blog overboard

is what happens when i'm buzzed.

anyway my friend over at stuff christian culture likes posted this on her facebook and i'm kind of obsessed with it.

check it out.

nothing has made me this happy

probably for the past at least 8 years.

no, not even my kids being born.

flo posted this link on her blog, and i am stealing it. i do that a lot.

but this, this is more than i could have ever dreamed of.

jesus

last night i missed jesus.



its weird to be in the absence of god, or goodness. this has never happened in my life. i have never felt like i was in the presence of anyone who had the absence of these things.i can see god, i can see life, i can see goodness, i can see hope in EVERYONE. when we say we dont believe in god anymore, if he is real despite our claims, does he move away? does he leave us to ourselves completely? i dont know how involved i believe the higher power is to begin with, but i believe he is near... i believe there is a god, higher power, whatever we must label it... how involved it/he/she is in our lives is what i question. what i do know is that i can see things in people, in my own opinion (which doesn't actually mean anything), that look like life, god, hope, light, goodness... and in the absence of these things is only a desert.

the desert isnt good for my heart. its left me thirsty, hot and far from any sign of life. im like a cactus who's water supply is low, its there in me. there will always be water in me but i need an outside source to fill me again, bring me into bloom. please dont mistake this to mean i feel i need 'god' to do this, i just mean i need people.

all of a sudden i find myself searching, reaching, grasping for life. running after hope wherever i can find it. i want to stand next to the light i see in people and get bright again, i want their warm hearts to defrost my own. i like the people who believe in jesus, their hearts seem the warmest for me right now. i dont know what that means. the least i know it means is that it makes me miss jesus.

baby buddha

thats my favorite name for him.

The Boy With Divine Powers

dont even ask me what i think about him, because i dont know.

i love jesus.

i really do.

when i read the bible... which is beyond rarely.. but none the less, when i do i love who he was. i love the way he loved, i love the way he challenged religious minds, i love the way he lived with conviction... whether i believe he was right is irrelevant to my life as well as my perception of him. him being God or not does not change the love i have for the person he was or the things he did. i have heard so many people say that if he's not God then he's a liar and not someone they would want to follow... i dont understand the logic because from what we can read of him, him as a liar is greater than most of us being as truthful as we can be. the way i see jesus, i know, is very different than most of my christian friends and family.. but i dont feel that its any less. knowing who he was has changed my life.. if seth came to me tomorrow and said he was God i wouldn't love him any different and i wouldn't discount all he has done as my dear friend... he is one of the most amazing people i have ever known and the way he loves is beyond what i feel my heart can grasp... if he believed he was God, i wouldn't give a shit.. to be perfectly honest.

that's how i feel about jesus, if he was a crazy person who thought he was God, but loved with that much intensity, that much conviction, and in that much service.. does it really matter?

jesus can be God, he can not be God... either way when i read for myself about the person he was i admire him and want to learn to love like him. i believe that there are few things that i am deeply convicted about for my life and i dont believe that all in all i live a life of spiritual conviction... but i do respect very highly people who live that way in love.

seth and i have become very different these past three years, there's still a lot we do relate on but a lot that we dont...i respect so much the conviction he has for what he believes and how he balances the truth of what it is he believes with how he loves. i have a handful of christian friends that i respect so much because i can see how they truly love in a way that i believe jesus did... which i think is really hard considering his unfriendly message. its hard to balance the part where i go to hell with the part where you love me without trying to make me like you... if that makes sense... and i have some friends who balance that beautifully.

all this to say that despite the fact that i am not a christian, there are people i know who's lives are impacted by his love everyday and they live it out in a way i can admire and i love who jesus was and am blown away that he had so much conviction for what he believed that it took him to his grave. to impact the world for centuries after your death is an amazing accomplishment and something i believe comes from living a life of greatness. i only hope that the impact he has through his people and people like me who loved him can be for peace and love, not hate and bigotry.

soulmate

i have found my spiritual soulmate in deepak chopra.

i just started reading The Book of Secrets: unlocking the hidden dimensions of your life... and its changing my life.

