Tag Archives: Sunday mornings

dogs, Duggars, musings, religion

Was it really God, or just dumb luck?

Happy Sunday morning, y’all. I’m not sure what we’re going to do today. I was giving some thought to going on post and seeing the rug guy, who lives in Wiesbaden, but usually sells his rugs in Stuttgart. We bought a rug three weeks ago, thinking we would replace one of the ones in the living room that Arran repeatedly peed on. But the guy didn’t have the pattern of rug we needed, and the one we ended up buying was a size too small. The rug guy is in Wiesbaden this weekend, so this would be the time to go.

It’s raining again today, though, and I’m kind of not wanting to venture out. I know I should, because I really do need to get out more. I just don’t feel like getting dressed. I’d rather hibernate with my latest book. Some travel blogger I am these days… I think COVID-19 lockdowns might have ruined my sense of adventure.

Given that it’s Sunday, I thought it might be a good time to write about today’s topic. I often see people praising God for things, claiming that God has somehow blessed or gifted them. The Duggar family is famous for claiming that God had blessed them with many children, as if they were flowers. Wonder what kind of flower Josh Duggar is…

I’ve heard Michelle Duggar say things like “Saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers.” And Jim Bob says things like “Every child is a gift from God. We will keep receiving as many gifts as God wants to send us.”

And while I’m not an atheist, I do sometimes wonder, whenever I read or hear these things. Is it really God sending you gifts, blessing you, saving you, or smiling on you? Or are you just lucky, hardworking, very fertile, or shameless in your willingness to ask for a discount or a freebie?

Don’t get me wrong. I like to think that God had something to do with some of the good things I have in my life. And maybe there have been times when I console myself when things go wrong, telling myself that it was God’s will. I try to tell myself that whatever bad thing happened is just setting me up for something better in the future. But is it, though? Or what if God is actually preparing you for something worse? We all have a “time” to go, right? We all encounter a time when, even if we are true believers, God won’t save or protect us.

Life is kind of absurd. People often do whatever works for them. I look at how and where I met my husband. I never, in a million years, would have guessed we would have found each other in the way we did. It’s hard not to think there wasn’t some kind of divine hand that brought us together, or at least fate. Not only did we meet in a completely unexpected way, but we are also very compatible. It’s crazy that we get along as well as we do. We’re like puzzle pieces.

If you know me offline, you might understand why I make that statement. I have kind of an idiosyncratic personality. Some people like me. A lot of people can’t stand me… or that’s how it seems, anyway. I tend to be outspoken, and some people seem to think I’m too full of myself. Other people think I’m a silly twit. Those people don’t actually know me very well, but most of them also never gave me a chance. Maybe it’s better that way. I find that I have some friends who are genuine, rather than a lot of fake people claiming to be genuine friends.

Recently, Bill and I had a conversation about how I’d like to travel more. Maybe I’d even take trips by myself, like I used to before we were married. Bill says he’d be okay with it, but I can tell he doesn’t like the idea. Truth be told, I’d rather travel with Bill. But he has to work, and takes work trips frequently. So I stay home and tend to the house and the dog(s). Bill’s therapist recently pointed out that his relationship with me was probably the most stable one of his life. It’s understandable that Bill doesn’t want to lose me. Of course, I don’t want to lose myself, either… and sometimes I wonder if I have, when I stay home and watch life pass. Maybe he’s afraid that God wouldn’t protect me as well as he does. 😉

This morning I saw someone post about the Boston Marathon Bombing. It happened almost exactly ten years ago– on April 15, 2013. We were living in North Carolina, preparing to move to Texas for our year there. The person who posted wrote that she had run the marathon and, in spite of having a bum foot and jet lag (she’d flown over from Germany), she kept running. She finished the marathon just five minutes before the bombing occurred. If she had been any slower, she might have been injured or killed.

She praised God for protecting her. I guess I can understand that thinking. After all, Bill was in the Pentagon on 9/11, and his office had just been moved the week prior. Had it not been relocated, he probably would have died that day, and I’d be an old spinster. Was it God that protected Bill that day? Or was he just very lucky? Was God protecting the marathon runner, or did she simply avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like millions of other people who didn’t die that day?

And what of the people who did die or get hurt? Was God NOT protecting them? Were they being punished? Was it just their time to die? Or was it simply the work of evil people with no respect for other people’s lives?

I truly don’t know the answers. I think it’s comforting to give it up to God, but common sense tells me that’s fallacious thinking at work. I inherited my mother’s pragmatic side. When I was a child, I had a really great imagination, mainly because I spent a lot of time alone. Whenever I came up with something really silly or fantastic, my mom would laugh. I don’t know why she was like that, since she is herself a very creative and artistic person. She makes beautiful music and creates incredible works of art with her needles– knitting, needlepoint, cross-stitch, and other such things. She is also a lifelong Christian, although not a particularly devout one. She always went to church, but it was mainly because she was the church’s organist most of the time.

