revisions.

i've been revising chapter 1 (mr. rogers shenanigans - from may 26th) and thought i'd share the new and improved version.

For the most part, I hated Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. I hated that he changed his shoes when he got home (why not just take them off?), I hated the way he spoke his songs instead of actually singing them, and I especially hated that stupid cat in the Land of Make Believe who only spoke in meows but somehow everyone understood her and liked her. But I watched that show all the time. I sat there through the shoe removal, and the song-speaking and the echolaliac cat, waiting for one thing: the Picture Picture Factory Tours. I sat raptured by the process of wax dying and paper wrapping required to make crayons, fascinated by the many different molds used to cut pasta shapes, intrigued that toothpaste tubes are filled from the bottom and then sewn shut. (Who knew!?) For a while, after I had to grow up and stop watching Mr. Rogers, I really missed those tours. You can imagine my delight when I came across How It’s Made on Discovery Channel. Now I know how guitars, hot tubs, snowboards, gummy worms and rocking chairs are made- and I don’t have to deal with Mr. Rogers’ shenanigans.


To make my point, I am a person who loves to know the origin of things, especially if it involves a process of sorts. For this same reason I love cooking, children’s museums, arts and crafts and history. I love when makeover shows don’t just show the before and after, but the in between stages. I like to take things apart. I like to know how things work. I think this is why I chose to study Sociology. It’s like a Picture Picture tour of people and the things they do. Sociology teaches critical examination of everything. It teaches you to take everything apart, understand how something came to be, determine what is truly useful and discard parts that are flawed or unnecessary for its health and development. In some, this practice breeds a pervasive cynicism- deconstruction of a person or society most always uncovers injustice- but if nurtured correctly it can develop a healthy and avid longing for truth.


Like a surgeon, I spent my days as a Sociology student dissecting. Urban society, suburban life, gender roles, family dynamics, educational systems – I took them all apart. I cut away layers of motive, upbringing, history and culture to find truth and value. The more I learned, the more often I turned my scalpel inward. I took apart my childhood (did being a ballerina put pressure on me to be thin?) ,my womanhood (do I feel like I have to be independent because my mom is a housewife?), my class (what is middle class?), and my ethnicity. I dismantled, learned my origins, reviewed the process of the making of me. Like a desperate gold miner, sifting through so much muck in search of the occasional nugget, I have been trained to efficiently strip away the false. But in every facet of my self, my process, I continue to find this thing called Christianity that I just can’t cut through. It goes back almost as far as I can remember. It trickles down to every particle of my existence. It is in my thoughts, my actions, my motivation and my ambitions. It affects the way I treat people and the way I treat myself. It makes me feel guilty and it brings me joy. My self is Christian self. My process is a Christian process. But with all of my sociological training, I can’t really figure out why.


In any other setting, in another person or society, I would dissect this Christianity and find out whether it was something that was positively or negatively permeating that social organism. But I can’t. I grew up in this Christianity – the Sunday school, VBS, Veggie Tales and McGee and me. I went to Christian school and youth group and Christian college. I married a Christian guy from a Christian family. Christianity is the back of my hand. I see it everyday, but let’s be honest – I couldn’t describe it to you if I tried.


My friend Julia calls it the “fishbowl syndrome”. She grew up a pastor’s kid and says that for someone raised in the Christian culture, trying to examine your faith objectively is like asking a fish to describe water. It can tell you that water surrounds it, that water fills it’s lungs-but ask it the quality of water, how it moves, how it sits in the bowl. It is impossible. The fish would need to take a mighty leap out of the bowl, lake or ocean and sit outside to examine the water. That is what it feels like to me to try and look at Christianity with my sociological mind. I cannot take it apart and examine it because I cannot even see it.


So I did what any scholar would do: I turned to my books. And like a sociologist, I didn’t seek out the textbook, I found memoirs because people teach better than statistics do. I sat


on the floor in the Inspirational section of Barnes and Noble with a stack. Lamott, Miller, Lewis…But it’s frustrating and dead-ending because these people aren’t like me. They’ve come to know God late in life. They’ve abandoned the church and then been drawn back in. They’ve fought with God and lost.


They’ve been outside the fishbowl.


But what about those of us who have always been inside?


In the church, we act like the worst place to be is outside of Christianity. But I feel jealous of these people who have been outside. People like my mom. She grew up Catholic, disenchanted by a church who taught her that God is angry and wants to catch her doing something wrong so He can rub his hands together and zap punishment into her life. When I was five, my dad started going to church with my Uncle Ralph. Uncle Ralph would come over after us kids went to bed and answer all of my dad’s questions. My mom would read her book and pretend not to listen, but couldn’t help overhearing about this God of love and patience who time and time again redeems His people. She says it was so beautifully different from the God she had pictured that she thought “I want that God”. I hear stories like this about people being drawn to God’s beauty and the grace of the Gospel. Looking in and thinking “I need that”. It makes me so fiercely wistful. I want to know that feeling. I want God to be something new and beautiful that I discover and choose, not just the water around me, not just a reflex. At times it feels like I can’t stop being a Christian any more than I could stop being Asian or stop having a northern accent or stop my feet from turning in. (and yes, I understand that Christianity is a heart change, not just a way of life)


I just read a book about a woman who heard someone speaking Italian and thought that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She decided that she had to learn to speak those lovely words. Like my mom, drawn by beauty she overheard, she knew it was something she needed in her life. In comparison I feel like I am the homegrown Italian who grew up speaking my native language, hearing it all of the time- both to bless and curse others. I love the language, believe it is what I need to communicate, but to me it is not beautiful, it is functional. I don’t hear the inflections and pronunciations that made that author’s heart flutter.

