Review of the “Dream Machine”
Like live Telletubbies without a toddler to appreciate it.
The End of the Great American roadtrip?
What will American literature do? What will happen to American national parks? This article mentions Kansas, but not the gorgeous places of the West that are far away and definitely deserve to be seen (I’m thinking about Canyon de Chelly, Bryce Canon, Arches National Park, Grand Teton, Columbia Gorge)… need I go on?
However, I would heartily advocate Amtrak for these great trips. I took two month long train trips as a kid that were of definitive shape for my growth.
Of course, I’ve been wanting to go to northern Michigan for the Cherry Festival every year (my favorite fruit) and can’t quite bring myself to pay for the tanks of gas. 
What do you all think?
A broken record crying in the wilderness.
I’m not a prophet, but my voice is crying and I do feel rather alone.
I went to an open q & a tonight hosted by the women of the church. I sent in my questions ahead of time, drawn from the depth of my being that I thought captured complex issues. If the responses I garnered were any indication, they were age old questions worthy of the trite answers I heard and rejected five years ago.
Why a broken record? Because it is like I wander around asking the same questions over and over again, maybe couched in different words, with none of the answers clicking me off, setting the record straight as it were, so I wander off and ask it again.
I didn’t conduct myself well tonight. I hope I just came across passionate, but I’m afraid I came across bitter. Certainly the undergrad whose voice cracked with passion over meeting people’s need for Christ came across better to the group than my frustrated sputterings.
bleck…………………………………..
Sermon Notes: God is not in my box, but who is ze?
Pastor Ken discussed this morning that we individuals want to put God into our specially designed mold for Him, rather than accepting the whole of who He is. I will grant that my search for mer often seems like I am just trying to fit a simplified idea of God into my head. The scripture for today was Deut 6:1-6 (the Schma). I began to get very upset during the discussion, partly because I watched Earth (written and directed by Deepa Mehta) yesterday, and wrote the following stream of consciousness (with a few explanatory notes in parenthesis):
One True God –>pretty intolerant
“Who are you to tell me anything?”
Bride and Groom–> Love each other only
Marriage relationship
See each other (a couple) loving each other
see God
see jealous love
God has a jealous love for his people
[It has taken me several years to realize that just such a jealous love is not what a strong marriage is built upon. A strong marriage is built upon relationships across generations and across interest groups. I need friends who can speak my language, just like Erik does. So in that picture Ken presents, where are the friends and family of the bride and groom intensity that is supposed to model God's love? I love many people, not my husband only. Should I then love many Gods (father God, mother God, child God, friend God, pet God as well as groom God?]
intolerance comment
–>affirm that God is one noncombattively.
no arrogance
My sobs seep from the Earth
Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees, Sihks
Death from jealosy
Masked in religious intolerance
Death from religious intolerance
Masked in cultural superiority
Is Life more important than affirming the Lord is One?
Who is that Lord?
God is Us (See Genesis 1, 11, Isaiah 6)
God is one
If it is not about my own wisdom in describing God
What is it about?
A community description?
A description given by authority?
A description forced at knife by a mob or changed in secret to avoid a mob?
Where is the only God in these descriptions? Does ze describe zemself?
Movie tears are supposed to be cathartic
But Mehta tears apart the shell I build daily to withstand history’s horror
(recover, recover, recover to sing God’s holiness with the choir, don’t let the voice shake or the emotions show)
Continuing to Deal
When I was a kid, I thought my secret inner life was this precious thing worthy only of a select few. When I finally started sharing details, I realized no one cared! Or to be more precise, no one recognized what a huge step it was for me to share. It was just every day reality for most of them.
I’ve gotten over this feeling, but I think sharing myself still takes something essential out of me. Part of my “social phobia” is that whenever I offer opinions or talk for long periods, I get terribly worried that I have made a fool of myself in some way. And that I have spread myself so thin that I have to spend time alone finding myself again. It is really rather frustrating. I love a good party, a good talk over coffee, a nice meal after church, but then afterwards, I have to climb back into my little hole and recuperate. I thought the anti-depressants had taken care of this, but it seems to be coming back this summer.
And if I do say or do something foolish, it takes me ages to get over.
I wish I were normal.
As if normality were ever something I would really want. Perhaps I just wish I didn’t want to tear myself apart so frequently.
Kass and Polkinghorne
We’ve been reading Leon Kass’s commentary on Genesis, The Beginning of Wisdom. The book has brought me to some startling discoveries about Genesis, but also makes me consistently frustrated with the God Kass describes. That God gives us creativity and then tears down efforts to use that creativity, except within certain narrowly defined parameters (God is the architect, we the builders). It just bugs me. It’s as if my father were only willing to accept me if I had become a botanist (his profession) and checked in with him everyday to make sure my work lined up exactly with his understanding of the world. It seems like God created a vast world and then made it extremely narrow.
I thought I was just reading Kass wrong or yet once again on the wrong side of a question until I listened to John Polinghorne on Speaking of Faith this morning. The way he (physicist and Anglican priest) describes God’s creativity and our own is fascinating. He embraces the beauty of the universe, particularly the elegance of mathematics even while recognizing that natural evil comes out of that beauty. Tectonic plates make life possible in many ways, even while their touching creates vast natural disasters. Genetic mutations allow evolution and natural diversity even while also leading to cancer.
That description of an active God who also sets up universal rules that encompass goodness, beauty, and suffering somehow makes sense to me. My mind is also trying to connect it to how Kass explains the reality of man’s freedoms. Our creative efforts lead to both goodness and suffering, and suffering can lead to wisdom.
“Give me six months as a walking dead and I’ll never say anthing angry again.”
This is confidence and passion.
Said to Harlan Ellison: “Get a little mellow”
Ellison, “First of all, the word rant has been co-opted by the imbecile internet. A rant used to mean one thing. A panygeric is another. A gardyloo is a third. I’m a passionate person. I care about things. But at least I have enjoyed myself.”
“You are a cutie pie. And I … Thank your mother for the chicken soup. And my wife and I clutch your antenna and enrap your cilia with joy.”
Kurt Andersen: “Yikes!”
Ellison: “Yikes!”
Documentary coming out: Dreams with Sharp Teeth
