Easter

So.  It is Easter evening, and the patterns of golden light on the wall are growing amber.  I have been with friends off and on all weekend, loving people who fuss over me and ask questions that make me think and who keep me moving in the direction of my dreams.  How did I get here, among them?  

The challenge in the message today at Journey is to live the Resurrection.  To honor the human being in everyone, including myself, get up from my tomb, and live the glory of God.  Put down the bag of rocks on my back that contains a grudge against my mom, judgment, who I think I am, where I like to keep Christ, excuses for not making art, wasted time and money, guilt used to justify self-deprecation and stuck-ness, the woulda-shoulda-whatifs that people my past, and most interestingly, my efforts to give my life and choices away to someone (or something) for safekeeping when they are too demanding.  If I leave the bag, what will I put things in?  Who will find it?  I find this embarrassing, to be without baggage.  It's like wearing a swimsuit indoors; it isn't me to travel with nothing heavy hanging on me.  But look at my posture!  And the smile on my face?

Is this taking control of my life, this living the Resurrection, the gift of seeing life beyond death?  Kierkegaard's explanation of those who drive and those who are driven around seems to apply.  I don't need to drive anyone around (except maybe my boys, and even that is limited to the physical act more often than not), but I must drive myself.  I always allowed others to drive me, suffering fairly constantly from car sickness, longingly looking out the window, until very recently when I decided I wanted to drive my own car.  A small, low-maintenance one. And I'm finally happy.  And now that I look at it, I anxiously realize there's no room for my bag of rocks when there are people in the car.

The rocks will have to go.  

Shalom.

Dating in 2009

So.  Since I only attract guys in their twenties when I'm out and about, I thought I'd see what is happening online.  I have some good friends who have fallen in love with guys they've met electronically.  I understand why--how could you beat the sifters they use to show you only people who've fit most of your desirables? There's no bouncer at the door of your favorite nightclub who would do that for you.

So.  The vulnerability.  The sweet angst, the pleas, the loneliness, the triumph over bad relationships or working too much, the wondering over how you begin again in your thirties or forties or even fifties, how to even get started at that age.  I've only been on two days and I've already received three beautiful love letters.  What do you say to that?  

And the posturing: I don't know what the ladies are doing because I'm not looking at them, but the guys have screen names like "stox" and "nupassion" and are mostly talking about their partnerships at law firms, their chiropractic practice, their body building routines, their love of football and scuba and dogs.  And then there are those, like my little brother, whose photos proudly display their tool belts and names like "Bobby" embroidered on the left shoulder of their shirts.  They are all in earnest, all unable to find who they are looking for because she's not at the bar, she's working, or she's afraid to sit in a bar alone (that's just sad, her mama would say) or walk in the dark alone, or she's tired and is having some dinner while she listens to her children's litanies about injustice on the playground and can I have money for this, please?  And I think the available guys are changing the oil or making Hamburger Helper or sausage wraps, reading the paper.  And, of course, checking their online dating site for interesting females.

I used to have a puritannical view of online dating, but I now think it is a compassionate, sometimes bitter, very often sweet look at how the indomitable human spirit is picking itself up after midlife trauma and seeing what might be possible in the newest phase of life.  And even I am hopeful.

Shalom.