How to Create Some Homeless

This morning there was an article in our local paper. 

It seems some leaders in our town are getting upset with homeless people camping out in unused landscape inside city limits.

“It looks terrible!”  They say.  “We have to make another law to keep them from just moving their ratty RV’s (that they live in) around to another spot every two days.” 

(The law here says RV’s can’t be parked in any one place for more than three days.) 

“We’re going to have to increase the stringency of the law to prevent these people from setting up tents in other peoples’ backyards!”  “We certainly don’t need the riffraff in plain view when we are trying to make our city more attractive to businesses!”

In response to the comment of one board member who said that making such laws would give people who already have few options even fewer:  “That’s why we have so many people here who are homeless.  We make it too easy for them!”

And then there’s this line in the article about who these people are. 

Apparently, these “problem people” formerly occupied a run-down trailer park until a developer came along and decided he wanted to use the space to build some kind of business or other. 

(I hadn’t noticed that the developer has even started building anything there yet, two months later.  But then, it’s been a couple weeks since I went by there.)

They were given two months to leave.  The developer had said he’d pay a little something to help them out, as I recall–his only obligation, in his eyes.  It didn’t matter that it may not have been enough to help some of them them move.  (I know from experience how expensive moving can be, especially if it’s to some place out of the area.)

A reporter interviewed some of the residents of the trailer park right after they heard the news.  (This article was in the paper too.)  The ones they talked to were really worried, not knowing what they were going to do. 

One resident was disabled.  Another had no way to move any of her things to another place.

I know for a fact (my brother and I researched the cost of living in a trailer park recently when trying to decide where to live after the house we were living in was sold) that even trailer parks can be expensive around here, and there aren’t too many places that have spots available.  And they interview you too, at least in one trailer park in the area. 

I’ve had experience with interviews here. 

Maybe it’s just that once you’re over 50, you are not considered to be worth hiring for anything anymore.  But I know a young man who hasn’t been able to get work for years because of a blot on his record from something he did when he was a teenager.  After a while (I know this from experience), you just give up and don’t even apply for jobs or anything else anymore.

There may be reasons they have not been able to move!

(The city doesn’t allow RV’s to park just everywhere, either, not even in the ritzier sections of town.)

Along the way they’ve also had blurbs in the paper about these trailer park residents who were displaced.  Just enough articles to cause me to remember…

I seem to remember reading that one of the residents had not moved out when the time was up, and his or her things were put in the dump or something.  (Eviction proceedings, no doubt.) 

Sort of treated like rats in the park, I would say.   You’re not really people, if you’re poor enough.  The place you leave can just decide something else is more important and force you out, just like that.

One winter in Boston, I worked in a homeless shelter that was set up in a church.  A lot of people who stayed there at night had ratty and torn clothes, so I brought my sewing machine one day and offered to fix anyone’s clothes that needed to be fixed.

The few possessions of a homeless person are as precious to him as our houses and cars and expensive possessions are valuable to the rest of us, I discovered.  Maybe more.

One guy needed his jacket fixed, but he was unwilling even to take it off so I could fix it.  He was afraid of letting it go.

I guess he’d had experience with people taking his things if he let someone else have them for one reason or another?  And his jacket with a big hole in it, in the middle of a very cold winter, was more important to him than a fixed jacket, if it had to go through someone else’s hands to get fixed.  He might not get it back, you know!

Another preferred his old ratty socks to brand new ones when they were offered to him.  (I don’t understand that one.  These homeless people do a lot of walking, and a good pair of socks can make all the difference in how comfortable your feet are in your shoes when you walk!)

It doesn’t matter to some people that these are human beings–”we have programs”.

Programs that make them dependent?  What kind of programs?

If it’s a program to help someone learn to do something himself or herself, that might be a good thing, providing there is also lifestyle transition help as well.  (They’d have to learn to fit into at least a middle-income person’s lifestyle in order to be acceptable, in our country.  That’s a far cry from the kind of lifestyle they’ve learned to have.)

However, I see a lot of the programs sponsored by more liberal-minded people as simply being a way to get us out of their sight.

A way to keep them from feeling guilty because they are unwilling to help the unfortunate, themselves.

As a society, we live in Disneyland.  Lots of shooting stars, clean streets, lots of fantasies…we are not going to allow any poor people, trashy yards, homeless people, or handicapped people, or dead people.  (At least out in the open, where everyone can see them…even though all of us will die, at least eventually!)

…Keep the “less valuable” people out of the sight of the rest of us, even if the only thing the well-off might show more value in is ”large amounts of cash”.

If this hulaballoo was about people who had a lot of money or who were going to build a mall for the city so they could get tax income from it, they would have rights.  You know they would!

Why does the fact that someone has nice clothes and jobs mean that they are any better at being quality human beings than people who don’t?  (I’ve noticed an awful lot of higher-up people making news lately simply because they’ve misused the “system” in a way that cost the people of America big-time!)

The typical solution to getting rid of the “druggies” here is to “clean up or fix up the houses they live in and they’ll move out.”  (Maybe because the rent goes up too and they can no longer afford to live there?)

Are our heads in the sand?  Unless the druggies commit suicide, they are going to have to be alive somewhere.  Just forcing them out does not solve the problem–it only shifts the problem to some other place, where it might become even worse in the long run. 

And it could very well come back to us again in another form that we’ll hate more–like having them camp out on the median strips near our downtown areas, or mugging people in the streets so they can find enough money to eat or shoot up with.

I think that unless we can come up with a “win-win” solution for everyone, we’re not going to have a permanent one.

And if, in the process of cleaning things up, we force people to be dependent on the “system”, we’re going to have to put up with a few people camping out in places that make our town look slummy when there’s some kind of an upset. 

Once you get used to be taken care of, it’s hard to think or do what you need to do for yourself anymore!

If Mom and Dad don’t teach the kids how to handle life’s situations before they leave home, those kids might just stay at home with them for the next 30 years. 

Doing things for other people that they should be doing for themselves does them no favors.  It’s training they need to be able to manage life on their own.  If you just dump them out on the street without the training in managing life, “street life” may be all they can hope for…or all we can hope for.

Maybe that’s what we want?  What happens when Mom and Dad pass on?

These are people–not rats. 

People–not cats you can conveniently dump when the next apartment you move to doesn’t allow pets.

And even if they were cats.  Cats who grow dependent on the care of a human being don’t necessarily learn to fend for themselves if they are dumped outside.  They have learned to look to human beings for something to eat, and they are then prime candidates for being abused.  Cats tend to try to find a human to feed them or take care of them once they have been “domesticated”.

My sister had one of those abused and abandoned creatures show up on her doorstep.  Poor thing.  

(The cat, I mean).

Even someone without a home is worth something.  They might even be worth more than the buildings we plan to put up instead of them!

I wish I had more money.  I’d do what I could to help out, if only to buy some land just outside city limits for some of them to park their ratty RV’s or set up their tents on.

Doing things for people is probably not the permanent answer, though.

Yes, there may be more of us than we even know who will need a bit of assistance someday.  There should be temporary help available for those of us who need help with the bumps in life now and then.

But there has to be a desire for something to happen and a participation/cooperation of sorts on the part of the receiver as well.

There’s a time to give handouts, but at some point, there’s also a time to require someone to stand on his or her own two feet.  (Maybe through a system that actually has work they can do and then requires them to do work–if physically and mentally able to do so–to receive the help.)

When I worked at the Salvation Army, part of my job was deciding who deserved emergency help, based on the stories of the people who came for assistance.

Sometimes their stories were so good, I couldn’t tell the difference between someone who was truly needy and someone who was just stringing me along.

