Wednesday, December 4, 2013

I Shouldn't Read Facebook

Why do I do things that I know will upset me?  Why do I read the comments of anything on facebook?

Why oh why.

I know I partly do it because 1) I want to know what people are thinking. 2) It is a safe thing to get mad at.

But it is no longer safe.

I am letting it get to me in an unhealthy way.  It is starting to make me question who I am and what I believe.  Partly because I have not spent enough time doing the work to make my own faith structure strong enough, at least not recently. So I get really disheartened and angry and just want to throw in the towel.  Don't call me a Christian, I'm not one of those people.

But I am a Christian.

I do believe that Jesus is more than a nice guy. I do believe there is salvation through Christ.  Really, I do.

So maybe I should be reclaiming instead of hiding.

And I do know when I do talk about what I believe with someone and how it affects my life, it does matter and it does start to change perspective.

Sometimes it can be hard to be either the only liberal in the room of Christians or the only Christian in the room of liberals.

But let's get real, I am so lucky because I live in a place that this doesn't happen all that much.  I have lots of pretty rad liberal Christian friends.  Who are some of the most thoughtful, intelligent people I know.

So really what I need to do is have lunch with some friends, read the Bible or some good theology books and stay away from comment sections for a while.

Thanks, blog for helping work that out.  :)

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Life After Death

I have no idea if there is life after death.  Sometimes I want to say yes, but other times that just seems like wishful thinking. I wonder if my true hang up is that the concept of infinity freaks me out.  When I think about what infinity is it makes me uneasy and uncertain and blows my mind in sometimes an uncomfortable way and sometimes in an awe inspiring way.

The awe moments come when I'm on the "this afterlife thing makes no sense but I will embrace it because surely my little brain can't comprehend it all" moments.

As interesting as that all is, I'm not really thinking about that kind of life after death tonight. I'm thinking about regular boring life and exciting life and hard life and well, life after someone dies.

Life after death.

We keep living.

I had to look up how long it had been since two friends died.  Eight years.  Eight years of me living, of the community we belong to still gathering.  Eight years of missed conversations.

Since it has been eight years it seems like something I shouldn't think about very much.  And I don't. But I do, and I still hurt.  Not in the raw way anymore.  Just in the scabby way.  Just in the way that I wish instead of my little girl having Dinah as a middle name she would be able to play with Dinah's little one, that never existed, but may have if there was time.

There is life after death.

And a scar.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Benefit of a uniform

Sometime ago I wrote about pastors wearing robes.  After a conversation with a pastor friend and some thought I don't want to take back what I said, but I would like to amend it.  What we don't see when a pastor wears a robe is his/her personal style of dress.  We see tradition.  We don't see if she is stylish or if he is a hipster pastor.  We don't get into conversations about if what is worn is "appropriate".  That being said, people will still talk about such things, but it is more limited - make-up or not, hair style, facial hair.

Annoys me that this seems to be more of an issue for women.  Barbara Walters interviewed Secretary Hillary Clinton and asks her about lipstick.  Really!  You have one of the most powerful people in the world sitting in front of you and you ask about lipstick.  That is shameful.  It seems we don't know what to do with women.  Should they be like men?  Should we just care about them as potential sexual partners?  (That is what the lipstick question boils down to.)

While we try to figure ourselves out, I get why women pastors might choose to wear a robe.  It also gives them more authority and power which is strangely ok in this circumstance.  Men, you have the power.  You don't need the robe.  Or maybe you do, so I don't judge you by your manner of dress.

Undecided.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

I have a few thoughts circulating in my mind, so I'm going to put them down.  This post might fall in the BS category of this blog.

Either do it or don't.  I've been thinking about how thinking about an idea is fine and all, but really the doing is what matters.  So, I've been working on taking more risks, even small ones.  One of my maybe small maybe big things I want to try is to open a "Toy Library" for other parents/kids to check out toys. I'm thinking of running out of our garage.  Many steps between thought and reality, but the old fridge is getting picked up on Tuesday so that is a good start.

Be more interesting.  I waste a lot of time reading stuff online that doesn't do me any good and just makes me angry.  So, instead of just surviving and wasting time I want to DO things.  I want to have more of those kind of days that you look back and think wow, I did a lot today.   Even if it is simple stuff like I made pretzels first time or clean up a closet or write a blog post at least I'm doing and not just existing.

This house is too big.  We need to downsize.  Meanwhile lets use it all for great things like hosting people and making things and opening toy libraries.  Currently our garage holds bikes and boxes - empty boxes, and an old fridge, surely this space could be put to better use.  We need to downsize our stuff before our stuff owns us.

That's enough for now.