get offa my cloud

i have been a mixed bag lately. really wonderful times of contemplation and enjoyment and snappy, crappy attitudes usually when i'm forced to interact with any human being on the face of the earth. dang. can't everybody just leave me ALONE! it's not really that bad. i love people, just not in my space, face or vicinity...

i am choosing to withdraw from the computer before noon for the duration of lent, so that i am more able to embrace other life-giving things. like reading all of the damn books i'm supposed to for school that i have been avoiding like the plague... i finished a class yesterday as i sent in my paper - it felt so good and freed me up to begin two others. one is enjoyable, one not so much. hermeneutics. damn. i did this all 20 years ago. why do i have to do it again? this text is far more life giving than where i was 20 years ago, but it still screams BACKWARDS to me. i just need to get past it and have it done with, right? so that's on my list and i'm enjoying therese de liseaux, a story of a soul. although i do get a little tired of her naivety and indulgent childhood at times. i guess i'm just jealous. anyway - i spent a couple of solid hours with my nose in the texts this a.m. and it felt good.

then i took a shower and prepared my living room for yoga. i have had this dvd for quite some time, still in the shrink wrap - yoga for the rest of us, produced by pbs and it was wonderful. although sun salutations make me feel like i'm square-dancing in junior high and can't figure out what the hell i'm supposed to be doing and i'm three steps behind the class and getting more frustrated as each call is made. i know i will get it one day, but there has got to be an easier way for my learning skills than trying to watch the screen, see my feet, breathe (dammit i keep holding my breath!) and RELAX! other than that i loved it and can see it really bring me a lot of health and wholeness.

i know that when i am able to memorize the sun salutation poses i will enjoy them as much as the 80 year old women on the tape do - it's so cute!

i made myself a healthy lunch and enjoyed a bit more therese while i turned the heat on in the office. i opened up my facebook and found a message from a guy i went to college with and it has rattled my cage and made me want to lash out at him and all of the rest of the cave men still trapped in that ugly theology.

here's what he said:

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.

I was just kinda glancing over your profile today and noticed that your byline is " I am a storyteller of redemptive truth". Some space above it is a note to run away from people who claim to have truth. So now I'm stuck: Should I run away from you or towards you? :)

UGH! the actual quote that he is referring to is this:

"You should always follow the one who seeks truth and run away from the one who has found it". - Andre Gide

sigh. of course he could just be curious and trying to ask about emergent things without coming right out and talking about it (god forbid it makes it through the grape vine he is conversing with a heretic...) but i instantly assume he is trying to bait me and i want to launch into a defense of myself, having found my voice and a place in the kingdom where i can use it and how their small minded truth damages their souls and the souls of all who follow after them...

and i just can't shake the re-re-rehearsing i'm doing in my head about my response. i just want to blow more air into the balloon and slide the scalpel in so subtly that he doesn't even realize that he is being forced to confront thoughts spiritually that he's never, ever considered. but then i remind myself that i am not the holy spirit and it's not my job to un-convert him... and then i just want to go all feminista on his wall and vent my spleen for all of the neanderthal ways i have had to endure for decades...

breathe... breathe...

hope lent is finding you all well today... breathe...

ps - any good comebacks will be rewarded with my eternal gratitude!