Beliefs and all that jazz.

I'm damned, apparently. I'm going to go to hell and burn, baby, burn with all the other people who don't believe the same as my family.



Oh, yes, I was told this in fact, by my parents. They said it in the most lovingly way they could with the reassuring touch to my hand that I will find my way eventually.



There's something about religion that gets to me. This exclusion of other beliefs... this hurtful way of telling someone who's not a bad person that they're going to hell that just gets to me. And the condescending way of telling me that I'm going to hell just because my beliefs differ from there's. Is that what Jesus taught? Is that what his message of loving one another *was*? Because I'm not buying it.



I know I'm not going to hell. I know this because, frankly, I don't really believe in hell.



This will come as a shock to a lot of you, but did you know that the past two years I was actually considering being a pastor? I still think of it from time to time because I do like religion. I like the community when you get into a nice one. I like the love and the feeling of belonging that it gives you. The structure, the niceness... All of that I enjoy. The thing I miss most about being a part of a church was the lovingness that was brought to me by everyone I came in contact with. Sometimes I contemplate going back to church, but then I recall the reasons I left.



I left the church because of the attitude that the people there had towards anyone a part of the LGBT community. I'm bisexual and this is a big thing to me. It's not something I can turn off or on. It's who I am. I can't change that part of me ; Lord knows, I've tried. And Sunday after every Sunday the pastor would shove his beliefs down our throats about how every homosexual is going to hell and how God hates the gays and how the LGBT community is disgusting and unnatural. After a while, this starts to get to a person. How can a God be loving in one sermon and so disgustingly hateful in the next?



I left the church because politics was also brought up every Sunday without fail. I'm a liberatarian with very liberal leanings. If I had to choose between the two big parties, I'd choose Democrat before I'd even think about going Republican. There would be no choice for me, in all honesty. Now, as you can just guess, the pastor I had wasn't friendly towards democrats. In fact, he hated them with a passion I'd only seen in Rush Limbaugh. Every Sunday after the election was a Sunday to bash Obama and discuss how he was ruining our country. I'm a person who believes in divorcing politics from church wholeheartedly. If I wanted a running commentary on how our nation was doing that Sunday, I'd've stayed home and watched Fox or CNN.



I miss the church more than most people can even fathom. I grew up in the church. Some of my closest friends were people I'd only see in the church. Some of them won't even talk to me now that I've supposedly gone to the "dark side". I miss the loving arms that would wrap around me when I came in on Sundays. I miss the good parts of religion, so much.



I think I might try to find a church that suits me. Not even because I so much as believe in the Christian God, really, but because I miss the sense of community. I miss the sense of oneness. Of being a part of something that's bigger than myself.



There's a pretty Episcopalian (haha, spelling error?) church down the street from me I might check out. Or the Catholic one up the street from me.



<3.

Ruthi.

Why I Am Weird.

I know most of you looking at the title of this blog are thinking, "Oh, there's only one reason?" And I know, there has to be more than one reason, but this blog is going to focus on mainly one of my many quirks and oddities. Maybe it will resonate (is that even the right word for it?) with one of you kiddos.

So, today I spent all day (almost quite literally, all day) reading blogs. That in and of itself will make a person go, "What the fuck? Why?" And when I say that I knew only two of the bloggers I spent today reading that just makes me seem all the more peculiar. The rest of the blogs were blogs written by random bloggers. Some are well-known (Belle de Jour has a fucking TV show based off of her blogs about being a London city call-girl and Diablo Cody... if you don't know who she is, go watch Juno and read Candy Girl) but most were just random people I found by clicking the "next blog" link on blogger.com (also known as blogspot.com). There is something in me that just gets excited when I read someones blog. It's their personal thoughts just put out there for me to giggle at, mock, relate to and agree / disagree with! It's pure candy for someone who loves to read memoirs like myself. I used to get excited when someone would ask me to take care of their journal and didn't care if I read it when I was little because that's so damned personal! I used to get excited whenever I recieved a letter in the mail because I could not only see the persons handwriting (yet another reason I'm weird for perhaps another blog some day) but I could feel what they were writing! And it was directed to me; oh the joy! Now, gone are the days of snail mail (though, I will tell you I still get so jazzed when someone randomly writes me a letter- if you want to make my day some time, ask me for my address and send me one :]) and here are the days of blogs and e-mails and IM's. IM's get me excited because I don't like to intiate conversations via them, but if someone else does, I'll almost squeal with joy. It's like reading a letter, only instantly. (Oh, Ruthi, you're so clever with words... that was the worst sentence, ever haha).

Blogs are my favorite thing, though, because it's like reading someones diary.

It's spectacular. It's fantastic. It's amazing.

And then I created a new blog...

I have so many blogs that I'm not quite sure what the purpose of creating this new one was. I have about five blogs. There's my FaceBook one, there's my MySpace one, there's my other blogger.com blog that I forget it's name and then there's my two Xanga ones. I never keep up to date with them. I always say I'm going to keep up with this one this time, but I never do. So, I'm going to say the opposite and admit failure already at the get go.

I will most likely not keep up with this blog. It shall become like every other one of my blogs that become unused. However, for right now... It is being used. It is being used because I was bored one Sunday and decided to create a blog. It won't be riveting like some blogs (a la Belle de Jour or Diablo Cody's) and it won't be that great to read.

It shall contain my thoughts, short stories (sometimes), poetry and my rantings about the world around me. In short, it is just a diary of sorts. A boring one, however...

<3
me