Effortless Effervescence

I realized the other day, as I was walking into Wal-mart, that I have a crush on Jesus, and I might be getting a little obsessive about this church thing.

After work yesterday, I went to the library to drop off armloads of books about religion, and to pick up armloads of MORE books about religion. As I drove home, I complained to my brother’s girlfriend (who accompanied me on my errand) that I wouldn’t be able to go to church for two whole weeks because I was about to go on vacation with my husband and his parents. The fact that I am so disappointed about this indicates that Something Very Odd has happened to me. I mean, even as a Bible thumper and faithful cult member, I wasn’t excited about going to church. The fact that I am now amazes me.

Have you ever heard about New Relationship Energy (NRE)? Apparently the term was coined by folks who practice polyamory to describe the invigorating feelings of infatuation that inevitably contrast themselves with the gentle consistency of an established long-term relationship. NRE is also (in my opinion) what draws so many people who profess monogamy into adulterous relationships. When you’ve been with someone a long time, and you know everything about them, and you’ve got some baggage between you, it’s easy to be swept away by the excitement of a new friendship or flirtation. NRE is a great feeling, a breathless high. NRE is how new lovers manage to stay up until all hours of the night talking and not feel a bit fatigued the next day. It’s the reason we watch the clock all day, and eagerly grab our phone whenever it rings. It makes us feel more beautiful than we have in years.

But all relationships, if they’re going to be long-term commitments, must eventually make that transition from exciting to comfortable. Not that a long-term relationship can’t be fulfilling, but when you’ve watched someone trim their toenails and leave the clippings in an ashtray on the coffee table, some of the romance and intrigue fades. You don’t run screaming out the door, because you love this sick, twisted person. Still, you may sigh in longing remembrance for the time when he or she was still a mystery, and such troublesome grooming habits were undiscovered.

Well, Jesus and I have been together for a long time. I realized a few months ago that my relationship with him has lasted longer than any relationship I’ve had with any human being - longer than my relationship with my first husband, which spanned eight years. If you count my conversion at the age of three, Jesus and I have been friends even longer than I’ve known my childhood best friend, Kathy. Despite the fact that I’ve found other things to distract me from Jesus, and even been so annoyed with him we haven’t spoken for a few years or so, I’ve always felt, in my heart, a certainty that what we had was real, and that we “belonged” together.

So why, all of a sudden, am I a Jesus fangirl? I mean, my devotion as a young adult wasn’t anything like this. Back then it was all about rules - being a Christian necessitated following strict “dos and don’ts” - and though I loved Jesus, it was an imperfect, selfish love. Jesus, take away my depression. Jesus, make me a better person. Jesus, help me finish my homework. Jesus, bless my church. Jesus, make these sinners into saints - not because I want them to love you, but because it just looks bad if I don’t make my evangelism quota. I was in many ways a model Christian, but I wasn’t a very good friend to Jesus.

He was a good friend to me, though. He answered many of my prayers, even the most self-interested ones. He comforted me in the darkest times of my life, even when my sadness was the natural by-product of my own mistakes. In Bible study, in prayer, in worship, Jesus’s presence and love was often tangible to me. It was delightful. He’s delightful.

When I left Christ Church, I was broken - not by God, but by man. By all the expectations that people had for me, by the exhausting, never-ending work of the church, by the lies I’d been told and the intolerable intolerance I’d cultivated, wielding the words of Scripture as a weapon. I didn’t trust Jesus any more, because I didn’t trust myself.

Oddly enough, although I had checked out of my relationship with Jesus, he didn’t check out of his relationship with me. He continued to comfort me and teach me, and when I was ready to talk again, he was there. It was something like a year ago that I realized I couldn’t fight it anymore. I’m a Christian. I don’t understand God outside of Jesus. I know that many people find fulfillment in many other religions - or without religion at all - but I’m not those people. Jesus, I wish I knew how to quit you.

Oh, wait. No, I don’t.

