Desert Island Discs

Recently a friend told me about a BBC radio program called Desert Island Discs. I haven't listened to it, but the premise is fun and the rules are simple:

Guests are invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island and to choose eight pieces of music to take with them; discussion of their choices permits a review of their life. Excerpts from their choices are played or, in the case of short pieces, the whole work. At the end of the programme they choose the one piece they regard most highly. They are then asked which book they would take with them; they are automatically given the Complete Works of Shakespeare and either the Bible or another appropriate religious or philosophical work. Guests also choose one luxury, which must be inanimate and of no use in escaping the island or allowing communication from outside.

Okay, so there we have it. Now, for my friend who asked and for anyone else who might be bored curious, my picks, arranged by when I became familiar with them:


Running to Stand Still — U2

If I could have the whole album (Joshua Tree) I would. This was one of my first CDs, passed down from my older brother. It was one of his favorites, too. There was no teen angst that was not soothed by this album and this song in particular. I feel at home when I listen to it, no matter where I am. 

Sweet Child o’ Mine — Guns N Roses Ditto above, except I didn’t know anyone else that was into U2, but knew plenty of GNR fans. My brother had a VHS recording of GNR live at the Ritz that I watched over and over. I bought all the GNR CDs, and the three CDs by solo band members. When I was learning to play guitar (acoustic) at 15, I had a crush on a guy who would call me up and play songs he was learning (electric); this was one of them. This song has been with me a long time and I still enjoy it, though I’m slightly embarrassed to admit it. 

Bareback Riding — Big Smith (poor quality vid doesn’t do the song justice, but gives the down-home taste of the shows of their early years)

If I had to pick a favorite band it would be Big Smith. All the elements are there for me. They were local and very popular. I began going to their shows when I was 15 and saw them every chance I got until I moved away a few years ago—and even then they happened to be playing at a festival 40 minutes from my house a couple years ago. It was the last year they played together; they retired the band and went on to do their own things. I’ve met them all, as well as some of their extended family, know where they work when they’re not playing music (half of them teach at the university), and I had an uber crush on the lead singer/guitarist for the first two years. I’ve never been closer to pure, natural musical talent. I love the music, I cannot deny. It’s so much a part of Missouri and part of me. This is my favorite of their songs.

You Sound Like Louis Burdett — The Whitlams 
When I became friends with an Australian when I was 16 we swapped gobs of music. This was one of my favorites and remains so. So energetic and so unique among my other music.

And It Stoned Me — Van Morrison 
Found this CD at a yard sale and found it so beautiful and soothing that I listened to little else for months, through some of the darkest times in my life. I have a fascination of water, so this song hits the spot. It’s so full of life; real experiences, tangible moments in time that I can relate to.

Falling Slowly — Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (aka The Swell Season) 

One of the first songs Denny ever shared with me. This whole album (Strict Joy) is one of my top 5; Hansard’s voice goes right to my core. But this; this is the theme song for me getting free of my bad marriage, for being brave when I was scared. This was Denny’s message to me. Such a beautiful song. I wanted to use the lyrics in “Free to Be,” but didn’t think it would fly with the copyright laws. “Well you have suffered enough and warred with yourself, it’s time that you won. Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time. Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice, you’ve made it now.” Trying not to tear up thinking about it.

Pulling Touch — Poi Dog Pondering 
Another of the first songs Denny shared with me, after we’d passed from friends to lovers. I enjoy the unhurried nature of the song; the band seems to take pleasure in making music and never rushes to add lyrics, but when they do they are generally thoughtful and very… human. With a bit of odd imagery. Like the VM song above, there’s so much in their music that I can relate to; simple, beautiful life stuff.

Old Old Fashioned — Frightened Rabbit Aaaand another one from Denny. I love the energy and the idea of tuning out the world and being old fashioned with someone—whatever one takes that to mean. I think of it as just connecting like real people.  So sweet and fun!  Like my life with Denny and the kids.

Cello suite #1 in G — Bach When I think about simply beautiful music, music without words that just grabs my attention whenever I hear it, it’s this. It just moves me so. 

