Friday morning rant :)

I'm really struck lately by the number of people in the church-at-large, who find complete satisfaction in an individualistic faith that focuses on sin and personal development. Now, don't get me wrong, I am the queen of personal development. Personal development is great! Go get yourself a therapist! But please don't let that be the end. Personal development is for the world, for the needy and the broken. We work towards healing for ourselves so we can pass it on to others.

I'm so tired, just bone-drained tired, of this endless religious craziness in the US. I'm tired of people yelling about "traditional values". The Western church is now completely about my personal relationship with Jesus - my best friend, and how my life was changed, and how great I feel about myself. It's all about what my neighbor is doing wrong, how my neighbor is sinning, or causing me to sin, all about how frightened I am of where my country is going. I just want to scream, "Get a freakin' grip, people!"

I might be single forever (lest you forget that this blog is all about me finding a man), because I'm not willing to put "Jesus is my homeboy" on my eHarmony page. I might be single forever, but I'm not willing to live a life of family devotions and being a submissive invisible wife. I may be single forever, but I'm not going to buy into the idea that women should cover themselves up to keep men from sinning. It's 110 degrees out? Yup, I'm gonna wear shorts. Deal with it. You had a sexual thought about a person other than your spouse? Deal with it, and move on. I want everyone to collectively throw in the "personal sin elimination" card and just accept the fact that they're flawed and are going to do and say and think stupid things. Yup, you are. You're human. Deal with it. You think God agonizes about forgiving you? It's doubtful. There are, after all, seven billion people in the world, and they all need four hugs a day, so...you do the math.

Now go out there and do something that helps people, that doesn't involve a sign. Peace out.

I love it when I'm wrong.

Vintage Van Eli Shoes - Aren't they fun?

On the walk home this afternoon, in 102 degree heat, I saw a bird struggling in the gutter. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to help the poor thing, then noticed that his tail was broken. I always hear that the worst thing a person can do is touch a wild bird, so I used some nearby brush to help the bird into the shade, hoping perhaps that a few degrees might help the bird to suffer less. The bird wasn't having it. He wanted to stay in the gutter.

A young man was watching me, and pulled out a headphone to talk to me. I said, "He's gonna die. I just wanted to help him die in the shade." This man understood - he showed me empathy! He looked like a gangsta (a completely normal look in my neighborhood), and my gut reaction was that this guy was not going to understand my need to save the bird. But he did! He really did, and now I'm reminded of how much goodness is in the world, and how a lot of the bad-ness is caused by our assumptions and false beliefs.

I wonder what the world would look like if we all believed that everyone was a friend. Is that what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your neighbor as yourself", that we always assume the best in others?

Thrift Share Monday :)

So I was at the special-item-case at the rescue mission thrift store this afternoon, and the woman behind the counter said, "Men are weird. [To me] Tell me they're weird."

I responded, "Um, it is difficult for us to understand one another."

"Ha! You know they're weird; admit it. My husband is a man, and he is weird. He is the weirdest person I know."

"Well, share your wisdom with me. How do you manage to stay married to such a weird man?" Oh man, I hooked her with that one.

"Well listen up girls [There was another woman behind the counter]. My husband is the love of my life. We can talk about anything. But he is weird. That's just how it is. I didn't have another choice - I couldn't marry a woman! And he thinks I'm weird. But I never would have married him if he hadn't been in love with Jesus. That's the most important thing."

So girls, take note. Marry a man who's in love with Jesus, and never marry a woman. I don't know about you, but I sure learned something today. I love it when people share their wisdom with me. Thrift store wisdom. I need to start writing all this stuff down. The people need to hear!

I think it's so funny that so many thrift stores are "christian" organizations, and assume that everyone who shops there must share their beliefs. I'm good-natured about it, but I highly doubt that everyone is. Hey! Here's a fun topic. Share your experiences with advice-giving thrift-store employees/volunteers in the comments. Let's see what we come up with.

Linking up with Apron Thrift Girl :)

I'm boycotting California

 

So this rash of commercial boycotts, led by conservative Christian groups, has got me thinking. What would Jesus do?

Let me do some research [Research sounds, coffee drinking, and sleepless nights].

Well folks, I've reached an unfortunate conclusion. It seems that the Christian scripture suggests that Jesus wanted us to love one another, to even sacrifice for one another, even those we have trouble loving. This is not good for the overall argument. I am fine boycotting commercial establishments like JCPenney and Toys R Us, but how does one move out of state, or for that matter, a rapidly changing country? Canada is worse. Mexico is ruled by the cartels. South America, Europe, and on and on; where does a well-meaning conservative girl go?

Africa is the last of the holdouts. Or maybe East Asia.

We're being overrun, people. See the signs.

The double bind

I really wish I could take this lot on a beach vacation :)

The web is full of women and girls telling the world how thin they are (or want to be), how clean their house is, how awesome their kids/husband are, and how much Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. And in some ways, I'm totally into it. I like "miracle" recipes for carpet stains, and I think the female body is one of the most beautiful things we'll ever see. But I really hate it when I see anything along the lines of "You are single because God is busy finding the perfect man for you."

