First World

What I saw on the highway

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

APATHY…HOPELESS… A few weeks ago I was in the car on the way to church and I noticed some graffiti along the highway. These are two of the words I caught. But there were more, all about the same. And I’m sure if you’ve seen any graffiti you know it’s usually depressing, or downright vulgar, occasionally you get the artistic words that don’t make any sense but whoever painted them seems to think they’re better than cuss words and negativity. What’s interesting is that only a short time after noting those words, I read somewhere (I believe it was another blog) that graffiti can tell us what young people are thinking nowadays.

I’m not sure how true that is, but certainly some angry teens are trying to tell us something. I have known moments where I felt life proclaiming to the world what I was feeling, not because the world could help me, but because I wanted someone to know and to notice.

In retrospect, I know that I had a lack of communication skills as a younger teen. And that it was because I had trust issues. ( We call it cynicism when it’s adults.) Plenty of lonely teens and kids are asking “Who hears? Who cares?” And I still ask those questions sometimes, but now when I ask I have the answer. Doubt is not the question, doubt  is having the answer and then questioning that.

We exist to be loved, and all of us know it deep down. When we feel unloved and don’t know why, we may think we’ve missed it somehow. That at some point in time either we made the wrong move, or someone just decided we  weren’t worth their time, or we were left behind by mistake; and eventually we conclude it is too late, better find something else to live for.

But what else is there? People do everything they do out of love, or need. And they are happy accordingly. It is terribly sad that there are young people out there who feel so unloved that they tell us all that apathy is the way to live, and life is hopeless. I’m not saying it is right or wrong to spray paint on the highway, I’m asking why.

I’ve wondered a lot why no one ever asked me why I was the way I was as an early teen. I think they probably just didn’t know what to ask, And my past is in the past, I’ve moved on. But I didn’t do it on my own. It took a lot of prayer, and I don’t mean the repetitive, religious prayer, but the kind where the tears are streaming and you feel like you’re being crushed under the weight of your pain. (Ever been there?) It sounds bad, and it certainly felt bad, but when you come to grips with your pain, it’s a huge relief.

I’m going to close this with a word of encouragement to anyone who can relate to what I’ve shared. There is hope. Apathy is never the answer because apathy is it’s own kind of hurt. it is better to face the real hurt and get healed. God can do that for you, or other people can help you. But it’s all a matter of opening up. And if there’s no one at all to turn to that’s when I’ve always found God to be my help.

I think that’s enough for all of us for one post–until next time, Natasha

Why are we so opinionated?

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I know that people are very opinionated nowadays, that is to say, everyone has always had opinions, but not everyone used to express them constantly. And according to some people we all express our opinions too much. I mean, who really cares what we think?

But hold on a second.

I have never been a person who liked to watch the news, but since we moved I’ve seen it nearly every morning, and it hit me: The media is constantly providing us with stories, facts, products, and ideas; and we sit and give our opinion on each, because, what else are we going to do?

When you think about it, it’s pretty unnatural for us to be as absorbed as we are with other people’s lives who we’ve never met and probably never will. not that it’s bad to like someone you’ve never met; but most of the time all we are doing is commenting on their lives, and what do we really know about them?

The majority of new stories could be filed under the International Gossip Chain category. But we’ve all come to think it’s just normal to hear about things that don’t concern us. (It used to be the news told us about public affairs.) But I’m not here to complain about the news; it’s just a sample. I find that in everyday conversation I run into the same phenomenon, often people have opinions on whatever the subject may be whether they know anything about it or not. (And yes, guilty.) I am not even saying that’s wrong, only that I am amazed at how many different opinions, likes, dislikes,  and impressions about things we can fit into our minds. The thing is, quantity does not equal quality. A lot of the time we form opinions out of ignorance of the full facts, or on something we’ve never experienced for ourselves.

It is true that every voice matter…as long as that voice is saying something of substance. no one is actually entitled to an opinion. No one owns an opinion because it was handed down to them from their forebears, or gets to use an opinion because someone who worked for it gave it to you for free. (I am, as you can tell, using the term entitled literally.) no, get to know things yourself, go out there and find out the truth. Like I pointed out in my previous post Parrot Talk, people should think for themselves. I don’t expect to be taken seriously until I can lay out a well-reasoned position. That said, I believe I’ll sign off for now–Natasha.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Don’t be too nice

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

SAMSUNG CSC

I titled this in a very unusual way; but I think you can all guess where I’m going with it.

I just read Martin Luther’s “Before the Diet of Worms” speech. Worms (also spelt Wyrms) is a place in Germany, the Diet is apparently the Emperor and his cabinet,( the paper doesn’t say, but I gathered that from what I read.) I was struck by the points he made about in our effort to not allow fighting and arguments, we might fight against the Word of God itself.

As John Eldredge has pointed out in his book Wild at Heart; there is such a thing as being too nice. You know those people in movies who drive the audience (and often the other characters) nuts because they won’t stand up for someone else or even themselves? Or the type of person who Philippa Gordon, in Anne of the Island, calls uninteresting because “She never says but good of anybody.”

