MoxieLife

Irrational Fear of Sarah Palin

Ok, I might suffer from an irrational fear of Sarah Palin. I get that I am easily offended by her - really everything about her. I REALLY wanted her to just go away. I know though, after talking to the in-laws on Thanksgiving in Missouri, that folks really like her.

They like what she stands for (abortion hating, gun loving, Jesus following, Mother of many).

They are into her and now on Ning I find that others are too - over 60,000 of 'em!

Yikes, what is it about that woman that just won't go away?

We Teach them about JeSus!

Happy day after Thanksgiving. I hope you enjoyed shopping, or not shopping, eating or not eating, working or not working - any way you had it I hope it was good. I wanted to share the BEST moment from my traditional Midwestern Thanksgiving yesterday.

One of the cousins (my husband has hundreds) who was about 7 years old was holding a baby. The parents of the baby were asking her why she liked babies and she said that every Friday she and her homeschooled sisters and their mom host a Mothers of Preschoolers meeting.

She works with the babies while her mom is with the mom's.

They asked further what she did with them and with all the sweetness this adorable red headed child had inside said, " we teach them about Je Sus."

Just like that.

It was cute (and ok the cynical pack of my little family thought it was brainwashing the kids to brainswash the kids).

I hope your holiday was filled with as many, if not more, moments of pure sweetness... because it just doesn't get better then that.

Amen, Je Sus.

Thanksgiving - Family, Food and No Fighting - Darn.

O.K. - This is it. The first holiday season without my parents. Wish me luck as I try to find the joy and inspiration of family on what is a new and uncharted journey in my life.

I have always like Thanksgiving. My family meals were made by my father who started cooking the night before. We had traditional, Creole, 70's costumes, Cornish Game Hens, Shrimp, you name it. He was an inspired cook and loved to make this meal special for the family.

We gathered around our large, dog chewed table, in our stucco green home and listened to him talk about politics. At some point someone would say something that would make someone mad. Me when I was little and then later my sister would leave angry. Fighting seemed part of the ritual somehow.

Later when we moved to San Francisco we traveled down for Thanksgiving once. My husband and I quarreled and I didn't go to dinner with him to his family. My parents had gone to dinner with friends at their church so I was at their mobile home in Costa Mesa twiddling my thumbs. After the dinner we got in the car to drive home and the freeway was a large parking lot - we just pulled into a Carl's Jr. and watched the traffic sit there for an hour or so before we joined the throng.

After that I said we wouldn't be coming down and I made vegetarian feasts for our little threesome. We made homemade decorations and enjoyed one another's company. It wasn't fantastic, but it was nice.

Now that we live in Arkansas we drive 2.5 hours to Joplin, Missouri to be with his relatives. The first several years were excruciating. The house is hot. The family isn't very friendly. The food is overcooked and blandly Midwestern. They don't play games, do crafts, go for walks or anything. They don't talk about politics or religion. It was unbearable. Over the years I learned to bring my own coffee. I don't bring a side or other dish because they haven't liked anything that I have ever brought - except for last year when I made Cracker Jackies, they liked those.

Four years ago my parents moved to Arkanas, but we didn't include them in our trek to Missouri because we didn't think that their heated conversations, wild food, and excitable nature would blend well with the more tame Midwestern event that we attend. It is too bad in a way because it might have been fun to see the two worlds collide.

Another Thanksgiving is upon us and we will be in what I like to term the most American Thanksgiving ever - that white Midwestern example of the holiday. Secretly I will wish that we were having exotic food and fighting over who Obama is picking for his cabinet. That is what Thanksgiving is about for me.

I hope your day is what you want it to be.  

Watch Out! She is Going Old School Online

This may be a no no, but I just have to say it - I think there are too many ways to connect and they are all just distractions from really living. WHEW. As a marketing guru I try to stay on top of what is happening in the field and there is no doubt that social media is what is new and hot, but I am beginning to feel that we are replacing REAL relationships with snatches of time online that are not meaningful - both in business and online.

Consider this, do you think having coffee with a friend is more meaningful or do you get a rush from the tweets on Twitter? I have to say that the coffee wins every time. So, what does that mean to social media? I think it is overrated. I think it is noise and I don't think it is authentic. I also know that thinking this puts me outside of the cool zone.

