Today was the last day of Sunday School for the year... i cannot believe what God has done in this short time from January to now... in January, there were no kids who came, and by now there are 4 who come, not all of them all the time, but some of them most of the time... and one girl who said she refused to think about God because doing so makes her head hurt has come up with one of the better analogies of how God might view time and our lives... and one boy who would never be the type one would imagine coming to Sunday School not only comes but still wants to have class even when he is the only student... i just pray that God will keep this momentum going through the summer into next year...

i asked Jc and Eb, the two most regular students, and the two who showed today, if they had to summarize what we have covered in the past six months, what would they say.  their response was "other religions", and yet i wonder if they realize how much they have learned about Christianity through the study of other religions?  i wonder if they realize how their perception of God has matured in just this short time....  i know at least that they no longer thingk of God as an old white man with a beard who lives in the clouds and chucks lightening bolts... they have begun to get the concept of God who lives outside of time, and for whom (i believe) all time exists at the same time > we explained it, with help from Jc, as God seeing our entire lives as a single sheet of paper, while we see them as the individual points that make up that paper, that plane.  we have to live each point and cannot jump ahead, but the Lord sees our whole life as a complete work...

today we discussed the 10 commandments... how the first commandment is repeated in the Shema "Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God, the LORD is one"... how in the first commandment, God doesn't say there ARE no other gods, just that we are not to worship them... what the second commandment about graven images means > pc/video games or myspace/xanga or  money all can become idols... how the concept of taking the name of the Lord in vain is really a commandment for OUR benefit -- God knows what we mean even when we utter God's name in vain, but the point is for us to be aware, and to try to catch ourselves, and change our ways of thinking and speaking... and how we are not commanded not to lie, but not to bear false witness, to slander or spread rumors....

it was hard to say good -bye today, knowing that next year i will not be back... there is so much that i want them to know and to remember... all i could do was leave them with the thought that we must always question when someone says we "should" do something> do what we beieve God would want us to do, think carefully and be sure we harm no one else, and if necessary take the hurt on us, since we have control over our lives and shouldn't put it on other people...

well, kudos to CsawDMILL (aka J Solberg, aka Amos the King), who has come to the Rescue of all of us....  his comment on my post reads as follows:

"Here's the straight dope from a 24hour a day hebrew speaker (sounds like part of a jewish stereo system, ha). "El Sh'dai" in a religous context is just one of the many names...and means exactly "God, who is sufficient".."sh" means "who is" and "dai" means "enough". We say "Dai!" when we want someone to "stop it, already!"..But..wait! The word(s) "shad'ai" also mean "my breasts". Really. "shad" is breast and the "ai" ending means "mine". So there...you're all correct..sort of"

so, i thank Amos-the-King, and i know that Dr. Tanner thanks him, since this will spare her the Reprimands she might otherwise have gotten...

a Kind Reader has brought to my attention that the translation of El Shaddai i referenced in my last post might not be accurate.  if so, i apologize, and cordially invite any Irate Readers to contact Dr. Beth Tanner, Professor of Old Testatment, at New Brunswick Theological Seminary to administer Appropriate Reprimands....  "my Hebrew dictionary says "El Shaddai" means literally "God Almighty / most powerful". It is not related to any words about female anatomy"....

the correction has been assimilated...

Still not the post i was going to make but...

Pet Peeve: calling God "he".... God is genderless.  God is beyond gender, and beyond time.  women are made in God's image every bit as much as men.  if you are going to call God "he" then you should also call God "she" since the divine encompasses both aspects of humanity. 

the Hebrew name for God, El Shaddai, means 'the God with breasts"...  Julian of Norwich, the famous medieval nun and mystic, often referred to God in the feminine. 

if we are to be accurate about God and God's gender, we need to be careful either to never assign a gender to God, or be equal in assigning gender to God.  just as it is inconsiderate, if not actually discriminatory, to use gender-exclusive language (such as 'man' or 'mankind' instead of humanity or people) for humans, the same is true of terminology for the Divine.

this post is a quickie > i want to do a 'real' one later but....

where do we Christians get off judging other people and their behavior?  Jesus never asked someone to stop sinning before they could come to him.  God never said you had to stop sinning to be saved.  "For while we were yet sinners..." - doesn't that ring a bell ????

