--- Very funny.
Apparently the Peeps put on a protest outside of the White House on Easter Sunday. Michele has the scoop---as usual.
--- Mr. H. has promised
to finally send me his submission about the ongoing bus drivers strike
here in the Twin Cities. I do believe I offered him the opportunity to
vent over a month ago, but he's been a wee bit busy at work and he
doesn't have a computer at home (poor man!), so I've waited patiently
and he finally promised to send it to me today. Still hasn't sent it
yet. He says he'll send it if, when he rereads it, it's up to snuff.
That is BS. Bubba needs to send it to me.
Am tempted to publish his email address here to get some of my loyal
audience to harrass him. But I won't because I'm a nice person and I
don't want his inbox to be inundated with penis enhancement spams. ---
Had a very nice easter over in Eagan at the sister and brother in law's
house. The kiddies were in happy form---very few tears shed and only a
few elbows were placed directly into the food on their plates. Life was
pretty sweet in that respect. I've mentioned before that, where the
husband's sister is concerned, religion is the proverbial loaded gun
sitting on the table, threatening everyone with its potential for
causing discontent. We try not to chat about religion. We really do.
I'm Catholic. The husband is agnostic, in the truest definition of that
word, and is not a big fan of organized religion. And the brother and
sister in law are Missouri Snyod Lutheran. There's not a whole lot of
common ground available for us to trod upon. But as much as we try to
stay away from talking about the loaded gun that's sitting on the
table, one of us invariably picks the damn thing up and starts waving
it around simply because they can't help themselves. (Talk about some
mixed metaphors! However, it works, so I'm leaving them!)
Now, the sister in law, bless her, is very religious. At the urging of
her husband, she has centered her family's life around their church and
what that church preaches. This is completely fine with me. But
what bothers me is that in this effort to be more Godly, she has, in
essence, used her religion as a shield to protect herself and her
family from ideas that she doesn't like. She homeschools the kids for
two reasons. One, she wants her kids to have a parochial education and
their church doesn't have a school. Two, she doesn't like the NEA's
liberal agenda, so she circumvents that agenda by homeschooling and in
the process eliminates the need to teach her children critical thinking
skills. But this effort to avoid ideas that she doesn't like isn't
present only in how she educates her children. It's present in
everything they do. She listens to the Christian radio station here in
town and loves it. They have speakers about how creationism is right
simply because evolutionism is a theory and has never been
proven---beyond a reasonable doubt---to be correct. She supported Judge
Moore last summer in his effort to keep his Ten Commandments monument.
She believes homosexuality to be wrong because it's in the bible as
being one of those forbidden activities (surprisingly, though, she
doesn't support the FMA for all the right reasons). I could go on but I
think you get the picture. She has a lot of religious books on her
shelf. And a lot of those books are put out by the Focus on the Family.
Well, yesterday, we were doing pretty good on avoiding religion
altogether. Of course, it was a religious holiday, so there were the
inevitable questions about Mass and services and the like. But we got
through it pleasantly enough and that was fine. What blew me away,
however, was when the sister in law called the inlaws down in Phoenix,
to extend the Easter greetings. She wanted to know if her Dad had
watched the CD-Rom's about "The DaVinci Code," that she'd sent them. I
was sitting right next to her and after she'd passed the phone over to
the husband, I asked her what the deal with the book was.
Apparently, she's concerned that her father was raving about that book.
She was concerned about this interest because her pastor---"a history
buff" as the sister in law described him---was concerned that people
would think the history in this work of fiction to be fact. The pastor
apparently held a few sessions at their church about this and put the
lectures on CD-Rom. Apparently, the sister in law was concerned and
sent the CD's to her father. Now, if she wants to rant and rave about a
book, that's fine with me, but what bothers me is that she hasn't even read The DaVinci Code.
Nor does she want to, from what I gather, because it has all sorts of
historical fallacies in it---or so her pastor says. The husband and I
were just dumbfounded by this one. She's suggested some pretty off the
wall junk over the years, but this one? To be concerned about what a
book---a work of fiction, mind you---presents simply because your
pastor said it had some historical inaccuracies in it? Nevermind that
the pastor is only a "history buff"--- but his word about the
truthfulness contained in this book is good enough testimony about the
worthwhileness of this book in the sister in law's mind. What the hell
is wrong with this picture?
I don't mean to rag on the sister in law. She's a nice person. She
really is. And I don't want to make it seem like I'm ragging on her
beliefs, either, but good grief, how can I help myself on this one? She
had never even read the thing and yet she's concerned about the
historical facts presented therein. What the hell? She actually asked
me what the plot was about. I told her it essentially turned the search
for the Holy Grail upon its ear and that the Holy Grail---in Dan
Brown's novel---was not what we typically thought of it as being. And
then there are clues and the characters follow those clues to get to
the resolution of the matter. "It's a good book," I said, but she
looked unconvinced. Then we chatted about "Angels and Demons," the
predecessor to "The DaVinci Code," and you could tell, simply by the
horrified look on her face when I told her the title of the book, that
it wasn't something she was ever going to read just because the title
turned her off. I tried to explain that Brown writes conspiracy novels.
That "Angels and Demons'" plot revolved about the Illuminati, a sort of
Masonic like sect.
The conversation then went like this:
SIL: "Oh, I heard that Masonry is rooted in satanic worship." {I do a
mental slap to the forehead at this point for using the Masons as a
point of reference. I should have known better.}
Me: "What? Who'd you hear that from?"
BIL: "She heard that from a pastor."
Me: "Huh? No, that's not right. The Masons were a secret society, yes,
but they have nothing to do with worshipping Satan. They were a
brotherhood that was formed to push society further---they weren't
allowed to chat about religion or politics. In essence, they were sort
of like a fraternity. A networking thing to help the members get
further in life. No one really knows what they're all about, but plenty
of rumors have circulated over the years, but I try and take the middle
of the road aspect about the rumors simply because we don't know one
way or another. I doubt they were satan worshippers, but I also doubt
that they were strictly all about pushing society further, either."
SIL: remains silent, but gives me an unconvinced look and then turns
away because one of the kids needed her.
The husband then got in on the act and the more we dismissed the sister
in law's position on the matter, the quieter the brother in law got and
the more entrenched she became in her opinion that this book was
historically inaccurate. Now, she never went over the line and said no
one should read it, but it was apparently fine with her that because
her pastor had said it wasn't a truthful book, well, she wasn't going
to bother reading it.
We left shortly thereafter and the minute we got home, the husband went
and found "The DaVinci Code" on the shelf and pulled it. He's going to
take it over to her and demand that she read it before she says another
thing to another person about it. He's her big brother---he apparently
can get away with that sort of behavior whereas I cannot. And that's
just fine with me. I would like her to read some fiction. All she has
on her bookshelves are self-help books and books about the Bible. I
just have to wonder though, why is she so afraid about books like this?
I don't want to knock her, but if she's really as strong in her faith
as she portrays herself to be, what's the harm in them? Why take an
activist stance against something you know nothing about simply because
you've heard certain things about its inaccuracies from someone who
isn't a trained history professor? It makes no sense to me. I want my
world to be bigger. I want to understand what this world and the people
who inhabit it are all about. The sister in law, however, wants the
world to be smaller. Yet, she wants a say in how the world is run. How
is it possible to understand the world and the people in it if you're
going to close yourself off from ideas that differ from yours if you
never look at those ideas in the first place?