I call this worshiping the gumball god … but it’s the same principle at work. Ya puts in yer prayers, ya pulls the lever, ya gets a response … usually shiny tasty gumballs. Yep … that there’s the god I wanna worship.

The next time you fear and/or expostulate that your government just may be spending your tax dollars in a less than useful manner, you might consider Switzerland.

There’s a crisis in Switzerland … of epic proportions. But the sturdy Swiss are taking steps to manage it. In January a multidisciplinary task force was created. People from the field, from industry, from banking … all were asked to report. Now in March the Economy Minister reports that steps are being taken, but a plan B must be implemented.

What’s the crisis, you ask? Why there is only enough bovine intestine for the national sausage until the end of 2008.

Great heavenly day! What will the world come to without ample supplies of cervelat on hand?

Of course … it strikes me that just perhaps there was a time in Swiss history that they produced cervelat (the national sausage … so maybe it’s been around for a while) without Brazilian bovine intestine. Where did they get it then? Maybe that’s a place to look …

I love words. I love languages. I love to find the meanings of words and then use them appropriately. I’m a stuffed shirt and have been known to correct people in my outloud voice for misusing words. I try to keep this inside my head, but it does not always work. I’ve been the bossy big sister for far too long and it leaks out sometimes. For the record, I’m always deeply ashamed of this. I do know how unsightly it is.

One might imagine that someone like me would despise profanity. Nope, just the opposite. I kind of like it. I enjoy it’s spitting rebellion. I take great delight in the shock that people try to cover up when they hear those words come out of someone’s mouth. I think that shock is really funny. Then, of course, I immediately feel bad and guilty for laughing at someone else’s expense and outrage. Because, at the end of the day, that is also wrong. So, I try very diligently to teach my children other words to say when they are angry or frustrated.

Here’s the thing though. Throughout the course of my life I’ve observed the list of allowable words grow narrower and narrower. Now some would say that on network television this is not the case. But it is. How many times do you see the word “penis” in print? And how many of you just took a breath when you saw it there? See? How about “breast” out of context? Same thing … It’s tiresome. Myself, I like the word “boob” to talk about breasts and even among women talk of bras brings about nervous laughter. Come ON, people … it’s UNDERWEAR … we all use it.

Using words properly and appropriately will not do anything to you. Well, it might give you the appearance of intelligence. However, except on certain television shows and movies, there is no magic in words. They are not charms or spells. There is nothing sacred or profane in them.  There is nothing to be afraid of.  Nothing to shrink away from.  Words are a tool with which we communicate ideas.

Over at Waving or Drowning, Mike recently wrote a post entitled “To Hell with Romans 13.”  Is the title provocative?  Yes.  Blaphemous?  Perhaps.  Heresy?  I don’t know.  Profanity?  No.  There is nothing profane about that title.  Yet one commenter was disgusted by the “profanity.”  I thought he was going to faint with the vapors.  Well, for heaven’s sake, if you have a problem with it then argue your point.  Don’t whip out your pretend profanity policeman’s badge and be a sissy with the vapors.

Grow up.  Get over your bad self.  Who died and made you God?  Oh … whoops.  You’re not.  I’m just so done with all the damn rules and regulations.  This person is made faint over the word hell, that person won’t allow the word breast on their blog, another can’t bear to sit under the teaching of women.  A school invites people to speak on campus, then dis-invites them when the heat gets too hot from their fundamentalist alumnae.  Every church website I go to has their list of fundamental beliefs that they want a body to sign up for in order to become a member.  One that I saw recently has pages worth; that indicates faith in knowledge rather than faith in Jesus.  You know what we’re all becoming?  Little gods.  This is what got Lucifer thrown out of heaven folks … the desire to be right even more than God.  It’s called “pride.”  And if you’re so damn full of it that you have to be right all the time … then you really are full of it.

A while ago my friend, Mr. Bill, and I publicly revealed that we have an agreement. We’ve agreed to always agree. When we don’t agree, well, we’ll disagree to disagree. Then, being a double negative, we’ll actually agree and everything will be all right. So, our agreement to agree works for us. We like it. One of the best parts of this agreement to agree is that Bill has one of the best blogrolls ever and I’ve been exposed to some new and wonderful writers through this arrangement.

