Pray as Jesus prayed: don’t use the word “just”

Tags

body language, commandment, faith, god, jesus, just, language, mathew, pray, prayer, subtext, words

Whenever I go to church, inevitably one or more leaders or lay people rip my soul with their language: “Lord, I just want you to [insert your plea here].” It makes me want to stand up and walk out, run even. Why am I investing time in a church, a whole group of churches really, that send me a message of faithlessness? I guess I’m speaking protestant churches, at least the Canadian chapters. I’ve not visited every church, so I just can’t call this a blanket observation. I’ve never not heard this abuse outside a Catholic church. I’ve never heard it used inside a Catholic church, but the Catholics fall under a whole different category of faithlessness. *grin* I can say this because I are a Catholic.

This is a use of just as an adverb, and as an adverb, just has a few meanings. Let’s review:

adverb
9.within a brief preceding time; but a moment before: The sun just came out.
10.exactly or precisely: This is just what I mean.
11.by a narrow margin; barely: The arrow just missed the mark.
12.only or merely: He was just a clerk until he became ambitious.
13.actually; really; positively: The weather is just glorious.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/just?s=t

So the question is, which of these meanings are being used. #9 is out as are #10, and #11. I hesitate with #13, but I rule it out too. These statements are not said with enthusiasm. They are restrained. The speakers act like they are subordinating to the target, Jesus/God. That leaves #12: only or merely. “Lord, I merely want you to listen to us today.”

Technically there’s nothing wrong with this usage. It says “God, stop doing whatever you are doing, stop paying attention to all my other needs, and listen to this one.” So, what’s my problem? I think it’s body language and tone. Whenever these phrases are issued, the speaker sounds as if he or she is submitting and pleading: “Oh please God, listen to this poor little lost insignificant soul today.” It feels like they are begging for an audience. And it’s sometimes it’s accompanied by a long drawn out whine: “Ohhh, pleeease Gaaaawd …” Sometimes it makes me want to trash the whole sanctuary: it’s a house of prayer not a whine-fest.

Let me ask you something: does God demand fealty? Did Jesus tell his followers to get down on their knees and beg? Last week we learned his greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” [Mathew 22:37] Praying that God will “just” do something is not putting all your heart, soul, and mind into it. It just isn’t. It’s diminishing your prayer. It’s saying you have no faith in God. At least that’s what it says to me.

Language is powerful. A single word like “just” can carry immeasurable meaning, and words are modified by your body language and tone. Do your words match your actions? Do your actions modify the meanings of your words? Do as I say, not as I do is a deep and true idiom. Pay attention to your actions and your words. Do they really relay the message you want to deliver? Just think about it.

Pray as Jesus prayed. Did the big JC bow down before anybody? Did he plea for his life when he knew he was in for it? Did he ever wail and fret over not being heard? Did Jesus whine and beg? Jesus prayed directly and deliberately. He did not bow down and he did not stand above:

^{John 17:24} Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

Jesus never used the word just. He said “Father, I want.” He didn’t say “Father, I just want.” Pray as Jesus prayed, not as your unworthy human soul tells you to.

If you really have faith in God, stop whining to Him, stop pleading, stop subordinating yourself, stop belittling God. Stand up with full confidence and say “Lord, listen to me today.” Say it like you mean it. Say it like you have faith.

p.s.: Friday Funny: God Tells Prayer-Warriors to Stop Saying “Just”

Word: Homeostasis

Tags

creativity, drivers, fat, Gary Taubes, gates, homeostasis, hormones, locks, stress, sugar, words, Writing

This is not a commentary on the homophobic nature of certain political parties and religious groups. Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties such as temperature or pH.

Sentences:

Our blood sugars are controlled by the homeostatic mechanisms insulin and glucagon.
Our blood sugar homeostasis is controlled by negative feedback which triggers insulin and glucagon release.
Insulin and glucagon homeostatically control blood sugars.

Think of homeostasis as a boat lock between two lakes. There are gates at either end. One can let water in, and the other can let water out. If we want more water to come in, we open the gate to the high lake. If we want to let water out, we open the gate to the low lake. Sounds simple enough.

