{"id":1295,"date":"2008-11-15T20:19:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-15T20:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2008\/11\/death-god-and-the-right-to-marry-random-jots\/"},"modified":"2011-11-01T15:12:03","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T19:12:03","slug":"death-god-and-the-right-to-marry-random-jots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2008\/11\/death-god-and-the-right-to-marry-random-jots.html","title":{"rendered":"Death, God and the Right to Marry: Random Jots&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_niPwTW3rBbU\/SR95T9d7hiI\/AAAAAAAAB4U\/SotWgLvyL1c\/s1600-h\/ThinkingMonkey.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;float: right;cursor: pointer;width: 320px;height: 240px\" src=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_niPwTW3rBbU\/SR95T9d7hiI\/AAAAAAAAB4U\/SotWgLvyL1c\/s320\/ThinkingMonkey.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><br>A long day\u2026<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This morning I conducted the memorial service for a young man who died of a drug overdose. Right after I drove back up to Newton to sit with the widow of a wise and good man who died last night. Some years ago he became financially independent following the success of a computer start up he was involved with. He took that freedom to teach High School math.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>An emotional whipsaw\u2026<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I\u2019m now working on my sermon, another reflection on our encounter with that difficult and annoying word God, and what it can possibly mean. I\u2019ll leave the rest to be read by those who care tomorrow, beyond this:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>God is a hole in the language into which we throw all our hopes and fears.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I keep pitching my heart into that hole, wondering\u2026<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Beyond this I find myself thinking of California\u2019s Proposition 8. I had planned on attending our Providence demonstration scheduled to take place at the statehouse. However, as I\u2019ve long since learned, death trumps. So, off I went, to Newton\u2026 <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But this fierce opposition to civil marriage. It is such a sad thing that people would vote to take away basic human rights. On the other hand the justice of civil marriage for all of us, gay or straight, also feels to me to be pretty obviously the current of history and while this vote was painful for many, it is only a brief ebb before the great tide washes this form of discrimination away\u2026<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Of that I am pretty sure.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Perhaps the fact we can change and millennia of discrimination at the edge of vanishing is a mild proof for the existence of a god, and a loving one at that\u2026<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/33904114-6979991624481306581?l=monkeymindonline.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A long day\u2026 This morning I conducted the memorial service for a young man who died of a drug overdose. Right after I drove back up to Newton to sit with the widow of a wise and good man who died last night. Some years ago he became financially independent following the success of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Death, God and the Right to Marry: Random Jots...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A long day...This morning I conducted the memorial service for a young man who died of a drug overdose. 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