Is it sunset yet?

The holy month of Ramadan is just about ending. We are actually in the last ten days, which are the most holy, and call on Muslims to pray more and be more vigilant in remembering God (or Allah as is said in Arabic) than we have been in the rest of the month. So what is Ramadan? Well, its kind of like Yom Kippur, Lent, and your birthday all mixed together. Lots of Muslims look forward to Ramadan all year. They prepare. They count days. Its like waiting to turn 5 or 21. You just anticipate it with giddiness. And when it gets here how do you celebrate? Well, there sure as heck is no cake.

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims don’t eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset. We also can’t smoke, have sex, or do any other “fun” things out there. But don’t worry… once the sun goes down all bets are off. This year the typical day of fasting in Ramadan is roughly from 5 am to 7 pm. God was especially judicious when He came up with Ramadan because it is on the lunar calendar. This means that Ramadan is at a different time of year each year. So people all over the world will at some point in their life have the joy of fasting in the middle of summer in the sweltering heat with 16 hours of daylight. (Well except for those living along the equator, but they are already lucky with living in the tropics and all) I am not really sure how Ramadan works out for folks living in Iceland who have like months of night. Hmm. So like Jews may fast for Yom Kippur and Christians may fast during Lent, we fast during Ramadan.

The whole point of the month is to remind Muslims of God’s presence in their lives and to ask Him for forgiveness. This brings us back to the last ten nights. These are said to be the most holy nights in the whole Muslim calendar. The 27th of Ramadan in particular is rumored to be the night when the Holy Qu’ran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. As a result, Muslims often spend the night awake, praying all night to ask for various different things such as health, forgiveness, and blessings from God. When I was 8 I stayed up for a bit and asked for a Furby; Allah, in all His mercy spared me from ever getting one.

I am often asked by my friends who are of the non-fasting variety if I get hungry. Well, duh. Of course I get hungry. That is kind of the point. Aside from fasting being a way to remember God, it is also a way to remember all the blessings you have. Like the Internet, so you can look up the exact time of sunset on http://www.time.gov/, or cable television including the weather channel so you know when sunrise and sunset are the next day. It is also 4 weeks (roughly) to decide what vices you want to keep and what vices you would rather lose. This year I am focusing on giving up school work as my vice. (I am a 3L in law school after all)

Of course, knowing if Ramadan has started or ended is a whole other debacle for my next post....

The Pope? Gay? Whaaaaat?

Tony Alamo's polygamist, pedaphilic cult thinks that:
"• Homosexuals are Satan’s tools.
• The pope is a homosexual who could be the Antichrist himself."

Who knew?

Well, at least those who oppose gay marriage/civil unions and support sodomy laws are in good company in their opinion of gay folks.

Convert Me, baby, Be Gentle

Oh God, what I would do to one of those chicks on the bible tracts you get when you're walking down the street. There's some aphorism on the front like "Would you like to know more about the bible?" and I'm all: No, but I'd like to no more about your shoulder blades, baby.

Proseltyzing disgusts me. I just want to throw those pamphlets away, but how can I throw out those hot little things on the front, with their home-knit sweaters, and fuck-me-I'm-a-virgin curiosity.

All I'm saying is: hey girl, wanna read Song of Solomon? We'll have to go back to my place for the text. I keep that shit in the tub.

Signs, signs, everywhere the signs.

Have you ever been mulling something over in your head, only to have life drop the answer right in your lap? You can call it what you want - fate, the Holy Spirit, kismet, serendipity, whatever. I've definitely had this happen before, and the most notable of these instances come in the context of life saying "yep, you're on the right track." What's more difficult though, are the times when the answer is "stupid, how could you ever have thought of doing THAT!?!?"

I mean, if you're thinking about doing something, and then life drops the path to do it or some other reassurance in your lap, its a simple answer - the universe is confirming that you're in the right place at the right time. (Editor's note: if this all sounds very new age for a Christian, see my earlier post re: New Age spirituality.) But, when the answer seems to contradict what we're thinking/feeling, this is harder for us to accept. Why is that?

Is it because we're stubborn humans who refuse to believe that what we want, when we want it, is incorrect? I think what is more likely is the whole uncertainty of it all. Let me paint an example of something that recently happened, which I fully admit is trite and meaningless. But, you didn't think I was going to detail my innermost pending decisions did you?

So, in the past few weeks, there have been a couple of times that I wanted to get fast food. I try to eat as little fast food as possible, but am a horrible failure at this task. So, like many who are trying to restrain themselves, I make up excuses for why I need it or why it makes sense for me to eat fast food. Nevertheless, in both situations as I had just talked myself into doing it, I had critical failures that prevented me for doing so - in one instance I forgot my wallet; in the other, my car wouldn't start. Not long after the second instance I decided that God was preventing me from doing what I knew I shouldn't be doing - indulging in high-calorie junk.

So, this example is obviously not very life-changing. But, it shows how easy it can be to say "this isn't a sign; it's a coincidence." In fact, when my car couldn't start, I promptly found someone to jump me so I could disobey God's command against eating fast food, and went straight to Taco Bell.

But, what do you do when a sign presents itself that is in opposition to a life decision that is greater than choosing to eat more healthfully? Do you listen? Do you ignore? How do you know the difference between a sign and a coincidence? I tend to live by the philosophy that if I'm at all hesitant about something, then I shouldn't do it. In that case, I tend to see "signs" as either a signal from God or just my mind creating a more clear excuse to prevent me from doing something that I subconsciously know I don't want to do anyway.

In any case, if I haven't confused you all by now, I welcome your thoughts! How do YOU distinguish between a sign and a coincidence?

