Amazing Grace

The word 'grace' has a great many definitions and to only write about one of these definitions would do a great injustice to the word, yet attempting to delve into all of them would mean that I would be writing all night and you would stop reading 10 sentences from here. So I will focus my energies on a definition that has become one of my personal favorites.

It is not the one that deals with the Grace and Mercy of God. Although that is truly a mind blowing concept. To think that there is an all knowing, all powerful God that wants to forgive my worst sins because He loves me and desperately wants to be with me is almost too much for me to wrap my mind around. Instead I will zero in on the definition of grace that comes from Classical Mythology.

In early Titan Mythology the word Graces was used as a collective moniker for the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome. These three women, Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia, were known as the goddesses of beauty and charity. Personally I don't really care who the early Greeks and Romans chose to worship for beauty, grace, or charity. The interesting aspect of this to me lies more within the name of the Graces mother.

Eurynome is often pronounced (or mispronounced, depending on how you view it) as 'your enemy'. Whether or not this is the correct pronunciation may never be known, however, if this is correct then I am most definitely in love with the symbolism that comes from Zeus (The main god and for the purposes of this argument, we will just refer to him as god) and Eurynome ("Your Enemy") having three daughters that were the symbols of grace, charity and beauty.

Typically when we think of the results of a god and an enemy coming together we do not think of beauty or grace. We tend to think of the ravages of war, for surely any encounter that a god would have with an enemy would result in a terrible battle with massive levels of damage. In this case though, the result was the creation of three beings that symbolized pure beauty. Two forces that would appear to be at odds with each other managed to produce a form of grace that that was so perfect it enticed people to want to worship it.

If this concept could have a parallel in our current reality I can only imagine what it would look like. I have no way of finding three perfect examples of grace walking amongst us, however, I can take notice of all of the tiny acts of grace and every minute display of beauty that I encounter every single day. When it would seem that humanity has slipped so far into a pit of sin and ugliness that there is no hope left, that is when I am able to see most clearly the beauty that still lives within us.

To put it simply. When God, who lives within us, meets our enemy Satan, through his presence in our world, it is then that we are able to see the purest Grace possible if we allow God to reach through the darkness to reach the lost. It is then that we are truly able to see the best of all of the Graces....Amazing Grace.

What's on your mind?

What's on your mind? That's the question that Facebook asks when prompting its users to set their status updates. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the question by itself....my problem is with the answers that this question elicits.

I understand that the thought of me having a problem with anything anyone does just shocks the socks off of my faithful readers, but if you will bear with me I will be happy to explain why the answers to the question of what is on Facebook users minds annoys the crap out of me.

First of all the question is absolutely ridiculous simply because many of the individuals that use Facebook will add or confirm friends based on a one time encounter or a mutual friend out of sheer nosiness or a strange desire to have a vast number of friends so that they look popular (That is a topic for another blog and another day), and they either don't really care what is on someones mind or they have no business knowing what is on someones mind.

Secondly, and far more importantly, far too many Facebookers will post a status update that says something ridiculously encrypted that is obviously directed at a specific person. Assuming that said specific person actually reads this status update, and also assuming that said specific person realizes that this status update is directed at them, my reasoning is such that I seriously doubt that said specific person gives two dingle berries about how they have caused grief to a person that is not even bold enough to name said specific person in their status update.

Facebook has been kind enough to add the 'tag' option to the status update feature. This means that Facebook users can not only type the name of the person that they are upset with in their status update, but they can also 'tag' that person to it so that the post is displayed on that persons wall. Tagging this person ensures that they know beyond a shadow of a doubt how badly they have upset their fellow Facebook user (assuming they care, of course).

The second irritating aspect of the obscure status updates is the totally random undecipherable nature of these updates. For example "I'm just so sick of all the lies and pain" or "Some people should really learn to grow up and face the facts. You know who you are" are not answers to the question of what is on your mind, they are random snip its from some conversation that the rest of the Facebook world is not privileged enough to be party to. Furthermore, I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that most of the users on Facebook are just as confused as I am by these updates. And they probably care about as much as I do (which is not at all).

I said all that to say this....if you decide to use the status update feature on Facebook to tell all of us what is on your mind, please be so kind as to leave us out of your personal drama, because we care to read about your personal drama about as much as we care about what happens to the fleas that infest the armpits of Osama bin Laden.

Who's Brilliant Idea Was That?

Children are gifts from God. I believe this to be true with every fiber of my being. When it comes to their toys, however, I find myself unable to reconcile myself to this point of view.

Children's toys are always brightly colored and more and more they seem to come with all sorts of moving parts and sound effects. As entertaining as these moving parts and sounds may seem to a child, they are a source of never ending irritation for the parent of that child.

I used to blame the individuals who purchased these toys for the child, however, lately I find myself leaning more towards placing the blame on whatever manufacturer decided that it would be a good idea to make a toy that only has one volume (loud) and one setting (on) and then decided that it would be really cool to make that toy a motion activated one.

I refuse to believe that these manufacturers have children because I cannot fathom how any parent would willingly dispense such a terrible weapon upon a fellow parent. When a child's toy starts playing The Itsy Bitsy Spider at full volume in the middle of prayer service, or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star begins blaring incessantly during Grandmothers funeral service, it is more than enough to make any new mother want to sink through the floor in utter shame.

