Unsure of the Next Move

I keep opening my blog page, imagining that there will be a new post, even if I already know there won't be. It's like I expect my thoughts to already be written on the screen.

For the last two weeks I have been feeling anxiety creep up on me. This is obviously not the first time, and is actually a part of a recurring cycle through out my life. When I get into a place like this I try anything and everything to make the anxiousness go away. I make good and bad choices, but mostly bad. I hurt the ones I love while I'm in this place. The funny thing is that I was in the same place exactly a year ago and made some choices that took my life on a very different path than I ever imagined it would take.

Usually when the anxiety gets to bad, I start to get depressed. Here's the funny thing, the depression is a coping mechanism for the anxiety. The reality is that I would rather feel sad and withdrawn than edgy and frustrated. I feel that over the last couple of days I have started to slip into the depression, as the anxiety just got to overwhelming.

Last night I was crying and talking with my friend Kat over the phone. Crying is incredibly unusual for me. I asked her what I should do, because I always get right back to this place. She suggested that what I am feeling may be a symptom of a greater problem. Then she recommended that I just go to God with it (She gave that advice at the risk of sounding churchy, but felt it was the best course of action). I tend to agree with her, so last night I prayed. And I know others prayed for me.

So I prayed, but of course the doubt that has plagued my life for a better part of two years creeped up. Is there really a God that hears my prayers? How can something so incomprehensible and unattainable really care about what I feel? So, after praying for a bit I went to bed and slept for 11 hours.

This morning, still feeling like crap, I picked up a book that I have been working on for awhile. It's called a Generous Orthodoxy and the brief bit that I read this morning has greatly helped. The author, Brian McLaren is trying to make it clear that all the churches now in existence have only a small piece of the picture. His point is that we need a Generous Orthodoxy that includes all of these religions, but also doesn't make the mistake of saying that this new Orthodoxy is the true answer. (That is a really bad synopsis of a really amazing book)

Anyway, I was reading the chapter on mysticism and poetry. He basically states that prose and logic don't cut it. These are things that the modern world really enjoy, the church included. However, the post modern world has started to realize that life can't be completely logical and straight forward; that prose just can't work to make one understand the depths of God and spirituality. Later in the chapter McLaren refers to one of CS Lewis's writings, where basically Lewis says that praying is blaspheme. This is Lewis's poem:


Footnote to All Prayers

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.



This so explains what I feel. I realize now that my words, thoughts and images can in no way encapsulate a God that is beyond all imagination. Therefore, I pray with this footnote in my mind, knowing that even my prayer is crap, but that in her greatness God hears me. It also makes me feel that the prayers of everybody on this earth are good and valuable and that even if they are directed in the wrong direction, God still hears them.

This makes me feel a bit better, however the question is where to go from here. How do I stop the cycle that keeps my life in repeating pattern? I think I might pray about it.

My Personality

Kelly, my roommate, had me take a personality test tonight. I found it amusingly accurate. Here are the links describing the results of my test:

http://keirsey.com/personality/nfep.html

http://typelogic.com/enfp.html

Here is how you can take the test:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

I am interested to see how everybody else scores. So take it and email me.

"Strengths Based Model"

Today wasn't the best of days. I started a four week training on the basics of child abuse assessment this week. Today we focused on the different types of abuse. The speaker shared lots of pictures and videos to illustrate her point as she spoke. It wasn't pretty. Everybody in that room felt like shit when we walked out! Abuse was very much put into perspective for us today. In the videos the instructor showed, the abuse seemed very extreme, however it really wasn't, in each video the children didn't really have physical injuries. This means that in the cases where children receive severe injuries (like cases we see often), the abuse is very extreme to cause such injuries. One of the videos showed a mom shaking her two year old pretty hard and yet he had no injuries. Meaning that if we get a child with severe shaken baby syndrome, the abuse was very extreme and it more than likely wasn't the first time that the abuse happened. In another video a babysitter hit a child over the head with a wooden spoon several times. The child had one minor bruise, even though she was crying really hard. This means that when a child has severe bruising and broken bones, the abuser used a tremendous amount of force. It is very sobering and scary. The instructor also reiterated that there is so much abuse that we don't know about. Especially in the middle and upper classes where physical, emotional and sexual abuse can be hidden much better. The reality is that we are much more likely to receive a call on a meth using mom who is surviving off welfare than the Johnsons who live next door, who have what seems to be a picture perfect life. Also overwhelming, are that the attempts to understand child abuse only started recently. Fifty years ago people really turned a blind eye and even today most people I know really don't want to hear about what I see and deal with everyday.

After the training today, some people expressed that this may not be the job for them. However, I was thinking that I just wanted to fight more. I want to protect children and make them safe.

