Separation Anxiety...

I just finished reading a book called Good News About Sex and Marriage: Answers to Your Honest Questions About Catholic Teaching by Christopher West.  Mine was not the revised edition the link goes to.

As a convert this book was helpful.  It went into greater depth on many subjects than hubby could, and it answered my questions - some of which I didn't even know I had.  More than that, the book solidified my theory that there is a great divide between society and Christian morals.  I know that's like pointing to the sky and saying, "look! It's blue!" but the separation is more noticeable to me now.

Before I had even thought about converting, in 2006(ish), I was living with my first boyfriend.  I had been neglecting my religious life except to attend a church camp during high school ('06 was my graduation year) but I still held firm to waiting until marriage...until pushover me happened.  I was devastated, and I should have known right then and there to leave and put myself back together, but the stubborn me decided I could make things right if only I married this boy.  I was 18, and being 18 I was pretty dumb.  Maybe not dumb, but certainly clueless. 
At any rate, I would come across the Christian teaching of sex and marriage in various ways and I would willfully ignore it.  I chose not to acknowledge it because it made me uncomfortable.  I wouldn't even take the time to really think about why it made me uncomfortable, I'd just forget about it and go about my merry way.  Because if I didn't pretend it didn't exist (via making fun of it with all of my other liberal friends) I had to look my mistake square in the eyes and completely reorder my life.  I knew I was wrong, and I knew I wasn't happy, but I wasn't willing to face the amount of change that needed to happen to make things right.  It wasn't until I was completely miserable that I decided to make a change, but even then it was a pathetic change, and I didn't learn anything. 
I didn't learn anything because according to society I had nothing to learn, I just had to find myself a better boy.
So I went on toeing around the Christian teaching, making absurd excuses like, "everybody else does it," to bandage the wound I had so covertly inflicted upon myself.  I say covertly because I didn't even realize what I was doing when it happened, all I knew was that I was hurting.  I spent a few years playing the blame game and pointing fingers to things that had nothing to do with my pain.  But it always came back, and each time it was a little more acute.  I was bandaging the wound, but not cleaning it so that it could truly heal.

Then I met my husband.

We had a lot of conversations while riding around the city in his car.  A very large portion of them was me posing theoretical situations to him regarding Christian teaching.  Eventually I decided to go to midnight mass, and then I made the commitment to convert.  It took me a long time to level with my past decisions, and I still haven't found peace from them, but I'm getting there: it's hard to say, "yeah, I messed up," instead of making excuses.

But now I understand the way things are meant to be.  I understand that society has degraded and is degrading sex in such a way that is laying the foundation for social turmoil.  The separation that has occurred regarding sexuality is quietly destructive.  Women complain that they can't find a decent man, but they don't understand that a huge part of the reason for this is because of what society is teaching.  A lot of people seem to miss the real importance of the contraceptive debate for this reason.  More is at stake here than people realize, and those that don't see are (more often than not) blinded by the intentional divorce of sex and children.

A Word in Edgewise

A large part of why I come off awkward when in group settings is my inability to insert myself into a conversation.  This happens for a variety of reasons:

1. I don't have anything to say.
2. I didn't think of what to say fast enough.
3. I waited too long for a break in conversation and now the topic has shifted.
4. I'm too nervous to say anything at all (for fear of looking like an ass).
5. I don't know the group of people well enough.
6. I'm having a good time just listening.

Some of these sort of blend together, but I thought I'd list them separately because I felt it was warranted.

The biggest reason I don't contribute has recently shifted from being too nervous to not thinking of what to say fast enough or waiting too long to speak up.  Some months ago the reason was that I just didn't know anyone well enough to feel comfortable saying anything.
It doesn't help that I hang out with awesome, cultured, smart people now.  I used to feel intimidated.
Since having the wee one and steering my diet choices in a direction that pleases me I have more in common with them, so it's easier to contribute to a conversation.  Sometimes I feel childish because my contribution was just relating my own experience to the conversation; I didn't have anything new and interesting to add.

