(no subject)

[which_chick]

As I forecast, I spent the weekend mostly doing things equine in the Gloriously Unseasonable Weather. Oh, and I set things on fire, too.



On Saturday, I took Nick out for a spin in the AM. That was fine and she did a good job for me. Hell, I took her out Friday after work, too, and she was again fine. Of course, I wasn't riding her along the road or trying to play in traffic. No point to doing that, really, because she still doesn't do cars. *sigh* Anyway, following my Saturday morning Nicknick outing, I put her away and searched for an excuse to stay outside in the Gloriously Unseasonable Weather.

In lieu of any better ideas, I pulled some strings out of the field until it was time for me to go show an apartment at 1. See, the round bales of hay come wrapped in orange plastic string. Sometimes the strings do not get cut off the round bales, which is okay, because the horses don't eat the strings or get caught in them. However, the orange plastic strings do get snarled up and scattered through the field during the intervening winter and then when it's springtime, someone has to go gather up the orange plastic strings (they're an eyesore) and burn 'em. Pulling strings out of the mud is good exercise and a fine excuse to be outside in the Gloriously Unseasonable Weather, not that I needed much of one.

After I showed the apartment (they said they'd let me know... whatever), I took Ceres horse out for a ride up to the top of the covered bridge road (this ride includes crossing the covered bridge twice) with La (on Callie horse) and Cass on Flint. All of that was uneventful. Ceres has absolutely no issues at all. Horse is issue-free. She does not care. Callie is mostly issue-free. She's not thrilled about people who are not me riding her because she thinks I'm her mother and is somewhat less trusting of other people. We're working on this by having other people ride her. Lots.

On Sunday, I had breakfast at La's house -- she makes some mean JuevosHuevos Rancheros. For the uninitiated, the version at La's house is made of eggs, a big flour tortilla, some refried beans (they're Old El Paso out of the can and La adds cumin and I think extra red peppers to these), and Stokes brand green chili sauce with pork bits. (Stokes chili sauce is not sold in Pennsylvania or in Maryland/DC. I think La gets hers from her husband's people when they go out west to visit. Also, when we went to Arizona to see the Scottsdale show the other year, one of the things we did was go to the grocery and stock up on cans and cans of Stokes, which La carefully packed into the empty large checked suitcase she'd flown out with. I'd kind of wondered what it was for...) Anyway. The eggs are cooked soft or hard, as you choose (I like mine dippy in the middle), and then the tortilla is put on the plate. Half of the tortilla is bedded with a layer of refried beans. The cooked eggs go on top of the refried beans. Then, the tortilla gets folded over so that it's a half-moon shaped thing. The sauce goes all over the top of the thing. For people who are low-carbing it, there is no tortilla. La's version comes with two eggs as the default but you can have three if you want.

It's a breakfast that will keep you going well past noon, a solid breakfast. You also get coffee (some weird coffee, starts with an L, maybe Luzianne?, has chicory in it), doctored to be hazelnut/chocolate flavored and two home-made gingersnaps that are, I must say, damn fine gingersnaps. (I make them for her according to the revised recipe located here . Side note: Fucking LJ still needs a decent fucking search engine. It does. The alleged search tool that is allegedly on my profile page, it can't find its own ass with two hands and a map. I pay for an account. Can I please have the ability to search for shit I've posted? It'd be nice.) That's the dessert part of the breakfast, the cookies.

Breakfast was followed by a discussion with La on religion. La is aware that I don't believe. She doesn't really know where she stands at the moment. I try hard not to push rah-rah-atheism at her. I'm not an evangelical atheist. Evangelicals of any stripe drive me up the fucking wall. People should wait to be asked about matters of faith. Sharing before being asked is ... impolite. Anyway, the question this Sunday morning was why people go to church. As I don't go, I don't have much of an answer there but I did what I could. I allowed as how I expected that people went to church to reaffirm their faith, to commune with their God, to get straight and refocused and ready for a new week. Also, if they go regularly, maybe they like taking part in the seasonal rhythm of the church calendar (what with advent and christmas and lent and easter and whatever) and letting that shape their days and their lives as they seek a True Christian Life (in a Piers Plowman sort of way). Some people like, y'know, structure. They go to hear the sermon, which hopefully illuminates some part of the scripture in a meaningful and accessible way. They go to reflect on the readings of scripture, which are usually aimed at the season of the church or chosen to reflect upon the text of the sermon. They go to be social. They go to sing, to attend Sunday School, to do coffee and doughnuts afterward.

