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misty_rain Shades of guilt - Subscribe
I tried a new church today, and I really, really liked it. I think God is wise and I was pleased that he chose to place me there. Now I have two churches: a small one and a second smaller one. After the service, I went with the folks to a Mexican restaurant and got into a heated discussion about the film Shawshank Redemption.

I said I didn't particularly like the film. I couldn't seize on why I didn't like it. It was the hardness of prison life and the violence and rape that I didn't like.

When Cathy asked me why I didn't like the film, I said it was because I didn't think of the main character as innocent. That caused a huge disruption! They didn't buy into my claim that he was partially guilty on account of having gone to the house drunk with a shotgun. They said either he killed the two or he didn't - a yes or no answer.

So I made up an example about a boy who was whipped by his mother for being found at the lake with his swim trunks after she told him not to go swimming. Whether or not he went swimming might be moot to her. The fact that he was caught at the lake with his swim trunks demonstrated intent.

(That's not to say that I would whip the kid who might have gone swimming. It's just to say that maybe his mother would. I don't think you should convict a person for a murder that they might have committed.)

I asserted that the character in Shawshank Redemption was 50% guilty.

Let's do a little situational math simplified in the extreme: Let's play Plinko. Let's say you are drunk with a shotgun outside your cheating wife's door. You can shoot her dead or you can walk away- and maybe you walk away because the rain is cold. Maybe on a warmer night you would have shot her dead. We'll say the chances you'll kill her that night are 50/50. We're lying, but that's what we're saying for now. So you, in your current state, before you walk away, or before you kill her- you are 50% guilty.
Murder yes or murder no are the two choices. But how did you arrive at being 50% guilty? Let's go up one tier and have the choice "drive to the house" yes or "drive to the house" no and say you are 25% guilty of murder at that point. Go up another tier and have the choice "pick up your shotgun" yes or "pick up your shotgun" no and say you are 12% guilty at that point, and so on. The next tier up might be whether you got drunk that night or not.

Life is like this. The outcome of your life is determined by the choices you make. There are shades of gray in guilt.

As for the movie, I liked the part where he bashed a hole in the sewer pipe.
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Mood: wondering

misty_rain The trip to the river Aug 18th, 2005 12:29:09 pm - Subscribe
I went to Ellie's house for the weekend, and I took Friday off to go on the trip, and we drove seven hours there on Friday and seven hours back on Sunday, and the drive was long but it was worth it (lazy run-on sentence) because Ellie's house is so peaceful and beautiful that it reminds me of heaven. Except: one can't be reminded of heaven never having experienced it; so instead, reminded of what I preconceive heavenly splendor to be.

Big words, but the itty bitty ones just won't do Ellie's house justice.
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Mood: happy
Random Thought: If you cross a river without getting your shorts wet, then you can sit on the roots of the centurion pine trees on the other side and be amazed at the scene before you, and be amazed at how massive the tree is.

misty_rain Getting violent Aug 18th, 2005 1:00:50 pm - Subscribe
A week and a half ago in Tuesday's class, I was annoyed with Daphne. She hurt my feelings. I left in the middle of class because I hadn't eaten properly that day and I didn't feel right.

The next class, which was a Thursday, they threw Daphne and I together in the boxing ring and had us go four two-minute rounds: one boxing and three kickboxing. So you know what I did. It doesn't matter that she outweighed me by twenty pounds. I backed her up and practiced punching combos on her head. Later on I kicked her until her headgear spun around (it was way too loose, so it was going to spin anyway).

She has good kicks too and caught me with a couple.

Even so, we were both pulling punches. It takes a lot for two chicks to try and knock eachother out. I just don't see that happening in my {first person} experience. Not ever.

What I mean is that I didn't feel guilty for smacking her around; but even at that level, even including annoyance, there was no... attempt to hurt, harm, knock out, whatever.

Oh well.
Fighting must be for boys.
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Mood: trippy
Random Thought: Art said to get leather headgear

misty_rain My mom left to spend five weeks in Kenya Aug 28th, 2005 1:00:58 am - Subscribe
Well - on Friday my mom went to Kenya; she arrived there today. She's spending the night in the capital, then she's going to truck out to some place I can't spell. She is doing literacy consulting. Low literacy rates are a basic problem in Africa. She is co-teaching a seminar to teach literacy specialists additional literacy info.

She is very good at what she does. I am going to need to pray for her every day while she is away because I am concerned for her.

My folks actually managed to pull it together in their friendship/ relationship this past week, but then my dad blew it later when they said goodbye. It's not a terrible thing, but he failed to make her feel the reality that he loves her only, that he doesn't want anyone but her, that she is the most special girl in the whole wide world to him.

Men don't always understand that they have that gift, that they have that weight- the ability to make their girl feel like she's the only one- the only thing beautiful, the most wanted of his universe.

See, chicks are after that. You wouldn't know it to look at my mom. She's a globetrotter; she has mad skills as a teacher, student, linguist, intellect, expert, consultant, planner, and writer; she's brilliant and she's fiercely independent. But it's still the approval of her man that she looks for. Her success is important to her- but she still looked to my dad to see if the thing was true that she had only a budding courage to hope for: the truth that he adores her.

And he does. I wish he'd verbalized it better. And I wish they didn't have to be apart from each other for five weeks.
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Mood: happy

misty_rain Photo - Large Green Spider Aug 30th, 2005 11:54:15 pm - Subscribe
I got back a picture today that I was very happy with.

This is what happened the day I took the picture: I was looking at an amazing rose. It was very large. I went and got my camera and set it on close-up shots. I approached the subject bloom and was surprised to see a large green spider that saw me and moved away from me. I moved slowly and cirlcled the rose so the spider wouldn't know which way to run. I took four photos but only one turned out. The one that turned out is beautiful. The large green spider has dark eyes visible. The photo shows hairs on its legs, and faintly gleaming are hints of two different strands of web it left trailing over the flower.

It is a nice photo. I plan on sending it to my cousin who was part of the photo club for years and won awards for her photography. I want her to see the photo because I am so pleased with it.
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Mood: encouraged