Category Archives: Religion

Sleeping and Waking. Injuring and Running. All in a days work.

Posted on 16 October 2010 | 4 comments

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.—Marguerite Young

I wish I was this motivated.

I should be. There is no reason I am not.

But, I am not.

So, instead, I teach from 8AM to 3PM—or 4 or 5 if I have a meeting—everyday, coming home to walk dogs, eat dinner, grade, then couch. Instead of writing, I fondle the remote control, waiting for some titillating piece of cinematic prowess to stimulate my mind into wanting to write or read or do anything productive. What I do instead of doing anything remotely academic or intellectual is I fall asleep watching Jeopardy before 8PM. Then I get up at  an ungodly hour in the morning to grade or to read or to plan my day. It’s sad, really.

I thought this weekend would be different. I thought I had a no-fail plan for catching up on all those things I should have done during the weekends when I was otherwise engaged, be my engagement in conferences or traveling or whatnot (side note: I cannot believe whatnot is in the computer dictionary, and that there is no little red line telling me it’s spelled wrong or not really a word.). I thought this would be the work weekend to end all work weekends, but my neighbors and their dog had another plan.

As I slept peacefully on the couch downstairs where I had fallen asleep watching Bones, I heard a loud commotion outside. I discovered that much like every other weekend since they moved in, my neighbors were having a drunken conversation on their front porch. This conversation was taking place in that I’m-trying-to-be-quiet-but-since-I’m-drunk-I’m-really-being-louder-than-usual radio newscaster’s voice. All monotone and spacey.

They were talking about the beers they were drinking; at least they’re drunken beer snobs, so I get to hear all about different, good beeers, instead of then pontificating about the ins-and-outs of beer pong or Asshole. At any rate, the dog must have had to go pee, because they let her out. Normally, she stays in their yard, does her business, and then goes back inside. But, I am sure, since she’s a smart dog, that she recognized the fortuitous twist of fate, the fact that they were so drunk they didn’t realize they hadn’t put her back in the house, and decided to come over into our yard for a bit. Which wouldn’t have been a bad idea if she would have simply stayed quiet and in the front yard.

However, she decided that it might be nice to go to the back and start snooping around, sniffing by the garage door, and nosing around in our back yard. This one, seemingly miniscule, action resulted in my being up from around 115AM when they awakened me with their revelry until about 5AM when they finally got their dog back in the house, and I finally calmed mine down for the third time. Yes, there were three cycles of Jane (their dog) barking and carrying on, which incited Sydney, who got Celie all riled up, who then got Lily all howly, and then I would come thumping down the stairs to quiet them down. On round number two, I took our dogs outside to pee so they could see that it was just Jane who was in their space. They didn’t really care. They didn’t want anyone in their space at 2AM.

Finally, after this second round, after I startled one of the neighbors while he was peeing in a bush, and after he decided to get Jane into the house, I stayed downstairs, sleeping on the couch until the third round of barking which must have been inadvertently stimulated by a squirrel or something in the backyard. Once those dogs get wacky, there’s almost no calming them down! I fell asleep watching Criminal Minds around 5AM. I should have used the time to write or read, but as per usual, I couched and remoted. I woke up about an hour-and-a-half later and went back upstairs to bed. I got up at 815ishAM. Needless to say, I am worthless today, so I am going to try to read the rest of the books I need to read. It’s about all I’m good for.

*

I finally went to the doctor for my ankle, and I have to wear heel cups, do stretches, and massage it with ice frozen in Dixie cups. I am going to start running again on Tuesday, but I have decided to move my runs to the afternoon, just when I get home from school and after I walk the dogs. I am going to start at the very beginning, so I don’t re-injure my ankle. My hope in running in the evening is that I will be able to run out the stress of the day and run in some energy to read and write for the evening. I figure if I can get to the point where I can get home, walk the dogs, and run by 530PM, I will have an hour for a nap/leisure time before Bec gets home. (I may have to reverse the order of the nap and the run.) Then, I will be more energized. Also, I am going to try to avoid the TV and the Internet between 630PM and 930PM or 10PM. Maybe this will help me get more focused as well.

One thing I will also have to work on is the way I eat. I have been eating like crap lately: lots of cookies, candy, animal products, and soda. I am not sure why I do this to myself, because I feel much healthier when I don’t eat these things. I love grape soda, so I am not sure I want to cut it completely, and a couple of Oreos won’t hurt either. I just need to stop eating ten or twelve Oreos and a couple of sodas each day. On top of regular food! It’s silly, really. And, I will need to stop the caffeine intake, too. No more Americanos that aren’t decaf.

