#why not find refuge - however finite - with each other

[re-pave]

The Physics of Forbidden Love

“You can blame it all on Percocet.

I was three days post-hysterectomy and a little loopy on painkillers. After five years of weekly testosterone injections, the canal (I can’t stand calling it a vagina, much less referring to it as “my”) had atrophied to near nonexistence. This made surgery difficult; I tore. The pain was bad enough. The fact that it was in an area of my body I had tried to ignore made me feel even worse. I had been treating the ache with Percocet, at the cost of my lucidity. 

In a minor delirium, I developed a sudden need to tell a charismatic acquaintance — a girl from India in my physics class — just how beautiful and funny she was. It was winter break, and I was at home in Wisconsin, while she had remained in San Antonio, where we went to school. So I decided to send her a quick message. I ended up writing her a rambling letter. 

“Hey,” I began, “you have cow eyes. I know that sounds like a bad thing but have you ever looked into a cow’s eyes? They are so deep and brown and beautiful. I’ve looked into a lot a cow eyes because I’m from Wisconsin.” After ruminating for another paragraph about cows and eyes, I wrote about how, when I squinted at the back of her head during physics, it looked as though the kinematic equations on the whiteboard were growing out of her hair. Finally, mercifully, I concluded by asking if she wanted to get together after the break.

The next day, looking for her response, I found my letter as a new email in my own inbox. In my stupor, I had sent it not to her but to myself. I didn’t try to resend it. But when I saw her back at school, I couldn’t resist telling the story of my misdirected, narcotics-fueled message. She laughed, then asked what surgery I’d had to get me on painkillers.

“That’s top secret,” I said. “You need security clearance. I’m going to need fingerprint scans, and your phone number.” She gave me her number. But I didn’t give her security clearance. No one at school knew I was transgender. I had transitioned at 15 and arrived at college with no intention of discussing my unusual childhood with my peers. So far I had managed all right, but now, that intention was on a collision course with my dating prospects. The more she and I flirted, the more I realized how unprepared I was to explain my history. Should I tell her bluntly or start from the beginning? What if she was angry, or told the whole school? Listening to a friend boast of a recent hookup, I felt a bitter envy; how simple it must be to have a body that makes sense, that needs no explanation.

After a few dates, I sat her down in the ornithology lab where I worked and tried to explain. Since she is pre-med, like me, I figured the simplest explanation was the medical one; how at the start of high school, after years of feeling like a boy trapped in a girl’s skin, I was told by my doctor that I had gender dysphoria, the product of a mismatch between body and brain. Although I tried to maintain a confident tone, I grew flushed and hot before I even managed to say the word “transgender,” and my voice grew so quiet that her growling stomach nearly drowned me out. When I was finished she sat very still, the only sound a whirring centrifuge, in the other room. I waited for her to get up and leave. She didn’t. 

Taking my hand, she said, “I had no idea.” 

In the flood of relief, I also felt a twinge of irritation. Of course she had no idea. I’m almost six feet tall, with a full beard and an Adam’s apple that had once poked a girlfriend in the eye. What would have tipped her off?

“I don’t really care, I think,” she continued. 

“Just tell me if I say something stupid, O.K.? I don’t know a lot about it. I don’t know anything, actually.”

For the next week, everything was fine. I was her first kiss. She fed me my first tikhi puri. Then one night, as we sat in her car, I learned that the biggest impediment to our relationship wasn’t that I was a boy with two X chromosomes, but something much more commonplace: my heritage. Her parents, who had immigrated to Texas from India when she was 5, feared that their culture would be diluted and lost in America, so she was forbidden from dating anyone who was not Indian. With my Midwest accent, ratty Packers sweater and frozen-tilapia complexion, I was the antithesis of the son-in-law they hoped for. She hadn’t told them about me and didn’t know if she ever would. A more painful breakup later on seemed inevitable, so we agreed to stop seeing each other. 

