How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Left Behind

Here is where the robbers made their mistake.  In their haste to empty my backpack so they could use it to transport our stuff, they dumped out the most valuable item in my possession.  Something that could have gotten them exponentially more money than my computer.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you THE RUG OF FAITH:

Also known as the Prayer-Soaked Rug, a.k.a. Faith Church Prayer Rug, a.k.a. large piece of paper with a picture of Jesus on one side and instructions on the other.  It was mailed specially to me from St. Matthew's Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which they tell several times is 57 years old.  They chose me out of everyone because they could feel that something very wonderful is trying to come to me.  Here something wonderful had been out there trying to come to me and everyone connected to my address and I would have had no idea!

I am going to go ahead and quote the instructions because they are just too outstanding to paraphrase:

"These next 24 important hours are crucial to you.  Timing is important to God.  After you kneel on this Church Prayer Rug, or place it over your knees, place it in a Bible, on Philippians 4:19.  (If you don't have a Bible, it's okay - just slide it under your side of your bed, for tonight, if you can.  If you can't do this, it is okay.)  Leave It There No Longer Than Tonight Only!  God sees.  Then, in the morning it is a must that you get this unusual blessing Church Prayer Rug out of this house and back to us, here at the church's chapel prayer room, in faith...You must get this Bible Prayer Rug back to the church so we can rush it onto another family that's in need of a blessing.  Do this without fail.  Please, do not break this flow of power between us."

But THAT'S NOT ALL.  You also let the fine folks of St. Matthew's know what you prayed for and they will continue praying on your behalf.  Do you have to spend a bunch of time tediously writing out your prayer request?  You do not.

All you have to do is check which blessing you'd like to receive.  Unless, of course, you'd like a specific financial blessing (And who wouldn't?) in which case you should specify the amount.  Perhaps you should be careful though.  You don't want to ask for too much or you might look greedy, right?  THINK AGAIN.

Sister Y. was blessed with over FORTY-SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS.  Wouldn't asking for less than that just indicate that you don't think God is capable of blessing you with more?  What kind of paltry faith do you have, sir or ma'am?  Personally, I feel that somewhere in the mid-six-figure range would demonstrate a proper degree of reverence.   

That's probably all you get out of this church though, right?  I mean is it not more than enough?  But again I tell you THAT'S NOT ALL.

There is also a sacred, spiritual prophecy JUST FOR ME.  It contains a sign from the Lord about my future.  It also contains my Holy Ghost instructions.  Obviously I can't tell you what is in my prophecy, but I can tell you that the Holy Ghost writes in all caps.  Surprising, right?

Surely that must be all, you say.  Of course it is not.  You can also get your very own, St. Matthew's blessed Prosperity Cross!  Because who has ever been more concerned with your prosperity than Jesus himself?  It's what the cross was about. 

If you'll read there at the top, you'll see that not only is it blessed personally for you in order to bring you prosperity, but "This collectible Bible Cross is one of the most beautiful in the world, and it is not sold in stores."

For those of you who are godless heathens wondering, Deuteronomy 8:18 reads: "But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day." which I am sure is not taken out of context AT ALL!

Too bad, burglars.  I guess all of these riches are still destined to be mine. 

Internet, I apologize for rubbing your face in my good heavenly fortune.  Maybe one day something very wonderful will be trying to come to you, too.  I could even have the good people of St. Matthew's pray for that! 

Except I'm totally going for the money.  Get your own blessing.

Confessional

Some people are going to judge me harshly for what I'm about to write.  I understand this because time was I would have done the same.

Some of you are probably going to feel sad for me or concerned.  I appreciate that, I really do, and I'm sorry that I'm going to make you sad or worried.  I'm sorry too if this makes any of you feel like I'm not who you thought I was.  But I can't not write things because of how people might react.  Especially this.

I think it's time to talk about why I don't go to church anymore.