I suppose the entire root of my hesitation is being worried about perception.  I worry a lot about how others perceive me, especially if it's someone I know will be in my life for a long time, or someone I admire and would like to keep in my life for a long time.
My in-laws fall into this category.  I made a conscious decision to just relax a while ago (and I'm sort of being successful with this) and that has helped me a lot with communicating with them.  For a while there I was pretty nervous around them.  A lot of that was because I didn't know them very well, but a good portion of it was also that they're awesome people.  They're also different than anyone else I know, which is sort of a dumb statement considering that everyone is different.  What I mean is that most of the people I know and knew before meeting hubby had very similar interests like video games and anime.  We didn't talk about much else really.  My in-laws are very down to earth people and they've been doing what I wanted to be doing with my life for a long time.
Meeting them convinced me further that hubby was the man I wanted to spend my life with.  I would have married him regardless of in-law awesomeness I think, but it helps that I felt like I wanted to raise our family in his family...if that made any sense.

I digress.
My point is, the more I feel is at stake with the people I'm conversing with, the less I tend to say.  Which is sort of shooting myself in the foot because it has happened before that those people took my quietness as aloofness.  I've been told that someone thought that I put myself above everyone else, which can't be farther from the truth.

[EDIT]
I don't mean to imply that my old friends are any less awesome than my new friends, because that's not true.  I meant to say that my interests (and myself) have changed a lot since I've been pregnant and I have more in common with those I've met recently, generally speaking.
[/EDIT]

"Hindsight is 20/20"

One of the most interesting things about converting to Catholicism (and thus gaining a new perspective of the world) is looking back on the weird things I used to do. 
 For instance, when I lived by myself, I would bake in my bikini top during the summer.  This made perfect sense to me at the time since I was doing a lot of baking for work and it was so hot.  There was one time while I had roommates - and there were people visiting - that I did this without thinking twice about it.  This caused some trouble that I wasn't made aware of until later; it hadn't even occurred to me that others would find this offensive, but I should have known better.

I used to think that hanging out with guys was okay, even if I wasn't single.  Now I understand why it's not.  What's more, I understand that the reason I felt this way was because I tend to not get along with other women very well.  The main reason is that I'm kinda nerdy and most girls my age are not.  I'm not interested in The Bachelor, or anything on television, really.  I prefer Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, and Sherlock.  I don't find very many girls that share this set of interests, so I rationalized being friends with boys.
I had a friend that would come over and do chain mail at my apartment.  He taught me how to weave, actually.  The idea was he needed someone to help him produce enough chain mail dice bags to put in a nerd shop for sale.  I did not see anything wrong with this for the longest time; long after I stopped doing it because it made my boyfriend (now hubby) uncomfortable.  It just hit me one day while we were having lunch with the priest who was my instructor.
Being married has driven the point further.

Being on birth control is a whole other can of worms.  Part of it was being uneducated and the other part was laziness.  Now I refuse to go back on the pill, or any other form of synthetic contraceptive for two reasons: I don't believe that messing with your body's natural hormones is healthy, and intentionally removing children from the equation completely strips sex of it's sacred and emotional values.
Besides, I really am a huge fan of knowing my cycles the way symtpo-thermal charting allows me to.  Sure, I'll end up with a kid every now and then, but that's not so bad, and I don't yet perceive that to be the fault of the method as much as the fault of the practitioner(s).


I guess my whole point is that, having found the wonderful world of Christ, I look back and wonder why I did the things I did.  I was seeking happiness, but I wandered down the wrong path.
Something about being sort of gullible.

Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven

Women, Sexuality, and the Catholic Church.
written by Uta Ranke-Heinemann.

I did not read the whole book.