Captain Ross was really helpful in this respect.  He said that for people who are continually poor, there is often a network in place through which they can usually find something to meet their need, even if I didn’t give it to them.  Just watch, he said.  If you don’t give help to them, now and then you’ll get a glimpse of them finding a way to get that bus ticket, or whatever–through someone in their own little network.

You give help to someone like that with a good story, and the next 30 people who come in will have almost exactly the same story. 

You then will have figured it out that they have figured out what works to get you to help them. 

They’ve learned to be survivors. 

Most people do what they have to do–they figure out strategies that work, then pass the word on.   And that’s what the ones who came for assistance from the Salvation Army did.

That’s not to say I shouldn’t help people, or that all of them can manage to find their own way.  They may truly have needed the help–and a good many of the rest of us may very well need emergency help someday ourselves.  That person who came for help may be from out of town, and know no one to whom he or she can turn.

The networks of the poor don’t usually extend to places outside of their own local areas.  A lot of them don’t even own a computer, where networking can make things happen for a lot of the rest of us.

But maybe there needs to be a better way than just cutting someone off if they show evidence of “abusing the system”.  After all, that’s the way they’ve learned to fend for themselves.  All of us have to figure out how to do that, at what ever station in life we may reside.

There needs to be a channel opened to them that is a more healthy way of learning to get those needs met.  And then it needs to really work for them, or they won’t do it for long.

Who Should Get Help?

If I was in doubt as to who should get help, the Captain said, I was supposed to give them a test. 

I should give them a broom and ask them to sweep the porch, or give them some other small job that needed to be done there. 

If they said “no thanks, I’ll look elsewhere”, you’d know they were “undeserving” (unless they were physically unable to do the work or something such).  I’d know that we were just part of their system for survival without their having to work for it. 

If they gladly did the work, I was to have no qualms about giving the assistance to them.  That seemed to be the defining line, to me, ever after. 

If someone is willing to work, and I have the resources to help them when they say they need help, I’ll do whatever I can to help them get to a place where they can be self-sufficient. 

We do people no favors when we allow them to live on welfare without corresponding responsibility.  Yes, it may take a transition period to really help them get to where they need to go.  But our government can no longer afford to support the masses when the masses are really capable of fending for themselves with the right system in place–a system that they can understand and live with too.

Our President is a Single Parent

For as long as America has been a country, it has been headed by one person.

In our country, that person is and was always a man, and he just about always has a lawfully-married woman (his own) standing by his side.

Wifey’s job is to look pretty, to look like the perfect White House hostess and to (sometimes) put up with whatever her husband decides to do on the side.

It’s a big job, no doubt about it. So many things to do, both inside the country and outside of it!

As a single woman who spent a long time looking for a potential spouse (at least during the earlier part of my adulthood), I have another point of view.

One thing has become quite clear to me about most guys who show an interest in me: most of them, if left to themselves, pay very little attention to certain things they consider relatively unimportant, such as housework.

Let me just say that this is certainly not true of all of them–guys who do care about these things seem to do them to perfection, and definitely put me to shame in this area.

It’s just my observation that if they marry, most guys are looking for someone else to do certain home-related chores so they can focus on other things.

I can just about guarantee you, if there’s any thought in a guy’s mind that I might be a possible partner in his life, he will eventually test me to see what my reactions to doing housework might be.

It’s a good test–but one I am invariably impatient with.

Why?  Because I’m somewhat like them myself, I hate to admit it!

When I am thinking or have other things to do, housework is just about the last thing I do.  I wouldn’t mind having a good “wife” too, in that respect!

But if I don’t do it, it generally doesn’t get done.  And sometimes it doesn’t!

Well, on with the story…

Characteristics of the house of a person who devalues housework can include:

• Junk on the floor one foot deep
• Doing the dishes is put off for days on end
• Pop cans and cat hairs are strewn across the floor, and they stay there until someone else picks them up or sweeps them out–even if it takes years before someone does!
• Furniture is left in the same place forever and ever–they don’t see it, so why would they be tired of it?
• A nanny is usually hired, or a friend helps out, if he has children–it’s too much for a single father to do all alone
• Design and color are nowhere to be found, and his home environment is typically colorless and drab.  Such things are just not important!

It’s a lot to do, taking care of the “kids” of the country and the big world out there, too.  And that’s what a President has to do, all by himself!

I suggest that two hundred years of having men as Single Presidents of the United States has probably left some major House-related things undone:

• Clutter in the Cabinets
• Help for the “kids of the country” is farmed out to others (charities, grants, etc.) because it’s too much work to organize it within the main branch of government!
• The House has not been cleaned from top to bottom in a long, long time!
• Wading through six feet of (now accumulated) garbage makes everything so much harder to do!  Someone needs to reduce all that paperwork, or someone will drown!
• Might need someone to help with the finances, if the man is not good with math
• Doesn’t have time to give the kids adequate attention, especially if dad has been tied up with things like war

If some things were moved around in government once in a while (the “furniture”, if you  will), it might be a breath of fresh air to everyone! It’s no wonder the role of the Vice President is seen as being undefined. No offense to men (and this is sincere), but some of them just don’t see the need to do certain things that would otherwise drive a woman crazy. Whether some things get done or not is just not important to them!

And that might be why God made women. We see different things as being important, and we fill in the gaps in life that can cause problems down the road if they are not attended to.  Sometimes what we do just helps to create a more comfortable existence for the man of the house when he comes home!

While a comfortable existence is unnecessary in the short term, the world of work can sometimes do such a number on men that they need that kind of a place to come home to, and it might be important for long-term sanity!

Dad has a very important job to do.  (This is absolutely true.)

He finds a way to provide for the family and helps steer the family “ship”, and much of the time that’s no small matter!

A father’s influence is more important than many people may know.  It is a fact that his interaction with the “kids” is essential for their emotional health, and results of the lack of any of that interaction is particularly acute after a child becomes an adult.

Did you know that almost no criminals have a good relationship with their father?  (That’s something Chuck Colson’s ministry discovered, when working with prisoners.)

And I know for a fact that the kind of interaction a girl has with her father very often determines the kind of man she marries, or whether she has difficulty relating to men.

The way dad interacts with the kids of America might be affected, too.  He needs to have some good interaction with them for the health of the nation, and not just be focused on his work in the world.

Mom typically brings forth life, life that was originally created between the two of them. She then spends half of her life nurturing it, doing a multitude of things that makes their “nest” a pleasant and enriching place for both the kids and for dad to be.

She cooks nutritious food so the family has the best possible health and and helps direct the kids into healthy activities, both for the present and to create good habits that will carry them well through life, running them around to such things as sports events, music lessons, and doctor appointments. (For the kids of the Country, that might mean learning to appreciate the Arts, Proper Exercise, Nutrition, FDA, Healthcare…)

Society sees the mother as being most responsible for those things, too.

If the kids are sick, most of the time it’s assumed that mom will be the one to take time off work to care for them. If the house looks dirty, the mother is judged to be at fault, not the dad. Statistics have shown that even if both mom and dad both work outside the home, women still do most of the housework. It’s just not seen as being a man’s job to do it!

For a long time, government has been seen as being “men’s work”.

Women are a part of it too, now, but the basic structure remains the same.

Aggressive tactics like filibusters are still allowed (such a waste of time and of taxpayers’ money!), abuse of each other in election campaigns is still seen as being normal; bribery is normal (“boys will be boys!”), and “it’s just politics” is seen as a justifiable reason for treating someone else badly.

Maybe some furniture needs to be moved around so we have another perspective.

Mrs. President

What the President needs is a wife (or a husband, if the Mr. President is a woman). We need a Mrs. President (and not just the one who is the President’s legally-married-to spouse)!

Our President is nearly always already married in real life. That’s not what I mean.