I think one of the best has to be Brant Hansen at Letters from Kamp Krusty. If he’s not the best writer, he definitely has the best hair. If it’s not the best hair, it’s definitely the most like Jesus. For the longest time, I went to Brant’s blog and refused to believe that the guy pictured in the corner was really him … nobody who was real, really looked like that. Only fake people on television and in magazines look like that. But if you go to his blog, that really is him. Most of his writing is laugh out loud funny, but the photos aren’t. They are real.

You may have noticed I said that *most* of his writing is funny. It is too. He makes many a sharply aimed point with boisterous humor. It’s amazingly well done. He’s really smart. All good comedians are. He knows how to use language really well too. But once in a while he drops the curtain a little and gives us a peek into himself. And that is equally if not more well done.

Shortly after Thanksgiving Brant took a brief hiatus from blogging; about a week or so. When he came back he had a few posts about his reasons … here (1) and here (2). In one of them he revealed a long battle with depression and anger. He also revealed that he’s been using anti-depressants for sometime as a weapon in this battle. He confessed how inadequate this made him feel as a Christian and as a man and on a whole bunch of other levels. I wept. I read and wanted to comment. But what could I say? “Dude! I’m right there with you.” But I’m not. I’m right here with me. Brant’s experience is his and mine is mine. On some level they are similar because depression has similarities. But then again …

So. Several people linked to his posts and I read them again. I was undone. Like I was being unsupportive or something because I knew I was in this same boat so to speak, but remaining silent. Yet I am not in the same boat. We both have similar leaky barges on the same stream; there is a mixture of anger and relief about that. It might be that we both spend a lot of time waving our arms and yelling, when we could be bailing. Yet my silence was not condemnation or fear. If anything I had too much to say and eventually I realized I needed to let it process and write later in my own space. So here it is … my own words about being here with me.

A little less than two years ago I fell off a cliff. Most people would not know that to look at me, because no bones were broken and I have no lacerations or bruises … outwardly. But inwardly … well, now, that’s a whole other story. I faced a Balroc and like Gandalf, just when I thought he was gone, the tip of his lash caught the hem of my robe and pulled me over the edge with him. The fall was long, endless and sheer torture to a person with so great a fear of falling that I could not even watch that scene in the Fellowship of the Ring.

I had endless panic attacks and stopped eating and stopped drinking coffee (for the first and only time since my 12th birthday). I couldn’t sleep for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time and naps were out of the question … unless I snoozed out sitting up on the sofa. The only time I truly felt at peace was during the daily broadcast of the curling competitions in the Winter Olympics and when we were out on our daily walks. Whatever metaphorical demons had been unleashed in my brain were quelled during those brief moments. I could barely leave the house and only with an escort … LightHusband or BlazingEwe and had to have someone in the house with me at all times. In short … it was a nightmare.

I have been walking through a sine wave of depression for most of my adult life. It ebbs and flows, sometimes greater and sometimes lesser, but it has been an ever present companion. A shadow, if you will, lengthening or drawing close depending upon the position of the sun. Always lurking and never overwhelming. It was enough to make me angry sometimes. Or make me wonder why I am so different. Or wonder why I see things that others don’t. Or how I could ever get through one more day and then another. And wonder what is real joy? What does happiness feel like? Is this it? How about now?

Here’s the thing about depression that goes on that long. After a while you begin to not trust happiness or joy. It’s not that you don’t enjoy them. You do. You love them. At first. But then you wonder how long they’re going to stick around; like a deadbeat dad, you wonder when they’re going to leave again. And you kick them out first so you won’t get hurt again when they leave too soon. You get conflicted about them after a while.

