RagingRev

Last Thursday my wife and I were in the midst of an argument. Nothing major of course, she was stressed out and when she is stressed she screams at me for a while until she feels better and then usually everything is all good. During our argument we saw a little head bobbing around through the window on our door…there was the pastor that performed our wedding ceremony standing there.

I’m not sure who sent him or if he had even been sent at all, this was the first time I had seen him in the three years since we were wed so the visit was quite peculiar. When my wife and I were in the process of getting married we both still believed though we had our doubts about Christianity, nonetheless the pastor found himself easily impressed by us and our resolve to remain virgins until our wedding night, so as far as he knew all was well with our faith at that time. I can only assume that he had gotten some wind of my fall from grace, this is a small town and I am very much an Out atheist, but regardless this is how our conversation went:

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This is a continuation of the last post: My Gripe with the TEA Party: My Town Responds please read it after you have read my original post: My Gripe with the TEA Party

The final letter that was addressed to me was from none other than the pastor that I focused much of my attention on in my original submission. Understandably he too thought that I was the heckler that shouted and interrupted his speech at the rally. I have attempted to call Rev. Hicks to inform him that this is not the case and left him a voice mail to that effect. I hope to hear from him soon, perhaps he would be willing to go grab a cup of coffee with me sometime. Due to the length of this letter I will only post it in portions, then deal with it a paragraph or two at a time. His letter can be read in it’s entirety Here without any of my comments inlaid.

Dear Editor, In the last edition of this newspaper, I was the main target of a lengthy letter to the editor. Inasmuch as the writer identified me by naming the church where I pastor, I feel compelled to respond. It is the right and privilege of the writer of that letter to express his “gripe” as he sees fit. I am thankful for the right to respond.

First, thank you very much for your relatively gracious response. We are both mutually thankful to have our right to respond and have gripes and I am even more glad that we can do so in a civil way. My intention was not to bring any negative attention onto you or your church and I am very sorry if that has been the case – I will try to better explain my intentions and failures as we progress here.

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Last week, as you remember, I wrote a letter to the editor of The Dodge County News regarding the T.E.A. Party tax rally held by some private organizers and citizens of Eastman, GA. That letter can be found in it’s entirety Here along with various comments from locals and my internet friends.. The Dodge County News runs weekly, every Wednesday and when I got my paper yesterday I was delighted to see that there was nearly a full page in total dedicated to answering my letter. I am going to post these answers and reply to them here rather than write another letter to the editor because I simply do not want to continue monopolizing the space of the paper, but I do want the Dodge County News to know that I am eternally grateful for their inclusion of my letter and it’s responses – the media is so often either a lame duck or a slanted medium to push policies and opinions of it’s editors that I find it very refreshing that even in my small conservative town a voice of dissent (and in my opinion a voice of reason) is not silenced despite the pressures that the editor may receive from various parties. It means a LOT to me that they allowed my voice to be heard and that tells me that this paper is one of integrity – Dodge County is lucky to have it.

I am breaking this up into two separate posts because this entry will be over 5000 words if I do not, the two shorter responses will be on this post and a very long response from the pastor that was a target of my original TEA Party letter will be on another post.

July Fourth – Religious Holiday?

The first response I would like to reply to is one that comes from a misunderstanding of the writer, and evidently a few other folks. While at the TEA party there was an individual standing outside the grounds at which the rally was being held that started yelling at Rev. Hicks, the speaker that I spent most of my letter complaining about, things that were pretty well in agreement with what I said in my letter. The individual yelled something to the effect of, “What the hell does this have to do with taxes?” among other things that I couldn’t quite make out. Though I agree with the general sentiment of the heckler (as I will call him henceforth), that heckler was not I nor was it anyone within my company at the time. The most protesting I did whilst at the rally was shaking my head at some of the things the speakers were saying, but I did not yell or interrupt the speakers at any point. The letter is as follows:

Editor, There was a letter in the paper July 8,2009 addressing the contents of the T.E.A. party held on July 4, 2009. The person that wrote the article would, by his actions, like to silence the tone on born again Christians.

The 4th of July holiday was picked by those that planned the gathering with the intention of giving a Christian tone, because the 4th of July is a holiday that is celebrated across our nation thanking God for the privilege of assemble. I was one of the people that was in the planning, paying my money and time to have the right to select the speakers that we wanted and giving the right to even an atheist the privilege to attend. Take notice that we did advertise that we would have barbecue, yet this intruder elected not to participate. He brought his own and stayed out of the venue that had been reserved for the TEA Party. By his actions, his purpose was not to come and listen, but was to cause trouble. The 4th of July is a holiday that was selected for Christians to assemble, and if the atheist that wrote the article really wants to organize something for his cause, he should locate and rent an old phone booth and invite all that wants to hear him. He could hold this gathering on the atheist holiday, which is April 1. At least he wouldn’t be bothered by any born again Christians to heckle him. In closing, Mr. Oxley has the right to be wrong. JW (Initials for privacy)

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For Fathers Day this year my wife and I went down to Rhine to spend some time with her family….the close knit nature of my wife’s family is something foreign to me, I was raised by a single mother whos only family was a state away and for the most part avoided my paternal family once my grandmother died. My wife’s family, as many faults as I may find with them (and them me), sticks together for the most part, Monica’s great-grandmother died a few years ago at the age of 94 and her grandparents are still solid foundations for the family. Everyone lives within half a mile of one another….everyone but us.

Monica’s grandfather is down on his health right now though, he was in bed all day today and that is something very uncommon for this man, who still works 7 days a week with his logging company. His being sick is scary for the family, at one point today my mother-in-law went in to see him and fought back tears when she came back out. She said that I should call or go see my dad and I didn’t know what to say at the time.