thank you to bryan stupar for posting that video because i finally feel like i'm entering the peace phase of this 3 year struggle to find who or what it is that i really believe in. i feel peace with myself, peace with others, peace with death... just peace with the whole of life. its so crazy that i finally feel this, i think i had actually forgotten what peace even felt like.

its amazing to finally feel like i have a complete bond with another human being, whether i know them or not, as far as my belief system... its been sooooo long since i have connected with someone on that level. not that im actually connecting with him, because i dont know him haha but to just know that i'm not alone and that there is someone who shares the same philosophy as me... there is so much peace there. its amazing to have someone to really learn things from again, like someone to look up to when it comes to this kind of stuff... i haven't felt like i had anyone to look up to spiritually for the past 3 years, maybe longer. i wish everyone would read this book. he is the first person that has given me a reason i can understand for having a sense of what is right and wrong. its not that i had stopped believing in right and wrong, i still do, always have, but i wasn't sure where that definition of it was coming from and when he explains in the book what he believes i was like 'oh... exactly'. i dont believe its coming from the 'holy spirit' or the bible or jesus or even God.

i know this blog is scattered but my mind is just in the middle of being blown.

he is so balanced and i love it... i'm so sick of extreme religion. for me, just the way the average christian person views the world is very extreme and i'm not the kind of person who would be ok with thinking there is no higher power at all or there is no spirit, only science... i've been in the middle trying to understand how to make love and science, ego and selflessness, death and life exist in balance together. he speaks of these things with so much balance that the world looks different. its like everything i have been going through these years has been leading up to this moment, one of what i hope will be many, of clarification and revelation. its so amazing to hear someone talk about love and unity with all humans without attributing it to a religion you are 'supposed' to believe (which actually most religions dont promote unity), its so amazing to hear someone talk about our inner selves, the good and the bad as a whole... without talking like somehow we in our nature are evil or sinful...

this is where i see God, in freedom, in love, in acceptance of who i am with NO condemnation... people would always say there is no condemnation in christ, but i never felt that way around his people. for the first time i feel truly at peace with who i am, what i believe and how that relates to the rest of the world. i feel completely secure.

theif.

i stole this from bryan's blog....



but i just LOVED it... i love love loved deepak chopra and totally agree with everything he said... i'm going to the library to pick up some books of his today.

please watch when you have time and watch all 10 parts.

hope

the avilas came over for dinner last night and travis asked me this:

'why dont you believe in the bible, like do you have list of reasons?'
(way to be intense trav... jay slash)

if you know me, you already know what happened after that...

a whirlwind of questions and thus an intense conversation that because we are parents ;) didn't get to get finished.

anyway during the conversation i said how all my life i've hoped in jesus and when that changed i didnt know where to put my hope. i went through a long time of feeling completely hopeless and terrified. i said that i felt like i was starting to get hope back in the things i've come to believe are true, but that i still feel hopeless a lot... and for some reason i felt really embarrassed that i didn't have something to put my hope in and feel sure of, i felt myself blush when i said i got hopeless. i felt like a sad lonely little girl telling a grown up that i had done something wrong.

all day my heart has ached and i've been on the verge of tears. today was a day that i was living inside my head, a very very loud place on days like this. i do think that i have a small amount of hope, my hope is that God is real and that he is good. that is all that i can believe i can put any hope in but it doesn't make me feel any safer than if i even let that go. then i started to think about if it matters if what you believe is true or not, i mean we can never know but is the point of believing something just that it gives you hope and therefore changes who you are? and should i just choose to believe what seems like the most likely possibility even if none of the religious ones seem very possible? can you just choose to believe what you want? or is belief something that happens to you? i believe that religion is a man made system that is just there for us, to make us feel safe, to feel ok, to feel like we have some purpose. which on one hand can seem foolish... to cling to something just to make yourself feel significant, but on the other hand does that really matter if thats the thing that makes you want to be good and to love?

i dont believe that jesus is God, i dont feel that i could make myself believe that he is, something would have to change in my heart... i dont feel like i need some proof... i just dont feel like i can make myself believe it. but today just made me want that security again. that feeling where you believe something so much you just follow it. it takes a lot for me to follow anything. if i dont find religion and the only answer i have for the rest of my life (that still is not a sure one) is that God is real and he is good, will that be enough to put my hope in to get me through? i feel like i have more hope in humanity than in deity, will that be enough? will i always feel unsafe?