If I had to pick just one?  Oh my...  I guess Bach.  I don't know if I'd ever get tired of it.


Book: The Princess Bride by William Goldman.

I had to put some thought into this. Denny grilled me, slightly horrified that I would choose a bit of fiction over something mind-blowing like Sagan’s Cosmos. The words, “Hellooo—The Princess Bride!” were apparently not explanation enough and had little effect on him. The movie is my favorite of all time, no contest. The book is even better. Cosmos might keep my brain sharp, but Wesley, Buttercup, Inigo, Fezzik, and Vizzini, et al, would all keep me company. What can I say? I love a good story. And Goldman’s creative telling of the tale, once you figure out what he’s done with the S. Morgenstern thing, is truly inspiring.

Luxury item: A word processor (with endless battery?). Natch.

Share yours in the comments, if you like.  I wouldn't mind getting to know some of you.  =)

Denny In Wonderland

We spent a sweet evening under the stars with the kiddoes last night.  Check out Denny's post over at Our Tomorrow to read more about it.   Sweet, sweet, sweet!

Free to Be -- Free download at Amazon

Been wanting to pick up a copy of Free to Be but haven't got around to it yet?  Well, you can always order an autographed copy from my website and I'll pop it right in the mail because I'll be insanely excited, but maybe you prefer ebooks?  Maybe you prefer FREE?  Check out this sweet deal: 

Be sure to read, review and share with your friends!  (Or enemies.  Whichever suits.)

Happy Thoughts From Trampoline Land

Bounce.  Squeak.  Bounce. Squeak.

I was on my mini-trampoline in my bedroom, listening to Sublime, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Squirrel Nut Zippers, staring out the window and doing some random combination of jumping and dancing.  This window is my favorite in the whole house.  It faces south; I can see about an acre of land on which sits the vegetable garden, a good portion of the goat yard, part of the yard where the children play, and I can see the corner of the barn to the southeast.  Surrounding it all, making me feel safe and secluded, is forest.  Fifty feet into the forest there’s a creek, of which you can catch glimpses in the cold season when the trees are bare.  But it’s not bare now; everything is green.  Overwhelmingly lush and green.  Eye candy.  In the garden I can discern flowers which just began blooming this last week.  I see the cedar-pole bean-house with its long, red, “noodle” beans and heirloom cucumbers, the potato-leaf tomatoes tower over the cedar support I built for them.  Among my other vegetables and perennials, covering the ground everywhere, grows the Smartweed, bane of my gardening existence.

On the edge of the forest is the paw paw patch, an area in which the goats have cleared everything but a few paw paw trees which spawned saplings and will, I suspect, begin producing quite nicely in a few years.  There’s the mimosa that lost its top during the big storm a few years ago and has re-sprouted like a gorgeous, frilly fiend, and the sassafras that fought that same storm and continues its growth at a perfect 45 degree angle.  Sycamore, oak, hickory, maple, elm; they’re all in there. 

The weather is mild today.  The sky is grey with clouds, but the sun peeks out occasionally.  We’re having the most amazing July.  I usually detest July, but this has been so moderate, cool.  We’ve needed jackets going out in the evening to view the stars and a sweater when cozying on the deck in the morning.

Bounce.  Squeak.  Bounce.  Squeak.

I absorbed the view in a moment.  It faded to a green blur as my mind wandered.  This short time of exercise each day has been good for me; a loose meditation of sorts. I thought about what time I would need to stop what I was doing to start pizza dough for dinner, thought about how much time until Justin needed to go down for a nap, thought about the music, thought about the people in my life.

I’ve always, for the most part, loved people.  I like having a broad mix of them in my life, but there’s those special few that I meet that immediately find a place in my inner circle, right there by my heart (or brain, as Denny says, insisting on accuracy regarding the human emotional center—but it’s not as romantic, is it?).  My peeps.  And they all know who they are.

I remember the time I realized that many people would come and go from my life; it was several years ago.  And I remember the time I made peace with that.  It felt like a mile-marker moment when I realized that the people in my life wouldn’t all hold the same significance, but that they would all have significance, and I wouldn’t ever know, upon meeting someone, if they would end up being close to me, and how close, and if not close then maybe they would end up somehow having a direct impact on my life.  Or maybe I would have an impact on theirs.