Maybe I'm subconsciously bitter, and taking it out on hopeful twenty-somethings who feel burnt by men. I really don't think this is the case. I just wish that all of this energy was put towards something more meaningful. Partnering is meaningful, but only to a point. There's a whole wide world out there, and sometimes it makes me sad to see loads of people playing into their aesthetic fantasies, showing off their "perfect" families and homes as if this is the point. It's not.

This isn't a finished thought. I haven't eaten breakfast yet, and I'm trying to recreate a thought that began last night after looking at Pinterest. People aren't evil, and they aren't intentionally oblivious, but sometimes they make me crazy. I can also be pretty judgmental. I'm trying to be an adult, and sometimes that feels awesome, and sometimes it feels really lonely. Here I am at the end of my education, and the beginning of my professional career, and all of my old friends are in a different place. They're happily married and nesting, and I'm living in a garage and freezing at night.

It's hard to know that I waited ten years to tell the person I loved how I felt, and he just walked away.

Discounted NON-local produce

Me at the store, last Saturday morning: "Blueberries? Yes please...Oh no; they're from Canada. Sad face. No thanks...[Two aisles later] Blueberries from Canada on the half-off shelf? Yes please! (zero guilt)"

Local is great. Organic is great. Organic from Canada, or local with pesticides? I have gone through this produce department dilemma many times, hungry, tired, and frustrated. And I'm not alone-there are others. A friend told me the other day that she's stopped caring about food ethics. How can a person care about absolutely everything that comes under this label, and do all of the wonderful things we were made to do, like watch Bachelor Pad and any reality show with the word Kardashian?

So what do people do? People who are imperfect and don't love kale (obviously not me, dear sister; I love my greens). They need to know that just because they don't have a vegetable garden, they aren't going to hell. They need to know that if they eat cheese, Jesus won't cry. They need to know that if they don't ride thirty miles to work on a commuter bike, angels won't lose their wings.

Vegan righteousness is off the charts. That's why I have no vegan friends (Note: If you are my friend, and also happen to be vegan, know that I say this because that is not who you are to me). Because when I'm invited over for dinner, and there happens to be feta on the all-squash casserole, I'm still going to eat it. And if the host wasn't terribly kind and thoughtful and put tofu in the dip instead of yogurt, I'd still eat it. Because people, every single time, are more important than your pious food choices. They're your choices, after all. Own them.

The one thing I won't give up

I am an eternal optimist. It's in my bones. But I wasn't programmed to be this way. I was programmed to be afraid of the future, every one around me, sleep, the dark, and the monsters underneath my bed. I was AFRAID.

I first recognized this part of me when I had a total freakout in class one morning, one of my first graduate school classes. The discussion on the table was about the ability of persons to change, and the simple answer is that some people will never change. Some people, it would seem, cannot change.

But the question I was asking, and thus the answer, was entirely different. I believe that people have the capacity to change, that God's divine goodness allows it, that this is grace, and that to deny it is to miss out on it. Several people disagreed, vehemently; I was shocked.

I think I raised my voice. I think I almost cried; my face was undoubtedly red. I was furious, raging from the inside. How dare anyone question that change is possible, that people can change? I saw it so clearly, but I couldn't communicate that which was central to my entire being.

My life up to that moment, was filled with grief, with loss, with longing. I didn't know enough to label it with those words because I was too busy feeling my own pain, but I knew enough to know that life sucked. I knew enough to know that life was not worth living all the time, that I myself oftentimes didn't want to live, and that I didn't choose to live the life I was given at conception (I use that word to avoid causing my readers any trouble continuing to read).

I didn't choose my parents or what they gave me. But damn-it, if I didn't believe with my whole being that life didn't have to suck. I still believe this, even when I'm so sad that I can't see any hope, I still believe this. Because there's a little girl inside of me who wants to die, and I'm never going to tell her that it doesn't get better, that it will in fact get worse for a while, a long while that will feel like forever. I won't tell her that. She deserves to be lied to.

Sometimes I sound deluded or naive when I talk this way. I recognize that. But if I sound that way, it's because I choose a life of delusion over the truth. I can live each day fully with hope, but sometimes, with the reality set before me at any given moment, there is not enough hope in the world to keep me alive. It is then that I lie, knowingly. It will get better. It will get better. It will get better. Because people can change, and circumstances can change, and life as you now know it, can change.

Am I Ever in Control?

The past four years of my life have not been easy. Going to a seminary wasn't what I had in mind when I got my BA in Psychology. I was never a very "religious" person. I thought that only super-Jesus-lovers went to seminary, and I never did the whole Jesus thing very well as a young person. I didn't get it. I saw God as harsh and unloving, so Jesus only increased my fears of being inadequate, of being weak, and of being unloveable.

I guess I was always spiritual, deep down, in-tune with my own experience of the world and that of others. I just didn't know that that was what it was when I was fifteen. And when I found God at twenty-one, I wasn't thinking I'd suddenly become a different person. But somehow, in a moment, I began to care very deeply about what God thought. I wanted to do exactly what God wanted me to do, every single minute of the day.

But that was an immature faith. God doesn't work that way at all. Relinquishing control over my life didn't make my life better. I still don't know the difference between being lazy and giving my troubles to God, or if there is ever a time when that exists, when we can have control over our own lives. I don't know when the power of choice ends and the power of God begins. I know very little. But I know that God is good, and that in the midst of great pain, God is with us. That I know for sure.