On page three (the first page of the first chapter) the author states "...that Jesus was a thoroughly "lust-free," i.e. joyless Redeemer."
Now that we have established that lust is the only way to joy:

...connects sexual pleasure so closely with the concept of "sin" that one more legal point should be clear: Sexual pleasure is not a good thing...the old Catholic view that there can be no sexual pleasure without sin.  (p. 4)

 These two points are in discussion of a session held in 1981 in the District Court of Hamburg.  The court is the one doing the connecting of sexual pleasure with sin, while the author is the one doing the connecting of all sexual pleasure to lust.  Presumably for the purpose of this book.
On page eleven it is stated that "...marriage was a permit to indulge in lust for those who found lust indispensable..." in reference to the Stoic view of marriage/sex.
Now that we have established that all sex is lust:

Like many neurotics he radically separates love and sexuality.  (p. 76)

This reminds me of my philosophy class in college.  When defining the term "love" in the first week the professor asked if there could be a difference between making love and having sex.  With no hesitation a girl in the front row said, "no."  This was rather disturbing to me as there is most certainly a difference between making love and having sex.  The contrast is quite stark, to me, and should not be overlooked.  But it is being overlooked by many, including the author.

So.  We have established the following:
Lust equates to joy.
Sex equates to lust.
Sex equates to love.

The implications are, to me, that one cannot find joy without lust and one cannot have love without sex.
I'm not following this line of thought.  It is apparent that you can find joy without lust, as there are many things that bring joy other than lusting or sexing whomever you please.  Sex with no love is the purest form of lust, and this does not make a good majority of women happy, yet this is what the author seems to find as the ideal (as the quote from p. 76 seems to show).  Further adding to my suspicion that this is her stance the author writes the following:

The philosophers of the Stoa condemned all extramarital sex and demanded conjugal fidelity from both spouses.  (p. 10)

The above is put in a negative context.  Apparently being faithful to your spouse is a bad thing.

So, with these in mind we move to Augustine.  The book had a lot to say on Augustine (and a fair bit on Aquinas as well) such as, "And since at bottom Augustine loathed pleasure more than he liked procreation, Catholic tradition has been preserved..." (p.280).  This is in reference to pope John Paul II allowing periodic continence as a form of birth control, basically saying that since periodic continence restricts sex, the pleasure-hating continues in accordance to Augustine.
Augustine is, apparently, the source of all Catholic teaching.
Also on page 280, "...the continual stress on children as the first purpose of marriage is really aimed at...keeping married couples away from sex."  I seem to have forgotten exactly what the natural product of sex was.  Isn't it something about creating more of the species.  What do you call it?  Oh, children.
This brings me to the final quote I wrote down:

Strictly speaking, it is an insoluble problem, because where there is no moral difference, none can be found."  (p. 281)

This is concerning the difference between contraception and what the author calls the rhythm method.  Never-mind that the author is completely uneducated about said method calling two separate methods (one bound to fail for it's incorrect assumptions, the other being following the natural cycle of the woman) the same.  I suppose that being a practitioner of NFP/FAM I'd know the difference a bit more readily than someone who is not acquainted with either.  Still...
At any rate, the difference is pretty distinct in my opinion.  What the author calls the rhythm method does not disturb the natural cycle of things.  Contraception, largely, does.  That is the difference between the two.
Not only that, but with the "rhythm" method you strengthen your self-control, the relationship between your partner, and your family (if you have one).  There are other benefits to it as well.

Like I said earlier, I didn't read the whole book.  I sometimes skipped entire chapters because they weren't about anything that interested me (namely oppression of women) and I skipped large sections of chapters for redundancy, or things like relating antiquated scientific views.
There was not a large part in this book about the direct oppression of women.  There was a whole chapter, maybe two devoted to it, but one of these was about how terribly hateful celibate men were to women.
The whole book put sex and lust on such a pedestal that I started to kind of feel sorry for the author.  If sex was that important to her, she might have been kind of miserable.

To sum all of this up:
I got the impression that the book attributed more import to sex than I think is due, and from the very get-go I could not agree with the author's view of lust as joy (being as I see lust as loveless sex, and loving sex brings far more joy) and so there were a lot of other associations I had trouble understanding.
This was the first book in a long while that I found I had to stop, reread the paragraph I had just read (sometimes twice), and then occasionally the paragraph before to follow what the author was saying.
It was a nice challenge, but I don't particularly find it relevant (although it did once site the Roman Catechism regarding marital sex).  The majority of the text was spent harping on how terribly in hate with all sex Christians are, and thus women must also be hated.  There was too much quoting of saints and not enough direct teaching of the church.

