Category: religion

enjoy life, life, religion

The Right Way to Stone Those You Love

Missy Piggy Tattoo by Jamie Sapp. Inspired by my career making performance, no doubt.

I’m not sure exactly what came over me, but one afternoon in the music room in junior high I was so charged up from a long day of doing anything I could think of to keep myself amused that I stood up and belted out the words “Look at moi! I’m as helpless as a piglet in a trough! . . . I get hungry just holding your hand!” like a 12 year old soprano Ethel Merman.  That afternoon, I remember standing by my mom’s bed where she was folding laundry and telling her a little sheepishly that I was going to be Miss Piggy in the school play.  It was kind of a big deal for me, but the thought of my family seeing me behave so outrageously was pretty mortifying.  And not only that, but I was going to be singing and dancing with a boy in my class.  In front of everyone!  A kind of cute boy even.  (Not that he could hold a candle to Justin Donneley who was not only the hottest 12 year old ever, but inexplicably, spoke with an english accent of some sort.  I think I would have lost control of myself in some way if I had to dance with Justin Donnely in front of everyone.)

I, of course, stole the show.  Or maybe not.  I don’t really remember.  But what I do remember is something my mom told me after the show.  Some woman who I vaguely knew existed had sought out my mom and told her that I had “a voice like a beautiful bell.”  Now, I do love singing – always have.  But for many years, I had a huge hang-up about singing in front of people.  So, I really had to push past my comfort zone to make a big ham out of myself in front of my classmates and whoever else was there.  This woman’s compliment was my reward.

I now only have a medium sized hang-up about singing in front of people.  Continue reading “The Right Way to Stone Those You Love”

Unknown's avatarRebecca TrotterLeave a comment
prayer, religion

I am. God is. Are you? Zen . . .

I am.  That’s our goal.  I am.  We are children of I Am.  Made in his image.  I am.  Are you?  Ha!

Part of our problem is that we are convinced that I am – whether it be God, ourselves, or our present circumstances and surroundings – is something to be suspect of, probably terribly boring or terrible bad or terribly not me.  Like the God whose main building tool is explosions is going to want us to stand around all day humming melodically.  Seriously?  (Sometimes when people talk to me, this just pops into my head.) 

But we resist I am.  If we didn’t we’d have to learn to slow down and be present.  We’d maybe even have to let ourselves be irreperably imperfect.  We’d have to face things we didn’t even know we’d be running from.  And that would be uncomfortable.  We’d have to do things the people around us might not approve of.  It might be too hard.  It might even drive you into the arms of God, no?  Because it’s not easy to learn to just be.  I would never want to have to do it on my own. 

When you are determined to learn to embrace I Am whether it is the I Am God or the I am Rebecca or I am going through an unwanted divorce and I’m really embarrassed at what the people I’m related to will think of me because of this, then you will reach a place that I call zen – although it’s probably a terrible abuse of what the actual word means.  To me zen is just a very deep acceptance.  It’s when you can let go – even for just a few seconds at a time – of your emotional need for reality to be different than it actually is.  It’s not letting go of desire – wanting something is part of reality, and acceptance of reality is what living with and in I am is all about.  One of the differences between real zen and the Christian version, donchya know.

When I am at “zen”, I find that I have all the patience in the world when I need it.  There is peace.  There is joy. Things make much more sense from the point of zen than they do any other time.  If I’ve ever said something that was so obvious that it made you feel stupid for not having thought of it that way before, it’s something that came from being in zen.  Continue reading “I am. God is. Are you? Zen . . .”

Unknown's avatarRebecca TrotterLeave a comment
culture, homeschooling, life, religion, science

In Which I Call Creationism Demonic

From “Thinking SciFi”

“O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.” (Psalm 139:1)

Perhaps the most frightening attribute of God is that He knows everything about us. Everything! He has “searched” (literally “penetrated”) us and “known” (“understood”) us. . . Furthermore, He is everywhere around each one of us (vv. 7-10), wherever we are or could be. He fills all space, and there is no escape.

Go ahead, ask me where I found that quote.  Or even better, how ’bout I up the fun quotient and give you some options. Was it:

a. A site promoting atheism

b. A humor site skewering religion 

c. A devotional piece from the Days of Praise blog put out by a Creationist advocacy group

I’ll give you a moment to figure it out. . . Oh wait – did I give it away?  Yep, this “be afraid, Be very afraid” moment has been brought to you by none other than The Institute for Creation Research; a highly profitable venerable institution promoting creation “science”.  The very same people whom a federal judge recently said  are “entirely unable to file a complaint which is not overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering and full of irrelevant information.” Good to see our tax dollars hard at work there, eh?