I’m talking about the government needing a shakeup in the structure of government, dividing the existing function of President into two parts:

• the part relating with the world outside the U.S., and the part managing the kids of the country
• And each of those two parts would need a “President” of sorts: Both Mr. President (with his or her spouse, if they had one) and Mrs. President (with her or his spouse).

If Santa Claus can have a “wife”, so can Mr. President!

Mr. President would, just like a regular dad, manage the direction our country would take in the world. (That might include dealing with the money system worldwide and such and trade.)  He would have the “final authority”. If there was a problem in the country that mom could not solve, there would be interaction and delegation and consensus on what needed to be done. Mom and dad would work together to make things work!

“Mom” would be responsible for bringing about new life (jobs and any other things that needed to be brought into being), also getting rid of things that have long since lost their value (cleaning house), nurturing of any new life and people who need help and coordinate many of the functions of the country itself. She would manage the functions now loosely managed by such groups as charities and religion and welfare and healthcare activities, keeping a view to saving the country money whenever possible (including eliminating duplication, especially where it creates conflicts and waste of money).

I saw duplication happen once between two well-known charities in my own town.  (I worked for one of them, that’s how I observed this phenomenon.)  Only the charity who got to the disaster first got to have its name put in the paper, and the one that got its name in the paper typically got more of the funding.

I think there’s a need now to help America start to think “right-brain” so as to best take advantage of the kinds of things that would benefit America most and jobs that would pay best.

Manufacturing and technology will have diminishing returns for America. Projects and programs could be developed to help with redirection.

An alternative currency system could be developed that benefitted women and met women’s needs and responsibilities best (as a balance to the current system), using volunteer hours as the base standard of value instead of gold. (See my idea of a volunteer currency system under the “Let’s Fix the Economy” tab.)

“Mom” could even help her kids find romance and provide for them to get guidance if needed…

Other countries have systems in place to help match up potential mates. The family is an important basic unit upon which rests much of the country’s stability (history shows that).  I think we need to provide some way for singles to come together that does not necessarily cost them a lot of money.

It would still be a singles’ choice which way they did it, of course.  But a nationally-sponsored system might be especially good for those who can’t afford the extra monthly expense of an online dating site membership or who might prefer to date in a more casual or nonthreatening way.

My experience as a single has shown me that sometimes there’s so much focus on ourselves as singles in the dating process that things might go wrong sometimes just because of that.

You know what kind of guy I’d be most impressed with, if I was “looking”?  Someone who showed evidence of caring enough that he’d voluntarily do something for someone else, and not just himself, or even me.

And I think if we worked together for a common cause but also submitted our psychological/personality profiles at the beginning, singles could be sent out on volunteer projects with other potentially compatible singles, both men and women.  I know when I was in college and some of the students went out on summer mission trips, there almost always seemed to be a few couples that got together over the summer through the trips.

Doesn’t it also seem like those who work together for a common cause also feel more bonding with those they work with?

I could see something easily coming together for them through the “volunteer club” idea I have (see the “Let’s Fix the Economy” tab), with a little bit of tweaking.

There’d be plenty for an officially-elected Mrs. President to do, whether Mr. President now sees the need for a governmental “wife” or not.  Just find a way to give him one, and I can almost guarantee that thereafter, he wouldn’t know how to manage without her!

Money Cycles Too!

Our money system is standardized world-wide.  When we do things with our money that are less than sublime, others involved in our rhythm of give-and-take can and will suffer too, we are learning.

On the home front, if one partner buys a fancy new car and the family can’t afford it, the whole family might have to live on macaroni and cheese for a while if they are going to have a good financial balance.

Maybe in the balance of life, our money system also needs something to balance it?

I’m going to compare our current money system to being a “single father”. 

Money spawns all these different things just by the ways we use it, and it takes care of the kids as a result, but there are some things that are missing without a “wife’s” interaction with it.

Money, being “man-made” (originally started by men, I’m guessing, since they were the ones who probably created it and handled it to start with), it tends to favor men’s priorities and things they are especially good at, in life.

That’s good.

Men traditionally “brought home the bacon” (especially if they raised livestock!). The system depended on men making most of the money in order to support their families, especially since earlier in our country’s history, most women had very large families and didn’t also work outside the home.

Hence, favor was given to men in wages (and often still is) and was programmed to appreciate in line with what were traditionally seen as being men’s attributes, things that are necessary for jobs, such as: the higher your skill level, the more you are paid.

Then women entered the job market. In order to compete in that market, we had to play by the men’s rules. That’s the way it’s set up.

World-wide, there’s this underlying value system that says a woman is fundamentally worth less than a man–am I understanding this correctly? Or is this just how it feels?

(There could be something I am not understanding just because I’m still single and don’t usually have the input of money-smart men around me.)

But you know it’s true. If some countries need to reduce their population, it’s the girl babies who are thrown away or killed. If a girl baby is born, there is dismay, while high congratulations are given to couples when a boy baby is born.

May I suggest that our money system reflects the belief that women, and anything women do, is worth less than a man or what a man does.

Until we fully value women and incorporate what is seen as a typical woman’s values into the financial system, I think it’s possible our money system may continue to cycle wildly out of control at times, if all it has is its “single parent” rhythm that tries to cover all the needs in society with one method.

Everything in life needs a balance. Money is no exception.

The Volunteer Club Currency System

What if we could give our money system a “wife”? One that incorporated female attributes into its reward system so that we had a currency with built-in rewards that favored a woman’s typical functions in society?

Just like in marriage, such a system could provide balance during times of normal monetary stress. When the regular money system ebbed in value, the “female” currency could flow.

And I believe, from hearing people talk about the Great Depression, that elements of my idea were present in the way Great Depression survivors were able to manage. This would just organize things ahead of time so everyone could benefit, through a prepared networking system.

See my “Volunteer Club Currency” page for an idea of a way to balance our money system to help the economy.

Life Cycles

Every part of life, and everything that is influenced by life, has its own rhythm.

Understanding that lets us work with it to the best advantage.

As people, by nature we may have particular times of the day when we function best and when we might be better off just taking a nap.

Each person’s rhythm is different.

 So are the rhythms of animals. So are the comings and goings of customers in a store. (It’s amazing how often customers tend to come into a store in a group and leave in a group. How do we humans know to do that?  There must be a kind of social rhythm too!)

So does money.

Because money comes and goes based on what people do with it, it is most valuable if, once you put the money in an investment, you leave it there, for better or worse.  What goes down will come up, as long as the companies you are investing in are sound.

Companies cycle too, based on what kind of business they are and how they are handled.

It’s fear itself that can be our own worst enemy, and banks and the stock market can reap the results of it.

If everyone panics at the same time and takes out all their money, the institutions we take them from have nowhere to go, nothing to hold them up.

We have “killed” them, all by ourselves, just by reacting out of fear!

Balance

If nature has been programmed to have rhythm, it has also been programmed to have balance.

Gory as it seems to me, certain animals are programmed to eat certain other animals, which keeps each population down so that no one species overpopulates any given area or starves or forces out any other group.

We can fool around with nature, accidentally or on-purpose introducing species from other places into our own country, and can totally mess up the balance of nature.

God seems to have given almost every kind of animal both a male and female (not all), and arranged for interaction between us to be a necessary part of life. We balance each other out.

Men and women, while all human beings, are fundamentally different in drive, perspective and purpose. Our responses to things, if misunderstood, can wreak havoc in a relationship between us.

If understood, however, and arranged in such a way that the best features of each are relied upon by the other and the worst features of each person are covered by the other, together man and a woman can be a much stronger force than either would be by himself or herself.

To me, that is part of what I see as the value of marriage. It’s part of a balance of nature that we human beings need in society as well as in marriage, and in money as well as in society.

