Category: thoughts

bible, religion, science, thoughts

Consciousness and Genesis 1

I want to share my personal theory on the story of creation told in Genesis 1 today, but I of course first need to grab everyone’s attention with something interesting or clever so I figured I’d start with this joke:

A minister, a priest and a rabbi went for a hike one day. It was very hot.
They were sweating and exhausted when they came upon a small lake.
Since it was fairly secluded, they took off all their clothes and
jumped in the water.

Feeling refreshed, the trio decided to pick a few berries while enjoying
their “freedom.” As they were crossing an open area, who should come
along but a group of ladies from town. Unable to get to their clothes in
time, the minister and the priest covered their privates and the rabbi
covered his face while they ran for cover.

After the ladies had left and the men got their clothes back on, the
minister and the priest asked the rabbi why he covered his face rather
than his privates. The rabbi replied, “I don’t know about you, but in
MY congregation, it’s my face they would recognize.”

Of course that joke has nothing to do with creation, but it’s funny so in my infinite wisdom, I’ve decided that’s what counts. Now . . . moving on to the story of creation.

One of the oddities of the story of creation in Genesis 1 is that the order in which things were created makes no sense. First there’s day and night and then later, after there was land and plants, but before there were animals, the sun, moon and stars get made. Water was apparently pre-existing and had to be separated from air to make the sky. So on and so forth.

For creationists, none of this matters because somehow that’s just how God did it. For people who run a wee bit deeper and wider than that, both logic and science say that it couldn’t have happened like that. Those who reject religion say the creation story is just something people made up to explain the world and really means nothing. Christians who don’t blasphemously reject the evidence of God’s own creation in favor of man’s understanding of scripture figure the point of the story is that God made everything, he made it with purpose and it is good.

I personally have my own pet theory about why the order of creation is all jumbled up in Genesis 1. Continue reading “Consciousness and Genesis 1”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
enjoy life, life, relationships, religion, thoughts

The Gift of Delayed Grief

My early twenties weren’t exactly a stellar time. Within a short period of time I was raped twice. I found out I was pregnant shortly after I decided to take Jesus’ words that it’s better to enter the kingdom maimed and had broken up with then boyfriend. The people around me didn’t exactly rise to the occasion. One woman I told about one of the sexual assaults told every-freaking-body. A man she told became so belligerent towards me that I had to interrupt his screaming rant to let him know that if he laid a hand on me, I would call the police and have him hauled away. One of my dearest friends died after a life-long struggle with a rare blood disorder.

I had been studying to become a high school English teacher, but would now need help so I could complete my student teaching in order for that to happen. Instead, I was sent out into the world without so much as a chair to sit in or a bed to sleep on. I became homeless and wound up in a homeless shelter/half-way house for single mothers. My roommate was an orphan who stole a ridiculous amount of money from me. The other women there were children of drug addicts, forced out by violent step-fathers, recovering from addictions themselves, etc.

Some of the people around me felt free to demand that I go into hiding and then place my child for adoption so my siblings, relatives and community wouldn’t know of my shame. (The idea that perhaps a person who has already had their right to self-direction grossly violated shouldn’t be told what to do with her own baby didn’t register, of course. And no, this wasn’t the ’50s. It was the mid-90s)

After I had my son and decided to follow God’s leading and raise him myself, family and friends refused to have anything to do with me. Some went so far as to tell me directly that I wasn’t welcome to come around anymore – particularly if my son was with me. I did manage to eventually finish my degree, but what sort of work to pursue with a degree in Literature and Communications still eludes me. I was poor, alone and directionless beyond knowing that I needed to care for my son.

There were a few brighter spots. My then 16 year old sister was supportive and actually happy about her new nephew. A local church held the only baby shower I had until a couple of my husband’s friends’ wives threw a spectacularly under-attended shower for me when I was pregnant with my 5th child. So, at least I had a stroller when my son was born. Continue reading “The Gift of Delayed Grief”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
enjoy life, family, life, relationships, religion, thoughts

“Love isn’t a feeling . . . It’s an ability”

One of the things that is both frustrating and fascinating to me is how bad we tend to be at loving. We really think we love people even when we are destroying them. Or we have very loving feelings towards people who experience us as aloof, uninterested and disapproving. We say that another’s happiness means more to us than our own and then make them miserable by trying to impose our preferences and vision for how they should find happiness on them. Just over and over again, we do things which hurt those we purport to love and then get upset with them should they have the nerve to say, “you’re hurting me!”

lovedoesnthurtyouI came across a post today on the blog “The Registered Runaway” that I want to share with you. We’ve all heard that love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice. But this writer starts with an even better idea: love is an ability. IOW, it’s a skill we have to learn and develop. It seems to me that we are so bad at loving in part because of our old issue of not ever wanting to be wrong. We want to think that we know how to love when we’ve never put in the time and effort it takes to unlearn our mistaken ideas about love and learn how to do it well. So in the interest of education, I’d like to share a few choice excerpts from this lovely blog post “Love is an Ability”:

Most of the time, an ability is not given, it is grown. You have to feed it and nourish it and work like hell to make sure it thrives through each and every season. Love is no different.

