Getting Organized and Helping Conservatives and Liberals to Talk

So it's a long title -- but in truth it's a summary of what I'm reading right now. First, I realized that if I'm ever going to get organized I needed to learn about organizational management without getting bogged down by one specific methodology and spending hundreds of dollars on the process which I may or may not follow through with. The book I chose to read is David Allen's Getting Things Done. Nice short title that is definitely to the point. I purchased the CD set so I could listen to him in the car (everything I had read had stated how exciting he was in person so I was looking forward to hearing this motivational speaker read his own book. No such luck, he's simply reading it and the enthusiasm is minute at best.) But the process is really helpful to me. Everything that keeps you up at night because it's not done, write it down somewhere that you know you will be able to find it and where you specifically accomplish it on that day. For the past week I've been waking up before the sun because things keep popping in my head that I know need to be done but, for one reason or another, haven't gotten done. So I wake up in the night and get it done and drag myself through the sunlight hours of the next day. Today I wrote it all down, step by step, and it feels really good to know what I can accomplish quickly and what I need more time with -- not to mention setting aside time to do that so that while I'm working on something else I can REALLY work on something else! So it's helping, even though listening to it is boring. I'd probably do better with a highlighter so I could reference it later, but still, that's putting it off. This way I can ONLY "read" it in the car.

The second book I've just finished is The Abstinence Teacher. I checked it out from the library and it was really good! It's the story of a sex ed teacher who is forced to teach abstinence against her will by an evangelical Christian church that in many ways is over the top. But I found myself getting irritated by this woman when she gets mad about a team praying together. I too respect people of other religions and don't see the need to demand that everyone pray a Christian prayer, but I also believe in encouraging people to pray as they believe and not to silence any prayer. It's doing no one any harm to give thanks. But then I began to get irritated by the Christians who started holding onto a Christian prayer like it was the only evangelical moment in the world. Doesn't the Bible say to go into your closet and pray not for self-glorification but rather giving glory to God? And where is the fine line between these many prayers? The dialogue between the two extreme beliefs showed me that personally I would really like it if we agreed to disagree and to respect each other. I'm a Christian who professes faith in God through the Christian faith, but I'm also a believer that God calls people to God's self in ways we may never understand and that we can't hold the authority of God in our simple minds. God's way is far beyond our own.

Anyway, that's my recommended reading for the day.