This upsets me.  My opinions about the theological viability of creationist interpretations aren’t something I’m shy about.  I truly believe that it’s demonic.  Whether you understand that to be a metaphor for our ability to create and perpetuate evil or as satan whispering in your ear, the answer is the same; it is demonic.  Continue reading “In Which I Call Creationism Demonic”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter36 Comments
life, prayer, religion, thoughts

It Will Be Alright. Or So I’ve Been Told

Suck it up, kid. You'll get a better one in heaven.

A friend recently sent a note in which she commented on the lack of “why me?” talk on my blog.  Silly girl – I was raised Catholic.  I can think of at least 100 reasons all of this is my own fault right off the top of my head!  That, plus the fact that life has been handing me inexplicably little help for as long as I can remember means that I let “why me?” go a long time ago.  There are only two answers: “you’re doing it wrong” or “because this is the way you need to go“.   Either I’m screwing something up and should fix it – hence the Catholic guilt – or this is one of those things that will only make sense later.  Frankly, Catholic guilt gets a bad rap – it’s downright empowering in light of the alternative!

This was a tough week.  It was one of those weeks where an emotional rough patch and a life rough patch collided and made a mess all over the highway of my life.  (I keep telling God he needs to pave the damn thing.)  And just to make sure that all of this doesn’t get to be too routine, my wonderful parents were visiting, so I had an audience.  (My poor parents; I’m glad and grateful that they were here, but I know it’s only marginally more fun to watch someone you love go through things you are helpless to do anything about than it is to go through it yourself.  I have to remind myself that God must have his reasons for asking them to walk a path which includes me and my mess of a life.)

If you read my book The Upside Down World ~ A Book of Wisdom in Progress, you will remember that I first met God in a fit of enraged blasphemy.  Which means that I’ve always felt free to itch and moan and be as upset as I want to be in prayer.  Besides, Jesus was said to have prayed with “loud cries and tears” himself.  So by the end of the week, my prayers had devolved into demands: “I can’t do this.  I’m not going to do this.  You need to fix this.  Not just spiritually, but for real.  In the real world.  Continue reading “It Will Be Alright. Or So I’ve Been Told”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
religion

Psalm 44: “You have made us a byword among the nations”

We have heard with our ears, O God;

Our fathers have told us

what you did in their days,

in days long ago.

I heard a story the other day about a woman who needed potatoes.  To make potato salad.  And apparently she needed a lot of potatoes.  I probably wasn’t listening very attentively, because I have no idea why she needed to make potato salad – church picnic, family reunion, Paula Deen was coming for a cook-out, I don’t know.  But the woman needed potatoes and had no money for potatoes which was causing her a good deal of stress.  People were depending on her potato salad.  And then she got a phone call from a friend who worked at the weigh-station outside of town: “there’s truck here that’s 150 lbs overweight.  It’s full of potatoes – do you know anyone who might need 150 lbs of potatoes?”  Why, yes, yes she did.  And potatoes fell down from the heavens like manna.

At the completion of this story, another man in the room exclaimed, “isn’t it amazing how God provides?  Over and over I have seen things like that – even in my own family, God provides in the most unexpected ways.”  Several others in the room nodded in agreement.  Not me.  I’m like the psalmist – I have heard of these things, but I haven’t seen them. Continue reading “Psalm 44: “You have made us a byword among the nations””

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
life, religion

Angels in my Bedroom?

After a longer string of good days that I’ve had in I don’t know how long, I woke up pretty out of sorts this morning.  Which is bound to happen.  Especially, you know, every four weeks or so.  So, rather than ruining my whole day by pushing myself until I’m too overwhelmed and drained to function, I grabbed my still groggy, crabby 2 year old and went back to bed to cry like a baby myself until it passed. 