About “Gay”

Though by using the word “gay” I am really just describing the type of relationship I think government parties and representatives have with themselves and their relative perspectives, I thought I probably shouldn’t use the word “gay” as a comparison without sharing my own perspectives on the subject. It’s an emotion-packed subject, and not knowing how I think about it could change how you see what I am saying.

…If that makes sense.

I should say up front that though it’s becoming less popular to be so nowadays, I’m a Bible-believing Christian.  However, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going where you think I’m going with this.

When I was in Boston, I had a friend who was gay [a friend of a friend, and he became a (platonic) friend of mine too]. I saw his reaction to me when we were first introduced. It didn’t take much to see that there was something about “Christians” that he was afraid of.

It seems to me there’s often this assumption that all Christians hate gays, or (if we’re a Christian) that we should.

(While I do not choose that lifestyle for reasons of my own, a person is a person, after all. Why should we treat them as if they were not?)

…And because, as I see it, when Jesus physically walked on the earth, I don’t think He did either. Look how he treated the woman caught in adultery (a sin punishable by death in His day).  (Strange how the ones who brought her to Jesus didn’t bring along the guy she committed adultery with as well. Adultery is a two-person affair!)

And He said, among other things, “Judge not, that you be not judged,” and “I did not come into the world to condemn the world, I came to save it.”

My gay friend is a very sweet and sensitive guy. He came once a week to spend time with my landlady’s adopted son, and afterwards we would usually have a conversation. I liked him. He’s a very nice, very thoughtful person.

When my landlady/employer (not Christian) introduced me to him, she told him in the same breath that I was a Christian.

I swear, he backed away from me about a foot. It was not hard to see that to him, there was something less than ideal associated with “Christian”.

I believe God cares as much about people who make different choices than I do as He does me. Whatever I believe, who am I to expect those who don’t believe as I do to do things my way?

After all, Jesus said, “Whosoever will (wants to) may come.” Not “everyone must be forced to do it my way.”

It’s a choice. We all have to make choices. And let’s face it, we all have God-given needs built into us that practically require us to do something to get them met. We just employ different ways of getting them met based on a number of factors that are important to us.

It appears to me that (just like most heterosexuals do), when looking for a partner, gays basically subconsciously look for someone to help them work on whatever issues they have left over from their past, someone who can complement their weaknesses and strengths.

On my side of things, I believe a true Christian gets any ability to do things differently because he or she has chosen to ask God to live with and inside of them, and He gives them a new heart and a new mind. How would anything God requires of a Christian apply to someone who has not chosen to be one?

Let me be clear. I do believe God asks me, as a follower of Him, not to have that lifestyle myself. From Scripture, the reason seems to be that “those who do so reap the results in their own bodies.”  Whatever tendencies I may have, I’m just not interested in those results for myself.

And I know all about “reaping the results in my own body” in another way–I love ice cream. Every time I eat it, I notice my body registers the results in pounds and indigestion and other nasty things. I prefer not to have any more results in my own body of that kind.  (Easier said than done!)

I guess most of us do things the way we do because we perceive that they work for us, or maybe just because they’ve become a comfortable way for us to relate, or do them, or emotionally bear things .

For me, believing as I do gives me certain benefits in the spiritual arena if I do things God’s way. And I want those benefits.

I’m explaining, because I just want you to know what I’ll miss out on if I decide to do things contrary to how God says I’m to do them.

One of the benefits of knowing God personally is that I can communicate with Him whenever I want (whether I say anything out loud or not), and know that He will hear and take care of me. I know that both through Scriptures and by experience.

God’s care of me may not happen in the way that I expect.  He might ask me to do some things too (they might come in the form of responsibilities, or something). It may also take a lot longer than I expect or prefer.

(Have to tell you, though. Though some say “God always does things on time”, that doesn’t always mean that “on time” is according to any human timetable! They’re right about it being “in time” for whatever thing God is doing, but what God does may seem to take way too long for the thing I think is supposed to happen!!!)

It certainly doesn’t mean I don’t or won’t suffer sometimes along the way. (Some people, like Job in the Bible, suffer a great deal in their lives. Suffering seems to be a part of everyone’s life in some way if they live long enough.)

I’ve been around long enough to see God do what He does in amazing ways, at times. Sometimes He does things that benefit me in ways others can’t see or do anything about, too.

(Truthfully, I’d just as soon others didn’t know about some of the benefits sometimes. I can get away with more. However…)

Just as a President is supposed to be “perfect” (is there any such thing?), somehow there’s this perception that if you are a Christian, you are supposed to be perfect, or something.   

(Well, maybe we’re supposed to be perfect in attitude, as Jesus says He requires that of us.  But I really don’t think that means we’re going to automatically do everything right simply because we believe in Jesus.  I John says if we say we have no sin, we are liars, and the truth is not in us.)

Being a Christian doesn’t mean I am flawless. It does mean if He points something out to me, I need to ask for forgiveness and correct the direction I’m going. 

It means that (however wrathful I may have learned He is) I do have a good God.

It means I have Someone on my side Who has a good plan in mind for me and has promised to go through the hard things with me,  “working all things together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

At times it might feel like everything has gone wrong in my life, and that nothing can ever be straightened out again. But somehow even out of bad things, God can and does bring good things for those who believe in Him, including me. Most of the time, though, I’m “in process”, and it’s often not obvious what He’s done until I’m on the other side of it.

Prayer

Our local paper had an article about a study done by some group to find out if “prayer” works.

My question is, if they don’t believe there is a God, how could it even work?  The last I knew, “prayer” has to connect with someone powerful enough to do something about what we’re asking.

Prayer is the natural communication between me and the One who made me. We’re asking Someone who can actually do something to Do Something, usually for us or for someone else or about a situation.

Prayer is an outgrowth of my relationship with God, and it also requires me to follow the terms of His covenant with those of us who’ve chosen to go His way.

To get results from my prayers, I find I need to keep my relationship with Him in good shape. That requires that I do what He says.

I have at times chosen to do things on my own terms. And though God forgives and keeps giving me chances when I don’t deserve them, I’ve also reaped the consequences, at times, when I have chosen to go against what He has asked me to do.

One of the consequences of not doing what God asks me to do is that I am not consistently able to pray and get answers to my prayers. I need to do what He says to have His benefits.

For me to abstain from a gay lifestyle does not mean I’m trying to make a statement or say anything about anyone else thereby.  I just want to do what it takes to keep my relationship current with my Heavenly Father.

The way I see it, God made me. That means He knows how I was made to function. When I ignore the standards He set up for humankind, things go wrong, and once they do, they can take a long time to resolve in a healthy way.

Getting to know Him means I get really used to having these (sometimes unexplainable) benefits that I’ll lose if I decide to ignore what He says!

If your lifestyle is different than mine, and I choose to keep it that way, rest assured it may not have anything to do with what I think of you.

Nature

Because most people refer to what I call God’s program for the earth as “nature”, I’m going to call it nature from here on out.

I learned when studying alternative health care subjects that the closer a food is to the way it came to us in nature, the better our bodies can use the nutrients in it for maintaining proper health.

The more processed or altered a food is when we eat it, the more likely we are, at some point in our lives, to suffer health problems in one way or another if we eat it, even if nutrients are added back in.

Enriching a food after taking nutrients out of it can actually cause certain vitamins to be even more out of balance in our bodies (such as the B vitamins, when they are added back in to denatured cereals) than before.

Our bodies were made to move in order to renew themselves physically and to keep them flexible and healthy.  (Wouldn’t it be nice if cars worked that way?)

The more we follow nature’s laws in moving our bodies the right amount, in the right way, the more we can generally expect to be renewed and energized physically and mentally. The more consistently we exercise in the right way, the more chance we have of living healthfully for a long time.