To me it is just life - just the water that fills my lungs.

my ant brain.

this is a chunk from an evolving chapter in the second half of the book. (for the newbies, other excerpts are in the earliest postings).and for the record, i'm not a fan of "hysterically hiccuping" either...but that's why i said it's an evolving chapter.  

i’m often afraid of heaven. if i think too long on it, i feel a shivery nausea run through me before my thoughts skip somewhere safer. the sheer unfathomable otherness of such a place or existence always overwhelms me.

one of my earliest and most revisisted memories is of my mom calming these fears. she found me hysterically hiccupping into my carebear in the dark of my canopy bed. when I admitted that the source of my panic was the thought of spending “a forever” in heaven, she laughed (the nerve!), but then got very serious.

“what’s the hardest thing you’re learning in school right now?” she asked. sensing a diversion and feeling wholly above such tactics, i answered hesitantly

“…long division?”

“now imagine an ant trying to do your long division homework…do you think that’s possible?”

i remember cracking up, thinking that was just about the funniest thing i could picture, his tiny antennae  twitching and sizzling as he struggled to  compute. stupid little ant.

 “no! their brains are way too small!”

“exactly. that’s what it’s like when we try to understand something like heaven. our human brains are too small to handle something so God-sized. You don’t have to be afraid of something just because you can’t understand it. the trick is learning to trust that God does.”

she asked me if the two of us could just keep sitting there on my bed and talking, would that be scary, even if there was no end in sight? no, that didn’t feel overwhelming at all.
 

i come back to that memory all the time to reassure myself that there’s a difference between fearing something and not understanding it. this is a distinction I tend to forget time and time again.

and really, would i want to worship a God who fit perfectly inside of my tiny little ant brain?  

ashton kutcher.

i think it was mother teresa who said "may God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in". i used to pray this prayer, like a good social worker, but after a while i realized...the whole world is pretty freakin huge and that actually hurts...alot. once God starts to crack your heart open to fit people in, it feels like He will never stop. (and i get images of all of my middle school classmates cranking their palate expanders, as the gap between their front teeth grew ever wider. i always wondered if they cranked too quickly if their head would split in two, right up between the eyebrows) and if He doesn't stop, where do i begin? who do i help?how do i help the refugees in Lynn but ignore all of the homeless people i pass on my way there? how do i focus on them when overseas, there's villages of girls brought into sexual slavery? and the crack babies and the lonely old men and the battered women and the crippled children....it never ends. IT NEVER ENDS.

for assistance addressing this particular overwhelmtion (yes, i made up that word), i'd like to defer to my good friend ashton kutcher and his co-star from The Guardian, kevin costner. (and my only viewing of this movie was also the first time my now-husband, then-"he's so dreamy!" put his arm around me, so forgive me if the details are blurry.) quick overview: the movie is about rescue divers. the people who - if you are stupid enough to get caught kayaking on the open sea in a hurricaine - will jump out of a helicopter to save your foolish self. so ashton (cocky, insubordinate trainee) is asking kevin (troubled, seen-it-all veteran trainer) how he decides who to save when there's more than one person drowning. 

and kevin, in his simple drawling wisdom says 

It's probably different for everybody. Its kind of simple for me though. I just, I take the first one I come to or the weakest one in the group and then I swim as fast and as hard as I can for as long as I can. And the sea takes the rest.

ashton thinks about this for a while and they have a real heavy moment. and the camera is zooming in on their serious eyes and capturing all the meaning in the room and ashton asks:

do you think i'm ready?

if i did not think you were ready, i would not drop you in the Bering Sea.

sometimes it feels like there's too much hurt in this world and if i come across one more hurting person, my heart is going to crack in half and fall to my butt. so when i start to feel the overwhelmtion take over, when i start to feel like i'm in the bering sea, surrounded by drowning people, i have to remember - i have to trust that God wouldn't drop me out here if i wasn't ready. i have to focus on the ones closest to me, the ones who are the weakest. i need to love them as hard as i can and as long as i can and keep swimming until He takes me back up. (too many metaphors?)

but here's the thing. i have to also trust that He's dropped other people in with me and we are all trusting swimming and loving the hell out of those around us. i have to believe that like frenchpressedfridays says, God has come to each of us with a vision for our lives and like mary, we have the choice to say no thanks or to say "my soul magnifies the Lord." we're all dropped in a specific area of the bering sea with a specific set of talents, abilities and passions that we are supposed to use.

i have to believe this because there's too many drowning people out there for me not to believe this.

another wise person said that sometimes in a world that's bleeding out, all we can do is hold our palms over the wounds. so jump in, reach out and find a wound you can reach. find one that your individual hand fits. and hold on. 


so maybe mother teresa is right - maybe God will continue to stuff people into my heart until the day i die. but the thing is, i have to remember that i can't fix them all - i can't save them all. but i can swim around all day, every day "preggers with grace and truth".

percolating.

there's a new post brewing in my head and it's ricocheted off of another blog. check out frenchpressedfridays in my "inspiration" tab and read the Dec. 6 "Preggers with Grace and Truth" posting.

percolate on that for a while. i will too and maybe post some thoughts of my own by the end of the day...

moths. gag.

today i was driving on the mass pike, gagging into the steering wheel. a text from my little brother:

" a moth just flew into my forehead and flittered its wings on my oily skin"

everyone has a phobia, right? mine just happens to be one of the lamest. don't ask me how it came about. it was a bizarre and admittedly stupid combination of the mothman prophecies, a nightmare, high school boys with a bug zapper and a perfumed visit to a butterfly farm. just thinking about their feathery little antennas....you know what- i can't even write about them. it's making me sick.

so, now that it's dark when i get home from work, i face the daily terror of The Threshold. Millions - ok dozens - ok like, 10 - moths gather on and flutter around the glass pane of our apartment landing. my dreaded task is to make it through the door without being
a) touched    b) landed on    c) followed.
because if they touch me i will vomit, if they land on me, they will either hide in my hair or worse, flutter near my ears (gagging) and if they follow me, they will either take a crack at option a or b or they will sneak into the apartment and get me once i fall asleep.
so far, i've successfully avoided all of the above through a trickily choreographed combination that goes like this:
....a 5-6-7-8... pep talk!don hood! full sprint! hit door! 360 through threshold! (a quick twirl is crucial as it is a successful anti-touch/anti-land maneuver as well as a vacuum generator to suck them back outside and squelch the possibility of being followed) simultaneous door slam! hair flip! (just in case) run up stairs without looking back! (make their little moth brains believe you are not afraid, just a spontaneous and bizarre dancer)

i have a point


even more essential than the quick twirl is the first step: my pep talk. without it, i would not have the courage to do my little dance. i think about the one moth in the wide multi-specied world of moths that does not make me gag. it is fictional. it is from lord of the rings (yes, i'm taking it there.) the one that visits gandalf when he is imprisoned (i swear i'm normal). it's so pretty and so helpful just as i'm wanting to turn off the movie due to depression. then gandalf whispers to it and sends it for help and saves the day etc etc etc.

