outWORD by Matte Downey

I just finished reading Frankenstein . I love the style of the classic fiction writers - so emotive and descriptive. I really do not see it as a frightful tale as so many have made it out to be, but one about responsibility and choices. What stood out to me again (as often does when I read fiction in this genre) was the way the characters respond physically to an emotional stimulus. We think that odd in our scientifically-absorbed world. Upon hearing bad news or seeing a shocking sight, it is not uncommon to faint and develop a fever that lasts several months - if you are in said story, that is. In one case, after the news of a family death, the person died a few days later of an apoplectic fit, or brain hemorrhage. This seems odd to us today, but I fear that we might have a tendency to separate the body from the rest of the person far too easily. I admit it. I have been known to go on emotional roller coasters as I am quite an emotive person and tend to feel things deeply and react st...

Sometimes I get a little confused. I take things too seriously that I should just shrug off and forget. And at other times I treat lightly those things that carry more weight than I realise. It is a question of priorities, I think, and also a certain amount of awareness that I need to cultivate. Today I was presented with a few situations where I had to decide if this was something that merited being taken seriously or if it was something that could easily drain way more emotional and physical energy than it was worth. I made a few not entirely correct decisions, but after some rethinking and talking to God about it, I think my actions matched up with the priorites I am trying to pursue, and where there had been frustration, I felt a measure of grace and joy return. So let me summarise: 1. cats being slightly annoyed is not a serious thing. 2. a person needed a helping hand is to be taken very seriously. 3. finishing sweeping my floor is not in the top 10 list. 4. talking on the phone...

Sorry about the lack of posts here lately, but I have had a lot of guests through my house in the past few weeks and...well...spending time with people while they are present and here NOW is more important than cleaning the floor or ironing or even *gasp* blogging. And that is something I am still learning - to be totally present in the moment instead of always thinking ahead or back or sideways to some task unfinished or other people I must contact. Anyway, all the different people through my household have had an effect on my cats. Tea, especially, became very needy and loud and confused about whether she had been fed or not and was quite bothersome when I was trying to sleep. Someone suggested discipline and I thought, yes, I will have to teach her that this is inappropriate behaviour and was thinking about taking the water tool (a small sprayer) to bed to discourage her poking me and meowing into my ear at night. But before I pursued this avenue, I asked a fellow Jesus-lover and ca...

I just started reading a new book today on the bus, Velvet Elvis , by Rob Bell. (I know, I know, I still have 2 other books unfinished!!) Some of the words in the book made me stop so that I could read the phrases again just to let the simplicity and truth of them sink in. If you ask me what the book is about I would say it shows off Jesus and cuts the legs off of the monster I will call, "Jesus AND...." Here are a few quotes: "Times changes. God doesn't, but times do. We learn and grow, and the world around us shifts, and the Christian faith is alive only when it is listening, morphing, innovating, letting go of whatever has gotten in the way of Jesus and embracing whatever will help us be more and more the people God wants us to be." "If there is a divine being who made everything, including us, what would our experiences with this being look like? The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We a...

define: transitive verb 1a : to determine or identify the essential qualities or meaning of; b : to discover and set forth the meaning of; 2 a : to fix or mark the limits of. Last weekend I learned to play a new video game (not that I play many at all, my favourite being a boat racing one - Hydro Thunder woohoo!) that involved characters fighting each other in kickboxing. It was fun at first as I learned all the moves and got in a few punches and won a spar or two. Then the person showing me the game changed from being my teacher to being my opponent and *argh* I lost time after time after time and pretty soon had racked up a score of 14 - 0. So I tried to play the solo game against the computer and after a few good rounds, ended up with a character I could not beat and each time I tried, I did worse and worse until it seemed pointless to even try. So I gave up, threw the controller down, let my anger and frustration show, even shed a few tears and in general wondered why I ever trie...

I have been having rather vivid dreams lately and though I don't take them quite as literally as I used to, nor order my life decisions around them, I do think that sometimes they give me a good gauge of where I am at in my journey of learning. Sometimes they can also provide a solution or clarity on some issue that has been eluding me in my waking moments (just like one can sometimes solve a problem or remember a detail by taking a break and thinking about something unrelated). In one of my dreams I was confronted with strangers who had come into my home and rearranged my furniture and had given some of my belongings away and were generally making themselves at home without any consideration for whose home it was. I questioned them on their identity and why they were in my home and quickly and firmly, but kindly, let them know that they were to put everything back as they found it and return anything they had disposed of. I then explained that I was a generous person and was hap...

Someone sent me an article on Cat and Dog Theology , a book written by Bob Sjogren. It takes off from this joke: A dog says, "You pet me, you feed me, you love me, you must be God." A cat says, "You pet me, you feed me, you love me, I must be God." Basically, dogs are all about the master, and cats are all about themselves. And so it is in much of Western Christianity. We think that God is here to make things easy for us, to get us from birth to death as comfortably and with as many blessings as possible. And this self-centredness is a far cry from Jesus' example of giving his life for others and accepting whatever came from the Father's hand. A blessed and successful life by our standards may very well be quite different from the life of abundance that God promises us if we walk with Him and do what he does. The word, "master" is not a popular one these days, but very biblical and we should not be ones who neglect the concept. This is Cassie from ...

We just returned from a road trip that included New York City, Philadelphia, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Toronto, Ontario. Here are a few of the world famous things we saw: the Statue of Liberty, the National Constitution Center, Niagara Falls, and Cassie, the best dog in Brooklyn. Okay, Cassie might not be world-reknowned, but she should be. If you asked me what the highlights were of the trip, however, they would probably not include these famous sites. They would include brunch with Mike and Char who always manage to mix fun and wisdom in wonderful proportion. They would include making a helium balloon bouquet for Ryan and chasing it down the parking lot (alas it was lost in an updraft). They would include cooking a French meal for Constance who was somewhat confounded not to be in the kitchen but just able to sit and talk while someone else did the serving for a change. They would be listening to Jana talk about her confidence in Jesus to guide her future. They would be se...

I am currently on a road trip so have not been blogging much. One of the stops we made was New York City and as we walked past this building near Times Square on Tuesday, I just had to stop and take a picture. The word just seemed to leap out at me from the stark white background. And later on that day, I had an experience which made it plain that I still do not walk in this element as much as I could or should or want to. It seems that I still hold myself to some sort of arbitrary standard of performance and expect a certain level of righteousness and competence from myself and when for some reason, I am unable to deliver, I just feel horrible about myself and wonder if I have any value at all and deem it unlikely that I can ever do anything right again. I know, I know, I can blow things way out of proportion, but that is the way I feel sometimes and as God so gently reminded me a few days ago, this is not walking in grace. Grace is a field God has invited me to freely run in, an...