if i could make myself believe in jesus does that mean i'd have to believe the bible? if i believed the bible how would i know what i believed about it? i dont want my life to revolve around a book that i dont even understand... that no one really understands.

i like who i am, i like that i question things and that i think about them for myself.. but sometimes i just want to have a brain that stops at one answer and believes it, whether its true or not, just so i could feel safe. so i could feel bigger, more important.

this is the hardest thing i've faced in my life... trying to understand who God is to me. i dont think i'll ever feel like i've arrived at the answer to that. i do love having hope in humanity, which i never had as a christian, because you are constantly taught not to.... letting go of that has made me see life, relationships, and people all so different than i did before.

i feel smaller than i have ever felt in my life, i feel unsafe and i feel embarrassed that i feel hopeless. i know i contradict myself constantly because i know i dont have any answers.

the only reason i think about this is to find answers, i want answers so i can have hope but i dont believe i can find answers here, only 'best possibilities' and i dont think i can settle for that. i just dont want to feel alone anymore. i think i've felt alone the past year because i dont know anyone who feels the way i do about God and the world, my whole life i had people surrounding me who believed the same thing and now i dont have one. my friends are amazing and i respect everything they believe, i love talking about this stuff but it gets lonely, it gets exhausting, sometimes you just want someone to relate to. this, above all else is what makes me want to move away. i dont know why i think i'll find people who relate to me somewhere else.. who knows. anyway that's not the point.

the point is hope, what is hope? who do we put our hope in? and will i find it again?


deep shit huh?

storybook jesus

so with christmas coming up one of the issues i think about all the time comes up. teaching, or not teaching, arabella about jesus. its hard for me because we are surrounded, i mean really not in any bad way, but surrounded by mostly christians who grew up in christian homes and were taught about jesus on felt. i didn't grow up in a christian home necessarily and i was still taught about jesus through a felt board. while i understand that even if you are taught about him in this way, if your parents are truly showing you who they believe he is in their lives the felt wont be a problem... but is learning about jesus that way necessary at all? the thing is seth and i have talked about when arabella is older how we want to actually talk to her about God/jesus/the bible etc... we wont teach her that the bible is truth and jesus is god. we will teach her what her father believes, what her mother believes and that a lot of people believe a lot of different things about God, that we have to always ask questions about him and see who he is in people and in our lives. its a hard concept to think about teaching and for me, the deepest i'm willing to go is to teach her there is such a thing as God and to try and live out love for right now... even having her pray at bedtime is a stretch for me... its hard for me to see it as a cute innocent thing, sometimes i think it is and sometimes it stresses me out knowing that she is just mimicking me. its not true. i dont want to create a believer that mimics my own. i want to grow strong women who search for God on their own, inspired by the love and hope seth and i have shown them. i dont want to talk about the man that my husband so truly believes is the creator of the universe, the one who came here and become nothing to set him free, i dont want to talk about him in a childish voice saying childish things. i dont want to teach her to talk about jesus because she doesn't know who he is, there's no way at this age that he could be anything but a fairytale and its not cute to me when children talk about God merely repeating the things their parents told them was true. when people tell stories about their children accepting jesus into their hearts it doesnt bring joy to me, it makes me feel really uncomfortable and it makes me wonder why the parent doesn't understand that this was only a child pleasing their parent. maybe someday it will become real, but why fake it now? why not just wait til their minds can at least be made up on their own? i think these days a lot of the shock and awe of just how great Jesus is has been taken away from us and our children.... because in the age of technology and medicine is a man made of felt that lived 2000 years ago really that awe inspiring? whether he's god or not the life he led deserves more from me than to speak of him as if he was drawn to life just like every other character my daughter holds so dear, i can't put him in the toy box with princess belle. i know there always has to be balance, in everything we do... so knowing that i want to teach my daughter who Jesus has been to me, who i believe God is and i want seth to teach her who Jesus is to him and who God is to him... but i wont ask her to mimic me, i wont tell her its "jesus' birthday" this christmas (can you imagine what she'll picture? jesus with a piece of cake on a princess plate with a princess hat on)... and if/when we do i want it to mean something to her not sound like a cute story. i want to teach her that christmas is time to be with your family, time to love and find life in the warmth of your home being filled with family and friends.