i still have a point.
believe it or not, it qualifies as "commentary on the christian culture" (per my subtitle).

so i think about this one non-evil moth and convince myself that these gross, terrifying flittery insects on my door are friends with the gandalf moth and i have no need to be afraid. this lie usually lasts until mid-sprint and  momentum takes me from there.

i know there's alot of people who think of christians and want to gag. they've been traumatized by a series of bizarre and probably stupid encounters and now want nothing to do with anyone who calls themself a christian. they come up with complicated maneuvers to avoid these people.

but what if they met JUST ONE christian who didn't make them want to run in the other direction?

someone who was authentic. someone who didn't pretend they were perfect. someone who cared more about loving relationships than a checklist to live by. maybe it would change their entire life.

i started out writing this entry to say that i want to be that gandalf-moth-christian. but as i wrote down and thought about what that would look like, i thought meh, i'll probably screw up and ruin it.

and then i thought about jesus. most people i know who don't like christians have no problem with jesus - just the people who claim to represent Him. i think that to people who don't like christians i would like to say,

"ignore me. i'm human and although i'm trying to be more like jesus, i screw up all the time. but if you get to know jesus, i think you will feel differently toward christianity. in fact, it won't matter much at all how you feel about christianity. i think you (more importantly) will feel drawn to Him...much like a moth (gag) to a flame."

shake and bake.

“I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-Shirt because it says I want to be formal, but I'm here to party.”

“I like to picture Jesus as a figure skater. He wears like a white outfit, and He does interpretive ice dances of my life's journey.”

Will Ferrell. Talladega Nights. Kills me.

I thought about that scene a lot when I was writing my Werewolf Jesus chapter (somewhere back in the earlier archives) and thinking about how I like to picture Jesus.

“I like to think of Jesus as a mischievous badger.”

I like to think that He’s my best friend, someone to talk to and share with.  I like to think that He answers prayer in the same way I send it out there: absentminded and sporadic. I like to think that He is tame, meek and fits in the palm of my understanding.

Is this any more absurd than liking to think He would wear a tuxedo T-shirt?

Throughout the months of writing this book, my picture of Him continues to change.  Like a rippled image viewed through invisible heat waves, He’s there, but pretty distorted.  Just when I think I have a real glimpse of Him, something changes.

Because, here’s the tricky thing: once you actually start reading the Bible for what it is, not just a storybook or a spiritual energy shot – but a true account of life-changing historical fact, your assumptions start to look real dumb.  And you realize that God, like all truth is really mind-blowingly complicated.

Lately, I don’t know what to think or what I would even like to think.

I’ve been reading the Bible in big chunks, just trying to get a better grasp on the person of Jesus.

I read the Old Testament, where Jesus is still weirdly apart but the same as God up in Heaven and they are so, SO kickass. God takes out armies and flattens cities. He kills people when they screw up and He has all of these bizarre rules that no one can really keep up with. Not so BFF. 

I read the Gospels and imagine Jesus just doing His thing, walking down the road and being like “hey you! Boom, follow me. And you – give away all of your money. Done. You! Go get me a donkey to ride on. And you, shut up and let those kids talk to me” Not very meek. Not very tame.

Then I go to lunch with these people who pray for God to send someone to pay for our meal and He does. HE DOES. He feeds all 70 of us. Totally reliable. Totally willing to answer prayers and bless His children.  

I read the book of Luke and Jesus is telling all of these parables and basically explaining to the Jews “Hello- I’m the Son of God, the one you have been waiting for.” And they are still so confused. Even his disciples, the people he hangs out with every day, who have seen him perform countless miracles and live in a way that no ordinary man does – they still think He is some weird political liberator or an abnormally insightful prophet. They don’t really get it till He’s dead.

“I like the Christmas Jesus best, and I'm sayin grace. When you say grace, you can say it to grown up Jesus, or teenage Jesus, or bearded Jesus, or whatever you want.”

What makes me think I know Him at all? 

cheep cheep.

people have been congratulating me on my recent strides toward authorship. and while this makes me giggle and blush, it also makes me feel a little twisted inside. that feeling under your ribs that stabs you when you take credit for someone else's work.

i picture myself like this little baby chick - so fragile and shiveringly vulnerable. and the only reason i have made it this far is because so many sets of gentle, caring hands have been sent to carry me from one milestone to another. i know there are alot of dbags out there in the publishing world - yet somehow i have just been blessed with the most caring and genuine team of mentors and encouragers.

if it weren't for these people, i would have given up a long time ago. (or, if we are sticking to the baby chick analogy, i would have been crushed in a very Ozzy-esque frenzy by empty pockets, professors who say I'm too honest and the question "so what do you do for a living?" - not to mention the "ssshhhyea right" look that follows my answer.)

but how do you balance satisfaction over 6 months of hard work with the knowledge that you're really just this tiny fluffy creature who Someone is paving the way for?

archives.

hey guys just a reminder- if you're looking for book excerpts, they are in the archives...the latests stuff is just...chatter.

jesus' credit card.

so drew's friend Jay from high school called saturday and said he was up from Texas with a ministry team, visiting a church they had planted in Beverly. so we went to see him and then went out for lunch afterwards with the ministry teams from both churches.

there was about 70 of us, so we packed out Acapulcos.