The reason for the question was this: Her cousin's church (The cousin goes regularly and takes it quite seriously.) is losing people because the new pastor does not much light a fire of belief amongst his flock. The new pastor's wife is not active and gung-ho with the young people of the church like she was pitched to be during the hiring process. Is the pastor guilty of misrepresenting how active his wife would be with the youth group? Should the church board of directors be talking with the pastor about this issue? Is the congregation guilty of being Dog-N-Pony-Show churchgoers? (Like, if the Dog-N-Pony-Show isn't good enough, they quit coming.) Is it wrong to think of them that way? How many of the people who attend church are Dog-N-Pony-Show churchgoers?

If people Really Believed, asked La, wouldn't they go to commune with their God regardless of who was doing the testifying? Not necessarily, say I. New Testament stuff sort of indicates that you don't really need a church. You don't need an intercessor of faith like a priest. That was the whole point of the Protestant Reformation, yo. Martin Luther nailed up his 95 Thesis in an attempt to open a discussion about the abuses of the HRCC vis a vis the ungodly priests and the selling of indulgences and such. The HRCC threw him out of the shrine church, though, and that was the start of the Protestant Reformation. In what was (at the time) a revolutionary, wild-eyed approach, Martin Luther obviated the entirety of the Holy Roman Catholic Church from the least member of the laity right on up to the fucking Pope because he said, "All you really need, to be saved, to enter the kingdom of God and have everlasting life, all you really need, is to believe." It's John 3:16, held up at innumerable sporting events all over the United States. You've seen it on the Jumbotron, I betcha, and it goes thusly: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.. Bam. That's all you need. Believe. Salvation Through Faith. Right there, kind of a One Step Program. You don't have to go to church regularly or help the poor or minister to the dying or give water to those who thirst. You don't have to be able to recite the Nicene Creed or the Lord's Prayer or sing along to Old One Hundred. To be saved, you have to Believe(tm). Works ain't got shit to do with it*. Salvation is purely a matter of faith**.

* For those who choose the faith-based way to Salvation, doing good works is sort of expected on the grounds that if you Believe (tm) for real, you will WANT to do works of your own free will because that's what Jesus would have wanted and you, as a True Believer, want to Make Undead Jesus Happy. (I am not particularly kidding, here. Also, as a side note, if Jesus actually lived and was the way he was written about in the nicer parts of the Newt Estament, he probably *would* have wanted us to go around being better to each other.)

** The only formal education I ever had on this subject was in Lutheran confirmation classes. The Lutherans were QUITE clear that Salvation is purely a matter of faith. YMMV for other Protestant faiths. I have no idea what Papists believe, either.

Anyway, shouldn't people have the freedom to choose a pastor that inspires them to zeal? If part of the reason people *go* to church is to commune with their faith, to reaffirm their belief, to center and ground and refresh so's to face a whole new week, then shouldn't they be able to *get* that out of their church service? Heck, if you're attending for a 90-proof shot of the Holy Spirit (Tastes like Jägermeister!) and they're serving Dixie Cups of warm Near-Beer, wouldn't you find somewhere else to attend, somewhere that served up the real deal?

I wish I had better answers to give. Sometimes the answers that I have are not very satisfying. They are, however, as true as I can make them. (The Holy Spirit probably does not taste like Jäger. Maybe Mary would know...)

After that, we went out and set the garden on fire. That was fun. La went to her 4-H meeting. I threw harness on Lutely and made her drive around the yard and up over the hill to the pear tree and stuff. She mostly remembered from last year, but we still have some work (standing. Damn horse doesn't stand still for beans.) to do before I can hook her to anything. I also took my hole punch and fixed the harness parts that needed to be ensmallened so that they'll fit better next time.

Then I went home and cleaned up stuff in my own yard and set more things on fire. My daffodils are peeking above the ground as are the day lilies. The lilac buds next to the chicken coop at La's house have burst open and the spirea at my house is budded up. The mountains are getting reddish. However, there are no frogs yet. It isn't spring until there are frogs.

Edited as per gwangi: I am illiterate in multiple languages.

