SFO International

San Francisco is a scary airport to fly into, if you are in a window seat. Up until the last possible second, it looks like the plane is going to be doing a nice big bellyflop into the ocean. Just as you start fumbling for that flotation device they always talk about on the safety video everyone ignores while wondering if you remember how to inflate it with those little red tubes because you are sure yours will be the one that doesn't inflate all the way when you pull the cord (and you're trying to remember which cord it was in the first place, dang why didn't you pay attention to the video!), suddenly the runway appears beneath the plane, which means you will be landing on LAND after all, and that's when you realize that you have been holding your breath for a really, really long time because it comes out in a gasping sigh of relief that makes the other passengers stare at you, and move slightly away, as best they can with their seat belts on.

Keeping It Real

Ok, I want to set something straight about Christianity, because the other day I was watching Joel Osteen on tv and he really irritated me.

I don't normally watch televangelists, for several reasons. Mostly because when I watch TV I want to be entertained, not sermonized. Also, I admit that I am probably prejudiced and judgmental. But a friend of mine introduced me to Joel Osteen's show, and I have seen it a few times now. And every single gosh-darned time I get mad. Here's this young, Billy-from-Melrose-Place lookalike pacing back and forth on a massive velvety stage in front of his vast, sparkling, upper-middle-class audience at his church in Houston, TX, and he is basically running a self-help seminar with the words "God" and "prayer" occasionally thrown in to make it sound religious! He rambles on (and on and on) about the power of positive thinking, about how God just wants to rain down blessings (generally of a financial nature) on each one of us, and how we just have to CLAIM THE PROMISES that God gives us in his Word (many of which, if he quotes them at all, are taken out of context). It drives me absolutely nuts, because he is not telling the truth about Christianity.

So, here's the truth. To paraphrase a quote from one of my favorite movies, _The Princess Bride_: "Christianity is pain...anyone who says different is selling something."

Please don't misunderstand me on this. I am not saying "Christianity is _a_pain" (as in, a pain in the...butt). Sometimes it can be! But that's not what I mean. I also don't mean, "Christianity is _only_ pain and you will always be depressed and sad and pathetic if you are a Christian." That would be completely ridiculous, and if I said that, I would be lying, on the opposite extreme of Mr Osteen's feel-good theology.

So what AM I saying? Well. I have been a Christian for a long time now--somewhere in the neighborhood of 26 years. And if there is one thing that I have learned, it's that God is not about being our "happiness genie." God is about growing us up into men and women of character and faith and strength and courage. These virtues don't come without a price, and that price is usually exacted in blood, sweat, and/or tears. I'm not trying to scare anyone by saying this, I'm just telling the truth. God promises not to leave or abandon those who take the path of following his son Jesus, but he does NOT promise that the path won't wind through some pretty murky territory.

Look, if someone comes along and all they tell you about Christianity is that God wants to bless you and make you happy all the time, don't buy it. God DOES want to bless us, but his blessings aren't always what we're looking for. Believe me, I know this from experience. And on the flipside, if someone comes along and all they can tell you is how miserable you will be as a Christian, don't buy that either. Christianity isn't about extremes, or it shouldn't be. It's about being real, and it encompasses ALL aspects of the human experience--pain, joy, elation, despair. If you don't believe me, just read the Psalms in the Bible. I can tell you that they weren't written by someone who was just coasting along on cloud 9, naming and claiming promises of health, wealth, and invulnerability when he wasn't busy writing songs all about how great life is!

In the end, I guess I get mad at people like Joel Osteen because they are taking the easy way of telling people what they want to hear. True Christianity is not what people want to hear. That was made pretty obvious 2000 years ago when the Man who started it all got nailed to a cross in a Roman execution. But Joel never talks about that either. His audience sits there dutifully taking notes with Bibles open on their laps, and he tells them absolutely nothing at all.

Give them something real, man--you owe it to them.

The Eleventh Commandment

Last night, my dad asked me if I'd eaten any fruit during the day. He's been on this kick lately of preaching fruit-eating to people, because it's good for you. Eating fruit, I mean. He said, "Those who love me keep my commandments." I said, "You're commanding me to eat fruit?"