What I learned:
A lot of men who followed the Catholic faith also hated women.

As a small note, this book is dedicated to the author's husband.  I can't figure out if that means she liked being married, or hated it.

Natural Parenting.

Women feel not only that they must be ever-present for their children but also that they must breast-feed, make their own baby food and eschew disposable diapers. It's a prison for mothers, and it represents as much of a backlash against women's freedom as the right-to-life movement.

-Erica Jong 

Okay, let me first say that I am very well aware that there are circumstances in which you cannot raise a child naturally.  I am in no way trying to degrade the women in these circumstances.  Very often (if not always) they are loving, caring, wonderful parents; something is just preventing them from doing what they might otherwise want to do.  I am responding to this particular woman's rather long-winded article against natural parenting.

This quote is more than a little irritating.  This woman has just railed against everything I consider to be logical in being a good mother.

Ever-present is not a good idea, but being with your child and actually taking a large part in his or her life is very important to raising him or her.  In fact, I might say that part of being a mother is sacrificing your own life to raise the child (or children) you have brought into this world.  That being said, I'm not really sure it seems like sacrifice for the woman who loves her child.  If it does, it is a good kind of sacrifice.

Oh. Wait. Sacrifice is bad.

I forgot where I was living for a moment.

The remainder of this quote is plain ridiculous.

Formula feeding should be your absolute last result.  Unless you like chemicals then, by all means, formula feed.  We wonder where all this hyperactivity is coming from in our children.  Would it not be logical to connect their diet to their behavior?  No?  Is it it too radical to think that processed foods (that are largely made of practically synthetic things) may actually be bad for you?

Early in the shift to hospital birth women were routinely X-rayed to make sure they had a big enough pelvis.  Oops, the babies got cancer.  Later, women were given a drug to help morning sickenss that caused severe (by my standards) birth defects.  Who is to say that in another few years there won't be widely publicized information linking formula to colic and other digestive problems?

Oh, and forget microwaving your formula: it can cause the formula to become toxic.  Not fatally so, I assume, but how many toxins are you okay with your baby ingesting?  They do label formulas with a warning against nuking them these days, but it took a bit for anyone to admit something was wrong.

It should follow that I am pro breast-feeding.  I am a formula baby myself and I'm just fine now, but it is something I would like to avoid if I can with my children.  And my reasoning seems logical to me, the same way eating a healthy, natural diet is logical to me.

Disposable diapers is a choice.  I'm going to try cloth, because I'd like to minimize my household's waste output.

As for the last bit:

I'm terribly sorry that having children also comes with responsibility.  If you'd like to be a completely free person don't have a child.  Children are not pets; they are a lifetime commitment.  As with any lifetime commitment (such as marriage) there are things that need to be sacrificed, there are compromises to be made, there are responsibilities to adhere to.

