Random post...

Hm, what happened to the font thingy on here? I may have to edit this to get it into Verdana...

Obligatory knitting/fiber content: Let's see, last night I took the yarn I dyed with Kool-Aid and overdyed it with Jacquard dyes - vermilion with some sky blue mixed in. It's still drying but looks like it will be a lovely dark red-wine color. Pics to follow.

Also I'm still working on my clapotis.

Spiritual journey content: I'm still sorting through my issues. I do feel freer spiritually than I have felt in years. It's a great feeling, that I can be free to let God be God and not put him in a box, or a jar, or whatever.

Here is something I wrote late last week:

A couple interesting books I ran across this week (Amazon works in mysterious ways hehehe): Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller and What’s So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey. The thing about Searching for God Knows What: I was just kind of hopping from book to book (I started out with Philip Yancey and that kind of led me into Donald Miller) and I did the search inside the book thing, and it took me to a passage about putting God in little jars… just like my metaphor of God-in-a-box. So of course I had to download the book to my Kindle. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it. He talks at length about how we try to create God in our own image, and how that gets in the way of having a relationship with God, and that hurts God because all he ever wanted was to have a perfect Relationship with us from the get go. (There’s an interesting exposition on Genesis 2-3. I had a little trouble with it at first since he appears to come at it from a YEC standpoint and I have a real problem with YEC theology, see above, but now I’m coming to realize that Gen 2-3 really talks about how God wanted a perfect Relationship with his blessed, created humans and how we humans fucked it up and continue to fuck it up.)

As for What’s So Amazing About Grace?: I skipped ahead to a chapter where Yancey talks about the passage in Leviticus about “don’t eat shellfish” and other holiness code passages about men with damaged testicles and women who have their period and people with open sores and people with physical disabilities – all unclean, and the passage in Acts where God tells Peter that what was once unclean, is now clean – both unclean foods, and “unclean” people like the Roman centurion. Yancey takes those passages and talks about how even today we make stupid rules about no dancing or no jewelry or no whatever, or no oddballs allowed (you have to be and act and talk a certain way to be a Christian) and those rules get in the way of a relationship with God. He points out that a “no oddballs allowed” rule would mean that NoBoDy could possibly be a Christian. We’re all oddballs. We’re all seafood in the diet of life. (Just as long as no one tries to eat me with melted butter or cocktail sauce.)

Jesus invited people from all walks of life – the seafood of society – to dine with him at the table. The ones he had a problem with were the theocrats who thought they were perfect and had God’s rules down pat. I can see Jesus today – he’d be hanging out with hookers and meth-heads and high school dropouts working graveyards at Loaf & Jug, and showing his love to them and helping them clean up their acts because he showed them love that they had never felt before, and telling the likes of James Dobson where to put it. (Man, that would be a beautiful sight to see…)

Yanno, the thing about James Dobson and the like: That’s long been a hangup of mine. I guess this is something to process or think about for another day. But I guess I see him and his ilk as the Pharisees of our time. Jesus sure didn’t have much patience with the Pharisees, their legalism and literalism. He had great fun challenging them to a battle of wits, and always coming out on top. And he reserved his harshest scorn for the Pharisees and the teachers of the Jewish law because they were so damn legalistic, and their legalism and literalism were barriers to a relationship with God. More God in a box, I guess… (Hm. I just turned to Matt 23 – “I’ve had it with you! You Pharisees, you religion scholars, you’re hopeless, frauds, your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom!” Woah…)

Anyhoo.

I did start an online meditation course Saturday. I am struggling with it some, when I sit quietly and meditate I find that fears and other negative feelings come bubbling to the surface. Things I've been trying to suppress for years, I suppose. It's kind of scaring me away from meditation. I've noticed in the past that when the quieting of the mind in yoga or meditation causes negative thoughts and feelings to surface, I shy away from activities that quiet the mind because I'm afraid of the thoughts and feelings. I think I need to face those thoughts and feelings head on tho.