Not only will I need to change what I eat, but when I eat. Seemingly, it would work better to eat more for an early breakfast when I first get up , hopefully by 430 each morning. Then by eating more for lunch, too, I will be able to run five hours later and skip dinner, having popcorn and an apple for a light snack before bed.

*

So here I go again setting goals I may not keep. The goal date for the following is July 22, 2011, my birthday:

  1. Finish a marathon.
  2. Stop shaving my head. Let it grow for Locks-of-Love.
  3. Spend at least half an hour reading the Bible, praying, and contemplating God each day.
  4. Have 75% of my students grow one academic year’s growth.
  5. Finish two chapters of my dissertation.
  6. Run 1000 miles.
  7. Stay vegan.
  8. Learn to say only what is necessary. Listen more than talk.
  9. Read one new book and one magazine from cover to cover each week. Follow the news.
  10. Finish painting the outside of the house.

4 Comments

Posted in Birthday Crisis, Coffee, Dissertation, Fat, Food, Goals, Reading, Relationships, Religion, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

This I Believe. Language. Seminary.

Posted on 26 August 2010 | 4 comments

Again this year, I am having my students write a “This I Believe” essay. I like to begin the semester (school year) with my students explaining why they believe in a particular idea, concept, or theme. I like to do this for two reasons, or probably more, but it helps me to get to know one big belief they hold, so we can talk about it throughout the semester. And, it helps me see how they already write about their beliefs, so I know what I need to teach about argument, about rhetoric, and about those pesky little things like grammar. I have a student writing about how fantastic he is, one writing about the first amendment, and one writing about friendship among other things. Fantastic topics, really, if they can pull them off with good, solid examples.

I have already had two parents tell me that they are thrilled that their children are actually writing in class school this year. Well, yeah, the only way to learn how to write is to actually do it. I figure it’s somewhat similar to trying to become a mechanic by learning the parts of an engine, but never putting the whole thing together. I suppose it might run, but it certainly wouldn’t run fluidly. Apparently, in the past, there has been a great emphasis on vocabulary and spelling without putting them into practice in writing. I really see no point in learning these skills separately from writing. In the same ways that reading and writing are related, and listening and speaking are related, vocabulary and spelling are related to writing. They all work together! Our language acquisition and usage functions as a gigantic web in which we learn how to speak and write. It’s ridiculous to separate them out on a regular basis. Enough ranting.

In other news, my Vibrams wore through the right sole. That’s my longer leg, which is probably why my other leg gets a hip ache, and that leg’s quad is always sore when I run. I can’t imagine being Wilma Rudolph. She deserves some mad props, running with legs that were once crippled. Seeing as how no one thought she’d walk normally, I guess she showed them by earning the title of Fastest Woman in the World. That’s right, Sister, run on.

In other news, I’ve been looking at recent AUSOT student orientation pictures. I remember being so optimistic and hopeful that anything I did in a pulpit would make a difference in this big, fucked-up world. I remember thinking that my sexuality had nothing to do with quality of pastor I would become. I remember hiding so far back behind those robes and stoles hanging in that seminary closet that I could barely see the light and the freedom that would eventually come from re-opening the door and leaping out a few years later. I remember thinking that my piercings might be a stumbling block for some and taking them all out, just to turn around and put them all back in. I remember being so in love with theology and talking about God and getting to know Jesus that I couldn’t focus on much of anything else. I remember passionately wanting to learn Hebrew and Greek. I remember walking in to the first orientation session and seeing some of my classmates and thinking that I could never be as put together as they were. I remember so many good things from my three years, but I also remember some bad. I remember being called a Femi-Nazi by a fellow student in a computer lab. I remember being so conflicted in classes when some of my beliefs didn’t align with the beliefs of others. I remember the pain and suffering that I put other people through, and though which they put me through. I remember knowing in the very core of my being that my sexual orientation wasn’t a choice, but that it was a gift from God that could rightfully be honored in a healthy relationship.

Now, I look back with a mix of joy and sadness, really the way that all people, if they were honest, would see the history of their lives. I think nostalgia is bound up in the details of remembering both good and bad, positive and negative, in equality. Both facets of our memories make us who we are. Do I love the fact that I met so many beautiful people? Yes. Do I love the fact that I questioned my identity in the world and in Christ on a daily basis? Yes, and no. Do I love the fact that I was made to feel like my own understanding of the gospel message was somehow errant because it didn’t align with the status quo? No. So, it was a tumultuous time, a blessing of a tumultuous time. Two of my students are writing their essays about how everything happens for a reason. I agree, but sometimes it is damn confusing how that all works out.

