faith is a journey

from rickj:

I'll admit that twitter has made me more of a Stephen Fry fan than I was back in the day when my brother and I would watch Fry & Laurie, but this is a fairly good piece of rhetoric from the Intelligence Squared debate. There's some parts that I disagree with, but overall, I'm a fan. Excerpt:

"It is the strange thing with this church, it is obsessed with sex [...] The only people who are obsessed with food are anorectics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic church in a nutshell."
( Stephen )

...now, back to sermon writing.

Two songs that I have swimming in my head. Gratuitous lyric / video sharing:
( Green Fields of France / Private Willie McBride )

( Czerwone Maki na Monte Cassino / Red Poppies on Monte Cassino )

Most of you, even with all that you have to suffer, are much better off than you realize. Yet the heart of man can be full of so much pain, even when things are exteriorly "all right". It becomes all the more difficult because today we are used to thinking that there are explanations for everything. But there is no explanation for most of what goes on in our own hearts, and we cannot account for it all. No use resorting to mental tranquilizers that even religious explanations sometimes offer. Faith must be deeper than that, rooted in the unknown and in the abyss of darkness that is the ground of our being. No use teasing the darkness to try to make answers grow out of it. But if we learn how to have a deep inner patience, things solve themselves, or God solves them if you prefer, but do not expect to see how. Just learn to wait, and do what you can and help other people.

Thomas Merton. The Road to Joy, Robert E. Daggy, editor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989): 94.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing to be reading books about self-care, burnout, and breakdowns right now. I mean, some of it hits rather close to home. At least I see my shrink tomorrow and my spiritual director tomorrow. Hopefully there will be some discernment between that and prayer and journalling.

In other news, Kiba chirps when he hunts.

Yet again, life imitates RP. Or vice versa. I'm never sure which way it goes.

Also, I am loving Little Mosque on the Prairie. Maybe a bit too much.

I am a northerner.

The fact that there was snow falling (and not sticking) on my way to church, I started squeeing. I squeed more when it started to stick to cars on the way home. It's bad that the first snow gets me so gleeful.

traumerin and naamah slept over at the condo last night because of their heating problems. Had a lovely breakfast today of proscuitto & feta scrambled eggs and then lox for supper. And hot cocoa after I came home. Tasty tasty.

Funny how food and friends and good company can do wonders for my mood & mental state.

Taking things one day at a time and trying to focus on academics. (The latter starting tomorrow).

But anyways, snow!!

Today was the Noon Service led by Faith for All at HDS. As head of that this year, that meant I got to plan the liturgy and ended up doing a dance to "See Me" from Bare: A Pop Opera (lyrics mp3 on amazon). After first I was completely gungho about this, but then as emotional stuff started to creep up on me, I just didn't have the time to choreograph it as well as i'd like and people weren't responding to my requests for help in choreography. And then after the weekend, I was really tempted to pull out and not go forth with the dance.

At the last minute I decided to stick with it. I'd mailed the letter to my parents and this was sort of the personal aspect of coming out. The song is so wrought with emotion for me - it's hard for me not to cry when I hear it - and dancing was, in a way, part of the healing process. There was excellent feedback on it too. A woman came up to me afterward and said that I managed to convey the experience of her son coming out to her. That was about the best response I could ask for. The feedback was great, and it felt good to dance. I have to start going to the weekly dance stuff on Tuesdays at HDS. I need that in my life.

A few people commented that the dance served the place of the sermon and perhaps it did in a way. It was certainly personal. This of course led to a friend challenging me to do a dance for the Billings Preaching competition at HDS. We'll see. It's a challenge to shake up the Billings preaching competition, which I tried to do last year with preaching on the relevance of Christ's erections in Augustine.

So, yes, Happy Coming Out Week, People. In the words of a certain Admiral - Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead.

Which is basically my weekend in a nutshell.

Baked a cake for the chaplain. And it worked! Cakes aren't really my forte, and I wasn't sure why. But this time it worked successfully. I baked the layers in separate cake pans, which meant I didn't have to cut layers in half. I usually frost cakes too soon, but this time I let it sit/cool overnight. And then I forced myself to be patient in the making of the chocolate ganache. So why weren't cakes my forte? Because I lacked patience. I feel there's an analogy for something bigger in there.

Anyways, friday night bad_influence and I went down to Providence to see Young Frankenstein. The three leads were the same who originated the roles on Broadway and it was phenomenal. Plus, how can you dislike a Mel Brooks musical? It was funny, the costumes were great and heavily Polish influenced costumes for the Transylvanian villagers. :)

Saturday drove to NYC for the NY Film Festival and the Tatarak/Sweet Rush premiere. Stayed with labellelabete and it was great fun as always to see her. She joked that we see each other more now than ever, with her living in NYC and me being in Boston. It's funny, but multiple visits to New York reinforce its distinctive character as a city to me and while I think there's many great things about it, I think it'd be too exhausting for me to live there. Not sure I really want to be a big city person - but it is nice to visit.

The movie premiere was great fun, the film was deep and avant garde and very characteristic Andrzej Wajda - it reminded me of some of his trippier stuff. There was family lunch before the movie, and then bars and late dinner afterwards and then more drinks. It was more social than I've been in months - or just a different kind of social, perhaps. Very odd and unusual. It was lots of fun, involved me digging out my French at the bar and meeting a cute South African actor and some cool South Indian guys. (Which made me think of certain rp chars).

Sunday was an early brunch and then driving back to Boston. Managed to catch all three kitties and take them to church to get them blessed for the Feast of St. Francis. They managed to behave and were very good. So all three kitties are now blessed. Amusingly, Harley was a bit freaked out at first, but once I started doing the first reading, Harley calmed down to the sound of my voice. Very odd and heartwarming.

Today I've been off my game emotionally - weird and not sure if it's hormonal or what. Trying to balance self-care and to do lists. Not always easy.

Had a long talk with my mother tonight, which didn't go too badly. Came close to sharing some things, but didn't quite manage to. Will probably happen soon though. Anyways, time to enjoy some defragging.

My brain is so done with being sick. And it's better. Or trying to be better. It's been an unpleasant few weeks of not being able catch a break healthwise and things snowballing one after another. I seem to be on the mend from the nasty head cold that's going around. Of course, my mind wants to interpret 'on the mend' as 100%, but my body keeps trying to disprove that. My shrink is worried about my health and is trying to make sure I won't catch H1N1. (Harvard is being incredibly paranoid about it, though, so i don't see it as a big risk). The taking care of myself is hard sometimes. Especially when I'm at that 60-70% stage.

The (reluctant) consensus is that I need to drop Latin this semester. Which I'm bummed about, but there's really no feasible way to catch up this semester. It means I absolutely need to do and pass latin in the fall, but gives me more brain space to focus on my senior thesis and my other classes (including pastoral care & counseling which may actually be one of my favourite classes this semester - the counseling we do feels real and right. It's like I've found one of the things I'm meant to be doing) I'll still be taking 3 courses + thesis, + auditing queer theology. so it might just make things more manageable.


There's thoughts swimming around about gaming that i might write down soon because i've been thinking about it the past few weeks (as it's one of the few things I've had the brain power to do and when available it was a great help in keeping me sane and preventing me from cabin fever)

It's hard to believe September is almost over, which means it's time to go apple picking soon. perhaps multiple trips.

Alright, off to write up my definition of faith for Pastoral Care & Counseling.