I think this in large part because I feel like I should help the people in my life understand it and I haven't done a very good job with that.  In order to do that, I need to get a better understanding of it myself and writing about things has always helped me work out what I think about them.

I've gone to church all my life.  Always.  I grew up in church.  I went in college.  Every place I moved I did the church shopping bit until I found one to go to every week.  When I was working seven days a week in DC, I went to church.  Tired and sick and even occasionally hung over, I went.

And not just church either.  I did youth group.  Small groups.  Singles group.  InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in college, where I was on the worship team, led Bible studies, and was the administrator.  I was a youth leader in Virginia and Texas.  At times my life has revolved around whatever church or religious group I was involved in.  It wasn't just my religious life, but my social life too.  It was my free time and my community service.

I won't say that I regret it.  For one thing, I try my very best not to let regret seep in.  I am where and who I am today because of the experiences I've had and I wouldn't change it.  Also, I have met some of the very best people I know through church and religious groups.  They have been and are dear friends of mine, people I respect and love.

But none of that explains why I left. 

It wasn't an abrupt decision.  It happened over time.  I just had a hard time listening to it after a while.  It all started to sound more and more ridiculous to me.  Unbelievable, preposterous nonsense.

So there was this faith that I had, that I had almost always had, and now I couldn't listen to anyone talk about it.   They weren't saying anything that I hadn't been hearing for years, but now something was different.  Something in me.  And I felt like if I didn't get away from the voices, I'd lose it all together.  What faith I had, I mean.  I didn't really know how or when it started, but I knew some things were going to have to change.

I realized that I had spent so many years trying to live up to something impossible and beating myself up for not ever being good enough.  I don't think that's a good thing.  I don't think anything positive ever came out of living that way.  There's being aware of your shortcomings so you can improve yourself and then there is berating yourself and allowing yourself to be berated by others about the extent of your own inadequacy.  It's not constructive and it's no way to live.

I don't think it's the intent of faith or church, but it has been what I let it become.  I have listened to good people explaining how they, how all of us are human scum and I have nodded along with everyone else in the room.  I have written very earnestly about my endless failings as a Christian.  Never patient enough, trusting enough, content enough.  On and on it goes in those spiral notebooks full of my handwriting.

I don't want to do it anymore.  I want to live my life.  To try my best to be a good person, love my neighbor, give as I am able to help those in need, make responsible choices in how I live and who I choose to run my community, state, and nation.  To be a good daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and girlfriend.  To work hard at something that matters.   I want to do what I can do, be the most loving and generous person I can, and let myself off the hook for the rest of it.

And I want and need some time to figure out what I believe.  I can't do that by throwing myself back into an environment of being told what is and isn't true.  I want to take a break from all of it to catch my breath and clear my mind.  Then I want to do some thinking and studying for myself.  What happens from there, I'm not sure.  But I know I can't go back to some of where I have been.  I won't let myself.

Because it wasn't easy to get here.  It would be easy to say that getting to this point is something that happened to me, but it wasn't.  It was a choice that I made.  A series of choices, really.  And each time I chose to let go of some certainty that I had held, I was giving up a part of who I had become.  None of it was done lightly.

It's far easier, I find, to give yourself over to absolutes and stick your fingers in your ears and shout LA LA LA than to acknowledge the questions and shades of gray.  But I started to see the gray and there's no unseeing it now.  It seems to me that if God had wanted faith to be in terms of black and white, we wouldn't have scripture in poetry and parables.  We can't remove the mystery from it by declaring that we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what each bit and piece means.  Why would we want to?

I'm not saying that I won't ever go back to church.  Just that right now and for the immediate future, this is what I need.  Some quiet.  Some time away from all of the voices to just spend alone with the questions and the possibilities.

I don't think I can explain it any better than that.  That's about as far as I understand it myself.  It's a strange place to be, after a whole lifetime of being so certain that I had all of the answers.  But as disorienting as it can be, it also feels right.  For now, anyway.  Where it leads, we'll have to wait and see.

