Category Archives: Faith
My Father-In-Law the Double Doc
My father-in-law graduated from Fuller Seminary with his Ph.D today.Â? I am very proud of him.
But…
I am much prouder that last night at his hooding ceremony in the CATS program, he wore the cat ears that I sent him as a graduation present.Â? He wore them on stage, during his speech, and for pictures afterwards.Â? Bishop Egertson, his guest, also wore them in pictures and around.
Let’s just say that I am *quite* amused.
Life With Horrendous Pain
So we’re getting this stuff in Big Sky Country called r-a-i-n and it’s coming in the form of multiple fast-moving thunderstorms — the kind that are triggered by rapid pressure changes. This means… the lovely wonderful rain that we’re getting is triggering really bad migraines for me which are hitting me in the face and head. The Imitrex and Trimitex (Imitrex with Aleve) will moderate out the migraine so that I don’t have the nausea and dizziness but I still have some pretty acute pain. Add in the lovely jaw pain from the TMJ which is probably also triggered by the weather and you have a pretty potent combination of pain.
Yesterday, I managed to spell the pain a bit. Today was to the point where I was either going to take the pain or I was going to start screaming because it was so awful and that was 7 hours of my 8 hour shift. The last 45 minutes of my shift were spent with me in tears repeating Philippians 4:13 to myself to get myself through. I was crabby and I seriously had to remove myself from my work area a few times to avoid screaming at co-workers.
So why don’t I just go home? Because it’s not like that’s going to do anything for me either. THERE. IS. NOTHING. I. CAN. DO. FOR. THE. PAIN. Seriously. I accidentally took twice the safe dose of Aleve today between the two tablets I took at 10 am for my jaw and the Trimitex I took around 1 for a migraine that came on. I can’t do anything at home that I can’t do at work and at least at work, I get paid to be there.
I have a dentist appointment tomorrow at 8 am (!!!!). Please pray that they can do something for me to at least kill the jaw pain so I only have one part of my head exploding instead of two.
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Sunday
So I did make it down to Church of the Incarnation for worship and Father Tim welcomed me very warmly when I walked in. (His welcome alone made the 2 hour drive worth it.) Worship was awesome and if I had actually been feeling like solid food was a good thing, I could have stayed for the parish potluck. Alas… the migraine wasn’t allowing me to do much eating so I made do with an oatmeal cookie from $tarbuck$.
I also got a Wal-Mart run in (which made me feel like my blood sugar had plummeted — thank God for Lipton Raspberry tea) as well as a few other errands before heading back up.
Sacred Places
I’ve been downloading some podcasts from CBC lately and one of them was talking about sacred places. (It’s the “Best of BC” episode from May 10th.) It was interesting to hear the author of the book talking about the concept of it and how it differs for each person. They mentioned Haida Gwai as one that would be pretty obvious and places like the Parliament Lawn and folk festivals as places that wouldn’t be so obvious. So… my sacred places are:
[+] the redwood forests of northern California
[+] Greene Point Rapids (where my grandparents used to have their cabin) in British Columbia
[+] the Sweet Grass Hills
[+] a quiet church with the sunlight streaming through the stained glass
Where are YOUR sacred places?
Finally Finished the Book
I just finished Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett and reading it was like consuming a piece of fudge — I had to go slowly to savor every part of it. Her writing is like her speaking (duh) and she is an incredible wordsmith, making every word count in a way that caused me to slow down my reading speed so that I wouldn’t miss anything she said. Having been a semi-faithful listener of hers, I could hear her saying the words on the page (OK… maybe that was due to one of the shows on my iPod being her reading from her book) but her way of speaking is so unique that only she could phrase things the way she does.
The premise of the book (and her radio show) is that speaking of faith is something that transcends language and that what we know of someone’s beliefs is what we see manifested in that person. The Muslims she has interviewed are radically different than the Muslims we see plastered all over the news when it comes to speaking of Iraq or Afghanistan. She parses the things that we see in journalism (as she is trained as a journalist) and talks about how misleading much of the normal reporting is. She wants to promote understanding and much of that is done in first person interviews with people like Jimmy Carter, Ingrid Matson (first female president of the Islamic Society of North America), Leila Ahmed, Bruce Feiler, Sister Joan Chittister, Jaroslav Pelikan, Joe Carter (by far, my favorite show), and Richard Mouw. (By the way, I think everyone needs to download and listen to the conversation with Richard Mouw in light of the recent California Supreme Court ruling. It shows both sides of the issue very gracefully.)
