The danger of ‘offending people’

I’ve been thinking a bit about what it means to ‘offend’ someone, particularly if that someone is a friend of yours whose beliefs you happen to strongly disagree with. I am not one to shy away from a heated argument (har har, understatement) on an issue that I care passionately about. But I do sometimes have this nagging worry that my anger will frighten off people that I consider to be good friends, and good people, who happen to have some unfortunate beliefs.

But the more I think about it, the more I believe this needs to be put in perspective.

The Bible says that unbelievers will burn in Hell for eternity.

… Wait, rewind, what?

Burn.

In HELL.

For ETERNITY.

Suddenly, calling someone a poopyhead doesn’t seem like such an offensive crime. I have friends who worship a God who would condemn me to ever-lasting suffering. Not just believe in Him, but worship him as some kind of superior moral being.

(Of course, most of my friends are the ‘cut and paste the good bits and leave out the vast majority of the rest’ sort of Christians, which makes them much nicer people but perhaps less theologically cohesive. I do still hold them responsible for the contents of the Holy Book that they choose to follow, though.)

While my friends hold those beliefs, I’m sorry, but I’m just going to stop fucking worrying about ‘offending’ them. If people don’t think the very idea of hell is the most offensive thing possible, then surely nothing that I can say will bother them, anyway.

Overheard

Lady on the bus, to her young daughter: “Sarah, don’t do that. Be ladylike, please.”

The daughter, sounding remarkably shrewd for a 5 year old: “Ladylike? What’s ladylike?”

The mother is stumped for a few seconds and then stumbles out something like ‘acting like a little lady’.

Five year old does not look convinced.

I think that she will go far in life.

Already seen my first ‘#prayforboston’ hashtag

Already seen my first ‘#prayforboston’ hashtag,

sitting there on my screen all smug and pious,

as if prayer will bring people back from the dead or re-grow their limbs,

as if prayer can keep this from happening again

When it is prayer in the first place

That makes some people decide

They would like to see your blood on the road,

Because their God wills it.

Either their God is more powerful than yours,

Or none
of them
are listening

So don’t waste so much time praying;

We need to fix this shit ourselves.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

* Just to be clear… I am aware that I am jumping to conclusions. Though to me it feels more like a small hop than a giant leap. Still, I may be wrong.

The approaching storm

~

This is one of my favourite photos from my 2011 Europe trip, or perhaps ever – and it was an accidental one. The girl ran into the frame and threw her head back just as I pressed the shutter button.

When I look at it now I can feel exactly what I felt when I took it, exactly what I heard and smelled and thought. I can remember the taste of the air. I don’t know if it will leave any impression on anyone else, but it does this for me. To me it’s a moment made infinite.

It’s why I take photographs.

Two things the Church wants

Your silence and your money:

 

Just going through Europe photos from last year, and I remember how much this made me roll my eyes. It’s taken inside the Notre Dame, Paris. Such a beautiful building – I don’t think we should let God take the credit for it. It’s not like he showed up to help out with the construction.

Surfing

I have discovered the most wonderful, fascinating, time-sucking, inspirational place on the internet!

Here it is!!

It is the kind of site, like tvtropes or wikipedia, that makes one understand where the phrase “surfing the web” comes from. Thirteen tabs open at the moment, and each one spawns more, like some strange technological fractal. Your brain becomes a spiderweb [hyper]linking it all together, mixing metaphors with gleeful abandon.

Also, clicking and reading and clicking and reading has led me to this article once again – it’s the final piece that Ray Bradbury wrote for the New Yorker before his death earlier this year, and god, it makes me teary. I feel the loss of authors I’ve read like the passing of close friends, and why not? You’ve been inside their head, and they inside yours. It’s not so strange, really.

~

“Even at that age, I was beginning to perceive the endings of things, like this lovely paper light. I had already lost my grandfather, who went away for good when I was five. I remember him so well: the two of us on the lawn in front of the porch, with twenty relatives for an audience, and the paper balloon held between us for a final moment, filled with warm exhalations, ready to go.”

 

There’s one day left before the summer.

Blue true dream of sky

While it’s true that anger is a valid response to injustice, there are other things, important things.

It would be far too easy to become a cynic, and the easy road is quite often the more boring one.

I think it’s far more challenging to create something beautiful than something miserable.

Challenge accepted.

~

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

- e.e. cummings