Things I don't understand....

I don't understand how preventing other people by law from doing things that go against your own personal moral beliefs makes you a better person of your faith.

But yet people do it all over the world. Here in America it seems centered around two main issues, abortion and gay marriage. Somehow, preventing complete strangers from legally obtaining abortions and from marrying those they love makes millions of "Good Christians" feel like they are being true to their faith. What I want to know, myself, is how they justify this.

Don't get me wrong though. I have nothing against these people holding the belief that abortion and gay marriage are wrong. They may not be my personal beliefs but I would fight for their right for them to live their beliefs within their own lives. But what I don't understand is what gave them the idea that Jesus wants them to get into their neighbors private business and use the Government as a tool to legally prevent them from doing those things. Jesus and the Bible clearly commands it's followers to stay apart from the world. It also clearly tells them to mind their own lives and wrongdoings and not concern themselves with their neighbors personal sins. Unless of course they are without sin, which is kind of hard to find in this world, a human without sin. Nowhere at all does it say "get involved in Government and force others by law to live by your own personal moral beliefs".

This is especially mind boggling because there are plenty of things good Christians can do to live their faith. They can first and foremost adhere to their morals in their day to day lives. They can follow the suggestions of Jesus to feed and clothe the poor(as you do unto the least of these you do unto me). They can open organizations that offer free Christian Guidance to those who are struggling with these issues in their own lives and wish for that guidance on how to handle them. They can live with the love of Christ as their guidelight and share that love with others. And honestly, if Christians did this and gave themselves fully to those simple things, they wouldn't have room to care whether Sally and Linda down the street or Joe and Bill three streets over get married or not.

And with that standard, I would venture a guess that homosexuals who are being denied the legal protections and rights that marriage, or at the very least a civil partnership offers don't feel loved in any way shape or form. In fact, I would venture a guess that being kept from legal protections like that makes them feel pretty hated.

So how can something that makes people feel hated, that goes against the bibles directive to stay apart from the world, and that meddles in your neighbors personal life be something that shows the love of Jesus? I think the only logical answer is that it does not show the love of Jesus, that it is not a very Christian thing to do. So while they may delude themselves into smug feelings that it makes them better Christians to legislate their personal moral beliefs for others to live by, them believing so does not make that a reality.

Praying for God to kill people is not funny

First, a bit about the meal planning, last night was stuffed peppers, they were good, but there is room for improvement in the recipe I used. Tonight is vegetable beef soup. The meat is cooking on the stove right now, it smells great! I'm going to add in onion, carrots, potatoes, green beans, peas, and mushrooms before it's all said and done :) It's going to be marvelous!

Now onto the topic that brought me here today. There is a bad joke going around it goes something like this "Dear Lord, last year you took my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite musician Michael Jackson and my favorite actress Farrah Fawcett and I just wanted to let you know my favorite politician is Barack Obama". There is even a facebook group by this name, but the maroons who started it misspelled Swayze.

Now I'm sure that some will accuse me of having no sense of humor, but frankly, praying for the death of a very real person does not strike me as funny in any way. It minimizes the tragedy of the deaths of the other people mentioned in the joke, which again strikes me as a really rotten thing to find funny and to spread around. I will leave the MJ thing alone, but both Farrah Fawcett and Patrick Swayze were good people who left behind grieving partners devastated by their tragic deaths by cancer while they were in the prime years of their lives. I'm going to bring in another aspect, as all the people I've seen spreading this around(and joining facebook groups by the name) are Christian. I think it's really sad myself, that a follower of Christ would think that a mock prayer asking their Lord to afflict someone with cancer or otherwise kill them is in any way funny. Why is it that people will act all holy and sanctimonious and wear WWJD stuff but when it comes down to their actions, they choose to do things that Jesus himself would find appalling and shameful? Praying for the death of a person is a hateful act. To make a joke of it does not make it less hateful.

