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Music:
My kids are obsessed with the Newsboys cd "Go!", the Mamma Mia soundtrack, and The Nightmare Revisited, which is basically rock bands doing all the songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I have rediscovered Jesus Christ Superstar, am glorying in my iPod's classic rock and Linkin Park playlists, and cannot get Pink's new song "So What?" out of my head to save my life. I think I'm also buying an Enya album off iTunes, who would have seen that coming.
I had a wonderful, WONDERFUL evening to cap off an absolutely horrible day. Basically, I have been heavy with doubt and confusion about gay vs. Christianity stuff for months now. At my last therapy session, a lot of stuff about my initial conversion to Christianity came up, and I remembered how deeply I experienced God in a very, VERY liberal Christian setting. How tangible and REAL He was to me, praying with a female pastor and going to interest groups during camp about how Soddom and Gomorra's sins (sp like whoa) were not about homosexuality but lack of hospitality. I've been drifting towards an increasingly Orthodox way of thinking for the past couple of years, as I struggle to find a church I can feel like belonging to. And it's all just making me crazy. I HATE coming off biggoted to people. I HATE wondering what I'll tell my daughter if she turns out to be a lesbian raised Christian and has a serious set of questions for me. I hate being afraid to mention to my new Catholic homeschooling mom friend that my nanny is a lesbian, and I hate trying to gauge how much the kids' VBS cd of Christian songs might be grating on the nanny.
Grant, cooking tacos: What's wrong? Why do you look all miserable and grumpy?
Me: I am just ...heavy with confusion. I don't get anything. What the hell is this whole cyclical thing, like....Ok. Job from the bible didn't have a pastor, or a church, or the bible, or anything. No missionaries, no history, no 10 commandments. He had the still small voice in his heart. And he endured all that suffering, and never wavered. It says you're supposed to know God is there without anybody telling you, just by looking up at the stars at night. And so I listen to that still small voice, you know, and it doesn't feel right condemning or denying anybody anything based on SINS. And yet, then, I end up with a bunch of sinning, non-Christian friends who want to know if I think they're sinners, and so I have to say, well, yeah, and then I feel bad again, and it starts over. This cycle.
Grant: I look at it like this - the disciples asked Jesus, Jesus himself, what they were supposed to do, like what was the most important thing to do above all else, and he said love your neighbor and love God. So that's what I try to do. And I suck at it lately but that's still the goal. Everyone's relationship with God is different, for me personally, I've prayed and I read the Bible and I think that for me, to be gay, that would be a sin for me. I have no way of knowing if it's a sin for anybody else. I don't know their relationship with God. I don't know what God is saying to them or what they pray about, if they can find peace with God about being gay I think that's great for them. This works out for me since I'm not gay anyway. Your relationship with God is really personal and it's different for everybody, God tells me to love them all. I've never felt some big call towards evangelism or whatever, I mean if somebody is having a really hard time sometimes I'll want to tell them, listen, Jesus can help, Jesus helped me, but it's up to them to decide about that.
Me: ...You know...I've been saying...you know how Mother Teresa being Catholic made me feel good about Catholicism initially? Well, Mother Teresa didn't KNOW any church teaching. She didn't do theology. And when people asked her she would say, all she'd read was the gospels, all she knew was Christ. That was what she beat into her own head over nad over was Jesus, what Jesus taught. She NEVER went around preaching...she helped sick people, gave the homeless beds, taught kids without parents - the MIssionaries of Charity she started even do Hindu last rites for people dying in their place. The whole thing is supposed to be that people come up and say, "I'll have what she's having" because she's this example of faith, like "They'll know we are Christians by our love" - what the hell has happened to that?
Grant: Exactly.
Me: I think sometimes that I have a hard time because way before I was ever Christian I was initially taught ABOUT it by these Baptists full of fire and brimstone and salvation, like, how can you live with yourself if you could have helped your friend be saved? I was crying in the bathroom because my parents were going to burn in hell forever. If you're coming at it from that perspective, then you have some kind of moral obligation to warn everyone that they're sinning and they'd best repent.
Grant: I think everyone knows whether whatever they're doing is a sin or not. Everyone hears that voice in their heart. It's good for me to know that sin is bad and it keeps me from God, and to teach our kids to try not to sin so they can stay close to God, but I'm not supposed to say, "FOR INSTANCE -" and start accusing people of individual junk.
