Monday, July 21, 2008

Someone Less Messed Up


When I taught Vacation Bible School and wasn't tanked up on Valium and doing the very very slow-moving puppet shows, I memorized tons of Bible verses and still find myself speaking in them to this day without realizing it.  I had a lot of gold stars by my name for this gift of memory; I loved gold stars because I thought they meant something, that I could collect enough and cash them in for a new self like collecting enough tickets at Chuck E. Cheese for a stuffed animal except that I'd trade myself for someone less messed up and along and I'd be one of the girls I envied, the ones that made everything look effortless.  If I'd actually been understanding that which my mouth could recite, I would have known this was futile and that God loved me as I was and as I would be.   And that times were hard and necessary and how this works to our good even when we cannot see it.

That's my favorite verse, the one on my refrigerator right under the Trailer Park Tramp postcard, the one about how we experience something of the death of Jesus all the time, but that we are never alone, knocked down, but not out.  I go a lot with Carver about not knowing why we do what we do and love his poem, Distress Sale, about a garage sale and about how he can't help anyone because he's trying to recover from drinking so much and he doesn't have any money.   But he wrote about it and in the image, there's love and sadness and tragedy.  And that does help.  Because we feel alone so often, but what we don't see is that someone is watching our pain and feeling it and helping us endure it even when we don't know it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Wherever three or four Catholics are found, there ye shall also find a fifth." Garret Keizer

Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Gotan Project La Revancha Del Tango

Benedictions and Maledictions
Thanks so much for all the encouragement on the book -- and Laura, from your lips to God's ear! Happy Monday!

9 comments:

Brianinmpls said...

I have that same tile in my bathroom..lol

Anonymous said...

I'd love to be in that bathtubb with you.

Anonymous said...

It's looks like Jesus was with whoever cleaned that bathtub tile.--Mr. Clean

Laura Benedict said...

Nope. We're sure not alone. Even (especially) when we try to hide! xo

Charles Gramlich said...

Sometimes I believe it. Sometimes not. Most of the time I think I'm just confused.

Lana Gramlich said...

I haven't been able to believe in any kind of god/dess in years. I find there's more comfort in that than believing, but to each their own.

the walking man said...

...but professor doctor, you DO make everything look effortless. This is why you are all the more amazing; that you are able to do this with all of the insecurities of the past hounding your heels into the present.

laughingwolf said...

like lana sez, to each their own....

Adamity73 said...

GOD IS GOOD!

**growl**