Sometimes I want to write so bad it makes me cry but I can’t get it out so it just sits there and rots.

Sometimes I think that the acids in my life just corrode the hell out of the wires that hold my thoughts up and then they just become skeletons instead of scaffolding.

Sometimes I think writing publicly is the most pretentious thing you could ever do…but then again, it’s kinda like talking to the mirror but you know that at least someone out there might be able to relate and be comforted by it. Or maybe they will just get annoyed when they try and google something and one of your blogs happens to have something to do with what they are looking for and they just get annoyed because all the search comes up with is your lameass opinion and a random Wiki article. 

I was reading an article about this group of people who deem themselves activists for the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  They seem to be running their campaign on an undefined word. What do they mean by religion? Do they mean the structural, institutionalized religion that has been grotesquely mutated by the modern day church? If so, go right ahead. Jesus was and always will be the most anti-religious person there ever was. Nowhere did he call for the hundreds of random, man made traditions and holidays, never did he call for any of the wars or atrocities that are and have been committed in the name of religion. These are things we all should stand against, theists or non theists. They say religions kills - man kills. They say religion is racist (that was the ever clever Mr. Dawkins) - man is racist. They hate religion because of things man does-, which is funny because man (themselves) is who they actually worship, so it's like they are hating who they hold in the highest esteem. It's funny that such applauded people, people who deem themselves as brighter than the rest, are so contradictory and ignorant.

 What I am deeply bothered by, and fear, is  when people see 'freedom from religion' they think of these things and think thats what believing in god calls for. Would they ever think that god would certainly want us to have freedom from religion and have security in a relationship with Him instead? Probably not. For someone who is barely even interested in getting to know christ, things like this just push them even farther away, because it takes a bit more work than most people are willing to do to actually uncover the truth. It's very easy to listen to someone that has a Ph.D telling you that believing in God is unscientific and that there is no proof for it, and that we are all just sheep believing in a giant spaghetti monster. Immediately people take all the bad things they know about religion, all the crappy sunday school they were forced to go to, or the bumper sticker christians they know and  form an opinion thats hard to get away from. It is a lot harder to actually challenge it and research how much proof there actually is and how hollow and pointless that argument is.  I fear people think that being a christian and having Faith or even believing in God somehow condones the pedophilic priests, the killings in the name of god, the crusades, the elitism, the banning from societies that church and religion has often been tied too. This freedom from religion group pompously struts around, asserting that christians all believe blindly and unscientifically, which is laughable, especially if you've ever debated or listened to a christian / athiest debate. They make a point to prey on human pride that drives us to reject conformity, they are full of charming sarcasm and wit and they are like the cool kid at the party - they exude confidence and intelligence, but inside they are just scared little boys (and girls) who desperately do not want anyone to find out that they can't look themselves in the eyes in the mirror.

 I am struggling with righteous anger over how those of us who believe in god are being defamed, I wish I could truly let god do his work here instead of getting so angry about it. God calls us to love one another (which I am clearly having a hard time doing with this) and thats what believing in him and Jesus Christ allows us to do. There is nothing wrong, or weak in believing in a higher power, something that is outside of us- we as humans (each and every single one of us) are physically and emotionally made to take what is outside of us and bring it within, in order for us to live. We intake food, air and relationships and education, all to live. There are no self-sustained people. There should be no shame for is to invite God/ Jesus into our lives in order for us to Live. There should only be shame in running around the country spreading lies and untruths which have been rebutted time and again to no avail and ignoring anything that says anything contradictory to that which gives you a feeling of power, warranted or not. People like that only make themselves look ridiculous, ignorant and vulnerable and one day they'll realize that, hopefully it won't be too late.

Have you figured out what your (or your kids') Halloween costume will be this year?  What's it going to be?

I'm not dressing up this year, but my costume for the last few years was kinda cool. I'd don a silk plum coloured spaghetti strap slip dress that went down to my ankles, the borders were black velvet and it's pretty gothic looking,  and then I wore fishnet stockings up my arms, stiletto's, and I'd intertwine leaves and sticks in my hair, slap on alot of dark makeup and carry around a pomegranate. Who was I? I think only a few people ever really guessed, and I unfortunately don't have the pictures anymore (thats the thing with non-hard copy pictures, they always get lost somehow), but I was Persephone, goddess of the underworld, mother natures daughter.