The class today brought up so many feelings of conflict. On Friday, we took a class called Strengths Based Model. This theory basically says that instead of using the medical model (which states find the problem and fix it), to use a model that looks at the strengths of the family. Then look at the needs of the family and figure out how to meet the those needs through encouraging the families strengths. This could potentially be a very great model, however using it isn't always practical or even possible. It's really hard to find the strengths in many of our parents and their families. It's really hard not to just throw solutions at the problem. It's really hard not to set strict limits and expect parents not to fail. It's really hard not to think parents don't love their children, when they can't get it together immediately.

I go round and round. I think I should see the strengths, but than it's hard not to focus on the overwhelming problems.

How can I repeatedly be subjected to this stuff and not become even more messed up that I already am? But who else can do it? This is what I am called to.

Dick Van Dike, Zombies and PDL

Last night I almost had a Dick Van Dike moment. I went into the living room to turn down the furnace at about one in the morning and ran into a chair that was not supposed to be there. I fortunately caught my balance and did not fall, but did cuss because I hit my toe on the chair. I walked over to the lamp in the living room and turned it on. Once the room had light I could see that there was no longer a sofa where one belonged and that the dining chairs which belonged in the dining room were the offending chairs. So then I looked in the dining room, where I saw that the sofa was in the middle of the room and the table, which had once been in the middle was now in the corner. I chuckled to myself, because I knew why this had been done. When Comcast cable came to set up our cable tv and internet they only hooked up to the cable jack in the dining room, which had been there before. This was because Comcast needed approval from our landlord before they could put another jack in the living room and Kelly being the honest girl that she is did not lie and tell them that she owned the house or that we had permission when we did not. So for the last month we have all sat at on the dining room chairs, which are very comfortable to watch tv. I think that last night someone got tired of doing that (my guess would be John and Adrian) and moved one of the sofas into the dining room.

I find this story particularly funny because to me it is an example of the truly amusing people with whom I live. Really between the four of us there are very few boring moments. I very much appreciate this because this living experience has changed me and made me stretch in ways I never have. I really care for each of my roommates and previous roommates (except for one, who felt it unnecessary to pay his rent). They each bring something new and different into my life and I enjoy hanging out with them. I think the thing that most impacts my life is to see that my roommates and most of my friends in Portland are genuine people, which in my life I haven't seen much of. They share their problems, know that they don't have the answers and care for each other when someone is having a crappy time. That to me is community.

Now what I am famous for, the switching of topics. Last Friday when I got home my roommates were just starting to watch Pet Cemetery. I sat for a while to watch with this movie, however was aware that I really don't like scary movies. Once it started to get really gross I left, knowing that it would probably make it into my dreams somehow. It did. A couple of nights ago I had a very weird zombie dream. It felt completely real and it was classic. Somehow the undead started to walk the earth and would bite living people and in turn make them undead. Therefore, those who were alive wanted to avoid getting bitten. In the dream I was running because really... I didn't want to become a zombie. I remember that for some reason I was so fearful about become one of them and it kept coming into my head that I needed to hide. So for most of the dream I was running and hiding really not caring about anybody else, but mostly just trying to save myself. For some reason I was trying to get to a pent house apartment at the top of a very large building, because for some reason I saw this as safe (although as my roommate John pointed out when I shared this dream with him, going up and being stuck was not the best idea), however that's what I did. I found however that elevators in this building only went up to a certain floors and none of them reached the pent house. The dream ended when I gave up and accepted my fate of becoming an undead.

For some reason I thought about this dream for a large part of my drive to work on Tuesday. I thought about the fear, the feeling of self preservation and how ultimately I gave into the stronger force. It tried to find how this could be a metaphor for my life today and the only one I could come up with was the Church. That's right, I'm comparing zombies to Christians. I guess my thought here is that so often the those in the church walk blindly consuming and "saving: without really thinking about. This is the same as the zombies who consumed and made other undead without thinking. The zombies don't really think about what they do, they don't have any higher thinking. They don't ask questions like "why is that I make others the same thing as me, when it's not that great?" They just walk around consuming. I personally feel this is a great example for the church today. It just tries to "save" and pull in other people who can then "save" others, without really asking the question if what they are doing is right. Those who are still alive run because they don't want to just being another zombie, they want to have their own thoughts. However, thinking for ones self can be scary. Constantly having to think for yourself, which means running and hiding from those who want to make you one of them. I guess one could fight, but that's even scarier, as then you actually have to confront the zombies and figure out how best to kill those who are already dead. I guess the scary thing to me is that at the end of my dream I gave up. I decided it was too hard to run, hide or fight and that really it was just easier to be another undead.

