Let’s Be Honest

OK, once again, I’ve been tagged for one of those round-robin-style blog awards. Always nice to be recognized by another blogger in a positive way, so I’ll respond to this one, as I did before with the Brillante Award.

This time, it was Hawa of the Fackin Truth Blog who has tagged me, this time for the Certified Honest Blogger Award.

First, the rules of the award:

Certified Honest Blogger Rules

• When you receive the prize you must write a post showing it, together with the name of who has given it to you, and link them back.
• Choose a minimum of 7 blogs (or more) that you find brilliant in their content or design.
• Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing they were prized with ‘Honest Weblog.’
• Show a picture of those who awarded you and those you give the prize (optional).
• List [if you can and or dare] at least ten honest things about yourself.
• And then, pass it on.

I want to thank Hawa for this. Not because it means I’m really all that great or anything but because (1) it’s nice to know that I’m exuding some kind of truth or honesty around here, and (2) I appreciate that I bring anything positive to my loyal readers, whether it is education, entertainment or tomfoolery. Now, as for Hawa herself, she doesn’t post frequently at Fackin Truth, but I will say that she has always posted honestly and enjoyably, and she very much earned her own Certified Honest Blogger award by doing so.

I’ll pick seven other blogs here not simply for their brilliance but for their intelligence and sincerity, since this award sticks “honest” in its name:

1. Raving Black Lunatic (Written by Big Man, who is one of the few bloggers I feel a true kinship with. We don’t always agree but we often are on the same page without having previously known it. Big Man is someone who my wife often jokes is the black version of me. That’s probably not fair to him, but he speaks from his heart on issues of race and politics…and other important stuff that occasionally comes up aside from those two.)
2. BlackGirlInMaine (This is a woman who speaks from her heart as well, a black wife and mother living in one of the whitest states in the nation and speaking on issues from motherhood to class issues to race relations to politics and whatever the hell else strikes her fancy.)
3. Losing My Religion (In this blog, SocietyVs takes on religion from both a standpoint of faith and skepticism. He does what I often try to do here, but with much less swearing. And God love him for it, because he often hits issues much more effectively than I do.)
4. Stupid Church People (Author Steve Chastain, like SocietyVs above, does much to make his readers think critically about religion while keeping their eye on spiritual truths. And, like the previous blogger, he doesn’t suffer from chronic potty mouth like I do.)
5. Something Within (When I’m not sure if I want to hear views from a strong woman or from a spiritual professional, this is the place to go (since I’ll get either or both). The author is a very sharp and sincere female reverend [possibly pastor, but I’ve never been positive about that].)
6. Truth for Dummies (Spiritbear does a good job in this blog of fighting against the tide of “churchianity” in search of real “Christianity.”)
7. The Word of Me (This blog is very critical of Christianity, and to me, that’s a good thing, because I need to be challenged. Even though I often don’t agree with what is written here, I appreciate the honesty and intelligence that goes into the posts.)

Do I dare go through with the listing of 10 honest things about myself? Damn! I guess I’d better be honest and do it. Hopefully I won’t embarrass my wife or son in the process (my little girl is still to young to be affected by…or understand…anything I might say here). Hawa did it, so I guess I’d better belly up to the bar and jack up my pants or whatever else one does before getting ready to boldly humiliate themselves…

Ten Honest Things About Deacon Blue

1. I’m not an overachiever. In fact, I may not even be an adequate achiever. Went to a Big Ten school and barely squeaked out a B average. I wrote fiction in high school, giving everyone the hope I’d be a novelist, and I’m only now writing one here in bits and pieces on my blog at the age of 40. I’m not a huge go-getter in the professional world, which hurts my family’s pocketbook. Sometimes, I wish I was a little more like Donald Trump or some other high-powered asshole.
2. I can do Hawa one better on the virginity thing; I didn’t lose mine until well after college. I really, really wanted to lose it earlier, but I was too shy and lacked confidence with women on a romantic level, even though, ironically, most of my best friends in life have been women, particularly in high school and after college.
3. Yes, I own porn. (And no, my wife doesn’t care.) This shouldn’t be a big surprise to anyone who’s read my feelings about the subject, but I might as well come right out and say it. DVDs, MPEGs on the computer, novels, online erotic fiction, photos. Got ’em all. However, I also know where the real and good stuff is, and that’s only found personally in three dimensions with Mrs. Blue, and not in the two-dimensional realm. But porn does keep me out of trouble.
4. There are three kinds of sexual fetishism that I find extremely gratifying to my fantasy life and/or my actual sex life. And that’s as honest as I will get on that. Being the reasonably smart person I am, I don’t pontificate on any of them in this blog, so if you think you know my kinks from past posts, think again. My wife knows about one of them very well, she sometimes remembers the second, and there’s no reason for her to know about the third, since it is impossible in real life and would be inadvisable to pursue even if it was possible.
5. I consider myself to be a pretty crummy child of God. For all that my Father has made possible and all that Jesus went through for me, all I can say is that I am an ungrateful and unproductive brat both for my heavenly Father and my brother, messiah and Lord.
6. I get zero satisfaction in most cases from being “right” in an argument or from winning in competition against another person.
7. When I worked in office-based settings, I never once handed in a 100% truthful expense report after a business trip. That’s what you get when you don’t give cost-of-living salary increases and keep increasing the employee contribution to the health insurance while reducing what it covers; still, though, I was wrong to do that.
8. I once stole a laptop from a company I worked for. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving company, but that still doesn’t make my actions any less wrong or sinful.
9. I actually think Spam tastes good.
10. I sometimes pick my nose. (But, in my defense, I wash my hands before interacting with anyone or touching any common items.) However, I haven’t eaten any of my boogers since the age of 8.