Maybe that’s when I began to come out of my shell.  Maybe that’s why I don’t meet many strangers these days.  Maybe that’s why I will engage with anyone and openly share random pieces of my life with anyone who seems interested.  You don't know where it will lead.

Bounce.  Bounce.

I’ve spent a lot of time the last few weeks corresponding with a sweet couple in Great Britain.  What started in May as two authors exchanging books for the purpose of writing each other honest reviews has turned into a wonderful relationship which includes both of our partners.  Tim and Hazel are such kind, engaging, humorous, interesting people.  And they pretty much adore us, if you can believe that.  What a world we live in, that we can form such friendships across such a distance with mere words and images on computer screens.

I have one other foreign friend.  Australian.  We met online in 1996, in person in ’98.  Stayed in touch, but since I turned my life around we have become good friends again.  I know he will always have an understanding ear and I can talk to him about anything.

A couple evenings ago I engaged in a lengthy pun exchange with two friends on Facebook; one friend lives not too far away, but I don’t see her much.  She helped deliver two of my children.  The other is a friend in the town in which I used to live; we met online when I was a teen and quickly formed a good friendship in person.  I haven’t seen him in ages and we rarely correspond much, but we know each other and will always call each other friend.

Other friends near where I used to live recently brought their whole family to stay with us for a weekend.  We womenfolk had connected the first time we met at church, but my family moved soon after.  We became good friends online and as her family worked their way out of religion too, we became better friends.  When they visited we connected all the way around; guys, gals, kids.  I would be surprised if anything ever interrupted our friendship.

So, as I was jogging in place, gazing out at my beautiful yard, I was feeling mighty happy to be alive right there, right then.  Grateful for the internet and for people who are open and interested in engaging, crossing distances to become the neighbor you always wished you had.

 I may not ever meet some of my online friends in person, or it may be years before I meet them or see them again.  When I was younger and had such friendships I was impatient to take them to the next level.  Now, as much as I would enjoy getting any of these friends to sit at my dining table, to feed them homemade pizza, hear their voices, see their eyebrows wag as they tell stories, hear them LOL, I’m not going to waste time wishing.  I’m going to enjoy these relationships for what they are right now.  Mine are fun, encouraging, helpful, inspiring and comforting.  Gmail, Hotmail, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, snail mail;  these are bridges to friends, friends I might not otherwise have, friends I might not get to see very often.  It’s remarkable how much of a life a thoughtful, observant person can share through these mediums.
                                    {{hug}}

Picky Eaters part 2-- Children Are People Too

Yes, yes, yes! A good friend of mine responded to my last blog post and gave me permission to share it anonymously here.  This is what I love, this interaction, this exchange of ideas.  This is what we can do for each other, folks!

Ok, so first, I've been following a family on Facebook called The Libertarian Homeschooler. She is the one that got me thinking. Then, in light of leaving the Bible and God's authority, it has made me come up with better reasons than, "God said so, so I said so," to say to my kids. Which then begs the question, why do I say so and why should they listen to me? So, then I have to ask myself, what authority do I really have over my kids, except that they live in the house that I provide for them, but does that mean they aren't still their own people, with their own desires, needs and ways of expressing themselves? 

In the Biblical model we are taught to believe "because the Bible says so" and "because the parent says to." But don't we want to raise kids who are able to think completely on their own without influence from us or the Bible or anyone else? Clearly, there will be some influence, but we want to raise independent thinkers. That is impossible to do in a biblical model, I think, so it's hard to let go of this idea that I have complete authority over my kids. I mean, they aren't really "mine" are they? They are only in my care because I birthed them and they are somewhat helpless until such a time as they can fend for themselves. My job is to provide food/shelter/protection/support until such a time as they are ready to be on their own.

Which brings us to your issue of food. And everything I'm saying, I'm saying just as much to myself as I re-think my role as parent in my world, so don't feel like I'm picking on you. 