In a boat lock we are allowing passage of a vessel by controlling levels of water.  In our bodies we maintain a level of something to maintain health. Other facets of life also exhibit homeostatic tendencies. Stress for example has been suggested as homeostatic, and it resists changing levels. To change levels of any homeostatically controlled substance, one needs to modify the homeostatic forces. Sounds simple enough.

There are reasons for wanting to modify homeostatic conditions. Perhaps someone has stored too much adipose tissue — fat. Maybe your blood sugars are too high. Maybe you have lots of pent up creativity that needs to be released. “Everybody has a novel in them.” It’s really only a matter of releasing the gates to enable it to flow out.

The big problem is that what controls substances is not always easy to identify or is easily misunderstood. There can be layered effects which mask the root triggers of gates. It sounds so simple that blood sugar is controlled by insulin and glucagon. We can give insulin injections easy enough. I’ve given myself many tens of thousands over the years. But how does one control glucagon, and does one need to control it? This is one of the hidden, nefarious deficiencies in type 1 diabetics: we cannot control our glucagon like a normal person.

Huh?

Yup, most of us are runaway sugar-making factories. The sugar-making gates are wide open. And it’s due to our lack of amylin. This hormone is made in our pancreatic beta cells just like insulin, and it’s released when we eat food. It’s job is to control glucagon. No amylin means runaway glucagon, and of course every type 1 is different. I release a lot of glucagon when I eat. In fact, eating meat or salad is not very different than eating bread for me. I still need to inject copius amounts of insulin.

Fat is the easy one. If we eat too much food we get fat, and if we don’t burn enough we get fat. All we need to do is control these two gates. And it really does work; which is why 97% of all diets fail. Hello? Yup, we’ve not correctly understood the homeostatic forces of fat accumulation. There is a third force or group of forces called hormones.  Fat is stored and released from cells via lipases. This is science, and it shouldn’t be debateable. We don’t accept it publicly or in the science and medical communities, but these are the fat storage homeostatic forces. To change fat storage, we change the forces on these lipases, and counterintuitively, insulin is the major force on these lipases. When insulin is high, we will store more fat. When insulin is low, we will burn more fat. Energy expenditure doesn’t open these gates, and if the gates won’t open, energy can’t be expended. The body will search for more energy instead. Hence, gluttony and sloth can be clearly seen as symptoms of obesity, not causes.

Can we translate these ideas to our creativity? Can we become better writers by tearing down the homeostatic forces trapping our creativity? One of the enablers I’ve found is technical writing knowledge. One can’t easily write if one doesn’t really know how to. So learn your five sentence structures. Learn how to use commas and colons and dashes. Learn when it’s okay not to. Learn your words. Learn advanced grammar concepts. Learn story writing techniques. Learn!

Read. Reading opens the mind and feeds the muse. It starts our brain on working with ideas, and ideas lead to ideas. Let’s try a simple example. Let’s say I wanted to take a photograph of a homeostatic condition. Let’s begin by taking two random words, then taking more words triggered from those words, and so on until we come up with an idea for a photograph:

1. race car  2. turtle
fast and slow
highway driving
traffic jam

Okay, let’s find a nice overpass and take a picture of a traffic jam. But homeostasis suggests a cause. Let’s add a construction project. Voila: homeostasis. All we need to do is finish the construction, and traffic will flow better. 

Yeah, right.

So read!

Stress and distractions impede our creative writing. Shut the television off. Kick the kids out of the house. Send the spouse away for a weekend. Turn off Facebook and your blog, seriously. Make some quiet time. I like to get up at 4AM, make a pot of coffee, and write in quiet darkness before it’s time to do the daily battles. My mind is blank and free and not filled with the day’s stresses.

Homeostasis. It’s balance. Learn to identify and affect balance points. Realize you may be wrong. Adjust!