4 Comments

Posted in Religion, Running, School, Teaching

Just A List of Ten Thoughts

Posted on 11 August 2010 | 6 comments

Today I am sitting in Starbucks having just completed some work on my dissertation, and I have a few (about ten) random thoughts:

  1. Writing a dissertation is nothing like training for a marathon. When you train for a marathon, if you have a bad training run, no one knows but you and the handful of people you share that with. When you are writing a dissertation, you can’t hide your lack of work or your foolishly naïve thoughts. Your dissertation director, at least, will always know.
  2. Writing a dissertation is exactly like training for a marathon. Both endeavors are a hell of a lot of work that culminates in one final product, and neither product is really understood by anyone who hasn’t done one. The marathon fills your physical need for challenge and excitement. The dissertation fills your mental need for the same. Neither one is comfortable, and neither one is a known commodity the first time around. Hopefully, there will not be a second time around for the dissertation.
  3. Getting things right with God is a hard job, like training for a marathon or writing a dissertation. No matter how many times I try to regroup and refocus my life with Christ, I find that I can never get it right. It’s a long, constant road to growth. And, for some reason, I keep being prodded to reconsider my career choices. It’s a strange feeling that I can’t quite interpret. I don’t know what God wants me to do anymore, possibly because I have been so focused on what I think I want to do. Should I simply have stayed at Grace? I don’t like to second guess my choices, but I have been spending a great deal of time lately doing just that.
  4. Waiting to put together your classroom because people are painting it right before school starts is a test of patience. Yeah. I think this is self-explanatory. Even though Lisa put the work order in last spring, the painters will be there through the weekend. I am a little panicked, but I know this whole Burris thing will be an exercise in my obedience to God and in my ability to give grace.
  5. Re-learning not to say bad things is a challenge. I recognize that I spend a great deal of my time talking about people and things. I don’t like it when people talk about me. I never used to talk about people. Jaymes wrote in my yearbook before we began dating, “You never say anything bad. How do you do it?” I think I did it because I was so in love with Jesus that I didn’t see any value in getting ahead in this world. How to get back there is the big question. At any rate, I need to stop running my mouth. I am working on it.
  6. Just because you have a few bad runs and you feel like you are gaining weight instead of losing it, that’s no reason to give up running. It probably does indicate that you should start swimming, too, just so that all your eggs aren’t in one basket.
  7. I like music. All kinds, except what Kellie plays, and especially old school Jennifer Knapp.
  8. I don’t think studying in coffee shops could ever be overrated. In fact, when I get the opportunity next summer, I plan to spend great deals of time in coffee shops reading, writing, and dissertating. I might be the person who talks with everyone and annoys the other patrons.
  9. I love being vegan and trying to eat healthy food that I make in my own kitchen. I could really live the rest of my life without ever going out. I’m a good cook. And humble. 🙂 Also, I can’t wait to eat a peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat each day for lunch at school. Eating PBJ makes me feel like a kid again. Young and carefree. I haven’t dealt well with growing up and becoming responsible.
  10. The hot weather makes me happy, but what makes me happier is a good thunderstorm. Thanks, God, for this morning’s amazing show.

6 Comments

Posted in Coffee, Dissertation, Fat, Food, Grace, PBJ, Reading, Religion, Running, School, Swimming, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

School. Dissertating. Running. Church. Vegan Food Failure #1.

Posted on 12 July 2010 | 2 comments

I went to school today to help rearrange the middle school office, which is a wreck, and I am not sure we improved it a great deal. We have those weird curved (around the corner) style desks where there are two desks attached to each other with a corner piece. Six of them do not fit well in one office. In fact, five of them would probably not fit comfortably. We will mostly be on top of each other, which is fine with me since I only have bodily personal space issues and don’t mind one bit sharing communal living space. I don’t mind if people are climbing all over my desk, as long as they don’t touch me in the process.

