approached the Ontario Department of Education. They partnered with the CN rail, converted a train car into a portable school (and home for Fred and Cela) and in September of 1926 they began travelling in Northern Ontario.

The Slomans stayed at each stop between 3 and 6 days, teaching their students English and giving them school work for the month. Most of the kids spoke little to no English and had never been to school before.

It was only in the last ten years of their service that Fred and Cela had a bathtub onboard. The space they lived in was cramped (especially once their fifth child was born), bitterly cold in the winter and covered in black flies in the summer. There were far more physically comfortable ways to earn a living at the time.

As I researched Fred and Cela for this post I wondered, “what is it that compels some people to take jobs or pursue goals that most people would find unsustainable over the long haul?”

Maybe part of the answer to that question can be found in this: parents loved the travelling school and appreciated all of the work Fred and Cela poured into it. Not only were the kids educated without having to live away from home for months or years at a boarding school, other free services like meals, medical care, bingo games, sewing classes, and lessons on hygiene and childcare were provided as well.

It can be immensely satisfying to not only help other people but to see the positive impact you’ve had on them in tangible ways every single day.

The experiment was so successful that six more travelling school cars were soon created and a thousand students graduated from the Sloman’s travelling school alone over the next forty years, including Cela and Fred’s daughters.

By the 1950s and 60s the demand for this form of education began to wane. More people were moving up north and with improved roads and larger settlements came the opportunity to build permanent schools in more communities.

Fred and Cela retired in 1965 and he lived out the rest of his days in their hometown of Clinton, Ontario.

I’ll end this post with a quote from Fred himself:

If by chance I get to heaven after I put my chalk away, I will have only one request to make. Two cheerful toots on an engine whistle please, when each old CN engineer comes through the gates after his final run.

Fred, I sincerely hope you heard those toots.

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September 17, 2011 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: September 17, 2011

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

The squirrel photo is courtesy of Drew.

Death of Dreams. What happens when you defer your dreams.

The Art of Clean Up. Organization taken to the extreme. It must have taken quite a while to tidy up some of the items in these photos!

Right vs. Left: Under Deconstruction. Some of you follow Naked Pastor already but this is a phenomenal discussion on the tension between unity and what you should do when someone you care about is supporting something you strongly oppose for moral/ethical reasons. I don’t have any answers here – I’m just learning from the wisdom of others.

Why We Forgive. A hint: it isn’t about or for the person who wronged us at all.

From Do We Live On?

We live on in the effects of our actions that touch other people, in our words, and in our works. We live on in our children and those who remember us, but tiny bits of us continue

on and on even without memory, as long as human culture continues, as long as people live by the examples set by others, as long as having been loved helps us to love.

So it turns out that I won’t be able to send out book recommendations through the email list after all.

This week’s recommendation is Dani’s Story. Dani Lierow was severely neglected (and probably abused) for the first seven years of her life. When her new parents brought her home she was developmentally like an infant – she couldn’t speak, wasn’t potty trained and had trouble with solid foods. This book isn’t about abuse, though. It’s about the life she and her family built after it.

What have you been reading?

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September 15, 2011 · 9:00 am

Passing Through

Craig Hart and I share remarkably similar backgrounds. We were both preacher’s kids who grew up in conservative homes and churches, home schooled for several years each, and devout Christians who eventually questioned more and more of what we had been taught.

Eventually both of us switched to other beliefs. Agnosticism for me, Energetic Universalism for Craig.

Everyone has a story. One of my favourite things to do is to listen to what it is someone believes, why they believe it, and most importantly what happened in their lives to lead them to those beliefs.

The best way I know to understand where someone is headed or why they believe what they do is to listen to these stories.

Passing Through: An Ex-Fundamentalists Pursuit of Personal Spirituality is divided into four sections. The first, by far my favourite, talks about how Craig’s experiences as a child and young adult shaped what he now believes. The church he grew up in was extremely strict – for example, women wore dresses but were forbidden from wearing makeup or jewelry and no one was allowed to watch movies. At 17 Craig goes off to Bible College at the same time that he seriously begins questioning his faith.

If only this section could have lasted longer. Craig’s bittersweet stories really resonated with me. Too often we only hear from the extremes – people who love everything about their religious tradition or those who deconverted and are still angry.

Part two is a philosophical discussion: what is religion? Why does it have such a powerful hold on people? What are the benefits of struggling with your beliefs? Why do people believe in God?

It’s easier for me to discuss philosophy in person because certain words or phrases can be interpreted in radically different ways depending on your tone of voice and body language at the time. If you read this book keep in mind that Craig doesn’t defines terms like religion and fundamentalism in traditional ways. He uses these words to describe how someone behaves or thinks, not necessarily what they do or believe.

The third section discusses issues like biblical inerrancy and infallibility. (Basically, are there errors in the Bible? Is the Bible actually the word of God? If so, how do we know these things to be true?) To be honest I find these debates boring whether the holy book in question is the Bible, Torah, Koran or some other text.

This section is a good introduction for anyone who has never studied or thought about these questions though. The arguments are easy to follow and the examples used are thought-provoking.

The final part of the book talks about how to live in a society where many others disagree with you and describes what Craig means when he says that he’s an Energetic Universalist. I definitely agree with Craig’s belief that fundamentalism is in no way limited to one particular religion or group – it’s found anywhere that someone settles into or says, “I don’t need to listen to or respect you because I have all of the answers already.”

It was also refreshing to read thoughts on spirituality from someone who genuinely respects non-theists. Too often religious inclusion is really only intended for those who believe in at least one god.

This book would be a good fit for anyone interested in taking a second look at their beliefs, Christian or otherwise.

Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from Craig to review.

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September 14, 2011 · 9:00 am

Wild Card Wednesday: How Music and Sound Work

This is the first time music has ever made logical sense to me.

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September 12, 2011 · 9:00 am

What Would You Do if Money Wasn’t an Issue?

Recently at a coffee shop I overheard two women talking about the future. One was trying to figure out if she should go to graduate school to earn an advanced degree. (Photo by lucidish.)

“What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about money?” asked the friend. I didn’t hear her response but this is how I’d answer the question:

  • Write.
  • Read.
  • Travel around North America and Europe.
  • Visit my side of the family at least two or three times more often.
  • Move to an apartment or condo that included space for a garden.
  • Provide seed money for other people’s dreams.
  • Volunteer somewhere that would allow me to organize stuff. It wouldn’t matter if I was working with books, files, a kitchen full of dirty dishes, food/clothing donations or something else entirely.

That’s about it. My needs and desires are simple.

Some of the items on this list are easy to accomplish. Others require more money or time than I can afford to spare at the moment.

What I like most about this exercise is that it boils down your life to what really matters. My definition of the good life isn’t going to be the same as someone else’s.

Respond

What would you do if money wasn’t an issue? How many of those dreams can you accomplish right now?

 

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