The Plagiarism Collection

By Refried Bean

This book contains a collection of poems and a collection of writings from an online Christian theology course.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Refried Bean
• Release date: Dec 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463260487

Refried Bean

Refried Bean is from Greenville, SC. Refried worked in a bookstore for twelve years and has an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Refried now lives in the Bronx near a Stop and Shop.

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The Plagiarism Collection

by Refried Bean

The Plagiarism Collection

Copyright 2018 by Refried Bean

Distributed by Smashwords, Inc.

Acknowledgements

Thank you so much, Princeton Theological Seminary Certificate Program.

Thank you Dr. Olson, Dr. Baretto, Dr. Charry, Dr. Barreto, Chelsea Williams, Dayle Rounds, and the whole Alexander Cohort.

Thanks again to New York Cares, NYU, New York Presbyterian, Mt. Sinai, NY Creative Arts Therapists, Washington Heights Physicians, and Xavier Mission.

Some people from other books that I did not thank are Gennie Perez, Rhonda Gomez, Diana Mendez, Anna Feingold, Sandy Speier, Dena Rosenfeld, and Anissa Reilly.

Thanks also to Louise Crowley, Ellen Lesser, and Connie May Fowler.

Thank you to the Conspiracy legal team and the cop and social work volunteers.

Thank you John, Wade, Catherine, Beth, Katherine, Haley, and Anne.

Thank you also, Donna, Patrick, and Barndt.

If anyone wants to be my friend in heaven, it is a done deal and we will play cards in basements with party food.

This book is called a plagiarism collection, but it isn't really full of plagiarism. I thought of the title because when I wrote one of the poems, some lines sounded familiar, like someone had just read the exact thing at a writer's conference that I went to. And I am still not sure that I didn't get a couple of lines directly from that reading that came to mind. But I liked the poem and decided to keep it, and hopefully I didn't take anyone's ideas. I decided to go ahead and make the whole collection suspect in case there really is a situation.

But I usually do the best I can and tell the truth. In all my life now, emotional and memory problems are making it harder for me to keep the same standards of behavior that I believe in. But I think everyone can relate to managing personal weakness, and I am going to keep trusting God and hoping that good can come from all of my failings and clouds of incomprehension.

Essay

A lot of people associate spiritual mastery with a feeling of peace and some kind of happiness that transcends circumstances. It can be a wisdom of knowing how much emotion to invest in caring about various things, and a sense of control at all times. Even better than that is a love and kindness always at hand to offer anyone around. I think this is not a bad vision of it, and it is a worthy pursuit for people who want to spend their lives in productive ways and have some spiritual power in the process.

But there are many kinds of spiritual experiences on earth, and God has gone to great lengths to offer people from all peoples an equal chance to join him in a variety of quests, relationships, causes, roles and identities, and a thousand other adventures for the soul.

My last memories of a natural mental stability and happy wisdom are from middle school. I was a funny, smart kid, and felt sorry for people when they seemed to give into some unreasonable emotion and unhappiness. My ultimate joy was making people laugh, and though I did care about doing well and achieving things, my main attention was on joking around and making fun of people. I began to have some social power in my classes, and because school was easy for me, I was able to spend class time entertaining whole classes and competing with teachers for the attention of everyone. Some of it was really in good fun, but sometimes I was cruel. And if I thought of something truly witty, I would get the laughs no matter whose hearts got broken.

But I also was having a good time at church, and at a camp during the summer after seventh grade, I decided to become a Christian. I thought to myself right then that the things I would do differently would be to stop making fun of people and to stop cursing. I did mostly stop doing those things, and on the school bus one day, I told one of my friends that I was not cursing because I had become a Christian. Sometimes at school I would think of the funny jokes to say, but I would resist from making the joke, and know that I had just given up some more laughs from people.

God provided me with a great friend named Kelly who lived near me and had also become a Christian through experiences at her church. We played tennis and walked to the drug store to buy candy, and I had a lot of fun and laughs as I started paying attention to who believed what, and whose salvation I needed to keep in mind.

But I had family problems that I did not understand, and as I became more involved in my church youth group, I felt like selfishly guarding my friendships from my twin sister, who had friends but was still not having the same experience as me. One day at the dinner table, it was my turn to pray and I thought about praying in my new way of an actual friendship with God, but chickened out and just prayed a normal simple blessing.

From then on, I