Nothing reminds you of all your weird single-person-who-lives-alone quirks like having a guest for an extended period of time. Kelli's here for the holidays and I pity her having to deal with me. I sing. A lot.
Every once in awhile I remember that someone else is here and I feel like this:
And mostly when I notice I'm singing, I've been singing this:
Merry Christmas!
On June 6, 2010 it will be 20 years since I graduated high school. You know what that means, right? Yeah, yeah I'm old. I don't fucking care. It also means that this summer is my 20th High School Reunion an auspicious event rendered totally pointless and infinitely more annoying by the advent of Facebook.
Tonight I've put up with the incessant nagging of someone I don't even remember. Apparently this yahoo has scanned in our senior yearbook and was puzzled that he couldn't find my picture. I told him I was too busy designing the yearbook (nerd, I know) to get my picture taken. He was convinced I had a maiden name I was unwilling to reveal.
I never thought I'd be that person, but here I am. The person who has absolutely no desire at all to attend any of their high school reunions. People tell me I'll regret not going that I should totally go, it's so fun. Maybe I'm close-minded but I don't see how hanging out in some godforsaken bar in East Fucking Bethel, MN with people I don't know is going to be fun.
And really wasn't the whole point of the reunion to see who married whom, who got fat and how many kids they had? I know all that already, from Facebook. I like Facebook infinitely more than I liked high school. And thanks to Facebook I won't have to drive to East Fucking Bethel, MN to attend the reunion, I'll can just look at all the pictures and judge people from the comfort of my own home.
I tweeted this link yesterday about the forgiveness of a
family that lost their daughter to a car accident. http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/79698172.html?page=1&c=y Forgiveness is so crucial to healing, both for the person
wronged and the person that did the wronging. By holding on to the pain caused
by being wronged, illness is created throughout a person’s entire being—biological,
psychological, sociological, & spiritual realms. Negative energy is created
and emitted, causing further suffering and illness. As a future holistic health
practitioner and energy healer, I have learned about the necessity of positive
energy in creating and maintaining a healthy person. The only way to reverse the effects of this is to practice
radical & complete forgiveness.
However, one needs to learn how to do this. Forgiveness isn’t simply saying I
forgive you. It’s not just words. It is a process of letting go of one’s
attachment to the security of their pain. It is scary to radically and completely forgive someone
because it opens you up to be vulnerable. Many people are afraid of being hurt
again, and they believe holding on to the pain of being wronged acts as a
protective shield. However, the perceived shield only blocks healing love from
being both emitted and received. One needs to let go of their pain. One needs to let go of
their fear. One needs to learn how to do this, and there are many ways to figure
this out. I use two ways: the example of Jesus Christ as the forgiving healer
in the Gospels and mindfulness as practiced by Thich Nhat Hanh. These two have
helped me realize the healing power of forgiveness. The negative forces of
bitterness, resentment, and anger no longer bind me. If someone wrongs me, I
recall the healing power of forgiveness as explained and witnessed by Jesus. I
use mindfulness to be awake in the present, which helps me see the wronging for
what it is and the reasons for its existence. By seeing the causes and dealing
with them, I can let it all go to history, where it no longer emits negative
energy.
Even though I babysit the Tibbles every Friday, I rarely get to see my nephew Cade. He's at school by the time I get there and I leave before he gets home. I spend the time in between talking about bats with Nolan and listening to Liam tell me everything I say is boring and that he likes Katie Lou much better (this, of course, cracks me up and I argue with him incessantly about it).
Yesterday Cade and I passed briefly in the living room.
He stood in front of me wrapped in his snow gear, backpack still affixed to his back. "Did you want really want an electric pencil sharpener for Christmas?" He asked, looking up at me from under the Superman hat.
"Yes."
"Good!" He pointed at the Christmas tree. "That's what we got you."
Sweet!
Enjoy!
What's the worst book you've ever read?
I spent the last week or so reading Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island. Surprisingly, this has been the first Christian theological work I have read in quite a long time. I think four-plus years of Christian education helped contribute to this much-deserved break. Now, I am well rested (in a Christian theological sense) and eager to dig right in to some good stuff. To appreciate Merton’s work, I had to understand the book was written in 1955. This means I had to realize both his male-centric writing (using the word man in place of humanity) and his negativity to other religions. Merton’s theological writing is Roman Catholic, though he does not write with a dogmatic style of a canon lawyer or apologetic theologian. This book reads more like religious philosophy than theology simply because of the questions and answers it raises. Here are some ideas I found interesting. ‘We must, therefore live by the commandments and the counsels and by the Sprit of Jesus. And in order to do this we much search the Scriptures and understand the Gospels, in order to find out what Jesus is like and what His commandments are” (59). This is Christ centered thinking, unlike the Pauline emphasis often found in Christian thought today. I believe this statement is the simple Christianity that can resurrect the faith today. “All men seek peace first of all with themselves. That is necessary, because we do not naturally find rest even in our own being. We have to learn to commune with ourselves before we can communicate with other men and with God. A man who is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his interior fighting into the society of those he lives with, and spreads a contagion of conflict all around him” (121). This means we can and should heal ourselves before even attempting to offer counsel to others. If we are hurt, how can we expect to heal others? By taking care of ourselves first, we can have enough energy and attention to devote to helping others without distraction. “The arguments of religious men are so often insincere, and their insincerity is proportionate to their anger. Why do we get angry about what we believe? Because we do not really believe it. Or else what we pretend to be defending as the “truth” is really our own self-esteem. A man of sincerity is less interested in defending the truth than in stating it clearly, for he thinks that if the truth be clearly seen it can very well take care of itself” (195). This is good reading for the fundamentalist evangelicals who push their brand of Christianity as absolute truth. Many of these same people will become notably angry when pressed about their beliefs. If one believes they know the truth, they can rest easy in confidence. If you know the truth, there is no need to defend it. “Anxiety is fatal to recollection because recollection depends ultimately on faith, and anxiety eats into the heart of faith. Anxiety usually comes from strain, and strain is caused by too complete a dependence on ourselves, on our own devices, our own plans, our own idea of what we are able to do” (224). Merton talked about recollection as a “change of spiritual focus and an attuning of our whole soul to what is beyond and above us.” It is like becoming awake and practicing mindfulness, which allows us to see things as they are. A thorough understanding of Jesus’ life and teachings gives us confidence to not only shed anxiety, it allows us the peace of mind to become awake & mindful. Christians become anxious when they doubt Jesus’ life and teachings and instead turn toward the abilities of human beings (Paul, other people, or themselves) to help them.