Depression was casting one of its longest shadows when I found Jesus sitting around in my neighborhood back in 1990. He came into my life in the form of my neighbor, a pastor’s wife. She saved my life from depression (caused in part by my personality and in part by some meds I was taking for a newly discovered seizure disorder) and from spiders that I have an inordinate fear of. She talked to me for hours about anything I wanted to talk about. Sometimes I even listened to her. That’s how I know she was Jesus. I was 29 at the time and then turned 30. And sometime in that time period I did it … I said the magical words and planted the magical beans … and got saved. Or whatever you want to call it. Got washed and then baptized. Gave my life to Christ. Etc. PW (pastor’s wife) was very good about reassuring me that nothing would likely change right away.

On the other hand, as time went on, I began to hear tales of people who had been saved and then SAVED from this or that. I heard especially about people being saved from depression and other mental illnesses. I heard that Jesus would be enough. Funny, Brant seems to have heard that too. I think a lot of people have heard that one. Jesus is enough. Well, I suspect He is. I’ll come back to that in a few minutes.

The shadow ebbed and flowed … sometimes longer and shorter. Like any roommate, I learned how to live with it’s eccentricities and quirks. What would happen if I left the toothpaste tube uncapped and how to handle the temper tantrums. I also began to give it due consideration. Was I just like this? After all, there were no clear indicators from childhood. Other than I come from a long line of phlegmatic personalities … my father, a grandfather, a great grandfather, a great grandmother. On my mother’s side of the family there is a documented history of depression and suicide for unknown causes. What if this just is … what if I am just wired this way? How does that figure into the equation?

Fast forward to my journey through the caverns of Moria and the fall off the cliff. I was very fortunate to have a sympathetic and proactive family doctor. She got me into a psychiatrist and a counselor very quickly. In turn they got me onto some good anti-depressants and mood stabilizers and got me talking, respectively. I’ve been with both of them for the rest of the journey since then and they are wonderful. My psychiatrist suggested that it was grounds for a celebration when I told him that I’d driven across the Bay Bridge not once, but four times in one week in early October. It was a mark of how far I’ve come from the days when not only could I not drive, I could barely leave my house. He has been conservative, yet sensitive to how I’ve reacted to the meds. Keeping me in just enough meds so that I can breath, but not so much that I am comatose.

That’s the thing about anti-depressants. When you have enough, you can breath and eat and grow. You become a living thing again … by Sesame Street standards. In all seriousness, I can … I can breath and eat and grow again. I have space in my head for all three, sometimes even at the same time. But if you have too much, you become a wooden stick. As someone else once told me, you can’t cry, even when you want to … or know you should. On the other hand, not enough medication and most times, just breathing is a chore, eating and growing are right out.

So now I have my blue and green happy pills. I call them my happy pills, not because they make me happy but because they allow me to live. They allow me space inside my head to consider different paths when the way before me is desperate and hard. They allow me to consider others. And, they allow me to be more me. Now we come right down to the fine hard grit. Who am I?

I still have my shadow-friend walking with me. I have come to accept that she is likely to be part of who I am. She is woven into my character from many threads in my life. I am not certain that she would or could be unwoven now. Here is where I begin to struggle with the question that haunted Brant and one which haunts many Christians in similar circumstances … if I am wired this way, then why is Jesus not enough? Why is who I am and how I was made so uncomfortable that I need to take pills in order to get along … for me, I need them to get along with myself some days. There are days when I am so crabby and unsettled that I cannot get along inside my own skin. We are told that Jesus should be enough for all of that … He will heal you. But He doesn’t … or something. So here are my several different answers to that conundrum of faith. I believe and use them all depending on my mood/attitude. On days when I have more grace, I am able to use the more gracious reasons. On days when I have less, I am more pugnacious. (You know? I’m not a robot … my mood and attitude does change from day to day. So deal with it. 😉 )

I’ve listed them as I think of them … not in any particular order:

One idea … God could heal my eyes too … but since I was seven I’ve worn glasses and no one bothers to tell me that Jesus is enough for my eyes. They just accept my glasses as part of me; the spectacles are not a character flaw, but the anti-depressants are? I wonder why that is. I also take acid reducers and multi-vitamins … Jesus should be enough for those too, I guess. But it’s a fallen world we live in, my body needs some help and no one sees that as a character flaw. But anti-depressants … well, that’s a horse of a different color. We’ve still got enough Puritan left in our cultural psyche to think that those who are depressed ought to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get over themselves. Okay … I’ll just do that.

