Pro-Life: Your life or mine?

I have been working hard to be open and striving to see both sides of issues in this blog. But some of you may be wondering if today I just had to take a day off...

Pro-Life movement, I just don't understand you.  Maybe you can enlighten me?

Now the name I love, Pro-Life, (wish my people had copyrighted it first!) I mean honestly who could disagree with that?  I have met very few anti-life people, to be honest most of them seem pretty intent on ending their own life. I think it should be agreed that the rest of us who choose to go on breathing in and out, feeding ourselves and doing the necessary tasks to keep on this planet, are all Pro-Life.  Life is good!

So can we agree to meet there?  Let's all bring our humanity to the table, and respect the lover of life in each other.

Now on the other hand no one is pro-life all the time. I am not pro-life of cancers or when it comes to the AIDS viruses- HIV, or other things I have determined to be "bad." I do not support the life of that virus or that cancer to continue which causes such destruction to human beings.

Clearly there is an assumption here, then when speaking of pro-life we are defining life in a certain way, mainly human life.  

Some of you define life as a cluster of cells.  

I do not.

I define life as living creatures including animals, causing me to be a vegetarian. 

Many of you do not.

I choose to not eat any meat, but do not expect everyone will want to make that same choice, or even that it will be my choice for the rest of my life.  If you are a meat eater maybe you will consider only eating meat that has been responsibly raised?

Maybe this video will help...

'Veggie Love': PETA's Banned Super Bowl Ad

To be honest, I couldn't watch the whole thing, just too hard.

And as I sit with this distinction between your pro-life and mine I wonder if both of us are acting out of a care and compassion for those who seem defenseless and in need of an advocate? I can certainly relate to that, it almost seems instinctual.

To be honest, I prefer to advocate on behalf of women in the complicated debate you define as pro-life, but I agree this is complicated and not as straight-forward as some would say.

Maybe in my pro-life fight you will help me advocate against factory farming.  You can have your meat, just have it responsibly.  And I will be happy to join you in advocating against unnecessary abortions and for giving women and men the skills needed to be responsible. 

Just maybe we can drop the term and finally agree your pro-life is not the moral superior to mine.

25 Things You Would Probably Rather Not Know About Me

Feels like the height of egotism, but I do love to experience the heights!  There is that facebook thing going around, 25 Things about yourself...

Yeah, I did it.

Here it is.

1. I am doing this because Brad threatened to do it for me, and truth be told, that terrified me.

2. I am sorta afraid I will forget people who previously tagged me in their note, and I will spend more time worrying about it, and focusing on the fear of potentially hurting anyone's feelings, than I would like to admit.

3. Therapy is one of my favorite things (thinking i might need more after writing #2) If i could afford it I would spend all my time paying people to discuss my neuroses.

4. About 5 years ago, my mom offered to bring me some hamburger patties that a woman at work was selling from her farm. She said everyone said they tasted really fresh. I said, fresh? What does that even mean? They taste like the cow? They taste like the cow eating grass? I passed on the patties, started a meat avoidance phase, and now 5 years later own up to being a vegetarian.

5. I went through two meat avoidance phases as a kid, but always bounced back.

6. As a kid I thought a mistake had been made and i was supposed to be born black. I watched tons of movies on civil rights movement, and tried to memorize MLK's I have a dream speech, to correct the mistake.

7. Ironically, my home town was home to Malcolm X at one time, and he said it was the most racist town he ever lived in.

8. I'm an only child.

9. I tend to be both cynical and deeply idealistic to my core.

10. About now i am thinking i should have done the list of 16 rather than 25 things.

11. I am a scorpio and Enneagram #4. 

12. I LOVE change and resist it more than anyone i know.

13. I just received an email from Brad with his first suggestion: I have not sat under my desk and cried yet today: TRUE! 

14. You really don't know me if you haven't seen me cry, i have no shame with sharing the tears.

15. My iPhone: I love my iPhone, I love my MacBook, I love everything Steve Jobs has ever touched.

16. I once touched Tiger Woods. I was sure with that one touch our eyes would lock and he would realize I was his one true love. I was 17 at the time. (I somehow still believe those insane fantasies of mine!)

17. I have a dream of being discovered, not sure doing what, but discovered all the same!

18. I am a yoga instructor, but i don't feel like a yoga instructor, it is something i do once a week more so than something that feels like it defines me.

19. I love cable news and dream of spending a day with Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, the late Tim Russert, Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell, and Doris Kearns Goodwin. 

20. During the election I had multiple dreams about Barack Obama, he was usually seeking my advice on something, and dreamt of Robert Gibbs (his communications manager and now White House Press Secretary) on at least two occasions.

21. Some of my favorite people in my life are the ones who incessantly make fun of me. I think it is making up for the brothers i never had.

22. I am extremely sensitive to things around me. People's moods, body language, energy between people, lighting in a room, smells, sounds, all is very clear and unavoidable to me. Sometimes feels like i am watching the special features on a DVD and feel bad that most around me are missing the subtleties. 

23. I have been to an intuitive reader twice, loved it, and have a strong intuition myself.

24. My brain is quick, and it is hard for me not to finish people's sentences, to cut people off and move on to next point and I do it a lot while watching tv or movies i have never seen. I am trying to learn the art of patience.

25. My life was changed by taking Boyd Wilson's World Religions class at Hope College and through reading Harvard Pluralist Scholar, Diana Eck's book Encountering God. I owe so much to the two of them!