I think it ironic that with one joke someone can mock their own faith, their own God and make themselves look like someone who does not really follow the tenets of their faith and yet somehow in the end they think it's hilarious because to them "it's just a joke".

But then what do I know, I'm just a pagan with no sense of humor :P

My oh my, how time does fly...

Looking at the date of my last entry I realized I was tardy in updating the Frog Blog. So here we are, just after 4/20 day, my most favoritist holiday ever. No Hallmark crap saturating everything, nothing to buy anyone and celebrating with some nice fat bowls of the Goddess in plant form and some nice munchies for afterward. What's not to love about such a wonderful holiday?

So here at the frog pond we have Mr. Tadpole working on his arcade projects and various gaming diversions. The cats think they are starving(despite having full food bowls) and specialize in giving out hurty punishing love. And I am trying to plan meals and distract myself. My little brother, We'll call him CatLover, moved to Fairbanks Alaska two years ago. He had purchased a spot of land out in the middle of nowhere, by Iskgiza lake specifically, and he has been working towards his ultimate goal of living the mountain man life on his property. Today he is closer to ever before, ready to take his boat out on the Tanana River, and I am simultaneously very excited for him and very very upset that I won't get to talk to him again until next November at the earliest. CatLover and I are (were?) very close and him living in Alaska was hard enough when I could call him up once a week and chat, the thought of not being able to even talk to him for months and months make my eyes spout big leaks and that makes it hard to see to type so I'm going to go on to my other current activity, planning meals.

Mr. Tadpole and I are foodies. We love our food, Asian, Greek, Mexican, Mediterranean, just regular old hearty home cooking and more. We love to make our favorite restaurant meals at home and try new foods and cuisines. So I decided in an effort to simplify our meals and hopefully save some on groceries, I would start planning meals. Now, I can't do the "We'll have this meal on this date" a week or two ahead. I don't know what my tummy will take nicely until the day of and we like spicy meals and I like to match meals to the weather, cold rainy days call for warm comfort food and hot days call for lighter fare. So the first time around I planned ten meals that I hoped would carry us through two weeks. I just hung the list on the fridge and decided each day which meal to make. It worked beautifully. The ten meals carried us three weeks. We did get a couple of items and made two unplanned meals in the third week, but that didn't bother me at all.

We had:
General Tso's chicken
BBQ meatballs
eggplant Parmesan
pizza
Penn Station style Italian subs
Cabbage and Bacon
Black Bean chorizo Burritos
Sheppard's Pie

And a couple of other meals that I can't recall at this moment(I lost the original list and my memory is crappy). We ended up making Lasagna too, because we only needed a couple of ingredients and that made so much that I put a smaller lasagna in the freezer and we had that last night for supper!

So hoping that once again 10-12 meals would take us three weeks between major shopping trips I started on a Master List for our favorite meals(with recipes I can look at easily) and made the second list of meals and we are two meals into it so far.

On the menu at the frog pond for this go around is:
~4/17 Frito Pie, hubby made this meal, nuclear strength chili, fritos, onions and cheddar cheese all baked together. It was good, but a little spicier then my tummy appreciated.
~4/18 Ratatouille- really awesome, it was really lovely, a baking dish piled high with veggies and cheese. We loved this, hubby told me three times how good it was!


Gyros
Rubens
Stuffed peppers
General Tso’s chicken (we love and adore this meal)
Vegetable soup
Chicken hot wings w/ blue cheese dip
Cincinnati Chili dogs and chili 5 way
Enchiladas
Nachos

The fresh veggies pose something of an issue, so I'm trying to make the stuff that calls for fresh veggies in the first week or so or put of buying them if I think we won't get to the meal in the next two weeks. It's one of the kinks I hope to work out. Another kink this week was I have a list of stuff I forgot to put on the list that I need :P. It's a challenge but it's being a ton of fun and I hope as I go on, things will get easier. They have to get easier, right? Just lie to me if you have to :) Thanks for reading and bright blessings!