Faith

This is a very unusual topic for me and I'm probably going to do a really crappy job with it.

I don't have what would probably be considered your typical Christian belief system. I'm not athiest, or agnostic, or even a druid (though I used to tease my ex about that). I do happen to believe in the teachings of Jesus, but there are some fundamental tenets of Christian theology that I have a real problem with. However, I'm not going to get into that tonight.

I spent a good bit of time thinking along these lines today because:

• I went to church on Sunday and paid attention;
• I have a good friend who is in a world of hurt, and I'm feeling ridiculously impotent about being enough help or comfort or any good at all;
• I work in an industry that teaches people who have been laid off how to be more strategic with their job search, and right at the moment we seem to be struggling with armageddon (or it just feels that way to the people involved); and
• I've been reading There If You Need Me, in which I am learning that Kate Braestrup and I have very similar theories about the way life and faith and love are supposed to work.

So what do I believe? I don't believe that life is difficult here because it isn't heaven. (And I don't believe that only those who accept Christ are allowed to go to heaven -- this gets me in trouble every time.) I do believe that life is like a giant university. It's not supposed to be easy or simple -- we ourselves are not easy or simple creatures. Life is going to present you with a series of obstacles or challenges or crises at every stage. That's just the way the world works. Our job is not so much to overcome all of them as it is to figure out why they are there and what our role is. Are we there to learn, or are we there to teach? To take something away or give something to?

Too simplistic? Here's another one: I believe that the fundamental reason we are all here, our reason for being, has to do with love. (Oh boy, here she goes...)

There is a passage in the book that really resonated with me when I read it - where she's writing to her brother about the nature of dealing with crisis and death and what is really important:

"It doesn't matter how educated, moneyed, or smart you are: when your child's footprints end at the river's edge, when the one you love has gone into the wood with a bleak outlook and a loaded gun, when the chaplain is walking toward you with bad news in her mouth...your life, too, will swing suddenly and cruelly in a new direction with breathtaking speed, and if you are truly wise...you will know enough to look around for love. It will be there, standing right on the hinge, holding out its arms to you. If you are wise, whoever you are, you will let go, fall against that love, and be held."

One of the issues I have with traditional Christian churches is that they seem to be more about judgement and rules than about love. The ten commandments versus the new testament. At the risk of sounding like a hippie, it's not about the rules. Dude. It's about whether we can open our hearts enough to get over our innate fear -- enough to recognize our role in a situation, understand what kind of love is necessary to help the people around us when they need it -- and offer it -- and have the ability to accept it when it is offered to us.

I believe we are here to learn, and to teach, and to help, and to love. What else is there?

Take Care Now, Y'Hear?

Now, about those percolating thoughts...

I spent a lot of time this weekend observing the parental units - not in their natural habitat, but it's better that way -- and thinking about some of the differences between their generation and mine when it comes to marriage and the expectations involved therein.

I don't really know if my parents have a happy marriage. I've asked, and my mom doesn't know how to answer the question. They aren't actively UNhappy -- but they seem to be annoyed with each other more than they seem to have a good time together. It's been this way forever, as far as I can tell. This fact scares me shitless,. This is my model for the way marriage works. Crap.

My father was a good provider. A distant, work-obsessed, non-emotional dad, but a good provider. My mother was raised to find a man who could/wanted to take care of her, so she could concentrate on taking care of the house and the kids and her husband. (Possibly in that order.)

Maybe because I've seen precisely how this works in my nuclear family, I do not want a man to take care of me. Nor do I want to reverse things and take care of a man. In fact, I don't know many independent, professional, emotionally mature women who do. What we want is a man who cares for us. There is a difference - subtle, maybe, but large. Being "taken care of" implies that one person has more power than the other -- is, in fact, the adult in the relationship: the responsible one, the mature one, the one who knows or is able to do/handle more than the other. Granted, this is ok in the short term -- look, we all have times we NEED someone to take care of us, or vice versa. But on an ongoing basis, that imbalance of power can be crazy-making.

I don't want a parent. I want a partner. Preferably, an equal partner. In a balanced relationship, two people care for one another. (And in a REALLY good relationship, they also eff like bunnies, but that's beside the point at the moment.) Why can't we ALL be adults at the party, focus on the give-and-take, shoulder our own responsibilities -- and still manage to have a loving, intelligent, happy relationship? Is this really so difficult? Apparently so.

I think this is why I fight so hard against my husband when he insists on being the only one allowed to paint the walls in our house, choose the landscaping, take care of the taxes, do the grocery shopping - whatever it is. I know he thinks he's taking care of me, but -- the impulse might be loving, but I'm wary of the motive behind it. If I let you do everything for me, will I become dependent on you? How much knowledge/skill/independence/adulthood will I abdicate for the sake of convenience and comfort? (I mean, hey, I already gave you total control over my sexuality, and look how well you did with that -- do I want to repeat that with all of my needs? Not effing likely...)