I am convinced that saying you love someone doesn’t count as love. I am also convinced that willing your mind to love someone that you’ve never reached out and touched, doesn’t add up to much. . .

You cannot love someone until you know someone and there is a clear-cut difference between knowing of someone and really knowing someone. You can put people on pedestals, but you can’t love them until you know them. You can leave the word love as the lasting residue of your rant, but you don’t love the folks you’re talking about, not really. . . Continue reading ““Love isn’t a feeling . . . It’s an ability””

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter3 Comments
culture, life, race matters, relationships, religion, thoughts

Stuff I Appreciate About Black Folks

Hey – want to watch me stick a fork in an electric outlet? ‘Cuz that’s pretty much the same thing as being a white person who talks about black folks, right? Or at least some would have you think so. But I’m going to do it, because African Americans are forever getting dumped on in our society and are rarely called out for all the things that are great about them.

Now, before I get started, allow me to provide proper cover for myself. For those not in the know, I’m married to a black man. I have 5 mixed race kids and two African American stepsons. So if nothing else, my “I have black friends” creds are actually solid. (I’ve written more about my experience with race here and you can learn more about my $.99 ebook on race in American here.) Of course, there is as much variety among black folks as among any other group of people. I’ve known sweet, shy, reserved black women and loud, sassy, confrontational black women. Macho black men and nerdy black men. And the things I’m going to list here aren’t universal. There are always people who go against the grain. But as a general rule, these are things which I have observed to be common among black folk I have known that are not nearly as prevalent among the white folks I have known.

Of course, every positive trait has a dark side when pushed to far. My goal isn’t to idealize African Americans, but like I said, we continually dump on black folks and discuss problems in the black community. For this post, I’m just focusing on things which I personally appreciate about black folks I have known. So having properly covered my ass, here goes:

1. They respond to your problems with grace and understanding.

Probably because black folks have had to deal with so many really serious, awful problems for so long, they aren’t particularly phased by your problems. Usually they’ve heard or seen it all before – and worse. And if your life is going to hell because you did something wrong, well, the black folks I’ve known probably disapprove of your dumb choices as much as anyone else. But they also know that you’re the one who is going to have to live with the consequences of your dumb choices, so there’s really no point in piling on. Better to help you move forward than waste time berating you much less exacerbate the problem by turning you out. In my experience, if your life goes all to shit, you’re much better off going to your black friends or a black church for support than to your average middle class white person or church. Continue reading “Stuff I Appreciate About Black Folks”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
book, giftedness, life, religion, thoughts

Christianity and Giftedness

When I was putting together my book The Upside Down World ~ A Book of Wisdom in Progress last summer, I went back and forth and back and forth about including an essay I had originally published here titled “How Being Gifted Means Being Different”. It was one of the most popular posts I had done. And many people had contacted me since I put it up to thank me for writing it. However, it didn’t seem to fit. The book is very grounded in my faith and the post is about being gifted. The two seem incongruent. But every time I went to take it out, there was that little tug that I’ve learned to listen to telling me to leave it be. So I did without really know why it was there. And I’m sure that those who read it wondered what it was doing there as well.

It wasn’t until some time later that I began to understand why it was there. The fact is that the church as a whole does not do a good job of making room for or embracing those parts of the body which are smarter and more creative than the norm. We see this in those parts of the church which fiercely oppose science and will even claim that those who engage in the work of science are doing the devil’s work. It is present in those who insist that a “plain reading” of scripture is good enough and refuse to consider context, history, translation or any of the other issues which affect the way that we read and understand the text. It shows up in how churches deal with their members who produce art, literature or music. This past fall, I talked with a lot of pastors and uniformly they told me that they have a policy of not supporting the work their creative members produce. (I talked about my frustration with this practice here – The Sheeple Are Leading the Flock.)

This animosity also floats on a the good number of verses which seem to speak critically of those who are learned or wise over those who are more simple: Continue reading “Christianity and Giftedness”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter8 Comments
life, prayer, religion, thoughts

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

This was where I was a year ago. The details of the circumstances have shifted around a bit, but really, pretty much nothing has changed.

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!

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

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.