I hoped that the rationality of the decision would offer comfort. It didn’t. Soon enough, though, we drifted back to sitting with each other in physics. There, during a demonstration of magnetism, our professor pulled apart two neodymium discs, only to see them slide back together when she laid them on the table. We watched, took notes and imitated. Within a week, she was back in my bed. It wasn’t a decision, it was physics. Opposites doing what opposites do. After the first few days, when all I could think was how stupid we were being, our relationship had evolved into a surprisingly functional one, though with a few limitations. I couldn’t post photos of us together online, or talk in the background while she spoke to her parents on the phone. Once she had to accessorize her temple apparel — a colorful, traditional kurti — with an oatmeal-like woolen scarf to cover the hickeys I had carelessly left the night before. We went on muck-collecting expeditions to find anaerobic bacteria for her microbiology class. I found a way onto the roof of the student center, where we would go to look at the stars. At first I made jokes about how doomed we were, but as we grew closer the jokes stopped being funny. She was truly unfazed by my transness. I exulted in this; it seemed as though I had finally cleared the last hurdle between me and the mundane heterosexual existence I had yearned for. Joking about reincarnation once, she said I must have had great karma to be a human in this life.

“It couldn’t have been that good,” I said, “or I wouldn’t have wound up in a girl’s body.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s not a girl’s body. It’s yours.”

As we lay together at night, listening to the possum living in my ceiling scuffle back and forth, we initiated each other into our opposite and alien existences. I told her about the ordeals of my middle-school years and the euphoria of my first testosterone shot, the suicides of friends, the post-transition balancing game pitting safety against loss of identity. 

And, feeling homesick, I told her about walking on frozen Lake Monona, and how the Wisconsin woods turn orange and then black and stay black for too long, until you think you’re going to die in the lonely cold before the ice ever melts. And how one day everything turns green, the trees and branches and trunks and even the boulders, too. She had never seen snow. I had never seen sugar cane fields. She told me about her grandparents’ blue house in Gujarat, where she had lived while her parents tried to ground themselves in Texas, and the terror of the plane ride to meet them; 5 years old and flying to America in a cabin full of strangers. She attended weekly services at the local Hindu temple and would do her best to explain what had been talked about that day, despite my total religious ignorance. My favorite faux pas: Telling her we should name the elephant figurine on her dashboard Elphy McTrunkface. It turned out he already had a name: Lord Ganesh. 

She and I are still together, and we will almost certainly break up. Our relationship is based on mutual respect and trust — like any healthy pairing — but also on denial. She cannot marry me. We both know this, though I think she knows it better than I do. The foolhardy logic I use to rationalize my commitment to her will no doubt worsen my inevitable heartbreak. But for now, it sustains me. As animosity toward brown-skinned immigrants seems to worsen daily in this political climate, and anti-transgender bills that strip me of my dignity draw closer to becoming law in the Texas Legislature, there are days when we wake up scared, go to bed scared and navigate our isolation in between. Why not find refuge, however finite and daring, with each other? In a time of such upheaval and uncertainty, our reckless, quiet love feels like deliverance.” 

Malcolm Conner

[firstumcschenectady]

“Taking Refuge in God” based on  Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 and Deuteronomy 26:1-11

I find it terribly interesting to be human, particularly the irrational parts of being human.  For instance, I am  quite capable of articulating the difference between God and the Church. Here, I'll prove it to you:  God is the creator of all that is, and the grounding source of love that universe is build on.  The Church is a gathering of people who have learned about God largely through Jesus of Nazareth and try to be responsive to God, including in sharing in the effort to make the world more loving.

OK.  I know there is a difference.  I believe myself to be rock solid on the difference.

Except that many, many, MANY times in my life, I've gotten confused between the two.  When the Church (big C) has messed up, has proven itself to be entirely too human, has broken my heart, and has failed to be what I think it should be – I've responded by getting distant with God, as if the failures of the Church are God's fault.  I've done this repeatedly in my life, and I don't seem to be capable of remembering the difference between the two, even though I already know it (mentally).

This seems like a particularly good time to remember that God is God, and the denomination, the Annual Conference, even this local church are not.  God is dependable, steadfast, and loving; even when God's people “turn away and our love fails.”  Holiness is present, even when we don't feel loved or heard by God's people. The Spirit offers us rest, support, and abundance; even when life is feeling frenetic, unhinged, and scarce.  The Divine calls us to healing, to wholeness, to authenticity, to full life; even when at the same time we hear voices telling us to form ourselves into something we just aren't.

