(no subject)

[2eclipse]

everything is squared away for my graduation.
the regalia is ordered.
the payment plan is put together (and mostly finished)
the transcripts are sent and accepted at wesley.
and my folks have agreed to drop a quarter by the library.
ross and i paid my library fines, but apparently they decided to charge me interest at the last moment. it would cost us more to mail them a quarter than the quarter itself.

i had something of a disturbing day yesterday.
first it was snowing. on easter. i'm not a fan.
second, ross failed to understand that it was important to my happiness that he go to church with me on easter and xmas. i don't ask him to go with me most of the time. he has his own faith and i respect that. but we didn't communicate adequately and he wished he had gone with me later.
we DID have an excellent theological discussion afterward...but it was an upsetting one for me, because sometimes he knows me better than i know myself. he thinks i need a church that is a spiritual haven, not some place i have to fight to get accepted. sure any church i belong to is going to have difficulties, but he doesn't like the energy at white bear and thinks i shouldn't have to go in already fighting. no matter how much i like the associate pastor, that doesn't change the attitude of the congregation....and i mostly agree with him and that hurts some.
he thinks i am trying to be everything and am therefore not getting my spiritual needs met. he is probably right.
i also missed my parents and that made me mad. i feel like i am encouraging my mother every time i admit that i miss her. it is a problem.
my windsheild broke on my car and while it IS 100% insured it still sucks to have to deal with it.
i'm worried about madeleine because she seems...just not her self. not as pesty and demanding. then this morning i discovered a bump on her gum. i wonder if it is an absess. i am going to make an appt. with the vet for her.

my jeans ripped, which means i need to buy new jeans, which got me thinking about clothes shopping and how i don't like how i fit in clothes right now...
really, there was just a lot of small stuff making me grumpy. i got over it..but then it got worse.

ross and i watched a movie that really upset me. a perfect world with kevin costner and clint eastwood. the first part of it was great, but the last part of it was so...human and painful and it really wrecked the happiness of the first half of the movie. i wound up upset all over again and it was more work to get myself out of it. i couldn't get that sad, upsetting ending out of my head. it was too real. and i couldn't do anything about it. i have the best, most understanding husband in the world. he gave me the space i needed and the affection i needed and then we enjoyed the rest of the evening together...

my dreams last night...reflected the movie, and my worry over madeleine...and the child of some friends. the re-occurring theme was that i was responsible and bad things kept happening beyond my control. from cedar ending up alone by himself in my parent's basement with the lights out to 15 small helpless cats outside my house with no one else to feed them....it was not a good sleep situation last night.

Comments

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

you are exactly right and i actually have a very ecumenical philosophy....
however in terms of what meets my needs? it is uniquely methodist.
i feel let down every time i go to a lutheran church (with my in-laws)and they've changed the words to my favorite hymns. it's not that i don't think God is the same or would be understanding. it is that _I_ am so thoroughly methodist it's hard for me to be completely happy in another denomination - even if i am somewhat happy. so what that means is that i will likely have to drive more than 20 minutes to find one i like. and i'm spoiled by being from an area with so many methodist churches that i pretty much had my pick within a very short distance. i want those hymns i'm familiar with. i want the cross central to worship. i want congregational singing with no cantors, and a focus on becoming more holy (which episcopals and other denominations may agree with, but don't emphasize as much as methodists do). really that's the thing for me. i want traditional music and methodist emphases in my worship services....i'm picky. and preferably no projection screens of any kind. the irritating thing is that even within your chosen denomination there's a lot of room for contemporary vs. traditional...blah blah blah.
there i'm done whining now.
:/

i think it is GREAT that you are so open-minded. when it comes to my friendships, i am too...but when it comes to worship, i have to do it mostly the way it means the most to me.

[mamaursula.livejournal.com]

I am totally down with the music thing. I hate the Episcopalian hymnal...booooooring. I think my next venture into a new church with be Baptist, I can see myself swaying in the choir, I can get behind the witnessing thing too. I'm just way to enthusiastic for my own good.

I never really paid attention to your profile, I feel kind of dumb now, of course you know about God ;-)

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

bah, it's all good.
i think it's really great that you're doing some pretty heavy thinking of your own on these issues.
i find myself constantly fascinated by the tension created between respect for other people's beliefs and adherance without betrayal to your own. sometimes the best understanding of God comes from holding two seeming contraditions in tension with one another (for example the trinity vs. one God) rather than from trying to stick a firm label on things that puts understanding into one camp or another. it is never a bad thing to be reminded of that.
one of my favorite episcopalians is vale797 who is a priest in tennesee and one of the scariest ventrue i know. :)

[cuddlejunkie1.livejournal.com]

See I like the Episcopal hymnal, but I grew up with it. Your post interested me because I would love to find a church down here that I would like to attend. But have yet to find an episcopal one. I think the one the major problems maybe that I want to find a church exactly like the one a grew up with. I can't really put my finger on what that is but part of it is the youth services, and the community aspect. We would have St. Patrick's day event every year and big fall fair, things like that. Our minister (the man who married me was great) He could talk to adults about religon and he could talk to kids about religon. I have very distinct memory of him starting up a sermon holding up a Shera doll. At my wedding he incorporated Harry Potter. THere were just certain things that I liked about my church in MA that I would love to find down here in VA.

I have other issues currently with the Episcopalians, but that would be for another post. If I can ever word it right I will post it.

[mamaursula.livejournal.com]

Much love to vale797 one day I'll remember to friend him!

I have had a lot of time to come to think about this, a very long story short, I was raised in a Christian "cult", so I had a lot of reconcilliation between the things I learned as a child and the things that I experienced as a young adult and later. The one thing that has stayed with me all these years happened in High School, someone asked me what religion I was and I said "Christian" (which was really the only thing I could answer) and the girl looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "We're *all* Christians." I realized at that time that a) she was an ignorant twat and b) being Christian was enough for me.

My quest for spiritual growth through accepting that I cannot know everything, so I'll just look for the things I can understand and act accordingly. My job especially requires me to be more open to discussions on faith, since many of my patients face life and death decisions and I have to listen and affirm their faith without judging it or them. I'm not the one they have to face on the other side, so I'm sure not going to tell them their wrong on this side. Lots of time to think...maybe too much ;-)