If I ever do go out again (which I'm not sure about, because since I've become Christian it seems rather hypocritical, even though it's all in fun), I will probably find another slip-type dress in a champagne colour and wear big clear coloured beads and swarovski crystal type things around my neck, then make a big paper mache olive (ambitious) and put it in my hair and be a martini.

Why is Free Will a gift from God? Seems to me it's often more of a curse. He knows we'll more often than not choose what goes against His nature, inviting evil into our lives. Is it to save us from becoming robots? Without it we would not have creativity, love, inspiration, curiosity. What a double edged sword that one is, although the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that He gave it to us as a gift of love. I mean, you could give someone a beautiful home baked cake and a bouquet of fresh hand-tied roses, a beautiful gift with good intentions, but we could eat too much cake and get sick and cut our fingers on the thorns. It seems that no matter what God gives us we manage to mess it up somehow. Honestly, I think of us humans as perpetual puppy dogs, always soiling the carpet but being loved for it anyways.

Another thing I've been wondering about Free Will, what are the limits of God being able to control that. I know He could do anything if he wanted, like stop all the bad stuff that's going on, but the Christian explaination is that He won't step on our Free Wills - like the genocides that are going on, thats the choice of those leaders in that country, or the abuse of children, that's the choice of those parents, etc.But how much control do we have over our own Free Will's? Like, if it were up to me and how I wanted things back when I was 20, I would be married to my first real boyfriend. That was my will. But it wasn't God's obviously, so he was stepping on my Free Will wasn't he? How come he steps in sometimes and sometimes He doesnt? And what about things like, praying for others. I have been feverently praying for M to quit smoking, because among other reasons there is a high cancer rate in his family and it's just getting ridiculous. But he's not stopping, and I was thinking thats because thats his free will to do so. But why isn't God stepping in there? Does M have to be aware of the need to change before God does anything about it? What's the point in praying for anyone at all, ever, if it isn't in their own hearts to change and God can't step over that line?  

And then there is the forgiveness thing- I repeatedly ask for forgivness for the fact that I can't seem to shut my mouth when people are gossiping about others, or when I have a slanderous opinion to spout, and although He does forgive me, sometimes I wonder what the point of me asking for forgiveness is for in the first place because I'm just going to go ahead and do it five minutes later. I mean forgiveness has to be geniunely felt to be heard right, how can you geniunely feel something you are fully aware that you will do anyways. Like how can you ask for forgiveness for lust over someone who is not your partner, when you know full well that there will probably be other times in your life where you will lust again over someone else? It's almost like we should save them up and then ask for one big forgiveness or something, because doesn't God just get so frusterated with the redundancy?

I'm slowly learning why I need to be forgiven in the first place, slowly becoming more humble and realizing that as an imperfect person I can't expect to live out eternity in a perfect place, it'd be like a fly in a glass champagne. I guess I'm just wondering about the futility of it all.

I'm wondering what everyones take on these things are, I know there are no solid answers.

You know it's cold in your office when you keep jumping every time something freezing brushes your skin and you realize it's your own damn hand.

I’ve discovered a new personality type.

This is someone who I will refer to as an ‘Employer’. This extraordinarily high-maintenance person has a manicurist, pedicurist, massage therapist, tailor, dog walker, housekeeper, physiotherapist, uber-hairstylist, personal trainer and life coach, all at their beck and call at all times of the day and night. They probably have a lawyer on hand too, just in case something goes wrong with one of their other ‘employee’s. (On a side note, I always wonder about the people who threaten “I’ll call my lawyer!”, I mean, does everyone have a lawyer? Aren’t there people like me out there who if they said that, would have to turn around and whip out the phonebook and get crackin on the yellow pages?)

