is there a correlation?

Something I've been noticing lately:

churches that put a high priority on being "right" (eg, making sure they interprete scripture correctly, making sure that Christian behaviour is taught and followed, making sure that all they do is orthodox, in the evangelical sense of the word) have little to no social justice ministries.

churches that are more "liberal" (eg, willing to be expansive about doctrines such as homosexual sex, may be very loose about interpretation of scripture, some questions about the 'only-ness' of Jesus) have vibrant, active social justice ministries.

Am I biased here? Am I missing something? When I say social justice, I mean things like political advocacy, working for change, refuge work, sex trade worker helps - that sort of thing.

switching it up around the old homestead

As Mike and Robert will attest, I'm a lot more polite and serious on my blog than I am face to face. So here's a taste of something I found freakin' hilarious. I'd hate for you all to think I'm a nice girl. You'd be so, so wrong.

geek

Hey Robert, look at my new bit of html! Robert is a geek for not having a blog

freedom in scheduling

Karen is thinking and writing about some great thoughts. I have had an absolutely terrible time over the last year with trying to put my days together in a way that is fruitful and life giving. I'm encouraged to think about what Karen is saying.

Now I can look at discipline as a friend, as Dillard put it, a scaffolding just as the word “rule” is to mean “trellis” or “guide”. Discipline keeps me tethered when I am tempted to run from these ordinary tasks that make up most of my days. I look at the color-coded schedules and to do lists of my youth with great weariness. How I spent my days then did not lead me to life but mere accomplishment. Now I see a schedule, a disciplined life as a tool to keep me from foolish idolatries of how much and how many. Discipline is just a way to wear the right shoes or have on a good pair of glasses. All the better to see you with my dear.

I have been looking into schedules. Even when we read physics, we inquire of each least particle, What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands in sections of time.

A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order-willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.

-Annie Dillard

another quote from The Heartbreaker

"Human beings love idols," says Lewis, "because human beings love to worship, but if you worship the wrong gods, you risk being seriously cut off from reality."

Anything can become an idol, he says: a nation, a political party, a head of state - drink, drugs, food - football, rock music, pop stars - cars, boats, designer clothes - sex, exercise, loadsamoney - you name it. All these things may be good in themselves, but once they become an obsession you squander time and energy on illusions, your priorities get rearranged, your balanced lifestyle goes down the tubes and your true self gets stomped on. Or in other words, getting cut off from reality can make you physically, mentally and spiritually ill.

p.440

wholeness

"The esscence of sin is "other people telling me who I am and I believing them". Collusion with inauthentic images of myself can only be a denial of the irreducible originality of the given self, and thus an offence to God. In this sense sin is linked to a great deal of ill-health; for to believe and to enact a lie about myself, however unconsciously or for whatever noble motives, can only be conducive to sickness."

Mud and Stars: The Impact of Hospice Experience on the Church's Ministry of Healing [A Report of a Working Party Consisting Mainly of Doctors, Nurses and Clergy], as found in Heartbreaker, a novel by Susan Howatch. For those of you who have never read Susan Howatch, get thee to a library! (Start with Glittering Images. Don't be put off by the cover.)

a couch haiku

a blur of seats and
pillow cushions. weary legs
take refuge at home

picking couches for my new office

I think I've seen almost 1/2 of the couches that are for sale in my fine town.

13 ft x 15.6 ft is what I have to work with. North facing, windows along the back wall (broken up by a brick column). The carpet is kind of a mud colour - one of those carpets that are 'every colour' - green, brown, cranberry, blue, yellow. There will be scarlet colour borders on the carpet (not my choice). Walls will be french vanilla. Accent walls in the main area will be a mustard yellow colour. Oak fittings.

I do most of my work with clients at the couches. My current office is set up with a couch, love seat and chair. I pull a table into the middle of the mix to create a work space. My desk is off in the corner. I want to replicate a similar feel in my new office. I hate seeing clients at my desk - for one, I keep a messy desk and there are confidentiality issues. Secondly, I don't like the power dynamics that a desk imposes. It feels so officious and me vs. you. It's hard enough coming to see a lawyer when your life is taking such major twists and turns - you don't need to have intimidation, whether it be purposeful or accidental, thrown into the mix. I try to create a safe place for people to speak clearly and honestly about what is going on and what needs to change (for all you Path soon-to-be-participants, my mission statement is: "To create a safe place for people to tell their real stories").

That's all well and fine, but I've now got to actually put this space together. I've been subletting an office for the last year and a bit and it came fully furnished. I'm moving into a new venture on Sept 1 and I've got to start from scratch. I have a horror of being a cookie cutter Ikea replicate, but I also have limited resources (read money) and am not a particularly happy shopper. I want my office to really look like me - not just some office drone's office. I'm not in to matchy-matchy. I'm not really an antique-y person. If left to my own devices, I'd probably do things in chrome and glass, but that's not very welcoming.

So here is what I've decided on so far. Keep reading - your input will be greatly valued.

1. Two love seats. I thought about getting a sofa and love seat, but the fact is that three people never sit on the sofa and that extra space is just wasted. Cheaper to get two loveseats. Any disagreements or thoughts to the contrary? Keep in mind the space.

2. An adjustable table from Ikea. This is very cool: you can buy table legs and table tops separately. I'm going to buy the adjustable legs so that I can make the table just a bit lower. Regular dining room tables are too high when you're sitting on a couch.

3. Chair. I have no idea. The thought right now is that I'll bring a chair I have at home - it is vanilla coloured and has wooden legs that are currently painted sage green. I'm not sure if it'll fit with the couches.

4. Desk - I have no idea. I like to have lots of space to spread out when I'm drafting documents, but I don't need a deep desk.