*and by the way, do you LOVE how in pretty much every pose on that picture jesus has his hands up like 'what did i do?'

seth showed me...

this today.

i dont believe in the bible necessarily, i dont really know what it means to believe in the bible, because i dont understand all that it says, not even close. i dont believe in living your life according to a book... but i know a lot of people do, a lot of people i'm really close to do, so understand i'm not saying thats bad i just have to say that this isnt me defining what i'm living by or saying the bible says a certain thing in a way to justify what i believe. i choose what i believe not based on the bible and i'm not saying i think this is truly what the bible says, but it makes a whole lot more sense to me than anything i've heard on this subject and i think its interesting. i certainly think if you are going to live your life according to what a book says, you should understand that other people can be living their life according to that same book and be living almost opposite of you... and both could be right, both could be wrong.... i'm saying this because i dont want a bunch of comments of people acting like they know the end all of what the bible 'really says' because its lost on me. if you tell me that you somehow know that what you believe the bible says is the absolute right interpretation, or that its not an interpretation, i wont believe it, cause i dont believe anyone has the right doctrine or has the bible figured out... and i do believe EVERY person who reads the bible is interpreting it, because there is no way to comprehend what you are reading, unless your minds interprets it. you can't be objective.

all of this was inspired by this.

i thought it was hilarious.

religulous

i always liked bill maher but thought he was a little outrageous... but now when i hear him, he sounds a lot like what goes on inside my head. hmm.

i wanna see this

stressssssssful...

so i went to abc this morning, by myself while seth slept in, cause he was in la and got home at 4am...

and usually whether or not i agree with a sermon, they dont really truly bother me. i dont go to church expecting to agree so it doesn't surprise me or make me feel weird when i dont... but today i got a little shocked and it really did bother me.

his talk was about 'protecting marriage' which i'm sure you have all seen around on signs stuck in front yards or up on billboards referring to prop 8... which i'm strongly against... but the fact that i dont agree with his side wasnt even what the issue was. it was more of the fact of how hard he was pressing this view onto every person sitting in that room all while saying some really really inappropriate, disrespectful and hurtful things.

i dont understand in general why this idea of outlawing gay marriage in order to 'protect marriage' really makes sense to anyone. i understand that for a christian church and other religious organizations it goes against what they believe... but that doesn't give them the right to tell other people who they can and cannot love. and as far as protecting marriage... i think things like the bachelor as my friend gabe noted are far more detrimental to the ideas we are forming in our society about marriage than two men or two women who love each other wanting to spend their life together....

some of the points he used to argue this made me so mad because it was just like watching a disease spread as he said words that would only continue to spread prejudice and wrong thinking about how homosexuals are so different from 'us'... like its a war and there are two sides. which is not how it should be....

he said that 'homosexual men are known to be more promiscuous than heterosexual men.'
(this i thought was a prejudice and stereotypical view that i didn't even think people really thought anymore, i mean maybe in the south... but..) and that 'research shows' that even when they are in long term committed relationships they invite more than that one partner into their sexual life, and that this assists in the spread of aids.. and he talked about how a gay couple is not fit to raise children and then went on to relate children being raised by a gay couple to a child raised in a single parent home. he said that if prop 8 is passed 'they will change curriculum in schools to teach children that marriage between two men or two women is ok'....

