Intro to wonderings, and first idle thought.

I'm just a normal girl living in southern Alabama. I wouldn't call myself or my life average, but then again, the word average hardly applies to anyone when you think about it. I began this blog today (I think it's April 7th by now) as a way to not only express myself in writing, but also to vent some of my random thoughts so that maybe they will stop plaguing my brain.

As a bit of a background, I am in my early twenties and live with my boyfriend and my brother. We share the house with two labradors and a black tabby cat. My brother's significant other is off serving the country at the moment, but still comes home and visits with us as regularly as is possible. As many living beings as there are in this house, it somehow never feels crowded and generally just feels like home. My boyfriend and I have been here for two months now and it just seems like comfortable living. A simpler life, I'm slowly observing, can be just as enjoyable as a very intricate one. It's also, I might add, a great deal cheaper.

Today (or was it yesterday now? Eh it doesn't matter. April 6th, for reference) the household all ventured out to the park to celebrate and support the local Pride/Equality for Alabama observation day. It was somewhat subdued but it was a beautiful day. There was much sitting in the grass, beer drinking, and generally just enjoying the company. We tend to gravitate more towards the bohemian, open-minded, free-spirited folks. And as one might imagine in southern Alabama, that group is somewhat limited. Yet limited thought it is, it still is refreshing.

In short summation, it was a great day. One of those days where you don't worry about whatever troubles you have going on in your life. A day when life exists in a very small sphere of space with a very select group of people, and while you could think of things that would make it better, they're not so important that you need bother yourself over. It was, in fact, that very feeling that inspired me to write this blog. Thought it was the events that occurred after I decided to write that is the inspiration for my first blog.

You ever sit around on Youtube? Wandering around the site online and just randomly finding funny or interesting or strange and bizarre things. My boyfriend and I were doing just that when somehow we managed to run across quite a few posts dealing with the Westboro Baptist Church. Now, I personally can't help but see the irony in running across this group when I had recently come home from an equality gathering. For those who don't know, the Westboro church is based out of Topeka, Kansas, and takes the practice of its beliefs to a level that even the religious of my acquaintance would dare take it. And as someone who grew up in the deep south, I've seen alot.

This group of people practice a religion of hatred. It is their most fervent belief that God is very vengeful, and very hateful, and practices his hate on a broad scale. To these practitioners, God's hate is expressed on homosexuals, Jews, Catholics, and a slew of others. They openly damn America as an entire country, believing that natural disasters, war, and terrorist attacks, are all directly connected to God's wrath at America. His anger, they believe, is directly on the United States because the country enables a homosexual way of life. They take their words of hatred and intolerance on the roads across the country. They begin the brainwashing of their children at birth and live a very secluded life. It is no wonder that they live that way, as a large portion of the people they would come in contact with would likely threaten them harm.

I suppose my confusion comes in when I can spend an entire day among my equals, enjoying their conversation, intelligence, talents, and humors, and then come home to hear raving, yelling, about these people who I was just enjoying the company of, and how we are all going to hell, because for some inexplicable reason, God hates us. Setting aside of course the highly controversial subject of whether or not God exists, and if so how, and why, and under what doctrine (yeah, not touching that with a ten foot pole), one would have to wonder and what point in time would God decide, after allowing us free will, to then HATE us for the choices that we make with it.

One of the leading member of this organization stated that this life on earth is a vapor, and that eternity lies beyond it. In essence that our vapor of a life here will determine how we will live out an infinite time. I can't help thinking, as I watched her say this, flanked by her two daughters (both wearing "Godhatesfags.com" t-shirts), that if my life is a short vapor in which I live, before forever, and I have been given this gift to choose for myself, to think for myself, to use this mind and this heart and this soul that God or Allah or Shiva or The Great Pumpkin gave me, before my soul is surrendered to the great beyond, is it so outlandish to think that I will use them? Is it wrong that it upsets me when these people talk about how this life doesn't matter, when I have always felt, in my heart, that this life is a gift? If God hypothetically exists, and has given me this life, and these abilities, would it not then in turn upset God if I didn't use them?

It does not take thought or heart to memorize and manipulate written word into what you want to see. In fact, most of us do it every day. When I look at these people, with their message, I just... I can't help but see speakers hooked up to one big radio. Fred Phelps (the leader of this "church") is one huge radio, and everyone in his church is a very large, very empty speaker, repeating only what the radio tells it to. I could be wrong, but you know, that's just what I see. I see the very same message from different mouths, in such an exact way that I can't see where this message has been taken to heart and applied to a daily life. It seems that the message rules their lives to the point where their lives are not their own any more. And while that is something I can respect, what I can't respect is publicly slandering people for their decision to use the gifts and talents they were given, and to live as their heart and mind beckon them to.

I suppose... my point is: Believe what you want to believe. But you keep that in your home and in your church and out of my face when what you believe in is stirring up anger and hatred in the fellow man around you.