neadods | Scattershot stuff of interest

faireraven summed up True Love beautifully in her LJ today, but the quotes I really want to pass on are

ginmar's. As usual, she has some profound things to say about the nature of love for another and love of country here. (For the two of you who don't know Ginmar, she's a Reservist who just returned Stateside... but do not expect cookie-cutout patriotism from her.)

Every time I'm confronted with the issue of gay marriage, I'm amazed that something so irrelevant can be become so important in some people's minds. Is love so plentiful in this world that we can pick and choose who gets to fall in love with which person? It's nothing but a form of hate to reject one person's hopes that way. Love is nothing but the purest form of optomism there is, putting one's faith on another person, as well as one's trust.

I've never loved my country because she was strong and powerful and... all that. I loved her because she was like my parents, flawed and unique, and occasionally in trouble because she tried to do the right thing, no matter what the cost. "The Star-Spangled Banner" isn't about an overwhelming victory. It's about a bunch of guys who don't know, lying in their foxholes, if their brand-new nation has survived the night. The only way they can tell is to check and see if their flag is still flying over the fort at 'dawn's early light.'

We're a nation composed of immigrants and founded on the notion that our hopes can transcend our flaws and our weaknesses.

Highly recommended reading.

As for me, I'm back to wrestling the nature of what I owe to the causes I say I support. There's a meeting at NARAL this Wednesday, discussing local volunteer options. This is exactly the sort of information I thought I wanted. Yet I find myself grudgingly writing down the meeting information, and have yet to officially RSVP. I don't feel "ready" yet, and to be honest, I don't have time to take on anything new for at least the next six weeks.

Part of me argues that I should go to the meeting and squirrel away the information for use in a few months, that passing up the meeting betrays my reasons for joining. The other part of me argues that they are inevitably going to present this information again, probably soon, and that if I can't do it with a whole heart right now, I'm better off focusing on my own projects and completing them so that I can focus more clearly on whatever NARAL might ask of me.

I have a feeling that both sides will be duking it out until Wednesday night.