I guess God don't want me!

 For the last 25 or 30 years I have been in church every Sunday morning.  For many years I went to the Christ Congregational Church in Belmont until the politics of that church and the powers that controlled the church no longer meshed with my beliefs.  When I left there I went across town to the historic First Congregational Church on Evans.  The one in Belmont had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and was progressive while the one on Evans was built in 1868 with red sandstone from Beulah.  It is on the national register so it is very historic as is the organ that pumped out music every Sunday.  Ken Joyal plays it and is accompanied by Becky on the piano and Karen and Jerome playing violins.  I was very happy there and never missed a Sunday.  

But, alas, those days are behind me!  In March our church closed the doors to let the pandemic work it's way out.  They closed for just a month or so.  Let me see; March, April, May, June, July, August.....and holding.  Sadly, the church has not opened.  They broadcast a service once a week and hold "virtual communion" and "zoom" meetings, but that does not cut it for me!

I want to set in the pew.  I want to hold the hymnal in my hand.  I want to sing with other people doing the same thing, but it is not happening.  So here is the deal; I am searching for a church.....

And here is what I want.  I want a preacher in the pulpit who will give me a sermon about love, compassion, good deeds and a God that will welcome me, a sinner, into his heaven.  I want a congregation that will welcome me and validate my worth.  In return, I will be there every Sunday.  I will tithe, just like the Bible says to do. 

I want a smaller church.  I am not into mega churches.  I want a liberal church that is open and affirming of all races, and gay friendly.  I do not want to be judged and I will not judge you.  Maybe we can have coffee after, maybe not.  I want to support the homeless.  I guess I am looking for a church the Jesus would go to in his tattered robe and slippers.

If you attend a church you think I would like and you would accept me, contact me through this blog down at the bottom.  

I would love to hear from you! 

Sluts, birth control and poor Rush is losing sponsors.

Got to weigh in on this one!  Now, granted I read the headlines and then the first line of the next 3 paragraphs and that is my news for the day. Anything else is overkill.  My take on this is that Rush Limbaugh was doing what he does best and that is being an ass.  Not the first time and not going to be the last time.  I am sure you all know who Rush Limbaugh is and how he leads his moral majority into the fiery halls of congress.  The man is not known for doing anything quietly and there is only one side to any story and that is the Ultra conservative.  As you all know I am a bleeding heart Liberal so no way will Rush and I ever agree on anything and frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. 
From what little I read about this woman, I can not help but applaud her desire to use birth control.  Just seems like the responsible thing to do.  Red blooded women with feelings have been having sex from time immemorial.  I have even done that myself once or twice.  We all know that sex sometimes has repercussions that are mighty weighty if we don't practice safe sex.  There is that AIDS/HIV thing that would stop me in my tracks.
But say you dodge that bullet,  and whoops, I am pregnant.  What shall I do?  Abortion?  That is not an option for a lot of women for a lot of reasons.  Have a baby alone and take care of it while finishing school and building a career?  Is that fair to the kid or you?  Seems like preventing that pregnancy in the first place is the wisest as well as the most economically feasible choice.  Oh, yeah, forgoing sex all together is the perfect answer as I am sure Rush and his cronies always do but not all of us have that will power.  If you are a man having sex you are a very eligible batchelor.  If you are a woman doing the same thing, you are a slut. Hmmmmmmmmmmm!
Now lets weigh the taxpayer cost here.  Birth control.  Abortion.  Medical care for single mother and financial aid to raise a baby for 18 years.  Too much for my little mind to grasp.
Just my humble opinion.

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Well, that was rather anti climatic if I do say so myself!

