FORAY INTO POLITICS

at this point, i'm going to make my first foray into political commentary, which, to be honest, is pretty intimidating, with my limited political understanding. when you're growing up in a conservative christian household going to a conservative christian school and attending a conservative christian church, these are the basics you're taught:

1. republicans are good. they don't believe in abortions, and they want to keep prayer in the schools.
2. democrats are bad. they want to take away important rights like being able to own a gun and increase the power of the government, which will eventually lead to no freedom of religion and the persecution of christians.

now, i must say, i loved my school and church (which finally updated their website, which was an extremely exciting discovery) and through both, learned many valuable things about God and life that i still hold closely. likewise, my dad did a great job of explaining his choice to be a republican, which i think has more to do with the fact that he's a business owner than with any beliefs that a primarily democratic government will lead to the apocalypse. however, the point remains that my understanding of the major political parties was pretty skewed.

now that i'm in my 20s and actually pay a little bit of attention to what's happening in politics (mostly because philip follows politics a ton and brings certian easier-to-understand happenings to my attention), i see that the lines are not so black and white. while i don't want abortions to be legal (i feel that the government can make laws about life-and-death issues, and women do have a choice - whether or not to have sex), i don't think it'd be appropriate for a teacher in a public school to pray to the (my) judeo-christian God before class. i'm not sure the phrase "under God" ought to remain in the pledge, considering i wouldn't be too thrilled about having to say "under buddha" as a grade school student, which is how a young chinese-american student might feel at present. i'm in favor of people being allowed to own a gun, but it makes sense to me that people should have to go through extensive checks and waiting periods to see if they're responsible enough. i don't care if there's a rock outside a courthouse that displays the ten commandments or not. but the bottom line with all these issues is that i don't think any of them are worth making a voting decision over. what are the real issues?

improving education is important. revitalizing the inner city is important. reducing homelessness and joblessness is important. preserving the environment is important, because the resources on this earth are limited, and "the end of the world is immanent" is not an excuse to trash the planet. not jumping head-first into a very sketchy war is important. and, typically, it's the democrats who care more about these issues.

a couple events triggered this stream of thoughts. first, philip directed me to a Washington Post article that discussed President Bush's plan to hit up the Church for support. the article begins, "The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has sent a detailed plan of action to religious volunteers across the country asking them to turn over church directories to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives." according to this plan of action, by aug. 15, religious volunteers are to "talk to your Church's seniors or 20-30 something group about Bush/Cheney '04" and "recruit 5 more people in your church to volunteer for the Bush Cheney campaign."

to use God's people as a voting pool by being blatantly manipulative of the age-old christian=republican line of thinking is pretty low, if you ask me. when philip and i walked into a long's christian book store a few months ago, the first thing we saw was a large, beautiful painting of the president, his head bowed humbly in prayer, with the angels of lincoln and washington laying hands on him, and Jesus himself looking on with tender love and approval. this kind of blurring of lines between political parties and christianity has no place in this country. churches should be encouraging their congregations to get educated, learn what the real issues are, and vote smartly - not lift up one party/man as being God's chosen. at least the democrats have the decency to stay out of churches - where worship of God, and not political pandering - should be the focus.

the second thing that promted me to write this entry is a spam email i received from the American Family Association. it was basically an ad for Dr. James Dobson's new book, Marriage Under Fire: Why We Must Win This War. first of all, why is a christian organization lowering itself to spamming? are not christians' ethics supposed to be a little higher than porn sites and viagra ads? be respectful of my private space, for crying out loud! secondly, even the title of this book upsets me. the war language sets up an us-vs.-them mentality - "us" being christians with conservative theological beliefs, and "them" being the liberals and gays. for one thing, i consider myself a christian with conservative theological beliefs, but i don't identify at all with dobson and his crew. secondly, i have friends who are the liberals and gays i'm supposed to be battling against, and fighting them will only push them further from the wonderful love of Jesus that i've found. Christ never said "fight those whose socio-politcal views make you feel threatened." he said, "love your neighbor as yourself." lastly, the imagery of the two brides and the two grooms which appeared in this email i also found manipulative and inappropriate. why hyped-up stamps reminiscent of those that appear on "girls gone wild" - "CENSORED!"/"LEGALIZED!" why war language? why guns? once again, if being a republican means getting on the fight-gay-marriage-to-the-death bandwagon, then i'm count me out.

BEACH NUPITALS

the pics above and below are from my roommate chelsea's wedding. it was the first beach wedding i've ever attended, and while i had my doubts about how exactly it would work, it turned out to be quite lovely. we had to deposit our shoes in a big pile a little ways off from the makeshift "aisle" (crafted by some white tooling and little green garden posts), and both the bride and the groom wore white. the justice of the peace who married them said we could all move in closely, and the forty or so guests in attendance jumped at that offer, crowding up to the bride and groom like they were rock stars performing a concert. it was outrageously humid outside, but i think withstanding the humidity was worth it to get the pictures they got. it was like the set of a movie - blue skies, rolling ocean waves, white sand ... it's painfully cliche, but TRUE! after the wedding, we partied at Captain Hiram's, which is one of those open-air waterfront seafood places that has become a stereotype of itself, but provided a relaxed atmosphere, tropi-drinks, a live jazz band, and a nice view of the inter-coastal waterway. the whole experience was great fun, and it made me wonder why women tend to kill themselves planning their weddings. chelsea's didn't feel like it was lacking anything, and yet, she planned it in under two months and didn't have to sell her soul to pay for it.

post-wedding existance has been fairly droll ... my roommate karen and i are putting off cleaning up our trashed house and dreading chelsea's return, when she will have to say good-bye to her husband for a year, as he's being shipped to afghanistan to serve in the military.

the only big news of this week so far is that i finally got my florida driver's license (after living in this state for almost two years - don't tell the po-po), so i guess i'm official. the process took two hours, as the license first read that i was a male. which i'm not. why are driver's license places always so busy? i probably watched 200 people come and go. you'd think people would get their driving biznass taken care of and there'd be at least a couple slow days. no. it's probably because they write on women's driver's licenses that they're men, and then women, who were once very patient, cooperative people, have to get back in line, wait for another 30 minutes, go through the whole picture-taking process again, and feel severely tempted to climb over the counter and strangle slow-moving and chatty employees.