I think this also applies to the way our spirits and souls function, too. We do best on all levels as human beings when we try to live closest to the healthy patterns of life. Patterns like treating others with dignity, respecting the boundaries of marriage, giving children the right kinds of attention at the right times, respecting others’ rights to own property, and so on. Certain aspects of our beings can get mangled just in the press of life, otherwise.

And I figure the outward choices we see some people make might just be a result of being “mangled” in one’s soul in early life, in some way. We have to get our needs met somehow, and if things aren’t fixed the right way, we might feel a need for other kinds of solutions.

Or something like that.

A Single’s Perspective

I decided to share some things I have learned during my years as a single that might relate to this. For better or for worse, I might have a different perspective in this area than others who believe similar to the way I do, because of it.

Part of the reason I am sharing this is because I have noticed that I had some things in common with the gay guy I knew, such as the fact that both of us went into deep depression after our fathers died. I don’t know about him, but my depression over my father’s death lasted a long, long time.

And I noticed that as soon as my gay friend’s dad died, he decided he didn’t want to come visit the little boy anymore.  (Abandonment.)

I wondered if his own dad do that to him in some way?  I’ve read that throughout the generations, we tend to continue to do the kinds of things that were done to us, unless the cycle is stopped in some way.

It kind of makes me wonder if, at the heart of things, my friend and I might have a common reason for our “relationship status”. (If that makes sense.) Maybe there was a common reason for our choices or lack thereof?  I don’t know.  (Abandonment? “Daddy” stuff?)

Fathers, I have heard and read, can make a significant difference in the outcome of a child’s life, just by how he treats his little ones and his involvement with them. Does he interact with them? Does he put them down consistently and tell them they are no good? Does he beat them, or abandon them, or fail to keep promises to them?

Or does he stick by them, talk to them, build them up and encourage them, and teach them to do what he does, taking them with him where he goes at times and demonstrating with his life what a good authority figure looks like–strong, patient, understanding and caring?  (I may have forgotten some. Good dads are good for a lot of things.)

All those things (or the lack thereof) can affect the life of a child dramatically, especially after he or she grows up.

Criminals, Chuck Colson’s ministry discovered, almost all love their mothers and want to send Mother’s Day cards to them.  Almost none wanted to send a card to their dads.  (Well, that could just mean that they don’t see it as manly to send cards to their fathers, I don’t know.)

Maybe I don’t see all the reasons for that.  I do know many women get very upset if their special days are not remembered in some way.  (Not all–I’m one of the world’s worst at remembering special days. Just ask my friend Karen!)

To me, this just says marriage between a man and a woman is still the ideal plan. God intended for both a daddy’s influence, support, and time and a mom’s love and nurturing to be the normal foundation for emotional well-being in the life of every child.

Men and women have two completely different perspectives and roles in life, even if they learn to blend their styles, and both are desperately needed in the molding of a healthy child in his developing years.

In My Own Life…

As a single, I have long had my own set of problems when it comes to finding a partner with whom I can share my life.

For a long time, I struggled with why I was so inept in this area. It’s not that I don’t do a lot of reading on the subject, because I do!

(Well, it’s been painfully obvious all along that I don’t live up to the beauty standards most men require now. But besides that…)

As someone who’s been single a long time, though, I probably have a few perspectives that are a little different from most of what is expressed in mainstream Christianity. 

I’m just in a different place, let’s face it.

I have done a lot of reading about the differences between men and women, and reasons why relationships work or don’t work. For a long time, I also tried just about everything (aside from doing things outside of the standards of Scripture) to make something work.

It never did.

And now, even though God gave me a special promise that He would bring to me the one He had for me, and that I would be married, it’s no longer a priority to find anyone (just for the record).

God gave me a calling that I believe is more important, for one thing, and I find I am often happier in my single state than some of my married friends are. I feel quite grateful I never married, to be frank. (I probably would have chosen a partner who would not have worked out, given my propensities for finding relationships that don’t work!)

After His promise to me, God did do a lot of work in my life, bringing people into my life who helped me learn more about people and relationships. However, the more I studied about the subject of marriage and family, the more it appeared to me that I really am not the kind of person who would be the best at making a man happy.

One thing I discovered was that I needed “daddy work”. And, having tried counseling a few times, counseling didn’t ever seem to be the kind of thing that could make up for the place that never seemed to form in me.

I had, I think, a great dad in many ways. Personality-wise I identified with him, too. He was quiet and sensitive (“genteel”, some called him), the kind of guy I’ve always kind of looked for in a husband myself.

Maybe seeing his good qualities was part of the reason it was so hard to figure out why I had so many difficulties in this area–I basically saw him as a good guy.

The only thing is, I only remember one time when he ever talked with me directly. He would even be in our house a great deal sometimes (he couldn’t do too much farming in wintertime), but he’d almost always be doing his own thing when he was. He’d talk to the boys in the family, and he’d talk to my sisters when they gave him trouble, but I only remember him talking to me once, directly.

I tried to do everything right and stay out of his way, basically.  Apparently I figured that was what was expected of me.

That expectation was confirmed once when he asked one of my sisters why she couldn’t be more like me. “Quiet” and “stay out of my way” was good, to him.

My siblings and I were not allowed to date until we got out of high school. That meant that we had “zero” guidance on the subject of dating from our parents, growing up (other than giving me a Christian book on dating). The only siblings in my family who have married were first “parented” by someone else as well, after they left home, maybe for a similar reason?

Part of the problem may have been that dad didn’t believe he and mom should show affection in front of us kids. I don’t know about my siblings, but I didn’t learn what healthy affection was supposed to look like, at home.

I confess, for a long time I never knew anything about what made relationships with the opposite sex work, and I have made such a terrible mess of almost every relationship I’ve ever had with a guy!

I don’t think my dad ever meant anything by his lack of attention to us girls. To him, that was just what being a good Christian father was–he followed what some considered to be Christian standards at the time. He was shy, too, and probably didn’t know how to interact with girls, even his own. That’s what his own dad did, no doubt.

At one point I learned I had experienced what is called “abandonment” in my childhood, and then I did some reading on the subject.

One book I read said that the only kind of woman a man should avoid marrying is the woman who has had an “absent” father (emotionally and/or physically) growing up, or a father who did not participate in some way in a healthy father/daughter relationship with her. That woman, the book said, would make his life hell.

Well, that was me. I have been looking for my “father” all my life. It’s a blank space inside that feels as if it cannot legitimately become what it needs to be in the right way, unless God does it, now. There are no handles to hold on to inside in certain places–they just never formed, I think. I don’t know how else to explain it.

I’m not particularly looking for anyone to fix that anymore, but now there are other reasons I don’t consider marrying, at the moment.

Temperamentally, if a man were to marry me, he would have to live with a “Joan of Arc”-type personality that needs to “save the world”/needs a mission to be happy. (That’s difficult for most families to handle, I hear).  (My dad was kind of like that, too, but mostly he just had a lot of ideas and interests he wanted to pursue. It’s hard to do that when you have six kids.)

My spouse would have to put up with someone with something like a professor/Einstein-type way of thinking that can completely lose touch with anything and anyone for days on end at times, because everything I experience on those days tends to be focused on whatever subject I am thinking about. (Einstein, I read, also had trouble with relationships because he was not always “all there”.)

Which is to Say…

What I’m trying to say is I figure most of us probably have a hole in the fabric of our lives in some way because of things that did not happen for us that needed to. (Baggage.)  I have theories about why people might do one thing or another, but there are too many possible reasons, such as inadequate relationships with fathers or mothers, or bad experiences with friends or others, to make any judgments.

(It’s unwise to make assumptions. Almost every time I think I have something nailed down, I find another way there can be an exception!)

