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hermionesviolinI think today was the first day I'd stepped out of the house since Wednesday. Youch. I went to the library to pick some books up.
Shelby was working Children's, so I went over to say hi because she's lovely. We chatted about the usual stuff and she asked how United was doing. "That's an interesting question," I said. She was asking about the "spirit" of the church rather than the finances (which was how I first answered the question) and mentioned the Taegers -- who are one of the many who left United ~6 years ago, and who now go to the Baptist and I didn't realize knew the Warners. I said most of the people who were upset by what happened had left, so it was pretty much happily chugging along as its own new entity now, but it's really not my church, in so many ways, a number of which I talked about.
We also talked about jobness and of course there was the question of what I would ideally wanna be doing, and she asked if I write, and I talked about how I'm good at discussing things with people and how I would love to get to do things on my own terms, to talk about fairytales and tv and movies and connections and just be trusted to be smart and not have to prove myself to an admissions or hiring committee, and how I'm not good at having an idea of my own which I can sustain throughout the course of a paper. I hadn't ever quite articulated that portion of it (the fact that it's hard to sell a board on my flavor of cultural studies has of course become old hat) and now that I'm typing it up I think, "Being a college professor, if you're a humanities prof at a liberal arts college, leading discussion is what you do, though there still is that hateful requirement that you publish regularly."
She said she was glad I come in and check in, that it's nice to hear from me, and she sounded sincere. I have come to not trust my readings of such, but it was a positive conversation regardless.
I also chatted with Michele for a while, about gifting among other things. I feel like I'm treated more like an adult than like a kid, which is nice.
Me: So, I'm debating whether or not I should watch tonight's CSI rerun, 'cause I know I've seen this episode before.
Mom: Why would you be watching the episode again if you know you've already seen it? For the order? In case there was subtle character development you missed the first time around? The CSI characters are too adorable not to watch?
Me (shamefacedly): Okay, I wouldn't call the CSI characters "adorable," but up until then, you were exactly right.
Cat called shortly after the show started, so I watched about 20 minutes with the mute on, which was enough to remind me more fully what the episode was about and also to remind me that it's a rather depressing episode I really don't need to watch again.
My mother says she doesn't consider information from me really official until it's been "enshrined" in (my) LJ. " 'I'm converting to Buddhism and moving to Tibet.' I'll send a condolence letter to the Dalai Lama. 'I know you're probably the most grounded person on the planet, but this girl's gonna be a test.' "
P.S. Neil Gaiman is love.
And this is not about Neil Gaiman, but confession time before Advent (time to prepare one's heart for the coming of God Incarnate). I think I understand that "Thou shalt not covet" commandment better now. It's about being content with what you have, but it's also about not begrudging others what they have. I find myself sort of seething negative energy when I read really amazing fic sometimes. I also totally rock the inferiority/superiority complex thing, and I begin to think the two are related -- that it's not just jealousy in the sense of "I wish I had that ability" but also "You do not deserve to have that ability." Which is somewhat troubling. I would be a happier person if I didn't hate people so frequently.
Shelby was working Children's, so I went over to say hi because she's lovely. We chatted about the usual stuff and she asked how United was doing. "That's an interesting question," I said. She was asking about the "spirit" of the church rather than the finances (which was how I first answered the question) and mentioned the Taegers -- who are one of the many who left United ~6 years ago, and who now go to the Baptist and I didn't realize knew the Warners. I said most of the people who were upset by what happened had left, so it was pretty much happily chugging along as its own new entity now, but it's really not my church, in so many ways, a number of which I talked about.
We also talked about jobness and of course there was the question of what I would ideally wanna be doing, and she asked if I write, and I talked about how I'm good at discussing things with people and how I would love to get to do things on my own terms, to talk about fairytales and tv and movies and connections and just be trusted to be smart and not have to prove myself to an admissions or hiring committee, and how I'm not good at having an idea of my own which I can sustain throughout the course of a paper. I hadn't ever quite articulated that portion of it (the fact that it's hard to sell a board on my flavor of cultural studies has of course become old hat) and now that I'm typing it up I think, "Being a college professor, if you're a humanities prof at a liberal arts college, leading discussion is what you do, though there still is that hateful requirement that you publish regularly."
She said she was glad I come in and check in, that it's nice to hear from me, and she sounded sincere. I have come to not trust my readings of such, but it was a positive conversation regardless.