Me: So what is up with how I can't find a damned group of Christians ANYWHERE that isn't telling me little babies are going to burn in Hell if they don't get baptized or gay people are a threat to our children or that don't feed our kids oreos and coke because it's never even occured to them to take that whole "our bodies are temples" thing seriously -
Grant: Look man, Jesus said "You will be an outcast, you'll be alienated". He said people would hate you and revile you and all that. It's not always going to be easy or most popular but you're not in it for a church, and you don't have to have a church anyway, if you have Christ and you know you do, and - what? What are you grinning about?
Me: I am so ridiculously fucking blessed to have you and talk to you and hear all this out of your mouth. Seriously. It's nuts.
*much hugging and squeezing of a poor man trying to stir hot things with a spatula*
Somehow everything is seeming so much simpler. This man, I swear.
In other (somewhat similar) news, I have had a severe gap in my faith where I can't get from nearly dying to God. It's hard to explain, and it related to the wall I put up to block out all emotions and my children while I lay in the ICU. Grant had JC Superstar playing loudly when I got back from counseling yesterday, and it'd been a long time since I'd heard that, but it was at the point when Jesus is singing all that "If there is a way, take this cup away"...I'll drink it if I have to but please don't make me have to. And it just felt exactly like it felt to not want to die; Jesus not wanting to die. And some connection was forged, and I started crying, and prayed and felt truly connected again for the first time in a long time, in my bitter "I don't want to do this, either, but will if I have to, and why do we all have to go through these horrible things?" way. It was good. Thank You, Andrew Lloyd Webber :p
Grant was Jesus for Halloween, as usual, but the people at his new job had never seen it before. He cracked them up all day long, for instance when he was making everyone hot dogs for lunch and his boss asked how many he'd made and Grant answered, you know it's weird, I just made one and somehow it turned out to be enough to feed everybody. Haha. Dork.
Also, I LOVE my new house and how it is (still, daily) coming together. And, Ananda and Aaron started their first book reports today, by picking and beginning to read their books after getting the assignment. It was very gratifying for Ananda to eagerly burn through an extra chapter before going to sleep, and hear her excitedly tell me all about it :D
My kids are obsessed with the Newsboys cd "Go!", the Mamma Mia soundtrack, and The Nightmare Revisited, which is basically rock bands doing all the songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I have rediscovered Jesus Christ Superstar, am glorying in my iPod's classic rock and Linkin Park playlists, and cannot get Pink's new song "So What?" out of my head to save my life. I think I'm also buying an Enya album off iTunes, who would have seen that coming.
I had a wonderful, WONDERFUL evening to cap off an absolutely horrible day. Basically, I have been heavy with doubt and confusion about gay vs. Christianity stuff for months now. At my last therapy session, a lot of stuff about my initial conversion to Christianity came up, and I remembered how deeply I experienced God in a very, VERY liberal Christian setting. How tangible and REAL He was to me, praying with a female pastor and going to interest groups during camp about how Soddom and Gomorra's sins (sp like whoa) were not about homosexuality but lack of hospitality. I've been drifting towards an increasingly Orthodox way of thinking for the past couple of years, as I struggle to find a church I can feel like belonging to. And it's all just making me crazy. I HATE coming off biggoted to people. I HATE wondering what I'll tell my daughter if she turns out to be a lesbian raised Christian and has a serious set of questions for me. I hate being afraid to mention to my new Catholic homeschooling mom friend that my nanny is a lesbian, and I hate trying to gauge how much the kids' VBS cd of Christian songs might be grating on the nanny.
Grant, cooking tacos: What's wrong? Why do you look all miserable and grumpy?
Me: I am just ...heavy with confusion. I don't get anything. What the hell is this whole cyclical thing, like....Ok. Job from the bible didn't have a pastor, or a church, or the bible, or anything. No missionaries, no history, no 10 commandments. He had the still small voice in his heart. And he endured all that suffering, and never wavered. It says you're supposed to know God is there without anybody telling you, just by looking up at the stars at night. And so I listen to that still small voice, you know, and it doesn't feel right condemning or denying anybody anything based on SINS. And yet, then, I end up with a bunch of sinning, non-Christian friends who want to know if I think they're sinners, and so I have to say, well, yeah, and then I feel bad again, and it starts over. This cycle.
