Try to stay awake: the President has a healthcare Bill to pass - Times Online

Try to stay awake: the President has a healthcare Bill to pass - Times Online

"Warning: watching American politicians argue about healthcare can be seriously damaging to your health. Symptoms may include migraines, extreme fatigue and sudden violent urges. In the event of exposure to competing statistics — regarding "donut holes", "HMO deductibles", "reconciliation devices" or suchlike — seek immediate medical help."

This article had me rolling in the floor! If you are as frustrated as I am over the healthcare debate, this will make you smile and probably lower your blood pressure back to the normal range. Go ahead, enjoy your hamburger as you read this article. It's worth it.

Looking to March

Hi everyone, I have some exciting things coming up in the month of March that I will be writing about.

First, the month of March is National Social Work Month and I want my blog to serve as a place that will inspire curiosity about the field of social work and also provide information about the past, present, and future of the field. I will post something every week about the "movers and shakers" of the social work field and how they have influenced the way social work is practiced today. Also, I will share a little of my own journey in the field and write about the one question that people never fail to ask when I tell them I am getting a Masters degree in Social Work, "Huh, so what are you going to do with that?"

Second, I have decided to participate in prayer and fasting from March 1- April 9. Now before you close out this window thinking, "Wow, talk about a religious wacko!" hear me out. I am a firm believer in Jesus Christ, but that doesn't mean I don't struggle with my faith. For the last two years I have had a hard time with prayer. I don't understand it, I don't understand how it works, does anything happen when I pray? Why? When I pray, I don't understand what I should say or how to say it. The engineer in me wants God to draw back the curtain of heaven so I can watch what happens when believers pray. Unfortunately, I am one of those people who, if I don't understand it I am less likely to do it. I have really struggled with prayer for a while now; I have researched prayer forwards and backwards, looked into the Greek and Hebrew and still have questions about it. The conclusion I have come to is that prayer is one of those things you won't understand unless you do it. Kind of like knitting, you can sit there and stare at the pictures describing how to knit all day long but until you pick up the needles and thread, you will never know how to knit. I am hoping to gain from this experience a deeper understanding of who God is and a deeper understanding of prayer. I haven't decided how much of this experience I will share since it is so personal, but you can expect some funny food stories. I will be writing about the particular fast I'll be doing later.

Right about now you may be asking, "Courtney, where have you found all this extra time to blog?" Well, I wish I could say that my days have magically lengthened from 24 hours to 30, thus giving me an extra 6 hours to think about and edit what I will be posting, but that would just sound silly. The truth is, I don't have any extra time, I have just decided to shift a few things around and make the time. That means I may not write about the fasting project every week, but I will keep my few (but loyal) readers up to date. Expect to hear more soon.

Demotivator of the day

For all my artistic friends. May you never know the truth of what is written below!

Courtesy of despair.com

Of graduate school and other musings

Here's one tiny bit of information that they won't include in your grad school orientation: your classes will suck the life out of you and you won't even know it! Someone should have suggested grad school as a "Big Bad" on BtVS. Hyperbole? Maybe, maybe not.

In other news, I continue to face challenges in my development as a social worker and as a Christian. The most recent being in a class about group dynamics. My professor lectured for more than an hour about listening (no joke) and then had the entire class do an exercise based on his lecture. The challenge wasn't so much in what he said, but what he wanted us to do in the exercise. We were supposed to practice listening skills and the one thing he stressed over and over was that true listening cannot take place unless you "...empty yourself to make space for others." A red flag (ok, maybe just pink) was raised in my mind. Here are some of the points he made:

1. To empty ourselves of our agendas in order to be able to hear those of others- no problem with this one

2. To empty ourselves of our prejudices, biases, stereotypes, projections, etc. in order to see and hear what is real- I understand what he means, but the way he said it made me uncomfortable.

3. To empty ourselves of our expectations and required outcomes- no problem, basically don't expect that the other person wants advice.

4. To empty ourselves of the need or organize or control a group or person or our environment or an outcome- no problem with that.

5. To empty ourselves of the need to be "Captain of our Fate" to surrender our lives to a "Higher Power" a spirit greater than ourselves- red flag, DANGER! WILL ROBINSON!

6. To empty ourselves of the defensive barriers that prevent the intimacy you really want- no problems there.

Why did this issue of "emptying" bother me so much? For one, when you empty something, you are preparing to put something else in its place and the question that should be asked is, "Is this (fill in the blank here) good for me?" I thought that was an issue that my professor would naturally discuss, but oddly enough it never came up. I think it's a valid question. If the key to really listening is to empty myself, shouldn't I be careful about what I listen to?

This point leads me to what really bothered me about this idea of emptying: we cannot truly "...empty ourselves" of anything because we are made up of things from our environment, family of origin, life experiences, memories, emotions, etc. We cannot flip a switch and become a tabula rasa, blank slate, because we were never one to begin with (ever noticed how babies can tell a difference between babies that look like they do and other babies that don't?). However, it is possible to set those things aside temporarily in order to listen to others. Semantics? Maybe, maybe not.

Seriously, Joss Whedon missed a great story arc by not letting his characters go to grad school. Buffy would have kicked some philosophical ass.