A serious post having to do with religion. Proceed at your own risk.

Did I ever tell you that once I provoked a church-wide controversy by hosting a cocktail party at my apartment?  No, of course I didn't.  We don't talk about that kind of stuff.  Until now.

Maybe "church-wide" is a bit of an exaggeration, but the controversy did reach all the way to the elders of this rather large, exceptionally conservative church.  Everyone invited to this small cocktail party was over the age of 21.  The party was in no way affiliated with the church or any of its groups.  But somebody needed some attention or something and threw a fit and a controversy it became.

It really was the living end for me at that church.  I liked a lot of the people, but I couldn't go there anymore.

Then I found this church where people are fully capable of admitting that hey, none of us are perfect and God doesn't always make sense and life's not always fair, but we're in it together.  To be quite honest, I never made much of an effort to get in on that togetherness because I'm pretty shy and all of that, but I watched from the edge and it looked like good stuff.

I don't count the people from that church among those Christians who went a long way toward putting me off Christianity.  But there certainly have been plenty of those Christians and they have had some success.  I make every effort these days to steer clear of those people, but they keep cropping up.  In some ways, I have found them quite helpful.  Through their example, I see what I do and do not believe.

I do not believe that God's will is some sort of cosmic Choose Your Own Adventure novel.  I do not believe that there is a prescribed person, place, job, and number of children that I must have in order to be "in God's will" and that any deviation from these will be my own undoing.

I believe that God's will for my life is that I love him and love my neighbor.  Period.  The end.

I do not believe that we get a free pass from God for not loving anyone based on their looks, actions, past, religious beliefs, political ideology, sexual orientation, or marital status.

I believe that that "take the plank out of your own eye first" business is some good shit.

I believe that it's ok to use words to make points.

I do not believe that an SUV and a big house in the suburbs are evidence of righteousness any more than I believe that poverty or disease are evidence of unrighteousness.

I do not believe that Americans are God's chosen people.  If you'll consult your Old Testament, you'll find that that title is pretty well sewn up.

I believe that the concept of taking God's name in vain has a lot more to do with using it to your own gain and justification than it has to do with what pops out of your mouth when you smack your head on the cabinet door.

I do not believe that a Jesus alive in the twenty-first century would spend his time whining about people saying "happy holidays" or fighting for organized prayer in schools or engaging in a culture war or crusading against gay marriage.  If the New Testament is any indication, it seems to me that he'd be more concerned with feeding people, healing people, and talking about forgiveness.  So I believe that's what we should still be about too.

I do not believe that it matters all that much what we believe on any of that small, petty stuff that Christians are always fighting about.

I believe that real faith should have more questions than answers and that anyone who tells you otherwise is covering for something.

Gordon recently wrote something which included the phrase "love the idea of God".  Some people sure did have a fit about that.  I really liked it though.  I think if we're honest with ourselves, there are times for a lot of us when that's pretty much the best we can do.  And I believe that God is ok with that.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you think that you have God one hundred percent figured out, I'd question that.  And I'd also think it was too bad.  You'd be missing out on the mystery, which to me is really the loveliest part of this whole faith thing.  I'd advise you to open up to the idea that there might be more than you know and that you might not be entirely correct.  You don't have to listen to me, of course.  You're free to tell me that I'm dead wrong and why.  But I don't have to believe you.

That's pretty much all I have to say about that.

A Streetcar Named Pop Theology

I was at church tonight and we were singing this worship song, which, like a lot of them contains some metaphors that it's best not to think too hard about.  This one was saying "may our worship be a fragrance, Oh Lord, to you."

This struck me as funny since my current favorite fragrance is Stella McCartney's thought-provokingly titled Stella.  Which I, of course, insist on pronouncing STELLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! 

