Craptastic

My laptop's keyboard is fuct, so I can mostly just cut & paste :-(

So, I'll just share some wisdom from one of my fave sites: http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

Hobo: Look at you on your cell phone talking all about yo' business. I don't want to hear yo' business. You keep that private shit to yo'self. All cell phones should be put on the moon.

--53rd & Lexington

All I can say is -- word Hobo man, word.

mute

Some things there just are no words for.

"...but it's calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion..."

the aching

These are difficult days. Understatement.

Some days I think they are the most difficult days I've ever had in my life. Hyperbole?

I wonder if I'm up to it. If my mettle will hold. Every fiber in my body aches. I kept pushing through the pain, until today when it stopped me. I sat on the couch and was unable to move. I couldn't even imagine getting up. When I finally moved, it was slowly, with the greatest effort.

As S. prayed over me last night, his hand on my head -- He petitioned God to give me deliverance. He asked God to show me how to trust His promises, No Matter How It Looks. That returns to me again and again -- the challenge to see beyond the circumstances. I must look through them like a smokescreen and see what is on the other side. I remind myself again and again not to care what it looks like, to not cave in. I will call those things which are not as if they are.

It is apt that those words were prayed last night, as my father called me today with more bad news. Everyday this saga gets worse. The brutality increases. I do not have the physical strength to hold back the barbarism that has invaded.

So, I will fight in the spirit instead. It is all I have. It is the place where I am as weak as I am in body, but where He is strong. I cried out to God, and He heard my desperate pleas. I sat on the couch and prayed, as the tears rolled down my face. I am learning what it means to trust Him, to have the kind of faith that will move this mountain. Justice belongs to Him. He alone can deliver us out of this snare that has been set by the wicked. The people who are set against us have declared war on almighty God, they just don't know it yet. The irony is that they claim to be Christians. Well, that should be ironic. These days, it's to be expected. How sad. I won't even begin to voice my disgust at the latest incident in which a televangelist shot his mouth off like a cretin. It's so revoltingly predictable as to hardly be worthy of mention.

I praise God that I'm broken, that I don't sit in lofty places, that I'm not blessed and comfortable. It has made me humble. It has taught me never to judge. It is perfecting His strength through my weakness. If I had the world at my command, if I was smug, self-satisfied, and flush, would I see Him the way that I do? I can rejoice that if I ever become successful, safe, and financially self-sufficient, I will remember who brought me up out of ruin, and I will not be callous and cold. No matter how much money I have, I want to always remember my poverty of the spirit. I want to always know my state of need before God, my unrighteousness, my flawed human heart.

I want to have more money in the future, so I can give more of it away. I would like to spend less time worrying about money, and more time helping people. When I read about what is going on in our country and all over the world, I wish I was a billionaire. I never cared much about money when I was little, because I didn't know what it could do. I only wanted to be an artist in a Paris garret. I was a punk, a poet, a romantic bohemian. I wasn't prepared for the real world. I didn't know the depths of its sorrows, nor how it chews up the poor and spits them out. I didn't know I'd find myself a victim of the lack of money. I didn't know I'd be overeducated and underpaid. I didn't know I'd become too ill to work, and need to navigate the governmental systems.

I hardly have any money in the bank, but I hope that a little girl in The Gambia is doing better because my father and I are sponsoring her. I have her picture on my refrigerator. She's not smiling. I hope she smiles sometimes now. I hope that now at least she knows that someone cares about what happens to her and her family. I donated to the Niger famine crisis through two different organizations. I feel like it's a drop of water going into an empty bucket, not enough to even give someone who is thristy a mouthful to drink; I can only hope that combined with other drops of water, it will shower the dry and weary land, and feed the children that suffer so. I don't mention this to pat myself on the back and to assuage white liberal guilt, I write about it because I realize that I am poor and want to give it all away, and that there are rich people like the televangelists who just keep lining their coffers with monies wrested from those they dupe. I want to see them help someone for once, and then, let them talk. Their day of judgment will come. I know one thing, on Judgment Day I'd rather be a repented killer, than be a Fallwell, a Robertson, a Swaggart, or any of the hundreds of others who are so boldly self-righteous.