I some how wonder just what that was all about, the star business, I mean.  But I sure found out who my supporters are!  To refresh here, I needed only a few feedbacks to reach my thousand feedbacks and my star would change colors.  Several of you emailed me that you would leave me feedback on eBay if you could, but they do have thier rules.  First you have to buy something from me and then you can leave feedback.  And you can only leave one feedback a week.  So I lingered at the 998, then along came Cindy Darrow, my niece,  to the rescue.  She left lots of feedbacks for things she had bought previously.  That put me up to 999.  She then began buying Lip Bong and leaving feedback.  But they still did not count!  Only one per week counts. ;(
Then some time in the night pheadwood left feedback for an Avon necklace and my purple star quietly turned red.  That was it!  No glowing letter from eBay extolling my virtues as a seller.  No fan fare.  No nothing.  But I do have to tell you about this niece of mine.  She is the daughter of my late oldest sister.  She lives in Oklahoma, so I do not see much of her, but I may make the effort to remedy that this summer when I head south to see my son in Dallas.
I am not sure just what the girl does down there, but I do know she sent me 250 of the big Crown Royal Bags.  She also sends me lots of electronics that actually work along with new stuff that comes from Lord only knows where.  I think she may have connections and may be one of  "Lou's Little Angels" who are people who work quietly behind the scenes for my little causes. 
Some of this is routed through her brother, my nephew.  And why does she do this?  These things are earmarked for the AIDS clients that I work with here in Pueblo.  If we want money for something like candle wax to make candles for the homeless, the office in the Springs does not fund that!  If we want to have an outing away from the office and just let out hair down, like at the bowling alley, the office in the Springs does not fund that.  A long walk on the Nature Center trail followed by a hamburger some where; the office in the Springs does not fund that.  While I do my own funding for most of the social events as far as the food aspect goes, there are a lot of little things this money furnishes.  I call this the "Lou fundraiser". 
Of course this is not tax deductible for you or me either.  If I were walking the streets asking for money it would probably be illegal.  What I have done is just let it be known to  a few of my friends that here in the Pueblo office we like to do special things for our clients to kind of raise their spirits and make them feel a little more human.  This money goes through no channels except me.  My first donation came from my friends Kay and Frank.  Then Cindy took up the banner and ran with it.  Last week I put almost $300 in the "Lou Fundraiser"  and I have more stuff on eBay now, along with a box right over there that needs to be photographed and listed.  More then one way to skin a cat in this old world.
As long as I have friends like Cindy and Kay and Frank, I will do just fine operating on the skirt of  the organization.  And as for my feedback number and the sad little red star, life goes on.  I am now setting at 1002 and I do not know when the next change will be, but I do know that I have friends out there rooting me on and that is all that really matters! 
And do you know what sponsored links are?  Those are places that pay me money when you go there and buy stuff.  And where do you suppose that money goes?

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Class? Me? No, I don't think so.

Some one told me one time that I had class.  Well, did not so much tell me as mentioned it to someone else and I over heard it being said.  So now yesterday I had  hours alone with myself in the car and I had occasion to think about class.  There seems to be more than one kind of class, as near as I can tell.
If  an older woman walks by, dressed in a sedate outfit, maybe a hat, rings on her fingers and smiling sweetly, one might say "That is one classy lady." 
If a younger woman with an hour glass figure, short skirt and lots of bling sashays by, one might say "That is one classy broad!"
If we are entertained by an act that gives us pleasure, we say "That was a real class act!"
When some one responds well under pressure, they are said to have "class".
Well, I would like to tell you what I perceive as "class".  That would be saying and doing the correct thing at all times when in a public setting.  And what brought this on?  Well, SWM (Single White Male) that I see on a more regular basis than any other SM (Single Male) wrangled an invitation to Thanksgiving Dinner at some one's house.  Now, granted had I been cooking I would have probably invited him and he probably would have eaten with me, but I did not, so neither did he.
So, he talks to himself a lot and I am privy to his conversations.  "I will take a bottle of white wine, since that goes with poultry.  I will wear my black slacks, a white shirt, my camel hair jacket, the gray, I think.  The black loafers.  No tie.  What will you be taking?"
"The car."
"What will you be wearing?"
"My green fatigues, if they are clean.  The white and green tennies.  An obnoxious tee shirt and the corduroy coat.  I will snack on a bag of Clementines and tortilla chips with Black Olive Hummus!  And Willie and Charley will serenade me all the way."  Love that country stuff.
The man is over 6 feet tall and so he definitely has the height advantage going there. And  his nose always seems to look longer when he looks down it at me!  He listens to Classical music in his garage for crying out loud!  He knows the origin of every painting on his walls.  One is to be donated to the museum in St. Louis when he goes for his final dirt nap.  (There is another one.  He prefers to think of it as his demise.)
So, to make a long story short, I am here to tell you that class is here to stay.  I am the working class, the blue collar class, the common every day country western lovin' hick or hillbilly class.  My bumper sticker reads, "If it feels good, do it!"  When I wake up on the wrong side of the sod I will be cremated and my ashes thrown to the wind.  That way I do not have to lay in a dress on a satin bed and have anyone look down on me.   But I do want to clarify something before I leave.  I have a lot of classy friends. They know which fork to use and when to not cuss and all kinds of things.  And most importantly , I know they love me just like I am and that makes the whole class thing a matter of perception on the part of the beholder.  SWM considers me a unique individual.
"Gonna' take me to St. Louis?"
"Oh, hell no!"  :)

What contitutes friendship?

Isn't this picture pretty?  It was taken at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  I was there with over 200 acquaintances.  Imagine not being able to say 200 of my friends.  I once told my mother that I had lots of friends.  My mother, a very wise woman,  told me "If you reach the end of your life and you can count your true friends on the fingers of one hand, consider yourself blessed."

Well, here I am with more road behind me than I see in front and those words echo in my mind.  Mother has been gone for too many years now and I find myself more often thinking like she talked.  So, I got to thinking about how many friends I have actually had and are they still around.  For the first eight years of school I had a very best friend.  Her name was Barbara and I spent one night a week at her house.  Never saw her after grade school.

