La la la la.... working on a reasearch proposal, my final project for my class this semester... I don't know why I can't get it together to get stuff done before it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. My brain just doesn't want to do stuff if I can get away with doing it later! (I really meant to do some stuff yesterday)

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Happy Birthday, Daisy Jane!!!

Nora, I'm the same way, and then hate myself for it, during the "okay, these are the absolutely necessary hours I need to be doing the absolutely necessary tasks?"

ION, I upgraded to IE 7, and I do not like it, mostly because it is different, which is kind of sad. But it is different. Very. Even the font here looks different.

Everything looks a little bolder and fatter, so if your favorite pants don't fit today, Bitches, it's not you; it's me. Also, I can't find my favorites. I'm going to have to call tech support away from his coffee.

I slept 'til 10ish this morning. I never do that, any more. I'm not sure I like it, which is kind of sad, too.

Thanks for the Julia birthday wishes. She had a very good day, which is what Julias do best.

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Hey Cindy, did you hear about the Swampscott shopping plaza that was shut down on Friday due to a bomb scare? I saw something about it on a silent television in the background (looked like our Trader Joes!) but I can't find anything about it online now.

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Your post is the first I've heard of it, Nora, but it looks like there's an article, here: [link]

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Cindy, I was just reading this in Oxford American and thought of you.

Most tonic for me as I’ve struggled with my own logocentrism has been the African–American church in North Nash-ville where my wife and I, who are white, have worshipped for about twenty years now. We first visited the congregation—which is part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the left-of-center Protestant denomination to which we belong—because we had heard that the music and the people there were great, and it was true, but not some of the doctrine. It wasn’t that the preaching and liturgy weren’t in keeping with “Disciples theology” so much as that they retained vestiges of outmoded downhome religion. Foremost among these were the personification of evil in the character of Satan; prayers addressed to Jesus as if he were still alive; and the ubiquitous references to Jesus’ blood and all the wonderful things it had done and continued to do on our behalf. We didn’t take any of it literally, or presume that every one of the church’s members did. Still, some of this imagery posed a stumbling block for us, especially the buckets of references to blood.

Over the years, we nevertheless grew more comfortable with this language, or in any case stopped getting hung up on the meanings that could be wrested from it. It wasn’t that our theology had narrowed—if anything, it had grown more expansive, more post-Christian than anything else. What did sink in, however, was the buzz and heat in our hands as we clapped them numb each week, the anguish and joy in people’s gleaming faces, the waves upon waves of kisses and hugs that we gave and received, to say nothing of the unshakable conviction that rose from our voices as we shouted and sang together. What hit home for us wasn’t the meaning behind these experiences but the truth in them, the glorious and inexhaustible reality of it all: rough, smooth, tangy, sweet, piercing, hushed, aggrieved, rapturous, and thousands of other things besides. These things, no matter how we conceived them, were the redemption in all that talk about “the blood.” The sheer humanity of it—the brokenness, the acceptance, the grace and love that mere words could never express—was the transforming blood of which we sang: the blood, very much present among and stirring within us, that would never lose its power.

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Happy Birthday Daisy Jane!

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Morning, all.

Weird dreams. I dreamt I went out last night in a really slutty outfit, and stayed out to 6 a.m., only to discover that what I thought was Saturday night was Sunday, and I had to be at school. So I went to work drunk and slutty and there was this huge gang war, and I stole a truck that ended up being this gang leader's truck and now he wants to kill me, and I was more worried about being the drunk and slutty teacher than imminent painful death.

ION, bad Thanksgiving. We were woken at 7:30 Thanksgiving morning by my mom's best friend's husband at the door, to tell my mom that C. had died of a heart attack at 4 a.m. Completely unexpected -- she was 53.

My mom was a wreck, but held up better than I expected. She was able to go up and speak at the memorial yesterday, which was a huge thing for her.

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What is The Oxford American?

My church could use some of the passion evident in the second paragraph. I love it, but I don't know how to do it, you know?

From the first paragraph, I think my theology is probably so different from his. I am very much a, "Yes, there was a virgin birth, bodily resurrection, ascension," sort of Christian. And although I believe arguing about inerrancy is a spectacularly divisive waste of time, I believe the writers of scripture were inspired of the Holy Spirit. And I believe in the power of the blood.

'Cause it's always got to be blood.

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Weird dreams. I dreamt I went out last night in a really slutty outfit, and stayed out to 6 a.m., only to discover that what I thought was Saturday night was Sunday, and I had to be at school. So I went to work drunk and slutty and there was this huge gang war, and I stole a truck that ended up being this gang leader's truck and now he wants to kill me, and I was more worried about being the drunk and slutty teacher than imminent painful death.

Oh my word, Erin.

ION, bad Thanksgiving. We were woken at 7:30 Thanksgiving morning by my mom's best friend's husband at the door, to tell my mom that C. had died of a heart attack at 4 a.m. Completely unexpected -- she was 53.

I'm so, so sorry. That is too young. Her poor family. Your poor mom.

My mom was a wreck, but held up better than I expected. She was able to go up and speak at the memorial yesterday, which was a huge thing for her.

Sometimes, that really helps. There have been deaths (like my dad's) where I've been unable to do that. There have been others (like my Nana's) where I've had to, and when I have, I've been so glad I did.

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'Cause it's always got to be blood.

Why do you think we eat it?

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