So for the past year I’ve identified as a Christ-follower, but in a very hazy, non-committal way. I wasn’t into church or churchy people. Frankly, most Christians still pissed me off. It wasn’t until about a month ago, when a Christian challenged me to stop focusing on the negative (what I DON’T like about Christianity) and start focusing on the positive (how I can love more, even forgiving and accepting the people who offend me most, like other Christians) that I realized I needed to kick my relationship with Jesus into high gear again. After all, focusing on what you don’t want often has the opposite effect - your focus draws you towards the very thing you hate. By despising legalistic, bigoted hypocrites, I was becoming a legalistic, bigoted hypocrite. But by loving a man who was the embodiment of God’s perfect love - well, mightn’t I become more loving myself?

That conversation was a revelation, and ever since I’ve been on this high, becoming more & more infatuated with my dear old friend. I’m obsessed with learning more & more about him. You’d think, after growing up in Sunday School and working in church ministry, I’d already know everything I need to know, but I don’t. It’s a brand new fascination, and it’s fun. Still, I can’t help but see the irony - I have NRE with someone I’ve been in a relationship with for nearly three decades!

I hope that after being married to my husband for thirty years I find myself just as excited to get to know him again, too. Isn’t that the key to any lasting relationship - keeping it fresh and beautiful and surprising, even when you know each other so well that you clip your toenails in living room, or pee with the door open, or fight about washing the dishes or who left the milk out or where you’re spending the holidays that year? Jesus knows the boring, frustrating, disgusting things about me soooooo much better than my husband does, and he’s still stuck around for all these years. How can I not be thrilled by him? How can I not be thrilled with myself - after all, this Jesus guy really, really loves me.

And that’s why I found myself smiling a secret, I’ve-got-a-crush-on-you smile as I walked into Wal-mart a few days ago.

I just want to let you guys know that I’ll be participating in Blogathon this year, raising money for my local animal shelter, the Virginia Beach SPCA. Blogathon is a worldwide fundraising activity during which bloggers post every 30 minutes for 24 hours; friends, family and random internet acquaintances pledge donations to the blogger’s chosen charity. Of course there are TONS of worthy charitable organizations out there, but I chose the VBSPCA because I have seen the good they do. The animals are kept in clean, comfortable kennels and adoption applicants are carefully screened to make sure they’ll be responsible pet owners and the animal they take home is a good fit for their family. And not for nothing, but the VBSPCA has received a four star rating from Charity Navigator, so you know that only a small percentage of your gift will be used for administrative costs; most of it goes directly to helping animals that are waiting for their forever home.

I’ll post more details as I find them out, like how you can pledge to sponsor my blog (if you so desire). I also want to make the Blogathon experience as fun as possible for my readers, and this will likely include pictures of cute furry things and a contest (or maybe more than one!).

If you’re interested in blogging for a cause you believe in, take a look at the FAQ to learn more about Blogathon. If you can’t commit to staying up and writing for the entire 24 hours, you can still help by being a monitor - checking blogs to make sure folks are fulfilling their posting commitments, and offering encouragement when bloggers become weary. For more information on monitoring,check out this thread on the Blogathon forum.

Let’s stay up late and make a difference, y’all.

…and this morning I decided NOT to respond to the day with my usual grousing, but to have a positive attitude. So what if it’s Monday? I can still have a good day, right? I mean, it’s only the first day of the work week. I do this every seven days, and I’ve learned that Monday always, eventually, slides into Tuesday…then Wednesday…then Thursday-Friday-WEEKEND-YAY! Then we start all over again. So what else is there to do that just accept where we are on the calendar and enjoy the day?

Yes, folks, I am such a Stuart Smalley/Pollyanna/Mary Sunshine that I won’t even let myself hate Mondays. Sometimes I’m ashamed of my disgustingly positive outlook, because I fear turning into someone that just annoys the snot out of everyone she knows. (And it’s entirely possible that I already annoy the snot out of everyone I know and just don’t realize it yet. But I won’t let myself dwell on such negativity!)

