Engrish

So, as a teacher who specializes in language arts, I feel it is my duty to discuss it.

It is imperative, as American citizens, to understand that written language requires the proper usage of punctuation. For example, I have used a tiny jot called a period three times so far. The period is necessary so that the reader knows when to pause. It is necessary. Let me repeat, it is NECESSARY. The period means you have completed a thought. You have expressed it. Done. It is representative of the natural pause given when a person speaks.

Secondly, there is a tiny mark called a comma that is used to signify another pause. This little guy is mainly used to allow for a tiny transition from one thought to another. It may not be a complete thought to a complete thought, but the thoughts are there and there should be a pause. It's almost there for someone simply to take a breath and continue speaking.

People do not speak with commas and periods, but we do speak with natural pauses. Mostly. We are not (generally speaking) ramblers, speaking a flow of words with no end. We have to eat and sleep. Natural pause.

Let's look at a few examples.

"My name is Betty. I live in a house. I have a cat and a dog and I like to eat food that is warm and salty. I drive to work every day. I walk home every night."

"My name is Betty I live in a house I have a cat and a dog and I like to eat food that is warm and salty I drive to work every day I walk home every night."

The second paragraph is not as easy to read as the first. It is also more difficult to listen to, by the way. Imagine a cute kid with a button nose and doe eyes looking up at you with his two missing front teeth talking at top speed about the merits of space travel with no pauses. Cute but hard to follow (perhaps) and hard to endure (nearly always).

Use punctuation. It's our civic duty.

Satan

So, I’m starting a series, I think.

On Satan.

I have studied this guy for years. He’s very wily. But ultimately, he’s doomed. It’s my belief that one should know his or her enemy. He is truly the only enemy humans have, including those humans who do not believe in such a creature.

I will use the Bible as my main resource, but I will also interject other sources that I come across. I will try to make sure they are reliable sources as this is not about fear-mongering or bashing anyone except Satan himself.

If you are easily intimidated by such things or you are scared out of your mind about dark and evil things, I encourage you to think long and hard about participating in this study. I even encourage you to pray long and hard about participating in this study. Pray to God, Jesus AND the Holy Spirit, because you will need the support. This subject should not be taken lightly in any way. Satan is nothing to mess around with, especially out of ignorance or curiosity.

This study is not out of curiosity. It is what I do. It is what I am called by God to do. It is what Jesus leads me to do and the Holy Spirit empowers me to do it. My dad, a pastor for many years, says that “[E]veryone who is not saved is a practicing satanist… They fear you and who is in you.” This is true. However, I want to add to this thought that it is one thing to unknowingly be blinded by his deceptions (i.e. complete denial of all things spiritual, or denial of God or evil) and another to worship the devil himself and acknowledge it. It’s this latter point that I will be researching.

I will interview satanists that I come across and include portions of the interviews here. All names and identifying information will be changed or omitted in the interest of confidentiality.

Please read Romans 12 in your favorite translation (I will mostly use The Message translation here as it’s easy to read and understand). I encourage you to check out http://www.bible.com/ and read this passage in several translations just to get a “rounder” understanding of this Word. Romans 12, summed up, states that we should love. Period. It does not matter how many people a serial rapist has assaulted. He should still be loved. It doesn’t matter how rude a Facebook friend has been or will be towards you. He or she should still be loved. It doesn’t matter how hateful your supervisor is to you and your co-workers. He or she should still be loved. No one can come to Christ through our witness if we are hateful back. This is Romans 12. This is my attitude in general. And this is my attitude about this subject and towards those who are knowingly "in league with the devil."

***
Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle. Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality. Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody. Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you've got it in you, get along with everybody. Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."
Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he's thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don't let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good (http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=romans+12&version1=65).
***

I hope you enjoy this study/series as it develops. Feel free to comment! Just be respectful!

Tornadoes

I have experienced many things in my life. Never have I been evacuated for any of those experiences.

I had arranged to meet an out-of-town friend at a local mall. It was an easy place to find, fairly centrally located and a great place to chat since neither of us drink coffee. We are to meet early evening for an hour and just catch up. Little did we know that I was leading him towards a tornado, according to the loud sirens that can be heard throughout my town.

