Rush.

Last week I took the driving test for the company car at Children's Service, Inc. I passed, but this is not the point. While taking the test, the Safety Administrator at CSI, Mr. Mehta, puts Rush Limbaugh on the radio. I asked him what he thought of it. He said "oh, I love Rush. He's great." I asked if he found it entertaining, or if he agreed with it. He said something about Obama and that he "likes to hear the other side." So from there I knew I'd be ok to make jokes if I heard anything particularly ridiculous.

Well, I did. I hadn't heard anything so directly biased from any viewpoint in a very long time. I found it hysterical. Rush Limbaugh thinks "liberals" (read: Democrats) are the scum of the Earth, to the point that when he says the word "liberals," he says it with this SINISTER tone of voice. It's like he's speaking about Satan himself. It's hysterical.

The ads call him a "liberal dose of reality."

Anyway, I now half-try to make a point to hear his show. My mom likes to say "you gotta' know what the enemy's thinking."

Today Rush was looking at his ratings and was wondering why there's a siginificantly lower number of women listening to his shows as opposed to men. I nearly laughed out loud. He went on to say something to the effect of "if dems cared about Black People, they wouldn't be in the squallor that they're in." WOW.

So now I guess I have to find the big "liberal" host and see what those people are thinking.

Ovie.

My man Alex Ovechkin scored a sick goal the other night.

He's pretty much better than everyone.

Slowing down.

If my recent posts aren't an indication, I've been feeling an overwhelming pressure to combat every injustice on Earth. As you can (hopefully) imagine, this left me with an enormous feeling of helplessness and frustration. I spent much of last week just being angry with the World.

Now, I'll stand by the fact that the world is messed up and that we need to do things to change it and be conscious of what's going on. But to focus on the negative (which I'm definitely prone to doing) will only drag you down.

At the pm last night, Joshua talked about the Kingdom of God as being the grass that grows up through concrete. He used the image of empire (read: injustice) as being the concrete and how it can often seem so heavy and overwhelming. This of course made total sense to me, as it was just what I had been feeling. He reminded us of many injustices, but the thing that really stuck with me was his encouragement to us. He said that even if we only come to the pm and get angry about it like 5 minutes every week, that's great. He encouraged us to look at what we're doing right (not in a self-righteous way, in a burn-out-avoidance kind of way) and not how wrong the world is.

This morning in our SIL Team meeting, my supervisor echoed that thought by encouraging us to do our jobs and not get ahead of ourselves. It was so refreshing. Jesus was speaking through Joshua and Tara. He's in control, I can't do it. He's done it.

Paint it Black has a lyric: "Even when your ship has run-aground, don't let the bastards get you down."

Keep your head up and your eyes open. Not only to how the enemy is working, but to how God is working too. My life (our lives) is (are) not result dependent. I forgot that. We need to be reminded of it, or we'll lose our minds.

God is good.

Metro.

I'm always jealous of the people on the el train who are reading a copy of the day's Metro in the morning. I usually have to stand and I end up fiddling with my phone rather uncomfortably on my way to work.

Anyway. While glancing over a shoulder today I saw a story that caught my eye, so I made a point of tracking one down this morning after I got off the train. Now, I know the Metro's not worth anything more than skimming the surface of news, but they still put a most disturbing slant on the whole thing. Here are some highlights/lowlights (depending on how you look at it):

- The article that caught my eye was about how a former prisoner at Gitmo has made a tape vowing to continue terror attacks against the U.S. The headline reads: "Out of Gitmo, still preaching hatred." The implications of the headline are supposed to strike fear and defensiveness in the reader. Come on folks, if you held me in a shady-ass prison where nobody outside of it (except the president who put you there of course) knew what actually went on inside and treated me like a non-person (as just about every prisoner in any U.S. prison is) and I got out, I'd be pissed off. I'd especially vow to terrorize the people that put me there if my mind had been drowned in nationalism/religious extremism BEFORE I went in. Duh. What (nonsense)*. "Oh no, the people that hated us before hate us even more know after we dehumanized them and terrorized them psychologically!"

- The very next page was full of more (malarky)* than any page of any newspaper I've ever read. There was a blurb about N. Korea's readiness to to test a missile that would have enough strength to hit the U.S. (PANIC!) Right next to it (no joke, IMMEDIATELY NEXT TO IT) is a spot about IBM's undertaking of building a super-computer to manage the U.S. nuclear arsenal! "This computer's so freakin' cool! We'll be able to control all of our WMDs from one place!" Please see the irony. PLEASE. Striking fear in the readers by talking about an "enemy's" nuclear capability, then talking about ways to improve "our" own stock. You've gotta be kidding me. What (silliness)**.

- Beneath those two wonderful pieces of writing was an ad. I hate ads. They're lies. The (ultimate) point of every ad is to say "you are not enough of a person without this," so you go out and buy it. They're heinous.
This one in particular really set me off. It had a picture of a couple, their faces slightly covered, though the woman's more visible (eyes closed, mouth open, soaking it all in), the man taller, their chests pressed firmly together, but with the info at the bottom just low enough so you can catch a glimpse of the top of her right breast. The words at the top and between them read; "The Couple That Lasers Together, Stays Together."
Wow. Just what we need. More ads telling us that we're not enough for our siginificant others, and that it stems from our physical "imperfections."