Word: Ubiquitous

Tags

articles, columnists, context, meaning, news, practice, ubiquitous, words

u·biq·ui·tous   /yuˈbɪkwɪtəs/ Show Spelled[yoo-bik-wi-tuhs] Show IPA
adjective
existing or being everywhere, especially at the same time; omnipresent: ubiquitous fog; ubiquitous little ants.

I read an article this morning which discussed yesterday’s blog topic – Steve Cooksey’s Lawsuit against North Carolina Dietitians. Paul Sherman at Law dot Com writes

There is perhaps no kind of advice more ubiquitous than dietary advice, and our general societal presumption is that competent adults are fully capable of weighing conflicting dietary advice and deciding for themselves what to eat. That’s why Cooksey has joined with the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm to challenge the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition’s attempt to silence his speech.

He argues that food is too common, and dietary advice cannot be regulated. Does this mean that only rare advice need be regulated? Should all rare advice be regulated? Slippery slopes.

I realized after reading this article that this word ubiquitous is a word I’ve rarely used. It might even be a word I’ve never used. It’s not a new word for me, but it’s not a familiar one. So how does one become familiar with a word? I decided to search for more recent articles using it.

How Pretty Things Beer became ubiquitous in Boston

Devra First finds an interesting context for the word. She seems to say that “Pretty Things,” a micro-brewery, is now ubiquitous and that’s a good thing. The article says they are considered the best micro-brewery in town and every pub carries their products. I think of ubiquitous as being common in terms of quality, mundane. This isn’t so. Quality is not part of the word’s meaning. It only refers to quantity. An important lesson.

Help: We’re losing it here

The subtitle states The gunfire in our city seemed so ubiquitous it felt more like it could strike anyone, anywhere, at any time.

The columnist, Danny Westneat, writes about two incidents: a public shooting where five were hit and at the same time a school was locked up because students saw a man with a gun outside – he was a jogger armed for self defense because of shootings.

At the end he writes

Mayor, police chief: This is the mood of the city. Joggers are packing heat. Moms of toddlers are contemplating arming up or heading out of town.

It’s insane, yes. We are losing it. Can you blame us?

In this column firearms are becoming ubiquitous and people are getting scared. Ubiquitous negatives create much tension and strife.

Here are some more articles I found. Enjoy this word exploration some more. It’s use seems fairly ubiquitous!

The Ubuiquitous US “Zombie Job” Market

Copper-nickel nanowires from Duke University could make ubiquitous printable circuits

Dan Wheldon reminders ubiquitous at Indy

A Girl in a Hoodie

Tags

cafe, coffee, poetry, words, Writing

I didn’t write this in a café, but I did a lot of work leading up to it there. This poem is part of a poem a day event for April 2012 run by Robert Lee Brewer in his Poetry Asides bog at Writer’s Digest.

During April 2012 I opened the local Starbucks in our mall at 7am. I read and wrote poetry. It was National Poetry Month, so it kind of made sense. I don’t consider myself a poet, though, so this month was a jump into a cold, strange lake for me.

On this day, April 3rd, I went for my coffee before I knew the daily prompt. I spent the time watching and writing words. I divided my page up into nouns, verbs, and adjectives and filled up the sections. I accumulated about 75 words that morning. When I read the topic, I started writing imediately. I spent all of five minutes on it, but I have made minor edits since. Here is my latest version. Of course it’s about someone sitting in Starbucks, a young man.

A Girl in a Hoodie

You flittered by
with your click clacking high heels
and swinging blonde ponytail,
throwing expletives at the distinguished
businessman following you,
his dark rimmed Poindexters pouring over
your waddling perkiness

I’m glad you didn’t look at me
sitting, chatting with the empty chairs
and large policemen grappling
their morning caffeine fixes.
Fuzz with a buzz you called them,
no respect in your voice.

Oh how you hated the brown bagged bellies
and apathetic gazes of my world.
And how I hated yours,
the lotto booth looks,
the knitting basket banter,
and the pink baseball hat Friday night drinks.

I prefer the Joan Jett stroll,
a girl with confidence in her attitude,
a voice with character and opinion.
I want a girl in a hoodie