conversion?-i don't believe in you.

hell?-i don't believe in you.

what i am left with...universalism?

universalism?-i don't like the idea of you either. i don't really believe in you.

so what? if i don't believe in this whose-in/whose-out game, but don't really believe that everyone is in, what do i believe. what is the meaning of religion...why do i follow christ?

Dear Beloved's,


It seems like the world is ending as I knew it. The world that I crafted out so perfectly, that made sense, was believable, was right. My aspirations of searching out the wisdom's of those before me, of reading, learning, questioning, loving, and lead me into this world of an unknown, a world where I have to constantly fight back and remind it I'm not right.


My heart and soul has been found in religious diversity, arguments, and beauty. Questioning God and man, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Universalism, has taken me over. I have found God in the fucked up places of man's idiocracy, in the complications of institutionalized religion, in the arguments and lies of man. While my searching has lead me to doubt, it has also thrown me oceans of wisdom and grace.


I am fighting temptations of God, his dumb-assness, pushing me towards priesthood. How can one, such as myself, find myself in the church. One who loves God as Muslims see him, as Jews see him, as Christians see him. How can one, such as myself, full of profanity, sarcasm and grudges, be pulled into the church. I don't understand why I'm being pulled here, but I am fighting against it, and will, until one of us wins, and it won't be him.

is disagreement something to be honored or merely something to be shared?


...traditionally disagreement is the consequence of refusing to unite on the one true path
...it is a barrier to truth
...sidetrack to reality


"the unity to which we aspire come in that moment when our disagreements are transcended and we discover that we are all working out of the same principles, toward the same goals"-Rev. Lisa Friedman


i know how to honor disagreement; to understand that not all people will come up with the same conclusions, same principles. i know how to honor and appreciate diversity. to love people of all faiths. however, i don't know how to love and honor all people of my own. i don't know how to honor their obsessions with Truth, conversion, salvation. i don't know how to honor their views of homosexuals, our religious others. i don't know how to share in our disagreements. i need to learn how.

today i miss oman.

more than most days.

i feel as if a part of my heart and soul has been left there.

it's being torn apart by religious conflict.

i feel as if it can't be put back together until the hatred stops.

until we begin loving others as we love our religious siblings.

i wish we could love others as god loves us.

to understand god as god understands us.

to realize that it is not about ourselves, our kind.

it is about others, others.

ode to sam.

I remember July 3, 1990 sitting on the edge of mom's hospital bed holding you for the first time, hoping that one day we'd be friends.

I remember our walks to down Odin to the bus stop talking about fish and our recent adventures and games.

I remember hating that my favorites were always your favorites even when I lied and said my favorite color was pink.

I remember all our fishing trips and even though I would always catch more than you, you still wanted to go with me; and how your would always be willing to take the fish off the hook and promised me the fish didn't actually die even though it'd float when you threw it back into the water.

I remember that sunny September morning when mom and dad sat us down on my bed to tell us that Aaron had gone to be with the Lord and feeling you small hand grab mine; I knew it'd been okay.

I remember those Sunday afternoon hap hours that we spent creating messages by knocking on the walls or sneaking to each others room.

I remember how all our fights ended in laughter and creating constellations out of the knots in the wood as we stood there with our noses on the wall.

I remember our 5 hr. long games of monopoly and how I'd always win. One day you will learn that I don't go broke because I have a stash of $500's that I refill after every game.

And I will always remember you standing at the end of the lane cheering me on as I swam the mile. Whenever I'm discouraged I picture you there reminding that I've done it before and can do it again.

I have done my best to be the best role model that I could for you. From the moment I first met you I knew that you would look like me, I knew that we'd be friends, I knew that you'd be a good person, I knew that you'd do great things; but I never knew that you would be the one I would look up to. I am as proud to be your sister today as I was the first day I met you.

*my addressing speech for sam's retiring address.

faith begins where thought stops.

