Lose Weight, Gain a Spirit?

I am really fed up with the notion that losing weight and staying youthfully beautiful will equate being comfortable in your own skin and deliver a healthy mind, body and spirit. Sorry gals, but life isn’t an Oprah episode. When I was eighteen and 118 pounds and by everyone’s account stunning, I was miserable. 

Miserable because boys wouldn’t talk to me and girls hated me. I was excruciatingly lonely. Wherever I went, men would gawk, say lewd things and otherwise treat me as if I was simply an image of a person, devoid of a life, personality and feelings. Being comfortable in my own skin was a foreign illusion. No one knew me, and I felt punished by my appearance. I was pretty and everyone wants to be that, right?

Now, many years, a marriage and four kids later I see a different person in the mirror. That young girl with the flat stomach and flawless skin is disappearing. Wrinkles, grey hair and a body that perfectly illustrates Newton’s law of gravity have replaced her. Now my culture wants to punish me for my appearance. No one wants to get old and ugly, right?

But this girl smiles more. I have a couple of true friends and a growing network that supports me professionally and emotionally. I dare say that the softness and age makes me a better person, mother, wife and friend. I have accomplished a lot so far and I like to think the best is still yet to come. 

This body that creates and crafts art, tends to the people I love, that loves a good man expertly, that carried, birthed and nourished four babies is simply the physical representation of me. It doesn’t define me. If it doesn’t conform to some man-made definition of beauty, that’s fine by me, nature takes its course on us all, and understanding that delivers a healthy mind, body and spirit. I only wish my eighteen year old self could have seen this, she may have been happier.

Christian Fanatic Assassinates American Doctor

Freedom of religion allows for every American citizen to practice freely, without fear of consequence, any religion of their choosing. I do not believe that it protects them to try to force their religion on others. This right to claim religious belief to justify any action, up to and including, assassination invades the boundaries of my right to not believe; to not have their beliefs forced upon me or my fellow Americans. 

Christians may loathe abortion, but regardless of whatever hateful doctrine they may subscribe to they do not have legal protection for their actions. Their god may tell them to kill a man because he performed abortions, but that does not mean that the rest of us have to stand by and let these hypocritical, hateful bigots be protected. Their god demands that “thou shalt not kill”, not “kill when someone disagrees with your belief in me”.

Instead of killing abortion doctors, how about this fanatic sect of Christians take on a more positive social role and actually do what Jesus might do: adopt an unwanted baby, work to STOP child abuse and get real about sexual education and work to prevent unwanted pregnancies to begin with. Well, I admit that would require an acceptance that man is an animal, a mammal specifically (not divine); an animal that propagates the species by procreation, not out of love or some holy mandate by god only sanctified by the man-mad construct of marriage, but out of a biological, natural need. This happens with or without God-so why not just leave him out of it?

A religion that preaches hate and advocates assassination is not a religion, it is a terrorist cult, and should be considered enemy combatants and rounded up by Homeland Security and held without trial, without a lawyer, and without constitutional protection. Maybe we can even employ water-boarding, lest another upstanding American citizen be gunned down in his place of worship. Let’s see how they like it. It certainly seems to be the American policy reserved for Muslims. 

Are Christian terrorists above the law or beyond extraordinary rendition. Or is it a terrorist organization shedding its veil?