It reminds me of this passage in the Bible:

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

Luke 18: 9-14

9 Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Just thinking about that unknown humble man brings tears to my eyes. Oh, that we would all be so broken. Dear God, that is my prayer, that I would be ever broken before you.

demolition

The days get harder, the skull gets softer. Bony fingers poking through layers of yielding brain mass, probing into grey matter. What matters? What's the matter? Twists and turns and labyrinthine knots of pathways folding back in on themselves. I could get lost in here. Adult supervision required. Not recommended for children under age four. Four. When we moved to the house, I was four. For so long, I was there, forlorn, and for so long, I've been leaving.

Behind closed doors lie ruined cities of squalor. A private shame that the neighborhood knows all about. Despite my hiding place in the closet where they forgot all about me, I could still be seen by others. If I left the closet, I lost my powers of invisibility. People saw. People could see. They knew. They all knew. Loud voices bellowing and screeching from the windows and doors announced the fissures within to the world.

I dreamt of ruin, destruction, divorce. These things sugared my dreams when all else laid bitter upon my tongue. Someone please come and tear this house down. Burn it to the ground. Sweep away the ashes and cinder till there is only dry ground...dry ground. Mark this place off for the barrenness of burial ground. Do not place living things here again to die.

Baptismal Self

Picture postcard blue sky, white clouds -- seen while floating in an inner tube, my head resting on it as a pillow, lying on my back, drifting...from shallow to deep end and back, while my people laughed and talked on the patio. The pool was empty, all mine. I thought back to two Augusts ago when I was baptized in this same pool, and the freedom I felt as I floated afterward, newly reborn. Today I've let down roots into that freedom and I live there now. It's not easy, it's not free of trial, it's still a life on this fallen planet, but I am not dragging all the ghost chains behind me now.

The day of my Baptism, I went to church all dressed in black and wore a tie with a picture of a skull on it. I was mock flinty and sounded like Clint Eastwood, when I professed my new motto: "It's a good day to die". Despite my comic delivery, I meant it. I was attending my own funeral, and I'd never been so happy. I was about to drown my old self by intention. The unwelcome uninvited spirit guests that dogged me went down into the water too and didn't come back up with me. When I came out of the water, I put on a white dress; the outward symbol of an inner transformation. I was a new creation, and I was determined to start a chapter of new depth, new freedom, new power.

Today I have my memories, my pain, my losses, my longings, but I walk in the knowledge of who I am, and more importantly, whose I am. This is more than enough. No matter what else happens.

small improvements

Well, today was decidedly better, though I don't have the desire to enumerate yesterday's tragedies, nor today's remedies. I will just say that the complete disaster of my Father's house sale is slowly working out. We have ten days to get everything out of there. It's going to be a challenge. It will get done somehow though. I just hope I don't have a nervous breakdown first. No, why waste a good nervous breakdown on this? Best wait till the move is done, then retire to my cave and write. Oh, who am I kidding, I can't afford the luxury of a self-indulgent nervous breakdown any more, I have to whip my life into shape. Besides, don't I have better things to do?

I have stayed up way too late futzing around on the computer. I got back from my Father's house after Midnight though and it always takes me a while to decompress. It's after 4AM now. I have to be up by 9AM to go to church. My friend B. is getting baptized after church. I can't wait for that. After that, I get to go in the pool and the jacuzzi. I can't wait. I've been a Mermaid with very dry scales all summer long. Imagine I'm on a freaking island surrounded by water and I haven't been able to go to the beach. Let alone a swimming pool. This will be my day to remedy that, and stay in the water till I go pruney.