God must own stock in: The Wave

Ok, I know no one is making a profit off of it, per say, but I'm pretty sure God owns stock in The Wave. My friend Jen says that at the University of Wisconsin, the wave not only circles the stadium twice, it then reverses, then splits and meets on the other end. I mean, the Holy Spirit is definately a part of THAT action.

What I love about the wave is that it's an individual activity that has enormous community benefit. Admit it - the excitement of when the wave gets going, the anticipation of it coming back around to you, the simple joy of waving your hands in the air and yelling a fun "woo" while doing so. They are all simple gifts from God. You can thank Him later.

Politics is their religion

I've tried (unlike Ziek) to keep politics out of my posts, but I've come to a point where I must say something. In reading recently about Sarah Palin's comments about the Iraq war being "a task from God", I became infruriated with more of what I've talked about before - people using religion to condone their (or their party's) bad actions/beliefs.

I can guarantee that God didn't want us to go to another country to kill people over oil. Or I mean, God didn't want us to kill people over spite. I mean, God didn't want us to kill people to ensure that our president would be in prime position to secure a second term in office. Well...pick you poison. I shouldn't be so critical, I guess. It's hard to remember ALL of the ten commandments when trying so hard to use religion for political gain.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think politicians who are religious should certainly not hide that fact and are correct to consult God while living thier lives, which includes running a government or campaigning for office. But, what too frequently happens is that these people will do a great job of talking the talking, but completely forget to walk the walk.

I even suspect that this one of the main reasons that Republicans have so heinously tried to appropriate religion as their own domain. The national platform of the GOP has time after time proven that it is incapable of actually walking the walk.

What Would Jesus Do? Well, I don't know exactly what Jesus would do in every situation, but I know this: Jesus wouldn't treat women, minorities, homosexuals unequally. Jesus wouldn't hoard his paycheck and not be willing to share it with people less fortunate. If Jesus knew the environment was dying because of his industrialism, he wouldn't turn a blind eye, hire fringe scientists to make fake reports to cover up the damage he'd done, and ignore the problem (Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson agree with me on this one.) And Jesus certainly would not start the Iraq war. Not in a million years.

So, instead, they pick one thing Jesus definately wouldn't do, and they make it seem like the most important religious and political issue of our time. They make the other side seem completely devoid of religion. They make politics more important than God by simply using God as a tool to achieve their selfish desires. Clearly this subject hits me emotionally. I welcome all thoughts and comments.

Kosha Dillz, ya'll

I love hip-hop, and if there's one thing I love more than hip-hop, it's Jewish hip-hop. Actually, I don't really like the Beastie Boys too much, except Sabotage, which rox my sox. So does the I'll-stir-fry-you-in-my-wok song. Still, in general, I think they're just white and whiny.

But I do like Kosha Dillz. I saw him a few weeks ago at the Aesop Rock show in Chicago. Dillz was playing with Yak Ballz, also Jewish, judging from his hair/swagger (here's a clip of Yak and Dillz at the show I saw in Chicago).

I like Dillz because he wears Judaism on his sleeve but its not his whole identity and its not his "shtick." He raps about being Jewish, his tour shirts say "All the Way! Oy Vey!" or something like that, but he raps about other stuff too, and he's not 2 Live Jews.

He's a Jew who is into being Jewish, but hasn't been around of Jews his whole life. This reflects a struggle I have with Judaism. I think its great for Jews to have Jewish pride, which usually includes wanting to be around Jews. But, as I understand it, Judaism is a minority religion by its terms. Half of our texts are about the Jews learning tough lessons from oppression - see Slavery in Egypt - or resisting oppressive majoritarian norms. Kosher laws, for example, prevent Jews from boiling a baby in its mothers milk because pagans in Judea at the time would do so. Some say that circumcision was originally a substitute for infant sacrifice, also at some point a normal practice in some places. So its hard for me to understand Judaism in a context where Jews are the majority, but I respect the common practice of Jews of showing solidarity with Judaism by living in majority Jewish areas.

I like Kosher Dillz because he's into being Jewish as a minority.

Plus, he can spit.

Ding Dong Ditched . . . By God: A Sign

It was a dark and stormy night. There was a ring at the bell. I went to answer it but there was no one there; only a string of burning bushes, producing no smoke and leaving no ash. They spelled out a message, ominously. It read:

Go forth. Have premarit-l sex with Sarah Pa-

And I couldn't make out the rest.

What could it mean? What are YOU tring to tell me?

God must own stock in...

I've decided to run with a theme that I began in a prior post about Sonic's Cinnamelts (RIP), and thus I am creating a series of posts entitled "God Must Own Stock In". Consider it sort of the products corner of Pork on Fridays. I'll try not to make too many of the posts about food.

For those of you who are blasphemy police, I'm not trying to indicate that God only inspires creations/inventions to personally profit off of them. Or that he even gives a crap about worldly dividends. I'm just making a joke about things that he likely had a direct role in inspiring. Or at least things he's dang proud of us for coming up with.

This week's installment: The Internet

No seriously, its flippin' miraculous. How many times a week (or day) do you utter "what did we do before the Internet?" I know I do quite frequently.

If you haven't ever pondered what life was like without it (those of you who can't remember a time when it didn't exist) or if you are having a hard time recalling, just think of all the night's you'd stay awake or the times you wouldn't be able to prove a friend wrong by being able to log on and find the answer to your burning question/issue.

Thus, to ease our troubled mind and to save trees, I'm pretty sure God inspired Al Gore to invent the Internet. (Its true, you can look it up online!)