Fearless Wonder

I've seen this statement going around today. "Dear God, why do you allow so much violence in schools?" "Dear Student, I'm not allowed in schools." If you believe that God's absence from schools is the reason for Sandy Hook and other school shootings, then why aren't you putting God back into the schools yourself? 2 Corinthians 5:20 We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. Christians, aren't you supposed to be God's ambassadors, his hands and feet?  If you are, then you can walk into the schools yourself.  You don't have to wait for the government to pass a law. I would love to have you in my classroom.  You could kneel beside a child and help them with their reading.  You could bring in school supplies to pass out to my needy ones.  You could read stories, sweep up spills, and wipe away tears.  You could tutor af

Right now I am reading a book called "A Chosen Faith."  Its sort of a primer to the Unitarian Universalist faith.  I am thinking about formally joining our local congregation.  (I already sing in the choir.)   Unitarian Universalism seems to line up with where I am right now.  However I find myself still in the awkward getting to know you stage with the congregation.  Folk are fairly friendly and there is a lot to do and a lot to get involved with.  However there are not a lot of younger childless couples in the church so its a bit harder to form those easy friendships one does with ones peers.  This has me thinking about the place of awkwardness in the spiritual experience.  We'd all like to be up on the mountaintop, blissing out to a spiritual high, but life is not often made of moments like this.  I think the Buddhist view of the present moment helps.  i.e. "Dwelling in this present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment." Thich Nhat Hanh.   If I remember

This is a response to my friend's comment on my last post. Yes, I have heard the lunatic/liar/lord argument.  I know there are scholars from the different camps who have written extensively on the historical Jesus, some to give evidence for faith, some to destroy faith, and some who simply want to examine the facts honestly.   For me, to parse out the truth of what happened 2000+ years ago is an hopeless task.  To call myself even an amatuer history buff would be too much.  I enjoy history but only have devoted myself to it sporadically.  Yet even if I did devote myself fulltime would the conclusions I come to be any more valid than the countless other historian who have gone before?   I have trouble enough determining what is true in the here and now, let alone seeing the truth in a distant path, where much knowledge has been lost and forgotten. In truth I haven't given a lot of thought to the historical Jesus, to either prove or disprove his worth.   It has always been t

My blog is a bit mad at me for ignoring it for so long, and it went and collected all kinds spam comments to show me that it's feelings were hurt.  Well, I cleaned up the comments and now I need to go one step further and post something so that my blog can finally forgive me.  (Sorry to Noah, whose last comment was accidentally deleted while I cleaned up spam.) Sooooooooo....um......life, and meaning, and religion, and er.....stuff.    I recently finished both War and Peace and Anna Karenina.  Tolstoy got me thinking about a lot of things, but I fear that if I start in posting about what I've learned from Tolstoy that this post will end up the same length as War and Peace.   I am also reading a book on Unitarian Universalism since I am thinking about joining our local congregation.  I already sing in the choir.  But since I am still making up my mind about the UU I don't have anything clear to say about it.   I could post about my adorable kindergartners and

Earlier this year I started taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication.   I had put off doing so for many years because of the bad experiences of some people close to me on various medications.  However, my therapist assured me that some of the newer medications did not have the same awful side effects and that if I did experience prolonged negative side effects I could always go off the medication and be no worse off that I was before.  I was at a crisis point in my life, where my depression and anxiety had become too difficult to manage on my own so I finally gave it a try.   After two terrible weeks of the initial side effects, the medication worked.  I was good.  I stopped have panic attacks and only had infrequent and short periods of depression, rather than the weeks on end depressions I'd had before.  Aside from that I finally knew what it was like to feel normal. Being on medication didn't put me in a fog, or send me to euphoric heights of bliss.  It just let

I left the church for a number of reasons, but I think the strongest reason I left was the realization that religious thinking was only fueling my problems with depression and anxiety. I'm not blaming the church for causing my depression and anxiety. I know now that the chemicals in my brain just work a little strangely which leads to bouts of depression, panic attacks and self-hatred. I found some relief in Buddhist meditation, which showed me that the SDA church did not have all the answers. Later therapy and medication helped me gain more ground against these messed up feelings. I applaud the SDA church for spreading the health message, because exercise and healthy eating are two important tools in combating depression. I also applaud a pastor in the church who encouraged me too seek the help of a mental health specialist. However, overall the message I got from the church was that I was a miserable sinner, and only prayer and God's grace would save me. For a long tim

I know the feeling stick man...I know the feeling. It's an irresistible urge to correct certain opinions that I strongly disagree with. The urge be to snarky in combating said opinions is especially tempting. Having seen many internet debates devolve into mudslinging and anger I've tried to refrain from engaging (or starting) internet debates. However, I think the real problem is their aren't a lot of safe spaces in our society for people of differing opinions to converse. The media gets people all hyped up into an us versus them frenzy (both sides are guilty of this). People get very protective of their opinions as well. Rather than recognize that we all have a lot to learn, we build up bulwarks of anger and self-righteousness to protect our opinions and then refuse to hear what anyone else has to say. Our opinions must be very fragile things indeed if they need so much protection. I like to refer to this phenomenon and invincible ignorance. The fact is that