So my great aunt thrice removed from my mother's side visited me at my office the other day. She was a welcome break and companion even though she was wrinkly and fuzzy and smelled a bit of moth balls. however, for some reason she did not particularly enjoy posing for the camera. The only features she would allow to be photographed were her eyes and cool dreadlocks.

anyway, i thought you may be interested in knowing a little bit about my great aunt thrice removed's history and life up until february 24, 2006.

Marpheus Mcfee III was born in the beautiful okanoganiopian valley of beautiful Canada in 1863. However, she decided to ditch the beautiful province of beautiful ontario because the tuition at beautiful ontario universities were far too ridiculously high. So, after investing 13 years of her life in high school (yes, it took her 13 years to complete high school. ha, ha) she moved to beautiful manitoba, where tuition is far too ridiculous on the other side of things, and due to that there is often no toilet paper in the washrooms. "Oh, well. I can always use my cat to wipe myself," says Marpheus, who is an eternal optimist, and altogether not understanding what God really gave us cats to do (which, as everybody except for Marpheus knows, is eat mice, look pretty, make people sneeze and be eaten by dogs).

Once she completed her cheap degree at the University of Under-Fundedness in the urban bowels of beautiful winnipeg, Marpheus Mcfee decided to follow her dreams to . . . Norway? No, silly. Europe? No. Asia? No. All of them put together. It was only on the plane to NOrway that Marpheus realized that her true calling was in stopping global conglomerates in selling unsuspecting students cheap garbage at stores such as future shop and Wal-Mart. "Who cares about poor children in Thailand?" complained Marpheus' seat-mate, Gordon Bush. "I refuse to spend more than 29 cents for a pair of jeans. Its my right as an American!" Marphus gives complete credit to the Spirit of God that this gentleman is still alive, as she is amazed that she did not strangle him then and there.

Marphus landed in China, and then realized that her brake was over, so she had to stop typing.

don't read this

it is so much easier to go to work when it is light outside. i'm not sure why, but it just seems so cheery.

i had a good talk with a friend last week over some thai food (mmmm...thai food) which was great, but altogether made me feel like i was once again stuck right into the sink hole that i keep thinking i escaped. (it is haunting me probably as much as the bad grammer in the previous sentence is haunting Corrina, queen of the womb.) i CANNOT reconcile things. i cannot see a way out of this which keeps a personal God in the equation. I cannot watch a play such as Pentecostal Wisdonsin without losing faith in a God who claims to respond to our longings for him. i cannot ignore the freedom i have seen in people's lives once they have left Christianity. i cannot reconcile a personal god with the reality of this dark world.


strange that the car accident that i had last year is my best source of hope. even with the above, i cannot accept that the guy who dug us out, who took us to his church, who took care of us was there by chance. The only reason he was there was becuase of a fungal infection. Good story, which also raises good questions. I'll leave that one for later.

but it gives me hope.

organic food gives me hope, too. more on this later.

and good friends. a huge thanks to B.N. and his email. this gives me hope. that there are those like me who can search and wonder and cry but still, somehow, remain true to our God throughout it all. I hope i am doing that. God, I pray I am doing that.

_

i have decided to use the word "astonished" as much as possible in the next two years.

I ain't nothing but a hound dog

So the day after the Conservatives get voted in, the Beliveau bus is severely late.
Coincedence? I think not.

ahhh. my heart grieves for the future of this country.

Anyway. enough of the drama. I'll give Stephen Harper a chance. Mostly 'cause I have no other choice. oh well.

enough of this politics crap. let's talk about real things. like weddings. no, not mine. goodness everybody settle down; all in due time. this week has been a week full of wedding stuff for odie's wedding. gotta say the crapulent wedding show was quite crapulent. do you know how much it costs to release doves at your wedding? Like hundreds of dollars. and its not like the company loses the doves; they just fly back to them. ridiculous. and do you know that you can take pole dancing lessons? sweet. janie and i are signed up already. we got the "lower extrematies deal." You can learn how to pole dance, lap dance, AND discover your pelvis. anybody want to join? no, NO BOYS ALLOWED.

Do i even have a pelvis? pelvis rhymes with Elvis. I think there are more pictures of Elvis in my parent's house than there are pictures of me. oh well. Maybe if I die of a self-inflicted drug overdose my parents will pay more attention to me.

JUST KIDDING MOM. I LOVE YOU DEARLY.

Just random thoughts.

Million dollar question: who sings this song lyric? "Heaven has a ring around you." Hint. one of my fav bands, although sometimes the lyrics are pretty cheesy.