UM yea they will and THANK GOD... because you know what? people will continue to be gay for as long as the world keeps turning and i hope that if we start teaching children that same sex marriage is 'ok' then not only will children who are gay feel more apt to come out without fear, but over time we can hopefully remove discrimination and the violence that can come along with it from our younger generations...

he also talked about how all sexual intimacy outside of marriage whether gay or straight is wrong... so lets see 'you can't have sex outside of marriage... but you can't get married... so because you are different from me, and i think what i believe is the ultimate truth above what anyone else believes, you shouldn't have sex your whole life, unless you become like me.'

at the end of all of this he said 'we all need to vote because as christians its our responsibility and i can't tell you which way to vote cause its illegal, but i'm pretty sure you know which way i'd like you to vote'. its nice that christians are getting more into voting, i just wish it was because of things more important than the same two issues that they have been clinging to above everything else that wont change in the end anyway....

its very hard to watch someone have that much power. to be one opinion spoken as 'absolute truth' to a thousand people every week... and not only does he have power because hes a guy in front of a crowd, but he's said to be a man of God and that alone gives his words power, and insures that many wont even question for themselves what he tells them. scary.

i love rabbi's

just a heads up- i tried to lace this post with as many links as i could.

marriage counselor M. Gary Neuman went on oprah talking about his book The Truth About Cheating and he talked about the reasons men gave as to why they cheated. the majority of men cheated because there was something missing in their relationship... that they didn't feel appreciated etc. he emphasizes that most men aren't cheating for the sex... then he gives examples of things wives can do to prevent they're men from straying....



a lot of women freaked out saying he was 'blaming women' for men cheating and a lot of them said it is just about the sex. .. this really chapped my ass as i like to say, because it just shocks me that women would first of all feel better about putting the opposite sex in a category where they are feeling-less pigs than understanding that they themselves could have had a part in driving their husbands away and learning how to change that and become better partners. i dont think cheating is excusable, but i refuse to accept this idea that the woman that a cheating man is married to has NO responsibility in the relationship getting to the point where a husband would even think about cheating. that's ridiculous. gary talks about the fact that there are definitely men who cheat because they want to and those are the guys who show no remorse.... but that these are not the majority of the men who do cheat... the majority are men who are normal guys, work all day long take care of their family and want to feel appreciated for that.... and any person who is not appreciated or understood long enough could be easily tempted to make a mistake or do something otherwise out of their character.... i think its soooooo good that he's trying to teach women what men need, its not about who's fault the cheating is, because yes in the end its always the one who cheats fault that they actually took action, but its about giving your partner what they need so they dont get alienated over time. ... because in a lot of cases that leads to a terrible mistake. lets fix it before it happens is what he is trying to say and if we want to do that then we have to create healthy marriages where partners feel appreciated by each other.. and he only talked about men that day but he is writing a book about why women cheat too. anyway. it just makes me annoyed that so many women can't focus on the whole point of what he's saying, that our men need our approval and our appreciation just as much as we need theirs and if they dont have it they might look elsewhere for it, because they're human. like us. the thing is too that most the women who are angered by it are women who have been cheated on, but its like.... can they really not see that that is just the heart speaking from bitterness? not wanting to admit that things you did lead him to that place? take the advice and make your next relationship better, healthy...

when you're in a relationship you are never alone, everything they do affects you and everything you do affects them. men are not just mindless pigs who only follow their dicks.... and to make them out to be such only shows weakness on our part ladies... and obviously further proves the point that if we think that way our men will be misunderstood and left to find that understanding and appreciation somewhere else.

and really was it that big of surprise to know that men need that continuous approval and appreciation for the things they do day in and day out like all people do?


----Although Gary discusses how wives of cheaters can factor into affairs, he says he wrote the book to empower women. "It's not about blaming the wife. It can't be. I mean, cheating is ridiculous. It's wrong. And you can't justify it," Gary says. "My book is about one thing. It's really about empowering women. If I can give you knowledge that says that I could have proof that if you do certain things, you can lead your relationship to a better place, that will be much better for you as well because it's not just about stopping tragedy. It's about building a much more mutually beneficial relationship."----- if this doesn't make sense to you and you're in a relationship, the relationship probably isnt as healthy as you think....


its weird that people dont think this way to me, i feel like if seth cheated i would definitely be pissed but i would know i had a part in getting him to that point. his fault in it would be the action he took after feeling the way he did, my fault in it would be the things i did to make him feel the way he did. that doesn't seem crazy or hard to understand to me, it seems like duh... that's what relationships are all about. i'm here to make seth happy and feel the best he can, to make him feel like he has value and worth and that he's going into work every day for a reason, a good reason... and he is here to do the same... thats how people survive and its not just in marriage, people thrive off of feeling important and appreciated, so when they dont it doesn't seem illogical to expect them to do irrational things to feel important and appreciated. that doesnt make those irrational actions right, but its a lot more complicated than just right and wrong.

