I feel guilty.

Many many loving people have prayed for me over the past month or so, included my name on the prayer list of their church services even though I am a stranger from cyberspace, sacrificed time from their friends and family to put prayer in action caring for an ill friend as in this is what Jesus would do, and written loving emails/pms.

I am thankful to everyone but I do not pray and will not do so insincerely despite my gratitude.  The support was overwhelming and raised my spirits.

Again I am appreciative.I was raised United Methodist in the Deep South and went to confirmation classes in my early teens.  A very good friend of mine now is a Methodist minister and I told him the only lesson I remembered from those classes.  Jesus said one was to pray in private (I think he said in a closet but that is rather suggestive in today’s climate) and one’s religion should be apparent from one’s behavior and service to others – not words.  That was how one witnessed.  My minister friend was happy that I remembered something and said that was useful. 

I used to pray.  Being from the Deep South I married as a teenager.  If one was having sex on a regular basis and saying “I love you” sincerely then one needed to get married. So I and other “one” involved married in a church ceremony at the church where I had been confirmed.  We divorced as could be expected several years later and I tried to pray. 

It felt like I was talking to a brick wall.  I went to my Methodist minister at the time who knew of my academic interests/pursuits.  He absolutely surprised me and said that I did not need to if prayer was not working.  He spoke of his fondness of the beliefs of Native Americans and recommended that I read Friedrich  Nietzsche.  If anyone is unfamiliar with the name here is how Stanford University’s Department of Philosophy describes him online.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He was interested in the enhancement of individual and cultural health, and believed in life, creativity, power, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. Often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers along with Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Nietzsche's revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries.

I read Nietzsche.  Much of Nietzsche’s early views/observations were based on his study of the Pre-Socratics as in those before Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle whose beliefs are interwoven into much of Christianity even though they were pagans by default.  They lived in the B.C. years as in before Christ and it is hard to believe in someone yet to be born.  The names of some of these Pre-Socratics and there are a horde of them are Heraclitus (read all about him at http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/HERAC.HTM), Gorgias, and Isocrates.

Yes I do know that Nietzsche did not like women that much.  More than likely because he was a nerd to millionth degree and they snubbed him.  Doesn’t excuse what he wrote about women but I don’t read that part. Do you listen to Eminem? Same situation.

Reading Nietzsche supported my love of rhetoric that I was studying in graduate school. That study became enmeshed with my fascination with comedians that honestly began in part because a new boyfriend liked to go out and drink beer on Sunday afternoons as well as Saturday afternoons.  He was a Yankee from Indiana where they had no blue laws as they did in Arkansas meaning no drinking unless it was a private club. The closest private club to my apartment was the comedy club.  We went on Sunday afternoons and I wish now 20 years later that I could remember the names of the comedians for whom we bought drinks and with whom we had conversations.  Alas I do not.  To preserve the Yankee’s dignity he was also an athlete who ran five miles a day so he was not just sitting on the couch downing six packs.  He just liked the party of people one did not find at church on Sundays in Arkansas.

God bless the very broken road that led me here to steal from Rascal Flatts.

One comedian who expresses my distress with organized religion is Doug Stanhope.Here is the major distress a la Stanhope:

You never hear in the news, "200 killed today when Atheist rebels took heavy shelling from the Agnostic stronghold in the North."

I understand that religious clerics in the Catholic and Muslim religions saved what we knew of the rhetoric I love by both the Pre-Socratics and Socratics during the Dark Ages.  Without them there would be as Nietzsche would say it – nothing.  So religion has preserved knowledge, promoted art, and disposed people to noble acts.  However, fanatics in any religion screw it up and start killing each other.  Despite the insistence on the separation of church and state in our country’s founding documents that does not happen.

Here is the second distress a la Stanhope:

If marriage didn't exist, would you invent it? Would you go "Baby, this shit we got together, it's so good we gotta get the government in on this shit. We can't just share this commitment 'tweenst us. We need judges and lawyers involved in this shit, baby. It's hot!"

This is the language of the standard wedding vows

Will you love him/her, comfort him/her, honor and keep him/her, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sadness and in joy, to cherish and continually bestow upon her your heart’s deepest devotion, forsaking all others, keep yourself only unto her as long as you both shall live?

Notice the order of the promises 1) comfort, 2) honor in several good/bad situations, 3) cherish, and 4) devote.  Only at NUMBER FIVE does one promise to keep one’s pants on and genitals to oneself around others.  Way too many people break those first more important promises one through four and think they are faithful wives and husbands because they keep their pants on. 

As Chris Rock notes about men which also applies to women: a man is only as faithful as options.  I don’t eat roasted goose every day.  This may be because no one offers it to me as an option.  I won’t know until regularly presented with roasted goose.

You can now classify me as one of those bitter middle-aged OS women writers if you have not already done so.

My point is that if one keeps those first four promises as well as his or her partner then why would there be a need to even promise to “forsake”? Why would one even want to forsake and cause pain to someone for whom they kept the first four promises?  

Stanhope explains

Jesus died for your sins. I'm doing it for your mere entertainment dollar. 

Similarly I am just putting my thoughts and feelings out there for your blog reading. So if you are really angry now. .. please do not be.