And I thought, if my worship were a fragrance, it would be this.  Some people's worship is probably like a Shakepearean sonnett or one of those really forcefully happy ska songs.  But mine is screaming like a maniac in the rain.  An unfaithful, drunk and mean screw-up of a maniac, begging for it all to please just not be over.

What romantic notions of faith I have.

[Note to pastors: I over-extended this metaphor while unable to pay attention past the first 20 minutes of the sermon.  I realize that I have a shorter attention span than a lot of people, but I don't think any of us need you to tell us the same thing 15 times using slightly different words.  Give us a little bit of credit here - 3 different ways will probably get the job done.  The Internet will thank you for not subjecting it to any more addlepated theology a la Lori.]

At least no one can blackmail me with these photos now that I've gone ahead and posted them my own stupid self

Not cool, Emily!  Yesterday, Emily of Not That You Asked (don't even pretend like you're not already reading it) wrote a little post where she divulged a little fact that I shared with her about my Christian adolescence.  Yes, ok, I was a member of the Koinonia Singers, Southern Wisconsin's premier teenage Christian singing/dancing/skit-performing troupe.  And yes, there were OUTFITS!  Let this be a lesson to all of us--never share potentially humiliating information with a fellow blogger.  Or take Melissa's approach: start all such statements with "this is off the record..."

So now I am feeling tremendous Internet pressure to cough up the goods, namely pictures of me engaging in Koinonia performances.  Which is no problem since I have a scanner!  A scanner which has made it so far as to have been unpacked from the box since Christmas!  And no farther!  And since tonight I'll be celebrating my roommate Holly's Birthday (Happy Birthday, Holly!) and tomorrow I'll be cleaning the house and baking for day 2 of the celebration, there is NO TIME for scanner hooking-up and figuring-out.  So I took digital pictures of my pictures and although they are mostly blurry, I feel strongly that this is one of those times when blurry is very much my friend.  It was the mid-90's, people!  So these looks are not entirely my fault!

First, a bit of background.  I was a part of a Campus Life youth group, which, during the summer did a 10 day tour as the Koinonia Singers.  No actual talent was required to be a part of this group (hence, my involvement.)  We'd spend a couple of months practicing (for there was much choreography to learn!  And skit lines!) and then do a 10-day tour of Wisconsin, sometimes getting as far as Upper Michigan!  Or Iowa!  This tour involved a lot of time on a school bus and nights spent on church floors, in camp cabins (and I use the term "cabin" in the loosest possible sense) or in the homes of church members.  So there was a lot of washing of hair and shaving of legs happening in church kitchen sinks.  And there were a lot of fun non-performance activities, some more advisable (read: less life threatening) than others.

Now on to ill-advised 90's fashion!  Here, I am sorry to say, is a picture of the costumes chosen for my first year on the trip, namely 1993.  When we wore imitation Cross Colors outfits.  Yes, it's true.  White suburban Wisconsin teenagers dancing around to Michael W. Smith wearing this:

Ummm...yes, that is me in the yellow shorts there.  And imitation Keds, obviously.  Here we see a bit of audience-interaction fun! 

And here we are performing the song that  is perhaps now my least favorite song of all time: Big House.  Except the "we" here does not include me.  See that empty box?  That's where I would have been dancing (and wearing craaaaaazy sunglasses to indicate, apparently, that this song was too cool for eyes!) had I not sprained my ankle very early in the trip.  But I was dancing on it again a few days later, because there is no "ow!" in TEAM.

A photo of us performing this same number at a later date shows us executing a move that apparently called for us to put our arms straight above our heads.  Because that is what everyone is doing, except me.  I have my arms up to about ear level and couldn't apparently even be bothered to execute halfway decent jazz hands.  This lack of commitment is probably the reason for the early end to my career in musical theater.  Oh, and I CAN'T SING!

