A Letter from Riin

I received a letter from Riin today. Normally, I wouldn't mention it (I really am tired of talking about Riin) but, after reading it, I decided to remove my March 27th posting, "Falling in Love." Since this obviously affects the blog, I thought I should offer some explanation.

When Riin threatened me with police action, I immediately agreed to abide by her wishes. That was a mistake. Riin was overreacting. I should have just ignored her request altogether and contacted her again in a month or two. Unfortunately, I panicked and agreed to abide by her wishes without thinking the situation through. Unfortunately, as a man of my word, this has tied my hands ever since.

However, recently I went back to her E-mail and examined in detail the exact wording of her request. Her exact words were:

I don't want you to contact me anymore. Don't call me. Don't email me. Don't put comments on my blog.

So. The only things here that she specifically forbids are calling, E-mailing and blog comments. Since these demands are unambiguous, and since I did give my word, I have no choice but to abide by those wishes. However, her E-mail does not specifically forbid any other form of contact...

Yes, I realize that she also states she doesn't "want" me to contact her but, then again, I don't "want" her to throw me away like a worn out tire, either. Still, she's doing it. So, as far as what she "wants" goes, I will only respect her wish not to contact her in those three specific ways, since I've already given my word on those. However, any other form of contact, as far as I'm concerned, is fair game.

With that in mind, I decided to send Riin snail mail. I've sent her two letters so far. One on April 27th, and one on May 14th. Actually, that makes the arrival of her letter a weird coincidence insofar as the postmark was May 14th. That means she probably got my second letter the same day I got hers.

Anyway, based on what she said, not much has changed, except that she says she's not angry anymore (though she was very careful to point out at that juncture that I shouldn't look upon that as a sign of hope).

At one point in her letter, Riin pointed out that it wasn't my publishing her threatening letter that she was angry at (which is why I didn't take down that posting). She was angry at the publishing of the snippets of her personal E-mails from earlier on in our relationship in "Falling in Love."

Until I got her letter today, it never even occurred to me that she'd object to that, (despite Sue's comments). They were just snippets, and they contained nothing that wasn't already a matter of public record (it's not like everyone didn't already know she was in love with me). If I had known that this bothered her, if she had just told me, I would have removed that posting immediately, but I honestly had no idea (if I'd been in her place, it wouldn't have bothered me).

However, now that I do know, I cannot, in all good conscience, leave that posting up. So I've taken it down. It was a case of bad judgment on my part. I apologize.

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On May 21, 2007 6:53:51 PM ADT, Anonymous wrote:

You could call the people at Planters, they work with nuts all day.

I'm allergic to peanuts. :P

On May 24, 2007 1:52:43 PM ADT, Anonymous wrote:

Take this message and run with it! All the way to the loony tune bin! Don't take it as hope or anything short of a miracle.

Is it just me, or does this comment make absolutely no sense whatsoever...?

On May 25, 2007 11:00:20 PM ADT, Anonymous wrote:

Personally, I find that endless drop-adding of comments and posts makes comprehending a blog difficult and frustrating.

Then stop reading it.

On June 4, 2007 8:01:49 PM ADT, Sue Ellen wrote:

Do you work? It seems like you have a lot of time on your hands.

I do. I also type at 95 WPM, so this doesn't take nearly as much time as it looks. :P

On June 9, 2007 9:09:24 PM ADT, "Annabell Spencer" wrote:

[A]fter reading some of your blog and going to Riins blog who i do not know either of you . . .

No, you don't, Janet. You don't know Riin, either. If you did, you'd know that you're not going to endear yourself to her by lying (with all these fake identities) and threatening people with violence (the latter of which Riin herself chastised you for on her blog). Given the way you've been behaving lately, both on this blog and on Riin's, I can understand perfectly why Riin doesn't get along very well with your side of her family...

I don't know all the details of the problem . . .

Then I submit that you're not qualified to advise me on the problem. It's not easy to understand other people's problems, but it's very easy to think you do...

I will pray for you tonight in church for you to have some peace. God bless you.

I appreciate the thought, but neither myself nor Riin are Christian. Riin doesn't believe in God at all. I do, but I don't believe in the Christian interpretation of "God." I believe there is a force out there that created us, and I choose to call that force "God." However, that is where my beliefs stop because I believe it is the height of Human arrogance to presume anyone could know anything about a being so advanced that it could create this whole Universe.

I view the spirit world as a kind of "chain of command" with "God" at the top. The way I see it my problems, or the problems of any one Human being on this one tiny planet in this virtually infinite Universe of ours, are virtually insignificant in the cosmic scheme of things. To pray to God to help me with a personal problem like this would be like asking Prime Minister Stephen Harper to fix the bad gutter pan in the road in front of my building.

Basically, the Prime Minster of Canada isn't going to bother himself with something so trivial as a small flaw in one street in one town in one province in this big, wide country. It's simply not reasonable to expect any one person to take care of every little detail in something so large as a country. In the case of road damage, what the Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Public Works is for. To take care of repairing the roads in my particular province.

I think of God in the same way. I'm not going to go to Him for something so small as a personal dispute, no matter how painful the dispute may be. He's got a whole Universe to run. He doesn't have time to deal with every little personal problem of every single one of the 6.6 billion people on this planet, not to mention the billions and billions of people on the billions of billions of planets with sapient life throughout the Universe...

That's why, when I "pray," I don't talk to God. I talk to my grandmother. She passed away almost a year ago today. Now, while God Himself might have more important things to think about than my fight with Riin, Nana's primary concern, in contrast, is the happiness of those she loved in life, of which I am one. So she can help me with Riin, and help me protect anyone else I love, too, without having to burden God with what are, to Him, trivial matters.

So, if you really mean it about praying for me, do me a favor and direct your prayers to my grandmother, Frances Annie Raine-Archibald, not God. He's probably too busy trying to keep our perennially battered planet from self destructing from all our environmental problems to worry about who Riin is or isn't talking to and why.

BTW, if you're looking to endear yourself with Riin, I'd drop the Christian references, if I were you. She hates Christianity. Don't believe me? Check it out yourself on Riin's old website. She has a whole section on there about society's woes, including a section titled "Christianity's damage and Puritanism" where she goes on, at length, about her views on Christianity (and there are not complimentary).

"God" is not Riin's friend.

Oh, and don't bother to try and tell me you're not Janet. There's something you keep doing that gives you away every time. I know you're the troll. I know you're most of the "people" who've been trying to post to my blog lately, too. If you actually want to get posted, you don't need to post Anonymously or under fake names. All you have to do is be mature and refrain from name calling. That's the reason a vast majority of your postings were rejected.