This is the line of thinking that leads to the concept of painless child birth.
What is that doing to us and our babies?

~~~

I am a woman.

I was created to be nurturing, loving, and strong.

I'm not imprisoning myself when I choose to raise my child in a healthy way.

Women have been raising children this way for ages, what is wrong with it now?

I am a woman.

And I find it ridiculous that others would unabashedly decline the logic of natural parenting because it's difficult.  Life is difficult.

Get over it.

Lessons Thirty through Thirty-five

I'm doing extra lessons today because it's been a while since I've actually posted a lessons entry - even though they're supposed to be every Friday.
There are three more lessons left after this!

Lesson Thirty
Contrition
To be completely honest, I think the world needs more of this.  At least people should read this chapter of the catechism; it explains how to be truly sorry for something you've done wrong.  The chapter itself is writing up to the next chapter concerning confession, but could be taken out of the book and made a life lesson.
The whole point is to be very, truly sorry for the wrongs you've done (sins you've committed) before you confess them.  You wouldn't make an apology to someone without meaning every word, would you?

Lesson Thirty-one
Confession
A complete confession is humble, has no lies, and no intentional omissions.  It is your duty to be honest with yourself and your confessor.  Perhaps the former is the most difficult.

Lesson Thirty-two
How to Make a Good Confession
This chapter details how to make a good confession.  You should prepare by thinking of all the sins you've committed between confessions.  I try not to leave anything out, no matter how dumb it might be; if I feel bad for it, I should confess it.

Lesson Thirty-three
Temporal Punishment and Indulgences
435. What is an indulgence?  An indulgence is the remission granted by the Church of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven
 436.  How many kinds of indulgences are there?  There are two kinds of indulgences, plenary and partial.
Plenary is full remission and partial is, well, partial.
You cannot gain an indulgence for another living person, but you can gain an indulgence for a soul in purgatory.
I'm not sure how I feel about indulgences.  They seem kind of selfish to me, but I'm not sure I fully understand them.  The way I see it, you should be the best possible person you could ever be without seeking reward.  But I could be understanding the premise incorrectly.

Lesson Thirty-four
Anointing of the Sick and Holy Orders
This lesson explains why the sick should be anointed and touches on Holy Orders at the end. 

Lesson Thirty-five
Matrimony
467.  What should Catholics do to prepare for a holy and happy marriage?  To prepare for a holy and happy marriage Catholics should:

• first, pray that God may direct their choice;
• second, seek the advice of their parents and confessors;
• third, practice the virtues, especially chastity;
• fourth, frequently receive the sacraments of penance and Holy Eucharist

This chapter also explains some of the rules regarding matrimony and briefly touches on why divorce is invalid in the eyes of the church.
"What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder."

~~~

I feel like this entry was kind of weak, but I can't think of anything more to say for these.  I guess I'm just not having a verbose day.
And that, ladies and gentleman, was an excuse to use the word "verbose."

FAQ and Miscellanious Musings.

Random story:
This morning, while opening the shop, I grabbed the airpot full of warm water to brew coffee and set it in the sink as usual - I brew a pot of water before leaving to keep the pot warm, thus keeping the coffee hotter for longer during the day.  I measured the grounds into the filter, loading them into the brewer and proceeded to empty the airpot into the sink.  Today there was some sort of spider, about the size of a dollar coin, in the sink.  I watched him as he struggled to avoid the flood, which he did successfully all the way up until the very end when he seemed to just give up.  He curled into a ball and followed the last trickling stream down the drain.
I wanted to save him, but I'm afraid of spiders.
I was so sad that he went down the drain.  I even said, "I'm sorry spider."  I felt bad that I had potentially killed him for almost an hour, and even recounting the story just now I still feel bad.
And that's my random story.

Some of these questions are off topic; I just decided I wanted to write about what it is I get asked the most as a blogger and as a barista.

Introductions are in Order.

I said in an earlier post (a long time ago, actually) that I would cease to be so anonymous after getting married.
Well, I am a married woman now!  So, here is a list of things about me:

• Who am I? 
  Jennifer Fitch
• What do I do? 
  I am a homemaker.
• Where am I? 
  Colorful Colorado!
• How old am I? 
  I was born in the third month of 1988.  You do the math ;)
• Am I learned?
  I went to Metro State for a little while, but decided I was disenchanted with higher education - I was going for art - so I stopped after a couple years.
• Do I have pets? 
  Yes, I have two cats and a puppy.  Vincent, Leeloo, and Brienne.
• How did I chose the name Demosthenes? 
  When I started this blog I had just finished the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.  That is where the name Demosthenes came from.  As to the actual man, I know very little about him.

 So that's all I can think of right now.  If you're curious about anything else, just ask.

Things are A-changing

Two things happened at mass this Sunday: I didn't go to confession because I haven't memorized the Act of Contrition all the way yet and I got embarrassed about it (so, I didn't take communion either), and Father (basically) announced that participation in the mass by singing was now more encouraged. 