Anyways, people who unwittingly come into contact with this Employer personality are often hapless, innocent people, who are just doing their jobs or are simply nice people, when all of a sudden they find themselves a literal servant for this stranger. The Employer is very good at being charming, playing a damsel (or the masculine version thereof) in distress, and will be your best friend in .5 seconds if they think you can do something for them or cater to them in some way.  The only way to avoid this person is by not returning their calls, something that will most certainly get you on the voo-doo list.

A woman I work with is the epitome of the Employer. She has an army of all of the above mentioned professionals, and just recently tried to ‘hire’ another, but the woman was smart enough and began screening her calls shortly before or after the 5^th call in the last week that  my co-worker  had made to her. This person works for a university and much to my coworkers surprise, is not solely devoted to serving just her and her needs, and has now been written off as an ‘idiot’ and other harsher expletives. Employers have a very tough life, because everyone disappoints them and ‘nobody wants to help them’ etc etc. It’s people like these that make me understand why people of stature centuries ago had like 5 maids and a butler for just themselves.

At the moment, my coworker has another coworker working out the itinerary that she should follow for her vacation, including what she should wear. Granted, this is something that the girl may want to do, but it just emphasizes my point. And this poor girl will be employed to do various other tasks and provide other types of coaching.

 The reasons are unclear as to why this personality exists- half of me thinks that she really can’t take care of herself, and the other half of me thinks its because she thinks people owe her that. Or maybe it’s a deep rooted self confidence thing where she doesn’t think she can take care of herself so she leans heavily on others. Or maybe she’s just lazy.

 I actually had fair warning by the previous roommate to this coworker that it would be a part-time job trying to bolster this woman’s confidence and help her balance her life. I am not very patient with people like this so I was pretty wary of the situation, but I find most of the time I can ignore it pretty well.

Yet as I write, my coworker has just finished being frazzled and stressed about something she couldn’t find online  and I jump in and start helping her look for what she needed and then after about 10 minutes of getting her organized I realized something- I’d been hired.

A couple weeks ago I finished reading a book that I've read a couple times before, called The Passion of Artemisia, which I got for $7.00 in a bargain bin. It's about a feminist painter in Italy in the 1500's who painted shockingly realistic portraits of biblical and mythological women. By realistic I mean that she was able to actually paint nude women who modelled for her, whereas the most men artists were only allowed to paint from young boys who modelled for them and they had to make up the rest.  The book had a romanticism about it that really had nothing to do with romance, kind of hard to explain really. I guess maybe I fancied myself identifying with Artemisia on some level, being an artist-in-my-head and totally relating to her the thrill that she got out of painting.

Anyways, I was under the impression that the book was loosely based on fact, but last night I was flipping through an old college textbook of a friend of mine and it was on Women Painters up to the 1950's, and I came across a whole section on this previously (in my mind) fictional character. It was so cool to realize that all these things that happened to her in the book actually happened to her in real life, and I was able to see the actual portraits that were the focus of her career when the book took place.  Plus then I didn't think the author made up a really corny name of a woman artist ( come on, Artemisa? hee!) So now she's my real hero, one of the first women to actually make a living by being a painter, despite the fierce opposition and obstacles she faced. She painted women with true, hard emotion, not just passive doe-eyed blank stares, she painted them real. I don't usually like this style of art at all, I find it is usually boring and I definetly prefer abstract art to this, but check out the 'lets get this thing done' look on Judith's face here:

And here's the  Wiki link.

Lately, the moon has been a complete source of wonder for me. Every day this week it has been spectacular. At first it looked like a perfect silver sliver, then morphed into a lucky charms marshmellow, then it looked like a fat slice of mandarin orange and last night it looked like it was slightly embarassed. I haven't seen a truly pink moon in a long time and it was just so cool, plus it inspired one of my favourite songs by Nick Drake (Pink Moon), which has been going through my head ever since. What was cool was that it set every night, it was only in my view of the sky for about 2 hours, which was neat because that seemed to fit well with how heavy and plump it looked. The pinkness of it just seemed to emphasize all the mottled dark spots on it and it just seemed so ethereal. I wonder why sometimes it sets and sometimes it doesnt? I wish I could have taken a picture.