My suggestion? Pick three things online that you really like. Blog, email and Facebook maybe (Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace... the options are unbelievable) and connect there. Just three. Don't spread yourself out to everything. Don't try to be everywhere. Be where you are and be present while you are there. I think that the depth of interaction will serve you better then flitting to every new thing.

Ok, that makes me decidedly Old School, but I am happy to be that if it means that the relationships that I build are real, life sustaining, and growth. So, what about you? Where online do you find real depth? Are you a gadfly running to each new thing? What community online feeds your soul?

A Little Thankgsgiving Pageant Redo - Or How Unitarians Got it Wrong

So, it is Sunday and I am not at church. That is because I am the biggest party pooper in the church. Yep, I said it. I am a Thanksgiving Party Pooper. Today marks the annual Thanksgiving Potluck and Pageant by the wee ones of the church. It isn't the potluck that keeps me home, although I am not a lover of mystery food. No, it is the represented pageantry put on by the little children under the direction of my very good friend and Sunday School Teacher.

They do this program out of the UU curriculum Holy Days and Holidays that is about Native Americans. It is meant to show our thoughtfulness to the true origins of the holiday. It is so far off base it makes my skin crawl: sharing, singing, tobacco smoking happy Native Americans (I believe when it was done when I was in RE it was Indians - so that gives you a bit of the political incorrectness.)

Now, lets see what MY Pageant would look like:

Entering from the kitchen to the front of the Fellowship: A happy family of Native Americans. They are walking through the fields on their way to fetch water and fish.

Coming from the back of the Fellowship are some sick, greedy, tyrants - the French, English, and Spanish. They are hungry and tired - and looking for gold.

They see the Native Americans and yell, "Halt Indians we are here to take your lands, pollute your waters, and steal your women. Hand them over."

The Native Americans not understanding but seeing a band of sickly people show them to the water where they can fish for food. The Tyrants give them blankets that have small pox and the children wrap themselves in them as they are unaccustomed to such poorly manufactured weaving and are interested in how it would feel. They fall over dead.

At the site of their dead children the Native Americans are filled with grief and do not see the Tyrants putting SOLD signs on all the land around them.

The Tyrants then march the Native Americans through the land to the least acceptable land and give them a pitiful stipend, strip them of any power, and give them alcohol to fuel their despair.

The End.

Oh, I know what you are thinking, I am a horrible Debbie Downer. I don't care. I can't willingly see little white children pretending to be Native American without feeling sick - that it happens in my so called religiously liberal fellowship further makes me ill.

So, I stay home. No one wants the minstrel of remembrance and guilt at their party. Not even me.

MY Jesus is WAY better then your Jesus, of that I am sure

As a confirmed pretty comfortable Atheist I have an unusual relationship with Jesus. First and foremost I think he rocks. MY Jesus is WAY better then your Jesus, of that I am sure. So, who is MY Jesus? MY Jesus is a man who lived a really long time ago. His mom got knocked up by a guy who she wasn't married to and they decided to create this incredible story about his birth. It worked. It protected her, the dad and the kid from being pushed out of their religious community.

So, MY Jesus went on to live his life learning to be a carpenter. I don't think he really liked being a carpenter. In fact, I think he screwed up a lot which made him realize he better find something else to do because this was not his passion.

He decided to go on a road trip and see the world. At that time the world was mostly flat and consisted of where you could walk, ride a donkey or grab a lift on a caravan. He chose to walk and traveled along the east learning about those old time religious attitudes carried by the Hindu's and Buddhists. He really liked the idea that there wasn't some angry God that Judged everything. He also liked that enlightenment could come to you. The food was pretty good too.

When MY Jesus came back to his hometown his family could see that he had changed. He didn't want to follow the customary rules anymore. He didn't want to do anything that they wanted him to do and he kept talking about love. Since they didn't get him he went to hang out with some of the less exemplary community members. The prostitutes got love - they knew that men were looking for it but didn't know how or where to find it. They also introduced him to other outcasts who were open to listening to his ideas about God not being some mean old guy out to get you - there was another way through love to reach god. That was great for some of the less rule abiding members of the community.

So, MY Jesus told the Rule Makers that they weren't necessary anymore. They could, in fact, take their rules and shove them up their... well, you know. He also told them to give their money to the poor. He knew that seeking riches wasn't going to make you happy. Happiness came through love. Only love. Now, these are radical thoughts because the Rule Makers liked to count money and charge money and deal in money. You can't really count love. So they got kind of mad at MY Jesus. They realized that he threatened their way of life and he had to die. What they weren't counting on was him being this major martyr. That didn't work out very well for them.

