Today is National Day of Reason/Day of Prayer
30 04 2008And I really can’t comment on either in a “reasoned” way. I wasn’t even going to write about it. But then I was assaulted by an unreasonably stupid person, and felt that if I addressed one, I should address the other.
When I was very, very sick, chemo was both killing me and keeping me alive. Killing the cancer, but preventing me from eating. Preventing me from being well enough for medical science to kill off my immune system so I could have a bone marrow transplant. It was a delicate balance and I was losing.
Then people in my community started praying for me. Hard. And coming to see me and telling me they were praying for me. I would croak out that I wasn’t Christian so I didn’t think their God was interested in me, but that didn’t deter them. About two weeks after they started praying, I suddenly got well enough for the BMT process. And here I am today.
So, maybe it was the prayer, maybe it was coincidence, maybe it was me not wanting to let my neighbors down. I don’t know. I don’t care either. If people want to pray for me, that’s fine.
However, I don’t think it’s practical for the government to call for a special day of prayer. People who pray do it when they want to, not when the government tells them to. What the government is doing by calling for a special day of prayer is drawing attention to the act of prayer, giving the populace both a directive and permission, which is absolutely against the original purpose of prayer, which is a personal communication with the supreme being of choice. What does the bible say about prayer?
Matthew 6:6-6:8
6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
I’m not against prayer. I think anyone should be able to pray anytime they want, because if they’re doing it according to scripture - nobody knows they’re doing it. I think the government calling for a special day of prayer seriously undermines the separation of church and state, but in the end, as long as they don’t spend any money on it, I don’t care if a bunch of theistards stand around in public praying - cuz according to scripture, God’s ignoring them.
Now, as for the reason part - finding reason in today’s society is rare. It’s obviously not taught, and it’s obviously not something people come by naturally. Today, I encountered one of the most unreasonable requests I’ve had in a long ass time - and I get more than my share of unreasonable requests, living in a virtual group home of teenagers.
Stay with me, because this gets complicated. I have a sick goat. I found her last night, and her symptoms stumped me. Stumped me after I consulted my Mercks vet manual, after I contacted the vet, and after I searched the Internet. In desperation, I consulted a dairy goat message board - ONLY because I value the advice and opinion of one particular poster. Now, I’ve had goats for long enough to encounter the most common ailments, treat them, and feel confident enough that most people in my county (including the vet) call me when they have a goat problem. So, I break down and post on this board. I’ve avoided it except for desperate situations because the people there are mostly new and obsessed with CAE (a rare and mostly asymptomatic disease of goats which poses no threat to humans). I get a couple of predictably stupid responses (which I ignore), and then get some help, and go tend to the goat. When I check back, I have a nasty-gram from some idiot moderator that demands I start signing my posts (all 5 of them in the last year) with my real name because, as she says, some posters feel more comfortable if they know who they’re talking to. I replied that I would not be signing my real name, that Doc would have to suffice, and that I thought it was a stupid rule. I then posted to my thread that my name was Doc and if that didn’t satisfy anyone, too bad.
I’m now in “time out” and I will probably be banned. She called me “hostile”.
Where’s the reasoning behind signing your “real name” on an advice-type message board, instead of the pseudonym that most people know you by?
On this, Day of Reason, Doc is questioning the reasoning ability of quite a number of people. This of course, is just one example. Most of my rants belong in the category of “stupid, unreasonable people”. Got logic? Welcome! Are you a fucktard? GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
The goat’s still sickly, so maybe those of you who pray? Get with it.
I’ve never been on a message board where you were expected to provide your real name. The funny thing is my message board name, what I use for the vast majority of message board I’ve posted on, actually feels like a real name. It’s now, after almost 15 years of use, as much a part of me as my real name.
I can’t say that I’ve ever been expected to provide my real name. I had to move my site because I was being seriously stalked by some weird goat person. I’m not about to give up the security I have - if that freak had known my name, he probably would have come to my home.
Aren’t there other goat lists you can join that are moderated by people with brains?
I freely offer both my real name and my handle but I’ve never been offered any privacy. Got over that desire young. Won’t go into it.
I do believe that prayer effects change. It’s energy that’s being put out into the world and it’s aimed at something specific. I’ve just seen it apparently work so many times to willingly discredit it. I’ll send one up for the goat.
Yeah, I’m on a couple of more localized goat lists - but sometimes you get a faster response if you go to a message board. My mistake! All of the most popular dairy goat boards are populated by the same small core group of CAE fanatics, the ones who advise you to “check for worms” no matter what the problem is. Most of them haven’t had goats long but want to be experts.
I think, in another alternate reality, I wouldn’t worry about my privacy so much, but seeing that my entire life is sort of alternative, I do worry about crazies. Men mostly. I won’t give out a lot of personal information publicly, but I have given my name and address and phone number to a few people, met a few more at different functions and locations, but I need to feel safe enough to make the choice, and not have some loon contact me out of misguided belief that we could be pals or more. I’ve come a long way, posting my picture, and being a little less paranoid. Still not giving the goat freaks my name though!
Well I have only ever known you as Doc, so thats who you are to me! Some people are just so petty its beyond the joke! This person probably leads her local prayer group too and longs as everyone does it her way! Sorry, I just don’t have time for people like that.
As for prayer on a large scale towards healing someone (I like to call it collective thought. If enough people put their energies into something it does work. But you don’t have to be together to do it or do the same thing. You could pray, sing, project happy thoughts or even do a little jig. Who cares as long as you are sending good thoughts and YOU believe in what you are doing).