Fear and Trembling-Soren Kierkegaard

i think testing is how god chooses to teach. i do not think that god tested abraham because he didn't know if he would pass or what the consequences would have been. maybe he wanted to do it so abraham would learn what faith meant or the extent of his faith. kierkegaard says that abraham had faith that god would not ask his son to be taken from him but ALSO had faith that god's will would be done through the sacrifice and that god would keep his promise to him even if it meant taking his son.

god temps us with times of meakness and sorrow-with acedia- so that we learn intimacy and joy and happiness. we have faith that god will bring better days. by knowing how it feels to be depressed we are better able to recognize our times of joy.

grace.

today i wonder about grace. i wonder what grace is, and what it really means. grace if free should be without limits and boundaries. there should be no exceptions.

if this is true, which i believe it is and should be, then i'm not sure if people can call themselves good. if i was to call myself good then i must define someone else as bad, have someone bad to compare myself too, and in doing that i myself am grouping people according to my own judgments. i am making myself better than others.

i think we understand grace wrong. i think it is about understanding and love. if god's grace is perfect and just, then i think that it doesn't define good and bad...that all men are equal. that one lover of god is no different than another. that one who worships allah is the same as the one who worships yahwah or god. that grace makes all this equal. i think that all men become equal because grace forgives the mistakes. if god is grace, then i think we must learn grace.

slow travels...

For a quick update, we were suppose to fly to Muscat on Friday. At 3 am we got a call saying that we needed to leave at 4 because a blizzard had hit OC during the night and we were afraid we wouldn't make it to Omaha on time to make our flight. So, at 4 am, we left the apartment to go and push our teachers van out of the snowbank it had found itself in. Then 30 minutes later we were on our way slowly trucking. As we were leaving Sioux City, poor ole' prof decides that he must potty now and we make our way up the unplowed off ramp to find a semi and car blocking the pass. Therefore, the three men in the truck had to shuveled the trucks out and the entire 2nd half of the off ramp. Around 8:30 or so, we made it to Omaha airport to find out that flights to Chicago would not be flying out, and we would not make it to O'hare before out flight to London and the next flight we could get to London would be Tuesday. Therefore, we took the 2 hour trip back to OC. Eh.

The next few days were spent relaxing, watching blizzards pass through, and trying not to dwell on the fact that instead of being in -30 degree weather, it was a good 80 in Oman.

Today was nuts! We started out the day thinking it was a day to relax, get our stuff together, wash clothes, but last minute (and I emphasize the word LAST) we got a phone call from our travel agent telling us we can get a flight out of Omaha but we had to leave OC within the next hour. Because of blizzard warnings for the next day, we decided to leave OC...

1.) We were given an hour to repack/shower.

2.) Drew David drove his car into a snow bank and we had to push him out.

3.) We forgot/couldn't get a hold of one of the girls and therefore spent 30 min trying to find her, knocking on a house which wasn't hers, and made her pack so we could get out.

We spent the night at Ohare, in the baggage claim because our 20 hour lay over was too long and they couldn't check our bags all the way through. It was freezing, which tends to be the norm during the winter, and the doors entering the building just wouldn't keep closed. A few of us wandered through all the ariport sections that we could get ourselves in to keep us pre-occuiped, although it was rather boring. I finally found a somewhat warmer place to lay and woke up to the sound of a woman yelling at me, asking for my boarding pass. I thought it was some kind of joke, but it wasn't. Thinking I was homeless, she told me I needed to gather my things and leave the building. Finally I convinced her that I was with the large group, and then she told me I needed to be more careful because I had been sleeping with homeless people. Oh, people. Eventually, and rather slowly, 8 am came and we were able to go up and find ourselves a table or 3 at the food court where we spent the next 6 hours waiting to check in. I was ready to be out of the states.

Finally we made it out of Ohare, to London and to my beloved Oman...

(Dec 25, 2009)


5:00 am: call to prayer. Beautiful, extravagant. Definitely not what I expected...but my expectations were pretty small. However, it was lovely.

We arrived in Oman around 9:30 last night. As we flew over Muscat, the lights looked similar to those of our cities and perhaps it was just my mind in excitement, but that seemed more appealing and beautiful. There we no large sky scrappers, just a sea of topaz and Sapphire diamonds.

Customs was not as bad as Monsma made it seem. Things went smoothly and yesterday didn't really seem to exist. At 6 am we arrived in London, 9 am left, flew 8 hours (which every min I slept) and then it was Abu Dabi and Muscat.