So while I do not see much chance of any relief from the obnoxiously loud, wiggling, rattling, motion activated toys, I encourage young parents everywhere to take heart and rest easy because there is a special circle of hell reserved for the inventors, manufacturers and distributors of these toys. A circle that is surrounded by brightly colored, cheerfully singing, life size toys.

Through the eyes of a child

Today had been a great day. Not because I received some massive sum of money, or because I received fantastic news. No, it was great because I have been acting like a child for the majority of the day. First my girlfriend and I went for a 2 mile run, the better part of which was spent skipping around or randomly sprinting down the street. Then we went to Smoothie King where we consumed 40 ounces of strawberry banana heaven. From there we went to Wal-mart with the sole purpose of printing 19 pictures and and hour later we left with our sides hurting because we hid in the kitty litter shelves and danced to the theme song from Rocky and meowed at passing customers. After then we had lunch and picked up the kids from school and joined them in jumping rope in the front yard while giggling hysterically.

While I was sitting on the porch panting because I am far to large to be jumping up and down for 15 minutes straight I realized that I have not laughed that hard in longer than I can remember. This brought me to the conclusion that while life is not easy and each day promises to bring its fair share of problems, a healthy portion of child like antics and the laughter they produce will do wonders for the soul.

Therefore my "mid way through new year's" resolution is to wake up each day and put my 24 years of maturity and stress on the shelf and view each day with the awe and wonder of a child.

Who am I?

Who can truly answer that question? Are we truly capable of looking at ourselves honestly and voicing what we really see? The most common responses to this question typically involve descriptive words. Mother, daughter, strong, caring etc.. And while those are probably all accurate descriptions of what I am to the people in my life, they do not really answer the question of WHO I am.

More and more I have begun to feel that there is simply no way to truthfully give an answer, because who I am is ever changing. Who I am today is not the same as who I was yesterday and tomorrow I will be someone different. This is because everything that happens to me today affects who I become tomorrow. The differences will be small, perhaps even unnoticeable, but they will still be there.

Therefore while I still cannot express WHO I am, I can sum up WHAT I am in eight words. I am the continual evolution of a soul. Though I am far from perfect, I view every day as another opportunity for me to finally reach the only being in the universe that can truly answer the question ‘Who am I?’, and that is the Great I Am.

What is love?

On a serious note:

Driving down the road today listening to some music I found myself contemplating the lyrics to the song. I won't bother boring you with all of the details but the gist of the chorus said, "What is love? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more."

Aside from the grammatical issues the song possesses I am deeply disturbed by these lyrics. What has our society come to that we automatically associate love with hurt? Why is it that before we can love someone we have to try and be sure that they will not hurt us?

I understand that the very nature of love requires that we open our hearts up to the possibility of pain and heartache. I also understand that you cannot love someone completely until you take that risk. What confounds me is the fact that love resulting in pain has become so commonplace in the world that we subconsciously perceive the two as going hand in hand.

I refuse to believe that this was what God intended when He gave us the ability to feel emotions and if I am correct then I am led to question how the human race can ever recover from this dysfunctional emotional roller coaster.

Perhaps the more disturbing question is whether or not we even want to recover?

MySpace

I love MySpace. Not the social networking sight that has fallen so far behind Facebook that I can't even remember my log in name or password. I love My Space. That would be whatever physical space happens to be occupied by my body. Would you like to know the part I love about My Space? It belongs to me and only me. No one else is allowed into My Space without my permission.

At least that was how I thought it was supposed to work. I have discovered that I was sorely mistaken with that assumption. More and more people have been approaching me and attempting to hold conversations with our faces 3" apart. I have tried to reassure them that I really can hear them just fine from 2' away but no, they insist on maintaining their tonsil inspection distance.

I usually try to politely back away from people like this or simply avoid being in a situation where we would need to talk, however, working in a restaurant is not conducive to avoiding the invasion of my personal bubble. I am capable of dealing with people brushing against me at work, it is the nature of the business and usually the bumps are not intentional. Unfortunately I have noticed lately that a growing number of my co-workers seem to think that we are close friends and that I have some sort of desire for them to come up and hug me, lay their head on my shoulder or perform some other display of affection that involves them being entirely too close to me.

Having no way to combat this without disrupting the flow of business I have been in a bit of a quandary as I attempted to come up with a solution that would provide a lasting result. You would think that my exceptionally cheerful personality (yes, this is a sarcastic statement, I know you are wondering) would have done the trick but I found that I was forced to resort to other tactics. I tried asking them politely to get away from me. I tried completely ignoring them. I even tried threatening them! (This was fairly effective on a good number of them). After several weeks of trying to politely keep people out of My Space, I inadvertently discovered the best strategy to combat the invasion of my personal bubble. All I have to do it step on them!!!

I am not a particularly small woman and I have a habit of walking rather heavily and at a high rate of speed. When I run into someone it hurts and they will still be feeling it the next morning. Once upon a time I would try to avoid running into other people in an attempt to avoid harming them. However now that I know that running into people makes them avoid walking anywhere near me I will make it a point to collide at full speed with everyone within 18" of me!

I bet that within a week I will have My Space to myself again!