How Was Church?

I'm glad you asked! The choir, (read Pink Floyd), sang through a rousing rendition of the album Animals and then proceeded to call down heaven, as they say, with a glorious romp through Dark Side Of The Moon.

I sat comfortably enthroned, (or is that entombed), on my pew, i.e. coffee house easy chair. The sacraments went down easy this morning, double espresso and a sensible bran muffin, less guilt, less repentance than that ever-tempting cinnamon roll.

The sermon, a disjointed ramble through the day's headlines- the miseries and malfeasances of the night before, until the Spirit Himself gave voice to the Father's heart. Let's just say, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

What was on the Father's mind this morning? The famine in Somalia apparently....

Above, an internally displaced Somali woman attends to her malnourished son at the Banadir hospital in Mogadishu. Photo by Ismail Taxta / Reuters. Below, Relatives of Hassan Abdulkadir Adan, third from left (rear), help to lower the body of his 7-year-old son into a grave in a refugee camp in Mogadishu. Photo by Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP. Photo text courtesy MSNBC.com.

Above, Aden Salaad, 2, looks up at his mother as she bathes him in a tub at a Doctors Without Borders hospital, where Aden is receiving treatment for malnutrition, in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell / AP. Below, a mother mourns the death of her son at the Banadir hospital. Photo by John Moore / Getty Images. Photo text courtesy MSNBC.com.

Above, a malnourished child from southern Somalia is weighed in Banadir hospital in Mogadishu. Photo by Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP. Below, a doctor examines Mihag Gedi Farah, a seven-month-old child with a weight of 7.5lbs (the average weight of a first world newborn), in a field hospital of the International Rescue Committee. Photo by Schalk Van Zuydam / AP. Photo text courtesy MSNBC.com.

Osman Ali Aliyow Mursal digs a burial plot for his four-year-old son, Aden Ibrahim, as men prepare to pray over the boy's body, wrapped in a plastic mat. Doctors were unable to save Aden, who died of diarrhea-related dehydration after four days of inpatient care. U.N. Refugee Chief Antonio Guterres says that drought-ridden Somalia is the "worst humanitarian disaster" in the world. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell / AP. Below, A woman from southern Somalia builds a makeshift shelter from tree branches at a refugee camp in Mogadishu, Somalia. Photo by Mohamed Sheikh Nor / AP. Photo text courtesy of MSNBC.com.

Mulmillo closes the eyes of her two-year-old son Mahmud moments after he died from malnutrition and related complications at a local hospital in Mogadishu. Photo by Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images, text by MSNBC.com.

So political BS aside, and no religious posturing needed. There will be no altar call this morning, the Christian response to hunger is explicitly mandated in scripture. Here's how we can help.

Whatever we haven't done for the least of these...

The "P" In PETA Is For...Porn?

Yep. Rueters announced this week that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is launching a porn site. According to the group, "There will be a lot of girl and boy next door content, but we haven't ruled out celebrities on the site as well." Um....

Sasha Grey, porn star and PETA activist. Her racy ad campaign gained the group much notoriety.

So let me get this straight. To combat the exploitation of animals the group is going to exploit women through objectification? Apparently so. PETA spokeswoman Lindsay Rajt ensures these tactics are cleverly thought out and will get results: "We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals.... We are careful about what we do and wouldn't use nudity or some of our flashier tactics if we didn't know they worked."

Animal meat bad. Women as meat- acceptable collateral damage. But at least it works, right?

Rajt said, ""We live in a 24 hour news cycle world and we learn the racy things we do are sometimes the most effective way that we can reach particular individuals. Instead of focusing on anti-fur, the porn site will raise awareness of veganism. We really want to grab people's attention, get them talking and to question the status quo and ultimately take action, because the best way we can help the greatest number of animals is simply by not eating them."

The programming will consist of porn interspersed with gruesome images of animal torture and brutality at the hands of humans. Now I am no psychologist or whatever, but this seems like a really, really bad Idea. PETA is going to entice people with porn and then inundate them with images of animal cruelty. Isn't there just the smallest chance that in the human mind these two polar opposite urges may become symbiotically twisted creating a huge upswing in people with fetishes for animals being tortured? Again I am no master of the mind's relationship between visual stimulus and the libido, but if you get somebody all worked up and then show them animals brutally killed it seems to me they are either gonna hate you for ruining their sex-perience or they're gonna develop some bestiality tendencies.

Miss Rajt, I am an animal lover myself, and though completely un-related, a vegetarian too, and if I may be so bold as to tell you your business, the best way for you to ensure that people don't eat animals is not to eroticize the act, even if only by it's proximity to porn. And as a lover of women, a man who fights for the end of sexual tyranny over women, your whatever works philosophy disrespects and endangers your gender.

Meet Susanne Eman. The World's First 2000 Pound Woman?

Susanne Eman wants to be the heaviest woman ever. The current record is 1,600 pounds. The 32 year old from Arizona ingests 20,000 calories a day in hopes to reach half her goal by December's end.

And then she plans to increase her caloric-intake. "I'd love to find out if it's humanly possible to reach a ton,’ she says. That isn't hyperbole. She really hopes to weigh 2000 pounds.

According to the Daily Mail online story, Susanne visits the supermarket once a month with her sons Gabriel, 16, and Brendin, 12, and spends up to eight hours filling six buggies. "It's like a full day's work," said Susanne, who uses a motorized scooter to navigate the store.