What does it really matter if they turn up their nose at a certain dish? If it were a table full of adults in your dining room instead of a table full of kids, would we even for a second stop to question their reason for passing on a certain dish, or making them defend their reasons for wanting a piece of fruit instead of a pasta dish? Do I ever for a second consider myself ungrateful if I don't want to eat liver when it is served to me, or do I just know I don't like liver? Or pasta. Or whatever it is that I think my kids should eat, but won't. Why is it so bad for our kids to decide they would rather go hungry or to comment that they don't care for something and would rather not partake of it? I mean, if they are forgoing dinner because they are looking forward to ice cream, then maybe we need to help them see how those are bad choices for their health, but if they are choosing a piece of fruit instead, what is really so bad about that? I don't know... I want to raise autonomous kids who know their own mind, and that means they need to be able to make decisions for themselves, even the foods they eat, but that also means I have to allow them to make decisions, even ones that I don't like or agree with! Eeeek! Now, I think there is a way to teach being gracious and polite and such, but to make them eat something that they don't like just because we think it's the way to do things, isn't really respecting them as people is it?

One thing that has really made me go huh? is to ask myself if I would do the same thing to either me or another adult. So, if I were made to finish a meal I didn't like, how would that make me feel? Would I appreciate it? Would I learn a lesson or would I just be pissed that I was made to do something that I didn't want to do? Especially something as benign as eating something that was gross to me. In the whole scheme of things, taste is so individual and also so not a big deal, right? I think part of my thinking that it is a big deal is because mealtime is so much about authority/control in the biblical model that is still seeping through in my parenting without me even realizing it. So much stuff to get rid of, but man, it's hard!

Holy pasta, I love this woman!  It's such a pleasure to parent alongside her.  My response:

Thank you sooooo much! You've hit the nail on the head, methinks. Denny and I go back and forth with these conversations. What's funny is that I struggled with that whole, "God said so, I said so" authority thing early on, as I wrote about in my first book, and backed off on some of my former child-training methods. Denny, a long-time anarchist, oddly leaned more at first toward reigning the kids in a bit.  But we end up talking about these things at least once a week. 

 It's tricky, isn't it? Humans having such a long developmental stage is interesting.

We probably went too far with the food thing, too authoritative, but the thrust of our overall approach was one of attempting to help the children with some perspective. This is a way I think we can and should be helping our children. Not "Eat this because I said," but "Here are some reasons you might consider eating this without complaining." I realize I didn't wrap up the blog by saying what approach we would take from here on out. I’m actually not sure we decided on anything, we were just desperate to help them see some reasons their complaining is unpleasant.  I'm not inclined to force them to eat food they don't like, never have been.  I had a long talk with one of them, asked him to write up a list of foods he likes, and I'll do so with the other children, too.  We'll see if we can come up with some nutritious meals everyone enjoys. And I will invite them to help create them.  I said, "I'm a busy momma and I have nine people to feed, three times a day, every single day.   It's not always going to be food everyone likes.  But I'm more than willing to accept help in this area.  I want input, but I want it polite.  And I don't appreciate complaints from people who aren't willing to help."

You're so right; contrary to what we believed before, these children are not ours. You couldn't have explained it better.  I feel my oldest testing me from time to time, and stories of wild and "rebellious" teenagers have been coming our way. I told her, "If you want to do those things, you're absolutely free to.   You're your own person with your own choices to make, I'm just here to support you.  There may be limits to what Denny and I allow in our presence and under our roof, but we can talk about those things when you’re ready.” She appreciates it. I feel like she is growing tremendously and expects to crash into my boundaries any moment, but when we talk like this she relaxes. By giving her the freedom to be who she is, who she wants to be, I feel like I am giving her the freedom to make better choices for better reasons. I want her to have no one to rebel against and focus instead on being who she wants to be. Are their going to be bumps? Hell yeah. But I think this is the best way, and I think that as a result there will be fewer bumps than if I try to shape her into what I think she should be.

Anyone else?  Feel free to chime in in the comments!