He tried to make me eat an apple before I went to bed, but I wouldn't do it.

It's a good thing I wrote my age on my profile here. I thought for a moment I'd turned 12 again, without noticing.

I bet you are wondering why on earth I'm up at 3.45am. I was wondering the same thing, and then I remembered that I have this flight to catch. Off to Seattle...

(PS I love you Dad.)

It's Not Nice to be Rude

The other day, a woman flipped me off as I was pulling out of our driveway.

You have to understand that our house is situated on a very odd corner. People coming from the left can't see the driveway until they are practically in front of it. So it's always a bit of a gamble every time anyone makes that left turn. If someone is coming around the corner too fast, they just might hit the one coming out of the driveway.

Well, it hasn't happened yet, but it almost did on Saturday, with this woman. She came barrelling around that corner, definitely too fast, driving one of those I'm-a-car-but-I-wish-I-was-a-house sort of cars, a big brown Buick or Cadillac or something. I had just put my foot on the accelerator after looking both ways, and had begun to move out of the driveway into the street. If I had stopped, she would still have had to swerve around the front end of my car, probably. Then she has the nerve to scream and yell and make obscene gestures because SHE almost hit ME.

I think that when you get to be a certain age, you really shouldn't be relying on juvenile physical reactions to get your emotional point across. In other words, she really looked too old to be flipping people off. She also looked like she might have been a hippie once, or maybe she still is, and that annoyed me because hippies were supposed to be all about peace and love and happy thoughts. She definitely didn't look like she was thinking happy thoughts that morning, nor was she "spreading the love."

My brother was with me and wanted me to stop and ask if she was alright, because it looked like she might be bursting a blood vessel, but I said forget it. I was too irritated and incredulous to care. (My attitude may not have been entirely Christ-like right then, I admit.)

The thing that troubled me most about the whole encounter as I kept thinking about it was that it wasn't even 10 in the morning at that point. So this woman was furiously angry before the day had even properly begun. And not just any day--a Saturday! Of course, maybe she was mad that she had to be up before 10 on a Saturday. We won't ever know.

All this to say, life is too short, people. It really is. The Bible says that our days are but a breath, and that's true. Time goes so fast, so don't waste it flipping people off and yelling at them. Even if they are the ones at fault (not that I am saying I was at fault, because I WASN'T).

That's my moral and spiritual lesson for the day, which I am taking the time to share, in spite of the fact that I have a deadline looming on an article I'm writing for the local paper. See how much I care about you guys, putting you before my career? Feel special.

Writer's Block

I am not feeling creative today. The muse is not merely elusive, she's checked out and gone to Tahiti. (Stupid muse. She never takes ME to Tahiti.)

Of course, there are some people who say you shouldn't rely on muses, because they are terribly fickle. Writing is work, they say, and you just have to treat it like any other job, which means you do it even when you don't feel like it. Sit down at a certain time every day, crack your knuckles, and go for it. Stare at that blank page til you go blind, and then write your name over and over again. Eventually, the experts assure me, you will get bored of that and start rearranging the letters of your name to form other words, and then you will start making up new words out of friends' names, and suddenly a story will start flowing out of you, and angels will start singing as heavenly light falls around youand you will think, "Wow, where did all THIS come from?? I'm sure glad I sat down and did my work of staring at the blank page for awhile! I'm sure glad I didn't give up!"

Me, I usually give up. Five minutes of writer's block is about all I can take. After that I start looking around and noticing how dirty my room is, for example. This never seems to catch my attention until I sit down to write. Or I will go play the piano. Or the guitar. (I don't actually know how to play the guitar all that well, but I'll strum through the good ol' G-C-D-Em chords until my fingers fall off rather than continue facing that horrible white wasteland, The Blank Page.)

In short, I often find myself doing ANYTHING to avoid writing, which is troubling to me since I tell everyone that I am a writer. How can you be a writer and NOT write? It's a mystery.

So today, I leave you with this meditation: if a writer is walking through a forest, and there are trees around, does she exist? And if a tree falls on her, will she tell a story about it?

Post Election Day Blues

So. Kerry is conceding before all the votes are in, Bush is planning his victory speech, and I'm still unemployed. But it is sunny and warm outside. I love California.

My youngest sister voted for the first time yesterday. She was so cute! We walked into the polling place and when she said she'd never done it before, all these adorable old people started smiling and clapping. When she finished and had cast her ballot, this woman even told her that "you did that very well." No one told ME that. At least I still got a sticker.

You are probably wondering who I voted for, aren't you? Well. I wrote in my post yesterday, as a joke, that I would vote for my friend Steve but the longer I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. So I did it. And before you start yelling at me about throwing away my vote, let me just say that the electoral college has already ensured that my votes will be pretty worthless in California unless I always vote Democrat. So at least I voted for someone that I trust and like, and who my conscience would not trouble me about later. This also frees me up to criticize whoever does end up as the President with total impunity, because I didn't vote for either of them--BUT I still did my civic duty and voted. I have the sticker to prove it.

(I like criticism. It is fun when it is directed by me at other people. It is not as fun the other way around though. Please don't do it. I get sad. Thank you.)

I'm going to go look for jobs now. Well, after I work on my tan, since it is so nice and sunny outside. I love California, except when it makes my votes worthless and good people like Steve can't become President. Then I hate it.

Election Day Blues

Well. Here we are, countdown to Election 2004, and I still don't know who I'm going to vote for, Bush or Kerry.

It's been interesting to be a Christian lately, because overwhelmingly, most Christians seem to be staunch supporters of Bush. I, however, am not, which might just possibly be a cardinal sin in some quarters.

Most of the people I have heard praising Bush do so on the basis of the Iraq war, and the fact that we have brought peace to the land, and established a democratic government. I wonder though...I just read an article on the BBC web site recently, about how the civilian deaths in Iraq are well over 10,000 since the war began. That's not really much better than Saddam's record, is it? And what about the soldiers still being killed in battles and skirmishes and bombings? Not exactly a shining testimony to peace.

And anyway, how did Iraq win the freedom lottery? There are lots of other countries suffering under oppressive or corrupt governments. What about Sudan? What about Saudi Arabia (which, by the way, has the highest rate of persecution of Christians in the world)? Are we going to free other nations too, or was Iraq just lucky?

Well, we have to remember that the rallying cry for the Iraq war was not initially about liberation. It was about the legendary weapons of mass destruction...which, in fact, turned out to BE legendary, for all practical purposes. When that became apparent, the rhetoric changed dramatically to the whole "liberating Iraq" mantra. Nobody really stopped to ask if the Iraqis were asking to be liberated. Even if they were, did they want the US to do it?

But this is all a bit beside the original point, which was something along the lines of: as a Christian, is it a foregone conclusion that I must vote for Bush, who also claims to be a Christian? You know, support the home team: all for one, one for all. He's one of the family, so to speak, so you've got to support him. Well, I am not going to question the genuineness of the guy's faith, because to do so means I have to question my own. After all, I am not perfect (shhh! don't tell!), and I don't always do "the right thing." But I believe that Christianity is about grace, and grace is about getting what you don't deserve, in the best possible way. If there is grace for me, there has to be grace for Bush. Otherwise, Christianity is just another religious system and what's really the point? We all know you can't be good all the time, we don't need another system to tell us that.

So I don't question his Christianity. But I DO question, and I have a right to question, his ability to make wise decisions. I question his commitment to my civil liberties. I question his understanding of diplomacy and our position in the global community. And these are reasons why I lean toward voting "No" for Bush.

And yet...I can't quite bring myself to vote "Yes" for Kerry, who appears to me to have elevated being-swayed-by-public-opinion to an art form. Or maybe it's teling-people-what-they-want-to-hear. Whatever the case, I'm in a definite quandary.

I think I'll vote for me. Oh wait, I'm not over 35. Well, I'll vote for my friend Steve then. Maybe you should too. He's pretty cool. He even has a blog: blah, blah, blog..... Comment on one of his posts, it will make him feel happy.