So i guess the moral of the story is that my grandmother is a cougar. And i was a sexy, if somewhat androgynous, 14-year-old.

Gay guys always tell me i'm pretty. Like, lots of different gay guys in lots of different contexts at different times and places. And they are not always drunk in a dimly-lit room at the time.

I was always highly complimented by this. Like, "They don't even like girls and they still think i'm attractive!" But it recently occurred to me that maybe they just think i look like a hot guy. Which has been said of me before. By my grandmother.

When i was fourteen, i cut my own bangs. I had cut my own hair before, most notably my eyelashes (story for another day. Actually, no: one time, i cut my own eyelashes. End of story), but up until this point, most of my experience was with cutting Barbie hair. However, i did a decent job of it. They were a heavy, straight-across fringe that, according to my crazy friend Renee, made me look like a little like Anck Su Namun.

Except my boobs were bigger. And usually covered by more than pasties and gold body paint.

However, my mom hated them.

For about a year, i'd been toying with the idea of getting a pixie cut. My hair is very thick, and Maryland gets very humid in the summer (like, from late April through mid October). Also, i was lazy and self-conscious and didn't want to spend hours every day trying to get my hair to look good. That was time i could spend knitting or re-reading Harry Potter or talking to a cat. I figured a pixie cut would be cute, comfortable, easy to maintain, and would give me a hip, rock-and-roll edge over my much cooler friends. (I was homeschooled and fourteen. Shut up.)

My mom decided that this was the perfect opportunity to talk me into making the leap. I was nervous, but consoled myself with the thought that hair always grows back. We went to a salon and i picked out a style. I was completely thrilled with the look and comfort, although less than thrilled with the sticky styling waxes and clays the stylist recommended. Can't i just comb it and air-dry, like boys do? Have we invented metrosexuality already?

The next day, at Wednesday evening prayer service, i was wearing a slightly baggy t-shirt and my hair had that "I-got-a-new-haircut-yesterday-and-have-no-idea-how-to-style-it" look. My grandmother was sitting on the other side of the (very small) sanctuary. My mom was chatting with her before the service, and Mommom asked her who the good-looking young man was sitting next to my brother. My mom glanced over, and then looked back at Mommom and said, "That's Diana."

Whatever, Mommom. That haircut landed me the Abercrombie model-lookalike who worked in the grocery store, okay? And he was totally hot and older and not even homeschooled and my sister saw him recently and said she thinks he's gay now and -- oh, fuuuuuuuuu . . .

Matthew 14-21

I don't have anything big to say this week. I guess all of my inspiration was crowded into last week's passages. Still, there is a lot of good in Matthew, just nothing that is particularly touching me right now.

I will say this: Jesus spoke in parables. Even His own disciples didn't know what He was talking about most of the time. So how can we read translations of memories of his words many years later and assume that we know anything? Parables are stories, and as someone who holds an English degree, i can tell you that stories are meant to live inside of you, to be explored and discovered and shared, to be discussed and analyzed and argued and loved, to be whispered at bedtime and shouted from the rooftops. They are not meant to be concrete. They are not supposed to be the same thing to every person, or even the same thing to the same person every time. I've read the Harry Potter books at least a dozen times through, and i still find new things to wonder at each time. Do we think that Jesus is less complex than J. K. Rowling? Do we think that His teachings are easier to understand and pin down?

Instead of trying to find The Answer to all of Jesus' teachings, The Lesson that He wanted to give us, why not accept that the Bible is a living text and that the Holy Spirit still speaks to us today? Why not read the Bible the same way that we read other literature, and understand that its shifting, multifaceted meanings are what make it beautiful and valuable?

Matthew 16:1-4
Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, "When it is evening you say, 'it will be fair weather, for the sky is red'; and in the morning, 'it will be foul weather, for the sky is red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and none will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah." And He left them and departed.

Why I Can't Go Out In Public 2

Or maybe i just shouldn't go to Fuji anymore. Clearly, i get in a lot of trouble at that restaurant.