we are called to love God and love each other. period.  if God wants someone to change, let God worry about that.  it is not our business, folks!!!!!! 

people will come to love God when they see God's love in us.  if all they see is the potential for judgement, no one will ever come to God.

i want to cry when i see how we are behaving towards other human beings; how we are talking to and about other human beings.  how can we be so cruel???? how can we be beacons of love and light if we are only spewing hate?  it doesn't matter if you are right since no one will listen to you!  just love people. love them in their sinfulness and don't even worry about their sins.  everyone of us has darkness within.  everyone of us has the potential for great evil.  and yet God loves every single one of us, even the most hate-filled....

just love people.  let God take care of the rest.

we have been waiting for a revolution for a long time.... it's been 37 years since the last one, a racial revolution that left much of the cities of New Jersey literally smouldering (to say nothing of a 10 year old girl petrified for her father who worked in one of those cities as an inspector for the department of health)... but all of the signs of oppression, disenfranchisement, discontent, bewilderment > the things that lead to revolution > are present... we are ripe for revolution... we need one!

in USA Today, Julianne Malveaux writes, "The average American has not experienced much good economic news lately. The wealth gap is growing. Median family income has been dropping. Meanwhile, gasoline prices are up 36% from a year ago. With interest rates rising, those with adjustable rate mortgages face higher payments, and residential rents also are nudging up. Incomes are not keeping pace with inflation, and the job market is weak...New York Times writer Louis Uchitelle describes workers as "disposable Americans," and daily headlines about layoffs - recently reports surfaced that Walt Disney Studios will lay off up to 10% of its workers - reinforce the sense of job insecurity.There don't seem to be many breaks out there for those at the bottom. The $5.15 hourly minimum wage has not been raised in a decade. The most recent tax cut legislation that extends breaks on capital gains and dividends will provide the bottom 40% of taxpayers with less than $20 in tax cuts over a three-year period. In contrast, more than two-thirds of the benefits of the tax cut will go to the top 5% of our nation's earners."

we are told continually that unemployment is way down.... down to about 4.7% nationwide, which is a nice, low figure, sure, but one that LIES! like a rug!!  most of the jobs are lower paying service sector jobs, and many of the unemployed have exhausted their unemployment benefits, and so they are no longer counted.  they still don't have jobs, but yet, they are no longer counted as unemployed!  my friend, JV, just got a job after being unemployed for 18 months....

oh, and you already know how i feel about health care!  i did finally get my appointments squared away, but at an enormously inconvenient time and in an extraordinarily inconvenient location.... <rolls eyes as steam comes out ears>

so... it seems we need a revolution.... even Rf wants to know why we, as a nation, don't change our policies, particularly in regard to the existence (or lack thereof) of a viable third party.  sweden, and germany, and the UK , and israel all seem to function with multiple parties in a coalition government.  these nations used our system as a model, but managed to find ways to improve on it - or at least, one hopes the changes have been improvements.  http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70980-0.html  is the link he sent me to support his thinking.... it is a good read....

  so... ok.... i have seldom been this frustrated with the state of health care in the United States.  it takes an awful lot to get me this steamed -- usually i top out at frustrated or even annoyed, but this time i am, dare i say it, totally PISSED off (and no, this time it is not better to be pissed off than pissed on....)

i came back from vacation, which carries its own set of frustrations since we were sharing living space with donathan's family and assorted extensions... having to sleep in the living room, which means people pass by all the time, and can watch you sleep, which freaks me out (what if i snore? or drool? or body parts become exposed???)... having to sleep in the living room on the floor (yes there was a sort of an air mattress, but only sort of)... watching all the dynamics between my s.i.l. (sister-in-law) and her in-laws, plus donathan's issues with his sister and her husband, and his mom and her daughter..... and then there was a serious train service disruption on the day we were coming home, and so my mom called us down in florida and offered to pick us up at the airport, which was kind of a mixed blessing.  at least we didn't have to scramble to find trains that were running, but we did have to deal with the MOTHER of all drivers (if you have ever read the comic strip Jump Start, and seen that grandma drive, you'll know what i am talking about)....

so vaca was over, and we were home, and i was taking the first full, long shower in a bathroom i only had to share with one other person. sounds nice, huh? i shouldda known....