i certainly think there are guys who cheat cause they are idiots.... but most men aren't just idiots and i feel like women make them out to be a lot and i dont like it.



anyway did any ladies see that show? and what did you think of what he had to say?


for that matter did any guys see that show? or have something to say on this subject?



i pretty much always love what rabbi's have to say... above any other religious leader i've heard from, i respect them. another awesome rabbi with super good advice that i love is rabbi shmuley boteach.
i used to watch him on shalom in the home. awesome.

what these rabbi's have to say is what our society needs because our marriages and our family's have taken a dive of death.

agape.

we went to agape today.

there were a lot of black people there, which was really really refreshing, which may sound weird, but when you live in a town where there's hardly any diversity around and then you finally see some, it just feels how it should be. plus if you know me you know my two favorite kinds of people are asian people and black people...

the worship leader was AWESOME.

not my kind of church (if i do have a kind) but you could see the people's hearts on their sleeves and i loved that. i appreciate when people are genuine and that's what i saw there.

* side note: super awkward. there was a baby that was probably like 4 or 5 months there and she had a big red birth mark on her face.... and you know ara with her colors... so the whole time we were talking to her dad arabella was pointing saying 'red red'! ahhh. and the dad was like 'what's she saying' seth diverted him... but we felt so bad. i know there will only be a million more embarrassing or uncomfortable things that come out of her mouth but... this is the beginning.

worship

this morning i've been listening to music on rhapsody.
at first it was just the usual, you know some good charlotte, smashing pumpkins, xtc, the sundays... and when i was listening to the sundays it reminded me of this super ridiculous amazing time of my life and i started to find music from those times. but the catch is that during these times i listened to nothing but the sundays, zwan, watashi wa and worship music. yikes. 'the times' were when i lived with a girl named skye. it was great... danielle felger was still here, all my best memories are when she lived here, cameron was always at my house cause he had a lil crush on my roommate, so was ryan ratslaff (random), seth and luke always hung out and we would all have pizza that skye made and ride our bikes downtown cause we lived 2 blocks away... we would watch movies and just always hang out. i worked at ahshe, i had just started. me and luke were not going out yet, so the shit haden't hit the fan. me and him and seth were all friends.

*i just have to say that right now arabella is just walking around the living room with her cell phone at her ear 'talking' and saying random names of people she loves like 'fo, kar' which is flo and karl.

anyway.... i started listening to matt redman and tim hughes, and this song called you said by the hillsong people... and as much as i hate what worship music is now, this music still makes me feel things. i mean its music, so thats normal... but i can remember the way i felt about God, and about Jesus... it was so real to me that Jesus was it, i didn't question it, i didn't wonder what else there was, i didn't care if i was wrong cause i was just happy where i was. i know deep in my heart that this is not what i want in life overall... but sometimes i wish i could go back to not wondering, to just believing something, it was so easy and carefree, i could have been completely ignorant thinking i knew it all but who cared cause i was pumped on church and tim hughes.... i just wanted people to get saved and ride bikes and be happy... yea i had no way to relate to anyone outside of san luis obispo, but i didnt need to... i was saved and my boyfriend was a worship leader. score. haha. but seriously, half of me is soooooooooooo thankful that i'm not just a sheep that follows never thinking for myself, that im not willing to just take the views that other people have settled on about God... but the other half wishes i could stop thinking about it and find security in something even though there's no way to know whether its true or not... just trust the people who were before me, the thousands of church members, the people who chose what to put in the bible, pastors. but i cant anymore. i dont even have it in me... the only way i will feel ok believing in God is if i find who he is to me, on my own... and i'm pretty sure this will take the rest of my life. i guess this is why everyone says ignorance is bliss. it is. as much as i hate watching hundreds and hundreds of people listen to one guy knowing that the majority of them will never question what he has told them, at the same time i wish i could sit there mindlessly and believe that would get me to where i wanted to go when i die.