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Two-fer Tuesday: Piety by Deacon Blue

It is really a damn shame when a perfectly good word gets ruined. Something that is actually positive and uplifting and something to which we should aspire, and then people get it all twisted and turn the meaning into something ugly and negative.

We’ve seen it in this year’s presidential campaign, with Barack Obama being labelled as “elite.” No matter than George W. Bush, our current president, comes from an elite family and went to an elite university and has held some pretty elite corporate positions. Or that John McCain’s father and grandfather were both admirals, which is pretty freaking elite; hardly grunt soldiers in the armed forces, were they? Somehow, by Obama having a good education at a fine university and speaking well and thinking, he’s got something wrong with him. We should just have a plain old average Joe who’s just like the rest of us running things in Washington or backing up the person who’s running things in Washington. Utter nonsense.

And we see the same thing with the world “piety.” First off, piety is a virtue. A good thing.  A sign of good character. Something which we should seek out. As Wikipedia says in defining the word:

While different people may understand its meaning differently, it is generally used to refer either to religious devotion or to spirituality, or often, a combination of both. A common element in most conceptions of piety is humility. 

This isn’t a bad thing. Yet if you say that someone is pious, what do you think will happen most of the time?

They’ll assume the person is preachy and judgemental, and probably figure that the person is hypocritical too.

This is the exact same thing that happened to “born again” and “fundamentalism” and “evangelist.”

They came to be used as negative labels because the general population looked at a few high-profile or very vocal people who were idiots or self-serving louts and call themselves those things, and then decided that the words must now and forever be used as labels for bad behavior.

But tell me, if you see some stories of greedy or incompetent doctors, do you automatically assume that all physicians are bad, and begin to use the words “doctor” and “physician” with scorn in your voice and a dismissive attitude?

There is saying, “Don’t kill the messenger” but in this case I think it should be reversed. “Don’t kill the message.”

When the messenger is an idiot or a fool, that doesn’t mean the underlying message is bad. It just means it was misused or misrepresented.

Piety is a good thing. Overzealousness is what you need to be on guard against.

Two-fer Tuesday: Piety by Miz Pink

So, here’s what I want to talk about today in regard to the topic of piety which is our Two-fer Tuesday extravaganza this week…We’re gonna head on over to 2 Timothy…that’s the Second Letter of Paul to Timothy. And it says right there…

1 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. (Second Timothy chapter 3, verses 1-5)

Now why am I trotting out this batch of bible verse for something about piety. Well, let’s look at one of those lines…that last line #5 in fact…and how is reads in a couple of the less common translations of the bible:

having a form of piety but denying the power of it: and from these turn away (Darby Bible) and having a form of piety, and its power having denied; and from these be turning away (Young’s Literal Translation)

You see, if people have piety, here’s the thing:

They don’t generally wear it on their sleeves.

There’s nothing wrong with piety as Deke mentions in his Two-fer Teusday post today. Being pious is really cool. But just like with being “cool” in a more traditional and people-pleasing fashion, the coolest people are the people who don’t act like they think they are cool.

Being cool is to carry yourself in a natural way that makes others say or think: “You’re cool.” The coolest people are the ones who will humbly play off those comments with a “thanks, but I’m just being who I am.”

Pious people who draw attention to their piety on purpose. Who show it off to others. Who pat themselves on the back about it. Who put it in your face. Who try to make themselves superior by professing it…

…these are people who aren’t pious one little tiny bit.

Worse yet are the people who operated in the exact opposite mode of being pious and still try to tell you they’re are pious. Those are the kind of people we’re warned about in that bible verse I dropped in here at the start of today’s fesitivities. Whether they are folks doing the right thing and taking too much credit for doing so (who are dangerous and damaging) to the hypocrites who say they do one thing and demand you do too but don’t really do it (who are really really dangerous and scary)

They’re pompous and shallow and self-centered. They aren’t operating in God’s grace and they certainly ain’t being Christ-like.

Pious they ain’t and you need to watch out for them.

Page Updates

Just a quick note that my Cleansed By Fire portal (which you can access via a link below my top banner on this blog) has been updated, for anyone following the novel.

• The individual chapter links now have capsule descriptions of the events that take place in the various installments, to help you hunt down something you may have missed or would like to revisit.
• A new page has been added that outlines the historical timeline of events and eras relevant to the novel.