God is God, and God is GOOD.  God's steadfast love endures forever, and it is enough.  

In the language of the Psalm, God is our refuge, our fortress, our dwelling place, our shelter.  We are at home in God, and we are safe.  We can relax with the Holy One, we can trust in God's love, and goodness, and desire for our well-being.  We don't have to fight to be “enough” or different than how we really are. We aren't competing against each other for God's love, because it is not a finite quality.  Our natural state is “beloved by God.”  We don't have to earn it or compete for it.  It already is.

That, dear ones, is how grace works.  Just in case it has been a while since you've remembered the nuances of grace, grace is a word for God's unconditional love for all of creation, and it is God's nature to be loving, to be full of grace.  Grace isn't earned, it just is, because it is God's essence.  As followers of John Wesley, even talk about various forms of grace including previenent grace, the grace that comes before (like someone wearing too much scent).  Previenent grace is God's love for a person that comes before that person is aware of God, or of God's love.  

Wesleyan theology says that later on, if we become aware of God, and of God's love, and decide to work with God for good in the world, we are impacted by “sanctifying grace”, also known as the process of sanctification.   This is the process by which things that are not loving in us are allowed to wilt away, while love takes deeper and deeper root in us.  It is the process of letting our lives be defined by God's grace for us and for others.  It is letting love take over.  The idea of John Wesley is that the work of Christians in their own lives is to be sanctified, to become every more loving until love is all that is left.  

I like that part ;)  

Deuteronomy is … it is many things at once.  Walter Bruggemann, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, often talks about how the text criss-crosses generations.  He says, “The rhetoric works so that the speaker who is a belated rememberer of an old event becomes a present tense participant in that old event.  In 'liturgical time,' the gap between past time and present time is overcome, and present-tense characters become involved in remembered events.”1 This gets even more criss-crossed when we attempt to put this text into context.

Deuteronomy places itself on the far side of the river from the Promised Land, it is a series of speeches by Moses to the people before they finally enter the Land.  So, from that perspective, this series of instructions of what to do with the first fruits of the land – the promised land – is a future tense reality.  Within the text, the people are dreaming of living in the land, and haven't gotten there yet.  Yet, the instructions are for what people will say with their tithes, and the words people are saying reflect back on the process of getting to (and into the land) which in the story hasn't happened yet.

If you want to add more layers (which clearly I do), think about the fact that this was likely written down during the exile – so a person who once lived in the land  but did no longer, was writing down the  words of one who never lived in the land, to those who would enter the land, about what they would say when they got produce out of the land, about their history before they got to the land.   Which is to say, I think Brueggemann is right, and there are ways that time gets messy in these texts ;)

I'm interested, as well, in the fact that re-telling in this liturgical way of the entrance into the Promised Land doesn't talk about the wandering in the desert.  It is huge theme in Deuteronomy, where it is said time and time again that the people needed to learn that they could rely on God before they could be ready to deal with the abundance of life in the Promised Land, so they wouldn't think it had come to them from their own doing.  It also functioned to led the old generation pass away, so that those who had known the oppression of slavery were not the ones who build a new thing. However, none of that is mentioned in this particular piece, even though the rest of the history is.

Bishop Karen Oliveto posted on Facebook this week, “You can take people out of Egypt but the main task of liberation is to take Egypt out of the people. Perhaps this is why wilderness wandering is necessary in our journey?”  That was when I noticed that this particular text glosses over the wandering.  Perhaps it doesn't have to be named here, because in the idea that the person is giving first fruits, we know they haven't forgotten the lessons of the wandering.  In any case, remembering that the wandering exists to teach us liberation is definitely of use!

I'm struck by the way the Promised Land is constructed as being itself a refuge, throughout the Bible.   Granted, just like churches, it is an often broken one, and just like churches it gets confused with God.  When the people lost the land they took it to mean they'd lost God's favor.  Yet, it might be easier to read this text with awareness that land IS sacred, and that means land is HOLY, and certainly for those who have been without land, land is a refuge onto which they can build a life.  Space can become home, it can reflect God's own home-like attributes.