I repeatedly called him and texted him telling him to do what he needed to do to be safe. I would have felt very badly if he were to be swept away whilst trying to find the mall in the middle of a giant storm. So, my friend was on the interstate, four miles away and stuck in 5pm traffic whilst I was stuck in a teensy closet beside Macy's with a hundred other people.

Freak out mode had begun. If you know me, you know that I'm fairly calm much of the time. I was desperately hoping that being in this closet would not last for very long. Mostly because it's a tiny space and I like my space to be not tiny. Also, I have a wild imagination and I kept envisioning shards of glass pelting people as they tried to reach the doors just before they were closed on everyone as a large, dark and ominous funnel cloud enveloped the stubborn people standing just outside the door.

Thirty minutes later, we were released. No funnel cloud. No shards of glass. No story to tell. Except this boring one that you are forced to read because I have nothing else interesting to share.

:-/ lol

Home

I was recently laid off from a teaching job at a charter school. I was unemployed from June through December of 2010. It was rough. That is for another blog entry.

To make a long story short, I was hired by that school's sister school in a nearby town. I have been teaching for ten years, or thereabouts, and I can honestly say that this is the second place where I feel that I belong. I work on two teams as a special education co-teacher. I work with a group of sixth graders and within that group, my main focus is a handful of students with minor needs (minor to me in the intensity, not in importance). This is the first group of boys and girls that I completely like. LIKE! I love everyone I have ever worked with, but I have not always liked everyone. I'm the kind of person that tries to find something redeeming in all people. I have run across a few that threw me for a loop.

Not this group. They are all rambunctious, pre-pubescent, hormonal bundles of talkative, sassy energy. They all love me to pieces and I love them to pieces. I can joke with them and hug them and cut my eyes at them and even raise my voice (I don't yell) at them and we still have fun. They know I care. I had one of them tell me last week that I have "an amazing personality." I have NEVER been genuinely complimented in such a way by one of my students. I nearly cried. Today, an administrator labeled me as "loving" as she has observed me loving my kids... I nearly cried. Besides my first administrator, I have never been genuinely complimented in such a way.

I truly feel like I am at home. I *am* glad to leave at the end of the day. We work hard at my school. But I don't hate going there in the morning.

On top of that, I love the special ed team and the middle school team that I work with. They are all awesome, loving, genuine and tender souls and I am glad to be a part of their world 10+ hours a day.

<3

Blood

So, I was having a challenging morning and asking certain people to pray for me. Some of them know the circumstances; some of them don't. All of them know me fairly well. I don't ask for many things, but I will ask for prayer.

So, I asked for it. I vented to a co-worker about life things then had to get to work. I was slightly teary-eyed and knew I needed the Lord this morning. I asked for His help and dried my face.

I walked outside to my morning post (which is carpool outside in the cold and rain). My job is to open car doors and help the kiddos out of their vehicles. One car stopped in front of me. It was someone that I recognize but he doesn't recognize me at all. As his daughter gets out of the car, he calls to her, "You're covered by The Blood!" ALL the heaviness I had been feeling for the previous thirty minutes immediately lifted off my shoulders and the rest of the day flowed smoothly, emotionally speaking.

My God is so good, so faithful and knows exactly what my spirit needs to hear.

*sigh* :-D

On Buffy...

"The Body" is my least favorite episode of my favorite television show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a matter of fact, "least favorite" would not be an accurate description of my feelings for the episode.

If you have never experienced a death, the death of someone with whom you were close, with whom you spent your whole life up to that point, watch this episode and you will have an inkling of my own experience.

The episode begins with Buffy coming home, calling her mother's name simply to ask her a question. Just another day. She walks into the living room and finds her mother laid out on the couch, eyes wide open, staring up. I remember watching this episode for the first time and cried throughout. Every other time that it has come on while watching reruns of the show, I have turned the channel or deleted it from my queue.

