Susan Marie Fisher

So in a surprising sort of way, I feel nostaglic about college. College, NOT grad school! For all
the grief over bad programming assignments, there was a flip side of fun. Maybe I am just more nostaglic about my
youth: being able to go out 6 nights/week and still keep a 4.0. Now I am grumpy if heaven forbid I get less than 8
hours of sleep!

My old sorority pictures are what brought this on: Phi Mu. Ah,
the good old days.

So the day after I posted this, my bible study group just happened to study this exact question! ("Why
does god let us suffer?") I'm much more confident now with my answer to that question. But as with any bad thing, it
doesn't change our response ("why me?", not understanding...), our human response that is, to the issue at hand. The bottom
line is that we have free will, and we can't understand god's reasons for something. Having free will has far reaching implications
- it means an angel can choose evil and become the devil... it means that some other person's free will, to say blow up a building,
may hurt us deeply. But that is all part of the 'gift' of free will. We as humans relish our freedom, and God, I believe,
relishes our freedom too - what is love without choice?

As for not understanding god's reasoning, I saw a television show
recently where "god" told a teenage girl to prevent another person's work from being shown in the school art show. She was unable
to do that... and then the kid got offered $500 for it! But then he decided to quit school because of it... I guess the
cheesy point there is that sometimes something that is seemingly bad, has a better purpose; we just can't see the future.

Doesn't help much if you are the one suffering, but I do know suffering alone is much much worse than suffering with God.

- The hawaii countdown
begins.

I've been sick lately, giving me much time to analyze the important questions in life. Like how and why a person who has
never smoked can get lung cancer... and how someone who smokes
a pack a day is still kickin'. I guess we'll never know 'why
bad things happen to good people.' I read Job as a source of
inspiration - but God still leaves us alot of questions; I believe the
book of Job does not provide a general answer to 'why me,' but rather
specifically answers why JOB suffered. I don't
believe God inflicts pain or suffering on us, and I do believe he cries
along with us when we are put in those situations, and can help
carry us through them. But. Am I casting a too rosy view on
this? Can we really rationalize away how God can allow evil to
happen?

Some folks theorize that all pain and suffering is a result of
sin in the world; not necessarily sin of the 'victim', but a
straying of society as a whole. Are we to be our brother's
keeper? Is that what God wants?

Or is pain and suffering simply a side effect of the gift of
free will?

At some point I've got
to
update this to real blogging software! But alas, until then, I continue.
Halloween is always interesting... but at an artist's
workplace, it can be crazy.

I decided that the only worthy costume was a geeky costume. I
wow-ed people with my ability to collapse down onto the floor
in my box, hip problems long gone!

Then I told John Lasseter that he should really consider doing
a film of all plastic, rigid bodies, with no hair... can you
imagine the render times???

Alas, I'll dream on... while
ploughing through slow shots at work and slowly but surely
convincing people that 5 minutes now of production tests could
save hours in render times later...