Picky Eaters

A possibly culturally insensitive ramble about intentional parenting

My kids are picky eaters.  Most of them.  I was determined they wouldn’t be, but, try as I might, here we are.  Granted, they are probably not as picky as most American kids their ages (three to fourteen), and the odds of serving one meal that pleases all seven of them are less than if there were only two of them, but more often than not we hear a complaint or a simple, “I’ll just go hungry tonight.”

In the past I have worked hard to respect the fact that we all have different tastes and preferences and that sometimes we just don’t feel like eating.  As a stay-at-home mother I have been relatively in tune to my children’s health and well-being; I know what they’re eating and when.  No one is allowed to help themselves to food, they ask for fruit for snacks if they want something mid morning or mid-afternoon, they drink water all day and sometimes milk with meals, and the three meals are generally served at regular intervals.  If, for instance, Royal is quieter than usual and says he doesn’t feel like eating, he probably is coming down with something and it would be foolish to make him eat.  My ex used to make the kids eat everything on their plates and more than one of them threw up their dinner as a result.

It takes discernment to decide if they don’t feel like eating or if they just don’t like a particular food or if they’re just being ornery.  I ask them to try two bites of new foods and if they don’t like it they can go hungry.  For my little ones (three and under, or thereabouts) I’ve been more flexible, allowing them to have a glass of milk and/or piece of homemade wheat bread instead.  Over time we’ve learned that Atira just can’t stomach bell peppers or the texture of quiche, and the same with Blue regarding beans or Mexican-seasoned food, so if I put these foods on the table I also serve something they will eat.

I have allowed the just-go-hungry option recently for the older kids, but the younger ones have joined in on it.  What ends up happening now is that 1/3 of the table’s occupants opt out of the meal every other afternoon or evening and just wait until the next meal, hoping it’s something they like.  Some of them pout about it and we deal with that separately; I don’t want attitudes like that around, not for any reason.  There are two other issues we are concerned about; one is the ungratefulness for the food and the labor of the one who prepared it, another is that more often they are opting out of the more nutritious meals of the day.

Most months I plan ahead, creating a 30-day menu of evening meals (breakfasts are standard—every Tuesday this, every Sunday that, etc.—and lunches are leftovers or whatever easy, simple food we have around).  I would keep it posted on the fridge.  Denny observed that the children looked at the menu and decided to skip a lunch they didn’t like because dinner would be more to their satisfaction.  Or they would ask for snacks in the afternoon, planning to skip dinner.  We took down the menu.  That still didn’t help much.

It’s not like I’m cooking up wild ethnic foods, here; nothing spicy, rarely anything strong-flavored at all.

How do we help these children be grateful for the nutritious meals prepared for them?  We have told them about the children in Africa.  They were unimpressed.

This afternoon we had an issue over lunch.  A benign pasta dish which everyone used to like has fallen out of favor with a couple members of the family.  Pasta, mind you.  A couple more turned up their noses because I added some vegetables to it today.  I decided to offer them a small serving each and, trying to hide my frustration, make them sit at the table until they’d eaten it.  I won’t go into all the details, but one of my older children is having cold pasta for breakfast.

Here’s where having a wonderful man like Denny has made the difference in our home.  With my ex there was no talking sense, only butting heads, with kids caught in the middle if I wasn’t careful.  Certainly no conspiring together to educate the children and help them become better people.  But Denny is thoughtful and considerate.  We discussed the issue at length and came up with a plan.

I put a pot of rice on to cook.  Denny put together a third-world slide-show; starving children living in dreadful conditions.  He mixed up a small bowl of mud and set it aside.  When dinner time rolled around we sat the children down and talked to them about privilege.  We realized that we live in a bubble.  These children really have little idea what is going on outside our community.  I haven’t done a very good job of keeping the world on our radar over the years.  It’s time for that to change.  I don’t know yet what all it will entail, but we started with this tonight.

