rambling rosemarie

Suddenly I find myself worthless. I was pretty much minding my own business, running some errands and without an ounce of warning the thought popped into my head that I am worthless and I can't shake the idea. The damned thing pounced on me as stealthily as any prowling mountain lion. I didn't see it coming. Some folks get to have brilliant thoughts. Mine are ambush predators. Tapes that play over and over in my head, coiling themselves tighter and tighter. Each time I try to take in a breath of hope, they constrict. What is it about me. Do I seem to be the weakest of the herd? Do my thoughts turn on me because they see me as an easy target? Am I bent on self destruction? It seems if the right button is pushed I begin going through the index system of experience to find proof they are valid. I must be worthless. Abandoned as a child, unmarried, unloved, unwanted. Those certainly prove I am not worth having around. What have I accomplished? Nothing. What will I acc...

I think capitalism works. I generally like to continue doing business with companies that I have used before. I have had the same insurance company for 30 years. I like that I get to spend my money the way I see fit and give my patronage to whomever I like. I am not trying to start a movement, incite folks to boycott or to take any sort of stand with me, but I do want to tell all six of my readers that I will not be renting a car from Hertz in the near future because of their new commercial campaign. It ticked me off. I find it an insult to men and women. Yeah, I have a sense of humor. A rather keen one actually. I don't find the Hertz "gas or brake" campaign funny. I am an equal opportunity satirist. I think folks are easy to poke fun at. All of them. Male, female, democrat, republican, old and young. OK, I especially enjoy poking fun at democrats. They make it so darned easy. But this commercial that Hertz is so proud of irritates me. Individually each little scen...

Today I feel particularly lazy. It's not difficult for me to feel lazy. I can go the the litany of medical reasons that sap my energy and come up with plausible excuses. Not just plausible excuses, genuine reasons. I am exhausted today, not just lazy. I have had two cups of caffeinated coffee and am working on the energy to go make a third which may do the trick or complicate my day by making my guts fight back. My life has a lot of pauses in it. Pausing for energy. Pausing to reconsider choices. Pausing to breathe. Pauses are wonderful things. In acting we learned that pauses are uncomfortable for the actor but give the audience a chance to feel and consider what they have heard and seen. They convey discomfort, regret, sorrow, arrogance, disgust any number of situations can be related to in a pause. Think of the power of a pause in music. Just when you think it is over, right when your soul is begging for relief the pause nearly kills you and then the note you are looking for ...

Going through my old books, papers and stuff. I am finding curious things. This particular one caught my attention and here it is: Duties and Responsibilities Bring Results. Romans 12-15 Romans 12:1 I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, {which is} your spiritual service of worship. Presenting yourself to God results -> become a living, holy sacrifice that pleases Him. Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Transformed by a renewed mind results -> able to discover and display the will of God. Romans 12:6-8 6 And since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, {let each exercise them accordingly} if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; 7 if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; ...

We've all heard variations of the expression, "Under that gruff exterior lies a heart of gold." It sort of goes with the old standby "Don't judge a book by its cover." The idea being that the ugly, drab, rough exterior often covers something beautiful. I understand the attraction to these idioms. There is a suggestion of hope, an implication that things are not always as bad as they seem. We like those stories. We like to find our heroes and heroines in unlikeable people whose likeability increases the more we come to know them. We like them almost as much as we like stories about 'underdogs' transforming into 'wonderdogs' but why? Because we are enamored by the prospect of being loved despite our unlovable character flaws and with winning against the odds. How else do we account for the number of people playing the lottery and the ever increasing self-help and self-acceptance industry? There are billion dollar industries banking on ou...

Been a while since I have been up to blogging. It's not that I am on death's door or have a lack of things to work out through my fingertips hitting the keyboard. It's that I keep wanting to find the topic that will make a difference in the way I go about life. The trouble with that is it takes effort and discipline and I have already confessed all I care to about being a lazy sloth. There is part of me that wants you to commiserate with me about joys and detriments of being lazy, but thanks to God's nagging Holy Spirit, the part of me that wants you to rejoice in my repenting of these besetting sins is gaining ground. Is it OK to call the Holy Spirit a nag? I think I am supposed to use the standard Christianese and say He's wooing me. Seems like a whole lot of wooing is going on in the world and most of it ain't good. Charlie Sheen wants to woo us into believing he's doing just fine. He's winning. Winning what? The honor of having his manic melt do...