Yesterday I visited Coastal Community Church (again - I’ve been there several times over the past year or so). It was quite a different experience from the one I had last Sunday at Kempsville Presbyterian Church; the biggest difference being that I know quite a few people at Coastal (including several of the pastors), whereas I was completely anonymous at KPC. In the first few years after leaving Christ Church (a.k.a. the Cult), when my first husband and I were separated, I HATED running into people I knew from my old church life. I always felt like they were judging me, mourning my demise from Good Christian Girl to Heathen Divorcee. Whether they were or not is absolutely irrelevant - I was a big tub of shame and all I could do was project my negative feelings onto other people. For that reason I adamantly did NOT want to go to churches where I might run into anyone I knew. Actually, I didn’t want to go to church AT ALL, so I didn’t.

Well, it took a few years and a lot of healing, but I’m actually at a place where I don’t feel as if I’m wearing a big scarlet letter (at least, most of the time I don’t) and I want to go to church REALLY REALLY BAD, and I want to see people I know and like. Now, I’m finding myself in the middle of a different sort of weirdness. After being used for so many years at Christ Church, and giving every bit of energy (not to mention money, and, oh, self-respect) I had to the ministry, I was hyper-sensitive to being taken advantage of. Ironically, I ran into Coastal’s pastor a few years ago, and he said they really needed “folks like me” in their church. I was appalled. What, you want to use me? You see me as nothing more than someone who’s really good at working hard and leading Bible studies and printing bulletins and making coffee? I am a person, you know!

Yeah, that was probably a bit of an overreaction. Whoops. Yesterday, when the pastor took my hand and said how glad he was to see me, I was really touched - and glad to see him, too. I also ran into an old friend, who said how glad she was that I “came back” and that she was sure I’d love Coastal. On the one hand, I wanted to say, “Slooooow down, tiger, I’m just visiting! I have no idea what my home church is supposed to be - heck, I have no idea what ‘kind’ of Christian I’m supposed to be!” But on the other hand - and this is kinda bad, I think - my heart leapt at the idea of belonging again. Of having people glad to see me every Sunday. Of being part of something. Of being important. I mean, for a long time I was a big fish in the little pond of Christ Church. Everyone knew my name. I was a role model, an example. I was doing God’s work, and I felt a tremendous sense of purpose, but I also felt (ugh, this is hard to say) a lot of POWER. I had prestige and influence. Sure, I was overworked and underpaid, but in some ways it was worth it, just so I could feel important.

And you know, that’s not how I want to make my decision about my church home. On the one hand, I can tell that God is doing good things at Coastal - I teared up at several points during Sunday’s service, because I can see the positive effects of that place on people’s lives. Do I want to be a part of what God’s doing? Of course I do! But I want to do it for the right reasons, in the right time, at the right place.

So, more discerning is in order. More church-visiting. More praying. And most of all, more enjoying the process. Now that I have realized that I need a spiritual home, and now that I’m at a place where I’m comfortable searching, I need to keep my mind and heart open. It’s okay if I don’t figure things out right away, if I feel a little lost sometimes, because I know that God is guiding me.

In an effort to get back into the blogging swing, I’m going to do my first “Seven Quick Takes,” which Jennifer at Conversion Diary hosts every week. Speaking of Jennifer’s blog, that brings me to…

Take 1: I’ve been reading Conversion Diary obsessively for the past few weeks. I highly recommend you check it out if you’re at all interested in the philosophy of religion. Jennifer grew up with a purely atheist worldview, and a few years ago she decided to check out this Christianity thing and see if it had any value or substance. Well, apparently it did (for her) because she converted to Catholicism in 2007. Since I’ve recently re-embarked on a bewildering search for faith, I’ve been very interested in Jennifer’s conversion story. And in an odd twist that I NEVER saw coming, I’m finding myself increasingly drawn to the Catholic faith. Considering that I was raised to be rather prejudiced towards Catholics, that’s pretty, um, wild. And kinda awesome.

