Sadly, I took my coupon to the local Smiths Food and Drug and they don't appear to have the water filters! Oh well, the one I have now has been expired for about 3 months now anyways. The water still tastes okay. I'll take that filter coupon to another store.
Tonight I used a lot of coupons and the original grocery bill would have been 104.00-ish. With coupons, I saved like 18 bucks. I purchased mostly frozen items because I am home a lot but at weird times.
I got a check in the mail today for 10 bucks, and I am not sure if it is real. I take online surveys sometimes so it could be real, but I am skeptical. They are a company called . They are a good company, but I just don't remember making 10 bucks. What's up with that?
Surveys have been a useful way to supplement my irregular income, since I'm not gainfully employed yet. Looking at my little Excel Spreadsheet, I have made about $133, with another $90 on the way, since August 2008? That's not much, but in this economy, it helps. Hope that check is real!
The other night I had the Bible study with the women at the Episcopal church in Edgewood. I got really useful feedback about it. I just realized that I was thinking of the one on the first Tuesday in April when we talked about the Syrophoenician woman. What was the one after that? I believe we looked at... Mary and Martha! That's right. I forgot. I got good feedback about how that one went too. One of the women told me afterwards that I said "sorry" quite a few times that night. I think she felt badly after telling me that, but I figure even though I felt a little embarrassed, it was still helpful. I was, as Mary-Louise Parker says in "Weeds," in the middle of "Shark Week" - the hormones were really flying around for me that night and I had hardly slept that week.
Next time we are going to have fun learning more about the "Sitz im Leben" of women in the Early Church by learning more about the household culture in the Roman Empire, and at their gender roles which were somewhat rigidly-defined. Of note, I am going to have to tread carefully because I do not want to give the impression that the Christian church did better at liberating women from their gender roles than the Romans or the Jews did. In fact, the Romans and the Jews (generally speaking) actually were undergoing their own liberation movements. The Romans were growing in acceptance of women in public places and the Jews were experiencing such a revolt against the Romans that was an economically-motivated movement. They both were highly patriarchal societies but had pockets of liberation around their homes and cities. Similarly, Christianity experienced its own challenges. Some Christian homes accepted women as leaders in their churches and other homes experienced a tension that struggled to suppress women's leadership. Because of this suppression, very little direct evidence exists to paint a very specific and clear picture of women's roles in the early church. I think that what we will do at our next Bible study is to look at some of those movements happening independently of Christianity, at the rigid gender-defined roles women were trying to overcome, and then to consider the tensions in society as a place to begin looking at portions of the Bible where women are being told to be "silent" or to "cover their heads" when prophesying, and to considering the enormous and rather revolutionary ways that Paul also included women in his address to churches. Paul tended to refer to these women by name, which was usually taboo for Greek and Roman traditionalists because it called attention to the woman's femininity and therefore her sexuality. By doing this, I don't think he was trying to call attention to her sexuality, but by including her as an equal in the church.
I would bet some people don't believe my opinion on this subject. Paul has often been labeled as "chauvinist" or even "self-centered" or "patriarchal." I am sure he was to some extent. But taking into consideration his fuller story - one that includes a drastic change from being a Pharisee who was championing the anti-Jesus movement, "holding the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen..." (Acts), to one who eats and drinks with those "impure/unclean" Gentiles and believed in fully spreading the Gospel to all who will hear (1 Cor 9), claiming that all he does is "for the sake of the Gospel," I think calling him names that smack of post-Enlightenment-Era self-consciousness is a low blow. Heck, I'm probably some sort of chauvinist too. And some of the things he says were in light of his expectation that Jesus would be back any day now, those passages which tell women and men to practice celibacy in preparation, unless they will have trouble staying so until the end times. (1 Cor 7) Other passages credited to him might not have been written by him (like Ephesians), so we have to take with a grain of salt those portions in which it says women must "submit" to their husbands just like we must do towards Christ. This is probably going to be 2 Bible studies. I think next time we should educate ourselves about what these "Household Codes" (in 1 Peter, Colossians and Ephesians) must have meant to women and men in the Early Church. Whoa - I keep writing a lot!
Here's a great photo my S.O. took from his front yard earlier this year. He lives in the East Mountains. I haven't seen a rainbow that is as squished down like that.
And down there is a photo of "Merle" and Me on April 17th! We got like, 6 inches of snow, and it even snowed in town. Here is one more pic of me in the snow with Buddy, one of the best dogs ever!
So the snow was amazing and it lasted all day and the next morning, it began to melt right away. Now everything is starting to green up because the desert got a jump-start.
I think I am going to take a break and clean the kitchen up a little bit. There are dirty dishes in the sink. This will not make Periwinkle happy because she just sat down next to me and laid her head on top of that questionable check. Maybe I will write a little more later. I have more to say. I am also now on Twitter.com, under the ID "popsicle33."
No comments:
Post a Comment