Gotta Love the High

So the first half of the week, my visits to the pool were largely to catch up from being really busy last week and not really getting to the pool like I should have. Today I was back up to my usual distance in the pool and had a great workout. Serious runners speak of having something called a "runner's high" when during a good workout you get an endorphin induced high where you feel like you're in a real groove and like you could run forever. Well, the same thing happens to swimmers and probably to others who participate in highly aerobic endurance type activities. So during my workout today I actually had one of those swimmer's highs and ended up making my set a little bit longer than I'd intended because my freestyle was just feeling really really good. Eventually of course, I did get tired, but it was a good tired.

Aside from that, I decided to pull out a book I read a few years ago for a paper in an Intro to Religion class. We had to select a book for the paper that was not regular course material. One of the two professors for the class reccomended the book and it turns out the other one could be found in the acknowledgments. It was a great book then but seems more appropriate to my current religious situation. So, in any case, I'm re-reading Patton Dodd's My Faith So Far: A Story of Conversion and Confusion. It's a brutally and comically honest autobiographical book about Dodd from age 18 to 20 and his journey from being forced into religion until he was 14, dropping the subject, and then somehow ending up a part of a crazy charismatic Pentecostal megachurch in Colorado Springs at 18. It chronicles his journey from there, including a year at the (in)famous Oral Roberts University. It's a good read and deals a lot with defining oneself as a Christian and what that really means. If nothing else, I can't spend all day on the job search, so I'm enjoying trying to have something on hand to read.

Bullet Points

Ok, so I'm not really less tired than my last post, but I'm going to try to do some bullet points from Velvet Elvis of things I really liked. This will probably only be a partial list. Again, if you want to read it, it's...

Bell, Rob. (2005). Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Michigan: Zondervan.

• Atheism is a belief, not a lack of belief. Just as Christianity is a belief in a higher power, atheism is a belief that things got this way by chance. In either case, you still believe something.
• The Bible was written in a time when each town or village had one copy of the Jewish scripture (the Torah) and it was read in group settings. People came together to hear it read and to discuss it. Radical and "innappropriate" interpretations were quickly shot down by having this kind of group discussion. The Bible was written with this in mind (and a long time before the printing press) and so we should read it with this in mind. It really ought to be discussed.
• Faith should be like a trampoline, not a brick wall. The springs of the trampoline are the doctrines that hold up the whole but they are not the whole. They simply are jumping off points. In many Christian churches, there is a brick wall approach where the Bible is used to create bricks of doctrine. When you remove one brick, the whole wall crumbles. In this case, the individual doctrines become the whole and you miss the point. There's no room for discussion or questions. The brick wall shuts people out. The trampoline invites people over to play. And really, who cares who has the better trampoline. They're just fun to jump on.
• Anytime you say anything about the Bible, it's an interpretation. In fact, even the fact that we're reading it in English involves interpretation from the original. Unless you happen to be God, you're interpreting and you really better not claim to have all the answers.
• "Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective (84)." You are a Christian. Do what you do and do it with passion.
• Ask questions. Ask more questions. Keep asking questions.
• Genesis starts with God separating light and dark. The rest of the Bible is God showing people how to distinguish the two (86).

Yes, I'm Still Alive

Sorry for my short hiatus. I've been very very busy the last few days and unfortunately haven't had much of a chance to post.

Given all the stuff I've had going on, I also slipped and have not been going to the Y like I should. I'm going to get back on that this week.

The big thing that has happened of interest has been on the religion front. I had a long conversation the other day with a friend of mine that I've known for years and years. He had always been a crazy conservative Christian and even during my Catholic days, we just sort of agreed that there were certain things we weren't going to see eye to eye on, but that it was ok. We chatted in person for hours the other day, about religion and other things. I was impressed on how much his views have moderated since we last spoke. I've slowly been figuring things out on my side, but he seems to have been doing the same. It was a great conversation, and we both left with book reccomendations from the other and I think feeling a lot better about things. I have picked up the book he suggested and at some point, when I get through enough of it, will post on that.