Imperious1928's Blog

Fragments of a dream: Orientation

imperious1928 — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:28:43 +0000

Yesterday I was too tired, overwhelmed, anxious, angry and brain dead to write anything meaningful. Needless to say it was a stressful day, that was to be expected. First day jitters effect everyone right? Despite all of those emotions I think everything went pretty well. It started off with everyone in the room. No talking, just barely breathing. Finally someone asks “So anyone know what’s going on today, or this week? How much are we getting paid? How many weeks is orientation? What station are we going to be assigned to for the rest of our training? Are we dressed appropriately? No one had any answers. Finally lieutenant Pitman walks in. Apologizes for some confusion. The process of getting things sorted out officially begins. Eventually we get ID numbers, bunker pants, bunker bag, class A uniform, badge, face masks in a cool looking bag and unfortunately a face mask. I say unfortunately because we had to get fit tested. A fit test determines if you’re mask properly fits. In order to make 1oo percent sure it does, the person doing the testing usually has some type of choking gas. You know, gagging kind that makes your eyes water, throat sour and asshole cringe. Because I already had my mask issued to me from volunteering, guess who was first!? Me! So long story short he prompted me to close my eyes and take a deep breathe. I knew it was coming but I can’t tell a chief no on the first day of my job. Better to take it like a man, that I did. I hope… Coughing your liver out doesn’t seem to manly but I recovered some dignity when I saw the other go through it. Another embarrassing part of getting fit tested is the shit they make you read when you actually have your mask on. “I’m a little tea pot short and stout” OR “I love looking at rainbows, the way they hit the sun is very beautiful and they make many lovely shapes.” – shit like that. Before you know it I was sitting with a pounding head ache sinking my teeth into a very healthy number 5 at taco bell. Some of the other guys went out to eat, i’ll be trying to hook up with them maybe tomorrow during lunch to built comradery. After lunch we just sat and watched power points of SCBA. I got home at around 4:30. I was cranky from having a headache all day. I went to sleep almost immediately.

Okay, so day two! I arrive and realize that I didn’t bring my certificates. I was told to. This is bad. I told lieutenant Pitman that another chief said I didn’t have to worry about bringing them because the department has it on file already from volunteering. It wasn’t a lie technically. They really do have it all on file, none the less I was told to bring them again, and I did forget. Pitman tells me that I HAVE to bring them by tomorrow or it’s deep water. He is understanding though, he knows that they do already have them on file. I’m betting that he just doesn’t want to see bad habits develop in his rookies. Fast forward: Were all in the bay. We have to put on our gear in under a minute. I am one of the only ones to do this in under a minute. 54 seconds I think. I just barely made it (damn zipper!). The next big thing is the RIT team drill. This basically entails dragging a RIT bad to a SCBA which represents a downed firefighter. The PASS device is blasting. Your goal is to crawl through the dark a long the hose line until you reach the firefighter who’s at the nozzle. Did I mention you’re blindfolded, on air and spun three times before you’re let loose?! It’s not bad, it was fun. I didn’t realize I was having fun at the time, but I sure was. My time and technique wasn’t the best but I got it done. In the end that’s all that counts. Next time I will strap the RIT bag around me and do a better job of orientating myself once I locate the down firefighter, so I can hook him up to air a little faster. Lieutenant Pitman comes out to greet me. He pulls me off to the side and tells me again that I have to have my certification by tomorrow. I suddenly realize that I have my EMT license in my wallet. One down, one to go. This eases some tension. I apologize again ask if I can fax it to him. He tells me that the chief that told me I don’t have to bring the certifications kind of overstepped his boundaries. He says it’s more of his fault then my own. This eases a ton of tension. Shortly after that I called my sister to fax the certification. She tried twice but apparently their fax machine hates me, or is just broken. One of the two. A bit more distressed now I make the decision to drive long and hard during my lunch break to get my certificate. My sister meets me out front. We looked like drug dealers, but it got the job done. I made it back with 10 minutes left in my lunch break and scarfed down some food. Pitman was glad I got him the certificate and I definitely was too. I’m new, I don’t want any attention. The rest of the day = Lecture on ventilation. The drive home was like detox. All in all today was a lot better then yesterday. I’m hoping this foreshadows the rest of my time in the fire service. Tomorrow is another adventure, and there will more then likely be another blog.