i step out of the shower, look in the mirror, and there is a visible and palpable lump in/on my left breast. ugh. scary ugh.  so i see the doctor that morning. and he agrees with me that it feels like a fibrous (benign) tumor, not a cancerous one, but he writes me a scrip for a mammogram with an ultrasound.  i have been this route before, since my very first mammogram turned up a tumor and i had to have a biopsy -- long story, but short version was that it was benign, and we left it alone.  this is the same breast, so i'm fairly confident, but since it is the memorial day weekend, i can't call for an appointment until tuesday.

so, tuesday comes and goes, and i forgot to get the provider book from my husband that will tell me if i have to travel out of state to have the procedure covered, or if i will be lucky enough to find a provider within 50 miles of where i work or live.  i got the book today, found a radiology center that is not only close, but the same one where i got my initial mammogram done, so we are looking good.  then i make the mistake of calling them....

you do not get a live person, but a series of "menu options" none of which are radiology.  so, since my breasts are involved, i figure ob/gyn to be the closest department, and choose that option.  but that is the busiest department, so i am on hold (suddenly dan's question about our "on hold" tolerance threshold flashes through my mind)... finally i get a person, explain what i need and she sends me to radiology where ... i am put on hold.

after 45 minutes of going around and around, and choosing and discarding 3 or 4 dates and times, we (the radiology secretary and i are friends by this point) find out that i cannot book the appointments (mammogram to determine that i felt what i felt followed by a sonogram to see if it is a tumor or a cyst) because i do not have the scrip in front of me with the vital diagnostic code.  i am told to call back from home.  i ask how late they are open, and they tell me until 8:00 PM.  this is great.

well, it is not really great, but it is not absolutely awful.  so i make it through my day, rush home since i have a 7:00 meeting i have to attend, dig out the scrip, and  call them back only to be told., by a very polite recording that they are CLOSED!!!!!!  and it is only 6:15!!!!!!

i have been on vacation, and so i have not posted to my own site... i kept up on some others though....

this past weekend, we attended the bar mitzvah of Ces' son.  the synagogue portion began at 9 AM, and was done about 1:00... then there was lunch.... then a 5 hour wait for the dinner/party portion. 

i loved the synagogue part so much.... i do not read/write or speak  Hebrew, but i did recognize words here and there, plus i felt professional interest in the service.

however, i am feeling residual guilt about something, and it won't let me rest....

Ces and i have a mutual friend, Ar, who is legally blind.  Ar was invited to the bar mitzvah, but had no way to get there.  we live about 15minutes from his house, while another friend, Sa, lives only 5 minutes from him, so we waited for her to offer to give him a ride -- she never did.  so we offered to get him.

during the service, i could have left Ar to his own devices, i mean i am not related to him or dating him or anything. but he couldn't see, and everything was in Hebrew (or at least 90%) so i found myself not only explaining what was going on, but describing what the bima (stage) and the ark and the torah scrolls and everything looked like.  even after our friends joined us, no one else even tried to help Ar out.  at least for the Kiddush luncheon Sa helped me get Ar a plate of food, but for the dinner, i had to cut up all the food on his plate because he could not.  donathan had to help him to the bathroom.  if Ar needed or wanted to go anywhere, one of us had to go with... he is 39 years old and cannot even cut up his own food...

the band was most excellent, but when donathan and i came back from dancing 2 dances at the beginning of the night, we found that no one at the table was talking at all, least of all to Ar.  even when we were all sitting there, if i didn't speak to Ar, no one did....

i really hated feeling like his caretaker all night.... and i feel really guilty that i feel that way....

For Ashton....love, Geneviève

You were a gift
for which I asked but did not expect...

I know your touch:
you know my kiss.
Our minds entwine in ways
our bodies yet cannot.

Ten days --
the universe was created in less....

I pine for the sight of you.
I strain for the sound of your voice.
No more ardent was ever
Shakespeare than I.
I hunger for your ideas and
reflection of myself.

Like a storm, you swept my heart clean,
and took up residence.

Be Careful What You Ask For -- A Princely Quest

A tale told by Charlotte

Once upon a time…. there lived a prince.  Because it was a law, he was handsome. dark. virile.  But, also by fiat, he had to spend his days in idleness… doing prince things that rapidly became boring… How many princesses can you rescue?  How many horses can you ride?