(nother subject change, however there is some tie in to the last two topics.)

Yesterday, I was talking with my sister about how she's feeling a bit on the outside in most of her communities. This is something that I felt very significantly at her age. I guess for me it was that I didn't' really fit into the "Christian"community, because really I didn't buy everything they were selling and I didn't fit in with non-Christians, or least the ones I knew, because I still held many of my Christians beliefs. I'm not sure if this is how my sister is feeling, but I wouldn't be surprised. Anyway, she told me about going out with a group of kids her age from a Nazarene church in her area. They went to Red Robin to eat, however before actually eating one of the guys in the group lead them in a prayer. My sister said to them something about it being good that they remembered to pray before a meal, because she never did. They guy looked at her and told her she needed to remember because it was very important to pray before every meal. My sister told me that she remembered thinking that was a bit extreme. I told her it was utterly ridiculous! Let's think this through, do you really think that God cares whether or not we pray before every meal. Give me a break. And really if God is looking at the heart of people, then she is not going to worry about whether you pray at a certain time, but rather about the sincerity behind the prayer.

Then my sister shared that her youth group unsuccessfully worked on PDL, being that I am no longer a part of the conservative Christian scene, I stupidly asked what PDL is. She told me that stands for Purpose Driven Life. Now I do know what that is and let me share what it is for is for those of you who might not know. Basically it's this book written by a man named Rick Warren, who pastors a church of about 16,000 people. A book which claims to have the answer for why we are here on earth and what we should being doing with our time. Here's a description:

http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/thebook.aspx

Now, while I find some to of the things he talks about to be valid the direction that he takes them is so boxed, I find that really it's a piece of consumeristic, conservative, constraining, narrow minded crap!

This morning I decided to google Rick Warren and came to this page:

http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/rickwarren.aspx

It actually says things like the following and thinks they are positive things:

"Now, with 16,000 in attendance each weekend, and over 50,000 names on the church roll, Saddleback is one of America's largest and best-known churches. It's been named the fastest growing Baptist church in history, and the largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention.

In the past seven years, more than 9,200 new believers have been baptized at Saddleback. The church has also started 34 daughter churches, and sent over 4,000 of its members on mission projects around the world.

Rick Warren is well-known as the pioneer of the Purpose-Driven paradigm for church health. "

This is in reference to his church. Why does only 32% of his church attend regularly? How many people does Mr. Warren personally know? How many of those 50,000 can walk in and walk out on a Sunday without actually having community? So what if it's one of the best known churches, does the bible say that's important? It's actually counted how many people have become "new believers"? And what is they're criteria for a "new believer"? The fact that it's the largest church in the Southern Baptist convention scares the hell out of me. And saying that he's pioneer of a new paradigm for church health...well...excuse me while I vomit. How the hell do you have community is such a large church? Why does large mean health? In personal experience the smaller a church is, the better the relationships of it's members, although I know that doesn't always hold true. Actually, to have good community, members of that community have to care about each other and be sincere. It worries me that 16,000 people walk in each Sunday and swallow what this man has to offer. The article goes on to say that 60,000 pastors subscribe to Mr. Warren's weekly newsletter. That is so depressing!

I am so sad and angry and feel that churches, pastors and books like this completely miss the point of Jesus's ministry.

I have recently been reading a book called A Generous Orthodoxy and personally feel that this is the book that millions of people around the country should be reading. In this book McLaren states that he highly doubts that if Jesus were alive today that he would be a Christian. The reality is that Jesus was a revolutionary, a rebel and a pacifist. While I would love to go on and on about this book, I don't want to take Mr. McLaren's words out of context and would instead encourage one to read it themselves.

Going back to PDL, last night I spoke with Kat about the conversation with my sister. During this conversation Kat did one of the most annoying things that she does and that was play devil's advocate. I really hate it when she does that, especially when I see her point. Kat said that we can't completely discount PDL, because even if it is a conservative, narrow minded piece of crap, people may still get something from it that helps their spiritual journey. While I want to say that is completely unlikely, that someone will never get anything out of it, I can't. I really don't like it when Christians that I know look at my life, the things I read and my choices and say that there is no way that I can have any spirituality present, or at least any good spirituality. So, how can I turn around and say that there is no way that they can't get some positive spiritual advice out of PDL? This is what I have to say, I still think it's a piece of consumeristic crap, but my hope is that God can overcome and reach the heart of those who read it in a very sincere, real way.