Take 2: Chrissy, my brother’s girlfriend, had some bad news this week: the dog she’s had since she was just a toddler had to be put down. So on Wednesday we went to the mall for some retail therapy so she could get her mind off the situation. We intended to see a movie as well, but everything was sold out by the time we got to the theatre. This probably had something to do with the fact that we hung out in the pet store for longer than we’d intended, cuddling soft, wrinkly English bulldog puppies. I’m glad that the price tag on the pups was outrageous ($3900!!!) because if it had been a little more reasonable, I might have started asking about financing options. I mean look at this face:

That’s not the dog I got to hold, but he’s darn close. Do you see now why I almost bought a puppy mill pup? You see how a person’s ethics could be stretched and strained by adorableness? My integrity can only take so much, folks!

Take 3: I would say something about Michael Jackson’s passing, but everything worth hearing has already been said. I enjoyed his music when I was young, but I wasn’t a HUUUUUGE fan. Same with Farrah Fawcett - I’m too young to remember the original Charlie’s Angels, so while her passing saddens me, it’s not the kind of personal hurt I felt when Heath Ledger or Kurt Cobain (two artists whose contributions to the world impacted me greatly) died. More than anything, I feel what I always feel when someone famous - or someone I know personally, as happened just two weeks ago - dies: Urgent. Life is so short, and we may as well live it as fully as possible. And by that, I don’t mean we all have to go out and cure cancer or write The Great American Novel or win the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, we’d better enjoy life every day, and be grateful for the small things. And we’d better not waste our time on pettyness. I know I sound preachy, but I’m really preaching to myself. I have an acute awareness of the fact that I only have so many days to enjoy life, and by golly, I’m going to make each one count.

Take 4: Of all the movies coming out this summer, I want to see The Time Traveler’s Wife most of all. If you’ve never read the book, do yourself a favor and buy a copy RIGHT NOW. Oh look, Amazon has it on sale. It’s a little bit sci-fi, a little bit romance, a little bit literary fiction. It’s the kind of book you want to take a nap in - you just want to soak up all the lovely sadness of it, and the bursts of joy. Of course, movie adaptations of phenomenal books rarely manage to be just as awesome, but considering that Rachel McAdams is in the title role (I’ve loved her since The Hot Chick, my favorite stupid teen movie EVER) and Eric Bana is playing the Time Traveler himself, I have high hopes.

Take 5: Just a week from tomorrow, the hubby, the in-laws and I are leaving on a road trip. I’m so excited to be getting away for a week, but I am going miss Milo (who’s going on vacation as well - to the “doggy hotel”) terribly. And the cats, too, I suppose… but mostly Milo.

Take 6: I went to my first Pampered Chef party last night, and as usual, I was the participant who got in trouble for interrupting too much. I was also so impressed with several of the tools that I ended up with a wish list a mile long. This is why I’ll be hosting a party of my own next month!

Take 7: Let’s make this one an audience participation type thing. What’s your favorite movie-made-from-a-book? What’s you LEAST favorite? For my favorite, I have to say Gone with the Wind, hands down. It’s a great adaptation - but I might just feel that way because I read the book AFTER I saw the movie. Least favorite? I’m going to have to say The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. I HATE Lifetime movies, but I hoped this one might be different. Alas, it wasn’t: poorly written, acted & directed, it hurt my eyes to watch it. *sigh*

It’s been a busy, non-blogging week. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

• I’ve been sick with a yucky cold since last weekend, when a sore throat showed up. It was followed by headache, congestion, and coughing. At times like this, I put all my trust in Ibuprofen + Pseudoephedrine to make me feel like a reasonable facsimile of a human being. Still, I’ve been operating at far less than 100%.
• I’ve been continuing my reading on religious (particularly Christian) matters. I’m not the sort of person who goes whole-hog on research; my attention span is short concerning things I don’t find compelling, so I’m doing a good bit of skipping from book to book. The God Delusion failed to hold my attention long, simply because I found the author’s tone so condescending. I do grasp Dawkins’ reasoning and can give his arguments credit, but I don’t think he & I will ever see eye-to-eye. And that’s okay. Right now I’m in the middle of Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind by John Marks. This book is interesting to me because I “get” Marks’ experience. However, it’s a slow-moving story, and I’m not quite sure what his point is, and it focuses on a segment of the Christian population that may not be as interesting to others who haven’t lived in it, as I did.
• I’m woefully behind on a beta reading assignment, so when I feel well enough to think cognitively, I’ve been pushing through his novel’s partial first draft.
• My husband and I gained two new roommates: my younger brother & his girlfriend will be staying with us for a few months. It’s a comfortable arrangement except that I think my dog might like them better than me.
• Progress on my memoir is currently stalled. No, make that full-stop. I have only myself to blame. And only myself to rely on if I expect to start moving again.
• Preparing for our upcoming vacation, which includes scheduling Milo for his annual visit and immunization updates so he can safely stay at the local kennel. (We go on vacation and the dog does, too!)
• Ordinary, boring life-type stuff such as laundry and organizing and cleaning.

