Big Ball of Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey

Introvert

I am reading a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.  I am very intrigued by what I have heard about this book.  It is also interesting because a couple of years ago, I decided to stop fighting what the world was telling me about how it was better to be outgoing.  Why be something I'm not?

Introverts are not necessarily shy--that is a perception that is placed on them by society.  I'm not shy.  I have things to say about many topics.

The world is more introverted than you think, too.  I would love to explore more about what that means for the Church and for those in leadership positions.

A few years ago when I was a youth minister for a summer, the pastor tried to make an extrovert out of me because it was the kind of person they expected should be a youth minister.  It didn't take.  It did leave me with feelings of self-loathing because I could not be what that kind of congregation wanted.  I told my therapist last year that I was happy to be an introvert, and I was finally at peace with that aspect of my personality.  I don't think she ever got what I was trying to say.  I'm not shy.  I'm not socially withdrawn.  I am just me.

I am this person God created.  My personality was created.  I will live within the traits that have made me wonderful up until this point in my life and until the end.

Moreover, I will encourage those whom the world labels as shy.  That is not a bad thing to be--it is only when we look upon those people as defective that that's what they become.

I am wonderfully made.

Reaction

Let nothing upset you,
Let nothing startle you.
All things pass;
God does not change.
Patience wins all it seeks.
Whoever has God lacks nothing:
God alone is enough.
---St. Teresa of Avila

I'm always working on how I react to things.  Most of the time I feel like I am yelling at the kids (or dh) for things they do wrong, i.e. spilling drinks, running through the house, fighting.  I need to memorize this poem.

The Me Who No Longer Exists

In the mail today, I received a "special one-time offer" for me to re-subscribe to Citizen Magazine which is published by Focus on the Family. This notice arrived about 14 years too late for it to do any good.

I'm not the same person I was fifteen years ago. In fact, the person I was a decade and a half ago wouldn't recognize me and would probably say I'm not even a Christian.

So what happened? I started thinking for myself. I gave up what I had been taught by the church as a fact, and I researched and studied to find out the truth. Divinity school is where it started; and since I graduated ten years ago, I've kept changing. I'm not the conservative evangelical that is being targeted by this offer that came in the mail.

If I had this magazine, I bet I would vote exactly opposite of what it says in its voter's guide. The "trustworthy Christian perspective" wouldn't be my Christian perspective. I am simply not the person to which this piece of mail is addressed.

That person died. Or maybe evolved is a better word.
I just know that I have never been more confident in my beliefs and values. I've never known better what to support and what to fight.

And above all, I wonder at how God can change a heart so radically as mine was changed.

The Facts About Amendment One

I'm against it. It would have to be rescinded in the future if it passes, so why not save us the trouble and vote no.

RIP Earl Scruggs

Interesting Quote

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. --Dwight Eisenhower in 1953

Feminization of the Church or Self-Domesticating Evolution?

Today I was listening to The State of Things on my local public radio station. The segment aired was about how animals are domesticated and become pets and what work the Humane Society is doing with the knowledge thereof. The process of domestication was explained and one experiment lasting over 50 years was that of a Russian scientist Dmitry Belyaev. You can read all about animal domestication in this National Geographic article.

When an animal is domesticated, there features change. They become cuter with floppy ears and different coloration. This is because the genes that affect those traits are the ones triggered when an animal is domesticated. Domestication comes when the population changes social aspects of itself like communication. There is a decrease in testosterone and a rise in cortisol as the body reacts differently to the stress of new social interaction. Even more interesting is that species of some animals have self-domesticated. Read this article about Bonobos which look like chimpanzees but act much different. This leads me with to interesting theory.

Humans are fundamentally animals, and I'm sure there have been some self-domestication times in human history. As with the bonobos, tight social bonds are being formed Could it be that with our new ways of communicating and relating to one another we have begun a new evolution of domesticating ourselves? And maybe it is why male evangelical, complementarian leaders have been saying the church is feminizing. With more communication and a lowering of testosterone, I would tend to agree. But that also means that society is feminizing as a whole.

Is that such a bad thing? If it leads to a more peaceful, altruistic society, I wouldn't think so. But the process is a work in progress and evolutionary trends aren't known for many millions of years.