So this is how I tied Dick Van Dike, community, zombies, church, Christians and PDL together. And it may not make any sense to anybody but me.

goofy, yet somewhat decent picture of me

night on the town

finding a way to rant and rave

I have no idea what to say or how to get this started, I just want to get my thoughts down. I keep thinking that this seems like a truly ineffective way to get my thoughts out into the general consciousness. I mean really, who will ever find this? That is unless I direct them here. And even if they do come, what do my thoughts really matter? Also, do I really have anything significant to add? If I do, will I be able to articulate it properly? I often try to explain things to people and find that I sound like a bumbling idiot, at least to my own ears. I often ask if what I am saying makes sense. However, one thing about writing is that I can reread it several times before I put it out there. This is very different to using speech to communicate, especially for me, someone who doesn't have a mental filter. (Also, if you haven't noticed, I really like using commas and have truly crappy grammar. On the positive side this program has spell check)

So, even with all of this said, I decided that I really wanted a forum to share my thoughts and to let others make comments.

Here are some recent thoughts/experiences that I want to put out there:

Today, being a Saturday, I made the effort to almost nothing. So far I have read a few chapters of Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren, taken a two hour nap and watched about 20 minutes of The Matrix Reloaded.

When I woke up from my nap I was super hot and grumpy. My grumpiness came from the fact that my back hurt like hell and that there was music blaring from outside my window, as there was someone painting the side of my house. This wasn't just any music, no this was Christian music. And not just Christian music but awful, quiet, soft rock type Christian music. When I woke up God Bless America was on. Now excuse my language, but what the fuck was a Christian radio station doing playing God Bless America. Now you may be saying to yourself that because it mentions God that it is therefore appropriate to play on Christian radio, however I say that's crap! I am very angered by Christians who mix patriotism and their religion, the two have no connection. God has nothing to do with the establishment of America or the running of it, in fact its my thought that God is probably very disgusted by the consummerism and sense of superiority that runs our country. (wow, I reread this and see that I may be coming across a bit strong, oh well.)

So this leads me into a second thought about the elections, and this is what I want to say: I am very very very disappointed in you America and in you Oregon! I cannot believe that we just reelected a man who sent us into a war that has killed many people (American and otherwise, but specifically many non-Americans) with false reasons; who has lost this country many jobs, has depleted the surplus that existed when he went into office; who feeds the American idea of "think of myself and my family first"; who has screwed up education. However, this country has survived bad presidents before and I am sure will continue to survive after Bush.

Oregon, Oregon, Oregon, I cannot believe that you chose to put prejudice into your constitution. I cannot believe that you just denied thousands of people their basic rights. Why does it matter to you if two people of the same sex want to get married? Seriously, it's not like it effects your life. It will not mean the end of marriage as we know it. In fact if you look at the historic nature of marriage you will know that for thousands of years marriage was about practical things such as money, class, children, etc. This all changed when the focus of marriage became love and when we made is exceptionally easy to get out of a marriage through divorce. My point is that everybody deserves to be equal and just because they want to be with somebody of their own sex, doesn't mean they should be denied basic human rights. I am really saddened by the passing of measure 36. I am really saddened that people can't get passed their own biases enough to see that they are messing with peoples lives and their pursuit of happiness. I thought this was a country that valued the individuals rights. I am saddened that the very people who were told to love, love, love ("followers of Jesus", otherwise known as Christians) are the very ones who pushed this measure through. Why? Does the idea of a few thousand people of the same sex getting married scare you that much? Now what you have to ask yourself is "what would Jesus do?" and folks I don't think that Jesus would have pushed through an amendment that alienated and marginalized an entire group of people. I think you need to go back to Christ Like Actions 101. (wow, I'm bitter)

Now this brings me to one of my favorite topics, Christianity. At one time I would have considered myself a conservative protestant Christian, well as you can probably guess I no longer do. To put it simply I do not want to carry the the same name as a group of people who are very unlike the origin of the label which they carry. I am tired of associating with a group who puts themselves on a pedestal, judging those who are not on the inside. I found that the general Christian perspective in this country is do narrow minded that they miss out on so much about this world. They are so focused on converting and saving that they miss so much of what is special about others people's perspective or lifestyles. They guilt, judge and generally don't love their neighbors as themselves. (yes, I may be a little harsh, however I once found myself a part of this group and was taught how to judge quit well.) What makes me really sad is that the birth, teachings, life, death and resurrection of Jesus are quit amazing. However, many people will never know about the greatness of Jesus, because the very group that has vowed to spread this "gospel" is the very group that has perverted it.

Something positive about my life recently, is that I have found a community of loving people, some Christians, some not. Each of these people have made it a choice to take life a day at a time, to know that they will screw up, to care and love without judgment. These are the people I chose to spend my life with and who I chose to invest in.

Well most have probably stopped reading by now, so I will just say that it felt so good to get that out. I look forward to any comments that people want to share. (I'm very impressed that I only used fuck once)