Going to school today really excited me for the fall. I want to start planning. I fantasize about what my room will look like, about the lessons I will teach, and about the ways I will interact with the students. If I didn’t have so much left to do this summer, I’d want school to start tomorrow. I walked around and just took in my classroom, looking in every cabinet and touching every filthy, kid-handled surface. I dreamed of burning sage and anointing the doorway, but I don’t want the campus police to be called because of the smell of the sage. (True story: One of my friends had the campus police called on him because he was doing an American Indian prayer/smudging in his office, and one of our colleagues thought he was smoking marijuana. They really came to our hallway and investigated his office until they were satisfied the smell came from sage. In their defense, they smell similar, and you can get high on salvia (sage) just as well as marijuana.) I may have to settle for just the anointing. No one will know what that smell is anyway, and the oil certainly doesn’t smell like pot-smoke like the sage does. I plan to spend much more time in my classroom than I spend in my office anyway. And when I am in the office, I will be working on my dissertation. I would love to get this thing finished as soon as possible. I am hoping to finish by May of 2012, which has been pushed back by a whole year because I will be teaching full time in the fall.

I just started reading a couple of theoretical/theological books to work on framing the chapter about biblical authority. Sometimes it seems like the more I read, the more questions I have instead of feeling like I am actually learning anything and moving toward having answers. Will I ever feel like I actually have some authority over my project? Will I ever be able to say to myself that I have read enough, digested it, and formulated my own opinions/theories about these texts? It feels like a long time coming, and like it may never happen.

Another thing that seems like it may never happen is this marathon. Although my six-mile run went really well on Saturday, my ankle still hurts unless I wear my minimalist footwear. When I wear my running shoes, and I have three different pairs I’ve been rotating, my ankle hurts ridiculously the next day. If I wear my Vibrams, I am fine, but the most I have run in them is three miles. Next Saturday, I am supposed to run 7 miles. Three of those miles will be done in the morning in Pendleton at a 5K that Bec and I are doing together. She’ll walk. I’ll run. We’ll finish together. 🙂 I think I will wear my running shoes for the 5K and my Vibrams for the other 4 miles and see how that works out. At any rate, I need to figure this whole thing out before I am up to running 10-15 miles at a stretch.

My Saturday run was one of the most beautiful I have been on in a long time. I started at about 630 with a nice slow walk down to Elm Street to sort of warm up my legs and work out the sleeping kinks, then I ran along the river from our house to the mile marker by Marsh on Tillotson and White River Boulevard and home. I finished by taking off my shoes and walking barefoot down to Elm Street and back. When I started out, the air was cool and there was a slight breeze. The dun had just poked out from above the horizon and the earth was just waking up. Slowly. As I ran, the sun moved up over the trees and the breeze slowed, giving me a humid, yet tolerable, workout. On mornings like that one, it’s not difficult to worship as I run, remembering the Creator and my place in the creation.

I think my view of my place in this world is complicated by the fact that I restrict myself to thinking worship somehow involves a human church, so on Sunday we went to church at Commonway because we had both been thinking this past week about missing church. Typically, we go to the Sunday evening Commonway service, but during the summer there aren’t as many college students so they meet in the morning with the regular service. The morning service has a whole different feel than the evening one. I enjoyed it, but when school starts back up, I plan to switch back to Sunday nights for a couple reasons.

For one thing, had it not been for my friend Molly and one of my students, we would have made it into the church, through the service, and back out without ever talking to another living person besides the surly greeter who didn’t understand why we wanted to share a bulletin. The speaker even made his way down the other end of our aisle, hugging people as he went, then almost tripped over my foot as he was exiting our aisle, but he didn’t even say good morning. Excellent interpersonal skills.

Secondly, I simply can’t stand selling things in church. I have this strong aversion to churches maintaining bookstores and pay cafés in their facilities. I have more of an aversion when the said money-making institutions are open for sales on Sunday morning as you are walking into the church. I have more of an aversion when there are inserts in the bulletin that advertise the sales going on in said marketplaces, and I just pretty much wait for the roof to cave in when the speaker announces the Bible sales from the dais after he makes a point about the importance of reading the Bible.

As churches today go, Commonway is a good one. They work hard to maintain social outreach. In fact, they have people in Kazakhstan doing some social outreach, they are collecting school supplies for students in Muncie, and they are collecting new kids shoes for those kids whose famlies can’t  afford them. I can get behind all of those things. The message had a good balance of material for new Christians and challenges for those people have been Christians for longer. And, I love the pastor. Matt pretty much rocks.

Vegan Food Failure #1: Taco pizza. Never try to make a vegan taco pizza without taco seasoning. It doesn’t work. At all. You will end up with beans, corn, tomatoes, and salsa on crust instead of taco pizza. Ew, but I hate to waste food, so I ate it, trying my best not to think of it as taco pizza so it would taste better. Okay, I imagined it was simply pizza, so it wouldn’t taste repulsive. I kept trying to get Bec to eat some of it, but she refused. Smart woman.