I was up at 5:00am this morning. Showered and sitting at my kitchen table finishing up a bible study by 6:30. At 8:40 I was in my car driving to meet with several ladies from our small town at a community bible study that is held at my church. I never made it. I found myself shopping at Kroger at 8:50 and back home by 9:45. Why? I wish I could tell you exactly why. The bible study I am doing isn't among my favorites but the women I study with are. Admittedly, I was puzzled by something in the study that bothered me. It was an intimation that when Christ said: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" He was addressing the other two members of the Trinity- hence He said "Eloi" twice. The study is on covenants and the author also correlated that in God's covenant with Abraham the smoking oven and flaming torch we also the remaining members of the Trinity. "Could it be that...." the author asked. Making statements by masquerading them as questions is ge...

Ever have someone say something to you that cuts your heart into ribbons and you think you deserved it? Recently someone I love warned me that at times I sound full of vitriol. She was speaking in reference to my passion regarding certain topics, one of them being politics. That gave me some thinking to do. Next a close friend of mine listened to a seminar I gave on hope. She said the material was good but she wondered if I was afraid or tired or if something was wrong. She expected the woman she knew, she expected some humor, some in your face truth and to be uncomfortable because I would make her think. She likes to inspect her presuppositions and be challenged by biblical truth. I blamed the pain I am in and drugs I take. I tried to dismiss it but I have thought about little else since she gave me her criticisms. A couple days ago I read a post on Pyromaniacs and after reading it, placed my tongue in cheek and typed a response that oozed sarcasm. Some poor woman with a twiste...

I was spending time on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) this morning and found myself listening in on a couple conversations. I had changed my nick to indicate that I was off being good and cleaning my house. I wasn't really communicating with anyone as much as I was eavesdropping. I spend a lot of time in the IRC chat channel that belongs to James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. James is an apologist, scholar and fractal artist extraordinaire. I have been participating there for years... as in 10 or more. I have learned a great deal from him either by reading his books, blog or listening to his debates and youtube material or by sitting in the chat channel and partaking of conversations. It's important to me to stress that I have learned a great deal and am absolutely grateful to God for the fellowship and instruction I have received there. What I am about to write is in no way to be construed that I am criticizing the medium nor am I criticizing Dr. White and the chan...

I have a few blogs that I read regularly. Well, as regularly as I do anything in my life. Steve Camp, at Camp On This, is always a good read. I don't necessarily agree with everything the man writes or how he chooses to write it, but that's true of everyone I read. In fact, I am mercurial enough to disagree with my own writing on any given day. Steve wrote a list of resolutions that are right from Scripture. Not only is his article a good read, the comments are worth reading too. One of the things that came up in comments was the idea that living by resolutions can give way to self-dependency. It's a valid warning. There is always a fine line between having faith in your faith and having faith in the sufficiency of Christ. There's a lot of information out here on the superhighway. Some of it isn't worth the powder it would take to blow it back to hell. It can be difficult to navigate your way to stuff worth reading. I am not one that thinks you should re...

I am fed up with political correctness. It has never been a good thing and it never will be a good thing. I want to shake people who are willing to throw away the hard won freedoms we have in the United States because they think that they have a right to go through life without being offended. I have news for you. Going through life without being offended isn't one of your inalienable rights. For that matter your happiness isn't an inalienable right, the pursuit of happiness is. There is a difference. People died to give you the freedom to be different from me. The whole point was to get away from intolerance and you're trying to breed it back in! Diversity tolerance does not equate with the right to go through your life unoffended. I have been building up to this rant since I was a kid and the Frito-Lay company took the Frito Bandito away. Why? Because some Chicano or LaRaza political activists thought that the character had a negative social impact for Latinos and Hi...