After a couple of minutes, Olivia looked up at the corner above the bed and began pointing towards the ceiling.  She does this fairly often.  I always say, “do you see an angel?” although I never see anything in the corner she’s pointing to.   Continue reading “Angels in my Bedroom?”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter3 Comments
life, religion

Seed Catalogue Dreaming

This is not what my yard looks like

I have been resisting the temptation to look for a couple of weeks now, but . . . SEED CATALOGUES ARE HERE!  I love seed catalogues.  I can sit and pour through them over and over again during the short days of winter.  But this leads to dreams of turning my scraggly 2 acre yard of reclaimed brush land into a lush garden oasis.  I develop delusions of having a thriving vegetable garden with well planned rows and patches.  Maybe this will be the year that we try our hand at growing giant pumpkins.  Visions of sunny sunflower patches.  Rose bushes!  A koi pond!  Maybe even cluster of blueberry bushes and a few fruit trees at one corner of the yard.  I can just see my children frolicking about the gardens, stopping to pluck a flower to adorn their curly hair while I sit with a glass of iced tea and soak in all the beauty of it.  If only my yard didn’t actually look like it was waiting for a Chevy on cinder blocks to adorn it.  One day.

For years I started seeds in a spare room under lights each spring.  Each morning one of the first things I would do is go into the room to check and see what had sprouted or put up a new leaf overnight.  Frankly I couldn’t even tell you why, but not much makes me happier – especially when it’s snowing in April – than seeing these little green shoots emerging from the soil.  A few years back I had to leave town for a few days in late spring before I was able to plant out that year’s crop.  The qxh, apparently not understanding that my request that he water them daily while I was gone wasn’t really optional, didn’t.  When I got back about a third of my plants were dead.  I’m normally a pretty tough cookie, but I cried for days.  Continue reading “Seed Catalogue Dreaming”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
religion

When a Clown Loves You

Doll by Jolene Nelson, AKA Locket

The room looks and smells not too different from the library in the middle school I attended while growing up.  Walls lined with books.  A floor covered with short, blue looped carpet.  Encouraging posters dominated by animals reading books are pasted to any wall without shelves.  Florescent lights buzz overhead.  The room smells like books do when the humidity from hot Chicago summers seeps into their pages and yellows them.  Missing are any of the trappings one finds in school libraries these days.  No computers or technology of any sort.  A typical, old school library; except this one isn’t in any school building. It’s on the lower level of a juvenile prison. Continue reading “When a Clown Loves You”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
enjoy life, prayer, relationships, religion

The Emotional God

A couple of years ago, I was sitting on my front porch steps after dinner, watching my two oldest daughters playing and complaining to God in my head.  I don’t remember what it was (nothing too serious), but the qxh (quasi-ex-husband) had done something to chap my hide.  As I wound down my complaints and let the whole thing go, I asked God in an almost off-handed way, “do you ever have to deal with people treating you like this?”  At which point I’m pretty sure all of heaven burst into hearty guffaws.  But soon a funny thing started happening: as I dealt with people in my life, often some parallel experience between God and people would pop into my head. 

Sometimes it was something little, like calling someone who did not answer their phone.  How often does God try to reach out to people who ignore or reject the call because they are too busy, inattentive or just don’t feel like it?  I would ask one of my boys to load and run the dishwasher only to discover at dinnertime hours later that we had no clean pots, plates or utensils.  Suppose God ever asks people to do things that don’t get done?  Ocasionally, I would have to deal with someone who insisted on talking over me, refused to listen to my perspective or treat it with respect.  Yeah, I’m sure God never has to deal with stuff like that, right?

By the next summer a variety of calamities, traumas and disappointments had hit my family full force.  As the qxh started to dissemble and then turn on me, these parallels became more pointed and poignant.  Loving someone who is being supremely difficult, unreasonable and hostile turns out to be something that God is intimately familiar with.  Continue reading “The Emotional God”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
life, religion

Fear of the Lord

Proverbs famously says that fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.  Old time fire and brimstone preachers said this meant we were to live in fear of the coming judgment.  Others, pointing to the finished work of Christ said that we need not fear judgment and that this verse was simply saying that we needed to have an attitude of reverence towards God.  Or it was fear like a child has of their parents.  But the word used is fear, not reverence and using fear to control children is rapidly falling out of favor. 

I have come to my own understanding of this verse.  I think that fear of God comes from really knowing that God does not respect our limits.  This is a God who created a world of predators and prey.  This is a God who made a world with mosquitoes and earthquakes.  Why would God create a world like this?  A lot of people embrace some version of religion which denies that God did create a world like this. Continue reading “Fear of the Lord”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments