being busy.

Jonathan was lucky enough to snag some World Series tickets and we went to Game 3 in Philly this past Saturday. I love going to be sporting events, just for the experience. After a rain delay, the game finally began around 10pm and didn't end up 2am, while we froze in the stands, but still glad for the experience and a great game. Then the Lively's (not as lively at the time being) drove back to DC, arriving around 5am....

Right now I am on an extended lunch break, as I came to grab my suitcase and do some final things before an afternoon of sessions with kids and then heading straight to Baltimore to fly out for a weekend at FL/GA festivities and spending time with friends.

Busy. Busy. Busy. I can't decide if I like being busy or if I wish for a slower paced life. Probably because of my dilemna of accepting happiness, I don't like being busy when I am, and then get bored when I am not galavanting with plans and people each weekend.

Hope you have a nice busy or chill weekend and hope its exactly what you need.

more nostalgia.

What is it with me thinking about old relationships these days?

Today was one of my childhood best friend's birthday. I have been thinking about her all day. We spent many of our adolescent days pining over our lives and shared so much, part of her is cemented to my personality and make up. It has to be. I laugh and love so much just thinking about her....

We stayed up all night talking on the phone, seriously, I did not sleep for a few years. We drove around Florida going to dance auditions and planning to escape our families (and boring) lives to go to performing arts boarding school (she went, i didn't). We were obsessed with "I Love Lucy" and that was our comic relief. We were (kinda) anti social to others, and found enough friendship in each other. Spent endless weekend nights "sleeping over" which including TPing the boys in the neighborhood wearing black "ninja" clothes and climbing out of her 2 story window with sheets tied together (but we had on our roller blade protective gear in case we fell). We got in trouble for laughing and not being able to stop. We both switched schools so we could attend the same one in which we ate lunch alone (but together) and one of our teachers called us, "the girls from another planet". We liked him and thought everyone else sucked, so this was a compliment.

In my young age, this dear friend saw more vulnerability in me than anyone. We were intense as friends and real. Depressed when sad, manic when happy. A roller coaster ridden, but with each up and down, we were in it together. She taught me a lot. About myself, and friendship, and relationships. I used to think it was weird that we fought. Like major conflicts and hurt. As a young girl, I didn't realize that in relationships, this is a part of it. When you care for someone, you get angry. Life is messy, love is messier, right? Ever heard that the opposite of love is NOT hate, but APATHY? I think that is true. If you piss me off, I still love you, if I don't care, you are fading away....

My husband doesn't know this old friend. Last year, we got to spend time together, Jonathan and I and my friend and her fiance. Enjoying two bottles of wine by Lake Eola, dear friend and I, started where we left off, our guys chiming in sharing stories, adventures and outlooks on life.

When driving home, my husband commented that he couldn't believe how similar we were, my friend and I. Our humor. Our stories. Our personalities.

So, I think about that, how are those that we love imprinted on us?

And, how do WE imprint on those we love?

Happy Birthday dear friend. Thank you for sharing your life with me many years ago.

steady and content.

As I walked around my neighborhood the other evening, bundling up for the first time this season, I was thinking about things in my life. I don't feel particularly happy or excited about any of them. Now don't get me wrong, its not that there is anything bad in my life or tragic, so I feel guilty even professing my ill-contentedness, but that is exactly what I have been- not content.

I thrive on new things, fresh, exciting, fun, right?....

Well, let's see here. I've lived in DC for over a year now with no plans for relocation as the real estate market might dictate our stay in our 550 square feet of bliss ; I've been at my job for almost 1.5 years; I've been married for over 2 years...I don't have plans to move, leave my job, or leave my marriage, so that is a lot of the SAME. BUT these are all good things, I love my home, my job, and my marriage, so that should be enough. It really should. What is my deal?! I am never happy and satisfied and always looking for more. If the SAME is GOOD, then why should I want DIFFERENT just for the hell of it?

Additionally, my life up until this point, has always been in a flux of change. Moving apartments almost every year. Having a few year plan in each city. Grad school. Different jobs, never beyond a year. Relationships on and off again. Engagement. Wedding. Newlyweds.

After the waters have calmed and I might actually be at a point of stability in my life, I am restless! I (kinda) understand how people start popping out kiddos, they get bored and that is "next" in life.... Still not there on that one-I obviously need to work on these issues before adding more complexity, such as a human life into the picture :) Whoa.

As I've fumbled around with these ideas, I feel convicted about my constant need to find happiness and fulfillment in my circumstances. What is the point of faith if it doesn't give me meaning and is "enough" to make me content?

Well, certainly aware of my own hypocrisy and shortcomings, I am working on having a quiet, steady joy...something that doesn't go up and down, with tears and exclamation marks, but STEADFAST. I can't imagine anyone has ever described me as THAT, so it might be a long journey.....

" You will keep in perfect peace him who mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you."
-Isaiah 26:3

"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." -Psalm 51:10

"Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold." -Euripides

peoples past.

This time of year and the approaching winter always signals a dip in my mood, and while determined to not be victim to such a depression, I have to admit I enjoy bits of the "contemplativeness" of my spirit tonight.

While not sure how to broach the subject on this public format, a certain event occurred this weekend which left me thinking about relationships lost....those people in your life who at some time you knew, loved, and had deep interactions with and now have faded into the peripheral people you might hear about while visiting your hometown over the holidays or catch up through mutual friends.

It is just so weird to me to think about really knowing someone and being involved in his/her life and then just not be anymore. Ofcourse, this is a reality and there is not really any way to not have this in our lives, but my heart doesn't really know how to deal with it or how to reason around this occurance.

It just makes me sad. Regardless of the reason for not having a certain person in your life anymore, whether it was your choice, or theirs, or circumstances. So, here is a guarantee to you about me- if you are in my life, my friend, my family, my love, past or present, then I will always remember you, think about you, and love you in some way. Maybe I don't act on the love because it wouldn't be appropiate or circumstances don't allow, but I appreciate you being in my life at some point. Each person I know and share my life with in some capacity, changes me, molds me, influences me, in some way....I love big and vulnerably, and the consequence is that people don't "leave" me. You are actually all here, somewhere in my heart or my luny head....

My husband had to leave early on a business trip. I am left alone with a glass of wine (and hot chocolate for later), a stack of books, and an i-pod playlist to comfort and fellowship with tonight.

Revolution in Jesusland.

Zack Exley's blog which he summarizes in this way:

"Right after the 2004 elections, a cynical map made the rounds of progressives’ inboxes everywhere, separating “Jesusland” from the “United States of Canada.” Several other self-righteous riffs followed.

The image was a hit because it expressed a sinking feeling in the hearts of many progressives that America had been taken over by an incomprehensible cult of ignorance, intolerance and hate—a cult they knew as “evangelical” or “born again” Christianity.

Most secular progressives are comfortable with mainline liberal Christianity. But when it comes to evangelicals, many can only think of anti-gay ballot initiatives, clinic bombers, street preachers with megaphones and corrupt televangelists. And they tend to be confused and disturbed by a movement that reads the Bible “literally” as the “inerrant word of God.”

This blog is a plea to the progressive movement, to take another look and get to know the diverse and complex world of evangelical Christianity in its own terms. Here you’ll find interviews, commentary, analysis and other dispatches from all over “Jesusland.” This tour will explore everything from the workings of the local church, to the evangelicals’ vibrant, decentralized national leadership training infrastructure to theological questions such as, “How in the world DO they read the Bible literally?” and “Do they really think I’m going to hell?”

There are two really big reasons to come along on this tour:

First, progressives will never achieve their goals as long as they are hostile toward and ignorant about the faith of 100 million of their own people who are born again Christians.

Second (and we know how difficult this is to believe) there is an incredibly large and beautiful social movement exploding among evangelicals right now that stands for nearly all of the same causes and goals that secular progressives do. Those goals include: eliminating poverty, saving the environment, promoting justice and equality along racial, gender and class lines and for immigrants—and even separation of church and state.

By learning to work together with “progressive” evangelicals, secular progressives will stand a better chance of achieving their goals and also learn an enormous amount from these remarkable people and their organizations that will help secular progressives strengthen their own movement.

This evangelical “revolution,” as one Christian pollster has labeled it, is unquestionably the fastest growing and most surprising of American social movements today. Whichever way you measure, it probably dwarfs the secular left. From mega churches to tiny country churches, evangelical Christians are rediscovering the “gospel of the God of the oppressed.” Perhaps the most surprising among these are the suburban, white evangelicals who are stepping outside of their comfort zones to “get into relationship” with the poor, the oppressed, the homeless, prisoners—the people of whom Jesus said,

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me….Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. —Matthew 25

They are building houses for and teaching job skills to homeless people, they are creating tutoring programs for kids in failing schools, they’re paying health care bills and sending off rent checks for people living on poverty wages—and there’s even a movement afoot among these people to move their young families out of wealthy suburbs and into forsaken inner city neighborhoods, putting their kids into broken and often violent public schools. And in their Sunday services and Bible studies they are questioning the very foundations of modern American capitalist ideology.

On this blog we will attempt over time to provide evidence, and to explain the inner logic of this culture’s narratives, theologies and passions, and to flesh out the larger context of this movement that is shaking up nearly every American community and producing so many exceptional leaders.

So—welcome to Jesusland. We hope you enjoy the tour."

I have recently found this blog and so enjoyed the conversations it promotes. In these days before an election with negativity screaming at you through slinging ads on tv, and with an economy I don't totally understand, but get freaked out when day after day headlines of the stock market "diving" and "recession" and "unemployment" are mentioned, it CAN'T be wrong to dialogue and hopefully better understand each other.

Fall Getting Away....

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring." -George Santayana.

My Mom and Dad joined us "kids" in the DC region and we went to the Virginia mountains for the long Columbus Day weekend...It was fabulous!

We lounged around, watched football (go gators!), flipped through magazines, cooked and ate yummy food, hiked, played games, tried to pick apples in an orchard (but couldn't find any), drove down long country roads, drank beer and listened to live music at a brewery, enjoyed some fall foliage and just being around each other. I feel rested and content, filled to the brim!

Ordinary Radicals.

Oh yeah. Watch this.

Things are a changin....

So, all the Barak Obama jargon about change certainly has an energy that is contagious. As already referenced, I am one who actually likes change and that exhilarating feeling of not really knowing what is around the corner....

With all this talk of change in the media, I have been intrigued with the idea and found some similar conversations regarding church/Christianity/faith in some books recently which have "lit my fire" so to speak....

I love it when my mind is whirling around with new ideas, not really sure how I feel about them, but energized by something new to contemplate and think about. I have to think that one grows when they challenge and explore their view on life/God/world/people. So I am going with the change idea, as a positive thing.

For example, Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola. It is a book written by a guy who has been involved in a "home church" for 15 years. They meet at different peoples home. No one person leads. The "service" structure depends on each week, day, member- so no 20 min worship, 10 min announcement, 30 min sermon, a closing and then dismissal. No dressing up. Not the latest and greatest videos, media clips, and musical technology which sure does make church seem "relevant" and "cool". Well, not to diss all those churches that do embrace these practices, but they are not my cup of tea and always leave me wanting more....

How more "relevant" could be meeting in another person's home, coming as you are, sharing life together, being led with the spirit as to the group's needs that week- maybe its sharing what God has done in your life, maybe its a teaching on a scripture or something read, maybe its time in prayer, maybe its quiet worship, maybe its loud worship, maybe its talking, eating, laughing. Wow, I would want to go every week!! Yes, its less human control and managing...more faith required, but come on, let's put our big kid pants on and grow up!

I just got really excited thinking about that idea.....!!!

So anyways, this book, Pagan Christianity, talks about practices of the church and how many of them did not actually originate from "christian" practice of the early church (the disciples shortly after Christ's death) but from the cultures of societies past. A lot of history, which some might find boring (my husband got really annoyed), but to me gave it credibility. It just makes you think about things. Like with a church's budget- why pay so much for a church building when it is used by people only a few times a week? Couldn't that money be used to help people without more effectively? And pastors- When did they start going to seminary and requiring all this "education"...The disciples were "untrained, unschooled" men, but were able to minister the power and message of Christ pretty effectively. Now its not to say that all these things are bad or wrong, but to put it out there that they might not have to be the staple and their origins are not necessarily "christian".

And another book, Jesus for President (by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw)(and i would check out the intro to the website). I am still reading but there is so much that excites me about it.

First, from Revelation 18:2-5, John writes:

"Come out of her, my people,
so that you will not share in her sings
so that you will not receive any of her plagues'

for her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes..."

And then the author's commentary (p.151)

"John's language couldn't be clearer: we are to "come out" of her, literally to pull ourselves out. Scholars point out that this is erotic language and that the words John uses are the same ones used for coitus interruptus- to interrupt sexual intercourse before climax. As John is speaking of this steamy love affair with the empire, he calls the church to "pull out of her"- to leave the romance with the world and be wooed by God, to remember our first love, to say no to all other lovers. Certainly he made his readers blush. And its not easy to pull out of a relationship of dependency and romance, of lavish gifts and captivating beauty, especially with a bride as beautiful as Rome or America."

The subtitle is "a book to provoke the christian political imagination" and that is what it does...makes you question the so called "christian" ideals of the USA and what loyalty we have to the country, when we might not agree with all of "her" decisions and ways. ...

Like I said, I am still reading and being challenged. Check this article out which delves into the book's message more : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-exley/jesus-for-president-a-re_b_94489.html

Don't be scared to question and examine...If you are sure you have found the truth, then you should be confident in your explorations!

Now after all this thought, I am anxious to figure out what in the heck to DO to change the way I LIVE my life. Much harder than the thinking part.