Another birthday has come and gone and it was pretty good. Very low key, as per usual- nothing like the rowdy cabbage patch parties and bowl-a-rama's in days of yore. I am now in the next age bracket, you know when you take a survey or something and the age options are 19-25- I'm now in the next one. But thats really the only different thing about being 26, except now I have the bad skin I was afraid of having when I was a teenager (how does that work?) and I don't get carded so much anymore. M got me a giant canvas to paint on, which was cute because he remembered how I'd said months ago that I've always wanted to paint on a big ole canvas with thick red paint. I'm not sure if this will be red, but I'll work on something, I may even do some preliminary sketches and everything. We'll see though, there is a lot of pressure with such a big expanse of space, it's about 4 x 4. He also got me a floor easel, it's a nice one and it has a space to keep my brushes etc in it. I think it's cool that he knows how much I need to paint and get re-creative. People at work were really cute, they decorated my desk and got me a cake etc. It's nice to work in a place where people acknowledge occassions like that, plus I had to wear a 'birthday girl' pin, which I didn't mind at all.

 I also got the game Black & White 2, for my computer. It's actually really hard to figure out and I'm in confusion as to why there is no comprehensive user guide that comes with it, or online- the online stuff I can only find 'tips' and excitement about how great the game is. And in order to play my new game, I also had to get a new video card for my computer, so I put it on our credit card. Wee! Oh and I went shopping and got a couple pairs of pants (which I can't wear as they are unhemmed) and two new shirts (which are still too big) and a couple new bras (which are definetly a different size than i'm used to..jeez..). So thats taken care of at least, I'm really quite poor now and I'm anxious to replenish my bank account a bit. It's amazing how much stress a stupid thing like money can cause you, whether you have it or not.

Tonight is the first Alpha meeting of the season, and this time me and M are facilitating one. I am looking forward to it, but I need to review the material. I remember liking it enough, sometimes there were some good insights, but I remember wondering why they didn't teach more of God's love, and how they kind of bang you over the head with the whole Jesus thing. I mean, people that go there are usually believers, because they are most comfortable with it, but even still, if ever an unbeliever comes (which I pray they do), I'd really want to make them as absoloutely comfortable as possible, ensuring that they were okay with asking as many questions as they'd like and knowing that it's all okay. I mean thats the reason I'm doing Alpha anyways, because I think it's vitally important that questions are encouraged, I think thats the only thing that will make church, as we know it today, relevant. 

Question of the day, if I want the holy spirit in me, and I want Jesus to work within me, and thats what's truly in my heart- why is it so hard? Like, God knows thats what my heart wants, so why is it always a constant struggle to get that into focus? Maybe I need to get some other stuff out of the way first. I'll let you know when I get the answer.

I am blessed.

I have a job that has vacation time, so that I can take a day off whenever I want. I work in a clean, nice environment where nobody abuses me, I am not breathing in toxic substances, I get paid a fair amount of wage, with health benefits and I'm doing something where I can see the results.

I can walk down the street during the day and not be afraid of being attacked, discriminated against or bombed. I can go into any store I choose and by whatever I want to, whenever I want too (like a very cute acid wash khaki courderoy skirt, for only $10.00). I live in a big, beautiful, respected country and I am proud to be Canadian.

I have the pride of my mom and the freedom of going out with her and her friends tonight.  I have the love and acceptance of a very large extended family, via M, a man who loves me very much.

I have food in my belly, and more where that came from, and it is fresh and healthy and good for me. I have a house that is big enough for two and contains enough stuff for it to get messy. I have a new bed to sleep in, I have locks on my doors, I have the security of warm arms around me.

I have people who respect me, I have people who vouch for me and care for me. I have a brain that is capable of anything and everything, I have talents to nourish and lessons to learn. I have the ability to physically do anything I want to do, walk down the street, climb a mountain, rollerblade, play badminton.

I have lived and learned through another year, monday is my birthday and I will be all of 26 years old. I am not where I thought I'd be, but I am where I am supposed to be. I have the strength of God above me, the love of Jesus beside me and the power of the Holy Spirit within me. 

I am blessed.