In the midst of all this, I have health stuff that needs attending to, and things to do in order to complete my social security disability application. These days there's just no time to get everything done. Tomorrow night after church and after the baptism and pool party, I need to sit down and fill out some of those S.S.D. forms. Queer as Folk isn't on anymore *sob* so I'll have time. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and Desperate Housewives are all repeats. The L Word is done for the season, and in repeats as well. "Weeds" is on, and so far that's pretty good. But my Sunday night, which was my big TV night of the week is no more for the time being. So, those freaking forms need to get done and I have no excuses (I need to remind myself to read this tomorrow night, when I may be trying to procrastinate).

Speaking of procrastinating, I learned from the best. Tonight my Dad convinced me that we needed a break and we watched an insane Norweigen film "Elling" (it was subtitled). The Europeans really know how to do a film with humor and pathos. Americans don't really make films like that. Some indie films get more at that, but there is still some quality that Foreign films have that ours don't. I think they're just more mature, coming from older countries with far more comfort about the full spectrum of human nature. This is overly generalizing, but I'm too tired to be more articulate about this at the moment. Anyway, this film was side splittingly funny, and yet filled with intense emotions, nuance, and pathos. My cheeks hurt from laughing and smiling afterwards, yet I was also touched by the totally unsentimentalized humanity of the story.

This was a largely pointless entry devoid of fizz, but I am trying to make myself write here every single day, if only as an exercise in self-discipline. I'm having fond wistful longing thoughts about an unknown disciplinarian now, but I'm not thinking about writing anymore. But you knew that.

This was the kind of day which might have been better if it had never appeared on the calendar.

Comme ci, Comme ca

I had a mixed bag of a day. I found out my cat still has fleas. Grrr. I declared war on the bloodsucking fiends and kicked ass, only to find them back again. I loathe fleas. Just knowing they are around makes me creepy crawly, and anything that brushes past my skin makes me think that one of them is on me. I must win this war at all costs. If I have to bring in the big guns, I will get those nasty chemical foggers and go stay at my Dad's house for a bit while it bombs my apartment. I suppose I'll have to bring the princess kitty with me too, but somehow I have to make sure she has no more fleas or eggs on her, otherwise she'll infest my dad's house, and re-infest the apartment when I bring her back. This really sucks. No pun intended.

Other than that, I went to knitting group, and that is always a blast. I knit with some crazy chicas. I love it. It's the highlight of my week. I got to chatting with some new girls that have been coming for a few weeks, and I found out about a spinning group -- Oooo! I am going to have to go to the next one. I know someone who hand spins, and her yarns are gorgeous but cost a fortune. Now I'll be able to make my own if I can get the hang of it. We shall see. That would be so rad though, because I could create my own color combinations, and really customize and be creative with it.

I finished the scarf I was knitting for the girl who works at the cafe where we meet. She requested one after she got to know me a bit, as I'm there every week. I gave it to her tonight. She loved it. I got free frosty caramel cappuccino, and a discount on bread that my dad wanted me to pick up for him. Wheeeee. Knitting for people has it's perks.

I came home and watched Discovery Health channel. This has become my thing this week. I am watching all these shows about weight loss surgery, and follow-up plastic surgeries needed. They also had a show on tonight about people who became super obese and could no longer care for themselves. I'm asking myself why the morbid fascination with these shows lately, especially since some of them show graphic stomach-turning operations. Am I trying to dissuade myself from considering weight loss surgery? Am I trying to encourage myself to try again to lose weight naturally? Am I trying to look at people far worse off than me and delude myself into thinking that my weight isn't as serious of an issue as theirs is? Or maybe it's just the novelty of finally seeing fat people on TV. Of course, as usual, they are only depicted as living less than full lives, and being on the brink of total health collapse. On the other hand, there was a "Miss Fat" pageant on TV recently, which was a freaking scream. The girl who won was what normal folks would probably consider average, or at the most "thick," but hey, that's okay, because she was the prettiest, and she could sing like a diva. There were much fatter chicks on the show though, and they all were treated equally and depicted as women with real lives, not just medical oddities. So, I suppose we might be getting somewhere.

