Suck streak
I wish sometimes to have a schedule of which pastor will be speaking at church, because I would probably opt to skip certain sermons. Today would have been one of them.
Don’t get me wrong — I dig the lessons. I like the atmosphere. I even think the guy’s a good speaker. But the only time we start hearing about hellfire and brimstone is when this one gets his hands on the microphone, and it always manages to turn me off more than it manages to scare me.
Today we talked about lying and all its various forms, such as breaking promises, insincere flattery, withholding the truth (or half-assing it) for whatever reason, exaggeration, etc. I’m certainly guilty of all of the above. I want to be authentic, but I’m also not going to make somebody cry when I can use the opportunity to make them, if not feel better, then at least not let them dwell on stuff.
Besides, doesn’t everyone in this world need a little more encouragement? Positive reinforcement works wonders. Believe me — I’ve been at the receiving end of enough “constructive criticism” and guilt trips to know.
Part of today’s lesson is that lying is not conducive to your spiritual journey. They used a Bible quote about taking off your old self (i.e., your heathen ass) and becoming someone God would approve of. The analogy was “like taking off your Wal-Mart clothes and going shopping at Hollister.” And that irritated me for some reason. I like the occasional item I pick up from Wal-Mart. Hollister isn’t my style or my budget.
It reminded me of an old job full of people to whom I would NEVER look for inspiration or advice, and yet they felt the need to convey to me that I needed some sort of makeover. Yeah, like any of them had room to talk. And hey, you want me to be different — feel FREE to pay for it. *kick*
Where was I? Grr. Anyway. Basically everyone who even tells so much as a white lie to spare someone’s feelings is destined to burn in hell, and yet, even if you don’t say a word when you supposedly should, you’ll be in the pit of burning sulfur with them. So, essentially, all of us in middle management know where WE’RE ending up!!!
You know, I tell the truth at home all the damn time. And all it gets me is aggravation. I’m well-aware of the repercussions of saying EXACTLY what runs through your mind not only the second it appears, but also how much FUN it is when you bottle it up and something else sets off a torrent of “oh and BY THE WAYs.”
One last thing that got stuck in my craw was the reading of one of the Proverbs, that “Give me neither poverty nor riches; but give me only my daily bread.” That conflicts mightily with the Law of Attraction. That’s why when you get on a suck streak, things continue sucking because you’re attracting the status quo because you can’t see far enough beyond it.
I think others’ little black clouds have impacted me too much over the years. I think I’m happy. I want to be happy. Fuck it, I want to be happier. I want to be so fucking happy that you can whack me with a pinata stick and a whole shitload of sunshine and rainbows comes out.
But therein lies the eternal challenge — keeping all eyes on the sunshine and being able to look beyond those little dark clouds. Not just peeking at the sun — fixating on it full-force and not even acknowledging what’s blocking your full-on view of it. Feeling the warmth even when you can’t see that giant yellow orb. Envisioning it shining on you even in the black of night.
I guess I’ve gotten into a suck streak for the past few weeks. Per the law of vibrational energy, I’ve attracted it and continue to attract it. At this point, all I want for Christmas is a strong hopeful vibe. Just one good — nay, fucking AMAZING — thing to happen so that it will generate more of the same.
In any case, one thing I TOTALLY agreed with in the service was that we need to get rid of the liars and the soul-suckers and the assholes in our lives — that we need to pursue relationships only with authentic people. And sweet Jesus and holy mother of God, I sing hallelujah to that one. Attracting great people usually attracts MORE great people who are leading good lives and that goodness can rub off. So, if anyone out there is having a success streak, would you let me rub you (heh — I really didn’t mean it THAT way) for good luck of my own?
December 10th, 2007 at 9:06 AM
If you’re talking about the passage I think you are, I read it fairly recently and was turned off by it too. It made religion seem too ephemeral, something you can just put on and discard, when my own recent experience is that it’s far too difficulty to just change lightly!
But then I just kind of roll my eyes whenever one of Paul’s epistles is read anyway. When I first heard the hypothesis that Paul was a closeted gay man, I scoffed. But then rereading them in light of the Late Unpleasantnesses in a certain political party, I think it’s probably all too true.