Did you hear the end of the passage?  After the first fruits have been given and the past has been remembered, it says, “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.”  I LOVE this part.  After all the labor of growing and harvesting the food, after all the remembering (and bouncing around in time) the end game is a feast of bounty to which ALL are invited.   All, including those without land. All, including those who don't know or worship God.  Those with plenty, those without, those set aside to do God's work, those who are doing normal daily work, those who don't have work – ALL the people are coming to the feast.  The work that is given to God is meant to be redistributed so that everyone can access it together.  

That Promised Land, the one the people were waiting to enter?  It wasn't meant to just be a refuge for them.  It was meant to be a refuge for all.  The “law” of the Torah seeks to ensure that widows, and orphans, those without someone powerful to care for them, will still have enough.  The Torah seeks to ensure that outsiders – the foreigners, the immigrants, the refugees -  will be welcome and cared for. The Torah OBSESSES over the poor, and puts in place practices that will prevent long term poverty and allow people to be lifted up.  The land isn't meant to be a refuge for some, or for the lucky, or for those who do right.  It was designed to be a refuge for all – a refuge that reflects God's nature.

Now, after fussing over these texts sufficiently, I want to get a bit practical.  God IS our refuge, and an excellent refuge at that, but we are not always prepared to receive the goodness of God's gifts because we tend not to pay attention them.  We are something, maybe too busy, too distracted, or too scared.  (Scared because we've been around broken humans enough to be afraid that God isn't as loving as we'd hope, since humans often aren't.)

However, the rest, the refuge, the HOME that God IS for us, is a gift to us that we can receive if we make time and space to do so.  I, personally, am best able to connect with this gift when I practice Centering Prayer.  Centering Prayer is “just” being, breathing in and out, and letting thoughts float away without judgment or attachment.  It is a type of prayer that takes practice, but it is transformative.  Other times, to access the rest, the refuge, the home that God IS, I need to be in physical places where I feel safe; other times I need to be with those with whom I can laugh. Still other times, a quiet walk in the woods, a good deep cry, or some time coloring mandalas will make space within me to let God's gifts in.  What helps you?  Are you doing it?  Do you need help finding new or different ways to let God's rest, refuge, offer of home take hold in you?  If you do, let's talk.

Because the world doesn't need us exhausted, aimless, and scared.   God and the world most need people being sanctified by grace, and I think we should make space to let God help us be those people!   Amen

1Walter Brueggemann, Deuteronomy (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001)

Rev. Sara E. Baron First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 10, 2019

[fluoxetinegirl-blog]

The reason Many Prepared People Imagine Bitcoin Is usually a Fad

It turned out my more mature year excellent for school the other of our trainers called united states in a room or space full of innovative computers. I was instructed for you to sit down plus "surf cyberspace. "

"Surf the web? in What mixed dough even signify? At the time Some live wherever close to the beach front and can't really see why concept of online surfing. That it was clunky and also pages were definitely slow to launch. There was oh dear that this could be handy. I returned to the local library later of which day for the duration of study community hall and look at the newspaper. You are aware of, the ones there is in accommodation lobbies and infrequently outside of cafes.

All kiddingthe around aside, when folks are used to accomplishing something some way for way too long it actually becomes element of who they are. I did operations control experience and each time I just attempted to alter the process or simply way of executing something to restore more efficient We were typically satisfied with challenge.

Some people are generally far more betrothed to several ideologies as compared with others. We come across it all over. I see them with the seniors at the bible not noticing the more sophisticated music. Or simply, for example , the particular National Domestic league baseball sticklers despising the very thought of the sent to hitter. Why not consider even uncomplicated things like any time Facebook or Twitter variations the user slot? Don't wreck havoc on my length of time! LOL.

The key reason why then when it is00 any unique for Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency? I communicate with people on a daily basis who are prepared and flourishing and yet however can't get to grips with the notion of cryptocurrency. Opinion it is for instance explaining the right way to surf the web to individuals in 94.

For centuries many people had that ingrained with their brains that will money written by the administration meant it seemed to be value.