i think its a natural part of growing up to realize that you dont have a true grasp on who the maker of the universe is even though you may have thought you did. to have the realization of just how small you are, but i know a lot of people dont ever go through that part, sometimes im jealous of that. its the same feeling i get about seth and i having fights... i know we talk and fight about things that some married people will never ever discuss and it would be so easy and nice to not talk about that stuff and sometimes i wish we were like that... but in reality i know that our relationship goes so much deeper than it would if we lived that way.

growing up is amazing, because you're not stupid anymore. but its super sucky at the same time.... cause life is all of a sudden crazy, everything that is important changes and the things that are important are more important that anything you ever thought was important before, its kind of a lot of pressure. i wish i still had that thing where whenever you feel pressure or stressed or like its all on you you can just say 'cast your cares upon jesus'... and you feel better cause you dont have responsibility anymore. haha. but really... now it sounds like the biggest cop out ever, but back then it was my stress release.

today i want to go back to 2003. i want to go to the burn service at the vets hall and hear luke lead worship, i want to walk to work downtown at 8 am and smell the coffee cake at lineas and know that san luis obispo is my town, i want to ride my bike with seth on a summer day and pass out fliers at farmers, i want to eat bbq pizza at the buchon house (even though i hate bbq pizza), i wanna hang out with cameron, i wanna lead worship at homegroup, i wanna believe everything luke or denise, or seth or cameron tells me...

on days like this i need to be with someone who understands those times, and since there are only a handful of those people, most of whom are gone or aren't close to me anymore that would normally be almost impossible, except that i married the one person who remembers it the most and misses it just as much i do. thank God.

and with that i will leave you with some images from those days...
thank god for friendster a freakin time capsule.

previous life

so one of the other things that has started to change about my beliefs is i think i'm beginning to really believe in past lives... so i guess reincarnation. i watched a documentary about this a while ago, and it was crazy... then i watched the whole oprah thing about it.. which was cool but could all just be alloted to other stuff.... but i've heard and seen other stories since then that dont seem to have another explanation. plus i'm starting to see how that could make so much more sense... we dont learn all we need in one lifetime, and maybe Gods way of really teaching us to love each other and truly have compassion and understand each other is by allowing us to see life literally through each others eyes... and in the end our souls are so filled with the experiences from all these perspectives we have gained endless compassion for each other and an understanding of God that we could not have if we only ever saw him from one side. maybe that's why some people are filled with hate and no understanding, they are new souls... maybe thats why some children seem so wise even when they are so small... maybe that's why people have irrational fears... from their other lives... the more i think and look into this the more it makes sense to me.

what do you all think?

i might not respond to comments about this just because its too hard of a subject to have a real conversation about online, but i would love to hear others ideas and reasons.

she blinded me with science

lately i have been on a long quest to redefine who/what i believe God is and how i believe that applies to life.. i have written some on this but not very much, and i still probably wont write an extensive amount because it is something that could never really be explained by my words... but as far as where i am now...

i'm feeling really good and really hopeful and free. better than ever. i feel like the more i learn about God (or what i believe about him) the more i have to learn and the more free i feel. i have started to believe that God is so much bigger than i ever imagined and everything i find is showing me this. on one hand what i keep seeing makes organized religion look so graceful (so graceful of God to allow i mean) and on the other it makes it look so silly, hollow and seem to more than ever make God incredibly tiny. there are a few major things i have decided i believe they may or may not be true in the end, but they are where i am placing my hope right now.... i believe that there is truth, absolute undying truth at the end of whatever life is... but i dont believe any person can "know", in the true definition of knowing, what the absolute truth is... i think we all get little parts of it believing it is the truth, hoping it is, but never knowing til we reach whatever the 'end' might be. this one change in the way i believed has made life so much more full. it makes discussions among friends so much more rich to me because we can all come to the table saying i dont 'know' whats true, i can only believe, therefore there is room for anyone to be right and anyone to be wrong... and so its easy to coexist. i dont know if all this is making sense because its hard enough for me to convey in person so i can't imagine how its coming across in writing.... anyway i have not come to a new conclusion about jesus being God and the more i search the more that that becomes less of the point and the more it doesn't seem to matter.. also the more it seems unlikely that i will come to that conclusion. although i remain open to it. i started reading varieties of the scientific experience by carl sagan (suggested by kev dog) and though i dont think its what he was trying to do in this book, it is making me believe in God all the more and reminding me that he is so much bigger than we can ever comprehend.... but that is at the same time that it makes me feel less like any organized religion makes any real sense. i just want to know God, i just want to search for him my whole life... i dont want to come to 'definite' conclusions of who he is, i just want to hope and believe and always learn more... i just want to understand why other people believe what they do and find him there... and that is just what i have been doing lately and its the best time of my life.. the scariest, the most peaceful, the deepest, the most hopeful, the most free, the loveliest time.