Don't even get me started on the Dove ad campaign for "real beauty" -- I mean, nice try boys, but none of those women is remotely fat. That's part of the problem with our country; that seeing normal women with average-sized bodies is painted as some kind of bold, risky innovation for marketing. Yea, so what, corporate Amerikkka has finally figured out that the majority of women in this country are curvy girls who spend money too, and they want it to be spent on their products. Wow, Big Fat Fucking Deal. All that amounts to is the repackaging of greed. There is nothing new about that. To impress me, they're gonna have to do a lot better than that. Yawn.

It's in the blood

I woke up at 4PM. I did nothing today except wash some dishes, drink iced coffee, knit, watch TV, talk on the phone and snuggle with my mush cat who kept jumping on me and velcro-ing herself to me all day and night. I didn't leave my apartment once, not even to get the mail. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I stay put when I feel like this. My body also aches a lot and I have no energy to deal with anything I want to get done. I have a host of chronic health problems, and depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder...You name it, I probably have it. I can flip through the DSM-IV and find more numbers to put after my name. I did that once, but I got tired. There were too many possible numbers.

I had good intentions for today, even given how late I got up, but then I had four conversations back and forth with my Father on the complete disaster that has become of the house sale. After hearing more bad news, I was feeling quite dismayed, and lost the bulk of my resolve for the day. The family home has been sold but there are issues... Aren't there always? My father has untreated OCD. He is a compulsive hoarder. We have owned this house for 33 years. Use your imagination. Then multiply your worst vision by a hundred and you may have some idea. It gets worse though -- my Father is 74 and is unable to do any of his own packing, purging or cleaning. My older brother, the only sibling I have, will not help. Guess who that leaves? Oh yes grasshopper, it leaves me, number one daughter, responsible. My Mother passed away in 1998. I seem to have been passed her mantle of responsibility, albeit with none of the say-so that comes with being the matriarch.

Half of the things my Dad has done since she has been gone he would have never gotten away with when she was alive. Yes, they had an awful marriage, but somehow in it's own sick, insane, abusive way it worked to keep his disease in check somewhat, because he knew she'd give him hell if he crossed certain unspoken lines. My pleas, threats, and desperate entreaties do not have the same effect that her abuse did. Oh don't misread this, he abused her plenty, and sometimes far worse, but as the years warped their way along, she became just as twisted, perhaps by maintaining her proximity to him, and continuing their sick dance till death did they part.

I feel like I've been left holding the bag of all of the cumulative madness of my family.

I also must humble myself and admit that I have the same disorder my Dad has. I'm not quite as bad and far gone as he is (thank God) but I do have a problem. I have clutter. I have organization problems. I tend to acquire things, and then not know how to manage those items. I buy things even when I'm broke. I get free things from various places. It's a disease. I am overwhelmed by the flow of paper: magazines, circulars, mail, newspapers, junk mail, catalogs, etc. I get crippled and paralyzed when it comes to dealing with these issues. I try very hard, but I get overwhelmed and shut down. I am determined not to end up like my Dad though. I have a tangible, living example of what happens if you let yourself spin completely out of control. I feel this when I look at his physical condition with regard to his size too. He's in really bad shape healthwise, partially because he hasn't taken care of himself for much of his adult life. He's fat. I'm fat. I don't want to end up like him. He has a collection of different canes. We bought him a walker recently. When I take him shopping, he usually rides in those motorized carts at the stores that provide them. He can't drive himself around most days because his knee and hip hurts too much to work the clutch on his manual transmission van.

Well, I suppose that's more than enough information for now, besides which, it's 5AM, and it might be a good idea to get some sleep. This is certainly not an edifying post. However, my cat just jumped on me, and she's purring. Thank you God for black cats.

In the presence of the saints

Tonight I went to a potluck for my friend E. who is leaving New York to go back to Indiana after working a summer job here. She started coming to my church in April, and she was pretty endearing right away. Everyone fell in love with her. The word "radiant" was used to describe her multiple times this evening, as we were all saying our goodbyes.