Suprisingly Susanne believes she can stay healthy. She adds, "The bigger I get, the better I feel. I feel more confident and sexy. Why shouldn't I push the limits and see how fat I can get and stay healthy?"

"Two years ago I hit 400 pounds because I was losing my battle against weight gain," she said. "I noticed I actually started attracting more men, and it made me feel good."

Susanne and her sister.

Susanne cannot work because of her weight, to stay active she says, "I go for a waddle and do stretches and exercises every day. My muscles need to hold up to my weight, so I have to stay strong. I take my blood pressure once a week, and every day, after I exercise, I take readings of my other vitals. I use a pulse oximeter to measure the concentration of oxygen in my blood stream. And I take my blood sugar levels just like a diabetic. If either of the readings go above a certain level, I'll immediately contact my doctor for advice. If I was to get sick, I've arranged for my sister to take care of my kids."

Susanne's daily 20,000 calorie plus diet...

Breakfast: 6 x eggs scrambled, cooked in butter 468 cals. 1/2 pound bacon 1,168 cals, 4 x potatoes as hash browns 672 cals, 6 x pieces toast with butter 600 cals, 32 ounce cream shake 1,160 cals. Snacking 1 x bag of animal cookies 1,950 cals, 2 liter bottle of soft drink 800 cals, 1 x 10.5 ounce bag of barbecue flavour crisps 1,650 cals, 3 x ham and cheese sandwiches 1,576 cals.

Lunch: 3 x beef, bean and green chilli burritos with 1 x cup of sour cream 1,453 cals. Salad (1 head lettuce, 1 cup cherry tomatoes, 1 cup carrots, 1 cucumber, 1/2 cup ranch dressing, bacon bits, 1 cup crumbled cheese, 1 cup chicken 1,479 cals.

Dinner: 12 x filled tacos + 1 x cup sour cream 4,906 cals, 2 liter bottle of soda 800 cals, Dessert 8 x scoops vanilla ice cream 2,080 cals, 1 x small pan of brownies 1,200 cals.

Total: 21,962 calories

Geez.....

There is so much wrong here. First let me address the majority of the commenters on the Daily Mail Online article thread. You're mean. You are hateful. And with very little exception, you revert to playground taunts and personal attacks to make your point, if you even have a point other than blatant disgust. This woman is desperate for love and attention. She is not psychologically deranged, she is pathologically unhappy. She fills the void in her heart with her drug of choice- food. Her self-abuse and waste is not ok, but please play nice.

Secondly, before I get to where I'm going, Susanne, darling.... There is huge difference between self acceptance and self delusion. You are beautiful, but the way you are made and the way you are making yourself are two very different things. Men may pay you more attention, may fettishize your weight but in the end you are killing yourself, you are destroying your children's chance at normalcy, you may very well be orphaning your lovely boys. Please, whatever it is that has broken your heart, bring it to the One who made you and let him fix it. You don't need to be waif-like and wiry to be beautiful but please, even if it means not getting noticed, do what's best for you and your kids. Or at least do what's right.

Finally.

How do I explain this:

To him...

Or her...

In a world where there are 925 million undernourished people, where a child dies every 5 seconds because of hunger related complications, where there is no food shortage only a disproportionate distribution of that food, this type of excess is unforgivable. It is a slap in the face of every mother who couldn't make enough breast milk to feed her newborn because of her own malnutrition and had to watch that child starve. It is an affront to every child reduced to digging the town dump for food...

or begging for scraps...

Every year Americans alone spend 174 million dollars on obesity related medical conditions. This makes mockery of the half of the world without any access to medical care. The millions of children whose lives could be saved by simple anti-dehydration salts or a mosquito net. This is NOT OK!!!

Humanitarian groups spend much of their energies trying to solicit funding to do their humble work. They must stretch pennies into dollars and turn the most meager rations of rice and beans into miracles of sustenance. And it is often politicians that these groups must petition for funding, the same politicians that allow people with self imposed disabilities to milk the system for the money for their daily feast and the medical care to keep the health risks of gluttony at bay. What is wrong with us?!!?? And not to single out Susanne, her situation is barely unique, but this is freakin' ridiculous!!!

Before my brain explodes. Please support the amazing Megan Boudreaux as she and the good folks at Respire Haiti feed 700 children in Gressier, Haiti every week. You can donate directly for their food program here. From the bottom of my heart....Thank you! And for the people around Susanne that enable her, or have fed her delusions with disingenuous flattery or full fledged exploitation....you are endangering her life and may be making orphans of her children. You suck.

Susanne, you are loved. Praying for you tonight...Praying for us all...

God Please Kill Me.

For all the girls who have shared their story with me...

We stayed late

To stack the chairs

And sweep the floor

And you were hungry

So we spread out a choir robe

On the altar

And picnicked on the butt ends

Of the unfinished French bread

Of the broken body of Christ

And you, chewing, said you knew

That God loved you

But thought He might oughtta

Raise His standards

And I said, self-loathing

Was kinda hot

And you shot the grape juice

Of the blood of

The new covenant

Right out your nose

And then you cried right through

Everything your dad ever did to you

As the gathering shadows

Further emaciated

The Son of sorrows

On the large brass crucifix

Above the baptismal pool

And you wept

The most honest prayer

That had been prayed

In that place all day

God please kill me

God hears your broken hearts, your healing is in His arms.