Joss Whedon is a genius. Mainly he has my respect because of this episode. Why? Buffy deals with the discovery of her mother's body by having a series of fuguelike daydreams. She remembers the last time she and her friends were all gathered around the dinner table... Then she comes back to reality. Then the paramedics attempt to resuscitate her mother. She begins to imagine that it was all some kind of mistake;  her mother wakes up, is taken to the hospital and is deemed well. She snaps back to reality. The paramedics are attempting to resuscitate, but her mother is not alive. The paramedics are talking to her; she is listening and is looking at the speaker but she doesn't see the speaker. The camera shows the bottom half of the paramedic's face. She doesn't see him. But he also doesn't see her... He's a paramedic, dealing with this sort of thing on a regular basis.

I distinctly remember having this experience many times. I thought that if I slept in her bed, my sister would come home from third shift and yell at me to leave her room. I had a whole scenario worked out in my head. It didn't happen. She never came home. I thought that she might call. She didn't. She and I worked at the same place and I was sure I'd bump into her at work. We didn't.

The paramedics leave her alone with her mother's body to wait for the coroner. She pukes in the hallway then steps outside. It's sunny outside and children are playing. But the sun looks odd as it shines on her, like it's surreal. This particular scene reminds me of when I experienced my sister's passing and I realized that the world would continue despite the fact that I had lost her forever. The sun didn't have a gleam. Children's laughter hurt my ears. Food was a stupid invention. Work existed to give me something to do. I even stepped out on our patio, as in this episode, and the sun was shining but it seemed dark to me. Birds were chirping, but it was noise. The cat I had at that time (not my sweet Smokey) did not bring me any comfort. He whined all the time, mostly because he had been at home for a few days alone and hungry; not his fault for becoming fairly neurotic. Not mine, either.

I hate this episode of Buffy. But here I am, watching it and crying my face off and writing this blog entry.

I miss my sister (and I am fully prepared to receive all the cliches that people say when they don't know what to say). I do not wish she was here. I know she hated living on this Earth where people are often rude, two-faced and could give a crap about someone outside of themselves. I'm glad she doesn't have to deal with what is going on right now. I'm reminded of her often in the little things. I can now talk about her for a full minute now without getting choked up or watery-eyed.

I hate "The Body" but it is the therapy that I should have continued after her death. Now when people die, I just pray for them to be able to cope with it, for them not to withdraw from the world as I did, to talk to someone and to carefully choose with whom they share (I actually had someone tell me I would get over it). I also pray that this death experience brings the survivors closer to Jesus, because He is literally the only reason I am still standing after all this.

Joss Whedon, thanks for the therapy.

Philippians 1:3-4

The NASB Version reads as follows: "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all..."

The Message reads: "Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart."

My secondary thoughts about this verse point to the fact that it seems the two translations seem to be completely different.

I used to read from the NASB translation as it was easier than the New King James Version. I recently switched over to The Message as I was reading through the Old Testament. The Message, though I still appreciate the King James, New King James and New American Standard Bibles, seems to make the language so plain that it jumps to life for me. This is the case with the verses above.

In the NASB, it does say the author thinks good thoughts when he remembers the members of the church in Philippi. It also reads that when he prays for Philippi, he offers those prayers with joy. That's nice. 

But in The Message, I get a visual. I read that the author leaps about the room thanking the Lord EVERY TIME the members of Philippi cross his mind! Imagine every time you thought of a sibling, a parent, a dear friend and not only did your heart jump with love, but you literally gave a shout out! EACH. TIME. Then, each shout out to your loved one triggers a spontaneous prayer. And that prayer is given "with a glad heart!"

My primary thoughts on this passage: 

Let's further imagine that if we did this for our loved ones, how this spontaneous intercessory prayer would cause just about anything to happen for them! Think about how a lost loved one would experience Love in its truest, purest form for the first time... Think about that friend or spouse who lost his or her job, has been unemployed for months or years and has children that s/he must feed. Think about that co-worker who is lost or financially struggling, or has a terminal illness. Or think about whatever! 

This verse, though I've read it many times over, came alive by reading a different translation. I am convicted to pray spontaneously for everyone that crosses my mind. And the most challenging part is where, even though I might be upset or confused about the situation with one of those people that crosses my mind, I am to give a shout and continue to pray with joy and a glad heart for that person.


How ridiculously simple. How ridiculously beautiful.