Can husbands command wives?

I mean does God say, I command you woman, I command you man... And what sorts of things does God command in that way, just scripturally evident commands (general ones) or specific things too (like do laundry). I mean there are ways God can speak to us all the time and guide our steps to do God's will, which I believe we often can perceive and which if we listen and do them our lives are enhanced with God...

But the foundation for these commands is the granting of free will and so every command in effect is a request. So if God requests we obey but understands it is our free choice to or not, then it seems to me that husbands are out of line expecting a relational command to be anything different than how God asks and expects of us.

doctor-pusher-flyer man

So I'm coming out of Georgia, on a plane that hit turbulence on its last leg, throwing the flight attendant sitting in front of me into the side of the plane, sending one person to the hospital when they landed.

My previous flight from Roanoke landed thirteen minutes before this one was scheduled to take off. I barreled through the airport as much as I could run, passing the gate attendant and throwing myself into the emergency exit door trying to bust it open upon seeing the jetway door closed. The gate attendant yelled at me that I couldn't just throw myself against an emergency exit door, to which I replied "Well I just did and it didn't open, so now I want you to get me onto that plane." (Come to think of it, aren't emergency exits supposed to open?) She called security on me.

While we were waiting for security I calmly explained how no one from the previous flight – which was delayed for mechanical reasons – had called to ask them to hold the flight, despite my requests. I listed all the things their airline had done wrong, as she spoke on the phone to someone about me as if I wasn't there. Before security arrived, however, another delayed passenger did. Then another. Soon there were five of us waiting, all delayed for mechanical reasons.

While she talked to someone I assumed was in the office, I calculated my list of needs (a 4 star hotel, $60 meal voucher, and free flight – for all of us there). Then she said, "ok y'all, come with me." I thought she was taking us around the corner to negotiate a deal, but instead she punched in the security code and let us onto the jetway. "I have NEVER seen that happen before," said the woman I sat beside.

So now I'm in the first seat I saw – right in front next to the exit, facing the steward in his fold down seat. I ask him how his night has been. "Not so good," he replies, and proceeds to tell me about people hitting the ceiling literally on the flight in from Seattle.

After a bit he asks me and my neighbor if we're going to watch any movies. "I didn't think we had any tvs," I say, having scanned the walls and ceiling for something like the screens the other passengers have in the seatback in front of them. "Oh yeah," he says, "they're right down there," showing me rotating arms like a dentists lamp hiding next to my legs.

"Yeah they have nice touch screens and all kinds of movies and games you can buy."

"Oh I left my credit card in the overhead," says my neighbor.

"That's ok," he says in confidence. "You don't need one, not when you know me. I know how to turn them on for you."

It's what he says next that grabs my attention: "Yeah they have lots of options to entertain you , and that's what we want. That's the future. We want you to be entertained. Anything to make it a little less painful. It's a long five hour flight and we don't want it to be painful. We want you to be entertained so you don't feel it."

Suddenly I feel like I'm talking to a drug pusher. Even though I know he doesn't mean any harm, I feel like he's speaking the mantra of electronic corporations everywhere, whose CEOs maybe don't mean harm either, or maybe they do. But I think, isn't that just what its all about. Life is long and it can be painful, and they want us to be entertained so we won't feel it.

It's funny because a doctor said almost the same thing to my mom when he gave her up for dead: "We just want to make sure you're as comfortable as you can be from here on out. We're interested in your quality of life." That was when I killed him.

I mean, as far as I was concerned. I walked out of the room and started searching for other doctors. We never saw his fleshy face again.

But I wonder why the word choices of the doctor and airline steward are so similar. Both of them represent a cultural response to life that has gotten just too hard. Apple is just another drug company. Screw trying to fix things; we're going to take this little pill and wait for it to be over. Imagine if drugs were administered by looking at them. If we could stare at an IV bag of morphine and feel better, it would look a lot like TV.

Which means that basically we're turning America into one giant hospital. And the illness is life. Our cultural doctors don't really know how to make life better, so they've prescribed a heavy dose of Comcast. Think I'm exaggerating? Name the biggest companies you can think of. How many of them are in the business of electronic distractions?

My mom is home from the hospital now. She's slowly worked her way back to eating, walking on her own, and being able to take care of herself better. It is an incredibly long, patient process for a woman who two months ago was still robust and working, despite having cancer. Dehydration brought her within a virus of dying, and one month in bed on life support has made her very weak. We take it as a good sign that she can make it into the family room to sit with us evenings and watch tv.

Our economy right now is built on electronics and legal drugs. The bulk of it is subsidized by credit and insurance, since what will satisfy us is far disconnected from what we are able to provide for ourselves. All this is fine, for now. Just as nurses can rest reasonably when a patient is on life support with stable vital signs. But what about when they pull the plug? What will all our children do when they pull the plug? Every generation born after me has had internet from the age of ten.

The blackout in Florida last week went unexplained. Not even the people who run the power grid could explain why it happened. The tornados in Florida tonight and freak winter storm over the middle two thirds of the country don't need explanations any more. We seem to know that you don't need specific explanations when the overall system is so strained. Our overall energy usage in the US is growing by 20% each year. Because of laptops, ipods, LCDtvs, etc. And we're not using any of it to solve our problems. We're using that power to be entertained.

