Saying Grace

The big holidays are fast approaching, especially here in the U.S. Thanksgiving is less than a week away, then Christmas. For many, it's a time for family and friends to get together and eat way too much delicious food.

As a Pastafarian, I celebrate Holiday which is the whole holiday season and requires nothing formal. But my husband and I also do the traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with his family.  

Since everyone knows I'm a happy godless heathen, no one ever asks me to say a prayer before our meal. But I also get together with my fellow heathens for dinner near these two holidays, and so I thought it might be nice to have something to say.

I looked up some definitions and found that prayer and invocations are both fairly religious terms, namely to beg to a god. 

But this morning I thought, oh, what about grace? What does grace actually mean? There are many definitions but here is one I particularly like:

Grace: favor or goodwill. Synonyms: kindness, kindliness, love, benignity (what an awkward word that is!)

On that same page I found the following Word Story:

¡Gracias! Grazie! When a Spanish or Italian speaker says thanks, they are invoking one of the meanings behind the word grace. That’s because grace, gracias, and grazie all descend from the same Latin word, gratia. For the ancient Romans, gratia had three distinct meanings: (1) a pleasing quality, (2) favor or goodwill, and (3) gratitude or thanks. We find all three of these meanings in modern-day English. The first when we describe someone as having (or not having) grace: “Dancing, she had all the grace of an elephant on skates.” The second when we talk about giving or getting grace: “by the grace of God.” And the third when we say grace (i.e., “thanks”) at a meal. So if you have something to be grateful for, you can say thank-you, gratia, gracias, or grazie.

While I can skip the god bit, I like the idea of being thankful. None of us is an island, so it's good to reflect on our interconnectedness and interdependence with our fellow humans, and all other life.

Around this time of year, I usually think of all the things I'm grateful for, and to whom I owe thanks.

It's good (and human) to have traditions with those you care about, it's good to be mindful of events and markers in your lives, to honor those who deserve it when appropriate.

Here are some things you can say if you are asked to say grace at a meal:

Heeere's Johnny!

Oh, don't hate me for that. Most of you are probably too young to even catch the reference. I had to do it, I was contractually obligated.

So you may have noticed the post titled How Many gods Are In the Bible?. Well, may I introduce to you, Johnny! He's commented on HDC before, and befriended me on Facebook, and I realized I really like how he thinks and his fresh perspective. As you may know, I am always looking for people to contribute to HDC, so that you get the best Dead Cats possible. When I asked Johnny if he'd be interested in joining in, he said yes! Woot!

So give him a warm welcome. Hopefully we'll have his deconversion story in the Testimonial section soon, but you can read a bit about him on the About page. As you can see, he's now our official resident Superhero. Woot Woot!

Thanks for joining us Johnny. :D

The Nicest Compliment Ever

So, I got an email from a nice man yesterday. He read my de-conversion story and told me something I have never been told before, at least not this way. He told me I need to reconsider and have a child! Now, I'm 40, so I really don't see that happening for a myriad of reasons, but the sentiment was so honest and forthright that I was taken aback.

This nice man found HDC and my story and just thought that atheists like me and my husband should have more children. You know, he's right, in a way. I mean, if you can do it, and you're a freethinking atheist, then yes, you should consider having a kid or two. Like he said, it would bring a bit more sanity into the world.

Unfortunately people who are more educated, intelligent and rational might think it's a bad idea. But the movie Idiocracy does make a good point. Mostly people who are sheep, who follow the crowd, who think having unprotected sex is ok because, if they get pregnant it was "meant to be"! (my idiot neighbors told me this... they can't afford their meager bills and the wife told me she doesn't even like her husband, but he is "hers" so they might as well have a kid.. OMFG don't even get me started on those two idiots... they believe drinking Mountain Dew is a good method of birth control! Seriously, WTF!)

I don't have any specific numbers, but it seems that educated, intelligent people are having less children in Europe and America. While less educated, (more religious?),  lower income people (I don't know a politically correct term that would be better to use. So try not to be offended, ok?) are having more kids. I know that Europe has been dwindling in population, especially in Germany, Italy and other countries. And muslim people are filling up the ghost towns, then immediately going on the Dole over there. That's what I've heard, but I don't have hard data. (that's from NPR, from a year ago, so maybe things are different now. But I don't listen to NPR anymore). Pat Condell is always talking about such things too.

I never saw the movie, Idiocracy. It looked really dumb, but the concept is what I'm talking about. It's more about I.Q. though, and I'm also talking about education and belief systems. If more atheists raise their children to be freethinkers and critical thinkers, imagine what the next generation would be like instead of what I see when we go out these days?

Since when did it become "cool" to be ignorant? That makes me stark raving crazy mad. I know of only 2 teenagers who seem to value intelligence and they are in my family. Maybe I sound old and crotchety, I don't know. It just seems that teenagers are having babies, and that everyone is purposefully embracing ignorance and mindlessness.

In my day... (just kidding... but seriously, in my day, it wasn't like this!)

Ok, it's getting a bit late, the weekend has been really long, and I'm tired. But I wanted to thank the man for thinking I'd make a good parent. I know I'd raise my kids to be freethinking individuals, even though it's not very cool.

Maybe you out there can chime in. Are you raising your children to be critical thinkers? How is that going? I imagine with the societal influences and poor education system it must be tough. Then again, am I just out of touch since I'm not a parent? Or did you do what my husband and I did? Did you decide for whatever reason that it would be best not to have kids? As always, I look forward to your thoughts!

A Grateful Atheist

I learned about a study through Scientific American yesterday. Psychologists, writing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that people keeping a weekly gratitude journal exercised an hour and a half longer per week than those who kept a complaining journal.

Basically, once a week for 10 weeks, people in the study would write down up to 5 things they were grateful for. It could be as simple as "waking up this morning". By the end of the study, they were working out an hour and a half more per week than a group that wrote about life's hassles, like "stupid people driving".

Ironically, I've had trouble being motivated to exercise and keep a food journal since Thanksgiving, so I thought I'd give this a shot. Last night I wrote down 5 things I'm grateful for. It was pretty easy.

But that got me thinking. It smacks of "counting your blessings", doesn't it? I just wondered, if I'm not grateful to someone, how does that work?

Gratitude: noun - the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful.
Origin: 1400–50; late ME < ML grātitūdin- (s. of grātitūdō) thankfulness, equiv. to grāt(us) pleasing + -i- -i- + -tūdin- -tude

Ok, so I guess I can be grateful, and it doesn't have to be to anyone in particular. I guess I was thinking it was more like the christian idea of counting your blessings and thanking god. Blech!

Being free of god, I wasn't sure about how gratitude worked. I guess it's just an acknowledgment of what is good in your life.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the study with you. Aren't you lucky, you get my thoughts that go with it as an added bonus. :P

Have a great day! I'm grateful for you! :)

Saying Thanks

In my electronic travels today, I stumbled upon a blog post from this guy Mike. He talks about how he used to thank god for everything good that happened to him, such as praying at meals, for his good grades and all that kind of thing. He's an atheist now, though.

Here is an excerpt:

I forgot to thank so many people for the so many good things I had in life and yet I managed to thank a god that I don’t see and is high unlikely to exist. ....