My dad was notably stronger in his Christian beliefs, I think… however, I think my mom is a better person than he was. Or, at least she was less abusive to me. He seemed to be more of a believer than she was, anyway… although I always suspected he used church for a social outlet and business purposes, as well as a place to show off his singing voice. He was very proud of it, and church was one place he could indulge his pride. As we know, some “Christians” don’t always really behave in a Christ-like way. Some might say that I’m not one to talk about that; but then, I don’t claim to be a super devout Christian myself.

I’m grateful when people I know manage to escape things like bombings, natural disasters, crime scenes, or other situations. I don’t know that I would necessarily credit God, though… because why would God choose certain individuals to save, while others are forsaken? And why would a loving, protective God allow such horrors to take place in the first place? Where was God when Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were making and planting their pressure cooker bombs? Where is God when anyone decides to do evil things? Why is it that God is there when someone is “saved”, but not when someone falls down the dark rabbit hole that causes them to do such awful things?

I’m sure there are devout Christians out there who can confidently answer my questions. However, I’m not sure I would be satisfied what they’d tell me. I’ve probably already considered their answers. Usually, what they say is something along the lines of “It was God’s will” or “God needed another angel” or something like that. I don’t blame them. Those thoughts are comforting. I do it myself when I lose a dog and think of them going to the Rainbow Bridge, joyfully meeting all of my other long lost animal friends.

When we lost Arran last month, I was grateful to God that he had a relatively peaceful end… and was pretty active up until the last twelve hours of his life. But maybe he was just very lucky… as were Bill and I to have him in our lives in the first place… as is Noyzi to no longer live on the streets of Pristina, but instead getting to live a cushy life in Germany with Americans. The odds were surely against Noyzi having that life, right?

Hmmm… maybe God had something to do with it, after all. Who knows?

Well, I think I’ll stop dwelling on today’s deep thoughts and move on with the day. That may simply mean retiring to my bedroom and reading more of my latest book, hoping not to fall asleep. 😉

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musings

Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man…

Every once in awhile, when the weather is rainy and dark and Bill is at home, we like to have a leisurely breakfast while listening to music. This morning, it was a live album I bought by the late Allen Toussaint. Released in 2013, Songbook is just Allen on his piano, playing wonderful music. Although I’ve been exposed to Allen Toussaint’s music all of my life, I never bothered to listen to him just by himself. The closest I came was in 2007, when Bill gave me The River in Reverse, an album Toussaint made with Elvis Costello the year after Hurricane Katrina wiped out Toussaint’s home and recording studio in New Orleans.

I loved The River in Reverse. We were living in Germany the first time when Bill presented it to me. In those days, I had an elliptical machine that I used sometimes in a futile attempt to burn fat. We set it up in the mother-in-law suite in our house, along with a TV and an old school stereo with a cassette and CD player. I think it also had a USB portal, but in those days, I wasn’t USB savvy. Anyway, even though I loved The River in Reverse, I never explored Allen Toussaint further until recently.

I have Keb’ Mo’ to thank for re-introducing me to Allen Toussaint. I recently purchased a second copy of his wonderful live album, The Hot Pink Blues. I already had that album from iTunes, but thanks to upgrading to Catalina, my music library is a bit fucked right now. I have a Bose speaker that works well with Amazon Music, so I’ve found that it’s easier to just buy another copy from Amazon of the albums I really love. Allen Toussaint’s Songbook was a suggestive sell… and I’d probably been drinking (I’m really great at “drunken downloads”). So I downloaded Songbook and it was the musical backdrop for us this morning after I listened to Allen’s thirteen minute version of “Southern Nights”. By the time he’d finished, I was a bit weepy. I had to share it with Bill, who also got verklempt listening to Allen Toussaint describe his childhood in Louisiana. Bill and I both come from rural southern roots, so the story he told resonated with us.

No storytelling in this version, but you can hear Toussaint’s evocative piano playing. I compare it to Pat Conroy’s vivid writing style. Allen Toussaint doesn’t even have to sing. The piano playing tells the story. Bill is distantly related to the late Glen Campbell, too. Glen Campbell made “Southern Nights” a huge hit.

I was also made emotional by Toussaint’s lovely piano playing. Playing piano was effortless to him and, I could tell, making beautiful music was a passion and a joy for him. I was thinking about what a privilege it must be to have the power to make total strangers misty at the beauty of music you’ve made. I have had a few people cry when I’ve sung, but they’re mostly people who love me anyway. I never met Allen Toussaint when he was alive; I never made it to a single one of his shows. But listening to his music this morning felt very intimate. I could relate to where he’d been. He made me cry.