I like to start my workday (after the coffee & Ellen DeGeneres) by choosing a soundtrack the day. Oftentimes this is either listening to 89.3 The Current or just hitting shuffle. If I'm feeling extra procrastinatey I have to create a playlist for the day. These vary quite a bit. One playlist is just a mashup of Exile on Main Street with Exile in Guyville, alternating the Stones with Liz Phair. Speaking of Phair, she has another playlist dedicated to her. This one alternates the rejected Whitechocolatespaceegg demos with the released versions of the songs.
The latest playlist was quite fun to make and it's just called Duets. I seem unable to resist a duet. I blame this on listening to a lot of Kenny Rogers in my formative years (he loved the duet too). And since we're very nearly hitting the 12 days of Christmas, I thought I'd share four of the more unusual duets in my collection.
Rocket Man, Elton John & Ryan Adams
Even though everyone knows "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" is Elton's best song, I have a soft spot for "Rockt Man" because it brings up fond memories of spending a drunken night on the company dime in a swanky Canadian hotel, where some co-workers and I commandeered the piano in the hotel bar and this song was sung repeatedly with made up lyrics involving Software Man.
Come on! Does this really need any explanation? I didn't think so.
The fact that these two sing together and have formed a sort of mutual admiration society is enough to make my heart burst with joy. It's a little known fact that I bought the Tank Girl soundtrack not because of the name Paul Westerberg but because Joan Jett (and L7, I was going through quite an L7 thing at the time). My Joan Jett admiration predates my Westerfetish by quite a few years. Of course, I should admit a lot of my Joan Jett love was due to the fact that in my early-childhood brain I had decided she was also Leather Tuscadero from Happy Days. Oh well, serendipity I guess.
Changed the Lock, Elvis Costello & Lucinda Williams
I have nothing to say about this one. I just really fucking love the both of 'em.
This month has been positively shameful. I blame a lot of it on how Await Your Reply totally wrecked me, and made everything else seem boring and unimportant. I only finished two books in November and I didn't like one of them. How sad am I? But, well, this is my last week of class and now the time I've devoted to reading some 425+ student pages a month can be spent on other things.
BOOK ACQUIRED
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
BOOKS READ
The Complete Essex County by Jeff Lemire: Sweeping and brilliant graphic novel about hockey, forgiveness, loneliness, and family in Canada.
Totally Killer by Greg Olear: Despite being a sort of homage to American Psycho, a bad choice in point of view ruins what could have been a pretty funny novel about murder, babyboomers, and 1991.
CURRENTLY READING
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
I was tagged by arulba. She was tagged by tagged by Kay. Thanks! Summarize the Bible in five statements (fifteen words). The first statement – one word long, the second two, the third three, the fourth four and the last five words long. Or possibly you could do this in descending order. Tag five people. Comprehensive (The book is comprehensive in content and form. There are so many nooks and crannies full of meaning. Most of the literary forms are represented in the Bible.) Human made. (This cannot be emphasized enough. Despite what many have said about Divine inspiration, the Bible was written and assembled by humans, specifically men. Imperfect human beings make imperfect writings and books, and the Bible is no exception.) Remember the metaphor. (The Bible is an imperfect book written in many literary forms for many different audiences. To read it as literal truth is to ignore these realities, which is dishonest to both the book and to the person reading it. Metaphor can help us make the book relevant for our particular time, though this requires work and thought. And whenever one interprets a dream [think Revelation], metaphor is the best tool one can use to pull meaning.) Read the Gospels first. (This helps set one’s mind in a Christian sense, providing one is reading the book in that framework. Then, read the entire Old Testament straight through before reading the rest of the New Testament, starting with the book of Acts.) Paul writes letters to others. (What many Bible readers and believers should to realize is that Paul’s letters are written to a particular group of people in a particular time and place. It is important to not take these letters out of context. Many Christians believe Paul provides a practical application of the Gospel. However, Paul is actually providing his own interpretation and application of the Gospel for groups like the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, etc. One is actually reading a one-sided conversation. For a universal message, turn back to the Gospels. Jesus’ message is simple and universal enough for one to apply without clinging to Paul’s [or anyone else's] ancient interpretation.)
