Oh Where, Oh Where, Has My Severed Head Gone?

Some random things that I have been thinking about and confused about.

1. My severed head polar bear pillow is missing. This makes me sad because, although it creeps people out, it is quite a handy and comfertable little thing to have around. Except when the eye balls whack me in the head or something, but mostly i love it. Did somebody steal it? Hide it? Did it re-grow its body and walk away?

2. Spinich on pizza is amazing. How come nobody ever told me this before?

3. A few days ago I got a spam message from a guy named Bart Farley. Does anybody else this that this is really really funny?

4. another spam message I got said, "Thank you for contacting us about your weight problem." Hmm. There are a few options here. one, my friends think i am overweight and am trying to subtly help me out. I appreciate that, thanks, guys. two, this consumeristic image-driven culture has found another way to make me feel like crap about myself. Sad, but I think I would prefer option 1.

5. It hurts when you are yourself and people decide that that is not good enough and that they don't like you anymore. I think that is the worst feeling in the world.

6. My nephew signed me up for these joke text messages, which come every day, and are sometimes dirty. I just heard the message come again and have no idea how to get it off of my phone. any ideas? I replied to the number and asked them to stop, but apparantly they don't care.

7. I think Jesus loves me, but sometimes I am unsure of this.

bye

ponderings

so i've been thinking lately what i would do if God was leading me to become buddhist. or islamic. or something. and how truly terrifying that would be. because i have been so trained that Christianity is the right way . . . the only way . . . that we have a monopoly on truth, and that if you turn aaway from this, I will burn. Not that i don't quite think this is completly untrue . . . i don't know. but just consider that. its been a struggle and a joy to try and follow God completly, wherever that may lead and wherever that leads. WHEREVER. Should not my commitment to following God supercede my strongly held beliefs that I have it "right?" If my commitment to God is foremost, should not logically (don't laugh, Janie) my commitment to Christianity itself is secondary? Yet it would be hard. and terrifying. And I have consistently been challenged and struggling to fit my evolving relationship with God and who I understand him to be into my largely right wing fundamental Christian upbringing. The two Gods seem incomparable, at least at this moment. And then it makes me wonder how strong my faith truly is. What am I committed to? To the Christian idea of God, or to God? To following my comfort level, or to following where he is leading me?

I can imagine that many people could (would, are) reading this and am a tad worried about my salvation. Please read this without any preconceived ideas. That is not where I am going, nor where I feel God is leading. But I need to consider the possibility that this is where the future will go. The focus on this sentence should be on consider, not possibility. this is so hard to explain without sounding like i am going to become a Buddhist Tibetan monk. But my commitment to God should be so strong that I would be willing to give up everything, including my religion, correct?

Perhaps my F or P friends think that I am just being stupid, 'cause this would never happen. But think about it. Think about giving up Christianity to become a Muslim. Think of what this would mean in terms of friends, family. Going completly against the inner beliefs that have been drilled into you regarding salvation. That would be terrifying. To suddenly have to not believe the truth of the Bible, or to not believe that Christ is part of the triune God. Scary. But this is what we ask so many people of so many other faiths to do to follow Christ. This has impacted me a lot lately. That converting to Christianity does not only mean perhaps leaving family, persecution, being shunned by friends, being fired from your job, being pushed into a lower social class, but also rejecting everything that you have been taught from a child about salvation. terrifying. to not be able to take hold of the basic soul insurance policy that you had been brought up with in whatever religion you were raised in.

wow.

evolve

hi all

i don't have much to say, but don't want to leave that last post as the most recent. thanks for your love. i am optimistic.

bleed

So yesterday i was walking down to the wuzzles' apartment on edmonton, and then i walked over broadway and looked down, and saw that there was this penny on the road. Not very cool, i know, but the penny had been driven over so many times that it ceased to be just a penny, and it was now part of the road. they were literally inseperable, and over time had become meshed into one identity. But two distinct parts. And I pondered and pondered and thought about how great of a sermon illustration that would be and how cool it was on Broadway, and then i remembered . . . oh, yeah . . . i don't preach anymore 'cause i got kicked out of my church.

crash. again.

It's really a surreal and interesting phenomena, to be kicked out of a church. And it was a bit obscene that it was done so callously, so subtly, and so quietly. and it is a bit appalling and confusing and interesting that it was not for anything that I had done. I wasn't kicked out becasue i killed somebody or becasue I went stripping at a club or anything, but because I had faith. Faith that God could break out of a simple book. Faith that God loves babies.

And it is strange how differently i approach this on different days. some days i wear it as a sordid badge of honor. the shock value of saying, "yeah. i got kicked out of my last church." is worth a little bit of social intrigue. And there are times where I get more than a little bit of a smirk knowing that the entire church shut down once i was shut out, and i feel a bit prideful when i pull the "it couldn't last without me" lie on myself. but i know better.

Some days its like that. But not most. Most days it simply cuts inside my heart like a newly sharpened butter knife - dull, but quite painful. Really, you would think that if there were ever one place in this world that you should be safe from being kicked out of, it would be church. You would think that it would be the greatest sanctuary that ever was, and you would think that you would be safe within its walls. But that's not quite how it turns out all of the time. So I am left homeless. Kicked down and ignored into a state of oblivion. And the most tangible response i have received was, "we are so glad that everybody has settled down into other churches." Once again I am invisible. What does this mean? That I am simply not included in the term "everybody?" That I am too heathenistic to even be considered? That

forget it.

who am i? what has happened to me over this last year to make me so damned cynical and joyless? why have i allowed these circumstances to suck out my entire personality, having only an empty shell (gorgeous, though, i admit) of wasted gifts? my drive is gone, and my passion is gone. jamie's death has shaken me. cyril's accident has hurt me. my rejection by my community has murdered me.

i am not who i was, and i grieve the loss of that strong, godly woman.