I think - I hope - that my cold is on the downswing and that I’ll be happier/perkier/bloggier soon. Until then, please send thoughts of clear sinuses my way.

Oh, dedicated Smooch-fans, how could I have abandoned you for so long? Mostly because I was so wrapped up in other stuff that I haven’t been in a blogging place. After my last post about Rev. Cutie, I had some very interesting conversations with a couple of friends, so I’ve been in a very thinking-and-reading-about-God-and-searching-my-soul place. Basically, I’ve been thinking for so long about the kind of Christian I don’t want to be that I’ve forgotten to think about (and work towards) the kind of Christian I DO want to be. And that’s just silly - no one ever reached a goal by avoiding all the goals they didn’t want to hit. Right?

There are some aspects of my faith that I just “know in my knower” - I KNOW that God is love, I’ve experienced it, I can’t deny it. (Which is not to deny that many people have experienced God & the church as the opposite of love - I’m trying to own my experience while keeping a respectfully open mind to others’.) There are also aspects of my faith that need help, that need to grow. To that end, I went to the library on Saturday and checked out nearly a dozen books on Christian apologetics. Today I returned to the library to pick up two books on “Atheist apologetics,” and I have one more book on that subject on reserve. (I know that the volume to Christiany books vs. the volume of Atheisty books represents a firm bias towards religious belief, but in my defense, I know what names & concepts to look for in the Christian apologetics field, and I only have a couple of recommendations of Atheist works to go on. I think I should at least get credit for trying to get the full story from both sides. Right? Give me a cookie for that, okay?)

Speaking of Atheisty books, I’m about two chapters into Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and I think it says a lot about who I am that I’m tempted to throw the book across the room not because of Dawkins’ attacks on God but because of one rude little comment about feminism. Hey, I’m used to hearing that it’s dumb to believe in a big man in the sky who sees me when I’m sleeping and knows when I’m awake and knows if I’ve been bad or good. (So be good, for goodness’ sake!) I am NOT used to (and NOT tolerant of!) someone telling me it’s dumb to think that women should be treated with the same respect as men because we’re all human beings, after all. Oh, Mr. Dawkins. If you only knew how many people you’d alienate from your otherwise rational discourse on theology with one flippant phrase.

But because I pride myself on having an open mind (and because I am genuinely curious about this man’s arguments against Christianity, considering that I worked in a bookstore when The God Delusion was at the top of the bestseller list and the snazzily-designed, foil-covered volumes were selling like $7 beers at an outdoor concert in, say, Virginia Beach on a 100-degree day) (no, really, people were paying that much! I was one of them) I will overlook that one offense against my feminist ideals. But really, gentle Smooch-fans, if YOU were writing a book about views that are already controversial, would you want to further piss off the literate world by attacking a whole other non-religious belief system? I think a secular humanist would tread a little more lightly around feminism, for God’s sake. (Or rather, for not-God’s sake.)

But enough of my righteous (or non-righteous?) indignation. It’s late, and instead of typing, I should be reading. Have a lovely evening, my friends.

Seriously: NOT COOL.

A popular priest known as “Father Oprah” has left the Roman Catholic Church and joined the Episcopal Church less than a month after a tabloid published photos of him cavorting on the beach with his girlfriend in a scandal that rocked South Florida’s Spanish-speaking community.

On Thursday, as thunder boomed outside and paparazzi cameras flashed, the Rev. Alberto Cutie (KOO’-tee-ay) held a news conference at the pulpit of the Episcopal Church’s Trinity Cathedral. Standing behind him: the Episcopal bishop, a half-dozen Episcopal priests and his girlfriend.