Although saying goodbye was hard, tonight was amazing. The night was hosted at the home of my friends S. & A., a young married couple. Last week in church, S. had a prophetic word concerning a bell. The image was of a very old heavy bell, perhaps the kind in a church tower, and this bell was covered in dust, but on one section, the dust had been wiped away. The word was that the rest of this bell was soon going to be dusted off, and the bell would be put to use again. S. strongly got that the interpretation of the prophecy was that it was symbolic of someone who had moved in a spiritual gift, particularly prophecy, and at some point, for whatever reason, had stopped operating in this gift, and that God was saying it was time to start again. Well, sitting there, I knew without a doubt that it was about me.

About two years ago, I started getting prophecies from God both for individuals and for the church as a whole. Then somewhere along the way, something must have happened, and I shut down on that. I am not even sure when it happened, but it dried up and went away. It went so far that I was even scared to pray for people directly, meaning laying my hands on them and praying out loud. I could pray for someone quietly and on my own, but I started to be afraid that I'd have nothing to say when I started to pray for them aloud; that God would not speak to them through me. I stopped praying for people in mid-week Kinships or at Sunday services altogether.

When S. gave the bell prophecy, I thought I should go to him, claim it, and ask him to pray for me. Then I saw my friend B., and I knew I wasn't afraid to pray for her, because we're close, and I'm at ease and less worried about screwing up, so I said to myself "OK, time to start dusting off the rest of the bell" and went over and prayed for her. Lo and behold, God showed me things on her behalf, gave me words to say, and told me what I needed to pray about, and how to share what He was showing me with her.

So tonight, we were all praying for E. as a group, before sending her off, and I was sitting on the couch and was softly praying in the spirit for a while (i.e. praying in tongues) and then I was just quiet for a while, and suddenly I saw a vision in my mind, and tears rolled down my eyes, but I wasn't sad. I remembered other times when prophecies came to me in the past, I would cry, and to me it was almost as if God is so big, and so impossible to contain, that even when you get a little bit of Him flowing through you, that it's too much for a human being to hold, and all you can do is cry, because there is an overwhelming sense of awe that comes with His presence. I stood up, and walked over to E. and told her what I saw. It rang true to her situation and who she is.

Then later, it happened again, I saw something clearly for my friend B. and shared it with her. She started to cry then laugh as I told her. When she recovered, she explained to all of us that this tied in to an image she has been seeing in her mind for a long time, and with a movie she saw last night that spoke to her about some situations currently in her life. She said how spooky this place was (meaning our church) but I thought to myself, no that's not us, that's just God. He tends to do stuff like that, but it never ceases to amaze me. I mean, he gives me clear cut visual, and verbal prophecy for someone, and it's dead on to their life in ways I could have never known before hand! So, the high point of my night was operating in the spiritual gifts that God had once bestowed upon me, that I somehow lost touch with over time. The bell is finally sounding again.

Our culture is fascinated with the spiritual -- people flock to psychics and those who claim to be able to contact the dead, but they're missing the whole point. That's all counterfeit. It's a pale shadow of what God does. That is the insidiousness of all of the spiritual realm that occurs apart from God The Father, Jesus The Son, and The Holy Spirit -- it's an imitation that passes for the real. Some women in my knitting group were discussing J.'s trip to a psychic. J. admitted that a lot of the stuff that the psychic said was general, and based on fishing for information, but that some of it was stuff he never could have known about her beforehand or otherwise. What struck me as so boneheaded about it was not that she believed that he had told her something valid, but that she didn't even bother to question how someone could have that "gift," or where the ability to know secret information about her comes from. In the case of a psychic, that gift does not come from God. Oh, it's true that perhaps this person would have the gift of prophecy or of discernment if they were a follower of Christ, but in the absence of a relationship with God, that sort of propensity or "talent" is easily manipulated and counterfeited by satan. Oh yes, I'm sure I won't win any fans on this one -- so few people believe in satan anymore, much less know how he operates. The mention of satan being behind anything at all is for religious wackos, Bible-Thumpers, fundamentalist bigots, etc. I'm none of the above, but I know that satan exists just as much as I know that God exists.