Genuine hangups

imperious1928 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:54:41 +0000

Okay! Lets start with sin and the great flood! (my favorite story growing up by the way)

Sin has been explained to me time and time again as separation from God. Using this definition it is safe to say that everytime we commit a sin were making the gap between us and God bigger. Depending on your denomination some sins can actually make the gap bigger then others. I don’t quite know what to make of all this. Not in a literal sense of course. I mean sin so far is pretty simple to understand and it kind of makes sense when you apply it to your own life. God is perfect, and everyone can relate with not being perfect. Most of us can probably conjure up numerous examples of doing things against our intuition or moral common sense. So sin (at least so far) seems like a perfectly reasonable answer as to why there are gaps between human characteristics and Gods characteristics. This whole blog isn’t about sin not existing, it’s more about if it does exist….then so what?…

Yea I said it. So what? I get confused when I read the bible with Gods divine attributes in mind. God is all knowing. God is everywhere. God is all powerful. Take for instance the piece of scripture below. Keep in mind that God knew everything before time. So WAY before the flood and even before Adam and Eve were created.

Genesis 6:5 The Lord saw how greats man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he that made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air – for I am grieved that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Now I know a lot of the scripture above was personification (well lets hope it is) but we can see that the overall point is that God decides to kill 99.99 % of humanity because in some way were not acting in accordance with his will. Were not living up to the image that he created us in and were not living up to his expectations. So I guess my question then is how can God blame us for not living up to his expectations when he knew exactly what to expect to begin with? To say that God didnt know the whole world was going to be sinful at that time would take away from his divine attributes as mentioned earlier. You cant get around the fact that God knew we were going to be fuck ups and still choose to create us (only to drown most of us later on). To make matters worse you have this piece of scripture that seems to suggest that God is having to fix some type of unexpected mistake. This isn’t consistent with being all knowing either so im confused.

More than just being confused, i’m extremely skeptical. It’s hard to believe that EVERYONE in the world except 8 people were big time sinners. I guess it was IMPOSSIBLE for someone to look around and say “Something is fucked up. We should probably change our ways”. Did they not have a conscious of their own. C’mon…not one person on the whole earth? It’s hard to believe. Maybe God lost faith in us. By the way I say big time sinners because in Christianity were taught that the only perfect person was Jesus. That means even Noah had to have at least SOME sin in him. So I say “big time sinners” to help differentiate between Noah and the rest of the world. I dont want to knock Noah off of his boat (hehe) but he’s not off the hook when it comes to sin. So here we have Noah and his family still being sinners (at least to some small degree) and then you have the rest of humanity uhh still being sinners. It’s confusing. They’re all sinners, but for some reason Noah and his family getting picked to be the chosen who survive. Were taught that even the smallest sin matters when it comes to God so I guess he just overlooked this when he picked Noah. I guess the lesser of the two evils. It does mention however that Noah walked with God. But what does this mean really? Lets not forget that Noah existed after the fall of man, so if it’s possible to walk with God after sin entered the world then why do we even need a savior?

One last point…

Being all powerful. Shouldnt he be able just make some small tweeks and adjustments here and there within our DNA to make us more compatable to his will. I understand that were supposed to have free will and all that and we can make our own choices therefore making our own destiny and blah blah blah. We’ve all seen the Matrix we understand the concept of free will But at the same time we have certain predilections that lead us to do certain things. I mean no guy goes out and cheats on his wife if he doesnt have a sex drive compelling him to do so. So all God would have to do is tweak the sex drive and TA DAAAHHHHH, no more infidelity. That’s just one of examples.

These are all honest questions and I bet you probably have the same or at least simular questions yourself. Believe it or not I am a Christian. When I read the Gospels they make sense to me. I believe that I have a relationship with Jesus. I guess I just don’t know enough when it comes to the Old Testament or haven’t talked to the right people. That’s pretty much the only reason I wrote this so don’t hesitate to get back to me on it. Thanks for your time.

Daniel Rivera