Here is the big challenge for me: what colours? I'm leaning towards either a red or yellow couch. Opinions on either of these colours? If I go with red, I'll probably go with a brick colour. If I go with yellow, I'll go with a warm yellow. I don't like mustard yellow, so that's out. Someone suggested ochre. What's that?

Wood: light wood or dark?

I want my office to be a relaxing, yet up beat place to be. If you were getting divorced, what would make you feel most comfortable in an office?

Input greatly desired!

Later: Here are two interesting sites on feng shui as it relates to colour.

another p.s.: feel free to suggest colours that aren't red or yellow!

the miracle of chemicals, or 'peace in a pill'

Many thanks to you, my reader friends, for your encouragement in relation to yesterday's post. I took some of my medicine last night and am feeling so, so, so much better today. The little bit of chemicals is just enough to put the foundation stone underneath my mind and emotions.

One of the hallmarks of depression and anxiety diseases, in my opinion, is a [brain chemically induced] loss of objectivity. Yesterday, it seemed like such a failure to have to take some medicine; I felt like I was not giving the withdrawal symptoms (what symptoms???) enough time, or that I was psychologically addicted to the drugs, or that I was simply an emotional loser who can't get her shit together. I figured that the dizziness was in my head, that I should just try harder to concentrate, that I shouldn't be so morbidly introspective, that I just shouldn't. Today, I'm not dizzy - physically or mentally, I can track along with all of my thoughts and actions, I haven't nasty talked to myself at all.

Hmmm. What's weak about taking my medicine? Maybe it's just plain smart.

the vagaries of life (alt. title: heart sore)

My heart is sore today from the vagaries of life. In the space of the same half hour, I checked a website I hadn't read for a while and found out that the writer is getting remarried, having lost his wife to cancer last year and I heard a friend's heart cry about the loss of an important relationship. I am confused. Why does it seem that God doles out heart relationships to some, but seems to either not given them in the first place or yank them out of the hands of others? I think the reason this pinches my heart is that I feel like someone in the second camp; someone who, for some reason, doesn't have a heart relationship. Am I doing something wrong? Am I ugly? What purposes are being accomplished by being on my own? I know with my head that those are pointless questions, ill framed, but my heart betrays me. My heart will unceasingly beat me up, if I let it. And I have let it have free reign in it's pummelling route far too often in the past while.

I am tired and feeling ill these days. And a couple of weeks back, I felt so full of joy that I could have probably lit the power supply of a small country. I will bear the deep sorrows, for I am one of those that is also privy to the great joys. Somedays, however, the pain is very acute. These days are painful. I fear that my body does indeed betray me. I have come off my antidepressants, making it down to zero on Monday, but have made the decision to go back on a very low dose. I can't find any firm ground when it is only my body in charge of the chemicals. I need just a little bit of help. I am unhappy about this, but I can tell you, I really don't want to feel this way. It's like being constantly wobbly, never having a firm grip on the slippery bars. It just doesn't seem fair.

more 5-7-5

whirl past the chaos
scattered showers, thoughts like stones;
yearning for the peace

resurrecting an old habit

This one's for you, Robert!

liberated by
being known across the miles;
next beer is on me

well rested, well tanned

I'm back from holidays. I'll catch up soon. How y'all doin'?

in listening to you, I listen to me

It just struck me as I was re-reading my last post and the comments attached with it: what Jen describes? That's what I want offered to me. But....

....what would it mean for me to sit shiva, hourly, daily, monthly, for the parts of you that had died? To sit with you, to sit proper shiva, not the visiting and talking about me kind, but the sitting and holding space for you, letting you direct the conversation, the biting my tongue and holding my arms out 'til it hurts to continue creating the space kind of shiva?

What would it mean to be the kind of person who didn't need to be invited in (because inviting tells me you want me), but who knew her worth - the kind of worth you don't have to give me for me to have- and could respond to that silent invitation, that yearning, longing invitation that your heart issued to mine, to sit shiva with you?

Would I be disappointed that you didn't, wouldn't, couldn't sit shiva with me? Does that mean that I shouldn't sit shiva with you - because our relationship isn't developed enough, or because it isn't polite, or because I'm treading where I'm not invited? Or, have we moved into a new plain, the kingdom now space, where our hearts know, even though our heads don't, that unless we just oh-my-goodness-get-over-it-already move into that sacred space, we'll wait forever for the polite invitation?

Yes.

hammer + nail = bang on

This is an absolutely frickin' brilliant post by Jen:

but really, clinical depression & her cousins aside, how many problems do you have that would not be drastically improved if you had wonderful people in your life who actually descended on you when you were in a state and helped dig you out of whatever trauma you currently felt trapped by? what fog of dismay could not be dramatically lifted by someone scrubbing your toilet, feeding you hot soup in bed and generally treating you like you're horribly sick, only it's your soul that's making everything feel so crummy? what soul sickness could not be cured by the hourly, weekly or monthly sitting shiva for the parts of you that died along with that trauma? with nice cashews and dried apricots and hot kenyan tea to go around while everyone listened to your stories?

Do not stop to collect your $200.00 on your direct route to read the whole post. And hey Whatever, I think we're maybe on the road to this. Let's keep our sights fixed on this goal.

tickled pink

I wanted to let you know I was absolutely tickled pink that each of you commented on my last 'waving hello' post. It made me smile to check my blog this morning and see so many comments! You honour me with your presence. And surprise me. It's a blessing to know that you think of me and wave back when I pop my head up.

Thank you, little community!!!

waving hello!

I'm here and am happily wandering through summer. Hello all and a big squeeze to each of you.