Here we have a photo of my personal favorite moment in Koinonia history.  This is our final show, after our triumphant return, performed for all of our friends and family members.  The skit calls for Jesse to say "Go ahead, make my day."  My mother captured the moment just as Jesse realizes that he has instead said "Go to hell" in front of everyone, yet Pam and I (sitting on the box) have not yet reacted.  Yes, my mom is quite the photojournalist.

Hmmmm...an extra-blurry photo of the year that we wore jumpers.  Coincidence?  You make the call!  Here you (sort of) see me on the right singing my duet with Heather.  My strategy here was to sing very quietly since Heather was actually a good singer.  So really what you see here is Heather doing a solo on the Steven Curtis Chapman classic "You are a Treasure" and me basically lip synching.

And finally, I present the year of the vest and skort!

Skorts which, in hindsight, turn out to be really inappropriately short!  Here we see me (far right) performing in a skit.  What can that be around my wrist?  Could it be a great big scrunchy?  1996, people!

So there we have a visual history of my career in Christian music-vangelism.  I've left out the more interesting pictures (and by "interesting" I of course mean "self-incriminating.")  I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane as much as I did!

Note: My email has apparently started screening my messages without my knowledge or consent.  So if you've written to me recently and not heard back, it could be that I never got your message.   Ha!  I was not just slacking!  Well, in most cases.

Licensed T-Shirts Coming Soon!

It's the very latest in annoying Christian jargon and you'll only see it here, folks.  I present: Stick the fish.  You'll be hearing it from your annoying neighborhood Christians any day now.  (And before the hate mail starts, allow me to assure you that of course I am not insinuating that all Christians are annoying and certainly not the ones you know.)

We coined the term while driving to the rodeo (yes, Internet, the rodeo that I attended two and a half weeks ago.  I know, alright!  It's just that I've been distracted by all of the funny winter and the shiny sequined Olympic people with their compelling backstories of personal tragedy.  And a sport with sweeping!)  We were stuck in traffic and discussing those people who choose to stick not only the one large Christian fish emblem on their cars, but also several small ones and we got to wondering whether those small fish might represent the children of the family.  What, though, do parents do if all of the children aren't, shall we say, resting in the arms of Jesus?  Does each child automatically warrant a fish, regardless of the destination of his or her immortal soul?  Or is it possible that the parents wait until each child has had his or her own come to Jesus moment to place his or her representative fish on the back of the family minivan/SUV?  In which case, all of the got saved/was born again/accepted Jesus as personal Savior/asked Jesus into heart/became a Christian...type phrases could be replaced with the efficient "stuck the fish."  For example:

"Little Billy stuck the fish this weekend!  We're so proud!"

"Don't worry too much about Amanda.  Our youngest didn't stick the fish until she was 19."

This could be a powerful teaching tool for those who believe that salvation, once found, cannot be lost.  Because those suckers do not come off your tailgate!

I choose not to stick any representative fish on my own personal car since my driving is what Christian jargon describes as a "bad witness."  Because I don't think Jesus would cut people off or call His fellow drivers "rat bastards."  Unless, of course, they were driving 15 under in the far left lane, in which case it is not so much an insult as just a statement of fact.

So I'll soon be selling the rights to my new catchphrase and then sitting back to collect my millions, just as Jesus intended.  And you'll be able to get a lovely array of fine quality Stick the <><! hats, t-shirts, keychains, mousepads, bumperstickers, onesies, pencils, pens, zipper-pulls, hard candy, bracelets, earrings, stickers, temporary tattoos, socks, shoelaces, bookmarks, plush toys, magnets, mugs, hoodies, Bible covers, and totes at a Christian bookstore near you!  Can the Stick the <><! Compilation Album (Various Artists) be far behind?

The Ghost of Christmas Alone

I have had a revelation.  Christmas is not all about me.  Whoa.  Ok, I suppose this might be apparent to the rest of you, but I was more shocked by this idea than I'd care to admit.