I also think it's why I was so annoyed this week when my dad spent his entire visit talking to my husband about his business - but never asked about mine. It felt like I was immediately assigned to little-girl irrelevance.

Yes, I realize I totally overthink everything.

Inspiration...Not

Why is it easy to blog, but not finish a chapter? Of course, I might as well ask why it's easier to landscape the yard, build a car from scrap metal, organize my closet by color and year, finish seven scrapbooks, and learn high German than write any part of my book. It just is.

When I started this blog I thought it would serve as a great warm up to the "real" stuff, and a safe place to test out some ideas and material. But it seems to have taken on a life of its own, and I keep having more fun writing it than the book. (Plus I keep finding other people's blogs to help waste more of the time that I have so much of, what with the job and the kids and the science lab and the law firm and the recording studio...) Sigh. I must get back on track.

The baby iPod is still alive, thanks for asking. (Again, instead of writing)...I've loaded 150 songs on it, created two playlists and ran approximately 12 miles so far without killing it. Feeling pretty good about this, which means I'll undoubtedly drop her in the reservoir the next time I'm out. (Also discovered that the world's best running song is the Uninvited's Ordinary Man -- which no one except a few other hard-core fans has ever heard, so their secret is probably safe with me and I can use it to someday win the Boston marathon.) But seriously -- have you seen the Southwest commercial where the guy actually throws the wii controller INTO the TV, which explodes and then crashes off the wall? Genius. I've never seen a commercial that quite so perfectly captures my relationship with technology.

Oy. A little scattered tonight, aren't we? But I did just spend four days nonstop with the parental units, so I should probably be grateful I have any coherence left at all. Or sanity. FOUR days listening to my father ask my husband about his business (but not me) and my mother describe in detail what food was served at/what she wore to every party she has attended since Thanksgiving. I have some thoughts percolating around relationships (i.e. the difference between "caring for" and "taking care of", among other things) that have to do with my observations over the last four days, but they're not quite ready to emerge yet. Maybe tomorrow night.

Sometimes there isn't nearly enough wine.

Into each life...

...a little rain must fall. Or maybe detergent.

I ran my cell phone through the laundry today.

Can you hear me now? No, no, I can't.

(But I can hear really interesting electrical shock type sounds coming out of it, where it sits in the very back of the kitchen in case it blows up eventually. Poor baby. No one warned them not to sell you to me.)

Good thing I have idiot-proof insurance. I'm sure it's really meant for IT guys and engineers who drop every electronic gadget on god's earth into the toilet. But I can make it work for me as I invent new ways to destroy my electronic toys.

I got a new iPod today too. I'm trying to keep it as far away as possible from the cell phone. In case it can still communicate, you know. Otherwise I'll wake up tomorrow and find that the new baby iPod has disconnected from my computer, wedged her way under the front door, and is halfway down the street in a desperate attempt to keep me from dropping her in the bathtub or running over her with the car. It's futile, honey. Just try to enjoy whatever short amount of time we will have together.

Maybe one of my pairs of sunglasses will send you a message letting you know how they've escaped over the years. (They're all living together on an island somewhere.)

Ooooohhh...maybe tomorrow I'll get a crackberry.

Twelve thousand monkeys with typewriters...

It's a new year, and nothing crappy has happened yet.

I thought I would have posted before this, like on New Year's Day maybe, but instead I've been sucked in (or suckered in) to the Twilight series -- which despite not being very good and in fact incredibly irritating, is also addictive and I can't escape until I finish all four books. Have they figured out a way to infuse the pages of the actual book with crack? It's the only thing that would explain it.

Can I vent for a moment regarding the extreme lack of patience I have with the ubiquitous practice of taking multiple pages in any sequel to explain what happened in the previous books? Look, I know that some people have short term memory loss, and other people are idiot enough to buy the fourth book in a series without reading the other three first, but it just makes me want to scream when someone has to waste valuable page space by explaining for the umpteenth time why X did Y to Z.

Anyhoo...

However, all of this irritation does mean that I have even more incentive to finish my damn book this year, though not containing vampires and werewolves and not being marketed to hormonal teenage girls it probably won't shoot to the top of the bestseller list immediately (or ever).

On the bright side, I also read (finally) the last two Meredith Gentry books...aaaahhh, I am very very pleased. Life is good. Laurell K. Hamilton writes really, really good sex. I think perhaps she would have many many points in the quiz I mentioned in a previous post. Did I mention that she writes good sex? Better than Anne Rice - a worthy role model.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go draw a bath, pour a glass of wine, and see if I can get through a few more hundred pages of Bella without wanting to kill her myself -- the reading equivalent of binge drinking with Bartles & James: can't seem to stop, tastes like candy, but will hate myself in the morning and have to self-medicate with Faulkner or Vonnegut.