Meaning and Authenticity

I'm in the recliner in my living room. Still coughing, still feeling lousy. But I've had a litte time to read some of my favorite blogs this afternoon, and that has lightened my mood. Wish I had time to read more, but Jan, Mompriest and Kate alone have really helped me. I've been in a bit of a funk, I guess, mostly just because of this persistent illness that leaves me so tired. I haven't wanted to reflect on anything, and that's never a good thing for me, a sure sign that I'm not myself. Jan's on a wonderful trip with her husband, which makes me smile. Mompriest is able to feel truly happy in circumstances that would put anyone down. And Kate's reflections on her entire year are profound and deeply moving. I'm inspired! The year began for me in a new place, a new job in a new church, new faces, new church culture to learn. Having left a dysfunctional church that allowed a few mean-spirited people to behave badly toward its clergy, I needed a while t...

Just some photos from our Georgia trip. These are views from my inlaws house. Several mornings there was a beautiful fog on the river...

We went to a Christmas Eve service at a Baptist church in Georgia. This church recently decided to abandon its downtown location and move to the suburbs where it has built a functional, and actually quite nice, new building. I was fine with the service for the most part until it came time for communion. The minister asked the deacons to come forward. More than 20 people rose and came forward. All of them male. Every blasted one of them. Male. Of course I knew going into it that this church did not have women deacons. But seeing those twenty men up there at the front of this huge church, I knew it in a new way--viscerally, in my heart. I was surprised by how painful it was for me. Tears stung my eyes. We receive communion, the body and blood of Jesus who was the Christ, to say Yes to being with Christ as the disciples were with Christ. Two thousand years forward in time and that same Christ is present among us, too, and that same Christ continues to invite all to the table, to know this...

On this Christmas Eve I wish all my blogging friends a most joyous Christmas. May you all be struck by the true wonder of our lives, our world,our amazing God.

This from Newsweek: The United States, like many countries, has a bad habit of committing wartime excesses and an even worse record of accounting for them afterward. But a remarkable string of recent events suggests that may finally be changing—and that top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror. In early December, in a highly unusual move, a federal court in New York agreed to rehear a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft brought by a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar. (Arar was a victim of the administration's extraordinary rendition program: he was seized by U.S. officials in 2002 while in transit through Kennedy Airport and deported to Syria, where he was tortured.) Then, on Dec. 15, the Supreme Court revived a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld by four Guantánamo detainees alleging abuse there—a reminder that the court, unlike the White House, will extend Constitutional protectio...

Here's a video by Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee for all that money, $700 billion, authorized by Congress to help us out of the financial crisis. I first heard her on Fresh Air and thought how amazingly understandable she was.

I'm tired. Up till 2:00 a.m. last night wrapping presents and picking up the house. Gosh, I can't do that and feel like a human being the next day. We had our "Christmas" this morning. All the chidren were here. We opened presents (for a very long time!) and then had a nice Christmas dinner, thanks to my husband's skill in the kitchen. Our little two-year-old granddaughter was a live-wire. She needed a nap big-time , but no one could entice her to it. Well, we enticed her time and time again, but she simply refused. And she got it in her head that I was her special friend today: " My KK. My KK," she kept repeating...."play with me, KK!" "come here, KK," "where my ball, KK?" Of course I loved it, but with low energy to start with, and six full hours of playing, I'm one whupped pup. My husband and I leave for a visit with my inlaws soon. The kids will be here and in City to the South at various times, but coul...