Reason Breeds Insanity

Here is my dilemma: I want to be more like Jesus, but I am having a hard time doing it. I know, I know, story of my life. I just am having a hard time taming that dastardly little bastard that lives in my mouth. James was right when he wrote, “So the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. […] The tongue is set among our members staining the whole body , setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. […] but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison” (3:5-8, really read 3:1-12). See, I have this thing I do where I talk about people, trying to “work things out” or “vent” or whatever, but it ends up just being gossip. I am not sure how to stop doing this. I am thinking about taking a week long vow of silence at some time during the summer, which for those of you who know me, would be as close to death in life as I could possibly come. This is all prompted by some things that happen yesterday. This person that I consider a friend, well, a friend I hold at a distance anyway, decided to tell some of my other friend that I was bragging about my grades. That is simply not true. I don’t talk about grades unless I am asked, and even then, I am not necessarily pleased to talk about them. I also think grades are fascist and they don’t mean much to me, so I unless I completely lost my senses, I didn’t “shove the grades” in this person’s face. However, what I did do was talk about this friend with another friend, saying that I couldn’t trust, etc. So really, what I did was the exact thing this person did to me, only I felt justifies in doing it because I was “venting.” Seriously, we can just rationalize anything can’t we?!? I mean, I know I can, but my damned tongue just won’t do what I tell it to. See another justification. I told it to talk. I didn’t even balk at it. I can say that woman is not who I want to be. James continues: “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My [friends], these things ought not be so!” (3:10). From my same mouth come blessing and cursing. I bless God everyday, and then I curse people from the same mouth. Sometimes I do this within minutes. It’s really schizophrenic, this disjunction of the tongue. I need to work on it. I do. Daily. Sometimes are just really bad. Yesterday was one of those days. Today is going to be better.

The Message, which I almost never use because it seems to make less sense to me than most other translations, says in Mark that Jesus “taught by using stories, many stories.” We all learn better when hear other people’s stories. I think this singular phenomenon may be why memoirs are so popular now—people learn better when they learn from stories, not from someone telling them what to do. Self-help books have their place, usually in the garbage can in my opinion, but memoirs and creative nonfiction, I think, have a distinct place, not the garbage can, because they feed readers’ need to other people’s stories. We need to hear how other people deal with stuff. Jesus knew that. He knew that people need stories that relate to their lives in order to learn how to function, especially because he was trying to teach them how to live in a whole new way. Of course the new way is the way they should have been going all along. The basic message of Christianity is not much different from the basic message of Judaism: forgiveness, grace, mercy, love, peace, kindness, compassion, and hospitality. Essentially the message is the same: you are created in the image of God; act like it. Perform your identity in Christ. I would go a little bit further with this whole idea of performativity, and if I were writing this for a literature journal instead of a blog, I might talk about Judith Butler, and say that the way we act is much of who we are. But this is a blog, so I won’t. I will say, though, that her whole argument is that we perform our gender. People perceive our genders based on teh way we perform them, or act them out. Wouldn’t it be great if people could look at how we act and immediately perceive our Christianity? My point merely is that our stories should be shared for the better good, to help others realize that we are doing in the world, and to help others make better choices than we have made. Our stories are the evidence we have for the world of our identities in Christ. We act like Christians, we act otherworldly, and we are perceived as Christians, our stories evidence this. Frequently, my stories evidence how far I have to go in performing my Christianity. Sometimes, sadly, I don’t look the least bit Christian. Too often. Mark continues to write: “With many stories like these, he presented his message to them, fitting the stories to their experience and maturity. He was never without a story when he spoke.” Jesus’ stories always fit his specific audience: he was acutely aware of the rhetorical triangle. And he was like one of those guys at the bar, or like a woman in a retirement home, he always had a story. His stories, however, had a point, and made sense. I do think, though, that people may have thought he was a bit like the barfly or the demented person, because his stories sometimes didn’t make sense, so much so that he had to go “over everything, sorting out the tangles, untying the knots” with his disciples. I wonder if they ever felt like he had gone crazy? Well, I know they were confused sometimes, but I wonder if Jesus ever started a story and then Peter and the others looked at each other like “oh, no, here he goes again, telling that story.” I want to tell stories that change lives. I want to be like Jesus.

