The First Rule of Religion Is...

...we don't talk about religion.

At least in my house.

I don't discuss it with my parents because they follow a distinctly....*waves hands in the air* version of Christianity. They *believe*, but know very little about their own faith.

I cannot tell you how many times I have had to point out/remind one of them that according to their beliefs God didn't just *send* Jesus, that Jesus *was* God. Or how many times I have to point out that the New Testament didn't just spring out of nothingness and that historical context is important to understanding what they're reading.

BUT NO. THEY *BELIEVE* AND THAT'S ALL THAT'S NEEDED.

Logic and reason need not freaking apply.

But I made the mistake on Thursday of talking about religion with my father. And it all boiled down to him telling me that I think too much, throwing out the old line about having the faith of a child and that I need to 'shit or get off the pot'.

*headdesk*

*headdesk FOREVER*

So.

I admit that the minute you start telling me that my *thinking* is getting in the way of God and that I need to be a child who just *trusts* and *believes* that you have lost me.

Because I think. It's what I do. I lack the emotional gullibility to just *believe*. I have seen no miracles. I have experienced no transcendent moments of faith. If I cannot think my way to a point then how can I be expected to believe it?

And I was never the child who just *trusted*. Maybe parents are supposed to be our models of that, they're supposed to be trustworthy so that we can have that blind, loving trust in certain things. But I grew up without parents who could be trusted. And I cannot remember ever blindly believing anything anyone told me. I'm sure there was a time. It's a thing that kids do. But for me that time is so far in the past, was so fleeting that it's as good as a non-event.

But really my favorite part of his argument for why I need to just believe so I can make my choice was that if *his* choice (though he swears he has reasons for belief that he can't explain to anyone) is right then I'm going to hell if I don't make the right choice. Implied, of course, being that it's the same choice that he made.

So we have, in my father's Christianity, this: don't think too hard and be afraid of going to hell.

Yeah.

I can't imagine why none of this appeals to me.

My Brain Twin and I Share the Crown for Queen of Procrastinators

And to be perfectly honest I am the evil twin.

Without a doubt.

I could show you evidence but then I'd have to move out of the country and change my name. ;)

Clearly I am just a *tad* behind on the Gospel of John posts and I also have a couple of comments on the GoJ posts I've already made to reply to. But it's been a super crazy month. We've had people at work go on vacation which is good for them and good for my bank account but has me working either really early hours or really late hours and leaves very little time for blogging.

We also upgraded the system we use to produce our classified section (I work at a newspaper in case anyone missed that factoid) by a whole lot. It's beautiful. I may compose odes to the new system.

I mean it's really bad when the representative for Brainworks (the system we use) didn't believe that we weren't using a third party program between Brainworks and our Quark because the version we had was so old he didn't recognize the interface.

*faceplants into desk for a million years*

We also upgraded Quark. From Quark 4 to Quark 9.

I know we can all count and see how many versions there were between those two things.

We were working on Ancient Mac's.

ANCIENT.

Basically this:

Only we couldn't get on the internet anymore. Or access some of our (rather necessary) servers. Because ANCIENT.

We have been promised the opportunity to Office Space one of these bastards.

For anyone unfamiliar with Office Space (watch it it is hilarious....) here's what I mean. There is some mild (in my opinion) swearing for those who are sensitive to that or, you know, have kids.





Please do not underestimate how badly we want to do that.

ANYWAY.

With the two weeks it took to do the upgrade, install and training and vacations (none of them mine), I've just not had the energy or the time to blog.

And then I spent the last week not sleeping well due to nightmares. It's funny how you can think that you're completely over something and then your subconscious just laughs at you.

So I've just been taking care of myself.

Which mostly means lots of reading (let me tell you about the Stormlight Archive series one day. Mostly it will be a lot of squeeing and shaking you until you buy the books) and watching the Lord of the Rings in my free time. Basically I watched both Hobbit movies (currently released) and all three of the Lord of the Rings movies (extended edition on all where possible) in two days.

Gotta love three day weekends.

Which might explain why, when I performed a minor household repair with no input or assistance I did this:

Let's all just ignore how things actually turned out for Boromir and Gondor, okay?

Yes. Excellent.

So, in conclusion, I know I suck but I've accepted this fact. At least in this case I sucked for reasons of personal sanity maintenance.

I plan, inshallah, to start the posts up again this weekend and just do one post a week. I think it's a schedule with less pressure (all personally given) that I can keep up.