The best part of the book for me (and it was all wonderful) was the last chapter in which she describes her struggles with depression very exquisitely. It was one of those passages (very short too in the grand scheme of the book) where she just captures the essence of what living with it is like — the numbness, the inability to feel joy, the thought that you might never really feel anything again… It was only maybe 5 pages of the 200 pages of the book but I just really resonated with it and it is probably the most real and accurate description that I have ever seen.
I highly recommend the book to anyone who approaches their faith intellectually in addition to emotionally.
I Really Should Update More…
I haven’t updated because I’ve been getting home late from work, exhausted, and needing to zone out. Most of what’s been on my mind lately is work stuff and as I really don’t want to be dooced, my work life is separate from this blog.
So… here’s the scoop on my activities lately.
[+] After having a craptastic week culminating in my glasses breaking that Friday (and having to be duct-taped together so I could drive home from work), I chose to spend last weekend in Great Falls getting my glasses repaired (and replaced thanks to my wonderful in-laws) and hiding from whoever seems to be putting the pins in my voodoo doll of life. It was great to get AWAY from the Hi-Line for a few days and I’m thankful to have family down there with whom I could stay.
[+] I attended worship at Church of the Incarnation last Sunday and enjoyed having a worship service where I could be anonymous and also not be intimately knowledgeable about what was going on. I am truly Episcopal/Anglican at heart and while they used some different musical settings than I remember from my church in San Jose, it was still really wonderful and familiar worship. Kudos also to Rev. Tim who preached one of the better sermons I’ve heard in an Episcopal church and managed to take the week’s passage in a different direction than I’ve heard before with that particular text. The church has a healing/intercessory prayer time at the end of the service and knowing how much I needed it, I went up and participated… and managed NOT to cry. (People laying on hands and praying for me usually reduces me to tears — it’s a testimony to the power of prayer and of what the Spirit is doing in me but it can also be kind of embarrassing.)Â? I kind of wish I could head down there more often because it was such a great experience in terms of worship for me.
[+] I attended my first barrel race last Sunday afternoon.Â? Being a sissified city girl, I’d never seen it and I managed to not look like a complete idiot to those who are knowledgeable about it by looking it up on Wikipedia and also asking some of my Montana relatives about it.Â? So why did I go?Â? Well… one of my co-workers is a barrel racer and I asked if I could come watch.Â? I actually enjoyed myself and it looks incredibly fun though it’s not something I’d ever do.
[+] I discovered a new podcast while trying to find something more wholesome to listen to at work than Lime n’ Violet.Â? (I have no problem with the divas but it’s hard to explain to the people around me that I’m snickering at comments about German man-shaving.)Â? It’s called “Catholic in a Small Town” and it’s about the lives of a Catholic couple in a small town (duh!) in Georgia and how they’re raising their kids, viewing their faith, interacting with media (especially movies).Â? I highly recommend it and I’d link to it if I could find a website of theirs that worked!Â? (Ahem Mac and Katherine…)
[+] On the subject of Catholic things, people who are Catholic/know Catholics/want to be Catholic need to listen to last week’s episode of Speaking of Faith.Â? Seriously, it was brilliant.
[+] Last Saturday, I decided to scout out where Church of the Incarnation was (mostly so I’d know how to get there and where to find parking) and when I saw the neighborhood, I decided to take a walk down the street to the other interesting looking church… which turned out to be St. Ann’s Cathedral.Â? I went in, blessed myself, and knelt in one of the pews to pray the daily prayers I usually say in the car on the way to work as well as some special ones for a co-worker facing surgery.Â? There were others in there praying and I thought this was pretty cool.Â? After I finished and had sat for awhile, I decided to look around (mostly to see if there were any candles that one could light) and saw that people were going into a back room and kneeling in front of a screen.Â? Oh… yeah… Saturday afternoon is when people go for Confession (OK… technically called “Reconciliation” now) so I understood then why the church was so full.Â? As it would probably take a few hours for the priest to hear my confession (mostly because it’s been like 9 years since my last one in the Catholic Church), I decided to leave the nice worshippers to their shriving.