Switch gears. Today is the first day of summer school. I never thought I would take summer school again. But here I am. Class starts in an hour, and I am not sure I want to go through with it. I am not sure I can. I really enjoyed the past week of doing nothing school related, reading things for pleasure, sewing, plating, mowing, fixing things, and spending time with all the pets. I keep telling myself that it’s only for five weeks, and I can do anything for five weeks (25 days). I am looking forward to reading some theoretical books, and I am excited about reading books for the book club, but I am not so excited about writing. I do know that I will learn tons of valuable information and techniques in this class, but I also know that I am one of the worst writers in the program, so it may be a bit painful. Regardless, it starts in an hour.

Switch gears again. The party at our house was a great success. I had fun, and so did a few of my friends, so that is really all that matters. I just wish that more people would get involved. I mean, if you can’t go to a party, what can you go to? I guess it is a busy time of year. Also, it was Mother’s Day weekend, and lots of people were Mothering.

Orion
by Susan Gevirtz

        What you make on Orion

             I leave to you



      What you take from Orion

              I take to you

If I had it all to do over again, I think I would have moved to a commune somewhere in the Pacific Northwest right after high school before the capitalists got me. I would have skipped the whole college thing and made baskets for a living or something crazy like that, because I hate money. I hate it with the deepest core of my being. If you can hate one thing, it is the effects of money on people. There are some of us who never have enough, and those of us who have so much we can’t properly manage it. I am amazed at how much conversation the topic of the “richest people” in the world generates, and not surprisingly, they are all men. You would never know they are all men by the way we glue ourselves to the telly watching Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and whatever female is our weekly exploitation. However, I once heard a statistic that the five richest people in the world have a as much wealth as the fifteen poorest countries. I am not sure how accurate that is, because I couldn’t find where I read it. At any rate, the money situation in our world is out of control! How does a world get so out of whack monetarily? If I had to write a composition for middle school English about America and my pride in our country, I think, knowing what I know now, I would write about why America should be communist—or at least communalist with socialized medicine or health insurance for everyone—and why I am so ashamed of who we have become. How can we justify killing the very people we armed (and trained)? That’s like giving a starving kid a cookie and telling her not to eat it! Or teaching a kid how to read, but telling him that some books are off limits. You can’t give people tools to inflict destruction and then get pissed off when they do it! How dare we. We have been very bad, and we can’t even take care of own people, much less afford to buy more bombs and guns! So, I propose we eradicate money, which is according to a very old book that I happen to love, the root of all evil! I would end my middle school rant with these words: Capitalism makes us kill each other, and if every one worked together like on a big sustainable farm (that was for you, Pastor), crafting, growing things, and wearing patchouli, and no antiperspirant, and coloring outside the lines, we could all get along. This is why capitalism is bad and communism is good. Capitalism kills people. Thanks.

On a much more fun, and way less serious note, my friends are coming home!!!!! They are moving back in early July, so we are going to wait to have our hundredth anniversary party for our house until they get here. I am SO excited. Now I actually get to see the kid grow up! Yippee! If anyone hears of any openings in English anywhere, let me know, so I can spread the good word. Now if I can just figure out how to pay to go see Merideth, I will be in luck!

I am reading a book right now that really challenges my thoughts about politics. Even more than God’s Politics by Jim Wallis, Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw has made me question my life and the way I live it. The whole idea is that our way as Christians should be so radically different than the world’s way that we end up sticking out like sore thumbs. Do you stick out like a sore thumb? Does your life even look different from your neighbors’ lives? Mine doesn’t. I want it to. I would like to think it does, but stacked side by side, I have an average American life. Actually, and even worse, I have an average middle-class American life. I am the bourgeoisie. Ick?!? How did I get where I am? I am not really sure, but I woke up one day to find myself here. I don’t hate it, but where I am looks just like where every other middle-class Christian is. I am not sure that I am so comfortable with that anymore. I am not sure I ever was comfortable with that. Anyway, Jesus for President has challenged the way I think about love and grace. They quote Dorothy Day, whose work I just need to read and then convince Bec to open our house to others, which will probably happen right as hell is freezing over. She Dorothy Day says, “Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer.” Love is the only answer to so many problems. My question for myself is how can I be more love?

With all of that said, I figured out how to make my own shoes yesterday. At least, I think I figured it out—I am going to make them like Espadrilles with the woven sole. Hopefully, I can find some used tires and inner tubes to use for the soles of some others. I read online that tire inner tubes make great insoles; and apparently, tires themselves make great soles. I just need to experiment and figure it out. Also, because it is raining today, I am going to run a few errands and then…..SEW?!?

Anyone know where to get some silk screening equipment for cheap?