We played the slideshow and discussed with the children starvation, malnutrition, illness, death, and things we take for granted. It was very somber.  We moved to the table and Denny passed around the bowl of mud, asking the children to imagine being hungry enough to want to fill their bellies with that.  Yes, some of our children are too young to really understand, but they did seem to pick up on the mood and were listening quietly.  Then Denny fetched nine bowls from the cupboard and placed about a third of a cup of cooked brown rice in each one.  No butter, no salt, no soy sauce, no eating utensils.  We ate with our fingers and no one complained.  Justin, the youngest, looked a bit put off, but eventually ate with no complaints.

When we had finished eating we talked a little bit more about nutrition and being hungry.  Denny asked the children to look across the table at a sibling and imagine him or her as thin and sickly as the children in the photos. That seemed to really affect them.  It affected me.  Tears in my eyes and voice trembling, I told them that tonight, when they stretch out in their clean beds, cozy and safe, their tummies rumbling, to please not be upset with us, but to really think about the privileges they enjoy every day.  I asked them to please, please never again look at the food on our table and complain or turn away a nutritious meal because it’s just not to their liking.


How culturally insensitive is all this?  I couldn’t say.  I don’t for a moment feel that our actions in any way benefitted the world’s starving children. That was in no way our intention; a silly notion.  Actually, I feel what we did was a tad on the ostentatious side.  How can a considerate person not feel that way when comparing their lifestyle to that of the underprivileged?  The unprivileged?  Using images of unfortunate people and situations as props for my own goals rather left me feeling painfully white, sickeningly rich, and somewhat ashamed.  I think we made an impression on the children, though it won’t last without some continued education.  I think we managed wrap up the meal with humility, not pride, but maybe even that sentiment smacks of pride.  How do you sort out these feelings?  Is there anything we can actually do to help starving children in Africa or elsewhere?  If we reach out, will it be to improve their lives or to assuage the guilt of sitting down to a balanced meal at home?

Sci-fi, Fantasy, Religion

Another tale from a rural, mid-American atheist.
Because what is commonplace here might just make an interesting story somewhere else.

A bit of rambling backstory first.

With a houseful of rapidly growing children who are receiving their education at home, we are keen on opportunities to get the family out of the house for worthwhile activities and socialization.  Trips to the feed store, library and dentist are great, but they don’t quite cut it.  There are doubts that the weekly homeschool playgroup we’ve attended the last two years will come back together this fall, so we have been discussing our options.

Farra, "dark elf" age 14

Freed from the religious bondage that kept wizards, witches and Klingons at bay, my children have all blossomed into sci-fi and fantasy fans.  My wee ones run around with wands carved by their older siblings, casting spells in Latin with delightful British accents.  My oldest girl and boy have begun working metal, wearing elf ears, and experimenting with stage make-up.  (The cloaks are not new, however.  Cloaks are always in style.)  Our van will soon sport a Star Trek logo with “WWDD” by it:  What Would Data Do?

The children are writing stories about interstellar space travel, cursed elves, magic dogs, and hillbilly children named after, uh… plants.  The creative juices are flowing.  My oldest, at nearly fifteen, shared with me that she would like to be a traveling costumer and writer.  The most benign children’s games can turn into life-long hobbies and careers, you just never know.

So how do we, as parents, foster these seven creative geniuses and their unique skills and interests?  We start a sci-fi & fantasy club.  Duh.

Bonuses:  it involves other members of the community, feeds creativity and imagination in all, encourages each one to set goals and offers the support needed to reach those goals, and helps them develop social skills (especially as we hand over leadership of the group to our older children).  It’s like Scouts.  For geeks.

We put a little extra thought into creating something that would cross the religious bounds of our community.  No atheists or believers here, just sci-fi & fantasy fans.  In our community there are oodles of activities if you are a child of christian parents, especially in the summer with camps and vacation bible schools. There aren’t enough secular families to justify starting a secular group of any kind; besides, who wants to discriminate like that?  Nope, everyone would be welcome in our group.

So, our first meeting of Fantastic Worlds was last night.  We had only a few people outside of our family in attendance (still getting the word out, and it will be interesting to see if we get more or fewer people when school starts next month).  We discussed the purpose of the group, our favorite books, movies and characters, and we were in the middle of making the cardboard and duct tape daggers that one of the moms had bought for a project when in strolled a man that I at first took for a teenage boy.  Second glance put him maybe around thirty years old; he was short and awkward.  He was wearing a dress shirt, tie, and dark slacks.  He had come to inquire after one of our crew members, a fourteen year old boy who’d apparently skipped his piano lesson to join us.  The boy introduced us.