I had noticed, when I sat in the pew, a book sitting with me.  So I picked it up and leafed through it, finding songs and various prayers.  I didn't think much of it other than it was new, so when Father had us kneel and say a prayer from it, I was vaguely surprised.  When he said that he would like us to sing, I was more surprised.
My initial reaction was excitement - I love to sing - and I spent the majority of the morning being excited for it.  Now I have mixed feelings.  I would love to sing parts of the mass (only if others around me are singing, I'm a very shy singer) but I'm not extremely excited for reciting prayers in unison during mass.  I usually just follow along silently, because reciting in groups has always made me uncomfortable.  The only exception I've found for this is the rosary - which I still say silently, but the prayers said aloud don't stir discomfort.  I can't say why it makes me uncomfortable, but there's an uneasiness that has always come with it.  My best guess is that it seems sheep-ish and the rebellious side of me, well, rebels against following the crowd.
Also, there's something unsettling about sitting back and listening to a fairly large group of people say something in unison.  It's like we're hypnotized...or something.

What we can take away from this is that I'm weird.

~~~

The rest of my weekend was spent writing out wedding invitations.  My mom came down to help, and I'm very glad she did.  I couldn't have gotten them done without the help of my mom, god-mother, and sister-in-law.  And my fiance; all he has to do is be present and I'm happier about working on something (he also helped stamp stuff).  Oh, and my roommate, she helped stamp on Saturday.

I might put a picture of the finished product on here, if I'm not too lazy.

At any rate, happy Monday!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the year of the Dragon: the year the world ends.

With the Mayan Calendar ending, who knows what will happen this coming December.  The Earth could explode!...or something.  Regardless of the impending apocalypse, this year is ringing in with interesting prospects:
The Good - awesome things

• My roommate is nice to me.  Together we are starting on the path to healthier diets and exercise.
• On a similar note, Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) is set up now.  Loads of fun shall ensue.
• I'm getting married this year and I can't wait!  I'm so excited to spend the rest of my life with my fiance; I'm eager to do the 'boring' stuff such as sitting around the house reading the paper, yard work together, and cooking together.  It will be fantastic, and I plan on keeping it that way for a long time.
• I am happy at my place of employment.  This is pretty much a 180° change.  I'm still working for the same guy (I used to be miserable here) but I've moved to a better location.

The Bad - things that are simultaneously good and bad

• Possibly moving my wedding forward.
  This is good because I'm an instant gratification person.  I want to live with my fiance now not later.
  This is bad because it sort of makes me feel overwhelmed.  I want to do this slow and steady; when I rush things I tend to make mistakes.
• The location I moved to gives me more hours, which means less time away from work, but more money.

The Ugly - things that fail

• Obama signed the NDAA.  The mere existence of this folly says a lot to me about our government.  Government is steadily losing direction and the general public seems to be unaware.  I ran into someone the other day who had no idea what the NDAA even was.
• The FDA decided "voluntary reform" was better than regulation of antibiotic use in animal feed.  The question here is, "what is this doing to our food?" and all of the implications that come with that.
• Government.

Lessons Twelve, Thirteen, and Fourteen

Lesson Twelve
The Marks and Attributes of the Church
A. MARKS of the Church
155.  What are the chief marks of the Church?  The chief marks of the Church are four: It is one, holy, catholic or universal, and apostolic.
B. ATTRIBUTES (or Qualities) of the Church
161.  What are the chief attribute of the Church?  ...authority, infallibility, and indefectibility.  They are attributes because they are qualities perfecting the nature of the Church.
Blogger's spell check doesn't recognize indefectibility.  Apparently it's a made up word.  I find it amusing that a good portion of the results are related to the Catholic Church.  We make our own words, damnit!  (That was a joke)
166. Are all obliged to belong to the Catholic Church in order to be saved?
My instructor eased my mind about this particular statement by amending it in a way.  He stated that people who belong to other faiths can know God better than someone who belongs to Catholicism.  I can't recall exactly what he said on the subject but the point was (basically) that people could belong to the Catholic Church without realizing it.
I'm not sure how I feel about this.  It seems elitist, but I can't surmise if it truly is.  At this point I will say it is not, the logic behind the statement is sound: we should seek truth, Catholicism is true, we should be Catholic.  That's an extremely simplified version, but I think you get the idea.
What I can take away from lesson twelve is this; I have a problem with anything that hints at superiority.  In my mind, I am superior to no one and no one is superior to me.  As people we are all loved by God and to even hint that one group is more cherished feels wrong to me.  Yes, there are good people and bad people, but no one is better than anyone else.  Making better choices does not make you superior.

Lesson Thirteen
The Communion of Saints and Forgiveness of Sins
A short lesson on the connection between the blessed in heaven, the souls in purgatory, and the faithful on earth.  What we can do to help each other and to help the souls in purgatory.  It's much similar to what I talked about in my most recent post in that we help through prayer, charity, and penance.

Lesson Fourteen
The Resurrection and Life Everlasting
 This lesson covers the second coming, purgatory, hell, and heaven (in that order).