I also know that people are hungry for spiritual experience. The new age movement shows that people are so hungry for spirituality that they think it can be bought with large sums of money. The growth of Wicca, and other forms of neo-paganism are on the rise because church has become irrelevant, and so much of organized religion is filled with hypocrisy and worse. Not to even mention the growth of people practicing the more spiritual of the yoga disciplines, Buddhism, and the Kabbalah trend. Islam is also growing around the world, despite their semi-bad rep. The Catholic church is riddled with corruption and sexual abuse scandal. The mainline protestant denominations and much of evangelical Christianity has become so culturally irrelevant that people have left in mass exoduses. I agree that "The Church" is in crisis. However, God is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow. He is my only hope. Not Christianity, not "The Church".

However, I am blessed to be part of a great church. There are no false pieties among us. We are as real as real gets. I'm one of the few lucky ones that is doing church, not playing church. But far too often, this is not the case. I spent my entire life as a Christian, and it's only been in the last three years that I have found a place that is real. People who are not holier than thou, legalistic, squeaky clean. People sometimes curse, and no one drops dead over it. At the yearly church BBQ, you'll find beer in our coolers. I wear black a lot, have a nose ring, and sometimes dye strips of manic panic colors into my hair -- my pastor was the biggest fan of all the hair color changes.

However, the outward stuff is the least of it. Yes, I grew up a punk, new wave and goth chick, but that's hardly the most incendiary identity in my arsenal. Though I'm going to oversimplify here, the eighties were the time I formed my musical identities, and the nineties were when I formed my sexual identities, as identity politics was in full swing on college campuses and in other sectors of society. The lesbian sex wars happened. The schism between radical feminists like Dworkin, and lesbian feminists like the crew of the lesbian sex magazine "On Our Backs" run by Susie Bright and her ilk was in progress, and the debates were often very heated. Even further afield was Pat Califia and the s/m dykes of the "Coming to Power" anthology. I read the radical feminist diatribe "Against Sadomasochism" at the same time I was totally fascinated by my reading of "Coming to Power". I'm politically moderate, but left-leaning. I come from a radical left background of student activism. I was the chair of our campus Center for Womyn's Concerns. Yes, we did spell women with a y. We spent a lot of time talking about how to convince more women to join, and to banish the notions that we were all a bunch of dykes. We'd hold these meetings and they consisted of three lesbian couples, including me and my then partner, L. The funny thing is, we were a bunch of dykes. I remember chastising one of the couples when they didn't show up for an important meeting, or forgot to Xerox the latest flyers; I turned to one of them and barked: "Well, if you could get your face out of her cunt once in a while, maybe we could get some work done!" Oh yes, I took my activism damn seriously!

I'm bisexual, though currently abstinent on all fronts for faith reasons (I won't lie, sometimes that really sucks). I have a background where I was very involved in the leather communities, i.e. S/m, D/s, and all the other letters. On the spiritual front I used to be what is now regretfully dubbed "Christo-pagan" (the term makes me cringe). I had a lot of pagan friends. I was the only Christian who hung out in the coven made up of my friends. My one friend Pooh came up with a title for me, he called me "a pagan for Jesus". The contradiction in terms inherent in that moniker was evident to me then, but I was dualistic. I read tarot cards for people and was eerily accurate. I read rune stones. I played with just about every divinatory system available. I was into astrology. I took Reiki I and II. I went to an all women's full moon circle once. I participated in a few of the covens rituals and holidays. The summer when I first started my relationship with L. I was 21, and I studied "The Spiral Dance" by Starhawk more than I read the Bible. Over the years I bought so many books on all kinds of non-Christian spiritual topics that when I decided to discard or burn all my pagan holdings a few years ago I was shocked at how huge my library of metaphysical, and pagan books was. I also had so many tarot decks, plus Celtic book of the dead cards, a few sets of runes, etc. It took a bonfire and lots of garbage bags.

