Musings on Bees, Work, Vacation, and Spiritual Paths

It was mostly a quiet week.

Tuesday evening I was mowing and paused to move a couple of tree branches by our sole surviving apple tree. The bees in the area didn’t appreciate that at all. I got stung once behind my left knee, once on my right side (through my shirt, even), and once under my left eye. That one hurt the most, but fortunately didn’t swell much at all. First time I’ve been stung in almost 30 years.

I had a full Thursday at work, testing two CNA candidates in the morning and four other people in the afternoon. CNA testing involves both a skills test and a written exam, and they can’t do the written until they pass the skills. I check them in and hand them off to the skills tester, then she brings them back to me for the actual scoring of the skills test. Kind of odd, but them’s the rules. Once I score the skills portion, they take the written portion which is graded on the spot by the computer.

The afternoon testing included a little bit of everything. The school can give the DPS written exam for drivers licensing. They also, for now, can test CDL candidates. I say for now because my wife is the only person in the district currently allowed to administer the written CDL test. She’s taken a new job (still within ICTC) and can’t test after September 1st. The school knows this, and the state knows this, but the state has been slow to add test administrators (and the school can’t really do anything about it). We got an email from the state this week though that said they’ll be adding test administrators in the coming weeks, so that’ll help.

We’ve finalized our Hawaii schedule. Now we just have to make the individual reservations. There’s an air tour of the island on Sunday, then a sunset dinner sailing trip Monday. Tuesday we’re doing a zipline safari kind of thing that includes a kayak tour. Wednesday we’re going horseback riding then to a luau. Thursday we’ll be on Oahu hitting Pearl Harbor, the Missouri, and several Hawaiian historical sites. Friday we’re visiting a chocolate farm. No, seriously. We’re going to be busy enough that we’ll probably need a rest from our vacation!

I’m looking forward to it. I’m trying to decide now what I’m going to do about a camera though. A couple of years ago, Oldest Daughter started a photography business and appropriated my Nikon D5100. I’ve been making do with my phone cameras since then, but I feel like I want a bigger/better device for this trip. The Nikon is 24 MP and gets some very high-quality shots. My current phone, a Samsung S21+ has a 12 MP regular camera (though the telephoto camera is 64 MP). The biggest issue for me is storage though. The phone doesn’t have an SD card slot, so I’m stuck with onboard storage or uploading to the cloud often.

So I’m torn then between hijacking my old camera back from my daughter for a couple of weeks or buying my own DSLR (probably a used D5600 or something like that). We’ll see what the treasurer says.

Today in History

• “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
• “If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.”
• “The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it.”
• “Adulthood is hell.”

H. P. Lovecraft, born on this day in 1890.

Reading

The Roys Report reports that Baylor University Wins Exemption from Title IX’s Sexual Harassment Provisions. This is a troubling ruling. The school, affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas (itself part of the SBC) asked for the exemption, citing religious freedom. In essence, they asked to be able to let their students be harassed because of their sexual identities. The case stemmed from a complaint by two students alleging that Baylor wasn’t properly investigating their sexual harassment complaints. The school’s position is, in my mind, directly at odds with a number of biblical instructions, not the least of which is to love your neighbor.

I know Christians will claim that praying for someone who’s committing sin is a very loving act. But is it really if you’re weaponizing your prayer? Choosing to combat one sin over others doesn’t seem to follow anything I’ve ever read in the Bible. Far too often, Christians seem to fixate on supposed sexual sins while ignoring the multitude of other condemned acts. They like to pick and choose which parts of Levitical law they emphasize, “negotiating” with the Bible to justify their actions, and it’s so incredibly disappointing to see them choosing some (misinterpreted) commandments and stories over those that are much more clearly expressed.

And if Baylor is so worried about sexual sin, then maybe they should take a closer look at some of the Christian groups it brings on campus.

I’ve been reading about this troubling story from Kansas where police raided a newspaper office and reporters’ homes. There are all sorts of issues with this case, from a missing probable cause affidavit (that should have been used to generate the search warrant) to a search warrant being used instead of a subpoena, as federal law requires. The cops are claiming that the case resulted from a complaint about reporting on someone’s drunk driving arrest; that person is claiming a breach of privacy. But arrest and court records are a matter of public record, so where’s the issue? This AP story suggests that there are plenty of people in town who aren’t happy with what the newspaper reports. Still, that’s no reason to violate the Constitution and federal law.

And right on the heels of that story comes this one from Wisconsin. A newspaper got sued over reporting that a local businessman (now state senator) used a slur during a public meeting. Cory Tomczyk complains that no reporter was at the meeting and that the paper relied on information “from others.” What Tomczyk apparently fails to understand is that witness accounts are commonly used in a variety of ways, from newspaper reports to capital cases.

Both stories illustrate the weaponization of the courts against journalists, which I think is fallout from the 2016 presidential election with its verbal attacks on so-called “fake news.” I noted at the time that claims of “fake news” were most often made against stories that the candidate didn’t like, or that painted them unfavorably, regardless of the facts of the story.

My TBR list at Goodreads grew by a couple of titles. Dan McClellan mentioned a new book by Andrew L. Whitehead titled American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church. I added that to my list along with another Whitehead title, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. I may never get to them, because my To Be Read list is currently at 580 books, but hey, goals are a good thing, right?

A writing colleague shared a post yesterday that got me thinking. I credit Beth for helping me realize that it was okay to deconstruct. Granted, she and I ended up in different destinations, but I’m grateful that she helped me along the way. The Church needs the questions that progressives are asking brings up a couple of thoughts. She mentions apostasy once or twice which piqued my curiosity. When I looked it up to make sure it still meant what I thought it meant, I realized it could apply to me. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard Christians, especially evangelicals, use that word to refer to people who’ve left the faith. But it’s accurate, I think. I’ve pretty much renounced evangelicalism and Christianity. I’m critical of it, or at least the way it’s practiced by far too many in the US.

I use the term “spiritual orphan” on my social media profiles, but I wonder if I could start saying “spiritually AAA.” Agnostic—Atheist—Apostate. Maybe. Then again, I’m probably focusing too hard on the labels.

And I know it was just a brief mention, but I cringed when I read the sentence about dressing modestly. Modesty culture wasn’t her point, but the whole concept really irks me, because it takes so much responsibility away from the person who’s looking. A person should be able to dress as they want to without being judged for the way someone else responds to their clothing.

People like to twist Matthew 5:28 to shift responsibility to the woman who’s being looked at lustfully. But verses 29 and 30 make it pretty clear the looker is the one in the wrong. Matthew 18: 8-9 backs that up. Purity culture and demands for modesty are the things that make us ask sexual assault victims what they were wearing when they were attacked. It leads to horrific misunderstanding of the dynamics of rape and sexual assault, and The Church needs to do better.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to share a thought in the comments. Sign up for my infrequent newsletter here. Find some of my other writing at The Good Men Project, too. Subscribe to the blog via the link in the right sidebar or follow it on Mastodon. You can also add my RSS feed to your favorite reader.