We all know there’s wickedness in the world, and while dwelling on it is gloomy and unhealthy, a person who will never speak of it at all seems hardly wise, smart, or realistic. And they also seem weak.

I have actually been lectured on how I need to know what’s going on in the world, which always means the bad stuff I notice, but I do dislike to think of the unpleasant things. I am not at all saying we should go looking for the wrong stuff in this world. It will find you. And when it does, as it did Martin Luther, we need to be willing to take a stand.

That’s a common phrase to hear nowadays, but taking a stand is a serious thing. It always has risks; it always could turn out badly, from our perspective anyway. We could be mocked, or ostracized, or we could simply fail to change anything.

And what’s more, we need to realize that not everything is worth standing for. For me the test is always in if it is biblical, if it is affecting an important thing, and if the potential benefits out weigh the potential damage. But I’ve taken very few stands in my life. If that seems surprising given the nature of this blog, then let me just say that it is much simpler to address the questions I have myself, via the internet, then to know when it’s a good idea in real life to make an issue of something. I have less to lose, and I am not fighting with my audience. That is not to say honesty on social media is not scary no matter who you are or how many followers you have, but real life is always more daunting.

When we take a stand we must care more about the truth then about what we want. But we also need to be loving and kind to the people we are standing against, remembering that they are human being just like us. Kindness does not equal niceness, it is unkind to be nice to someone who really need a good shaking up. It is also unkind to shake someone who really needs a hug. It about what is needed, not what either party wants.

A stand can be quiet, or it can be loud. It can be silence, or it can be yells and shouts. Both are right in their own time and place. But yelling doesn’t make something a stand. And quiet doesn’t mean kindness. It’s all in the reason.

But never taking a stand is worse then not making it perfectly. We are so anxious not to offend people. We are so concerned with who likes us. (Even now I can’t help wondering if I’ll get any likes or comments on this post.) I have seen a problem either ignored, or handled in the nicest possible way, so many times, and very few times have I seen anyone really take the harder route.

You know, we’ll never be complete human beings until we will fight for something with all our might and main. Sometimes it will even be with ourselves. But we can’t sugarcoat everything. We can’t keep turning a blind eye, unless we want to turn blind next.

This has been a little less encouraging than usual, but I hope you’ll take it not as criticism, but as a challenge to look around and face things with courage. I know the Martin Luther inspired that feeling in me. I just want o pass it on. With that–until next time.

Natasha.

Classified

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

It’s been a few days, but I had a creative dry spell, no point posting if you have nothing to say. But the other day I was thinking, (I say that a lot when I start these posts,) of how hard it can be to put myself in any designated people group.

Yesterday I was a an ASL class, and we were told to describe ourselves with a list of sign words, and I kept using opposites.

I like to think I’m unpredictable. But my family probably would disagree. I don’t fit into any category except perhaps homeschooled, which is general.

Maybe you aren’t aware of this if you don’t know homeschoolers, but we have our own set of stereotypes. So do churchgoers. We have both what we think most people think we are like, and what we think of each other. There was a survey once that found the people who responded all thought they were fairly average, but everyone else was strange. Or maybe you feel everyone else is normal, and you are strange.

Well, the most normal people in the world are the most boring. But for some reason we all feel we need to have groups, so we can understand others, and they’ll understand us. But seriously? Who really understand anyone in another group if they have not mingled with them and heard what they have to say?

Religious people are famous nowadays for being close–minded. And I’ll readily admit some of them/us are; but the fact is religion doesn’t make you close minded, you can be that way no matter what you believe in or don’t believe. Fear is the real cause.

I hate being generalized. When someone writes me off because of my age, or even my intellect, or my homeschooled education; they assume I think one way and they think another way. Or maybe we think the same because I’ve had a good bringing up. (Does anyone but me remember that phrase bringing up?) but even though it drives me crazy, I went through a phase where I was constantly trying to decide what group I fit into, whether by age, skills, temperament, beliefs, or personality. I seemed to be searching for an identity but each of these things was only a part of me, and I had on and off moments.

I could say I’m artsy, crafty, and creative; but what about the times I don’t feel inspired to do any of those things?

I could say I’m intellectual, but what about when I just don’t want to think or learn and when I want to curl up with a book or a movie and forget about the outside world.

I could say I’m radical, but what about when I feel mellow?

There you see? This isn’t just me, we all feel this fluctuating of our interests and our traits. You could say the human soul is like the tide, it rises and falls, in and out, some days its string, other days it’s just not.

And whatever words you would use to describe yourself, remember that no list can cover it.  A list is other people’s options that they give you, sometimes they’re good, other times they aren’t.

We love to create classes of the population. It’s what cliques, fandoms, parties, and demographics are about. And maybe you technically fit into one, but I think what’s inside a person can’t be put into one class or another. To paraphrase Gianna Jessen’s words, “No one cans ay to you this is how far you will go and no further.” Remember that though the message of not being prejudiced can be over preached, it is still true.