So, where is MY Jesus today. Well, dead. He was just a man with a radical idea. An idea so radical that very few follow it. It is way hard actually to live fully in love. To give more then you take. If I am wrong and he is really the son of their God and he comes back MY Jesus is going to be pissed. He is going to smite - yep smite. He really isn't into those big churches collection big salaries to spread his word because his word is free. The word remember is love and that doesn't cost a dime. The good thing is that he can find these churches SO easily because they have GIANT crosses (more on that in a minute) in front and inside. He will use those as his guide to where to smite. It is so nice that they created these giant beacons for him to find.

The crosses - MY Jesus hates them. He can't really figure out why anyone would celebrate torture and death. Remember that is what they did to him. They tortured him by hanging him from a cross after beating him in the town square - really this isn't a thing to celebrate. If his message is love then why would the cross be the celebration or symbol? MY Jesus doesn't like the cross, enough said.

So, MY Jesus rocks. My Jesus loves you, you and you. In fact that is all he asks us to do is love. Love, forgive, care, be passionate, feel, and love again. I love MY Jesus.

Who is at your front door? Search results for your blog:

There is some science/art to gaining readership on your blog. One of those is to write more about areas that people are searching for. That, for me, is a scary proposition. In the last week the phrases that have gotten the most search hits for this blog are:

• 7 hits for I Want to Kill Obama
• 4 hits for Breaking Up Online
• 4 hits for MoxieLife, and
• 3 hits for "Atheist Bus"

It is a bit disconcerting to me that a small post that I wrote about the Arkansas boy (being from Arkansas this mattered to me) that was charged with creating a plot to kill Obama - he and his Tennessee friend who is now fighting the court system saying that his jury wasn't "white enough". This was a small post - not a plot or plan for me to kill Obama. It scares me that this is even being searched on.

Breaking up online: that refers to my daughters ex-boyfriend changing his status on Facebook before having the balls to talk to her. I don't suggest that breaking up online is a good thing either and that people are searching on this (this comes up most weeks) is a sad fact that people hide behind their screens rather then deal with people one on one.

MoxieLife is a no brainer - I live one and write about it so that could be friends, family or people who just want a life filled with more Moxie.

I do love that Atheist Bus has made the move up - I love the idea of advertising the Atheist idea in public. I put it with the idea of Harvey Milk with the GLBT community coming out to friends and family and then there will be less discrimination because it is harder to discriminate to groups when when you know someone in that group. If more of us came out as Atheists perhaps it won't be too long in history when we can have an elected official be an Atheist and not be afraid that they won't be elected.

So, what are they searching on your site for. You can find out by having Google Analytics search your site - It is an odd thing how people land on your front door and I have to say I am glad it s my cyber door and not the one on my home as these searches are kind of scary.

The Holiday - A Movie Review

For those of you that recommend movies to your friends be careful of what you are offering. Last week I was given the DVD "The Holiday" by two of my favorite girlfriends. "You will love it." "It is sweet and romantic." "Really, even if you don't like Jude Law - or any of the other actors you will think this is a nice, sweet film."

I cried for 15 minutes in the bath following watching this film.

Was it the hyper romantic setting of England, the predictable romance between Jack Black and Kate Winslet (who, by the way, I love), or was it the tragic set up of Jude Law with those adorable orphaned girls?

No.

It was the friendship that developed with the older Jewish writer and Iris (Winslet). She helps him walk without a walker, celebrates the holidays, and he recommends films with strong women characters. All with the kindness and grace of a relationship between an aging articulate man and a young confused woman.

It reminded me so much of my relationship with my father that tears just flowed down my cheeks as I watched them with one another.

Who knew? I am sure it was a sweet film, but all I could see was what I was missing now that I know longer have my father here. Totally self absorbed, I know, but films bring up all kinds of things.

My husband came home the next day, after complaining throughout the whole film that it was torture to watch - he said it was porn for women. It was dashing men, beautiful settings, orphaned children, smart, funny - porn for women. He is probably right - I just missed it!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: A Book Review

I have been hesitant to read novels ever since my father fell last year and I spent everyday in the hospital with him. Since his death in May I have checked many books out of the library, but it was only nonfiction that I could focus my attention on. I didn't want to be engaged in a character only to find that they die, are injured, or suffer (the climax of many stories). I wasn't prepared to feel that for someone inanimate.