Back to the present day, and my church: My pastor is a woman. I belong to the first Vineyard church to have a female pastor. She has paved the way for others now in our consortium of fellowships. The Vineyard is most a group of churches with similar philosophical beliefs rather than what I'd call a denomination. Nevertheless it is only since finding the Vineyard movement that I have found what it means to have freedom in Christ. The prior 33 years of being a Christian were sheer misery. So much so, that I completely walked away from the church for years at a time. But that is a story for another time. The prodigal years. I learned a lot. Experienced a lot. Got the shit kicked out of me a lot.

I finally reached the end of that though a few years ago. I walked in to the Vineyard, or rather crawled in, because I'd hit total bottom, and I stayed. I'm not sorry. It's a decision I will never regret, no matter how hard it's been or how much of my old life had to die. Just as there are birth pangs, there are death pangs too. The old self tries to hold on for all its worth. It's hard to let go, sometimes your scars are all you think you have, and you mistake your own damage for a personality. So healing can actually feel like dying, but all that is dying is that which is already dead. So I have been learning to let go of all the dead parts of me, even when they try to dig themselves up like the persistent zombies they are. They try to convince me I need them to go on, that they are the best parts of me, the parts that make me who I am, the facets that make me most interesting. Sometimes I almost believe them, until the stench of their putrifying flesh begins invading my nostrils, and then I send them back to the pit where they came from.

Spamming the Lamb

You know what boils my blood? OK, I know you didn't ask but I'm going to tell you anyway. What irks me is that on my first ever little post, I got spam, and out of that spam, two comments were "Christian" spam. I am already a Christian, and do not need to be evangelized. If Jesus was here today, I think he'd chastize those who spam in his name just as much as he threw out the money changers from the temple. Isn't hawking religious T-Shirts pretty much the same as selling in the temple? It's just as odious. It's just as non-Christian. It's just as offensive. And if it offends me, and I'm a follower of Christ, how much more does it offend non-believers? -- the intended audience for these spam messages. I have said it before and I will say it again, these kind of "Christians" are the worst P.R. reps Jesus ever had. I think Jesus, the reputation of Christians, and Christianity as a whole would do a lot better without these sorts of people.

Postscript: I'll update this to say that these people are the ones I most need to forgive. Despite how I feel about what they do, I am still commanded to forgive. This is excruciatingly difficult for me. Unlike far too many so-called Christians, I have no problem with society's outcasts, freaks, weirdos, disenfranchised, broken and bereft people. My heart goes out to any sort of underdog, because that is my tribe. Hey, it was Jesus' tribe too, but too many people have conveniently chosen to forget that, erasing all the dirt smudges from their Bibles in favor of a clean-cut All-American sanitized man made religion built by white men's hands. I can't forgive George W. Bush. I can't forgive Jerry Fallwell, or Pat Robertson. I can forgive any sinner on a street corner though. The problem I've realized though, is that these pharisees are the biggest sinners of them all, and so, I am called all the more to forgive them. Bummer. I will be working on it. All I can say is, I'll try. I'll attempt to be willing to have God supply forgiveness in my heart for these people. The larger and louder part of me just wants to brand them as betrayers of the faith, and call them to repent. Then I remember that God is their judge. God and God alone. Justice is His. Justice will be done. My job is not to try to do God's job of judging. Besides which, I will be judged with the measure that I judge, so unless I want God to get out a magnifying glass and scrutinize my flaws, I have to lay off on doing so to others. Sometimes being a real Christian sucks. "God, do I really hafta forgive Dubya?" :::shudder::: "OK, OK, I'll think about it...I'll try..." *sigh*

I'm here

I have arrived, and after sorting through all the names I couldn't have, I finally have came up with something that no one else had claimed yet. After all that, I'm too tired to write a real post.

I promise, all my future posts will not be this scintillating, because I care about the well-being of your heart, and I don't want to over-excite anyone or cause undue stress. I'm concerned for the state of strangers like that. Yes, just call me Miss Empathy.