As for the goat, I hope it feels better soon. From my end, I am sending happy healing thoughts! I think I will call them Karisma’s Kiss. Because we can name things or ourselves whatever we damn well please! (I was going to say “who cares?” but obviously some people do. Oh well, have a great day and get well goat!
I’ll pray for you and your goat, in my too many pagan words way
And then I’ll pray long and hard that I may actually live long enough to see an entire Day of Reason in our government. A whole 24 hours of Logic, wahoo!! (Does this mean I can grow hemp today?? One day only??) Oh wait, maybe this just means today is the appointment we have with G-d to hear our prayers asking for Reason… I wonder which one is listening today, I hope it’s not Loki!
Okay, so all day (until I wrote this post) the goat’s been looking like death.
Now she’s nibbling her feed and looks about 1000X better.
Or it could be the drugs. I loaded her up with goatie-downers.
Well, they banned me. When I tried to log in to see what other advice they had, I see this:
” Sorry Doc, you are banned from using this forum!
Crazy Person! Doc of what? Haaaaaaaaaaa!”
Because I refused to use my “real name”.
Good grief. Some people really take their little internet domains seriously.
Of course, there is this reasoning with regard to prayer: Why bother if your Father already knows what you need?
Glad the goat’s doing better.
Hope the goat continues to improve. And reason prevails somewhere for at least a day sometime.
And aren’t you a doctor as in a person who has a PhD? Like a REAL doctor (as opposed to the medical type). Not that it is any of their business… You are better off without all the forums you have been banned from. Probably better for your sanity in the long run.
Unfortunately goats are the first thing people think of when they move to a half acre or so and think they’ve mastered chickens. Cows are too big, sheep are too much work, but goats? Yes! Large dogs that give milk! Combine that with the “ownership” mentality that so many mods have on the millions of boards out there now, and it’s no wonder that you can’t get an intelligent answer to your goat questions. Sometimes they have to resort to name calling just for something new to talk about.
Have a goat that is bloated, dripping foam from the mouth, staggering and then down, at the same time that the gate is open and the rhodies are trashed? The board speaks! Quick! Check her gums, worm her and hang a heat lamp in her stall because heaven knows, 45* is uncomfortably cold for her. Wormer didn’t help? Better give her a copper bolus and maybe some baking soda for her upset tummy. AAARGH!
Don’t you sometimes wish that people would have to pass ruminant physiology 101 before they start doing experimental diagnosis and treatment on farm livestock and then sharing their very limited expertise on the internet?
Ummmm…..oops, sorry, it’s YOUR page to rant. But you’re so good at it, it must be contagious right through the screen…. and you hit one of my own sore points…..
Hope the old gal continues to improve, Doc.
SV
Phew! You really did push my buttons! All that ranting when what I MEANT to say was “Do they think that they could have helped your goat better had they known your real name?” Ha! Perhaps if you had presented easy symptoms and exhibited humble gratitude for the patent answers you could have remained simply “Doc.”
Sheesh.
SV
OMG, you understand.
The goat’s doing better, ends up she has a couple broken ribs. She’s eating, drinking, pooping, peeing, standing. She’s not in danger of dying of bloat, worms, or CAE anytime soon.
The dipshit who banned me stalked my blog 33 times in just a few hours before I remembered I can ban her stupid ass.
My pet peeve is the CAE thing. It’s a marketing ploy for breeders who can’t make money by simply breeding better animals, they have to go with the “strict prevention” bullshit. But second are the shrill voices who cry out that “replacer” kills goats. Funny, I had a 25 lb bag of lamb replacer I bought “just in case” during lambing, fed it to my orphaned kids until it was gone, and it didn’t kill them. Hell, they doubled in size in two weeks. I should have kept ‘em on it.
Now I’m guilty of stalking your blog, I suppose, because I had a quick read at lunch and now I’m back, BUT it occurred to me while I was letting the mind roam while I worked in the greenhouse this afternoon…… what kind of person comes back to your blog 33 times in less than, say, 20 or more DAYS? Yikes.
So….. broken ribs? Who’s practicing blunt force trauma on the old dear?
It’s spring, the grass is green, and the girls practice throwing each other up against the walls of the barn daily… could have been that, or she just fell off something. Dumb goatlings.
Doc, I am glad she is better. How does one treat broken ribs in a goat? My doctor told me I had a broken rib once, and said, “We don’t wrap ribs anymore since it causes more problems with pneumonia than the pain causes problems for the patient, so…” I interupted with, “So, don’t do it if it hurts. Do it if it don’t hurt?” and he replied, “Yes. That will be $50.”
Annette
I’m giving her banamine (pain killer) and antibiotics once a day by injection, and keeping her away from the other goats. She won’t lay down, so she needs a wall or something to lean against so she can sleep standing up. Other than that, I’m leaving her alone, which is fine with her. Probably about the time she can no longer stand not laying down, she’ll feel good enough to stand the weight on her ribcage. She’s moving slow, but looks better every day, microscopically better, but still better. We are theorizing that she fell off the bridge that spans a 10′ deep ravine and creek that separates the goat pasture from the woods. Sometimes the young goats play “king of the bridge” up there.
I have a special account that has a real name. It’s not my real name. But it looks and feels “real” just for these situations. Haven’t had to use it since the 1990’s because I haven’t run into anyone idiotic enough to push the issue.
But I have it.
I have one too. I use it for illicit purposes, like logging into places I’ve been previously banned from. It has a sweet profile and background and everything. I actually googled a real person and based it on her. I’m thinking of making her my sock puppet.