~~~

Things I used to be (and what changed my mind):

• Pro-Choice.  Watch this and you'll understand the reasoning behind my switch.  Even though my views changed before watching this, it raises some good points.
• On Birth Control:  This was a case of being uninformed.  What eighteen year old girl is going to actually read the packet full of warnings they give you with drugs?  Not me, apparently.  I made the decision to stop taking the pill some time ago.  It's just not worth it.  Besides, there are perfectly natural forms of 'birth control' out there that no one tells you about.
• Anti-Organized Religion:  What I really am is anti-bigoted religion.  All it took was to experience first hand exactly how religion is practiced right.  Attending mass daily is really a joy.  It's unfortunate that my work schedule doesn't allow for it currently.
• Pro-Sex Before Marriage: I'm still a little bit on the fence about this one.  I used to say things like, "you wouldn't buy a cow without milking it, would you?"  But sex has never been an all-encompassing thing for me.  It seems to be that society is obsessed with hyper-sexuality.  The rate of women who disapprove of having a child outside of wedlock is declining, fairly steadily. 
  However, if you really love someone, and you know - absolutely know, without a doubt - that you are going to spend the rest of your lives together, the worst that could happen is you can get pregnant.  And even then, that's not so bad right?  Particularly if you're already engaged.  I do think that you should wait until marriage to have a child, and to have sex.  But I'm not sure it's such a terrible thing if you don't. 

Great Expectations part II

In a recent post I outlined what I perceive to be society's expectations of me and in general.  I didn't touch on everything because, well, there's a lot to touch on.
I don't consider myself someone who conforms to the expectations of society, so following is what I expect of myself:

I should be happy, and grateful, for all of the things in my life.  Things like running water, a grocery store, transportation, electricity, the people in my life who love me, and the people in my life who don't.
I should be grateful to God, and I should tell Him so daily.
I do not yet fill this expectation.  But I am working hard to do so.

I should be honest.  At all times.

I expect myself to be kind to everyone, regardless.  Sometimes (rarely) I can't manage to pull this one off.  This is usually when you've done so many things to me that I can't look at you without registering some form of pain, be it anger or sadness.  I'm always deeply disappointed with myself when I can't find it in me to be kind; no one should be treated poorly.
That being said, I am never malicious.  Period.

Not for the Faint of Heart

WARNING!
Do not read this if you are easily offended.

One of the issues I had always had with the Catholic church was what I perceived to be it's stance on gay marriage.  The problem with this is that my perception was not based on actual fact.  Like most lazy people I hadn't bothered to research the idea behind the stance, I just took what seemed most reasonable from what I had heard from others.  The problem with that is what you hear from others is generally not reliable, sometimes not reasonable, and most always not educated (not to say that people are unintelligent, the majority just don't do their homework).  The lesson here is to always find out for yourself; simply taking someone's word on something is not a great idea.

I know more about the Catholic view of gay marriage than when I started down this road, but I'm not nearly as articulate with it as they are here.  I have to say that all the bigoted 'Christians' that take such an emotionally charged, defensive stance in the argument are actually hurting the church rather than helping (so cut it out, would you?) and there seems to be an inordinate amount of them.  These people are where my view of Catholicism and gay marriage became skewed.