Clarissa and i were having lunch there a few weeks ago, as a combination farewell date/sushi eating lesson. I hadn't been sleeping and, if i remember correctly, hadn't had my coffee that day. Consequently, i was a little out of it.

This thing, but less crumpled and more folded. And more soaked in Coke.

As we chatted and i sipped my soda, i glanced at the glass and noticed something white in the ice cubes. I very smoothly and surreptitiously fished it out as Clarissa was telling me a story, and unfolded it. It was the wrapper from my chopsticks.

I stared at it for a moment, until Clarissa noticed i wasn't listening anymore and looked to see what had distracted me.

"Did you just take that out of your drink?" she asked.
"Yeah," i said, still bemused.
"Do you want to get a new drink?"

Here's the thing about Fuji: the soda comes in a can. They bring you a can and a glass of ice with a straw. So it would have been difficult for them to miss it a folded chopstick wrapper shoved into the ice cubes. Then again, i missed it and it was my soda. But still, where did the lighter fluid chopstick wrapper come from? (Arrested Development? Anybody?)

I thought about all of this for a moment. I also tried to remember what i had done with my wrapper when i removed it from my chopsticks.

"Um, no," i said at last. "It's just a wrapper, and i've already been drinking from it, so i can't imagine that i'll suffer any ill effects. Plus, i'm not really a hundred percent certain that i didn't put it in there myself and just forget."

Clarissa stared at me wordlessly for a minute.

"I'm really tired," i explained. "I do weird things sometimes when i'm tired."

But you know what, Clarissa? It's not even that weird. People do things like that all the time: leave their car keys in the freezer, put the empty cereal box back on the shelf, forget their child at WalMart, whatever. Sometimes you get distracted and do something that seems logical at the time and only strikes you as odd in hindsight. So stop judging.

And by the way, totally still alive. So it was fine. And i ate at Fuji today and spilled nothing and found no weird things in my drink. So, progress?

playing house, part two

When someone bought the lot with the mountain on it, the dirt was carted away somewhere. There was a smaller mountain further down the street where we played, but it wasn't the same. One day, when i was eight or nine, i was at the smaller mountain and i made a strange discovery. There was a cedar log -- really almost a whole tree -- abandoned in the dirt. There were no large trees for miles around, and this was not fresh. The branches and roots had been stripped away long since, and the trunk was weathered and dry. It had not been there before, but it had appeared that day, quite inexplicably. I decided that i needed to have it, and i dragged it all the way back to our house, a good two or three blocks.

We had a dirt pile in our back yard (you know, until i wrote this all out, i had no idea how many large piles of dirt were integral parts of my childhood. I really was Tom Sawyer.), left over from when we had put in our pool. It was an above-ground pool, but it was necessary to dig out a small foundation to protect it from tornadoes and windstorms and vigorous swimming. Anyway, with the disappearance of the mountain, the dirt pile in the back yard became more important to us. Though it was nowhere near as large as the dirt pile down the street, it was a lot closer. 

I brought the tree to this pile and set it up in the "house" i had carved into one side. Pieces of the aforementioned playhouse were sometimes integrated into this particular house. My mom hated the dirt pile and often wanted us to move the dirt to the garden, where it could be spread around and used and stop being an eyesore next to the deck. But we loved it and couldn't stand the thought of losing our favorite outside play space.

Somewhere around this same time, my grandparents had a rotting tree in their back yard. Afraid of it falling and breaking the swingset or the shed or the house, or even falling into the neighbor's yard, my grandfather cut it down preemptively. It was a big job and took some time to complete. Step one was piling the branches and logs into a huge stack, easily as tall as a house. While step two was formulating, i began examining the beaver dam-like pile in the yard and discovered that the branches had naturally formed a hollow space in the center. With some judicious rearranging of sticks and wriggling of my childish frame, i managed to crawl inside.