I also chatted with Michele for a while, about gifting among other things. I feel like I'm treated more like an adult than like a kid, which is nice.
Me: So, I'm debating whether or not I should watch tonight's CSI rerun, 'cause I know I've seen this episode before.
Mom: Why would you be watching the episode again if you know you've already seen it? For the order? In case there was subtle character development you missed the first time around? The CSI characters are too adorable not to watch?
Me (shamefacedly): Okay, I wouldn't call the CSI characters "adorable," but up until then, you were exactly right.
Cat called shortly after the show started, so I watched about 20 minutes with the mute on, which was enough to remind me more fully what the episode was about and also to remind me that it's a rather depressing episode I really don't need to watch again.
My mother says she doesn't consider information from me really official until it's been "enshrined" in (my) LJ. " 'I'm converting to Buddhism and moving to Tibet.' I'll send a condolence letter to the Dalai Lama. 'I know you're probably the most grounded person on the planet, but this girl's gonna be a test.' "
P.S. Neil Gaiman is love.
And this is not about Neil Gaiman, but confession time before Advent (time to prepare one's heart for the coming of God Incarnate). I think I understand that "Thou shalt not covet" commandment better now. It's about being content with what you have, but it's also about not begrudging others what they have. I find myself sort of seething negative energy when I read really amazing fic sometimes. I also totally rock the inferiority/superiority complex thing, and I begin to think the two are related -- that it's not just jealousy in the sense of "I wish I had that ability" but also "You do not deserve to have that ability." Which is somewhat troubling. I would be a happier person if I didn't hate people so frequently.
Re: Newbie question
Date: 2005-11-28 04:54 am (UTC)I'll give you my personal church background to start things off. I was raised fundamentalist Baptist. I can remember having issues with my religious upbringing as early as six years old. I had been given a stuffed caterpillar for Christmas that year that also doubled as a purse. Her name is Catty (yes I still have her. LOL). I came forward during the invitational one Sunday to tell the preacher that I was worried because I didn't love God the way I loved Catty. Now the question was childish, but the sentiment wasn't. How do you love (like truly love) an intangible?
My issues with the church I went to increased as I got older. I was told in Sunday school that I could go to college if I wanted, but really I should just focus on marriage and breeding. My Sunday school teacher told us when his son's best friend ran away from a bad home situation that he just couldn't let him stay at their house because he didn't believe in black people and white people staying under the same roof. I was also really annoyed (read scared of going to hell) with the whole Punishment/Reward system the church advocated.
As a ninth grader, I decided I was an atheist. Oddly enough, I feel like this was the most spiritual time of my life. I was doing a lot of philosophical and religious reading, ranging from books about withcraft to pithy Victorian moralism. And I was really, really damn angry. LOL
Several years later, I decided that I was no longer atheist but agnostic. I looked at the world around me and couldn't fathom that it had sprung, even slowly, from nothing. (I do believe in evolution; that's just scientific good sense in my mind; I just couldn't believe that the primordial ooze came from Nothingness). I went on in this state for years--wanting to be spiritual but feeling very bereft in that department. It doesn't help that I have two degrees in English and am working on the third. I've been trained to deconstruct texts, not have faith in them.
In spring 2002, my husband and I decided to start a family. When I got pregnant, I thought, "I better figure this religion thing out before I have to explain it to another human." So I began investigating the Catholic Church. Josh (hubby) and his family are all Catholic, so it seemed like a logical course. I liked a lot of what I heard and experienced. The Genesis story as a myth, not the literal way the world was created. The beauty and pageantry of the rituals. The way it made me feel sacred when the priest blessed me or when I took Communion after I joined the Church (this process takes about a year).
But ultimately, I found that none of my pivotal questions were answered and that I still am unable to have faith. I find myself questioning the church on policy issues, specifically concerning women and gays. But beyond that, my issue with religion has always been faith. I truly want to have faith. Believe me, my life would've been much easier in rural Mississippi if I'd had some. LOL But I can't force myself to believe and that's a scary thing.
I realize that this got way too long and TMI-y, so ummm....sorry. :)
Re: Newbie question
Date: 2005-11-28 02:31 pm (UTC)Oh that so did not hit the TMI threshold. And I'm like the queen of long posts/comments.
I would like to hear more about your personal church background and anything else about yourself you'd like to tell me. One thing I've noticed about lj is that often our posts are so concerned with fannish things that it takes a while for personal details to trickle through. So, tell me all about yourself.