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.  This isn’t right.  And besides, it’s not just me – I have all these kids.  If it were just me, fine – but it’s not.  You need to fix this right now.  I’m not Joseph – I can’t wait 40 years for you to bring it all together.  You won’t even help me figure out what to do – I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing!  If I’m doing it wrong, just tell me – but that doesn’t mean I can even fix it.  What am I supposed to do?  Why won’t you just help meeeeeeeeee!”  At which point, I’m like an overly dramatic, whiney emo-teen and I have to withdraw to pout a bit while the Spirit intercedes with “groanings too deep for words” before I end up with another tattoo and a facial piercing.  (I have always wanted to get my eyebrow pierced, though. Continue reading “It Will Be Alright. Or So I’ve Been Told”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
being mom, family, kids, life, religion, thoughts

Wrestling Hope

“Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante’s hell is the inscription: ‘Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.'” Jurgen Moltmann

I’ve wrestled a lot with hope in the last few years. Mostly to try and send it away. “Hope deferred makes a heart sick.” I’ve had enough of being sick. But allowing oneself to venture into hell is a dangerous thing as well. I know – I’ve wandered into hell more than once as of late and couldn’t muster the strength to find my way back out.

I’ve taken to resisting comfort. I’ve fallen for it too many times before. I’ve read the words of scripture and their promises that God will not abandon me or let me fall. My heart has leapt at them only to find that holding onto comfort is like holding onto water as it slips out between your fingers. And God is no where to be seen but my failure is all around me. Better not to let myself try to grab hold any more.

I’ve gazed at the cross with its promise of redemption after suffering. But Jesus’ suffering lasted for a weekend and mine is lasting for years. Jesus’ suffering was probably greater than mine, but it’s not a competition. My neighbor’s broken leg doesn’t make my broken heart hurt any less. I’d say I just want my suffering to end, but the damage has already been done. What difference does it make now?

And then I realize that it is an evil thing I’m fighting with which bids me to remain in hell and refuse comfort as too little too late and far too quickly gone. Continue reading “Wrestling Hope”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter8 Comments
life, prayer, religion, thoughts

Just a housewife

Let me share a few things about myself which may not be immediately clear just from reading my blog:

I became a mother at age 21.

Last year I took my first commercial flight since I was 3.

I have never been outside of the USA.

I have done almost no traveling outside of the Midwest.

I was planning to be a high school English teacher before I became a mother.

I have 5 kids and two step-children.

I am entirely self-taught re scripture, religion, philosophy/rhetoric, psychology, ANE culture, and other topics I discuss here.

I have never been able to learn a foreign language.

I have been a stay-at-home mom/housewife for the last 12 years.

At this moment, I am sitting in my bedroom in a house that can be seen from I-94 ignoring 3 of my children who are bickering and pretending to be hissing cats.

All of which is to say that from the outside, I hardly seem like anyone special who would be qualified to speak on anything special.  I’m just a housewife.  It has taken a lot of chutzpa on my part to keep writing here as if I had anything anyone might be interested in reading. Continue reading “Just a housewife”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter9 Comments
bible, life, politics, religion, thoughts

Most Christian’s Opinions Aren’t Worth Two Dead Flies – But That Can Change

I like to say that I grew up in the “Easy Listening” phase of American Roman Catholicism. We sang “On Eagle’s Wings” with a guitar accompanist and hung felt banners around the sanctuary. My cousins attended a church that had alter girls and interpretive dancers. An opera singer who attended our church was sometimes allowed to lead songs and children regularly got smacked in the back of the head for giggling when she stretched to hit really high, screechy notes. Which was better than when her nightclub singer daughter sang and made us all feel like we should go home and shower after watching her squirm around singing about God and love in breathy tones.

Some of my sisters feel strongly that they were damaged by being forced to attend mass each week at this retro-grade institution. But honestly, my memory is of sermons that could basically be summed up as, “kids, listen to your parents and don’t fight with your siblings. And every one needs to stop trying to run each other over in the parking lot after mass.” For me it was about as benign an introduction to Christianity as you could hope for.

Which isn’t to say that it was entirely content free. Like all good Catholic kiddies, I attended catechism classes every Wednesday night for an hour all through grade school. I have an amazing capacity to completely tune out anything that doesn’t catch my interest, so I don’t have any idea what we did each week. But what I do recall is having to memorize things. We memorized prayers like the Our Father, the Nicene Creed and the prayer for confession. We memorized the 10 commandments, the beatitudes and the various works of mercy. It is entirely possible that we actually talked about what these things we were memorizing meant, but again, I wasn’t really paying attention.

The end result was that I couldn’t have told you why Jesus lived and died, but I did know that he told us to love each other and serve those in need. And as much as I love me some good theology, I’d say I got a better religious education than other kids who could explain penal substitution and use “Roman’s Road” to explain (their version of) the gospel. Continue reading “Most Christian’s Opinions Aren’t Worth Two Dead Flies – But That Can Change”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments