Church + Dayquil

Today I barely made it into church high on Dayquil feeling pretty good, trying hard not to shake anyones hand. I actually wish I had been feeling better, because the hymns were Church of God, Anderson and ones I hadn't heard since I was a teenager. It was great. I felt spaced out and caught up in a cloud of sentimentality and/or medicine!

The message was about unresolved guilt and other baggage people carry around like garbage. The point was to let the "garbage" go before the New Year so we can all be free to focus on the future. God wants us to be happy and free! Great!

I think it's a good idea.

I realized that I don't have a lot of guilt. I do feel victimized by various things that have happened and like maybe I should "talk to God" about some of that, but I don't really feel a lot of guilt. Hmm, maybe I should!

Sometimes I am as sensitive as a brick in the head!

still feverish: more missional emergent monastic churchish stuff

Made it into work only to be sent home. My coworkers are kind.

I have been trying to be still. Being sick makes me realize how much energy I have, how strong I feel life within me. Maybe I am talking about what I perceive to be my spirit.

In my last post I said I didn't talk about my spirituality here anymore.

One idea I share with others is to start a group of people-- people who are alienated by the church, younger adults, older people that understand denominationalism is going to end, and others, and bring everyone into a kind of collaborative effort to ________. I wish there was a safe space for people to gather and talk and discuss. I know there are lots of people scattered in various local churches, and other people who have dropped out of churches and I want to see these and other people come together. I want help organize some kind of group that doesn't inspire people to snicker and be cynical and roll their eyes, I want to be part of a group of people seeking to connect with God in a way that is sincere and authentic.

I want to be part of a missional church, well, I am part of a missional church.

Here is what drives me mad/crazy/ makes me nuts: I know three different people, different leaders in their various communities, all of whom I have much respect for, that are all talking about a similar kind of thing/ project/gathering/conversation. I am connected to all of them in different ways, and believe in all three of their unique dreams. My question is this: why can't everyone just get together and collaborate? Why can't people start a conversation together about building a new and relevant community that is going to focus on helping others as an expression of faith?

Also, I am a very impatient person. I like to get things done, I know how to organize, to make things happen NOW, not next month, next year or in the ambiguous future. Life is short, I want to get things done!

Now, I don't like to pretend expressions of faith that I don't have, but I do believe in missional communities and really could help build, organize something. I want be a part of something, I feel like there is so much potential here. I feel like I am starving for sincere spiritual "fellowship" with people and I am going to 3 different churches! Maybe its my problem. Maybe I need to try harder. I feel that so much of church is not about our spirituality, but about churchstuff. I feel like there is so much fakery at different churches. Is that because there is a boat load of fakery or because I am too cynical?

If what I am saying doesn't make sense, my excuse is a very real fever.

NEWSFLASH! i have a cold!

just kidding. not about the cold though :(

anyhow i'm just not really sure what the purpose of this blog is anymore. i don't really write my honest "thoughts about God" here or whatever, not like they are consistent thoughts anyway, but i don't write them. and as far as my other "spiritual commitments" etcetera I have A.D.D. when it comes to "choosing to read the bible in a year" AND i still haven't found a comfortable answer for what the difference is between constructive criticism and plain old complaining.
I don't want to turn into a whiny church person.

I guess if all else fails this can be a place where I post pictures of my cats :)

snowy little adventure

"Christ came down" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint

crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagon sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

reclaiming the holiday

isn't it about redemption anyway? beneath the fancy, decorative lights.
one of my favorite Christmas carols is O Holy Night

God help us rise up, singing, being, hope

digging out of the cave

I think I have found a cure for the blues. I had a couple of rough days early in the week, but now I am off work for a five day weekend. I realized that since Evan left for the east coast I have allowed our apartment to morph into a kind of gloom cave. It has evolved into a kind of paper station/ clothing depot where I come home from work, dump all the crap I have accumulated around my computer, navigate my way between the ever growing pile of laundry, and find my cats peering at me from their temporary romping around on the unmade bed and/or top of a book/paper stack.

Enough! I am cleaning up and actually having some fun. There are a lot of cures for the blues. My current cure is reliving the summers of 1999 and 2000 when I was completely immersed in Dave Matthews. The music used to make me so happy! :) The sun is out! It's a beautiful day! It's going to be January soon! I have so many good things in my life! I am so lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful people and friends, to have a meaningful job and live in a beautiful place. Well, back to cleaning up the house and letting a little light inside.

more on the job

The funniest thing about my job is probably the parking situation. The main office is located in the downtown core, in a two hour free parking zone. All of the employees and volunteers park their cars, come into the office and then set stopwatches (I am not kidding!) for an hour and 45 minutes. Then all day long the watches going off--everyone is constantly taking turns running outside of the office to move their cars! The meter guy apparently only works until 2pm at which time (wait for it!) he becomes the local dog catcher! He drives around in a little white cart and chalks peoples tires to mark the start of their two hours. Part of my job, along with whoever is at the front desk (both my cubicle and the front desk have windows) is to warn people if I see the meter guy/dog catcher chalking our tires! It is hilarious! Well, I don't plan on writing about work very often, just because it's not very smart, but I just had to write something, especially about the stopwatches and the constant reparking of cars!

what seems like a very long time ago

found poem from the words around my desk

$7 dollars off Jiffy Lube
Covey Run Merlot
The Faith Assembly of...
Titanium,
"and several want to get their GEDS"

"these two new volunteers
have had a training?"

War is a force that gives us meaning
Sharpie, Chase.com, GREPOWERPREP
micro, cannon, nature valley
JVC "and mornings don't work for her", Dr. Pepper--

evergreen christian, ecconline churches-
baptist national convention usa inc.
-- "for who among us would not want
our neighbors to do the same for us?"

joy joy joy joy down in my heart

these last few days, I have felt a genuine kind of joy bubbling up within me and informing my perspective! Isn't that nice!

Busy

Suddenly my life is very, very full. Before I started my new job, I worked pretty hard to keep myself as busy as possible. Now I am even busier! Really though, I have so much energy right now, it is great! It really reminds me of when I was in Americorps except the pay is better :)

In other news, I recently found out that if I delete stuff on this blog it can still be read by people who subscribe to my RSS feed! What can I say, I am a pretty (melo)dramatic person sometimes and this has been a nice place to rant and then delete!

Here's an example that I won't delete:

Last night I had to go shopping for a holiday party gift exchange. It was hell! Everywhere I looked I saw people in various stages of bewilderment, trying to figure out what gift to pick out! I hate dodging all the moms and dads with their dueling carts! I imagined that everyone was lost in their own individual family stories, lost in thinking about things people only think about this time of year (eg. Could Aunt Sally use more candles?! will it piss off Such and such if I brought resees pieces to a potluck?! does candy corn count as a vegetable dish etc). Looking at the cocoa samplers with mugs promising "comfort and joy" I couldn't help myself and uttered a particularly unseasonable greeting toward the merchandise!

Ho, ho ho!

the church and the emerging church (pete and repete jumped off a bridge)

at one of my favorite blogs, Carol Merrit at tribalchurch writes:

I love the ECM because it gives ex-fundies (like me) a refuge. There’s an entire generation of people who grew up in conservative evangelical churches who were told that they had to be Republicans to go to heaven. We were told that caring for the earth didn’t matter, because Jesus was coming back any time now. We were told that the rich were rich because God blessed them and the poor were poor because they deserved it. We were told that women were to always graciously submit to men. We were told that same-gender relationships were an abomination. And none of this made sense in the actual world that we lived in and loved. But the emerging church has become a place for these people.

She continues with some concerns, among others, that there are few women in leadership positions in the emerging church movement:

I don’t understand why more women aren’t in leadership positions. I’ve told it’s because it’s a meritocracy and as soon as women start producing, then they can be in leadership. But I see women producing all the time. Beautifully. Just not usually in emerging church leadership. And I’m not stepping into a feminist time warp to become a part of a movement.

This is a concern I share. Another concern I have is about the use of strategies that are currently considered "emergent" being coopted as tactics to "draw people in" to whatever church, project, etc. people are working on. Not that it is bad to draw people in, but that adopting a certain style often evolves into a routine and then eventually a ritual (which can still be enjoyable as a ritual, eg the doxology).

I have only been to two churches affiliated with the emerging church movement, and attending both of them were fairly depressing as spiritual experiences (but quite inspiring thinking about the potential for social change). I personally felt at both churches like I was at a conference for the Abercrombie and Fitch crowd-- at a church that existed for all the people that made fun of me in high school sort of thing. At both churches there was a late 30s early 40 something pastor that "wanted to be real" a band, coffee, a powerpoint presentation with the sermon. Maybe I am weird and these tactics do reach most people in my demographic. At one of the churches they resorted to U2 music (something i used to enjoy before it reminded me i was a demographic)

Carol pointed out how she cannot understand why the EC is so cynical about mainline pension plans etc. I think that's especially ironic as there are quite a few emergent folks out there who have made quite a name (and market) for themselves through the EC movement.

More on this later perhaps. You can read the rest of Carol's thoughts here.

i have the best job in the entire world

that is how i am feeling after just 2 days of work!

Right now I am still trying to get acclimated, but I am loving it!

i want to be part of the hope

it is my perspective that it is not God's will for people to suffer. personally, something started happening/starts happening, something started changing/starts changing when i began/begin again to not blame God, to not believe that God just allows/exists/is-- detachedly at best and sadistically at worst-- idling by while people suffer. i am happy that i believe in a concept of God that infinitely surpasses my ability to imagine God

beautiful

from tribalchurch:

I was standing in front of the communion table in my cold musty sanctuary. Even in the midwinter, the air never lost the dampness and smell of the swamp. It was an ideal country church, a white structure with a tall steeple. Although, it sloped a bit and there was no insulation. The cracks in the floorboards allowed you peak at the ground and there were places where the corners of the building did not quite meet each other. In fact, on really frigid mornings, I would come into the office, and the water in the toilets would be frozen.

read more of Bearing God

job update!

As some of you know, I had an interview last week with a local nonprofit for the position of volunteer coordinator. Even though I have a good amount of experience, I didn't think the interview went that well because it was so rigorous and intense, but today I got the call!!! I GOT THE JOB!!!

I can't believe it! I have a real job! It is meaningful and I will be good at it! I am so thankful!

serotonin