Sister Popular

Well I do feel a little bit popular because Sister Scully was visiting Windber yesterday and she asked me first to sit with her.  I was heading for her row when I stopped to talk to Ann and then the next thing I know the brother is asking us to find our seats and get ready to sing and Ann said oh can you sit with me?  And there was an empty seat right there, so I did.  My apologies to Sister Scully for my poor timing and my long-winded nature.  It was almost like a convention, all the talking and visiting and so many friends to spend time with! 

I have spent most of today so far thinking about something Brother Anastacy said in the talk, how love and respect for a marriage mate should be.  He said that when two people wed they have selected each other out of all the possible people on the planet they could have married instead.  And it should remain that precious.  Why does the new seem to wear off?

In my case, perhaps it went wrong from the get go because we didn't really select each other.  We were living together after my spiral downward out of the organization, and I wanted back in.  He was technically living in my apartment, my name on the lease, and I said you have to marry me or move out.  He said move out.  He came home from work to find his stuff boxed up on the balcony.  He said wow, you're serious.  Darn tootin' I answered.

We went to the lab at the hospital the next day for the blood tests Oklahoma law required.  Then 48 hours later, when the results were back, we went to the courthouse.  All my life I have known he married me because it was a better alternative than moving back home with his parents.  I suppose all his life he knew I married him only to get right with God.

Of course, I felt sad for Abel and sorry for me, that I was willing to select him but not the other way around.  It is so hard to know someone found you lacking.

Another thing the brother said in his talk, appropriately and perfectly, was that when it came to sex, balance was the key and all effort should be made between husband and wife to please each other.  That's all he said, and really that is all that is necessary, but I appreciated that he didn't shy away from discussing the more private aspects of marriage.

Akira Kurosawa said:  Being an artist means to never avert one's eyes. 

Jehovah is an artist of the highest order.  Look at creation.  It doesn't surprise me that some venerate and worship the creation instead of the creator because some of it is so lovely.  Mother Nature is a euphemism for creation, when really it is Jehovah who is both Mother Nature and Father Time, but I see how one could fall in love with the planet, with animals, how a scientist could devote his entire life, and fulfill the innate need to worship something, by devoting an entire life to stars, to rivers, to apes.  Look at Diane Fossey, of "Gorillas in the Mist" fame.

Jehovah did not shy away from discussing reproduction and all the details that go along with it.  The Mosaic Law Covenant is filled with references to adultery and menstruation and childbirth.  When people deem such topics too sensitive for discussion, it makes it possible for the abuse of those topics (for incest, for pedophilia, for spousal abuse and female circumcision to name only a very few) to proliferate in silence.

So, I am still thinking about that wonderful talk which may be why I feel like I just attended an assembly day between the spiritual feast and the loving brotherhood.  And the sisterhood, might I add.

I don't mean that it is always easy to discuss such things.  I had a blog last Friday that a few people have emailed comments about or mentioned in person.  No one has objected, and many said they never thought of that before.  And some of you didn't think about Satan having sex first of all the angels who forsook their heavenly places.  Yes, my sisters.  We have a biological difference that Satan has misappropriated and shifted into a biological disadvantage to be exploited.  I would see him in the abyss and later destroyed primarily for challenging his Creator, for his presumption, for his desire to steal our Father's glory.  And vengeance belongs to Jehovah for this, but I have to say, I am happy enough for this to happen to him because of how he has treated us as well.