velv elv

i just wanted to write on here to anyone that is interested in the things i've said about God or my relationship with him, or has felt the same way as things i have written that i want them to read velvet elvis... particularly chapter two... i love the whole thing so far, but chapter two is something i've felt inside for a long time and didn't know how to express... i really do feel like he's the first 'pastor' i have ever even remotely related to... and i relate to him a lot actually, i have related on most things except i am still not at a conclusion about whether or not jesus is God, which i dont think really matters anyway... i dont consider myself a christian, but i think aside from that i see religion and relationship and the bible a lot like he does. i love the freedom that being unsure brings. i am not sure of what is true, but there are things i choose to believe are true... very few things... but i feel very open because i feel like we are all wrong, we are all missing it and at the same time we are all getting parts of it and we are all speaking truth everyday and if we can understand that we need each other in order to find God and to find more and more of what is true, thats when we will really find it. we need people around us who dont agree with us, people who agree with us, we need people who understand us, people who dont but want to because that's what makes us grow and that's what shows us who God is. we can see God in a way we never could have on our own in another person because we are so different. i'm just really excited about this book because its the kind of christianity i find inspiring, whether i am a christian or not this kind of christianity inspires me.... there are kinds of faith in any religion that inspire me but it has been hard to find that for myself in christianity. ... i have no idea if i made one single distinct point in this or if i even made sense... there is so much in my mind. this is good.

if you ever told me to read velvet elvis...

thank you.


there were a lot of you.

seth and i have made it our 'potty book' and both of us feel like we have found our soulmate.


its so good to finally feel understood, yea he doesn't know me, but i can tell by what he writes that he would understand me, because its exactly the things i've been thinking and saying all this time. its like a huge sigh of relief for me, just to feel like i'm not alone.

blessed?

when i was doing the dishes tonight i was thinking about how we (as humans) think of blessing, or i guess us who believe in God or what not.. anyway most of what i see that people express as being blessing is good things and i was thinking about how i feel so blessed or lucky to be able to stay at home with arabella and spend so much time with her... then i was debating whether that was lucky or being blessed.... and i dont think i really believe in luck, things to me happen for reasons, as i have learned from my entire past..... so if things happen for a reason then the only other option really is that when you feel something good has happened to you you are being blessed by someone, God or otherwise. so then i was thinking about how it doesn't seem right in my mind to think i am blessed for being able to stay at home with ara, because does that mean that someone who wants to stay at home with their child and doesn't get to is not blessed? and if not, why would i be blessed and them not be blessed.... and this is something seth and i have discussed a lot, like when we had absolutely, i mean absolutely no money and it would have been easy to say we weren't blessed, and i see that a lot in church that you are 'blessed' when you have a lot or have things, and that God wants to bless you with things, big houses, cars etc..... or even the way to which God wants to bless you with different characteristics, or 'gifts of the spirit' the way we tend to see blessing is in the 'good' and not in the 'bad' .... but i think it is all blessing. God knows what we need, seth and i needed to have no money at all for a time, it was a blessing and i'm so thankful we went through that, i just think if we look at life like God wants the best for us always, and if he is for us and in control, then everything can be a blessing..... it just depends on how we look at it. i mean this isnt a new idea i guess.... God said this in the bible.... that trials are blessings, because they produce perseverance.

anyway i dont know if this all makes sense it seems a bit scattered.... but i think sometimes, actually most of the time the best blessings dont look like what we would think they should look like.


this new baby is a blessing.