Not all that long ago, I know many fathers didn’t see it as being important to interact with their children. That was their wife’s job, and their job was done if they provided an income for the family.

Among younger people, there’s often more flexibility in family roles now.  I really appreciate seeing that, when I do.

Part of my thinking, both about gays and about heterosexuals, is that we all seem to subconsciously look for partners who might help complement us in our areas of weakness or fill the needs left in us from things that happened in our lives. If we were missing something in our upbringing, we tend to look for someone who can help us work through our “stuff” that still needs to be worked through.

If, for instance, we were missing a daddy’s love, we might be looking for someone who looks like he could fill that spot or maybe has some of the characteristics of the parent we still have issues with.

How is that something we should judge each other for?

Just My Perspective…

As His created ones, God knows how He made us to function best.  If we operate these well-equipped “human machines” He made contrary to how He made them to function, some things will probably go wrong. (…And others will either benefit or suffer from whatever we do around them as a result, since we are made to function in relationship). 

A good many of us might not know the right way to maintain our created functions without help of some kind.

Though much has changed, that was certainly true of me.

Suppose there is a manufacturing company that makes toasters. Their conveyer belts move fast-as-a-bullet, so that employees must work quickly to do their jobs right.

Suppose also that an employee at this company sneezed as a toaster came through. Maybe as a result of the sneeze, he neglected to put in a crucial part–say, one spring on the left side of the toaster, such that the toast wouldn’t come up correctly on that side.

A piece that is missing or put in wrong can cause things to function in a way that is not normal for that appliance. The poor toaster with a missing spring might be flinging toast into the cabinets or not ejecting toast at all, without help and “healing”/fixing.

I have learned a lot about myself in the last ten or twenty years.  I have come up with theories about possible reasons for things I see in others by observing my own reactions to situations that come up, sometimes.

In one situation, it seemed like I was being offered an opportunity to have a “relationship” with another woman. It surprised me that my first reaction was a sense of relief.

I knew that there was a missing part of my own life for which there seemed to be no remedy. I also usually get along really well with most women, and I do tend to have a gift for saying and doing all the wrong things around guys who might have an interest in me and in whom I also would have an interest…

If I had chosen to take part in this relationship, it would have probably been because an enduring relationship with her actually seemed possible, as opposed to everything else I had tried that never worked out with a man.  (Unless he was someone I was not interested in–then it often didn’t seem to be a problem relating to them at all.)

After a little bit of probing, it seemed to me like something similar might have also existed for this woman I just mentioned. In her profession, she rarely met any eligible single men, and it looked to me like she desperately wanted children of her own. She needed to be a mother, and it was painful to see that she couldn’t be one, simply because there were few eligible single men she could meet.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but for at least some of us, maybe the reason some of us do things others don’t think are right (like having a lesbian relationship) is that there just needs to be better ways of finding eligible mates in our country, and some of us end up compromising so we can at least have someone.

This was ten or fifteen years ago, perhaps before online dating sites really started to take off. I know there are lots of online dating sites now, but not everyone benefits from them, I think, especially if they don’t have a computer or don’t have a lot of extra money lying around.

I know there are some free ones too… I don’t even bother with them, myself, because it seems like every guy’s preference is for a model-type woman, which I am not.  And I believe with the promise God gave me, I’m to be looking for a certain kind of person.  I haven’t met him yet.

But this discourse should answer just about any question you’d ever ask me about how I relate to the word “gay” or to people I know who are…or about how I feel about being single. 

I at least hope it helped you understand my concept of why government is “gay”.

 

Our Political System is Gay!

 

Can anybody tell me why America seems to crave having a woman or a black man in the White House at this particular time?  During this election, all of a sudden, we have two white women and one black man in the running in the two major political parties.

 

 

We Need a Civilizing Influence Now

 

Consider our Presidential Campaigns. Somehow, the standard now allows candidates to attack each other in order to win.  (That is often considered a typical male characteristic–though I have to say, when women do fight, they can be pretty nasty too!)

 

 

Too Much Money Wasted

 

In my way of thinking, it’s practically sinful allowing anyone to be able to use so much money, however they got it, simply on campaigning.  Currently, its main use seems to be for the purpose of slandering the competition in order to get what one wants: to be President.

 

 

Campaign Process

 

A campaign process could incorporate right-brain techniques and current trends even beyond technology for winning the Presidency in ways that I think might be so fun, absolutely nobody would miss watching the competitions on TV! …Sort of the difference between laundry soap ads on TV thirty years ago and the kind of ads you see today.

 

 

Advertisers really have to work at being able to capture the attention of viewers, now that those who have satellite dishes and DVRs can speed through taped programs and ads anytime they want to.  As a result, ads can be so fun to watch now, they can be better than the programs we originally intended to see.  (Some of those Geico ads might be among them.)

Why can’t Presidential elections be as much fun to watch as some of the ads nowadays?  During election season, we’re forced to watch and hear the same complaining, abusive stuff over and over and over, and that does very little to show us who we should be voting for anyway, much of the time.  Surely we can do better than that!

See my “Different Kind of Campaign” page.  It’s about an idea for a different kind of campaign that I think might be fun, fun, fun for the whole family to do and to watch, and might not even cost candidates a cent!  (Maybe anyone in America who was truly qualified could become President someday!

 

Whether or not a candidate gets donations in such small amounts that it doesn’t “count”, or whether a candidate takes anything from the government coffers to run his or her campaign or not should not matter!

I think that money could be used for better things and still be able to demonstrate the things in a campaign that voters need to know, showing us what kinds of things they would do for the country if they were elected and what kind of person they are.

It’s deceitful to do anything else, I think.

Do we allow sports competitors to take drugs so they can outshine their competition?

Of course not.  It has to all be based on what a candidate is naturally able to do.

Allowing some candidates better access to money to further their campaigns over that of any other competitor does exactly the same thing, the way I see it.  If they do such manipulative things to get into office, they should be disqualified…unless they are equally willing to continue raising funds from outside sources during the entire time he or she was President in order to run the country, as a way of showing us what he would do as President.  All of it!!!!!

(We could sure use the money to pay off our national debt, plus the trillion or so dollars that our leaders voted to be applied to stabilizing our economy!)

One of the current candidates says he wants to tax the rich more to redistribute the wealth.

You say it doesn’t affect the poor when the rich get taxed in this country?

Sure it does, because where do the jobs come from?

They come, most of the time, from businesses that get busy and need help.

Some of the highest expenditures a company ever has is for wages and the taxes that go along with hiring people.

Raise taxes on the rich, and you may find yourself losing your job. Your boss may not have enough money to pay Peter (the IRS) and Paul (his employees).

Right now, even if a candidate tried to be nice, he would eventually have to provide rebuttal to the attacks or risk having the voters believe what the competitor said about him. (It seems we voters do believe that kind of thing, too, if there is no response to a competitor’s attacks.)

I see abuse as being a normal part of our Presidential Campaigns now. I really think we need a new format for them, if only to stop the abuse.

Why do we allow candidates to abuse each other? Because we need to know that they can handle the abuse of politics and politicians and leaders around the world? Abuse creates abuse, and sometimes war.

Why is it allowable for any of the news media to abuse or try to bring disfavor to candidates they don’t approve of? I thought journalists and such were supposed to be non-biased!  And neither church or charity leaders are even allowed to say anything to influence elections now, or they supposedly risk losing their tax-exempt status.  (If they are liberal church leaders who condemn America it doesn’t seem to matter, however.) 

Among America’s entities, are only journalists allowed freedom of speech in this country? 

I have another question. Why do we allow followers of politicians (those who try to get their candidate elected) to be abusive?  We don’t let (say) employees be abusive, if we want to maintain good working or business-to-customer relationships.  It’s even illegal to do so.