Another idea … Jesus may be enough, but I am clearly not. Really. That’s the thought that runs through my mind when I hear that. I know for certain that Jesus is enough for all this and a bag of chips. He threw the stars into place and the sand into the sea. The oceans rise and fall at his breath, surely He is enough for me. Yep, He really is. But I am not. I am miserable. My bread doesn’t rise properly, I forget the physics of heat transfer and ask my son to pick up a scorching pan lid with no oven mitts on, I can’t keep all my friends straight and I can’t meet their expectations of me and I can’t meet my expectations of myself. No use telling me to lower my expectations because at 46 I’ve tried that over and over and over again. You think I haven’t? Like that’s a new idea? Yes, I’ve tried that … expectations are what they are. Try lowering your own sometime and see what happens. Nine times out ten that’s called … d i s a p p o i n t m e n t. Then you have doubled your fun. You don’t meet your expectations and now you’re miserable, because you also failed to lower them. YAY. So, by myself, I am not enough and I haven’t figured out how to do the partnering with Jesus thing.

Another idea … Grace is enough. Grace is enough, yet it is not enough either. Here is probably my most bitter commentary on the church and our greater culture in general. We do not accept others for who they are anymore. We have discovered that, “You know, there’s a pill for that …” instead of working at relationships and understanding that others are truly different from us, we all insist that others conform to us. Our culture has become a chaos of bubble Napoleonic little kingdoms each demanding that everyone else conform to them. We cannot accept one another as individuals anymore because we no longer have a vision for what that is. We want crazy Uncle Fred to take a pill so he’ll be like us, and overly affectionate Aunt Edna to keep her distance. I have to wonder, why is Uncle Fred crazy? Uncle Fred is a package … there’s crazy Uncle Fred PLUS genius Uncle Fred, but you can’t just have the genius. You have to have the crazy too. More than that, you must embrace the crazy … even if it hurts. That’s grace being enough. Telling Uncle Fred to “take a pill for that” is not grace, it’s legalism. Reducing Uncle Fred to the crazy guy in the corner is not grace, it’s contempt. Containing Uncle Fred out of fear is not grace … it’s fear.

Related similar idea … We have discovered the beast of legal mood altering drugs and released him on society. Now we can make everyone just alike. Don’t fit the cookie cutter? Let’s lop that awkward corner off with a pill. Smooth that rough edge with another one. Some days I wonder if we’ve entered that Brave New World that Aldous Huxley wrote about. Or the Big Brother of George Orwell. Too many of the outlandish mind control projects written about by the science fiction authors of the 30s and 40s seem to be morphing into existence today without government intervention, just a cultural demand for bland homogeneity of character. Stepford Wives and Redford Husbands; happy, smiling with nothing to mar their bland existence. Perfect teeth, beautiful hair, we must all conform to cultural norms. We’ve got a pill for that, ya know.

I am glad to be taking my lovely blue and green pills, don’t get me wrong. They help me understand my life and process my emotions in ways that I need right now. I guess I just wonder about the pace and tectonic forces of a culture which has pushed so many of us to this point. Why do so many people need mood-altering psychotropic drugs just to get through the day? Why do we need a pill for that?

P.S. Don’t answer more hard work, or less stuff … those are the easy answers and they do not account for the complexities of where our society and culture are right now. And anyone who comes by and says some version of, “you need God.” will be hung at sunrise – virtually … and in the kindest, most Christian way – by their toes.

So, I upgraded my blog yesterday. I think it finally took. Everything looks well and fine. So I think I’m okay. I also decided to experiment with a new feedburner … called, Feedburner. You can find the link in my sidebar for a subscription to my feed if you want it … it’s handily located within the flame right to your right. Pretty simple, no? Enjoy.

This is one of my very favorite movie clips of all time. I absolutely love this bit from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. It has so much texture and it’s funny to boot. It never fails to get me laughing. Never. Even though I can just about recite it from memory. But watch … then we’ll talk.