Well I expect you've begun to notice by now that I put near my entire life up on my LJ -- and I've had an LJ since April 2002. You are entirely welcome to poke through the memories. Religion, politics, queerness, and tv episode commentaries make up the bulk of it (excluding the "misc fic" tag, which is where I dump stuff to read later).
I grew up in an interdenominational Protestant church [referred to as United or UCN in my LJ]. Way back when (I wanna say 1907 or something) it was a merger of two actual denominations, but by the time I was there, its leanings varied based on who the minister was. The people who ran the church were in large part older women friends of my grandma/mother [which means I get tetchy when people are all, "I'm getting so old" since I grew up with people who were more busy now that they were retired than they were when they were working] and I didn't particularly care for the minister who had been there since I was 9 and usually slept through the sermons or skipped the service altogether to help out with childcare, but I had grown up there and it felt like homeAround the time I was a junior in high school, there was an influx of very energetic young (20s and 30s) people who would probably be called fundamentalists and charismatics. I'm not good with terminology, but their theology was a lot more conservative than mine (or my mother's) and they had a strong emphasis on spreading the Good Word to the greater community -- which totally has Scriptural basis and precedent, but was not how United had operated previously -- and also on testimonials of the saving grace of Jesus/God in the own lives and a lot of contemporary praise music. They made a lot of changes in the church without any real discussion and a lot of the older people felt really hurt by this and many of them left (hence my snarkily calling it "the great schism"). I was heading to college and continued to go when I was home on break, but it had ceased to feel like my church. My sophomore year of college I started going to First Churches in Northampton -- a UCC/ABC merger. Definitely good people, and the way the service was structured was in many ways similar to United. The political liberalness sometimes made me uncomfortable (if I have to define myself, I pick Libertarian, which means both sides of the traditional right/left divide have aspects that appeal to me and aspects that make me uncomfortable) but on the whole it was a good place to be for 3 years.
So now I'm back home after college -- though once I finally get a permanent job I hope to move in closer to Boston. Church-seeking is complicated by the fact that I'm not sure I actually believe in Christianity. I'm attached to it from growing up with it, but I need for it to logically make sense, for there to be enough evidence in the historical record for me to make the faith leap that Jesus really did rise from the dead, and I need a better understanding of what exactly were Jesus' claims for himself. I have been pathetically lax in actually researching any of this these past few years. I'm torn between "If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, why would the apostles have insisted he did?" and "Jesus so preached that his second coming was very soon, so unless you fanwank that to mean his Easter resurrection, he was fallible on a very serious point and this just doesn't follow." I've absolutely made the God leap, because it's better for my peace of mind to believe there is Someone up there I can hand my shit off to, and who is actually watching out for me, but to go any further....
Re: Newbie question
Date: 2005-11-29 01:55 am (UTC)I know exactly what you mean. I was talking to my friend Lisa today about spirituality. We frequently do this anyway, but reading your posts has made me think about spiritual issues a little more closely than I would otherwise. (Which is actually my modus operandi; I feel bereft that I am not spiritual. Yet my solution is to just not think about it LOL) Anyway, I was telling Lisa that my major problem is faith. I feel like if I decide that I want to be Christian, then I have to really believe it. All of it, including the church policy issues that I disagree with.
Lisa is heavily influenced by Eastern religions; I find them fascinating, but I can't quite wrap my head around the little reading I've done.
Re: Newbie question
Date: 2005-11-29 02:44 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm not sure I'll ever find a church community I can wholly get behind given how many things I have issues with. (Though since I come from a Protestant tradition, allowing ministers to be women/married is pretty much a non-issue, and I'm blessed to live in a time when there are so many Open & Affirming congregations in all denominations, my issues usually aren't what one would typically call major ones.)
My issue tends to be moreso with the apparent contradictions in the Bible itself -- and how I suck for the fact that I have been meaning to read the New Testament full through for years and still haven't gotten around to doing it, or to doing research into the historical Jesus (which is another thing I really need to do, because Christianity is -- duh -- centered on Christ, so it's deeply important to me to understand what Jesus was teaching and what claims he made about himself).
Having grown up with Protestantism I'm quite attached to it, and if I ultimately decide to reject Christianity I suspect that I will just lapse into the deism that has been my usual modus operandi anyhow.