I think lawyers are more trustworthy than people in marketing. In law, there's at least a hint of honesty and justice at the beginning. It just gets rubbed out by the broken system. In marketing, the idea is to get people to buy something, regardless of what it does to them. It's a purely selfish industry. Sorry folks. It's nonsense. Aint no need.

* bullshit
** jackass-ery

On patriotism.

Patriotism. Pride in one's country. It is often described in a way that makes it out to be the end all-be all of human existence. Gently, I'll say it makes me uncomfortable. Frankly, I'll say it makes me angry.

I think patriotism really inhibits one's perspective. It puts strict limitations on the point of view that one views the world with. Pride is phrased by Saint Augustine as "the love of one's own excellence." If one is clinging to the idea that their country is the best, it prevents one from seeing mistakes and from criticizing said mistakes.

For example, americans fear north korea's nuclear capabilities. I read a quote in Time from a n. korean official basically saying that if america disarmed its nuclear weapons, there would be no problems. The U.S. has a bit of a history of pre-emptive strikes... But not only do americans not realize the irony of fearing one from north korea, they also defend the idea of a "necessary" pre-emptive strike. A ameri-centric point of view prevents one from seeing another side of a conflict that could really bring about some clarity.

And on a basic level, patriotism says "we're better than everyone." This is not true. I don't care if you're Laos, Canada, Germany, Brazil, or the U.S. It's not true. What are we basing "better" on? It probably has a lot to do with money, military, and influence. None of those things are independently good. In fact, I'd venture to call money and military independently bad.

On an even more basic level, I think people have enough to put between us that make us different. We don't need sweeping generalizations to boost our self-worth. I mean, it all comes down to where we get our worth anyway. Countries are plots of land with imaginary lines drawn around them. They're intended to be divisive. That sucks.

There's a Fugazi lyrics I really love that says: "We draw lines and stand behind them. That's why flags are such ugly things."

Patriotism, in my mind, is a deadly weapon unto itself.

Will. Blessings. Patience.

I recall a quote I was told towards the end of Mission Year. An alum said he was sitting with one of his seminary professors. The students were talking about figuring out where their lives were going and discerning God's plan for their lives. The professor replied quite hastily and sternly: "God doesn't have a plan for your life. God wants His children to make good decisions."

This has stuck with me. In my upbringing, especially during my college years, there was so much pressure to find God's will for your life. Finding God's one plan for you (specifically who you were going to marry and when) was the top concern. I don't believe that. It may be purely selfish, but I like the idea of God wanting us to make good decisions rather than discerning the one plan He has for us. There's far more freedom to experience God's Love, and far less pressure.

The whole thing has left me with an overwhelming tendency to worry about everything. I can barely buy jeans (seriously, I stood at the rack at Target last staring for like 5 minutes). Translate that into something actually important, such as my relationship with my Beloved, Lindsey. Oh dear, I'm unable to enjoy the blessing that she is because I'm always looking for the indicator that God's "one plan" is for me to not be with her.
- A by-product of the whole God's will thing is that most people around me doubted what I felt God was leading me to, leaving a pretty big issue with self-doubt. -
I assume because I love Lindsey and because I personally benefit from knowing and loving her, it's wrong for me to be with her. It's some sick idea of "God doesn't want us to have things that we think are good. Only He is good, and He constantly reshapes our definition of good by giving us "good" by our definition, and taking it away to realize that there's only one way to see Him." I use the analogy of God being some kind of bully big brother who, in order to teach us how to walk down the stairs, trips us and pushes us down them. And then He shakes His head and calls us stupid for falling. God doesn't work like that. All that theology leaves out the FACT that during Mission Year, when I was getting to know and falling in love with Lindsey, the more focused I was on God, the more I loved Lindsey. Last night I wrote "loving Jesus means loving Lindsey." To love Lindsey is to pursue Jesus. That's how it works. Duh Jordan.

When it's put in perspective, I seriously doubt that God would place Lindsey in my life, bring us so close together, have me sweat it out during Mission Year and finally get to tell her how I felt at the end of the year, just to break us apart. God is good. He is not in support of torture.

Every day's a battle to enjoy the gifts that God has given me. Weird, isn't it? While most people seem to overindulge in God's blessings, I can't even appreciate them.

Lord, have patience with me.

Obama.

I thought I should clarify the whole thing with Obama.

I'm in no way opposed to his like, existence or anything. And when put up against John McCain, I'm really glad he's the president.

Working with a mostly Black staff at a historically Black agency with mostly Black kids in my program, the whole thing is exciting. People are standing tall and paying attention to politics now. One of my kids asked, "do they always broadcast the inaugurations?" It shocked me. People are now watching because the president is someone they can relate to in some way. This is positive.

However, it's only a small step. It totally sucks that people feel good about themselves because of who the president is and because they "had a part" in electing him. I voted for Obama. I feel no connection to him. As a politician, he needs to be watched. He got elected making some big claims that will be very difficult (actually, impossible) to back up all the way. I fear that he's going to be let off the hook when he does stupid things because he's 1: Not Bush, and 2: The first Black president. Neither of those are legitimate reasons to let him off the hook. Keep your eyes on him and see how he bends things his way to make his claims fit.

Like I said. It's a positive thing. But it's completely contextual. He still speaks in a way that values "american" lives over "non-american" lives, and that totally sucks. It's an american context, not an entirely human context.

Baby steps.