The Weekend

As I have fondly told a few friends, this is how i spent my weekend and day off yesterday:

swimming
shopping
trying to give blood/platelets no one seems to want.

Ok, maybe the last one isn't quite fair. I guess they don't want to take platelets when it seems that I just have enough for myself, but it did feel like a big waste of time to go and get hooked up to the machine with all the little tubes running like mice through a maze, reds, yellows, dripping like urine in and out of the inside of my elbow. They had this cool little tv too that's suspended on a rotating arm that dangles over your shoulder in front of your face, like it's trying to smother your consciousness of a needle extending from your vein. Very clever, those nurses, or admin, or wheover thought it up. Especially since the platelet process generally takes over an hour. It's not a bad thing to do, if you're tired and hot and just want to catch your daily dose of sitcom -- go give some platelets! They give you snacks when it's all done, too. Heck, they even gave me snacks, and I just sat there wasting their time (and all that disposable equipment).

I swam almost a mile. I'm getting better with the kickboard, my legs seem to be able to stand it when I rotate crawl with just plain kicking.

I also went shopping, and got a skirt (which I didn't need) and a pair of pants (which I didn't need either, but oh! I like both of them very much). And five books, yes, five, and I wasn't even supposed to be buying ANY. _Prep_ was very good though. I read two of them in about two days. I haven't read that intensively in a long time; it makes me wonder what i have been doing with myself, if not reading and stuffing my brain with information and experience every second that I can, or that it can tolerate it.

I'm just getting more and more hedonistic. Doing things that are immediately physically satisfying, and mentally satisfying too I suppose. My room is a mess and I need to clean it up.

That is certainly not mentally nor physically satisfying, and thought I strongly suspect the result might be, it's not enough incentive to start. Yet.

Conversion Story

I heard a conversion story from a co-worker today. I really do like hearing those personal stories; there's such an honest baring of soul, except from those that are demonstrably evangelistic. I thought how naive and sheltered I've been, how priviledged as a child to not have to gone through a rough childhood. And any religious group is full of these stories, that there's always a personal story to faith. There's often a human face to faith, an overcoming of suffering and darkness.

She told me the visualization a visting pastor had told her of moving through a dark jungle, rife with danger and lethal obstacles--biting snakes, treacherous pits, poison. At the center of the jungle there is a little house, safe, where your Father is, and he can see you, though you can't see him. The Father tells his Son to go out into the jungle, and bring you home, despite the risks, even though he may--and does--die to bring you, and everyone else lost in the jungle, home.

I think that's one of the best metaphor of Christ that I've ever heard. It's not unlike Buddhism in the claim that the whole world is full of traps, pits and poison; the whole world is full of suffering. The ways in which you recognize the suffering, its source, and your method for dealing with it is different.

It does make me wonder though, when Christians claim to leave things to God. To follow his will, to pray, to see what path he takes them on. To what extent does that lead to passivity? But isn't it human nature to struggle, hard, and to be ambitious? Is it human nature then to have constant conflict but ultimately seek meaning in things that you can't control?

I have such a love-hate relationship with church. Visiting church, being at church, watching other people at church. Seeing the dynamics of people there, their role models, the virtues they strive for and the ways of correction, intervention. There's such a strong moral core that's quite shocking to me sometimes. The strictness against sex, the chastity of dating, of early marriage. I wonder now how much of my obsession with it has to do with my search for a moral code ever since childhood. It's easier, isn't it, in a church to seek acceptance through adopting a moral code, being embraced by that community and having that moral certainty and strength of backing... than to go it your own way. Constantly stumbling against others and being jealous--yes, jealous--of theirs. Security, acceptance, certainty. I'm jealous of their having that.

On another not entirely unconnected note.

On Sunday morning July 30 (I think) I woke up and looked my alarm clock at 7:57 am, and NPR was on. I had been dreaming that I was listening to one of the most beautiful pieces of music, an operatic piece, called Cruxifisans. It was about the cruxificion, and it literally made me weep in my dream. I neverweep over music, and I knew that in my dream, but I wept like a baby. I was surprised when I was waking up that I wasn't actually crying, that my pillow wasn't soaked. I tried like hell to wake up and check the time and hear the name of the piece. I saw 7.57. I heard "Joyful Queen of Heaven." I wrote them down hastily on a post-it, tacked it to my dresser and marveled as I fell asleep again that that would make me cry.

I wonder what kind of person I would be if I converted to Christianity. Would I be the same? Would I be different? Would I be disappointed in myself, unhappy, having given up something that's essential to who I am? Or, stranger yet to consider but probably closer to the truth, wouldn't I just be getting closer to who I really am, all along? Scary how much I may change, unpredicably from now.

Theological Reflection on Incidents

(I think I've found a new purpose for my blog.)

based on the Art of Theological Reflection by Killen and de Beer, 1997.

Assumptions:

Theological reflection is an act of making meaning.

Making meaning out of our lives and the events in our lives is a fundamental human ambition.

Making meaning is most pressing when our ordinary explanations or comforts are unsettled.

On the other hand, we often look to quiet discomfort and up-ended worldviews as quickly possible, thereby rushing to new but superficial meaning making.

Theological reflection, then, requires a process in which the feelings of discomfort are fully engaged and explored before rushing to new insights.


Things that need meaning-making (and that have simply been stacking in the back compartments of my skull):

1. Cancer. People with cancer, easing closer into my sphere of ignorant comfort.
2. Marriage. Eternity. Lying next to the same person in bed for fifty years. Losing good friends to that.
3. Things to look forward to/long for; how to do the former and not the latter. How something can be amazing but not, nirvana but not: mothers know.
4. Living life to its fullest; giving everything your all.
5. Knowing enough and doing enough and being enough to live on this earth. The fight against apathy. All those things to deserve to be alive, and coming to terms with falling short. Self-acceptance and forward-moving. Recognizing "incidents" that require "reflection." "Reflecting" upon them.
6. Figuring how people fit into my life, the constant shifts. To not be disappointed in them, to help them as fully as I can. To continue to expect highly and be expected of highly.
7. When I will be comfortable enough to share this, my thoughts, with them. When I will be okay with myself enough.

Some cheering up, please

Things I like:

sunshine
icebreakers
smoked salmon
cacti
anchovies

Things that make me happy:

sunshine
clean beaches, and visiting them
exploring quiet deserted places
ferris wheels
the nervousness before a first date
purchasing my own new cutting board for my own new place

the first list is practically all food, and the second list just makes me melancholy.