Nattering

Paul Auster, The Book of Memory,

Prophecy. As in true. As in Cassandra, speaking from the solitude of her cell. As in a woman's voice.

Today, sitting with my three Lutheran Missionary friends, I was the Liberal. I'm always the wild card in a group, could be the Conservative, could be the Liberal depending on who I have surrounded myself with. I like being the Liberal. It sort of chaffs on me in groups of Christians how the word "liberal" means bad. "Oh, well they're really liberal." I have decided to stop reading Christian, Evangelical blogs because it is sort of like watching a car accident. I need to get some more positive thinking in my life and stop being enamoured with people who worry about the most inane things.

I listened to this sermon with a guy nattering on and on about "sexual purity". Fucking a, just let it go. You got all these high school students and you're shaking a stick at them to not masturbate? I just don't get it. There are things to get upset about — this is not one of them.

And I envision now the readers of this blog spilt: my friends to the Left who couldn't give a shit about religion wondering why I even care, and the Right wondering how I could have said such a sacrilegious thing. Let me quote Auster again:

The prophet. As in false: speaking oneself into the future, not by knowledge but by intuition. The real prophet knows. The false prophet guesses.

I have been accused of being cynical. But I don't think I'm as cynical as I should be about our new congress. I have so much hope and though I keep telling everyone that I don't, secretly I do.

There are over 30,000 suicides a year in Japan. They rarely make the news, but they have the last couple of days because a couple of jr. high school students killed themselves. The newscasters rake it over again and again. There are graphics showing the girls schedule and how their condition was the day before, hour by hour. The newscasters and commentators wonder aloud, scratching their heads. The Japanese cultural machine is broken, but no one can say that. We need more of something. More graphs. There. I got my cynicism back.