random thoughts from moving to blogging

i feel kind of sad today...i had been thinking it was mostly because my hubby is 9 hours away at a wedding i couldn't attend because there was just too much to do here...he felt horrible leaving, but he was a groomsmen and had to go and that left me to pack up the apt. so we can move tomorrow..(thank you, Jesus!) i am happy to say the apt is all packed up minus the techincal stuff he begged me to leave alone until he gets home tomorrow and the house is cleaned. its been a productive 1.5 days and that usually makes me happy.

i sat down to take a break and admire (i admit it) a job well done. i made some brown rice (the only food i remembered to leave unpacked) and poured myself a 1/2 glass of yellow tail red wine.

i checked my email, but there was nothing waiting for me. i called my mom, we talked for a few minutes and then lost connection and i was forced to ask myself what i am sad about. i came up with two things.

i am sad about the state of the world. and i am sad about the state of the church.

we don't have tv, so occasionally i feed my news addiction by looking at foxnews.com and i read about the little girl from idaho they just found with a sex offender at a denny's restaraunt after 7 weeks of being gone and how they are thinking of having a 24 hr news channel just report missing children because its so much of the media these days. i read about how this man had writtten about his 'demons' on his blog before abducting the girl. and then i found my way onto a link about katie holmes and the whole scientology thing. (which by the way, is pretty scary) then a little banner popped up on my screen that advertised "feed lindsay" and i barely recognized lindsay lohan from the picture...child actor fallen to anorexia. i sighed.

i decided to see if anyone had posted on my blog (or sent me an email in the last 5 minutes) to distract myself. no such luck. so i clicked on the link on blog site "blogs we've been noticing"... www.postsecret.blogspot.com and its a blog site (definately not for children) dedicated to posting people's secrets. apparently , people send post cards and every sunday they scan in a few select ones so people can tell their secrets. at first it seemed like a joke, but i read on...people posting that they had never been able to tell about the sexual abuse in their childhood or the awful thoughts that plague their minds...the owner of the blog ended up seeming charitable to me...providing (how strange) a place for people to be honest. its not for the faint of heart, but you should read it.

wow. the world is sad. people are lonelier than ever, aren't they? i wanted to respond back to almost all of those posts and say "i have felt that too! you are not alone" or "don't you know every sexual abuse survivor feels responsible?" or something to connect them to compassion....hope...family. Something. Anything.

I went for a run then. To burn off some steam- to get into the glorious Seattle sun. it was amazing until i realized i was far from home and my husband farther still and i got scared. what of someone attacked me? what if i car slowed down and tossed me in the back seat and no one could tell shawn what happened when he got home and found i was gone? i picked up the speed and took a shortcut home.

i would call him, but he's in the middle of a wedding...i came in, kicked off my shoes, got a glass of water, and sat back down to read my friends' blogs. not much new since an hour before, so i start looking at the blog links on their pages...reading their friends' entries. (yes, its boring to be without a car!) along thwe way, i actually found blogs of some friends from college. i read and i read and i read.

that's when i found out the second thing i am sad about: the church. i am really, truly, wholeheartedly sad about the church. i used to be so mad about things i could spit nails..but over the course of the last year, my anger has quieted into a deep and unrelenting sadness. i love her. i am a fan of saying "you can't choose your family"..and the church is my family. i want to know and love her the way i love my sister...intimately, passionately, fiercely...i want to laugh with her and cry with her and sense who she is and what she thinks without inquiring. But my love for her feels more like the love for a runaway cousin who lives a life beneath her...one you have begged and pleaded and prayed to come home only to have her refuse. love that feels a tad bit like a fresh bruise...if someone bumps it at all, it hurts.

i don't fit with the current (and yes, i do mean current as in it won't stay long) fads in Christianity. i don't get them. i admit it. i read the blogs of my former classmates and i couldn't relate one iota to the long doctrine- related debates or the bashing (and yes, i do mean bashing) of every thought that varied from their own. i read their words and felt like a complete alien. i kept thinking over and over to myself how harsh their tones were...how repulsed i felt at their comments,,,how much i hoped no one wondering about Jesus would be perusing through blogs and find them. i love these friends, mind you. they are dear and not AT ALL do i question their love for God. not a bit. i just wish it wasn't so biting.

someone whose friendship has long been mine told me this week they think its a crock to say the Bible is a love letter from God to us...i chewed on that statement. i know what he meant. i think i disagree (although my blogging friends wouldn't, i am sure) i know the Bible was written as a historical account of things. i know at the time, no one thought they were writing the "Bible" i know it sounds cheesy. i know right now everyone wants to make Christianity really impersonal. they want to say it has nothing to do withe human participation...it has nothing to do with you or me at all...God isn't concerned or affected. i think the beauty of the Bible is that somehow it was meant for us as well as for times before- that the beauty is buried in the understanding that it is both fact and mystery...that truth transcends the boundaries of this world and of our minds. i happen to think God is affected...not changed, but affected. If Jesus was the "image of the invisible God" and He wept with compassion over people, then i must believe God is affected. Just read the minor prophets- God often sounds like a jealous lover. i think the problem is with our understanding. if we are 'affected' it either adds to us or takes away from us..but isn't it possible that God (being that He is God) can feel without losing or gaining? I just know i cannot buy that God is unmoved and unemotional and impersonal.

i don't claim to be a scholar of any kind. i want to state that. i refuse to argue theological issues and participate in debates on the basis that the Bible tells us not to be quarrelsome and anyway, most of the time i am too stuck at "love your neighbor as yourself" to have time for such things. all i know is this: God has spoken to me through the Bible and its probably not really 'in context' and probably most scholars would disagree with what i heard. and that's okay with me, because He didn't speak it to them or to me for them...He spoke to me. and i may not know a whole lot of things, but i know His voice. i know He speaks to me sometimes in the morning when i roll over and watch my husband sleeping, i know He speaks to me in the quiet of the morning, I know He moves my heart all through the day. i believe this possible, because Paul cried out that he was laboring "until Christ be formed in you"...and by faith and little by little in experience i am seeing His thoughts and emotions and personhood forming in me...overrunning my thoughts and emotions and person. anyway, i was under the impression that is what Christianity was suupposed to be. God choosing to infiltrate the world through broken people.

and anyway, Jesus didn't teach 'in context'.

anyway, this has gotten long and it wasn't supposed to be...someday i will write a short blog!

thanks for reading.