My faith and my friends

[altarflame]

This day took quite awhile to warm up. Like...10 hours. But then it finally got going and was sort of ok. I give it a C-.

To nullify the parts where I slept in until people were arguing and making messes so loudly that I had to get up, and then wasted hours trudging around feeling grumpy, I'm going to list the things I did accomplish to make myself feel better.

*sitting staring blankly for far too long*

Oh! Alright.

-enforced all chores being done and all animals being attended...this is getting to be a lengthy process as we currently have three chicks indoors under a heat lamp and 7 kittens being nursed by a ravenous mama cat, in addition to the guinea pigs being pet-sat (<- ha) and Jake having chores now...
-Helped Isaac through handwriting, Jake through "g" and "h" work, and Aaron through a nature journal entry, and checked Ananda's math work.
-Made a great dinner of chicken fried rice and steamed green beans that was a hit all around.
-read The Ugly Duckling to Elise, some poems about chocolate to Isaac from a volume he found at the library, and part of the D'aulaire's Book of Trolls to Jake (our third multi-night run through this one...he loves it), at bedtime...Ananda, Aaron and I started The Island of the Blue Dolphins.

THAT'S IT.

I'm "currently working on" (I stop every couple of paragraphs to do a little more) some incredibly tedious crap to help Grant out. This is the only sort of thing re: web coding and design that I can be trusted with, I assure you. It involves color proofing and renaming dozens and dozens of tiny images that represent fabric swatches for one of his clients with an upholstery business.


and I had this epiphany that I can contemplate how I want to reconcile my faith with whatever issues and whether or not I should be Orthodox one day while I'm Catholic. I can make sense of it all and have communion every week at the same time! This seemed really profound for being so simple, and sure enough today I am already complicating it, again.

I went to St Louis's website to look at contact numbers and schedules for childrens' religious education and RCIA, and hit the first stumbling block - because it's $135 for the first child and $45 for each additional child, to complete the course. We just don't have any money for ANYTHING, right now. And I was kind of taken aback, too, that they're charging for something that really seems to me as though it should be a volunteer based ministry. But, I am trying not to be too judgemental - this is a church where they have a MASSIVE number of kids coming through and a whole battalion of people dedicated to running the program, and they seem to take it really seriously. Also, most members are rolling in money and I'm sure they're using it for good things and I also highly suspect that they let people in and through whether they can pay or not. Which I may persue. I was talking to my favorite Orthodox Christian Dama on facebook at the time of this discovery and so we got into a big thing about how the Orthodox don't do religious education because it's considered better for worship and love of God to be experiential as kids' grow and also, as it's seen as Grace regardless of understanding, even infants baptized in receive communion. There are no classes required to be taken before you get it. Which made me tell her how I'd really prefer that system as the entire Mass (or Liturgy, for the Orthodox) revolves around Communion, and just yesterday Jake was asking why he can't go have it, and so next thing I know I'm back on the freakin' e-search for an Orthodox Church I can reconcile myself to the distance and deep ethnicity of (most Orthodox parishes in the US are "Greek Orthodox" or "Russian Orthodox" with services held partially or completely in a native tongue and everyone attending being first or second generation immigrants, unless you are lucky enough to live near an "Orthodox Church In America"/OCA).

Tangenitally, wait is that a word? It sounds ridiculous. Anyway we ended up on the topic of my friends and how sometimes, lately, I find myself - for the very first time in my life - getting stressed out and exhausted by my relationships with ultra liberal people. It's a lot of little things, from one good friend who is ditching her 20 year marriage for an affair that she wants to label polyamory even though her husband is totally not ok with it, and is trying to tell everyone this has no effect on their 6 children, and expects me to be supportive, to just wishing that even one RL non-Christian person I know could TRY to curb their "Jesus Christ"ing and "Goddamn"ing around my kids and I... I remember once I had a really good friend - I mean she's still a really good friend, we'll always be a part of each others' lives. But anyway we were stupid teenagers who said things were "retarded" and "gay" to mean stupid and she was bisexual and at one point started noticing this slang as a demeaning thing. We talked about it and she actually asked me, since she had come to Youth Group with me for a long time just as a social thing and knew I was always travelling with the church and things, if it bothered me when she said JC/GD/assorted variants, and I admitted it did because I was trying to not say/think those things back then (now, I can't imagine even slipping. I kind of cringe inwardly whenever I hear them. But these beliefs were still new to me and I was raised in a totally agnostic household). So we made a deal that I would stop saying things were gay and she would stop saying Jesus Christ. She said she couldn't really promise she'd stop "Oh my God" because it's so deeply ingrained but would keep the more blatant stuff down and replace it with other words. This worked out well, until we didn't see each other for awhile and then when we did, I had stuck to my end (and honestly, now, I find it intolerably insensitive to call things "gay" - or "retarded", though that one took a LOT longer...like until Elise was born with problems and I considered it in a new way :/) but she had completely relapsed without a backwards glance and just never brought it up again.

