sick

So...I have a cold. It is not pleasant. I means that I dream about not being able to breathe. It means that there is a damp spot under my nose when I wake up. It means that my chest is tight and I get winded climbing the stairs to my bedroom. It means that my throat is scratchy and I am always thirsty. It means that everything seems like a bigger deal than it really is.

This morning, the doorbell buzzed while I was still in bed, sleeping the open-mouthed, sweaty sleep of the sick. I woke up, a bit groggy, but aware enough to know who it was. The mailman was delivering books which I had ordered. Yeah! I was waiting for this shipment and was happy to receive it before the Friday deadline. The mailman usually just leaves the package in the hallway of our condo building when I am away, so because I was feeling kind of rough and certainly looking like someone's nightmare (plus, I didn't want to infect the poor man with whatever I had, I reasoned), I decided not to answer the door. I stood just inside and listened. And I heard a little voice tell me that I was just being proud, unwilling to let someone see me not at my best. Yes, I was unwilling to have someone think, "Whoa, that woman just woke up and she looks scary!" So I waited until he left, then tiptoed down the stairs to the building's mailboxes.

There was no box waiting for me. What? I saw the mailman get into his red and white truck and just stared at the sad empty space above the mailboxes. Why hadn't he left my package? Didn't he know I was waiting upstairs, afraid to come down because I wasn't wearing my best jeans and my cute purple top, and because I had not taken a shower, brushed my teeth, put on any make-up, combed my hair, nor wiped my face clean of sleep and mucus? Didn't he trust me to come and get it the minute he was gone and I could pick it up without being seen? All that was waiting for me was a notice that it would be available the next day. I briefly thought about racing out into the street and trying to catch him before he drove away, but I knew that I wasn't up for it, so I watched him drive away with my precious books. Didn't he know that I didn't have the energy right now in my weakened state to walk 20 minutes to the post office to pick it up? I guess not.

Sometimes when I need it the most, I am the most unwilling to put myself out there to receive something. I don't really want the package or the gift that badly, I realise. I would rather have people think well of me, not show them my weakness, my sickness, my disease. I would rather wait and do it my way, expending much more effort just to avoid being seen as I am. That's just stupid pride and it has cost me dearly over and over again. Hopefully, this time I learned something. When God brings an opportunity or a gift to me, I will not hide behind my door, self-conscious and afraid, but boldly step into the open and receive that most wondrous thing that I have been waiting for, in whatever state I find myself in. It is worth it. I don't want to miss the chance again. Good receivers have to leave their comfort zone.

This is a picture of me saying "no" to the camera in my bathrobe.

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun. I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading. One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others). Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding. Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity. In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007. “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’ Consider but a sampling o

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim

outWORD by Matte Downey

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Names of God

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

comedic timing