God is so fricking intangible and that depresses me this week. Its all so complicated. I don't even know what it means to follow Him anymore, or to love Him or to serve Him. Any ideas?
Bre

df 

anniversary

one year ago today i was sitting in my car . . . upside down in a ditch . . . with my best friend . . . in my beautiful Pontiac Sunfire, may Max rest in peace.

a year. though there are still very real repercussions from this day, i am glad to see this anniversary come and will be even happier to see it go. Bad things have come . . . I still have back pain from this day. had to write off my car which I worked so hard to pay off and upkeep. dealt with some emotional guilt with almost killing my best friend. but overall i look at that day as one of more blessings than curses. we were blessed that we had our seatbelts on. blessed to not hit the hydro pole. blessed to hit soft, fresh snow. and indescribably blessed to have a wonderful Christian man come and dig us out of our dark car. blessed to have another wonderful Christian man come pick us up and take us to a movie even though that turned out to be a very unsmart thing to do . . . what can i say, we weren't thinking clearly. I have grown. Grown to respect the ice more. grown to forgive myself for allowing this to happen to my best friend in the car with me (thanks to Tig for your help on this one). i am indescribably thankful to autopac whose adjusters made the whole situation relativly easy, and were most willing to help out with my accident insurance claims and such and who gave me, I believe, a fair price for my smashed car. Throughout my years as a Manitoba driver and my ridiculously high amount of collisions they have always impressed me with their customer service and help during personally hard circumstances. I know everybody seems to hate Autopac, but I have always found them to be very easy and fair to work with.

So . . . just some reflections. I have found in my life that there are always always good things that happen along with bad, and I think that this can be attributed to nothing but the grace and goodness of God. Redemption. Beautiful.

2nd post of the day.

This is a picture I drew of my friend having a baby on my exercise ball. Note the family similarities between the mother and daughter/son.

In the interest of confidentiality, I will only refer to this lady by her alias - Janie-o.

whoa

"There is no God up there who is going to listen to your prayers from down here and do anything about it. You've got to do it yourself, take some responsibility for how the world is. Do good yourself instead of waiting around for some sky-bound deity to do it. God is not an excuse. Find all those good things you've attributed to God inside you - love, compassion, a heart for justice and human dignity. And ditch the things religion has taught that don't line up with the good - jealousy, arrogance, tribe mentality and its requisite genocide. It's time to show a little respect for your own abilities to make God real in the world. Sure, something you might call God may exist outside of you, but I'm not going to talk to it like it can hear me, anymore. I'm talking to you."

Found this paragraph in the pages of Geez magazine, a new magazine from editors Aiden Enns and Will Braun. This paragraph was written by Gretta Vosper, a minister of the United Church, and it is a portion of a sermon she delivered.

I crave your thoughts on this.

It is disturbing. And beautiful. And terrifying. And honest. But also very challenging and exciting. And I am once again caught within the tension of left vs. right. Neither side can accept the balance. That there is a God who cares, and who does answer prayer. That you can be a committed Evangelical Christian, following God passionately and pursuing and living in deep relationship with him while being concerned for traditional standards of morality and economic, gender, and social equality.

I struggle to find the reason why so many find these two ideas so incompatable. They would seem to have a natural and powerful connection. Christ calls us to himself, to follow him above all else, and calls us to care for the poor and oppressed. It would seem to be obvious in many readings of the Gospels. Yet I have encountered so much resistance to this. People who I have offended for being in the “middle,” for not “choosing sides” in this fight and in this struggle. Yet I look around me and see nothing but intolerance. Both from the right and from the left.

No, God is not an excuse to sit and not fight for justice. Prayer is not a substitute for action. Faith without works is dead. But at the same time, action is no substitute for confession. Unity is no substitute for the Holy Spirit. And inequality is no excuse for intolerance.

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control.

Next topic. I can think of no better or more compelling reason to leave the Christian faith than the statement “There is no God up there who is going to listen to your prayers from down here and do anything about it . . . Sure, something you might call God may exist outside of you, but I'm not going to talk to it like it can hear me, anymore.” There has been nothing more disheartening and discouraging than this. This is truth, and it is honest. What can be done with that?
Don’t worry, though. Just a question.

does anybody even read my crap?

ha. wouldn't it be fun if there weren't tea leaf readers, but poop stump readers? i would definitly pay some good money for that.

this is getting obscene, and it hasn't even started really. but this is how my mind works. i am infinitly saddened that i don't have anything really substantial to say. there's lots inside of me, but i'm not sure if i can get it out, or if you would even like me anymore if i did. so i think i may just blab on about nothing.

check out the "Reverand Billy and the Church Of Stop Shopping" link to the right. coolio.

