Guess Who's Back?

Ok, so I've got about a hundred things I want to blog about. I think I'm going to have to break this up into more than one post or even more than one day.

First off, I'm back from Florida. Aside from it being a little too much family time, it was a nice trip. Well, that, and I'm pretty sure that hell feels like central Florida in August. We went to the usual Disney parks as well as Universal Studios and Universal Islands of Adventure. I'm a roller coaster junkie and think the best way to summarize the trip is with a Top 5.

So, here it is. My top five picks for rides...

1) The Incredible Hulk (Universal Islands of Adventure)

2) Fire Dragon - Dueling Dragons coaster (Universal Islands of Adventure)

The Dueling Dragons (Fire Dragon on the red track and Ice Dragon on the blue)

3) Ice Dragon- Dueling Dragons coaster (Universal Islands of Adventure)

4) Rockin' Roller Coaster (MGM Studios)


5) Revenge of the Mummy (Universal Studios Florida)

Aside from the rides, we stayed at the Walt Disney World Dolphin which is a very nice hotel on a small lake. From the hotel you can see, walk to, and ride a boat to Epcot, The Boardwalk, and MGM. You can't beat the location.

View of the Boardwalk and Epcot from our 17th floor room

View of the boat docking behind the Dolphi to go to the parks

While in Florida, on Saturday evening I got stuck going to Catholic mass with the family since we went right after dinner. I chose not to receive communion since I no longer consider myself Roman Catholic but I'm slowly becoming open to the idea that I can gain from going to services and talking to people from all different denominations and so sitting through the mass wasn't too torturous. I do really dislike the church (Mary Queen of the Universe Shrine) largely because it comes off as a commercial enterprise rather than a church, but I did take the picture below of their chapel's bell tower just as a thunderstorm was approaching and really liked the shot.

I think I'll save non-Florida updates for another post.

So for those who are interested, I think the interview went well but you never do know. I should find out this week if I'll be called back for a second one. This is a job I'd be pretty excited to have and it has some great benefits including some serious help paying for grad school so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. In the meantime, I'm continuing to look elsewhere too.

On the religion front, I again attended mass at the same Episcopal church today. The service was a nice tradtional service once again but I overall found everyone there, particularly the greeters and leadership to be too friendly. They were very in your face with insisting on knowing your name and engaging you in conversation. Right now, I'm still trying to figure out where I stand with things. I really sort of want to just sit by myself, do my own thing, and leave. When it comes to religion, I believe in meeting people where they are. I think you should let people move at their own speed. I'm sure these people had nothing but the best intentions, but it rubbed me the wrong way. Aside from that, I did once again enjoy the mass. What I really want to know, and am deciding whether to ask, is what their position is regarding blessing gay unions in the church. I know there is another Episcopal church nearby that does it, but I'm fairly confident this one does not. In light of that, I'm not sure I want to get too close to a church that wouldn't do it. It is one of the things that drove me away from the Roman Catholic church after all.

As one final note, I wrote the other day that I was listening to Jupiter from Holst's The Planets. Ironically, a day or two after that, I saw a new Reese's commerical that uses Jupiter. I have to say, that's a combination almost as good as peanut butter and chocolate.

No Lightning?

So for the first time in months, I set foot in a church yesterday for a Sunday service. Much to my surprise, I was not struck my lightning immediately upon entering the door. In fact, overall, it was a rather pleasant experience. For those of you regularly following this blog, you'll have probably gathered that me and the Roman Catholic Church are no longer on speaking terms. The pope seems to have lost his marbles and overall I've found the church to be like the brick walls Rob Bell talks about in Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. They spend so much of their time making rules and regulations and dealing with doctrinal things that they build this wall that tends to fall when you remove a brick and is very good at keeping people out. In light of this, but because I do enjoy a combination of more liberal social ideas but more traditional services, I attended a service at an Episcopal church. It was a nice service in a beautiful old Gothic church. It also had a kick-ass organ which always makes me happy. It's someplace I might consider going back to.

In other news, I've finished Dodd's My Faith So Far: A Story of Conversion and Confusion. It was again a good read and draws some of the same conclusions at Bell. Essentially, questions aren't a bad thing. Ending up in the middle is ok. My own conclusion, the journey isn't a waste. Just because you end up somewhere completely different than you intended doesn't mean the time you spent elsewhere along the way wasn't valuable.

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.