now, the people from this ministry team are all in their early 20's and have joined this year long program to just learn about Jesus. aka they have no money. i heard them all whispering among themselves how they were supposed to pay and it was pretty clear that they had come out for lunch just because they knew we all wanted to just spend time with them.

so the burritos and quesadillas make their way to our tables and then to our bellies and i head out to the bathroom and on my way back, see one of the women from the Texas team laughing with the hostess.

i ask her whats going on and she says,

"a stranger just called in and said 'there's a large group there and i want to take care of their bill' they gave a credit card number and hung up"

dude, that's like an easy thousand dollars.

as we were leaving, this scottish guy who sat near me just shook his head and muttered to himself "woa, that lady has Jesus' credit card number!"

i'd laugh but then i'm not so sure it's funny.

christmas store crap.

last night buddy, lily, big guy and bri came over for some soup and laughter. we had a solid group "remember when" session.

remember when your elementary school set up santa's shop in your gymnasium!!???

remember the tables upon tables of flimsy, useless crap that they overcharged us for? remember how we paid them whatever price they slapped down because we were still young enough that we trusted strangers in santa hats?

think of the fortune they must have pulled in. it's sheer genius.

i remember i would wake up shivery with excitement, anticipating my first steps into that fantastical winter wonderland. my mom would put a glittery red coinpurse in my lunchbox with a list of people to buy gifts for.

herself included.

garfield the cat potholder? score.

brooch shaped like a smiling teapot? jackpot.

she might as well have put her money through a paper shredder.

but no, being the mommiest mom in the world, she would always go wild over this junk and thank me repeatedly for being such a thoughtful daughter.

it wasn't until we had this wonderful community remember-when session that i grasped the ridiculousness of the whole situation.

my mom gave me HER money to buy HER a crappy gift, which i then ecstatically presented her with and she oh-so-sincerely raved over. but that's the beauty of being a kid: thinking you're awesome when really you're just being lovingly indulged.

this makes me think of God. (oh yea - i'm going to bring it back to that.)

i think about how awesome i think i am with the "work" that i'm doing for His kingdom or the "worship" that i offer him. i threw the quotes on there to emphasize the ridiculousness of THIS situation. He doesn't NEED my worship. He doesn't NEED my help with any of His work. For God's sake....He's God! anything we could offer Him is really just something He could reach down and snatch from us anyway.

But in his infinite Grace and mommish indulgence, He allows us to partner in creation and even goes as far as to say that our praise is a sweet song in His ears and that by living sacrificially, we are pleasing to Him.

my favorite Bible verse says that

The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.

all we have to offer is crap from santa's shop and He - the guy who made aaaaalllllll of this delights in us and rejoices over us???

that's the kind of God i can jump on board with.

iblog.

i passed in my book proposal this afternoon. now, the waiting begins. jo's going to take a look at it and if there are no further edits, she will pass it on to her agent.

(i'm a little giddy because i just found out he works for alive communications...aka donald miller, franklin graham, eugene peterson...yikes.)

one thing jo drilled into me at our meeting is that i need to step it up with my blogging. i'm a first time author- aka liability, so my "hits" and "followers" are my only currency. and let's face it, i don't really care about this thing.

but now i must hardcore blog for my very survival.

everyone keeps telling me that social networking is the best thing for publicity these days and i should be blogging, facebooking and tweeting with every spare second i have if i ever want my book to sell. but oh, it just makes me cringe to think of myself as a 'blogger'.

but, in the wise and comforting words of peng yu,

a blog is acceptable if 1) you have interesting things to say 2) you are doing something awesome that others want to hear about (aka girdie's african adventures) or 3) you want to get the word out about something (you.) no one wants to read a blog about stupid shit someone is doing every damn day."

i hope i fit into at least one of those categories...

you'll be hearing from me alot more now and i will try to keep it interesting. gulp.

this next posting is from the middle of the manuscript, from the section called " I'm awake, I'm naked and I think I'm a Christian". (hard to explain out of context...)

I didn't keep posting consecutively for 2 reasons:
1) i realize that if i keep doing that, eventually no one will have reason to buy my book (knock on wood).
2) the first section seems so whiney and memoir-y without the other parts and i didn't want people to get depressed and stop reading.

so here's a chapter straight from the middle. hasn't been proofread yet...



*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
I think it’s called a Revolution.

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right
Ah

I took this class called American Pop Culture at this school down the road from my school taught by this man I secretly call Flat Top Terry. It was a pretty cool class, seeing as I like to learn where things come from, including trends and history and all that. I learned all kinds of trivia, like that Peter Paul and Mary’s “There is Love” is the only secular song blessed by the Roman Catholic Church for a Wedding Mass.

Everyone says that this world is getting worse and worse and I guess I see what they’re saying, but one thing I saw from this class, as we moved from decade to decade in American culture, is that we aren’t really getting worse…we are just moving in a circle. People have always been and will always be the same flawed, beat up (dinosaurs) that we have always been. Human nature is not getting worse because you can’t get much more broke than broken. I think people are always searching for ways to fill our wounds, to stop the bleeding and we see the ways it didn’t work for our parents and so we try a new way and our children do the same and it seems like eventually we come full circuit. (examples).

If history does indeed repeat itself, as Flat Top Terry says, then if I could pick a decade for our present time to resemble, I would have to choose the 1960’s. It’s like those word similes (“associations”?) you have to do in the SATs

1960 is to Y2K as:
a) Vietnam Conflict is to the War on Terror
b) John F Kennedy is to Barack Obama
c) The Beatles are to the Jonas Brothers

I’m not saying things are identical but it is more like a second cousin type thing- you can see it around the eyes. One thing Flat Top Terry taught us was that the revolutionary spirit of the 1960’s was fueled by education. This makes sense to me. I see this at college all the time: we learn things away from the confines of our old self, have a group of peers learning the same things and we talk, discuss and get each other amped up to make a change. College enrollment swelled in the 60’s because parents of the baby boomers wanted them to have a better life than their generation did. Flat Top Terry said that some colleges had to build temporary trailers and even rent out hotel rooms just to house all of the students. So when the Vietnam Conflict happened and the draft started snatching these college age men off to war, their peers were informed and united enough to make a stink about it.