So I was reading over at Bill Kinnon’s the other day about the latest irony in Christendom. I guess Brian McLaren is decrying consumerism by asking folks to buy his books and CDs. Kinda funny, no? Not funny, haha, but funny weird as my Grampy O would say. Yeah, it’s ironic and sorta sad. But Brian is just doing his schtick. He’s gotta make money too, ya know. We all havta make money.

Someone wrote a fairly insightful comment at Bill’s and it got me thinking. Here’s the bit that sparked my brain, but you should read the rest at Bill’s place:

I question our use of a system that is biased towards marketability regardless of quality. This creates a profit oriented motive to do “ministry” and fosters the growth of dubious theology. It entices people to compromise on their values and principles to get better sales and/or increase marketability.

I question whether the growing trend towards fee-for-service ministry is appropriate because it shuts out the poor. One of the marks of the messiah that Jesus shared with the followers of John the Baptist was that the gospel is proclaimed to the poor. — Leighton Tebay

This idea is not fully fleshed out yet, so please bear with me. But my thinking is that we poor humans have absolutely no idea of what to do with an infinite God. In this capitalist age, we are less equipped than ever. In the days when faith reigned supreme we had a chance, but now in the age of reason we are handicapped, stunted and miserly in our perspectives on God and His provisions.

We start young. We begin as children, competing for the attention of our parents. Various behavioral issues are seen as efforts to compete for a limited resource (our parent’s time and attention). It continues even more voraciously in our public schools with 20 or more children in a classroom competing for the limited resources of the school system. Most obviously they compete for the time and attention of the teacher on a daily basis. Life becomes a zero-sum game. And all of us learn how to play it quite young. In places that we’d never suspect it we begin to assign winners and losers in the crevices of our minds. We understand that in an environment of limited resources, we are responsible for grabbing all that we can for ourselves. God helps those who help themselves, right? It’s in the Bible somewhere. And no one wants to be stamped with the scarlet “L” for Loser. Because losers don’t get any of those scarce resources … whatever those resources might be.

Can you hear the violence inherent that system? In such a system we must constantly be at war with one another. True love is not entirely possible, because we must also compete with each other for limited resources. Thus, even while we know that commercialism is wrong, we might tell each other of it in the same breath as asking for increased sales of our books and cds. While this makes no logical sense, it does within the context of our socio-economic system.

There is, however, a better way.  God spoke of it when He revealed himself to us in his human form.  It involves laying aside our limited ideas of wealth, self-care, and resources.  It involves relying on the infinite and becoming careless and carefree.  All of this appears silly and we will become losers in the zero-sum game of capitalism.  But for an infinite God with infinite resources, with whom we do not have to compete for His attention.

No, I have no idea what this looks like.  I’m still thinking about it.  If any of you have some ideas … please put them in the comments, I’d love to hear them.

We have passed reasonable …

We are into silly.

Yesterday we put coat number FIVE of red onto the livingroom walls. It needs at least one and maybe two more.

I made the discovery through talking to another hockey mom that there is a special primer for dark colors. After four coats of red had been laid down. She also told me that friend of hers had painted a room red once.

It took EIGHT coats of paint.

Sigh.

This is why it is better to purchase paint at paint stores rather than large conglomerate, chain, hardware stores. The employee at a paint store might have informed me that such a primer existed and would be preferable for using underneath a strong color … such as red.

Sigh.

In other news, we got a phone call yesterday and were happily informed that our new bed is coming.

Two weeks early. Now I need to finish painting the livingroom so I can paint our bedroom before the new bed arrives. Here’s the new bed … it’s quite beautiful. We bought our first bedstead used, when we were first married. This is our 20th anniversary gift to each other. We’ve been looking at it with longing eyes for three years now.

Bill Kinnon (of the Ends Achievable) has a great post on digital rights management this afternoon. He’s talking about the general shift in attitude of the music and other industries to considering that their customers are stealing the products they are selling. It’s really sort of sad when you consider it.