I've gotten this sting of how laughable/mockworthy/whatever my faith is to people I care about, from a lot of directions at once lately. I try to bite my tongue; Christianity is the default for so much of our society that there are tons of people blatantly misrepresenting it and hurting people under fucked up pretenses: I understand there is going to be a backlash against that hurt. I think it's right (for me) to turn the other cheek and to try to assume the best of people. But it's hard when it's my close friends casually laughing and shoving me in the arm about the ieda of prayer or publically posting tons of insulting and intense anti-Christian stuff where they know I'm going to see it, or what have you.

I want to be like, alright, I know I'm "supposed to have" a certain amount of white-guilt-like Christian-guilt here according to a lot of people but I'm not that hateful attacking judgemental person you're talking about, and neither is damn near anybody I've ever personally met. I've known people who adopt crack babies and people who pay my way to things as a poor teenager and people who'll walk with you in the cold rain because you're up late at night and freaked out as a pregnant teenager.

This whole train of thought has led me to how I wish I had more Christian friends again. NOT at the expense of my other friends, at all. In addition to. Other friends I really knew and could be honest with, who had the same beliefs and questions I do - not just friendly church-faces that don't go past small talk. I think I've become guilty of really stereotyping older, plainly dressed Christian people who are polite at first as automatically being:
-boring
-shallow
-uptight
-upper class and classist
-intolerant of various and sundry things about me that make no sense
-spotlessly clean at home and impossible to ever bring to my messy house

Which is ridiculous, and keeping me from forming relationships. Dama, who is a (slightly) older and generally plainly dressed Christian person, and one of my favorite people ever, pointed out to me that I was so pleasantly surprised by this other older plainly dressed Christian person at PATH at the end of last school year that I raved about it (here and to her) and haven't I ever considered that maybe lots of other people I'm dismissing on sight would surprise me, too?

Which made me realize that when I was 17? All of my best friends were middle aged pastors. Two men and two women. Like, go to their houses, write letters when they move away, cry in their arms friends who got me through extremely hard times WHILE BEING OLDER AND DRESSED LIKE DORKS AND ACTING POLITE.

I don't know when I got this idea that ONLY batik'd out belly dancers and nose ring'd henna artists are worth my time. But it is silly.

I hope this hasn't been hurtful to anyone I love: or that anyone thinks they independently inspired my rant. It really has been more than half a dozen people in the last week that have all sent this "you can't take that religion of your seriously" energy towards me so even if I am thinking of you, it's not like YOU are "the problem". Ok?

The problem is that I need people IRL who are not Grant or my sister who I can comfortably discuss things like repentance and devotions with. All of my friends are people I value because we connect on some deep level (if not many): past traumas, deep beliefs about raising children/birth, a dedication to healthy living and eating - even a similar sense of humor. I just don't like this segmentation where I have this whole other HUGE part of how I see the world, and make all of my decisions, that isn't really a part of my conversations with any of them.

...and for whatever reasons I'm supposed to just swallow it every time one of them says something that would be considered deeply offensive if I it were reversed to my saying it and it insulting their situation/religion/political affiliations/etc.

Sometimes I wish more than anything that I could go back to the Christian camp of my teens, where the talent show was all Indigo Girls and Radiohead and dueling kazoos played through the nose, and Jenny made a dress out of bubble wrap for the masquerade ball, and there were so many kind souls everywhere ready to provide free counseling or just let you wander through the forest if you needed time alone. I hate how complicated everything is for me, now. I hate how frustrating and paradoxical something beautiful that saved me not so much - in my mind - for all eternity as in this life, has come to seem. Where there was volunteer chaplaincy, now there are new HIPPA laws. Where there was a Disciples of Christ church there is some other congregation, now. Where my heart-rending sincerity for guided meditations of Christ was, now I have the guarded cynicism that comes from knowing too much doctrine and theology to trust anything that is done without Authority and where I poured it all out with gushing joy I now hear every.word.I say through the ears of a billion people who think "Christian" means "anti-everything, backwards bigot who is repressed and hates poor people, and women, and everyone else". There is so much charity happening only through Christianity in this world right now, and I want to be a part of it again.

I want to NOT ever make another epic God entry that leaves me with a headache.

I want to get back to that place I was in last Fall, high on the Spirit, close to God every day, when being on Eat to Live was easy and inviting Bob to come here was natural. Not this screwed up place I'm at now when I go months without church and days without praying and I weigh more than I ever have, and want to throttle my brother.


That got long so I cut it.

Comments

[traumerin.livejournal.com]

I don't know if there are any in your area, but Antiochian Orthodox Churches are often the most convert friendly and convert-full. There are some that still use Arabic, but most that I know of are almost all English. I think 78% or so of Antiochian priests are converts!