faith

Andrea Palpant Dilley:

...In reality, I left the church more because of my own internal discontent than the lure of so-called secular life. When I came back, I still carried that same discontent. I was confused, and still bothered by questions and doubts. I stayed in the back row and didn’t sing or pray. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to be there.

And yet I sat there, Sunday after Sunday, listening to the pastor and the organ pipes and trying to figure out what was going on in my dark, conflicted heart.

Although I never experienced that dramatic reconversion moment, I did come to peace with two slow-growing realizations.

First: My doubt belonged in church.

People who know my story ask what I would have changed about my spiritual journey. Nothing. I had to leave the church to find the church. And when I came back, the return wasn’t clean or conclusive. Since then, I’ve come to believe that my doubts belong inside the space of the sanctuary. My questions belong on the altar as my only offering to God.

With all its faults, I still associate the church with the pursuit of truth and justice, with community and shared humanity. It’s a place to ask the unanswerable questions and a place to be on sojourn. No other institution has given me what the church has: a space to search for God.

Second: My doubt is actually part of my faith.

In Mark 9:24, a man says to Jesus, “I believe, help my unbelief.” The Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor called this the foundation prayer of faith. I pray that prayer often and believe that God honors my honesty.

I also believe God honors my longing. The writer and theologian Frederick Buechner said “Faith is homesickness.” C.S. Lewis called it “Sehnsucht,” a longing for a far-off country. I feel that sense of unshakable yearning. It comes from the deepest part of my heart, a spiritual desire that’s strangely, mysteriously connected to my doubt.

Sitting in church every Sunday, my doubt is my desire – to touch the untouchable, to possess the presence of God.

Flipped Part II

$7.99 at the Salvation Army

I used our dog's brush to comb out the fur and retied the laces. I think I could have sold them for more had I bought some funky laces, but I put them up telling myself I could try better if they didn't sell. But I was happy with the $17 (+ $10 shipping) that they went for. 

$6.99 at the same Salvation Army. 

And sold for $52! 

FLIPPED Feedback

A true eBay gem!

"Hello there,

I have yet to receive the boots, but no worries, packages rarely arrive that quickly. Unless these boots are in very different shape than the pictures, you will be receiving great feedback... These are stunning and will definitely keep me satisfied because I decided using your actual photos. In fact they obssessed me my entire afternoon and evening, as I desperately and finally came up with guilt free justification for them. I never really did justify them in truth, so at the very last second I threw in a bid and left it up to fate Ha-ha!! It was meant to be!! Your e-mails have been quite amusing in places, I hope you are putting your wit to good use somewhere- I have never in over 100 purchases run into a buyer even close to as amusing!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, (even snowhyte007 is great), J--------"

FLIPPED

I bought these shoes for $12 at Salvation Army. I knew it was an incredible deal-- Frye boots are well made and have a great reputation.

I was pretty excited about my find. I proceeded to march off to school in them but soon had to admit to myself that they were both too small and not really my style.

Cowgirl boots? Rather hard to pull off if you are the farthest thing from country.

Meanwhile, my mom had me list half our household on craigslist. On a whim, I decided to do a 24-hour listing of these boots on e-bay. Saturday night I uploaded photos I'd taken earlier that afternoon. Right away I had several hits and even a few people "watching" it. I started to get a bit excited. I bumped up the starting bid from $69 to $89. By the next morning, I had my first bid.

It was pretty thrilling. Especially when the final bid was... get this... $157!!!

Cha-ching!

So I got a bit of the e-bay bug. Monday morning I packaged up the boots snugly and made a beeline back to the Salvation Army. I didn't find any Frye boots, but came out with $40 worth of shoes.

I might have been slightly over-ambitious. I guess this is a learning curve, but I am stubbornly optimistic that it will pan out.

Or maybe I just had beginner's luck. But seriously... $157!

haunting melodies

Lisa Mitchell ~ Valium

Soley ~ Pretty Face

Food Overhaul

An NPR comment in response to this article about the long-term results of bariatric surgery hit home for me.

People have to drastically alter their relationship to food...permanently. We have to choose: indulge in all that excess, worthless food and be fat and very unhealthy (and unhappy), or commit to a permanent, life time, life altering food plan consisting of only healthy nutritious foods, and abstaining from worthless processed "foods" containing refined sugar, corn syrup and highly processed flours, also abstaining from excess quantities and learning appropriate portion sizes with the help of a food scale, and abstaining from eating in between meals. A well balanced, nutritious meal will afford satisfaction and a lack of craving or need for between meal snacks, for at least four to six hours. Breakfast is fuel for the morning, lunch is fuel for the afternoon, and the evening meal is fuel for a night of resting and physical rejuvenation. Food is not intended to be "entertainment." It is meant, along with being enjoyable and satisfying to the palate, to be a "prescription" for health and well-being. Also, everyone needs to drink lots more cold, fresh water every day. Processed, sugary and flour-based foods have a tendency to be highly addictive; there are very helpful 12-step programs for recovery from food addiction; these programs are spiritual...NOT religious...in nature.


Amen. 

Things that terrify me

1. Death
2. A huge asteroid crashing into earth (aka death)
3. Becoming homeless (leading to death)