I’m really not trying to be political about all of this. I’m actually just trying to make a point about the Church, if I can just get to it.

My friend Danielle is one of those people with what I think of as a sensitive spirit. Like she has a divining rod in her heart that tells her when change is coming or when God is moving. Honestly, sometimes it’s creepy but most of the time I’m spine-tingled in awe. We have been friends for a long time (in fact, she was one of my Werewolf Jesus cohorts) and I have learned that when she says she feels God doing something, I shut my face and listen. Right around the time I started thinking about this Christian culture that I am trying to unpack, she started telling me about the work she is doing in a local youth group and how she feels this generation yearning for a change. She says she feels like something is going to happen but she’s not sure what. I picture it like those massively pregnant women you see on the beach in bikinis. There’s so much pressure on that skin and you just know a baby has to come soon or she will bust open. Danielle says she can’t see the Church functioning much longer the way it has been. That a revolution has to be born or we are going to explode. Actually, she said “implode”, nova-like, collapse in upon ourselves…but explode matches my pregnant belly description.
Here’s the thing about revolution, though. I think it usually has two parts: the deconstruction of the present way of doing things and the construction of a newer, better way. But one without the other is just stupid chaos. My 6th grade teacher took a missions trip to Haiti and came back with all kinds of stories about the poverty and squalor she encountered. She told us that Haiti used to be a rich and beautiful French territory, built on slave labor. When these slaves banded together and overthrew the French rulers, they burned and destroyed most of the French construction on the island. You can’t blame them for wanting to wipe the slate clean, but the thing is that the French had built some helpful inventions, like irrigation systems and farming machinery. Without these things, Haiti had a hard time getting back on its feet and has yet to develop much since then.

The students who led the revolutions in the 1960’s wanted the government to stop doing things the way they were doing and start doing them a new way. I’m sure there were students who joined protests in ignorance, just jumping in on a cause because their brother/boyfriend/roommate got killed or sent away. I think this is where a revolution can get into trouble- when people desire the deconstruction of the “bad” without being informed enough to see it through to the construction of the “good”. I think some people just say “yes! I agree with what you’re saying! The way we do _____ sucks! Let’s destroy it!” This kind of short-lived passion can help fuel revolutions but it can also set them off track. (They are built off of pain and anger…instead of knowledge and care…fundamentalists, radicals, jihad, crusades, Haiti…) From what I can see, the best kind of revolution is the kind that is done with a plan from the very beginning (Civil Rights, Ghandi, etc)….

But the change that Danielle feels coming (and the reason I write any of this) is not in Iraq or Vietnam. It’s closer to home. It’s in the Church that we love.
(And there’s this squeezing on my heart when I write this because I really do love the Church. It’s my home and it’s the people I love. I know things need to change but I hate to be the one to suggest a deconstruction zone. It feels disrespectful and judgmental and ungrateful and disloyal to say that I think the church is doing anything wrong. )
In a world of crooked politicians, voice synthesizers, food preservatives, breast implants and pastors with fake smiles, I think our generation is yearning for authenticity. We have grown up learning to discuss problems and seek our own solutions, but in Church we memorize the answers and are sent out to tell them to others. We have grown up encouraged to be the best that we can be and stay true to ourselves, but in Church a lip ring or an honest confession can get you bumped down a notch on the hierarchy of holiness. We grew up learning about equality and freedom, but we all know there is black church and there is white church. In Sunday school we read the Sermon on the Mount and recite the Beatitudes when there are people begging for money and lonely souls cutting their wrists just steps down the street. (When what matters more is that we are safe and happy and blessed. If we can sit in our pews and feel content, I think that might not be a good thing? If we are comfortable with everyone in our congregation, maybe that’s not good? Maybe we should bring someone to church who makes us uncomfortable? – quote from Traveling Pants 3 about people acting the worst when they are hurting the most?- not saying I do this…not gonna be one of those people who tell you that in order to be a Christian, you can never be happy or admit that you are blessed. But maybe that shouldn’t be our goal? ) I think our generation is tired of this disconnect.

But the revolution that Danielle feels coming in the church and I see necessary for our generation needs to be holistic. It needs to include a deconstruction of the way we do things and a reconstruction of a newer, better way. But we need to learn from the Haitians to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. But we need to deconstruct without destroying. I believe we are uniquely primed for this too. Our postmodern mindset may be built on the nonexistence of objective or absolute truth, but Christianity- or any belief- is built on the existence (and need for!) truth. This creates a unique standpoint for any postmodern Christian today. I think it finds balance in the embrace of “fragmented” or “conglomerate” truth, where one that admits that no human can have it all figured out. It is a willingness and humility to admit that we could be wrong and the way we do things could be wrong, we are just messed up humans trying to follow and imitate a perfect God. The way our parents did church is flawed…and so will be our newly constructed way. The only type of plan a flawed human can make is a flawed one. We need to realize this and take the truth and the beauty from the present way and use it as a foundation for the new way. And then we need to see it through to fruition. This is difficult, because some of us are in this because we are angry or hurt. Some of us want revolution because we hate what the Church did to our brother/boyfriend/roommate. This is not productive or useful.

I have no idea what this new church will look like. That will probably be someone else’s job. But since I know our generation begs for authenticity- I think we will go back to the basics. We will choose a Werewolf over a WASP. We will look at the Church Jesus built and try to move back to that blueprint. The way I picture it is that so much time has passed since the good old original that cultural traditions and ridiculous ritual overgrew it and became calcified and mistaken for actual Truth. I think our generation would like to just Bic off all of those falsities and just have bald, naked church back. Maybe that’s what we will call it. Bald Naked Church of God.

update

also, just an update for those of you who care... i'm still working on this book proposal but my deadline is october 31st - after that the agent will pitch it to several publishers (some of his clients are big time, so keep your fingers crossed!!!) and see if anyone likes what they see! yikes!!!

but there's a whole section on the proposal where i have to list different "broadcast platforms" that i could use to help market the book. they ask how many people i can contact within a month, how many people regularly read my work, etc etc...so this is where this stupid blogging comes in. so thanks for being a member and helping give me at least ONE platform to brag about!

so keep the comments coming, because i can use every suggestion and improvement that i can get! (or just plain old encouragement is never a bad thing either).

