Neanderpundit

Used to be right next door to the Home Despot, but they built a giant huge super mega maynards down the street. It has two levels, a pair of moving sidewalk non escalator escalators, a piano at the top of said escalators with occasional live music, and more groceries than piggly wiggly. I don’t understand why a lumberyard sells groceries, but the woman who sometimes plays the piano wears a skirt and the piano of course does not have a modesty panel. You cannot help but look up her skirt as you ascend the escalator, and I know she has been informed of this fact, so I can only imagine it is her intention. She plays a mean ‘Claire De Lune” though, so I’m not finking her out. Anyway, the store is farging huge.

The old maynards is going to be a Planet Fitness come jan 1. I thought, good lord, no, another expensive fitness place? Turns out it’s only $10 a month. Shit, I thought, that’s actually not that bad, I spend that on asswipe. Except you can’t pay except with a bank routing number (No cash whatsoever) so you have given them your number and it will take an act of congress to get them to stop billing you.

In actuality, I would mostly use the treadmill- walking is about all I can handle these days, though I might have been convinceable to use some weights.

THen I thought, shit, I can just walk around inside the giant new Menards. So I been doing that, just a couple laps around the store and I have a couple miles in, heated, indoors, clean and nice, and no membership. Of course I wouldn’t shop there of I could avoid it, they treat their people like shit. But I’ll use their heat as long as they let me.

It occurs to me, is the faith practiced by Anti Theists. Your garden variety Christian can’t muster the faith in the Creator that an anti-theist can, because they have so much invested in G-d not being there.

It is an ongoing struggle for me. All I can do is pray for those who are so determined to destroy G-d, because I know they cannot. They can destroy belief, but belief is a tent without poles, it requires you to hold it up. They can destroy the physical institutions that the faithful call home, and they are certainly doing that. They will defend- are anxious to defend- anything that opposes any organized religion, no matter how ludicrous it is, no matter how it would ordinarily set off their reason alarms, because they have too much invested in damaging the thing they have the most faith in.

I don’t know why this is. I know in some circumstances it’s because the individual in question has had some particularly nasty experiences- been molested, been orphaned, been abused in some other way- and aren’t capable of making the connection with G-ds mercy and the things that humans do to one another- and of course, no connection is possible. Humans have free will, and that free will often leads them to do things that are harmful to one another. G-d cannot control that because it would put the lie to the whole free will thing.

The very best people are the people who come from that abuse and make the connection. When you have risen above that and decide that instead of becoming an instrument of G-ds destruction you become an instrument of His mercy, the power it gives you is amazing. I see, in my minds eye, the people who have done this, friends, mentors, family members, and I am staggered by the effect they have on the world. When, instead, I look at the people who have let their experiences poison them against G-d, they are small and usually pathetic. All you can do is pray. And hope that their actions in the face of their really overwhelming faith do not get called into account when they meet the Creator.

Andy Granatelli just died. And Michael Schumacher is in critical condition and worsening following a skiing accident.

All of those laps and he busts his head open on a rock.

H/T my dear old friend and confidant Mlle Jenny.