High school is a blur.  Then I married and moved around a lot so friends were hard to come by.  After the divorce I moved back home to Hutch.  There I became best friends with a waitress named Vi.  She had a daughter the same age as my son.  That one stuck through thick and thin and still exists to this very day.  She is a better friend then I am.  She writes, I read.  She calls, I talk.  I moved to Colorado and she moved to Missouri.  We have both buried our husbands.  I got to go see that girl this spring!

The next lasting friend I made was Frank.  We were in business with him and I liked his honesty and all his family.  He is still in business and lives in this town and I have not seen him for several years, but I still count him as friend.  If I called he would be here in a flash and vice versa.

Then came Renate.  Renate listens when I talk and I listen to her.  She is bluntly honest with me when I am wrong.  She and I use each other as sounding boards. We both work with AIDS clients so we have that to commiserate over; that and attending funerals together.

Then along came Kay, who winters in Texas, but we keep in touch and have breakfast every Wednesday when she is here.  We have in depth conversations and do a lot of gossiping.

So you see there is four friends, each perched on a finger.  I only have room for one more!  You know, either my mother was wrong or I am blessed beyond measure because I have a lot of people that I consider very dear friends.  Back home is Evelyn and Kay, Karen, and my sisters.  Shirley in Kansas City.  Amy in Florida. My dear friend Jade.  And all my Internet friends and that is before I start naming the ones here in Pueblo.   I am not even going to go there because someone will get their feelings hurt.

I have friends who have become lovers and lovers who have become friends.  (I like the latter better.)  I am truly blessed in that I can walk into any place in this town and there is someone I know who is very happy to see me, so I am not alone long.  More often than not their name escapes me, but they don't seem to mind.  This impresses me.  Most people want their name remembered, but my friends do not care.  They love me for who I am, not if I remember their name.

I have few rules that my friends must adhere to and failure to do so gets you off my list of friends and you then become a "this is".  So watch out for that one.  If you are still with me here you are my friend, or my dear friend, or my very dear friend. 

The first rule of friendship is to always be honest.  I gave up lying because I could not keep my stories straight.  So honesty is paramount.  The truth is what it is and should never be altered.  I respect the truth.  Lie even once and we are done.  The omission of a relevant fact is also a lie or at least it is in my book.  You are my friend because I judged you by your words and actions from the first day I met you.  If you neglected to mention that you are a serial killer in your spare time, don't you think I would want to know that?

I am loyal to my friends and I expect loyalty in return.  If you have something bad to say to me, say it to me, not someone else.  We can work out our differences if we know what they are and we face them head on.  Love has to come naturally, but a friendship is worth working to save.

You must respect that I am a Bleeding Heart Liberal.  You do not have to like it when I work with the AIDS clients, or the battered women, or the illegal immigrants, or pile my car with recyclable crap, or stop and give that homeless woman the money in my pocket, or stand nose to nose with a homophobe in the middle of the library and we get thrown out.  You don't have to  like it but you do have to accept it and if my actions embarrass you are free to just walk away.  Just do not attempt stop me or try to correct me.  I am on a roll!  You are free to voice your opinions and I will respect them, but they are yours and part of your conservatism.  It is best we not discuss politics.  LOL

For the most part I try to adhere to the 10 Commandments and so do my friends.  It is nothing we think about, just sort of comes naturally.  So once more I have digressed from the point of this blog entry.  I came on here to decide who to put  on that last finger to fill out my friend list and discovered that I am going to need a lot more fingers!  I love every body and they love me.  It is called making the world go round.  I can not limit my friends, nor would my dear mother expect me to.  So I will just hang on to what I have when the road comes to an end, I will just look back and see who all is still there!

My token Republican wins re election by like 79%!

Hey, tell me I do not know how to pick friends!  Elections are now over and the token Republican that I call friend in Kansas has won his seat back by an overwhelming 79%.  When I was down there in the Spring my nephew was on the "Get rid of all them!  Everyone of them!" kick.  Twas then I told him, "No, kiddo, you got to check their record. See if you really want to do that.  It is a matter of the devil you know or the devil you do not know."  Apparently he listened.

My friend Joe Siewert and I can set and discuss and you all know my philosophy.  I am the Bleeding Heart Liberal who wants to save the world.  My friend Joe is the Conservative Republican who also wants to save the world.  I even have a picture of him on my phone and I have been know to flip it open and show people that I am not all bad.  I actually have more than one Republican friend, but Joe is far away and I only get to see him once or twice a year. 

So, I send out a big Congratulations to Joe Siewert back in Kansas.  I don't remember his district number, but it is around Hutchinson or Pretty Prairie somewhere.  The important thing is he gets to continue in his job, although he would not starve without that income because he is a farmer.  Joe and I will continue to fight the good fight and just this one little word of warning to the boy,  "Remember your roots and remember that Democrats and Bleeding Heart Liberals also have a stake in the nation.  Oh, and go get 'em Tiger!  I am behind you all the way, nipping at your heels!"