I am Truman. (from chapter 3)

Remember Jim Carrey in The Truman Show?

For months after seeing it at my friend’s 10th birthday, I was ridiculously suspicious of my surroundings. Was my mom really changing the battery on the smoke detector, or was she adjusting the hidden camera? Had the entire free world seen Becca and me pretending our Barbies were having sex? I remember having a very grave conversation with my 8 year old brother about my misgivings toward the dining room chandelier. The movie puts you on edge, because, if you’re like me, you hate the idea of your life being run by something outside of you and you hate the idea of being kept ignorant.

Sometimes, looking back, I feel like I did kind of grow up like little Truman. Not in the sense that I was adopted by a media corporation as an infant or that my mom was hired actress, but that decisions were made for me, my environment was strictly monitored, even fabricated. Remember the lengths the producers went to when Truman tried to leave the “island”? They set dogs on him, collapsed the bridge, drowned his father. They did everything in their power to keep him in his world, and my parents did everything they could to keep me in a purely Christian world. If I tried to venture into the secular realm, I was cut off and offered a Christian alternative.

I remember when my best friend Jared secretly bought the Backstreet Boys Millennium album. We kept it hidden in his room because neither of us was allowed to listen to secular music. I actually don’t think we listened to it for the first month or so, we were so nervous, we just took it out and admired how white their shoes and smiles were, occasionally gushing about how happy we were that Brian recovered from his heart surgery. Jared’s mom found the CD and threw it away and we both cried and listened bitterly to the Carmen’s RIOT that she bought him as a consolation gift.

I pendulate between feeling upset at being so sheltered, so boxed in by my Christian bubble, and being thankful for parents who just wanted me to feel safe. Do you remember when Truman finally sets his mind to escaping and sails literally into the edge of his world? The producer of the show, who has seen him grow from a baby and has designed the only world Truman has ever known, comes over the loudspeaker and tries to convince him to stay. He asks Truman not to be angry, but thankful because he was only trying to protect him from the cruelty of the world outside. He created a safe space for Truman to live and grow. I know my parents are not these sinister psychologists doing experiments on me by controlling my environment…they love me so much they tried to keep me in a world where I could roam freely. A world where joy and hope had a fighting chance. I don’t blame them, but as I get older and think about my own kids, I’m plagued with the question of when should this end? At what point does the Christian culture stop being safety and start crippling us? We have to live in the real world at some point- when should our parents start preparing us for that?

In my seventh grade science class, we were each given a caterpillar. We fed it this weird goop and eventually, they all wove themselves into little cocoons and we waited for them to emerge as butterflies. I have an embarrassing phobia toward moths and this makes me wary of butterflies, but this didn’t stand in the way of my overachieving nature. I wanted my butterfly to come out first, so when the cocoons started shaking and pulsing, I put a little slice in the side of mine, to help the little guy along. My butterfly came out limp and sickly and died soon after. Mrs. Bishop judged me through her bifocals and patiently explained that a butterfly needs to struggle out of the cocoon in order to develop the muscles to actually fly. Of course I denied helping my cocoon in any way, but I still feel a little flutter of guilt deep in my ribcage when I think about that little butterfly. I was just trying to help, but I killed it. When Truman actually escaped his island, when I finally made it out of the Christian bubble, stepped out blinking into the blinding reality of life, my question is, were we protected or crippled? Should we be fed reality in little jars like baby food? Or simply thrust into the water, learning to swim out of necessity?

prelude: werewolf jesus

I don’t have any grandfathers. Only Mem and Grammy, my grandmothers. I have blurry memories of my mom’s father, Grampy. He and Mem had been divorced for quite some time before I came along, so we didn’t see him too often. I remember he drank strawberry milkshakes and had an oxygen tank. I remember my little ten-year-old self being picked up early from a sleepover because Grampy had died, and then all of the sudden we had a new washing machine. On the other side of the family is my paternal grandfather, Ernest William Clark, - “Eunie”, as Grammy refers to him, her Japanese mouth trying so hard to form the “r”. I don’t know much about him. He passed away when my dad was my age, just finishing his second year in the Marine Corps. I know that he was a tall skinny man who played the piano when no one was around. I know that he was a pharmacist before pharmacology was a profession of wealth. I know he met Grammy in Japan during the war and brought her to America when she was pregnant with my dad’s older brother. I could parrot back the facts to you all day but I still don’t really know who he was because I never hung out with him. I know him through my dad’s stories and through my book report facts- I know about him. I couldn’t tell you how he would react if I said the word “bastard” (it’s not really a swear…some people are ok with it) or if he would cry during PS I Love You. I really wish I had gotten to know him in that way, so I could understand how my dad loves and misses him, even when he doesn’t say so.

I guess what I’m trying to explain is that I don’t know Jesus. I grew up Christian, with the person of Jesus tossed around in all of my conversations, like the ubiquitous imaginary friend. Like my Grandpa, I have been told about him my whole life. I was the frequent champion of Bible Quest in my house, so I can rattle off a list of facts about him. But I don’t know Him.  I know versions of Him and the longer I live, the less I trust that these versions resemble Him at all.