2 Comments

Posted in Dissertation, Food, Grace, Religion, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan

The Naked Gospel by Andrew Farley

Posted on 1 June 2010 | 4 comments

The Naked Gospel: The Truth You May Never Hear in Church by Andrew Farley begins with an epigraph by Arthur Bury from 1691, making the claim that the naked gospel “was the gospel which our Lord and his apostles preached,” which is what I expected this book to do. I expected to read a new take on Jesus theology, in which I would learn a bit more about what Jesus said and did and the ways in which those actions were revolutionary. I would have loved this book if that had been what it really did. What I got instead was a whole different story involving Paul, a Jew who supposedly grew to have no use for his traditional religious upbringing, and those people who came after Paul who also saw no need for relationship with the Jewish Scriptures. How, can I ask, does this present “the gospel which our Lord and his apostles preached”? Instead, possibly the epigraph should have been a quote from Origen who thought that Paul “taught the Church which he had gathered from among the Gentiles how to understand the books of the Law” and then ignore them. It seems as if Farley spends quite a bit of time discussing Paul and Paul’s aversion to his own tradition, which doesn’t seem like a Naked Gospel, but more of an interrogation of Paul. That being said, this book isn’t all bad; it just wasn’t what I expected.

Farley provides an excellent critique of our desire to remain staid in our own complacent following of hollow rules that we perceive make us good Christians. However, I am not sure that early Christians would agree with his reading of the meaning of old and new and the ways that he argues Christians are called to live a new life without considering the laws or the Jewish Scriptures. It makes no sense to advocate the very heavy disregard for the early Christians’ previous religious experience, especially because there is substantial evidence to the contrary. In fact, the very people Farley discusses—Peter, Paul, and the other apostles—did not leave the Jewish faith. They merely reconfigured their previous beliefs to fit with their newly acquired faith in Jesus as the Messiah. Particularly, Matthew adheres to his Jewish roots as he tried to convince both Gentiles and Jews that Jesus is the Messiah. Making such an adamant break from discussing Jewish traditions and religion is a major weakness of Farley’s text. I do agree with his assessment that Christians need to learn to avoid “the painful symptoms of un-necessary religion” (31), but does this need to be done by completely breaking away from tradition or previous manifestations of religious worship? I think not. Even Paul, who Farley quotes sometimes very out of context, references his own religious and secular traditions as well as the religious and secular leaders of his time.

The main tenet that Farley proposes with which I agree is the idea that we are free from sin. We are always already forgiven, and too many Christians don’t realize it. They are crippled by the perceived necessity to keep accounts of their sins and to compulsively ask forgiveness for those sins, sometimes to the point of unhealthy self-reflectivity and analysis. I love the song “Everything Glorious” by David Crowder Band, because it makes this claim so well. I think Farley is getting at the same question as Crowder: “You make everything glorious and I am Yours, so what does that make me?” According to Farley, “It’s important to understand that we’re joined to the risen Christ, not to a dead religious teacher” (180). I would even take this a step further and say that we are the risen Christ. Whatever is to be done on this earth now, is to be done through us as we are the manifestation of the work that Jesus did on the cross. We are required to be Christ to people: “Genuine growth occurs as we absorb truth about who we already are and what we already possess in Christ” (187). I concur.

In short, I liked this book because it challenges several commonly held beliefs in contemporary Christianity, such as the idea that we have to change who we are to be perfect Christians. As Farly writes, “Having Christ live through you is really about knowing who you are and being yourself. Since Christ is your life, your source of true fulfillment, you’ll only be content when you are expressing him” (194). I agree but my main complaints about this book can speak directly to this idea: what if the way you experience Christ living through you includes a love for and an adherence to those “Old Testament” ideas that he claims are null and void? Can we really claim that the naked gospel is a gospel void of any sense of tradition or Jewish scripture, relying solely on tradition and reason to inform our actions as Christians? I don’t think so. I don’t think this is really “Jesus plus nothing.” It’s more like Jesus nothing with a heaping helping of misread Paul. I would recommend this book, simply so people could wrestle through all of these ideas as Farley adeptly challenges the reader to think critically about a variety of ideas.

You can read this and other reviews of the same book at Viral Bloggers.

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Posted in Grace, Just for Fun, Just Random Stuff, Literature, Politics, Reading, Religion, Writing