Correios currency (money issued by way of government aid USD, Currency, Ruble, etc) has that connotation regarding it in which because the federal printed the following it MUST be valuable. While it very well that our $ have cost, most people believe that it is because it is covered by something. As the society looking for decided this shiny enzymes we find out from the ground usually are "valuable" therefore so is definitely our capital.

When companies are childish along along with governments do not get overbearing and the wonderful have a comparably "trust" in that person then certainly, fiat currency exchange works quite nicely. What happens after we tip of which scale in addition to things shouldn't go as well? Economists currently have varying beliefs on that will, but most of that time period governing body shapes will primary and try to encourage the economy. That is done by modifying the economy by tactics just like lowering car finance interest rates or quantitative easing. Government authorities love to activate the prints press if things lose their freshness.

These types of predicaments can lead to suspicion, or even worse. Recessions can turn straight into even bigger challenges such as amount controls or perhaps food shortages. Just check with the people with Venezuela who definitely are protesting inside streets daily. This is because their whole government endorsed Bolivar contains seen three times the digit monetary inflation and it's not worth typically the paper it could printed for. Let in which sink throughout.

The , have doubts, doubt of central banks, government authorities and enterprises has led to persons seeking personal refuge in another place. It can be exceptionally difficult plus costly to be able to money throughout the world as well. There was a time when i would manage bankers and the approach was laborous and demanded many readers on it to get verification needs.

Blockchain technological know-how is switching all that. It is actually completely decentralized meaning that not one person President, Master, government or maybe corporation might control the idea. The online electric accounting journal known as often the blockchain provides trust and also multiple human beings nearly promptly verifying purchases for each many other. People are on a financial basis incentivised to take some action. It's a resourcefulness peer to see operation this relies on visitors' greed to help verify just about every transaction. Therefore, blockchain deals are also the exact safest and the majority secure orders ever manufactured.

What the world-wide-web did for info, blockchain systems is doing pertaining to transactions. Bitcoin is not comes with any vibrant material during the ground, nonetheless by a little something far greater. How little trust in common fiat forex is resulting in people out of all over the world to push their money in cryptocurrencies. This is the secure along with relatively easy means of payment. I can also send Bitcoin to any one in the world for pretty much no rate at all and receive the item instantaneously. They may keep it with Bitcoin as well as they can right away trade them on an substitute back into your local currency within their choice.

And also, but stores around the world will be starting to get sucked in and many at the moment are accepting Bitcoin as a procedure for payment theirselves. If I managed a store, Rankings be ASKING people to give me around Bitcoin. Individuals that accepted Bitcoin since the start out of 2017 have now TRIPLED their gain.

And it is exclusively getting started. Now only about 1% of the society is positive in completing regular ventures with Bitcoin. Imagine as soon as that selection moves that will 3%. Next to 10%.

What lots of individuals don't realize is always that the more individuals that jump towards cryptocurrency the larger value it's going to have. This is because the level of Bitcoin that should ever possibly be created can be FINITE. And you simply can't employ a Ponzi program with a radical resource. Of which number has become 21, 000, 000. That is certainly it. One time that happens there will probably never often be another Bitcoin created for a second time.

Because we are 7 million people available and perhaps only twelve million people today invested in cryptocurrency, there will take place a day of which 1 Bitcoin alone upgrade . than more than enough to leave the workplace on.

It's simple to certainly continue on singing those self same songs. Actually , I like rare hymn so often, but with even more guitar. You possibly can continue to attack something you don't need fully understand or simply dismiss this a trendy while Lots of money 500 providers and governing bodies are start to realize this.

Let me nearby with this. Gradually we all spread around that papers in analyze hall in addition to began to talk on the news and various interests truly by online this world wide web. You can't believe or you certainly be here article!

Appreciate reading this plus, as always, I may love to know what you think.

[realcollectedwords]

Why not find refuge, however finite and daring, with each other? In a time of such upheaval and uncertainty, our reckless, quiet love feels like deliverance.

[chapterswebegin]

[2.5]

Why not find refuge, however finite and daring, with each other? In a time of such upheaval and uncertainty, our reckless, quiet love feels like deliverance.

And what we have together becomes intangible. And if it’s intangible it can never end because officially there’s nothing to end. And if it never ends, there’s no real closure, no opportunity to move on.