Grant: I look at it like this - the disciples asked Jesus, Jesus himself, what they were supposed to do, like what was the most important thing to do above all else, and he said love your neighbor and love God. So that's what I try to do. And I suck at it lately but that's still the goal. Everyone's relationship with God is different, for me personally, I've prayed and I read the Bible and I think that for me, to be gay, that would be a sin for me. I have no way of knowing if it's a sin for anybody else. I don't know their relationship with God. I don't know what God is saying to them or what they pray about, if they can find peace with God about being gay I think that's great for them. This works out for me since I'm not gay anyway. Your relationship with God is really personal and it's different for everybody, God tells me to love them all. I've never felt some big call towards evangelism or whatever, I mean if somebody is having a really hard time sometimes I'll want to tell them, listen, Jesus can help, Jesus helped me, but it's up to them to decide about that.
Me: ...You know...I've been saying...you know how Mother Teresa being Catholic made me feel good about Catholicism initially? Well, Mother Teresa didn't KNOW any church teaching. She didn't do theology. And when people asked her she would say, all she'd read was the gospels, all she knew was Christ. That was what she beat into her own head over nad over was Jesus, what Jesus taught. She NEVER went around preaching...she helped sick people, gave the homeless beds, taught kids without parents - the MIssionaries of Charity she started even do Hindu last rites for people dying in their place. The whole thing is supposed to be that people come up and say, "I'll have what she's having" because she's this example of faith, like "They'll know we are Christians by our love" - what the hell has happened to that?
Grant: Exactly.
Me: I think sometimes that I have a hard time because way before I was ever Christian I was initially taught ABOUT it by these Baptists full of fire and brimstone and salvation, like, how can you live with yourself if you could have helped your friend be saved? I was crying in the bathroom because my parents were going to burn in hell forever. If you're coming at it from that perspective, then you have some kind of moral obligation to warn everyone that they're sinning and they'd best repent.
Grant: I think everyone knows whether whatever they're doing is a sin or not. Everyone hears that voice in their heart. It's good for me to know that sin is bad and it keeps me from God, and to teach our kids to try not to sin so they can stay close to God, but I'm not supposed to say, "FOR INSTANCE -" and start accusing people of individual junk.
Me: So what is up with how I can't find a damned group of Christians ANYWHERE that isn't telling me little babies are going to burn in Hell if they don't get baptized or gay people are a threat to our children or that don't feed our kids oreos and coke because it's never even occured to them to take that whole "our bodies are temples" thing seriously -
Grant: Look man, Jesus said "You will be an outcast, you'll be alienated". He said people would hate you and revile you and all that. It's not always going to be easy or most popular but you're not in it for a church, and you don't have to have a church anyway, if you have Christ and you know you do, and - what? What are you grinning about?
Me: I am so ridiculously fucking blessed to have you and talk to you and hear all this out of your mouth. Seriously. It's nuts.
*much hugging and squeezing of a poor man trying to stir hot things with a spatula*
Somehow everything is seeming so much simpler. This man, I swear.
In other (somewhat similar) news, I have had a severe gap in my faith where I can't get from nearly dying to God. It's hard to explain, and it related to the wall I put up to block out all emotions and my children while I lay in the ICU. Grant had JC Superstar playing loudly when I got back from counseling yesterday, and it'd been a long time since I'd heard that, but it was at the point when Jesus is singing all that "If there is a way, take this cup away"...I'll drink it if I have to but please don't make me have to. And it just felt exactly like it felt to not want to die; Jesus not wanting to die. And some connection was forged, and I started crying, and prayed and felt truly connected again for the first time in a long time, in my bitter "I don't want to do this, either, but will if I have to, and why do we all have to go through these horrible things?" way. It was good. Thank You, Andrew Lloyd Webber :p
Grant was Jesus for Halloween, as usual, but the people at his new job had never seen it before. He cracked them up all day long, for instance when he was making everyone hot dogs for lunch and his boss asked how many he'd made and Grant answered, you know it's weird, I just made one and somehow it turned out to be enough to feed everybody. Haha. Dork.
Also, I LOVE my new house and how it is (still, daily) coming together. And, Ananda and Aaron started their first book reports today, by picking and beginning to read their books after getting the assignment. It was very gratifying for Ananda to eagerly burn through an extra chapter before going to sleep, and hear her excitedly tell me all about it :D