I would like to post up a picture of something useful and inspired, but i don't have anything and i still don't really know how to use Paint, so that's not helpful. The great Macintosh let me down yesterday when I wasn't able to play my X-Files DVD-Rom in the drive. Ernie blames Windows. I blame the oppressive capatalist system.

So I am thoroughly enjoying my adbusters magazine, and I encourage you all to get copies, even though it costs like $11 per mag. But then i remember it costs so much because there is no advertising, and then i feel good about it and want to buy 50 for my closest friends and homeless people. hmm. today there was an article about how important it is to buy locally grown stuff. i felt proud. and it said, "hey, you won't get much variety all of the time and you might get spinich, and may have to eat it twice in a week, but its worth it you freaking consumers of all things injust." that's a loose paraphrase, a la chuck nichols. check out fresh options. they're great, and i absolutly love what they do.

ramblings. sorry to dissapoint.
does anybody else think that it is hypocritical that i put a link to the adbusters website above? 'cause I do.

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.

i am loved. thanks.

hello friends.

so i am a quarter century old today. wow. doesn't feel much different than i did yesterday, except now i realize that the next milestone is 30 and that number doesn't seem at all as fun as 25.

i can't imagine that someday i will be 40...50...60. that i will be in an old folks home grabbing the male orderly's butts and trying to start up a food fight in the bingo hall. its a strange and surreal thought. you always know that you will get old someday . . . but if you think about it, it sucks a lot. or does it? i don't want to be confined to a wheelchair or have demensia or cancer or some other horrible thing. it makes me want to grab life more now and go and travel around the world and move my little legs while i still can . . . but work and life seems to get in the way of that. oh well.

a huge thanks to all of my brave friends who came out to my very wet birthday shindig yesterday. i think my feet are now webbed, but hey, it was worth it. i appreciate the sacrifices you all made in the muddy muddy field, adn the fact that your shoes are probably ruined now, not to mention your pants and perhaps our carpet. but it was definitly worth it for me to feel special. just kidding. sort of. i wish we had pictures, but alas. funny how my clothes were still soaking wet this morning. wow.

i have eaten so much cake and sugar i think my body is going into shock. but it feels so good . . .

hey . . . i just saw an updog.

i'm done

So apparantly none of my highly-educated friends listen to CBC radio, 'cause I was on it. Yeah. I touched the Governor General. I am so cool. I haven't even washed my hand since. She was very strong and confident and approachable. And CBC thought me articulate enough to talk about her on the radio, but then decided to cut my 2 minute interview into a 5 second sound byte. SICK! But that's ok. It was fun anyway.

Hmm. Strange days. Yesterday Odie's mom and dad and brother and grandpa and 3 family friends and one stranger got stuck in our elevator for awhile on our floor. It was sort of funny at first, but then got a little bit heinous. 8 people in our small elevator for awhile. odie and zac and i sat outside in the hallway for a bit, talking to them when we could (they were at our floor, but the door wouldn't open). They were there for an hour, which upset me 'cause its not like odie's grandpa is a young guy. and the stranger lady from the 6th floor was very upset and crying and stuff. not cool. i feel pretty guilty about all of this, and a bit upset at our stupid elevator and the fact that it took 10 minutes for the caretaker to finally come and "check out the situation" and THEN call the repair guy. ridiculous. They couldn't take our word for it on the phone, apparantly, and call the repair guy right away. Stupid. That made me super mad. So he came up and yelled, "Can you press the 8th floor button? Can you press main? OK. Its not working. I'll call the repair guy." As if they wouldn't have thought of that. "oh, maybe we should push a button here and something would happen." if that were me i would be continuously pushing all of the buttons in case something could happen. ridiculous.

i had something to say, but can't think about it now. but that's ok. i guess. hopefully it will come again.

thanks for reading.
bre

my name is bre
i am a flea
i need to pee
oh whoa is me

Oppression

so i walked up and down spence st. yesterday . . . i had a good reason, though, and saw all of the bands that the Coalition To Save the Elms put out on the elm trees. And I was walking and looking and noticed that every single band had like at least 50 months stuck to them, who died a horrible sticky death.

i am considering establishing a Coalition to Save the Moths.

gross

What’s the deal with strangers calling me sweetie and dear? Does this happen to everybody? Am I simply excessively cute? Why do people with whom I only have a one-sentence conversation feel that they have the right to think I am their sweetie?

Ridiculous. And not only with men, but women too which makes me even more uncomfortable because now I am just more confused than ever.

Oh well. My friends are one thing, but weird strangers. Old men are the grossest and the worst at thinking that they have a personal right to my life and my body.

Whoa. This is now a rant.

Something positive . . . got to say something positive . . . nope. Nothing.