This story incites a sputtering, screaming, throwing-things-at-walls rage in me. Why? NOT because a priest fell in love and had a secret affair. People are people, no one is without sin. No one. This includes clergy. I’m not mad that Rev. Cutie is leaving the Catholic Church and becoming an Episcopal priest - um, it seems to be the logical thing to do since he doesn’t want to give up his vocation OR his relationship with his girlfriend. What makes me OMFG PISSED OFF is that the Episcopal Church seems to have welcomed him with open arms and without condition. Sure, he has to jump through some hoops to be an “official” Episcopal priest, but it appears that the ECUSA is going to let him pastor a new congregation without asking him to take a time out from ministry at all.

NOT. COOL.

The issue here is not sex. It’s the breaking of vows. It’s the betrayal of trust. It’s the secrecy, the lying. It’s the fact that Cutie lived a double life for TWO YEARS and when he was caught by a tabloid and taken to task by his spiritual authorities (his “boss,” if you will), he flounced to another denomination instead of humbly saying, “Dayum, I messed up.”

Something that may not be understood by people who aren’t part of a Christian community: a pastor has a lot of influence, and power, over the people in his* church. Sometimes his influence extends beyond his church to other churches in his area (if he serves on denominational or ecumenical committees, for example), and to unchurched people in his community/nation (if his church does outreach, say, in the form of soup kitchens, clothing drives, or educational reform). When a man chooses to violate the vows that he took when he became a priest, he is not only sinning against God, he’s betraying ALL the people he committed to serve, all the people he’s instructed and counseled over the years. And he needs to make amends.

But that’s not what Cutie is doing. He’s unwilling to say, “You know, my bad judgment shows that I’m not in a place to help other people right now. Once I get my head on straight, I’ll BRB.” Because he’s clueless, someone else needs to smack some sense into him. Unfortunately, the Episcopal Church (which, by the way, is the denomination I served in for five years, and I love them dearly, but they can be so full of FAIL sometimes) is asleep at the wheel. The ECUSA has recently seen a dramatic drop in church attendance as well as a decline in new priests entering the ministry. Many Episcopal congregations across the country have NO PASTOR because there’s a huge shortage of clergy. Of course I don’t know the whole story behind Cutie’s conversion (disclaimer alert!), but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Episcopal Church’s lack of judgment has a whole lot to do with their desperation to fill pulpits and pews. And that is NOT. COOL.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that making a Big Mistake disqualifies anyone from ministry. I’m not saying that it’s wrong for a pastor to be married (or, for that matter, gay - which I have to mention because The Gay Episcopal Bishop Debacle caused my Diocese to implode a few years ago). What I’m saying is that it’s wrong for someone to be so arrogant as to assume that his sneaky, selfish actions have no impact on the people he promised to serve in humility and purity.

NOT. COOL.

* There are many women pastors/priests in Christian denominations around the world, including the Episcopal Church. When discussing pastors/priests in this post, I’ve chosen to use only male pronouns for the sake of simplicity, and because the priest in question is a male.

Just to warn y’all, I really enjoyed this book, so my review of it could spill onto the annoying side of enthusiastic. Okay? Think you can handle it? If you say so…

OH MY GOD LAMB BY CHRISTOPHER MOORE IS THE BEST BOOK I’VE READ IN A LONG DAMN TIME

I warned y’all.

Seriously, though, this book rocked my socks. My friend Kerry recommended it to me almost a year ago. It was on my list of Books to Buy and Read, which, unfortunately, is not a real list, just a vague idea in the back of my overstuffed mind, so I often don’t get around to actually buying and reading these books for a loooong time. Finally Kerry just bought me a copy because she was desperate for me to experience its awesomeness, and I am SO glad she did. I took it with me on our road trip this past weekend, and plowed through all 400 pages in a day and a half.