For my senior volunteer hours in high school, I worked at a thrift store run by a local church. It wasn’t a passion for elderly-scented hats or sequined sweaters that made me choose the Blessing Barn. It was just that my two best friends worked there and our supervisor was blind (literally), so we just did whatever we wanted. Our work days usually consisted of making fun of the clothes, playing with the creepy hand-shaped doll that no one ever bought, singing along to (blind) Christine’s gospel music and again, making fun of the clothes. Overseeing all of our mischief was Werewolf Jesus. I named him that, much to the giggling shock of my good Christian friends. It was a portrait of Jesus that hung on the wall, in which he looks as though he is painfully animorphing into some sort of shaggy beast. He had a unibrow, yellow eyes, heavy sideburns and a slightly voracious look. Without the divine glow about him, you’d think he was from a Geico commercial. We made a lot of jokes about Werewolf Jesus, always glancing sideways, not sure how close we were flirting with blasphemy. At the time it was funny because everyone at our little New England Christian academy knew that Jesus was blonde, with blue eyes and impeccable dental work. Plus, it was absolutely absurd to think that He would ever sport a unibrow. We had all watched the musical cartoons in Sunday school where Jesus, played by an animated, moustached Anne Hathaway, blinked his big, blue, Bratz doll eyes and healed people with his pale hands. Meanwhile, his fat, swarthy disciples, played by ex-Taliban members, looked on in tanned amazement.

I wish someone had told me back then that Werewolf Jesus was in fact, more on the accurate side of Biblical history than this cartoon Jesus - the White Anglo Saxon Protestant Jesus. For goodness sake, He was from the Middle East and slept in fields- He probably went days without washing his armpits. He was dirty. He was shaggy. He was hungry. He may or may not have had a unibrow. In modern times He would be “randomly searched” every time He tried to fly somewhere. Why was I taught by so many earnest Sunday school teachers that He was the kind of man who would fly first class and sip a mimosa? If I was going to fill my head with endless facts about Him, I should have at least made sure they were accurate.

If anyone ever trusted me with a Sunday school class, I would ask for middle schoolers or high schoolers. I would send them home to read the book of Luke or John with this assignment in mind: describe Jesus to me. Pretend you’re not a Christian; pretend you’re a dirty little pickpocket observing Him in a crowd, or an old man sitting on the porch, watching him preach. Imagine you ran into him at the market and did that awkward dance, trying to get out of each others’ way, or gave him a flat tire by stepping on his sandal. How would he react? How would he treat people, talk to them? Would he haggle for a lower price? Would he wash his hands after he peed – like really wash them, not just rinse and shake?

Then we would sit around and talk about it, based on what they had read about Him and His character. I would lean in and drink up everything these little detectives had to tell me about Him, all the things I missed because I can’t see the forest through the trivia. I wish I had had an assignment like that before I came to college. I wish that instead of things being fed to me in this condensed soup version of religion, that I had been allowed to wonder, to search out answers for myself. I wish I had been guided more than instructed.

I have all of these Sunday school notions drilled into my head and at times it feels like it has been a detriment to my relationship with God. Like all the Sunday school and Christian books and Christian school and Christian college has created a lot of white noise with Jesus buried somewhere in the center. I just read an account of some girl who noticed her Christian friend really, truly loved people. One drunken night she started crying and got on her knees and told God she wanted to genuinely love and help people, like her friend, but she couldn’t because she was selfish and needed something bigger. I wish I could boil my faith down to something that simple. I think maybe sometimes its better to develop a worldview and then realize how Jesus is the significance that is missing, who fits in so perfectly and fills all the gaps, than to start with WASP Jesus and this complicated stigmatized view of how to live like Him that is so big and noisy that it fills your vision.

It makes me want to shut down the arena in my head and kick everyone out- just erase everything and start over. Find out who He really is.  

animaniacs (from chapter 2)

The first time I went to church I got tied to a pole. Something like that kind of gets burned into a five-year-old’s mind, so I remember the details very clearly. I had been feeling ambivalent about this whole church thing ever since my mom had mentioned it. On the one hand, my brothers and I would miss out on our usual Sunday morning ritual of Animaniacs and apple slices. But then weighing it pretty heavily was the fact that I had heard Church was a place I could wear my new green dress with the big white ribbon that made me look like my Rebecca doll. It’s all very ironic, you see, because I had almost named Rebecca doll “Renee”, which turned out to be the name of the girl who tied me to the pole in the church basement, using that pretty white ribbon. Then Renee’s big brother David told my little brother Ryan that his beloved Peter Pan hat was for girls because it had a feather and I thought “that’s it…I’m going back to Animaniacs”. But the thing is, a five-year-old has zero control over her own life, so I was back at church the next week and every week after that.
Church is fun when you are little. You get to wear your prettiest dress while snacking and gluing things together in the basement. There is a 70 percent chance that an enthusiastic “God!” is the answer to the question being asked, so you look smart and pretty. The Donutman led you in sing-alongs about love and joy and then, just when you didn’t think it could get any more magical – they introduce Flannelgraph. Oh, the hours I spent in front of that red felt board, listening to the stories of Moses, Daniel and Joshua, (interchangeable) itching to arrange the pieces myself and be the one to give them life.
As my parents grew in their walk with God and knowledge of how the church expected them to act, we started shifting to be a Christian family. We prayed at mealtimes (even in restaurants! Out loud!), my parents got new friends and we learned a new language. I’ve heard it referred to as Christianese. It’s very subtle, but for example, we didn’t say “lucky” anymore, we said “blessed”. I scolded the kids on the bus who took God’s name in vain and we said weird things in secret Christian code that must baffle anyone not in the loop. Imagine walking by someone and hearing them say “Hallelujah! I’ve been washed in the blood!”
Once, during this transition to Christianese, my parents set up a fantastical scavenger hunt for my two brothers and me. It took us all over the yard from the “waterfall” (our bright blue slide) to the “diamond mountain” (our neighbor’s granite wall), even to the woods, where a snack was buried for us under a log. It kept us busy most of the afternoon and we couldn’t wait to get to the end where we would find “the greatest treasure you will ever possess”!!! We were sure it was gold or rubies or Sega Genesis. Inside a rotting log, we found a wooden box. I held my breath as Billy opened the lid.

It was a Bible.

Not even a colorful Psalty bible like Karise had- just a maroon leather Bible like the ones you found in a hotel. We looked at each other, crestfallen but also guilty that we didn’t think the Bible was even as cool as Sega Genesis. My mom made us sit on the log and have a lesson together and I remember being really annoyed and bitter. But it was all a part of this new life we were starting together.