This came to me while I was in the midst of a full-on holiday-induced pity party because I'm single and will have to go to holiday parties with no date when everyone else will have a husband/fiance/boyfriend and I'll be the only single one there and even the high school boy is bringing his girlfriend and everyone will be giving me single person pity or asking when I'm going to get married or maybe talking to each other about how sad it is that I can't find anyone and how it's a shame since I have a good personality and don't even get me started on New Years because the entire holiday is built around parties which require dates to avoid patheticness and being the only one standing there with no one to kiss at midnight.

For whatever reason, this year has been exponentially more difficult on that front.  I had no boyfriend last year at holiday time and yet, the joy and merriment of the season was in no way reduced due to that fact.  This year my state of aloneness is threatening to suck the joy out of the most wonderful time of the year.  I feel myself turning into that girl (who, at holiday parties can honestly go one of two ways: sitting in the corner crying in her eggnog OR sitting in the corner having an ill-advised drunken make-out with a male co-worker of questionable attractiveness.)  If I continue down this path, I fear that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come will show me scary bitter old woman Lori who chain smokes, has nineteen cats, and who the neighborhood children believe is a witch.  Yikes.

So there I was, staring at the Christmas tree and feeling sorry for myself.  When it occurred to me that Christmas is not, in fact, about me.

The joy associated with the holiday is meant to come from one event, the birth of Christ, which does not vary from year to year based on my level of personal happiness.  Every year it is just as amazing and awe-inspiring as the last.  God Almighty chose to give up heaven for 33 years to live as a human, hurt, cry, suffer, and ultimately die an excruciating death.  And He didn't come down riding on clouds.  He came as a helpless baby, dependent on a very young first-time mother and her not-quite husband.  And He did it for us.

And all of these parties are supposed to be in celebration of that.  An event to which no shepherd or wiseman is reported to have brought a date.  Because it wasn't about that and it still shouldn't be.  They were drawn there out of a need to worship the newborn King.  Whereas I've been spending my holiday season bowing down at the throne of what everybody else thinks.  No more.

So I found my Christmas joy again.  This year I just had to look a little bit harder.

No progress, however, in locating my New Year and (GAH!) Valentine joy.  Anybody know where I can get a good deal on some cats?

Bum Steer

Ever since college friends started marrying en masse, turning me into a biddy by age 21, I've been getting the same self-righteous and very bad advice from what Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones so aptly named "Smug Marrieds."

"Once you become content with God alone, then God will send you a husband."

Loosely translated: We married folk clearly have it together and are vastly more righteous and godly than you singletons.  We're not saying that it's your fault, just that there must be something intrinsically wrong with your relationship with God if He has not yet blessed you with a mate.  Stop having any desires beyond salvation and one day when you are perfectly serene and content, you will have earned a spouse from God.  Like us!

These are Job's friends with bridal registries.  I have always known this sentiment for the total crap that it is.  But now, NOW I  have been proved right by no less than Moses himself!

Thanks to Donald Miller's book, Searching for God Knows What, I started reading the first few chapters of Genesis.  Of course I've read these before, but this time I saw something I hadn't seen before.

Adam was lonely.

And what did God say?  Did He say, "Adam, you ungrateful so and so!  I gave you paradise, dominion, even let you name the animals for goodness sake!  AND I walk around and personally hang out with you and love you perfectly!  And you want more!  Where is your contentedness?  I hereby smite you!"

No, He did not.  God said, "It is not good for man to be alone."  And He made him a wife.

Ha!  The perfect man with the perfect, direct relationship with God still needed someone else.  And God agreed.  Vindication is mine!  Take that Smug Marrieds!

Yes, I'm still single and I don't know why.  But at least I have some heavyweights on my side against the argument that it's due to my low level of contentedness.

Many thanks to Donald Miller, Moses, and God Almighty, without whom I am just an opinionated 28 year-old biddy whose greed for more would surely never win her a husband.