This was my house for what felt like weeks, but was probably no more than ten days. One day, i went to my grandparents' house to discover that my grandfather had fed all of the wood into a mulcher. My home was dissolved. There were other log homes from other fallen trees, but there was never another beaver dam.

Yesterday, my boyfriend asked me to tell him a story. I was bored at work and he was bored at home and we were on Facebook chat, and i started telling him stories about all of my childhood "houses". When i told him about my beaver dam and how sad i was at its loss, he said, "That's because it wasn't our house. If you still had your house there today, we wouldn't be able to live together. You would have had a happy little life by yourself in the beaver dam-esque abode, and never have come to Quincy to meet me . . . and we would never have loved each other."

"I would always love you," i replied. "I just wouldn't know that it was you."

I've been waiting a long time for him.

Overheard in the Office 20

"I sent you an email. But it's not urgent. You can read it when you get back. It's like, a work thing. So it's not, like, a non-work thing."

Matthew 5-13

All passages from the NKJV.


Matthew 7:1-2
Judge not, that you not be judged. For with what judgement you judge, you will be judged; and with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

This week, Rachel Held Evans posted on this exact topic. It's all been said there already, but for those who, for whatever reason, can't or won't open a link in a new tab, i'll sum it up for you: give people the benefit of the doubt. Assume good things about the motives and hearts of others.

Matthew 7:7-8
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

I'm going to refer to Rachel again, and to her brilliant book Evolving in Monkey Town, where she talks about the evolution of her faith. A little background: Rachel grew up in Dayton, TN, the town that hosted the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial. Things haven't changed much since then. Rachel was raised to believe that evolution was of the Devil, and was given handfuls of pat answers to those who would suggest otherwise. Then she discovered that there was a huge, compelling, empirical body of evidence to prove evolution, and that there were many people of all religions who embraced both science and faith. She also discovered that most people in the world didn't care that much about evolution. They were way more concerned with things like AIDS, and poverty, and bigotry, and rape, and hunger, and not having access to schools or water or clothing. When Rachel's heart broke for the 'least of these' that she saw, she began to ask how God could allow something like this to happen, which is a question that we nearly all ask at one time or another. But when she asked this question at home, she was told that God's ways are greater than our ways, and that we should have faith like a child.

Rachel, rightly, called bullshit on this. Have you ever spent any time with a child? What do they CONSTANTLY do? They ask questions.

Faith like a child doesn't mean that you're not smart enough or knowledgeable enough to care about facts and truth and explanations. It means that you ask questions out of a thirst to know and understand, and out of a desire to have your Father talk to you. Answers only lead to more questions, but an honest and open dialogue leads to a relationship.

Ask. Seek. Knock. This is what leads to loving Christ more. You won't always like the answers, but that's how it is, kiddo. Just keep asking, seeking, and knocking. You've got a lifetime for this.

Matthew 7:16, 20
You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, not can a bad tree bear good fruit . . . Therefore by their fruits you will know them.


(emphasis mine)

I wrote last month about a similar passage. The point still stands: stop worrying so much about what is or is not "Christian" and focus on loving people and God and doing good things. You know how people are always complaining about Christians being hypocrites? That's because they're looking at the fruit they bear: hatred, fear, bigotry, anger, condemnation, divisiveness, condescension, rudeness, etc. Don't be that guy. Bear good fruits.

Matthew 9:12-13
But when Jesus heard that, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.' For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."

This makes me think of the modern Church. We spend so much of our time, energy, and talents ministering to people who are already Christians. We have Bible studies catered to each stage of development, we have Sunday School classes and fun get-togethers, we have ministries and book clubs and movie nights and fundraisers, and all of it is good and important. Anything that promotes fellowship and personal spiritual growth in the Church is good and important. But what about ministering to the people who don't go to church? Sometimes we forget about that in all the kerfuffle of the bake sale to raise money for the sixth-grade girls Bible study to go to SoulFest.

Overheard in the Office 19

"I hate soda. It, like, burns me going down." (said as she massaged her throat)