My time in Virginia has been spent working on a system to get kids involved in learning about climate change and reducing energy usage, organizing a program for the Girl Scouts to educate their communities about the importance of changing habits and of efficient devices like Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs, which they will also be selling. I'm trying to change it all, but I'm just one person. I could die on this plane ride because of crazy weather caused by global warming. And everyone around me is just watching tv.

Lots of people go to the hospital. Some people die there. Some people come home. I went to the hospital once, and I didn't die. But it took me a lot of years getting better, to learn how to use my energy better, to work on what matters, to not get by in life just being entertained. My mom is home from the hospital now, and her path to getting better is long and slow, and not even assured. The sickness is still inside her.

The world needs a lot of us working on what matters now. We all are a lot closer to dying than we might imagine. Maybe it would help to realize that we are already in the hospital.

--
Andrew Varyu
Founder, ITSCOOL
Innovative Tactics for Sea Level and Climate Change Outreach and Opportunity Leaders
"Getting kids psyched to be America's leaders against Global Warming"
206.909.8868
founder@itscool.us

Press:
NPR: http://www.wvtf.org/news_and_notes/audio/cs_girlscouts-03-07-08.mp3
TV: http://cfc.wset.com/searchvideos.cfm?k=girl+scouts
Paper: http://www.kirklandreporter.com/jumpstory.html?story=news3&pubdate=10/10/2007
Partner: http://www.gsvsc.org/news.htm#itscool


_other projects:_
Harvard Masters of Divinity Candidate
Postulant to Priesthood, Episcopal Church of Western Washington.
blog: www.andywrites.org
alt contact: harharvar@gmail.com

Private property

The really messed up thing is that I bet, when resources get more scarce, our governments start passing laws allowing people to defend their property with use of force. Its sad to realize we will think of that before we do away with the concept of private property, which is flawed at its root.

Response to John Carlson's "The Cooling of Global Warming," Redmond Reporter, 5-14-08

Letter to the Editor
May 17, 2008

On my desk is a recent issue of the Redmond Reporter, which devotes two pages to a faux-sceintific commentary by John Carlson on "what science is actually telling us about our climate." According to Carlson, the period from 1940-1970 (in which the earth cooled 0.1 degree C) and from 1998-present (which cooled even less) shows that Global Warming is a myth.

What he conveniently leaves out is that from 1880-present the overall change was an increase of 0.9 degrees C.

He also either leaves out, or is ignorant of, the fact that climate change models do not predict consistent warming, but periodic cooling as well, as fresh water from melting icebergs causes oceans temporarily to cool down. Al Gore could have told him that. If he had been listening.

Social debate about Global Warming is really not about science, as Carlson's (mis)use of it shows, but about an issue much closer to home– our ways of life. Behind the most vocal doubters' tantrums is a desire to protect this way of life we have built - energy-guzzling bigscreen tvs so we don't have to talk to each other at home, water-thirsty lawns that keep us safe from neighbors, ever-widening highways so we don't have to sit next to each other while we commute, and irresponsible commentaries issued in newspapers so we don't have to face those we debate. There is natural resistance to sacrificing things we have grown accustomed to, and so for people like Carlson, I can see why this would make him defensive.

The debate is really between people who want to justify our comfort zones and our right to waste more resources than most people in theworld have to live on, and others whose sensitivity to the suffering in the world - both in nature and in humans - does not afford us the luxury of this ignorance. For better or worse, I find myself a member of the latter group, and I feel outrage at the thinly-veiled attempts of public figures who use their mouthpieces to sway others in order to make their own lives easier.

The truth is, the simple things we have to do to stop Global Warming make sense on many fronts. Buying more energy-efficient cars or better – building public transport – can help us conserve resources that are limited. Using energy-efficient appliances and lightbulbs can shave hundreds of dollars off home energy bills. Switching to clean sources of energy (wind, hydro, solar) can improve our children's health (coal plant emissions cause asthma in children).

So why all the fuss, John Carlson? Is it too much of an inconvenience for you to care?

Andrew Varyu,
Redmond, Washington

Economic sins

Buying on credit, if for other than cash flow reasons, thus living beyond our means. Signifies a lack of satisfaction with the abundance god provides, pride in taking into our own hands the substance of our fulfillment, and a rejection of god's gifts.
buying an SUV if to enjoy the sense of power and protection it affords. Signifies a lack of faith in god to protect us, and a willingness to destroy god's creation for the sake of personal comfort, hence not treating our neighbors as ourselves.
Saving any money before we give ten percent of it away.

We should Ask god to help us Examine our hearts to find any sin in our own economic decisions.

There is irony at all our medicine to take our survival out of God's hands, yet 75% of illness doctors see is stress related which doctors can't treat.  We are killing ourselves as fast as we are saving ourselves.

homelus

mortgages are rising homes in foreclosure people on street.

guys on fox debate
millionaire boy: "live within your means!"
sociactivist: "we are victims!"

man across the street sleeps on bench.

I think mortgages a bad idea to start with, like credit.
I tell mom : system never should be built, banking so much on future.

Mom: but how would people buy houses?

Exactly.

man sleeps on bench. some think we are better than he:

"I pay my bills," we say.

But really we don't. We pay to support the denial:
No one can live within their means in this system of "ownership."


Unless we live on a bench.


We thought we were better than he? Different?

God is showing us the truth.