I had gotten an email from a long ago friend in Davis, California. Our girls had been friends when they were in preschool almost 15 years ago and she said that she had enjoyed the book that was part of her book club. That was it. Not you should read it or anything else. I just have such high affection for her and her outlook on life that I thought if she liked it I might too.

That started the instant love affair with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It is based on the aftermath of WWII on the isle of Guernsey in the Channel Islands and how a columnist and writer discovers their plight during the war, their Society, and the struggles that continue to come to them.

It is a book written in letter format - some gruff and "uneducated" while others are beautifully crafted. The characters come to light during these exchanges of paper and their histories, hopes and dreams are fully alive.

Sad, very. WWII will not easily be forgotten by those who lived through those moments in our combined history. Lovely, absolutely - the parties, descriptions of the isle, the depiction of subtle smiles and ungracious bragging - just delectable.

You might find yourself wanting to either book a voyage to the Island of Guernsey or starting a Literary Society in the manner that they run theirs - so lively and filled with human expression and the love of books.

Take a chance to be swept away by this brief novel. I did and I grateful that it facilitated my reentry into the world of fiction with grace, humor, and understanding of the depth of care in the human spirit.

UU and You Online - Unitarian Universalist Resources Online

Sunday I had the opportunity to present to my fellowship a talk titled UU & You - Where can you connect to UU's Online. After a momentary stressful moment in the morning when I wasn't sure if my adapter for my MacBook Pro would work - it did - it went well. I brought my wireless router and was able to be online in real time while I showed them some of the resources online.

I thought I would share them here - perhaps there are things you don't know about (although I doubt that):

Unitarian Universalist Association
This is where you will find resources for church services, programs, resolutions, church locations, history, etc. If there is news or information about the UUA that you need this is your first stop.

Our Fellowship Homepage
You can check the services, send guests who would want more information, and share with friends/family. Thank you for Doug for updating the site!

Twitter
Twitter is a site that allows you to update people you choose to follow and who follow you with what you are doing in 140 characters. These can be sent/received via text message if you choose. You can follow the updates of the UUA (along with many other large companies, news media, and members of the congregation.)

UUA Lists (EMAIL LISTS)
If you are interested in connecting to any number of people in the UUA on a particular issue this is the site for you. You can join these lists for free and start conversing on a number topics. Remember if you don't like a lot of email to sign up with DIGEST as the preferred way of receiving email.

Flickr
This is a lovely photo sharing site - if you take digital photos and you want to share them with friends and family you might consider Flickr. They also have a UU group you can join!

Facebook
This site is used to share photos, updates, link your blog, with family and friends. Remember if you have teens/young adults to ask if they want to connect with you on Facebook - this is their turf and you don't want to be a stalker. It is a great way though to connect with your past friends, alumni and, of course, UU's.

UU World
Did you read an article that you loved in the UU World publication that you want to share with friends? Now you can send them the link or read past issues yourself.

LinkedIn
This site connects professionals to their network and allows you to be introduced to their network. If you have worked in a variety of positions/companies this is a nice way to connect with them.

UUpdates
This is the blog aggregator for Unitarians who write blogs. If you are interested in what other people are thinking this is a fun place to find witty statements or deep thoughts. If you write a blog you can submit yours (you will be accepted!) to be part of the blog aggregator. You don't have to write about UU things at all - you are part of the community JUST because you are UU.

EXTRA BONUS:

UU Audio Sermons
This is a resource of over 2200 sermons that are recorded from a variety of congregations. A GREAT resource.

Actual Slide Show that was presented
You can see the actual slide show here: It is still being translated into Slide Share Land: but perhaps it is working now.

And the blogs I know about written by our Fellowship members - if you have one please share with the group!

http://wisdomofhands.blogspot.com/

http://wellreadgardener.blogspot.com/

http://goodwolve.blogs.com/moxielife

http://goodwolve.blogs.com/moxieworks

I received this email today from a member of the Fellowship: "I almost didn't come to church today because it sounded boring but you made it really interesting!   Great job." Well, I guess I did ok - or at least I didn't put them to sleep!