Opinion: Does God have a gender?
Fall is in full swing. The temperatures have cooled down and the leaves on certain trees are turning red and gold. Spooky decorations are popping up in the yards as we approach my favorite holiday Halloween. My birthday is this weekend and I couldn’t be happier.
Had I known I would some day reach six and a half plus decades I might have taken better care of myself. I once had a high school counselor tell me if I didn’t change my ways, I would be dead or in prison by the age of 25.
Rebel without a cause, James Dean, loved the prophetic quote, “Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.” Variations of the saying have been around for more than a century. It is a line from the book, made popular in the movie version of “Knock on Any Door,” a book by Willard Motely and staring Humphrey Bogart and John Derek. In my opinion Derek is most famous for being the husband of Bo Derek, the perfect (female) 10.
Halloween will be very scaled back this year, I fear. The Madera Rotary Club was unable to stage its annual Halloween Ball this year due to COVID concerns. With the ongoing threat it is probably a wise decision, but one that still makes me sad. Hopefully it will be back next year bigger and better than ever.
The trick-or-treaters this year should have challenges deciding if a Halloween mask is as safe as the surgical masks most people are seen wearing. Going house-to-house in the wake of the pandemic is very risky. I can’t help but wonder how many parents will allow their little ones to even go out. It is sad that they will miss one of the most fun activities of the year.
Halloween decorations in the stores are in short supply this year. The stores seem to have plenty of candy but the jack-o-lanterns, skulls and other scary merchandise are in short supply. My understanding is that the shipments that should be in the drug and variety stores are stuck on a dock somewhere, or so the story goes.
The Halloween super stores in Fresno still have a large inventory of costumes, accessories and decorations. I picked up several items to add to my collection of Ouija Board and Tarot cards. People ask me if I have ever received any messages from the Ouija Board. Since it is a game that shouldn’t be played by only one person, I have never played the game with someone I was sure wasn’t moving the planchette, (pointer) for their own amusement.
I made a great discovery recently checking sale items on eBay. In 2008 Parker Brothers, the makers of the Ouija Board, produced a special pink slumber party edition. If I remember correctly the original cost of the game, at the now defunct Toys R Us, was somewhere between $10 to $20. On eBay they are asking as much as $275 for one.
I say asking because I can’t tell how many have sold at that price. One of the absolute truths in the world of collectors is an item is “worth,” what you can get someone else to pay you for it.
I’m still excited to own a pink Ouija Board and wish I had bought a dozen of them when I had the chance.
We were raised attending the Church of Christ that is now on church row on Sunset Avenue. When my mother began broadcasting her Astro-Analysis by QuoVada on our local radio station K-Hot, she received a visit from our pastor attempting to discourage her from what he viewed as an unholy pastime.
Instead, she asked him for his birthdate and gave him what she called a thumbnail sketch of his personality. This was a fairly new pastor that she had met only once or twice. She informed our paster that Astrology was a science to be studied, not a religion to be believed.
He went away from the encounter a bit stymied; my mom was a fine debater. I once had a similar argument with a new Church of Christ pastor where my assertion was that if the almighty God had a gender, it is just as likely that she is a woman as a man.
Of course, the pastor could quote chapter and verse to support his opinion, while all I had on my side of the argument was arrogance and a strong belief that I was right.
Through sheer body mass and brute strength men have been in charge of the world since God made Adam. It stands to reason men would believe God to be the heavenly father.
But what if in the original text it read heavenly parent? Could that parent be a mother rather than a father? We both agreed the likelihood of the almighty having a gender is uncertain. But it made for a spirited discussion, one in which I refused to back down — regardless of what facts the pastor presented. I think that alone secretly delighted the pastor who enjoyed a good debate.
Long days and pleasant nights, have a blessed weekend.
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Readers may contact Tami Jo Nix by emailing tamijonix@gmail.com or following @TamiJoNix on Twitter.