This boy happens to have a special place in my heart.  His grandparents used to live across the creek from us and when he would stay with them (just one of the many places the unwanted chap was passed around to) he would cross the creek to visit with us.  I’ve known him a few years; he’s bright and remains tender-hearted in spite of the neglect of those responsible for him.  Church is one place he’s been well-received and shown love; if not genuine love, then at least attention, and “good, clean” attention as far as our community is concerned.  (The best place for a troubled youth is church, right?  Where else is he going to learn morals?)  As it turns out, this piano teacher was an acquaintance from church.  I overheard my friend talking with him about the next Fantastic Worlds meeting, which would fall on an evening the church was hosting a revival (a hyped up, week-long church service).

The church man turned to me to ask if he could make an announcement.  I guessed he wanted to announce the revival and invite everyone.  Yep, seriously.  An evangelical christian knows no limits.  If there is a group of people gathered, for whatever reason, or even a single person, he or she will take the opportunity to try to get you to their church, or at least get you to believe you are a worthless human being in need of a bloody salvation.

Trying to think quickly, I decided to let him say his piece, but not without putting a word in myself.

His invitation was awkward, but sufficient.  He jazzed it up by saying, “You all are into sci-fi and fantasy.  Well, what I’m offering is even cooler.  All kinds of miracles happen.  People dance with their eyes closed and don’t even bump into things…”   He trailed off.  That was it.  I swear to pasta, that was the miracle he had to share with us.  Frankly, I was slightly embarrassed for him.  I would have been even three years ago, when I was a christian myself.  But my embarrassment for him didn’t prevent me from speaking my piece.  When he hopefully looked my way I took a deep breath for courage and a chuckle escaped me before I said, “Um, no.  Been there, done that.”  He looked at me, puzzled.  “I’m an atheist,” I said, clearly, proudly.  Maybe it was my imagination, but the look on his face turned to wonderment.  I like to think he was an atheist virgin and that I was his first.  Ha.  I continued, “I was a believer for many years before that.”

“Oh,” he stammered.  “Do you mind my asking what happened?”
“Sure,” I smiled, as friendly as I could be.  “I studied my way out of the Bible.  I was really steeped in it, but I studied and found out the god of the Bible was not real.”
“But he is real.  This stuff you guys are doing here, it can all be disproven, but God can’t.”  He almost found his feet there for a moment.
“Sir, I make no pretenses about what we do here, this is entirely and admittedly fiction.  As it turns out, so is God.”
He had nothing else for me.  He began to back toward the hall he’d entered by.  I had one more comment for him.
“But this group is open to everyone, believers or not.”  I didn’t want to misrepresent the group, make it seem like an atheist gathering.  I’m not sure he heard me as he turned and shuffled toward the door.

He retreated.  He actually turned and retreated at my words.  I have mixed feelings about that.  Part of me feels good for standing up and making it known that his church propaganda was not entirely welcome, that there are people who aren’t interested, people who know better.  Obviously to him we don’t “know better,” but I want people in my town to know that there are unbelievers here, that they are not the only ones around, and that if they are going to go into random places, uninvited, and share their “good news” then at least this one unbeliever is going to stand up and be noticed.  Yeah, I’m the kid that pointed out that the Emperor was bare-ass naked.  My only hope and purpose is to give others the courage to think about what it is they believe, or don’t.

A greater part of me wishes I’d handled it entirely differently.  I wish I’d thought more quickly when he asked if he could make an announcement.  I didn’t necessarily want to make a scene.  I wish that, knowing what he wanted to announce, I had asked, confirmed it.  Then I could have told him that although everyone is welcome in our group, religion isn’t, unless it’s acknowledged as the science fiction or fantasy it is.  Then, had he asked, we could have talked about my unbelief.  I feel this would have been a far nobler approach. 

Sigh.  I’m learning.