BECAUSE WE'RE HOT...

BIBLE STUDY/BACHELORETTE PARTY

after all the whining i did in the last post, it's really pretty embarassing to admit how much connection i've experienced over the last few days.

thursday - girls bible study. this is an endeavor i started in order to get to know the girls in my college/career group at church. since i came in as philip's girlfriend, i figured that's how i was known. i was like an extension of him, and whenever i was with any of the girls (who were his friends long before he and i ever met), he was there. so, i created a time when we could bond guy-free. it started out with a fair amount of momentum; we had five at our first meeting, including a very curious woman from another church, and in the meetings since, we've had two other girls join us. but attendance is random; there's just not a lot of commitment. some of this i attribute to myself - in my efforts to not add another item to the "to-do" list, i've established a casual attitude that has crossed over into even merely showing up. plus, i haven't been using any sort of book/guide, since all the guides i considered using were lame, but i do a lousy job of thinking up any sort of DIY guide, so the discussion often falls flat. and we only meet every other week, so i think people get confused about if we're even having it or not. however, despite these considerable errs on my behalf, the women themselves haven't stepped it up to do their own studying, to find out if we're meeting, or to come on a consistant basis. it's all very discouraging.

we had planned to meet this past thursday at a pair of sisters' apartment, and i just had this feeling nobody would show up. i didn't feel like preparing anything, and said so to philip. "it's just not worth it," i told him. "why not?" he asked, and i was humbled, knowing he was right - even if it was just the sisters and me, they were worth preparing for. so i prayed about what passage to use (we've been studying women of the bible), and i immediately thought of the woman who anointed Jesus' feet and decided we'd do a little lectio divina. basically, this involves reading the passage out loud twice and asking God to reveal a word from the passage to you that He would like you to meditate on for 10 minutes. Ten minutes may sound like a very long time, and it is, but it really slows you down and allows you to relax and breathe. we're so uncomfortable with silence; i think it's healthy to force ourselves to be quiet once in a while. i also picked out some praise choruses centering on Jesus' sacrifice on the cross (surprisingly, there aren't that many) and figured we'd do a time of "checking in." this involves each person telling how they are - how they really are - and while they're sharing, no one else is allowed to say anything.

i headed over to the apartment, and i was right - nobody else came. it was just the three of us. but i proceeded with my little contemplative plan. we did the lectio divina, and i wondered at maybe shortening the time to five minutes. but God said no, do the full 10, so i did. my word was "weeping." i thought of all the reasons why people weep - joy, pain, disappointment, beauty, stress - and i thought of how Jesus even wept. words came into my head - expression, release, honesty. when someone cries, their soul is coming the surface. then we "checked in." i hesitated to even do it, since we had already chit-chatted earlier about our weeks and jobs and so on, but God said do it, so we did. when each sister shared, she started to weep. common themes came out - a lack of confidence, a feeling of uncertainty about the future, being in a difficult time of waiting, hurts that are hard to forgive. i was amazed at what came out when there was a concentrated and safe time of sharing. i think we all left that night feeling much closer than we did before, and i felt like i had a better idea of where this study needed to go. God knows what He's doing.

friday - chelsea's bachelorette party. this was also something i wasn't too amped about, just because i was feeling tired and sickish and i didn't know any of the girls coming very well, except my roommates. however, the evening really ended up kicking ass. we were all given goodie bags, which contained such goodies as leis, jelly bracelets, star-shaped sunglasses, candy necklaces, a personalized decorated cup, penis straws, and other trinkets. a tip for any girl planning a bachelorette party: give your attendees goodie bags. nothing makes you feel like you're wanted there like having a bag full of presents with your name on it waiting for you. we all donned our many items and took loads of pictures. we even wore them out, which set us apart as THE bachelorette party - where the party is. we also played some typical bachelorette party games, which involved cherries and whipped creme and bananas and condoms. gotta have those. we rode in a limo to our downtown destinations. i can't tell you how many times i heard, "where's erika?" or "erika, get in this picture!" i felt included, loved, appreciated. and chelsea was practically weeping tears of joy over how appreciated and loved she felt. "i've never gotten so much attention in my life!" she exclaimed. she deserved every minute of it.

saturday - discipleship group. this is a collection of couples and individuals from our church, including one of the pastors and his wife, who get together about once a month to discuss some topic and learn from each other and our various stages in life. philip and i are the youngest couple there, which our mentors, danny and jodi, being the oldest. we discussed what it means to worship "in spirit and in truth," why we go to church, how one goes about picking a church, etc. i was pretty floored by how much interest people there had in me, what i had to say, our Something More group, where i worked... the discussion was thought provoking, and it was hugely cool to meet people from our church who don't land in the 18-34 category.

today - chelsea's wedding. i have to go get ready for it now. it's on the beach, and i borrowed a white strapless dress with giant pink hawaiian flowers on it to wear. philip's computer assignment for his grad class was due tomorrow, but the due date got extended till wednesday, so we're in great moods. this should be another beautiful day.