In fact, in a sports contest, we would disqualify someone for abusing one of his or her competitors.

Our laws don’t let advertisers slander or put down other advertisers.  Why are politicians allowed to get away with doing that to their competitors or other politicians?

All may be fair in love and war, but as far as I know, politics was not supposed to be included in either of those categories.

Shouldn’t there be some level of decency or dignity allowed for every person who appears in public, as well?  We have made heroes or villains of anyone who is famous, and it seems to be perfectly okay to trash them, put them on a pedestal, or hunt them down.

People are people.  Rich or famous or political people are people too.

While selling things on eBay, I corresponded briefly with someone from Holland and discovered that he’s been watching our elections on TV, too.  I think we would do immeasurably more for our candidates and for our country in the eyes of people around the world if we required our candidates and their followers to show respect for each other, in speeches, in debates, in interviews, even in speeches they might give in other countries.  If the other person becomes President, the speeches the first candidate gave may very well lower the opinion the whole world has about our country. 

We need a good reputation in the world in order to do trade and other business well and to help our own economy.

At least in theory, women who are real women are the civilizing part of society.  We soften things up, we focus on understanding and resolving issues and meeting needs; we reduce the abuse.

Just eliminating the abuse in campaigns might actually do more to show us who each candidate really is and what he or she would do for us, because none of them could then base the rest of their campaigns on how well they were able to put everyone else down. 

(And let’s face it, just because a competitor tells everyone in all their ads that the other guy is doing something wrong, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are telling the truth.)

It gives me a picture of any candidate who would do such things as being someone who is eager to make war.  I am personally quite sure that I don’t want that kind of person in office in these volatile times.

One of my philosophies is, “it takes one to know one.” If one candidate wants to bring up a point about the other candidate, maybe some (verified) neutral party should be appointed for the task of bringing it up and making investigations in depth for both candidates.  That neutral party or team could be the ones appointed to reveal the outcome to America.

Myself, I tend to not even think of some things unless I’ve experienced or practiced them myself somewhere along the line, or knew well someone who did.  One of my questions might be how candidates even know to bring certain things up about any other candidate?

Are we sure it’s entirely because of which group any of the candidates represent? I think it might be because we actually need some different things to happen in our country now!

Pure and simple, I think American government is gay, and maybe we just need some new perspectives in government–some new relationships–now.

What?

I am trying to describe the kind of relationships I see at play in government today.

Even though we have a Republican Party and a Democratic Party to balance things out, for the most part I see it as still being mostly two different groups of men fighting for the power between themselves; one group of men’s perspectives and ways of doing things versus another group of men’s perspectives and ways of doing things.

In a marriage-style relationship between a man and a woman, there is still the dynamic of vying for balance of power present, but there are different kinds of perspectives and ways of doing things than when the gender of both partners is the same.

Back when America was formed, only Caucasian males were considered important enough to help out with any part of the decision-making about what the government would be like.  (Or maybe part of it was that women had so many children back then that they simply didn’t have time to do anything else?)

Indians were not important in the process, except to a few (even though they helped the white man get established here); women were not important (they were considered criminals if they tried to find a way to give input); blacks could only be slaves, and so on.

Even as late as 1920, women who wanted to have a say in government were abused and treated like criminals, and it was considered appropriate (at least by President Woodrow Wilson) to do so.

Our forefathers may have meant exactly what they said when they said, “…all men are created equal.”  (…Unless you were from a different background than they were, that is.  Blacks certainly weren’t considered equal, even if they were men.) 

Men, not women. (Nor children, nor anyone else who was not considered to be equal.)

Just to let you know, I’m not making a judgment for or against men.  We need them!

It’s just been my observation that usually things work better, in nature (or, as a part of it, in human beings), if they follow a path similar to the way God made things to function.  (Parallel to the way nature is set up, if you will.)

If you eat food your body is not able to receive complete nutrition from, you can cause things to malfunction in your body after a while. Teeth can decay, bones can become brittle, livers can become diseased.

A book on nutrition told me that the closer foods are to their natural state when ripe, the better our bodies will function after we eat them.

The less processed foods are when we eat them, the better health we will usually have as a result.

(Non-nature example here): If you put the wrong kind of fuel in your car, your car might sputter and die somewhere you don’t want it to!  (It’s happened in one car I rode in!)

I think Daniel Pink is right. Right now America needs more of the kind of things we typically associate with women: right-brain activities. We are just “left-brained out” for awhile!

As I’ve mentioned before, women are typically associated with certain things:

• the color pink
• bringing forth/nurturing new life
• creativity
• intuition
• religious activities
• nurturing
• cleaning up messes
• putting flowers on the table
• writing letters, sending out cards for birthdays, weddings, Christmas, “keeping in touch”
• keeping house
• coordinating all household events for the sake of efficiency in running the household
• being the peacemaker or the counselor (though men sometimes do it too)
• resolving quarrels
• saving money
• volunteer (unpaid) work, and being the one who puts together nutritious meals/mind-expanding activities that keep herself, the kids and her husband healthy and able to function at peak efficiency

Voila! Exactly what we need right now in America.  (Well, maybe not any more of the color pink, though  the wisdom of someone like Daniel Pink might be welcome.)

I think it may not necessarily be that we need a woman in the White House–just someone who is right-brained enough to understand some of the kinds of things that needed to happen from a woman’s point of view, in the way a woman might typically do them.

When human beings function the way they are made to function best, the left side of the brain functions right alongside the right side of the brain.  If either side of the brain functions alone, it faces serious challenges.

The best brain function is not the left side or the right side of the brain. It’s the whole brain that functions best, the kind of brain that is most capable of easily making shifts back and forth so that it can function at top capacity.

To my eye, our government has mostly left-brain function, having male characteristics, since it was created when only men were considered to be correct in the way things were done.

You say, we already have women in government positions.

Do we?  Women who do things in government the way a woman would do them?

How long has it been since our government has had a good cleaning from top to bottom?  (A typical woman’s function in society.)

Maybe we could bring about a better balance–one that might include a little bit different arrangement of government to accommodate the part that’s been missing for so long.

Men are typically seen as being the leaders, the logical ones, the ones who have the final authority and the overview.

Of course, men bring many other important things to the table as well. But they are typically the more aggressive half of our species, the ones who are most likely to choose go to war (and to cause it sometimes).  We do need someone to protect our country–otherwise anything we do inside of it is all for nothing.

I read an anthropology book once that said that if every part of a society caters to the men and nothing accommodates the women, it becomes like the society of a certain Brazilian tribe, one of the most violent and abusive societies on earth.  Women there don’t think their men even love them unless their husbands beat them, it’s so bad.  And the same problems are perpetuated in their society generation after generation, due solely to the fact that the men have all the say and the women have none.

Pro-Choice AND Pro-Life

Well…let’s just admit it.  I’m not pro-choice in the abortion sense of the word.  Let’s just say I’m pro-choice in a different way.

In my estimation, I’m pro-choice too because I have made a choice that results in not having children.  Quite possibly, mixed into the batter may be reasons that are similar to why some women choose to abort.

Just for the record, I am an older single woman with no children and little chance of having any of my own now.  For better or for worse, I too have made a choice not to have children.

The reason?

For me, besides believing that marriage is the proper context for having children, I’d want any children I had to have a good daddy as well, and not only a mom.  I know what can happen when kids don’t have a good daddy’s regular input into their lives.

After children grow up, seemingly insurmountable difficulties can result if their daddies gives them little, no, or negative input, even if they otherwise have a lot of good qualities.

With every choice in life, there are consequences.

Some of the consequences I could be looking forward to could also be some of yours someday, if you are pro-choice.