Allen Toussaint was fortunate enough to die at a “good age”… and he didn’t spend weeks sick and dying in a hospital bed. Instead, he played his last concert in Madrid, Spain, then died of a heart attack in his hotel room. He left behind a treasure trove of wonderful music that still makes people feel things and sometimes get a little weepy.

Bill and I love to sit around, drink wine, and listen to great music, especially when the weather sucks. We’ve had some great conversations this way. Fortunately, we have compatible tastes in music and he’s very open minded to hearing new things. He’s often told me I greatly expanded his musical repertoire, which was not an experience he had with his ex wife. She liked Top 40 and pop country, and ridiculed Bill for liking alternative and grunge music. She claimed he was just trying to be “hip”. Instead of being a unifying thing, music was something to fight over in their relationship.

Ex would use music to belittle Bill. She’d play songs as a means of showing what kind of man he should be. He can’t stand listening to “To Really Love a Woman” by Bryan Adams or “Strong Enough” by Sheryl Crow, because those were songs Ex ruined for him. Or she’d make up insulting lyrics to hit songs as a means of putting him down. It got to the point at which Bill would respond in kind. Like, when she’d sing “Never Gonna Get It” by EnVogue, he’d respond with “Really don’t want it.” Or he’d hum “Thick as a Brick” by Jethro Tull when she was around.

I don’t think music should be used as a weapon. I love it too much to use it to hurt other people.

As we were talking over Allen Toussaint’s music this morning, the subject of conflict came up. Bill doesn’t like conflict, which has led him to a lot of trouble. Some of the problems he’s had come about due to not wanting to fight have been very serious. For instance, on the day he married his ex wife, he knew the marriage would fail. He had voices in his head telling him he shouldn’t marry her. They even fought on their wedding day. But instead of disappointing his ex wife by calling off the wedding, they married and spent almost ten rocky years together. It’s taken years to mostly undo the mess, which has affected a lot of innocent people.

As we were talking about how sometimes fighting is the right thing to do, I was suddenly reminded of a classic hit from 1979. Written by Roger Bowling and Billy Ed Wheeler, “Coward of the County” was made famous by Kenny Rogers, who sang as if he was the uncle of a young man named Tommy whose father died in prison when he was ten years old. Tommy’s father told him not to get into trouble. He didn’t want his boy to die in prison. He made Tommy promise to “turn the other cheek” and avoid fights, even when he really wanted to knock the hell out of someone. Tommy faithfully honored his promise to his dad, and let others walk all over him. Everyone in the county called him “Yellow”.

Then one day, the “Gatlin boys” came calling. They assaulted and gang raped Tommy’s girlfriend, Becky. When Tommy found his love battered, bruised, and shattered by the three brothers’ brutality, he was torn between wanting to avenge Becky and stop people from calling him “Yellow”, and honor his promise to his father that he would stay out of trouble. Tommy makes up his mind, goes into town, and puts all three Gatlin brothers out of commission. It’s not clear if he used his fists or a firearm, nor do we know if the boys were killed or just knocked out cold. Then Tommy says that he’s always tried to walk away from trouble when he can. But sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.

A classic song… even though one of the songwriters supposedly had a feud with the legendary singing group, the Gatlin Brothers. The legend goes that songwriter Roger Bowling said, “Fuck you, Gatlin.” to Larry Gatlin when he congratulated Bowling for winning an award for one of Kenny Rogers’ other hits, “Lucille”. Interesting story.

I couldn’t resist playing it for Bill, who smirked and said, “It’s kind of a cheesy song.”

I disagree. It’s 40 years old and still resonates. As Bill pointed out, they made a movie out of it. There’s a lot of truth in the lyrics, too. Sometimes you have to get in a minor conflict now to avoid a major one later. It would have been better if Tommy could have been more assertive when he was younger. Maybe those Gatlin boys wouldn’t have had their way with Becky. Maybe Tommy wouldn’t have had to dispatch them in such a dramatic way. We wouldn’t have been left with such a classic song or story, either.

After listening to the song, Bill agreed it wasn’t so cheesy after all. Especially as we face down another week here in Germany.

We finished our coffee and Bill took Arran for a walk. Now he’s at AAFES looking for board games to play and a jigsaw puzzle for us to do today while he cooks a rib roast for dinner. I think it’s going to be one of those “easy like Sunday morning” days… even though “Easy” isn’t really a happy song, is it?

So glad I grew up in the 70s and 80s, even if it does mean I’m getting old.

It’s amazing how music can help you solve your problems. It relieves stress, lubricates conversation, makes you move, and even helps you cry when you need it. What a gift it is to have wonderful music to listen to on a rainy Sunday. I bought a bunch of stuff last night and this morning, so we’ll probably have some great conversations today.

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