I'm fudging the rules and letting my students (and myself!) have next Tuesday off. I'm so far behind in grading that I can't see over the stack of papers anymore. We've spent so much time working on the deck that both my Esteemed Spouse and I have a lot to do this weekend to catch up.
Snow was predicted for today, and indeed, I saw a few "flakes" as I drove back to the apartment. "Pellets" is a more apt descriptor. The weather forecast is predicting much more snow next weekend, the day after Thanksgiving (the Black Friday shopping day) and that weekend. Yippee. No enthusiasm, believe me.
I'm spending the night at the apartment rather than driving home after classes on Thursday so that I can get my tenure portfolio done. Sigh. More hoops. I am so very tired of hoops. I'm getting too old to jump that high or that often. Unlike my beloved friend Ellie, I'm not energetic enough to tackle a new career, and I love teaching. If ONLY they would leave me alone and just let me teach! It's all the crapola that goes along with teaching that demoralizes us and causes us to deal with burn-out.
I'm also dealing with another beloved friend/relative who is offended that I don't share her beliefs in religion. Carolyn is deeply hurt and angry because she said she didn't push her religion onto others, and I disagreed. She does. Most of her facebook posts are about her religious beliefs, her constant need to add people to her prayer list, her constant invitations (orders?) to join her at her church or at the church of our choice, her "signature" for her emails (God is great, blah blah blah....). She just does not understand that all that makes me want to scream and shout and seize her (and others) by the neck and shake them until they get a clue. Those of us who don't share your beliefs are tired of hearing all that crap. Stop and think. If I constantly praised Satan on facebook and signed my emails with some sort of witchcraft slogan, people would quickly get on my case and tell me to shut up. Carolyn believes what she does only because everyone else in the area believes, not because there is proof of a deity. And "just faith" isn't enough. We're living in troubled times when far too many people are willing to kill others who worship a "different" deity (they are all Naked Emperors). I'm just plain sick and tired of the lack of logic and reason.
I started to mention to her my latest brain fart. If the Ten Commandments says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and she (and others) constantly praise the Son of God (allegedly) AS God, then aren't they putting Jesus before God, which God specifically said NOT to do? How can Jesus be God AND Son of God? He's got a human being as a mother. He's a halfbreed. And if God is omniscient, why did he need a human woman to impregnate in order to have a son? Why didn't he just create one, the way he supposedly "created" Adam? It would have been a lot easier. And poor Jesus would have been spared the humiliation and agony of being crucified. But, oh, I forgot. That was done in order to "save us from our sins." Gee, thanks, Jesus. Now that your own father allowed you to be murdered and you therefore have saved us, why do we need to pray and go to church and think good thoughts and do good deeds? You died and saved us, so we're home free, right? Yeah. All that makes SO much sense! Oh, but once again, I forgot: I could believe all this crap if only I had FAITH. That makes about as much sense as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
It's time to come out of the closet, not as a homosexual, obviously, but as a skeptic and a rationalist and a humanist and a secularist and a nonbeliever. Add your own "ist" to the list.
It's time for Jeopardy. It will be my luck that they'll have a religion category tonight. My religious friends and family would probably be surprised that I usually run thatcategory. As I told Carolyn, three of my last four book purchases were about comparative religion. (Know your enemy?) But what I really prefer to read are books like one I'm currently reading: The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris, who also wrote The End of Faith.
I'm so tired that I'm making lots of typos and other errors. I don't sleep well at the apartment, and I need to decide in the next week whether to renew my lease. It's a question of whether to buy a house here or commute, maybe with a carpool. Even my department chair is commuting from Grand Rapids to Big Rapids now.
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