Well Amanda is yacking away on the phone with some grossly overweight chick from New York. I had to share an apartment with her once. I think her laundry situation made mine look good.
Speaking of, I found a dried Shadow crap in my pile of clean clothes this morning. I guess I have some laundry to do, after I finish this cat skinning.
I think I believe in Jesus again. The religious pilgrimage I've been on the past five years has been good for me, but it was always my hope to reach some sort of destination. I will always be seeking, but I'd like to do seeking on the side, with enjoying and honoring God as the main thing.
In short, two reasons for where I wound up. First, personal development. I am really surprised by how big of a piece this was. I figured the key was to figure things out, roughly. I didn't realize how hard that would be with my psyche all wacked out. The biggest example is that I've come to realize how much I expect from myself. (I pretty much always let myself down in the face of those expectations.) It has been easy for most of my life to confuse those expectations with God's expectations, or with religious imperatives. That definitely got in the way for me. Every mistake or minor failure was a sin. I think there was a lot of Christianity that I misunderstood.
The second thing is the intellectual stuff. Here's the nutshell of the nutshell, oversimplifications galore: I have never stopped believing in a loving creator-God. I believe that such a God would make him/her/it/themselves known to most of its creation, with natural revelation not being enough. I believe that Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible blows out of the water any other ancient characterizations of a supreme being. He's incredibly compelling; better (as Harold Bloom writes) than anyone in Shakespeare (he says Lear comes closest). I love Zen and I love the Tao, but I find them to be much more of a close reading of the natural world than an instance of special revelation. Hinduism and Shintoism just aren't for me, for a variety of reasons. So that leaves us with the great so-called "Western" religions. To start at the beginning, I think it is very hard to believe, within a Jewish framework, that Yahweh has kept his covenant with his people, particularly in the face of the Hollocaust. "Yahweh" has become, for many Jews, "I will be where I will be," a sad alternate reading of "I am that I am." To skip to the end, I find it very hard to agree with Baha'u'llah that we currently live in the kingdom of heaven fully come. If this is the kingdom of God in its fullness, I'm underwhelmed. To drop back a religion (chronologically), I believe (and this is really the whole center) that Islam gets Jesus, and his predecessors, wrong. I do not see a level line connecting the prophets; I see a progression that reaches a tipping point; and Jesus, rather than being a letdown, is a screaming success at the pinnacle of that progression. I also find N.T. Wright's reading of history very believable--that is, that this whole notion of Jesus' bodily resurrection--is both very hard to explain (if it didn't actually happen) and very hard to dismiss (given the actions and thoughts of his immediate and early disciples). So, Jesus wins. Put a fish on my car and call me an Xian again.
I've been going to a lot of prayer services at St. James Episcopal downtown--mostly noontime and evening. I owe a special thanks to Julia and to Tebben for encouraging me back in the day to get over my fear of the "barely Protestants" (I can be an intellectual jerk) and try it out. If it hadn't been for those experiences during college, I would not have felt comfortable going to the only mid-week services around here when I truly needed and desired it. Saturday evening and Sunday morning two weeks ago, and then again this past Sunday morning, I went to Grace Lutheran, about three blocks north of our apartment. I really like it there. I like that the focus is on Jesus, not me. I like that I don't have to get in a car to get there.
At work, I'm heading up the proposal of a broad, long-term social networking strategy for the chamber. It's challenging and fulfilling as a compliment to my more typical duties. We recently added some new folks to our 40-member board of directors, so I look forward to getting to know them. On September 11 and 12, I'll be in Philadelphia at the Loews Hotel for our annual Board retreat. Depending on what's needed of me, there's a possibility I may stick around in Phila for a day or so.
Mike, my IT buddy at work, is helping me with some FroNo stuff. It continues to progress slowly and not-so-surely, but after three years at this revamping stuff, I'm in no hurry.
Two years ago I cracked the reverse light on the back of my car. Last year it should've failed inspection for that (water can get in and cause the bulb to go out), but my mechanic put packaging tape over the crack and called it good. Since the inspection is due at the end of this month, I figure it's about time I correct that. I found a replacement from a junkyard on eBay. It arrived today, and it fits, as one of my former foreman liked to say, like a finger in an asshole. We don't talk like that at the chamber. We talk like nonprofiteers trying to sound like business people.
If you're on LinkedIn and not a connection yet, find me and connect to me.
We're eight months into our Total Money Makeover(R) and still going strong. By the end of the year we should be clear of credit card debt. By the end of next year, we hope to be out of all the other debt. In the meantime, I just hit my one-year mark at work and so my 401(k) is going to kick in. I think it's a great time to invest.
The Creative House of Lancaster just keeps being a better and better thing for me. I'm meeting lots of great fellow artists, and we're having a heck of a time together. There is clearly a cultural groundswell going on in Lancaster city, made all the more evident by the presence not only of an arts scene but also of an underground, quasi-resistance arts scene. When artists switch from bitching about there not being enough galleries to there not being the right kind of galleries, that's a great thing. I'm really happy we ended up in Lancaster, and the more I become a part of it, the more I find to genuinely love.
Psychoanalysis continues, too. One year, eight months into it. I expect at least two more years. I'm learning a ton about myself. It makes it hard to have a life on weekday evenings, but I think without it I wouldn't be able to function anyhow. I feel like I am getting better, mostly through understanding that my notion of what I should be like and am meant to be like is, well, impossible. And not cool. The meds still help as well. Travel for me remains the biggest stressor and barrier. Weekends have become a critical time of renewal, and travel has become a significant energy suck. That makes me feel a bit "shut in" in a way, but I have hope that there will be time for that to improve and grow easier for me.
Thanks for all the prayers that you all have offered on my behalf. I think there was real power in them.
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