Lamb is a Gospel told from the point of view of Biff, Jesus’s childhood friend. Biff wants to set the record straight about Jesus’s life - particularly the first thirty years of Jesus’s life, which are woefully unrepresented in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John - the Gospels most folks are familiar with. According to Biff, he and Jesus (whom he refers to as Joshua) traveled the world in search of wisdom and knowledge. Jesus knew that he was the Messiah, but he didn’t know what the meant. Exactly what was the Messiah supposed to do? In the course of their search, Jesus and Biff learn quite a bit about philosophy, love, friendship, self-discipline, but they never get an exact answer to the “What the hell does a Messiah do, anyway?” question. Jesus continually asks his Heavenly Father for guidance, and the old bearded dude in the sky is rather tight-lipped on the subject. (Something I’m sure many readers can relate to - something, perhaps, that gives us some insight on Moore’s relationship with God.) In the end, Jesus gets the job done, but not the way that Biff had expected. Biff’s a little pissed about it, too.

Moore says that he didn’t write this book with the intention of offending anyone, but I promise you, many Christians would be offended if they picked up Biff’s story. I would not call Moore’s tale blasphemous, but it is irreverent, which is probably why I liked it so much. Mostly, it made me think. When you grow up in the church and know all your Bible stories inside and out, you get a certain version of events lodged in your imagination. There were several points in Lamb where I said to myself, “Wow, I’d never thought of it that way,” or, “Huh! That could have happened, sure.” Rather than offending me, this book strengthened my faith, because it helped me to see Jesus in a new light, to understand better what it means to call him fully God yet fully man.

Here’s who I DON’T recommend this book to: people who cannot laugh at their own dogma, and people who really, really don’t like Christianity. But for those of you in the middle, who have faith or wish you had faith, or who have no desire for faith but no animosity towards this Jesus fellow: you’ll get a kick out of Lamb. You may, like me, end up adding it to your canon of spiritual texts, just because it’s just THAT fun and insightful.

Blogging can be (and often is) an exercise in vanity. We who blog talk about the things that are important to us, post pictures we like, make fun of the people who piss us off, and et cetera ad infinitum. But blogging is also (often, not always) a form of performance art, especially when one blogs on a public site. If I cared only to hear myself talk, I’d keep my words locked up in a diary. There is a time and a place for that, but on my website, I want my words to have some entertainment value. I want this to be a place people love coming back to.

So tell me, folks…

My husband and I took a road trip this weekend, and I learned some very valuable lessons.

1. When deprived of caffeine, my bladder can successfully wait 200 miles between pit stops.

2. When provided with caffeine, my bladder’s lucky to make it 50 miles without stopping.

3. McDonald’s uses the same antimicrobial cleanser they used 13 years ago when I worked for them. I know this because EVERY SINGLE McDonald’s bathroom smells exactly the same way. However, no amount of that cleanser can cover the smell of copious amounts of urine. (This is actually a lesson I learned 13 years ago, but I received a “refresher course” this weekend.)

4. Murphy’s Law of Urination, Part One: The smaller and more cramped a public restroom is, the more people need to use it at any given time.

5. Most establishments on I-95 haven’t figured out that coat hooks would be a low-cost value-added fixture to add to their public restrooms. Not having to loop my purse over my neck while squatting in the stall would improve my customer satisfaction tenfold.

6. Murphy’s Law of Urination, Part Two: The fuller your bladder is, the more bumps will be on the highway exit and road leading to the gas station/fast food restaurant where your throne awaits.

7. Although most convenience stores sell a variety of domestic and imported 40 ounce bottles of beer, none of the ones I visited stocked hand sanitizer.

8. Hand sanitizer would be a welcome addition to the “things my purse must ALWAYS contain,” for the times when touching the bathroom door handle as I exit makes me feel that washing my hands post-urination was for naught.

9. Murphy’s Law of Urination, Part Three: The worse you have to pee, the more stubborn and uncooperative the toilet paper dispenser will be, and the longer your relief will be delayed as you attempt to cover the toilet seat with a dozen small squares of one-ply tissue.

10. Nothing feels better than the first time you sit on your own commode after thirteen hours of communal toilets.

I hope this wisdom I have imparted will guide you in your next journey. Go in peace, my friends.