(I’m going to add more to this section and discuss how Christianity becomes a culture within itself, with it’s own language, select people group, artifacts, etc. I just need to brush up on my sociological definitions....Trista!? Jason!? The point was to show how we had to change into almost a new “ethnicity” or something in order to fit in. It seems fine when you’re in it, but as a kid it was weird at first and rightfully so)

quick note

hey guys...thanks for reading...its been nice to get some feedback/encouragement. I really hate this whole self promotion thing but i think i'm getting better...here's the thing: you reading my blog is really only helpful to me if you become "a follower". that way, when a publisher sees how many followers I have (a grand total of 4 last time i checked...), he/she will want to sign me on. So take 5 seconds and become a follower of...me.

mr rogers shenanigans (from chapter 1)

For the most part, I hated Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. I hated that he changed his shoes when he got home (why not just take them off?), I hated the way he spoke his songs instead of actually singing them, and I especially hated that stupid cat in the Land of Make Believe who only spoke in meows but somehow everyone understood her and liked her.

But I watched that show all the time.

I sat there through the shoe removal, and the song-speaking and the echolaliac cat, waiting for one thing: the Picture Picture Factory Tours. I sat raptured by the process of wax dying and paper wrapping required to make crayons, fascinated by the many different molds used to cut pasta shapes, intrigued that toothpaste tubes are filled from the bottom and then sewn shut. (Who knew!?) For a while, after I had to grow up and stop watching Mr. Rogers, I really missed those tours. You can imagine my delight when I came across How It’s Made on Discovery Channel. Now I know how guitars, hot tubs, snowboards, gummy worms and rocking chairs are made- and I don’t have to deal with Mr. Rogers’ shenanigans.

To make my point, I am a person who loves to know the origin of things, especially if it involves a process of sorts. For this same reason I love cooking, children’s museums, arts and crafts and history. I love when makeover shows don’t just show the before and after, but the in between stages. I like to take things apart. I like to know how things work. I think this is why I chose to study Sociology. It’s like a Picture Picture tour of people and the things they do. Sociology teaches critical examination of everything. It teaches you to take things apart, determine what is truly useful and discard parts that are flawed or unnecessary. In some, this practice breeds a pervasive cynicism, but if nurtured correctly it can develop a healthy and avid longing for truth.

And so I have scurried along in this world for the past three years, being kicked along by the steel-toed boot of Inquiry. Look closer! Look closer! Why, why, why! So I dig and I dig for significance.

Like a surgeon, I dissected the urban society, suburban life, gender roles, family dynamics, educational systems. I cut away layers of motive, upbringing, history and culture to find truth. I turned my scalpel inward and I took apart my childhood (did being a ballerina put pressure on me to be thin?) ,my womanhood (do I feel like I have to be independent because my mom is a housewife?) my class (what is middle class?), and my ethnicity. Like a desperate gold miner, sifting through so much muck in search of the occasional nugget, I learned to efficiently strip away the false. But in every facet of my self I find this thing called Christianity that I just can’t cut through. It trickles down to every particle of my existence. It is in my thoughts, my actions, my motivation and my ambitions. It affects the way I treat people and the way I treat myself. It makes me feel guilty and it brings me joy. In any other setting, in another person or society, I would dissect this Christianity and find out whether it was something that was positively or negatively permeating that social organism. But I can’t.

My friend Julia calls it the “fishbowl syndrome”. She was raised by a pastor and says that for someone raised in the Christian culture, trying to examine your faith objectively is like asking a fish to describe water. It can tell you that water surrounds it, that water fills it’s lungs-but ask it the quality of water, how it moves, how it sits in the bowl. It is impossible. The fish would need to take a mighty leap out of the bowl, lake or ocean and sit outside to examine the water. That is what it feels like to me to try and look at Christianity with my sociological mind. I cannot take it apart and examine it because I cannot even see it.

My mom grew up Catholic, disenchanted by a church who taught her that God is angry and wants to catch her doing something wrong so He can rub his hands together and zap punishment into her life. When I was five, my dad started going to a small Baptist church with my Uncle Ralph (who is not really my uncle, just a lifelong friend). Uncle Ralph would come over after us kids went to bed and answer all of my dad’s questions. My mom would read her book and pretend not to listen, but couldn’t help overhearing about this God of love and patience who time and time again redeems His people. She says it was so beautifully different from the God she had pictured and she thought “I want that God”. I hear stories like this about people being drawn to God’s beauty and the grace of the Gospel. Looking in and thinking “I need that”. It makes me so fiercely wistful. I want to know that feeling. I want God to be something new and beautiful that I discover and choose, not a reflex. At times it feels like I can’t stop being a Christian any more than I could stop being Asian or stop having a northern accent or stop my feet from turning in. It takes more effort for me to be “unchristian” at this point.

I just read a book about a woman who heard someone speaking Italian and thought that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She decided that she had to learn to speak those lovely words. Like my mom, drawn by beauty she overheard, she knew it was something she needed in her life. In comparison I feel like I am the homegrown Italian who grew up speaking my native language, hearing it all of the time- both to bless and curse others. I love the language, believe it is what I need to communicate, but to me it is not beautiful, it is functional. I don’t hear the inflections and pronunciations that made that author’s heart flutter. To me it is just life.

"my adventurous life...

...is writing and trying to publish a book called Werewolf Jesus about growing up Christian and how it affects your perceptions of God."

So most of you have probably already seen my blip on the Gordon radar, as i spit out this ridiculouly long sentence in the Adventurous Life commercial. I look a little undone and a little unsure.

Well, I am.

I had planned on giving the whole back story to this manuscript but I realize no one really cares about that. Let me just say that this was my Thesis for my Advanced Creative Writing class and with the vigorous encouragement of so many, my undone and unsure little soul is tiptoe-ing it into the publishing world.

Apparently, publishers are more willing to take a risk on first time authors if they already have a 'following'. Apparently, blogging is the new way to muster such a following.

I have 45 pages done so far and I'll post them one by two when I have time.