In my own life, I see the consequences of not marrying and having children as possibly ensuring that I will not have close family members around to take care of me when I am old.  I don’t particularly want to be a burden on society or distant family members.

But there’s a good chance I will be, as I have never learned to manage my money well enough to save a significant amount up for retirement.  And though I’m finding my way in a different way now, regular employment no longer seems to be an option after I interrupted my “career” by moving across the country to be available for my elderly mother.

When I was younger, I was among those who did not want to have to deal with children.

As precious as children can be, let’s just admit it:  little ones take a lot of work, and each one creates a lot of expense we wouldn’t otherwise have to pay for.

It’s possible this reason came into play, as well:  I might have to think of the well-being of others besides myself if I had children!

Besides, the best time to start a career is when you’re young.

I also treasure “quiet” and “stress-free” a little too much sometimes.  Unless there’s something wrong with children, having them might guarantee considerably less of both!

Observation tells me that for a parent, raising children might well be the hardest work on earth.  It’s not easy bringing kids up right so they have a good chance to compete well with others, make a healthy contribution in some way, and learn the values that will serve them well throughout life. It’s challenging to have to keep coming up with solutions for them and addressing the issues of growing up!

I think it’s possible that even those of us who choose to ”have a life” over the lives of the children we could have had may one day wish we had chosen to have some, or to keep and cherish them.

The rhythms of life seem to guarantee that if we live long enough, we women will have a chance at freedom and life once we have empty nests (providing businesses would be willing to give us jobs then, that is!). Most of us could have a chance for the freedom of a having career then, too, if we were willing to wait for it and maybe go to school later in life.  (We could have the best of both!)

Observing my own family members growing old and dying shows me that at the end of life, what matters most is our wonderful memories of family and the quality of our relationships, at a time when it’s probably too late to create many more.

Billions of dollars in the bank or great careers, once they are in the past, just can’t take the place of friends and loved ones and any difference we were or were not able to make in the lives of people around us.

By choosing to rid ourselves of our unborn, I think we may as a nation be choosing things we ultimately don’t want, leaving behind the things we might have cherished most.

By ridding the country’s current majority in this country (I’m speaking of Caucasians here) of the offspring that would rightfully belong to it, we may ultimately give our country over to those who typically choose to have more children than we do:  it’s the majority vote that counts in our country, you know.

From reading I’ve done, this could very well mean that, say, Hispanics or Arabs will be in the majority in our country by the time our children or grandchildren would be voting, at a time when the rest of us are old and need people to stand up for us.

In other countries, decisions are being made now that, besides abortion, are giving doctors and others the right or responsibility to take the lives of other innocent people:  some are sick people who could recover if given a chance, and some are older people who are euthanized simply because they happened to be considered a drain on their country’s resources.

(Don’t visit Holland–if you end up in the emergency room there, you may never come back.)

And by the way, countries who are adopting these policies are typically those who have chosen to have socialized medicine.

In societies that allow these kinds of things, when they first begin (typically when abortions are allowed to be a normal choice for every woman), they tend to progress into other things.  The results may not be in our favor, whatever way we voted, once we start eliminating other members of our society that we consider to be worth less than we or our comforts are.

Should we decide to choose socialism, we could be choosing those very same things for ourselves.

Do you know what I think?

If it was my decision that counted, I have a strong recommendation to make.

I think every citizen in America should take two years of Spanish and two years of Arabic before they reached adulthood, and refresher courses periodically thereafter.

Why?

I think someday the official language in America may very well be the language of those people groups: there might not be enough of us Caucasians to replace those in the current majority, and if we have another war, I guarantee other cultures in our country will come out ahead of us, at our standard rate of population growth.   …Or possibly, at our standard rate of population reduction.

We may need to make friends among other ethnic races or language groups in our country someday, especially if we are to maintain an influence of some kind.

Many of us have already made the choice to be childless.  (I’m one of them, as I choose to wait for a husband first.  In my way of thinking, the right one has not come into my life yet.)

I think that kind of choice may very well affect our future and our nation in ways we can’t today fathom.

It’s hard to know all the circumstances under which a woman would feel a need to get rid of her unborn.  Though I can’t think of too many circumstances under which I’d find it acceptable, I can say I’ve noticed there can be exceptions to just about every rule.

I do find it hard to understand, though, how a woman could depersonalize any baby she carried with her while “it” was in the process of starting to become someone, enough to be able to do away with it. As women, isn’t bringing forth life a part of who we are, on some level? Why would we even allow anyone to take that away from us?

Besides, I see population control–whether it’s of trees in the forest, of wild animals, of rats in the city, or of people in the world–as being one of those inbuilt rhythms of nature.

Studies have shown that rats are much more aggressive when they are put into a space that is too small and then their population grows until there are too many of them in that space. That’s when they start killing each other off and bringing the population down to a bearable level.

We used to raise gerbils.  It didn’t take long for gerbils to multiply astronomically.  Gerbil parents seem to eat their young when their population balloons out of control, too.

We humans tend to do that too on some level.

Not fun, but true.

There can be more than one reason people go to war.  Among other things, reasons for a war might include conflicts in beliefs, lack of the basic necessities of life, getting even, or a need for liberty.

Or…when the frustrations of having to deal with way too many people and the resulting complications cause life to overwhelm humankind, someone, somewhere may eventually say or do something that really ticks somebody else off.  People might start to take sides, and next thing you know, there is war.

As a religious person myself, I think I can probably say this:  if my religious beliefs tell me that someone else is wrong! wrong! wrong! if they don’t do it my way, and I think the only way to get everyone else to do it “right” is to force them to do it, I could very well be a force in the world to foreshadow the next bloody war.

(If you know anything about history, you know it’s been done before, and you’d know that there’s a good chance it will be done again.)

All it takes is a lot of people who all think differently (especially people who don’t know how to give and take in the press of life), living in a small amount of space so that no one person can easily get away from the others, and voila! Instant population control in the form of our next war!

War is neither fun nor pretty.  Countries can’t be blamed for wanting to find ways to keep the population down.  Trying to curb a population artificially has its own drawbacks, though.

People in China are finding out some of the negatives of China’s requirement that couples have only have one child.  Even those who do what the government says are suffering on many levels.

Negative consequences in taxes or jobs are given to couples in China who have “too many children” (more than one).  Unwanted children (typically girls) are discarded (sometimes killed), and orphans and anyone who cares enough to try to help them are beaten and treated like criminals.

Woe to you if you get married again and both you and your spouse each bring a child with them, or they decide to have another one between them.  One of the children has to be discarded and becomes one of the outcast orphans there.

If a woman in China becomes pregnant more than once, she has to go into hiding because she is now a criminal, and police may burn houses of their relatives or beat them or force them out of jobs… (This information is from a recent e-mail I got from a publication called “Voice of the Martyrs”.)

I’ve heard there’s a whole generation of men growing up there who will have very little chance of ever finding a woman to marry.

I sympathize, in more ways than one.

If there are mostly men in a culture or only men have the say, a society typically becomes much more aggressive.

Where there are far more men then women in a culture, the competition for the few available women as potential marriage partners is typically fierce.

History shows that such situations have at times induced war.

When there is a true need going unmet, something has to give.  Somehow, we all have to have a way to obtain what we really need in life, or there will be problems in one way or another.  Being able to find and keep a good mate is one of those needs.

Who knows?  A war could take place someday so that most of the wifeless generation of men in China would be able to obtain wives from somewhere else, overpopulation or no overpopulation.

Men and women need each other, however much some of us may protest otherwise.  All of us would benefit if we were able share the best of who we are and what we can do with each other in the right ways…through our own choice, not because anything was forced on us.

Where one lacks, the other can take over. Where they lack, we can cover for them.

That’s the way it was meant to be, as I see it.