So Jenn hit me up with this meme:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
7 Wierd & Random facts:
#1) I have virtually no sense of smell or sense of direction. (The former is a result of years of alLergies. The latter is one of the ways being learning disabled impacts me.)
#2) I’m a total science-fiction/comic book geek. I managed a comic book store through chunks of high school and college. To this day I often decompress from life by hanging out in book stores and reading comics for a couple hours.
#3) I have this wierd little ball of flesh inside my right ear lobe. It’s about the size of a pea.
#4) I have completed a novel. It’s probably the most unsellable piece of writing ever created. It’s ambitious, over wrought, confusing, envelope-pushing, poorly punctuated and well intentioned. The title of the book is “A House Divided” It’s an allegorical retelling of my coming to Christ. It’s also a story about a demon who eats kids that are locked into the juvenile justice system. It’s also my attempt to supply Emergent Christianity with an epic, narrative representation of its theology in the same way that folks like Frank Perreti represent my more traditional brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s also walks your dog.
(Just kidding about the last part.)
#5) I once took belly dancing classes. It wasn’t a pretty picture. All I can offer in my defense is that I was engaged in imbiding a lot of things I should not have been that interfered with my decision making abilities at the time.
#6) Somewhere deep inside, I’m still a teen ager.
#7) When my eldest was born I wanted to name him Daggan. When my youngest was born I wanted to name him Phinneus. Most people are glad that I was outvoted on both counts.
A few people I’ll tag:
Al
Steve
Garret
Billy
Yes, I know that’s actually not 7 people.
There’s a few people I thought about tagging.
One often goes by an initial. If that person reads this and wants to consider themselves duly tagged I hope that person will feel free.
Similarly, a few of my other blogging contacts I’d consider more cerebral than social bloggers. There’s a bunch of people I’d actually be interested to hear 7 random facts from. (Micah Tillman, Enigman, Andrew Stevens being among them.) But I’m not sure if they “do” the whole social side of this wierd little obsession (blogging) so I’ll let them respond if they see fit.
Published by
Jeff
The stories that speak to our soul begin at a home where things are good. Cinderella is happy with her father. The three little pigs have grown up and are ready to move on. Bilbo Baggins knows his shire. Adam and Eve walk with God in the garden.
My story isn’t much different. There was a time and a place where it was so good. There was a community for me. And there was joy. We were filled with a sincere desire to do what God wanted us to do. We possessed explanations and understandings that went a certain distance. We offered security and tradition and laughter.
For a lot of years, that was enough. I have this sense that it was also necessary. I have this surety, now, that it certainly wasn’t everything. There were some things that became increasingly problematic as time went by.
There was a desire to package things up so very neatly. Sunday morning services were efficient and strategic. Responses to differences of opinion were premeditated. Formula began to feel more important than being real.
A real desire for everybody to be one of us, but also a real sense that there is an us, and there is a them. They carried a regret that it has to be this way, but deeper than this regret was a surety that this is how it is. I began to recognize that there was a cost of admission to that group. There were people who sat at the door, collecting it. Those people wished they didn’t have to. But I guess they felt like they did have to. They let some people in, and they left others out. There was a provisional membership. My friends did possess a desire to accommodate people that are different… But it would be best for everyone concerned if they were only a little bit different.
I did make many steps forward in this place. Before I went there, there were lies that I believed. Some of the things that I learned there, I still hold on to.
But that place is not my home anymore. Those people are not my community anymore. There were times it was hard.
I am engaged in a different community now. And I am working hard at finding a place in many different places now, embracing many different kind of families. I don’t always get it right. I am trying and I am learning and I am moving foreward.
I have this sense that I am not alone in these experiences. I believe that we are tribe and we are growing. We are pilgrims, looking for a new holy land. Perhaps we won’t settle on the same spot of land. But if you’ve read this far, I am thinking that we are probably headed in the same general direction.
I have begun this blog to talk about where my journey is taking me.
In every space, we find people who help us along. And maybe we can get to know each other, here. We embrace ideas that provide a structure for the things we believe, and perhaps we can share these too. Maybe we can form a group, a tribe, a community, if we can figure out a way to work through the shadow of these kinds of groups, if we can bigger than the us-and-them ideas that have caused so much trouble in the past.
As important as they are, I think the very nature of online interactions will lend itself to something equally powerful. I am stumbling onto these practices that my grandfathers and great grandfathers in the faith engaged in. I am learning about these attitudes and intuitions are so different than the kinds of things we call doctrine today. I don’t know about you, but I am running out of patience, and even interest, in conversations about doctrine.
I hope that maybe you’ll share a little something about where your journey is taking you, and maybe our common joys and challenges might help each other along, and we might lift each other up. Thanks for doing this journey with me.
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Jeff's deep thoughts 
who goes by just an intitial?? Not real creative that’s for sure. Hmph. Looking forward to blog surfing and checking out other peoples weird things…except dude, the ear thing? TMI!!!
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Well, since the initial person doesn’t seem to be responding, Jane, I suppose you could respond.
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