♫ You say goodbye... and I say hello ♫

I was getting nervous. Application after application went in, and no prospective employers called back. I think I was failing their automated exams, which I am convinced are illegally discriminatory. But railing against the automated application process wasn't getting me any work either.

I was learning what it meant to pray "Give us this day our daily bread". I was scared.

Last week, I sold my most precious yarn, giving me enough to buy a decent load of groceries for that week. I told myself it was a good thing, really; I was learning to let go of material things. Store not up for yourselves treasures on earth and all that.

This week was harder; I sold a shelf-full of my books. Books I love. I gave them one last caress before handing them over to the used book dealer, who cared for them not at all. 22 books turned into $15. I tried very hard not to cry, and succeeded- barely. I still believed God would provide what I needed, but I suspected the Almighty and I were disagreeing on just what constituted need.

I got home, dejected but with money enough to eat. And I looked at the phone. I had a message.

This morning I was selling bits of my soul. This afternoon I had a full-time job. Tomorrow, I'm going back to work.

I say, old chaps, this is a lovely picnic spot, wot wot? We ought to call it Jehovah-jireh. The Lord will provide, you know... eventually.

Nothing new under the sun

On the knitting front:

• I found the lost dpn.
  
• My size F crochet hook is MIA.
  
• I finished up that pink shawl from months ago.
  
• The cursed Christmas afghan yarn is rapidly turning into a log cabin afghan.
  
• I am avoiding weigh-in because yarn is scattered all over the house.

Knitting does not occupy my mind as much as the state of my church right now, though. I know full well that the Living the Questions handout does not represent the actual views of more than, say, 15% of my local congregation, but what I read is still terrifying.

Take this snarky little statement:

And yet many Christians today make it proof of their faith and a litmus test of their relationship with God that they embrace thousand-tear-old religious ideas- and are proud of it.

The handouts for this series have been abominable at best, but this last one really takes the cake. It's seven pages portraying believers- the kind who think that maybe orthodoxy isn't a bad word- as stupid legalists afraid to think and afraid to lose the religion of their childhood. The growth in conservative churches and the death of liberal mainlines is explained by saying "people are desperately looking for just one place in this crazy life where things don't change". If you're not on board with the progressive Christian- or progressively less Christian- agenda, then you're a dead church that teaches stale rules and makes people shut their brains off in church- and you're so stupid, you like it.

Have the authors of this thing ever stepped inside an actual conservative church? Where on earth are they getting their facts? The model of churches they set up looks like this:

Type 1: Church of the Evil Conservative Nuns with Rulers

• God hates you.
  
• Stop thinking and follow the rules.
  
• The Bible is the fourth person of the Quiddity.
  
• God never meant for you to be nice to people.
  
• So scared of change we're theological LARPers.

Type 2: Church of the Smart People who Love People

• God is love, love, love and never gets mad, except at conservatives.
  
• Rules, schmules. Our only rule is... all that social justice stuff from the Old Testament.
  
• The Bible is a book written by ancient, stupid people.
  
• The only thing God cares about is that you try to do good.
  
• The only thing we fear is old stuff.

This is madness. We started the series by jettisoning the Bible, because no thinking person could ever believe that. Then we jettisoned everything else that looked vaguely orthodox, because no thinking person could ever believe that. And what have we ended up with? The sort of Pelagianism that no thinking person should believe. The earth's orbit must be bit wobbly, because I believe the Reformers, that brainy bunch, must be spinning madly in their graves.

How can these "progressives" miss that all they have is a kinder, squishier legalism? Nothing new under the sun, I guess.

Senseless Saturday

From BBC Sport:

England's experimental team ran up a record score against Wales as they put a second-string Principality side to the sword at Twickenham on Saturday.

...

Fly-half Jonny Wilkinson, who looked sharp throughout, kicked 18 points as a dominant display by England's massive pack gave him an armchair ride in temperatures of 30C in London.

...

Wales infringed in desperation and England kicked the penalty into the corner before a machine-tooled catch and drive from the line-out saw Easter - like Perry looking much fitter - power over once again.

This time Wilkinson converted and with Wales looking under increasing pressure up front a big score was already on the cards.

The hosts collected a third try before half-time when the England pack once again put the Welsh on the back foot and a hot-stepping Wilkinson set up a beach head from which Borthwick plunged over.

I read things like this and think, We really don't speak the same language, do we? I mean, what's this about an armchair ride? Isn't 30C a bit hot to be carried about in an La-Z-Boy? There are all these words that I recognized- "romp", "fly", "massive", "beach", "machine-tooled",- but I can't put them together into anything that makes sense. The reporter might just have well written about his colorless green dreams sleeping furiously, for all the sense I can make of it.

No wonder rugby hasn't made it big on this side of the pond. Nobody can understand what the commentators are talking about.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find a metal detector. Somewhere between casting off one sock and casting on for another, I lost a dpn, and I'm down to three. I really like the first sock, and I need that needle to make the second one. Wish me luck.