It makes me angry when I purchase a song from iTunes and the only place I can play that song is on my iPod or the specific computer I purchased it on. I know that someone is going to come on my blog and stick up for the artist and their rights to be paid for the song. Trust me as I write this piece there is almost no one more empathetic to the rights of an artist to be paid for their work. If the musicians were actually getting a piece of that pie, I’d be sympathetic, but the reality is that the music companies are getting the large portion of that money, not the musicians. If I pay $.99 per song, how much is the musician getting? Really …

Here’s what the whole post got me thinking about though. Last month our guild had a speaker come in to talk to us about copyright law and quilters. I didn’t get to be there because … I’d just come home from the hospital (remember that fun?). In any case she spent the entire evening telling our group of kindly little old ladies about how they were breaking the law when they used a pattern more than one time. Or shared it with a friend. Or some other horrible offense. Again, don’t get me wrong. I design quilts and some day I hope to publish designs. But as an artist it would be my fondest hope that people would share those with each other. If I found out that people thought enough of my doodles to share them with each other, I’d be THRILLED. I certainly would not swear out a warrant after them. Now though, there is a current of fear in my little guild that never existed before. My wonderful ladies worry about whether or not they can make their quilts and give them away. They are fussing about things they don’t need to fuss about. All because someone had a little bit of knowledge and decided to pass along some fear.

It’s rampant these days. Have you noticed? Fear sells. It sells cars. It sells insurance. It sells politicians. It sells whatever someone wants you to buy. But it sells. It’s not how we used to sell things here … but it’s how we’re selling things now. Fear. Our greatest desire lately seems to be safety. So we’re listening to the people hawking fear.

Several weeks ago my counselor challenged me to put a date on the calendar.  Our house is pale and uncolored except for our fabulous mural.  I’m bored with the lack of color.  Last spring I finally bought drapes that I like.  But I don’t want to put them up until we paint.  So my counselor made me put a date on the calendar by which we would have painted the livingroom.  That date is rapidly approaching.

The date is Sunday.

Tonight we bought paint.

We are painting the livingroom “cherry cobbler” and “home song” (which is a very pale jade green).  I’ve had chips on the wall for months.  But I didn’t like any of those.  So we ditched them.  And made completely different decisions in a matter of 5 minutes.  Those sorts of decisions frighten me.  But I always end up liking them.  Even though they make me uncomfortable the whole time I’m executing them.  I will spend the next whole amount of time that we are painting the livingroom finding reasons that this is not going to work.  When I sense that it will.

So, I’m steppin’ out of my comfort zone.

As we were leaving I saw a scene at Home Depot that was out of my comfort zone.  A young man and woman were entering the store as we were headed for the checkout.  I did a double-take.  The man was carrying a pink and purple tote bag over his shoulder that cradled a chiuaua.

So, I’m sort of morally opposed to carting animals around in purses to begin with.  I’m not sure why.  But there’s something wrong with containing an animal in a purse and carting it around like a toy.  I know the people who do this would likely insist that they do it because they love their animal and do not want to be separated from it.  But I dunno … it seems like they are turning the animal into something it sort of isn’t.

I have to admit, though, I’m really struggling with the visual of a man carting around a small dog in a pink and purple purse.   It was a clearly feminine dog in a clearly feminine container carried in a feminine manner by a man in a male environment.  So, if I’m wanting to break down role barriers for myself, why did this bug me?

Check out this map.  Click on it and go to it’s website of origin.  Someone cooked up the fairly brilliant idea of matching the Gross Domestic Product of various nations with the gross domestic product of each state.  Now this is somewhat disingenuous because it’s difficult to split out the gdp’s of different states and you really need to control for population, etc.  BUT … it does draw our attention to how enormous the US economy is in relation to other countries.  You can read more details at the website, along with economic data that makes this map make a lot more sense.  Or … you can just sit and be stunned by the whole thing.  Which is what I did for quite some time.

We really do need to go back to kindergarten … and learn how to share our toys well with others.  Right now our report card would have an “N” on it … for Needs Improvement.  And that is unacceptable.