Now that my wife and I are home though, I have thought about it a bit. I understand my mother-in-law’s position, she was raised in a loving home by loving parents and had grandparents that were there until just recently. Both of her parents are strong willed, kind hearted folks that put their family first. They have always been there to help when someone needs it, so I can understand celebrating the sacrifices of people like that.

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I think I have dealt with this before on this blog, but things seem to have escalated around here at my small Georgia town. My wife and I seem to increasingly be the subject of random conversation with people that we don’t even really know.

To be completely honest, one of the things that prompted me to start RagingRev and move my blog from Livejournal was that the rumor mill was running wild around these parts. My former Pastor approached me at the gas station one day telling me that he heard I was in to “Satanism” and things like that, at the time I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the title of Atheist but once I settled into those shoes I felt the need to dispell some of the ludicrous things that were being falsely derived from my Livejournal at the time. Quite simply put, someone (I don’t know whom) read a few of my entries wherein I express an interest in the Occult, and decided that I must be a Satanist…how silly!

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Today I turned 23. Was a good birthday too because Mellissa @ Blackbird Coffee(the best little coffee shop in the world) gave me free coffee all day, I ended up with 3 Quad shot skinny cappuccinos and a sugar rush from the cinnamon roll she bought me for lunch (lunch of champions). I was wired all day, still am. I also had about 20 people say Happy Birthday on facebook…makes me feel loved just a little.

Tommorow is another important persons (you guys do know I am important right?) birthday, one Charles Darwin would be 200 years old tommorow, and Origin of Species turns 150 this year. In honor of Darwin this year I intened to purchase a copy of Origin of Species and read through it entirely…sadly I am too ignorant of evolution to defend it  well enough…I understand the premise, and it certainly makes sense and even seems to me to be obvious…but I have a lot to learn.

Tommorow I am going to try for an extensive rebuttal to Guy’s response to my last couple of posts….before he loses his mind (…nevermind). I will also try to fix the issues i have had with the Wordpress upgrade if time allows.

So last night when I went to bed I felt pretty decent, I wasn’t drunk off of cough syrup anymore so that was definately a plus! When I woke up this morning though, my tonsils were swollen and on fire, I went ahead and took a shower and started getting dressed before i realized that it just wasn’t happening today. So I had to stay home sick today. Monica woke me up with her own invented recipe this morning though to help me stop coughing, it worked so well I thought I should share it.

Here’s what you need:

1 bag of tea—whatever kind you like, but you might want to go with a low caffeine type…and not sweet tea, just regular HOT tea. I used Lipton White Mango and Peach tea

1 peice of peppermint or Halls Coughdrop—menthol is best–add more for extra strength

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As I said earlier I was sick most of the weekend, I had an overall icky feeling, stomach aches, a good cough, and sore tonsils. The Stomach pains all but went away yesterday, but my throat has still been hurting, so I was taking Tylenol Cough and Sore Throat to help that, and it works wonderfully.

Here’s the problem; Tylenol Cough and Sore Throat DAYTIME  and Dollar General Generic Sore Throat NIGHT TIME come in the SAME BOTTLE, are the SAME COLOR (blue), and have almost exactly the SAME FLAVOR. So this morning before I went to work (a 45 minute drive)  I took two huge gulps (almost half the bottle) of the NIGHTTIME formula. Needless to say it was a long drive, combine NPR with sleep inducing medicine and you have a recipe for disaster. I was all over the road and I had to slap myself alot to stay awake. My boss realized how bad off I was so she took me off the phones and had me shadow over the new guy and let me leave at 2 when everyone got back from lunch. I was very intoxicated and if I would have had to do a sobriety test I would have promptly failed.  I didn’t find the NightTime portion on the label until I got to work BTW

So today’s lesson? Read the labels, no matter how similar things may seem, they can very well be different.

Romance of the Southern Spirit
By Zao

Romance Of The Southern Spirit

Every kiss is a goodbye kiss
And every touch is momentary
Like trying to hold her ghost
Yes she dissapears at sunrise
Some times the past is all we have
I see you in my mind so clearly
A salvation to these tired, cold and searching eyes
We fade, we fade away like dream
We come apart at the seam
Every moment comes to an end
Just another fading memory
She let life destroy her
Move through me like a ghost
No one to break thier blades
No one to cut their throats

All of your words will wash away
My broken heart stills mends
But you could care less anyway

for Mother

Its Black Friday, and this is my post:

Yesterday was Thanksgiving…. I don’t get into the sappy family thing much but here are some things i am thankful for:

1: My wife–she is pretty cool most of the time

2: Freethought–it has brought me to the happiest point in my life thus far

3: A job–as much as i hate it at times, alot of folks are without them currently

4: This blog–i would be nuts without some sort of place to air my greivances (get the Festivus reference there?)

Since i feel the need to complain just a tad today, some things I am NOT thankful for:

1: Christmas–I hate christmas

2: The war on Christmas-Yea, im sick of it—just to annoy those of you that take up this cause every year because someone wants to say Happy Holidays and be all inclusive IM gonna call it Xmas—there it is, X mas…no jesus there haha!

3: Christmas Music—if you like it then you may be worse off than first thought

4: Christmas lights— gaudy and wasteful

5:Christmas Shopping—its just …i hate it. People, like my wife, right now, blackfriday shopping with money they dont have buying things they and I don’t need or on credit they cant afford.

Read more: This is a letter to the editor i wrote last year @ xmas time

Relavent Rhino has a good post about the war on christmas–check it out (!Language Warning!)