It bothers me when I hear others make generalizations about thousands of people, saying they are all idiots, or evil, or biased, or whatever.

Judge not lest you be judged, right?

Well, I hope this made sense, and you got something out of it. I was just thinking through writing. Until next post, don’t get classified–Natasha.

Not a statistic

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

There are statistics about almost everything that people do: about how we dress, and how we behave.

But I googled random acts of kindness, and there’s no statistic about how many people do them. Or how often.

I think the obvious reason is that most of us have done a random act of kindness (or helpfulness, if you’ve seen that commercial) at some time in our lives, but I would hope it would be several times.

But then I thought, what about the less obvious reason?

Kindness just can’t be measured. Remember what the fairy godmother says in the 2015 Cinderella movie? “What’s a bowl of milk? Nothing. But kindness makes it everything.” How can we know the effect of a single act of kindness? I love those videos that you can find on YouTube of people doing an act of kindness and it setting off a chain reaction of kindness. I think a lot of us might be skeptical about that actually happening, but would we be skeptical if we were told that a single act of unkindness (like cutting someone off in traffic) could trigger a whole chain of people being rude to  the next person they meet? If being mean is contagious surely being kind also can be contagious. Though it is true that  kindness can be harder to catch, if you’re not in the habit of it already.

Kind means proceeding from, showing, or having benevolence.

Have you heard that story about the horseshoe nail? For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the war was lost; for want of the war the empire was lost. All for the want of a horseshoe nail.

An Act of Kindness is kind of like that horseshoe nail, now, what if it wasn’t lost?

Brought to you by Natasha.

 

In faith

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Here’s a thought that struck me today, what does the phrase “In faith” really mean?

I have read Shakespeare, weird as that may sound, (I couldn’t care less if it does,) and that phrase is about as common as us using the words “Seriously” “Totally” “For real” “Legit” and our other ways of saying we “really mean it.”

You may wonder why I’d bother to post about a phrase, but bear with me. The last verse of 1 Corinthians 13 says “And now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.”

I don’t know if any of my followers noticed this, but my blog is called drybonestruth, my tagline contains the word truth, and several of (if not all of) my posts are centered around what’s true and what to do about it. But on my homepage I talk about hope. And a lot of my posts, the recent ones included, are about love. I didn’t do this to incorporate the above verse into my blog, I just did it because those were the things on my mind. So, love, hope, and truth, but what about faith?

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I am cautious about mentioning my beliefs overmuch, since I don’t want just other Christians to read this blog and get something out of it, but I certainly don’t want anyone to think I’m ashamed to talk about it. Christian or not, I’m sure you can understand that, no one wants others to think they are weak in their convictions.

With this in mind, I began asking myself what the phrase “in faith” really means anyway. “In faith” is interchangeable with “in truth” or “in earnest.” It could also be interpreted as “I swear.” Simply put, it means “I believe what I am telling you.” Apparently in Shakespeare’s day it was normal for people to go around talking to each other and declaring what they believed to be true about life, and about other people, and about themselves. (If I can go by his plays anyway.)

So, my faith would mean what I believe is the truth.

That sounds obvious, but hold on, let’s really think about that statement. I’ve discussed what is truth in other posts, so for my thoughts on that you can search my blog, if you’re interested. Let’s just assume we all have a criteria for what truth is already. Now let me ask, do you trust that?

Do you believe that what you believe is really real?

I heard that in a sermon once, but it could be asked to anybody who even knows what they believe. If you had to look someone in the eye, and tell them what you, at core, believe is the truth about life, what would you say? Would you be able to say it? Would you say it like a parrot, or with passion?

What feelings does thinking about your worldview excite in you? Enthusiasm? Energy? Does it move you at all? Or is your worldview just something you accept, but don’t think about?

If my faith is my truth, that is, my faith is my trust in what I know is true; then I should be passionate about it.

I am, I get excited about what I believe. And that may offend some people. Who am I to get excited? What makes what I believe better than anyone else’s belief. Maybe they might even think I am an example of what’s wrong with religious people. We think we know what’s best for everyone.

Or, maybe someone might pause and consider that I’m not faking it. If I am nothing else, I am at least sincere.

I don’t need everyone to agree with me. I don’t even want everyone to agree with me about everything. Anyone who wants that, doesn’t have faith, they have preference. I can cover that more in a different post (it’s worth thinking about, believe me.) But suffice it to say I’m not talking about getting everyone on my side.

I’m talking about what I would stake my all on. My faith. The same thing thousands of people die because of in other countries, and even in this one.

Who among us in our western countries takes what we believe that seriously? Shocking to think about isn’t it?

Until you are willing to die for it can you really say your beliefs are “legit”? I mean, if other people are willing to pay the ultimate price,  doesn’t that give them some merit?

I am not endorsing every religion that people die for, I am only saying that they were nothing if not serious about their faith.

Maybe we should all think about that phrase “in faith” more often when we’re speaking about things. Well, in faith, that’s all for today–Natasha