Comments

[wynnsfolly.livejournal.com]

we heard our first frogs this weekend, being somewhat further south & west of you.
Redbuds aren't really out but spirea, forsythia, & daffodils are well bloomed.

I've even got grape hyacinths & camellias in the yard.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of surprised that you have more flowers than me! My winter aconite is happily blooming, three (yellow, of course) crocuses were up this morning, and a number of hyacinths, tulips and something that looks suspiciously like a daffodil I forgot planting are beginning to poke out of the dirt of the garden-by-the-door.

I am one of the lexience who has not seen that quote on the Jumbotron, very rarely catching a Jumbotron glimpse to begin with.

Watchmen was good. There is all sorts of morally compromised-ness going on, and one can hardly help drawing parallels between the not-quite-a-villain's moral duality and his possible sex life.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I don't have any actual flowers. I have half an inch of daylily green shoots above the ground. I have the barest tips of daffodils sticking out of the ground. And I have vaguely green buds on the spirea. The lilacs at La's house have green buds about the size of the fuzzy part of a q-tip. Nothing is actually flowering.

I haven't seen the movie (Weekend did not include 1 hr drive each way plus 3 hr for movie. Was too full of pony.) so have no idea what goes on in same. Brother the elder enjoyed it, though.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

New Testament stuff sort of indicates that you don't really need a church.

Except, of course, for the parts of the New Testament which say you do... :)

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

We are not allowed to compare Christianity to the Nugganitic faith.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

It's exactly one small step from following that old anti-Semitic flake Luther to receiving updates from Nuggan outlawing the color blue.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I did full disclosure of my formal religious education. I took confirmation classes at a Lutheran church. The way they taught it, Luther was the good guy. The hero. The bringer of enlightenment by way of a slightly smudged and enumerated testy little OCD list of grievances with the HRCC. (Honestly, doesn't it sound kind of like some usenet feud...)

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

I got my confirmation indoctrination from the Methodists, which theologically are far, far more low-church than the Lutherans, who from our point of view, were just the Catholics minus the inaccuracies of the Vulgate translation & a slightly less magical-realist communion doctrine. And from that view-point... I think you're mis-interpreting the import of the whole 'by faith alone' core doctrine. The denial of the salvation aspect of good works doesn't invalidate or negate the essentiality of being in communion. There's way too much in the New Testament, no matter which translation, about the church as an entity, as a person, as a whole, to interpret *any* of it as "between God and the individual". It's definitely about a covenant between a community of faith and God. The Christian life is properly lived through an actual community, through social interaction with the rest of humanity, preferably in communion with the church.

And this is from the view-point of a sect which only made its peace with the concept of "bishops" after decades of insistence on congregations, pastors, and that's it. On the other hand, Methodists have a... complicated relationship with the concept of 'good works'. But I would definitely say that the social aspect of a church is as important or more important than the mere spiritual aspect. The goal of communion isn't simply justification - it's to incorporate you into the 'body of Christ', to make the individual part of the congregational whole. It's one of the core mysteries of the faith, the "Holy Spirit" part of the trinity without which Christianity would just be a weird heretical version of Mithraism.

And it's this part of being a Christian that I miss the most. I really wish I could believe in all of it, I miss the Church. I miss the social aspect more than anything.

[gwangi.livejournal.com]

You have never typed anything more true than that the search engine on this site is lousy. NOTHING.

Also, just to nitpick, it's huevos, not juevos. Here (http://gwangi.livejournal.com/125664.html)'s my personal recipe.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

My bad. I was generalizing from "juan" and "jerez" and so forth. If I spelled it like it sounds around here, it would be Wave-Ohs, like sort of a breakfast cereal affair. I'll make an effort to do better on that front in the future.

[cousinsue.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons people attend church is to spend time with other people with similar beliefs. Hanging out, drinking coffee, eating, and just lightly talking about their weeks.

Leadership is important, 'cause who wants to be there when people are boring.

Eldar Spawn's Rockathon went well, but we brought the rocking chairs back to the back of the church, and now people are just hanging out rocking and talking. It's been interesting.

[alycewilson.livejournal.com]

The social component of church should not be estimated. My mom's church always has some sort of drama going on, with people dropping out over perceived slights or because they don't like something the pastor says. It's as bad as LJ drama.

After that, we went out and set the garden on fire.</i. Which was somehow fitting. ^_^