Last week's microblogging throughout the week was so successful, it even inspired me to write a whole other blog on Monday! Let's do this for another week!
1.
I always think I'm going to be better at microblogging than I am, but then I get going and I have too much to say and before I know if I've got like a whole page and a half of random musings and it's just a regular blog.
2.
Made it through my old church's whole sermon this week! This doesn't need to become a random church sermon review blog, ha, but I am trying to continue to process. In the past I would take in my church's sermons and believe and take to heart every bit of it unless my parents specifically said not to (every so often they'd disagree with an interpretation), so it's good to be able to have the freedom and ability to dissect and process.
I did have strong feelings during a short section that pitted my way of living against God's way of living and said I couldn't do both. While I believe I know what was meant (that if God and I disagree, there's not a compromise option, I'm either choosing one or the other) it is another instance that assumes that I, to my very core, am eternally in opposition to God. Even as a Christian, even as a born-again new creation, my desires will never be good, and if they are, it's because they aren't mine, they're God's. It's a tiny distinction but, again, it matters to me. At its worst, we get these weird situations where I am hesitant to do anything that makes me happy because that's following my own way, which is always, perpetually, without any exceptions, in opposition to God.
If we really truly believe in the transformative power of Christ, why do we continue to speak as if no transformation has occurred? Why do we continue to set ourselves up as the enemy?
3.
In contrast, I also watched the service for the Lutheran church I'd been attending off and on before the pandemic hit. I have found more and more joy in liturgy in the past several years as I've been deconstructing and reconstructing my faith. There's a tendency in non-liturgical evangelical churches to come across as very stressed that we're not listening or connecting to God enough, and so everything can be very... forceful and pushy and loud and engineered. The liturgy is a way of refocusing me without making me feel bad about my lack of focus. It's like in meditation, where you're told "your mind will wander, just become aware of that and bring it back." One kind of church service understands that my mind will wander and will be there when I return. The other panics that I might not be listening and yells and shakes me until I do.
4.
The Supreme Court just voted to strike down abortion restrictions in Louisiana.
I don't want to get into details about any of it... but I have all the feelings about all those times people told me they were voting for Trump even though they hated him because he would overturn abortion rights and then it would all be worth it.
5.
It hasn't come up very often since I stopped being in a classroom every day, but for the last couple years I have refrained from saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I do it for reasons of faith -- I cannot in good conscience pledge total allegiance to a country when I believe that my faith and my God transcends human-made borders. Additionally, more and more I feel like I am being asked to choose between my country and my God (while pretending they are one and the same). But if that is ever my choice, if I am being asked to be a good American or a follower of Jesus, I will always choose Jesus.
Weirdly, almost the only friends of mine who have problems with this are Christian.
6.
Reading through Reddit's AITA subreddit, where people ask for judgments on whether or not they are acting like a jerk in particular scenarios, always makes me supremely grateful for the people I have been fortunate to have around me or have chosen to surround myself with. In particular, my parents, who have always been there to support but have always urged me to make my own choices. There are so many stories of parents who are making decisions for their kids on who to marry, how to raise their kids, the careers they need to pursue, and I just can't even fathom my parents being overbearing like that, and I'm so grateful for that.
7.
I have just realized that when talking about my feelings about pandemic stuff (and I have lots of they're), I nearly always frame it in terms of sadness, not fear or anxiety, even though it does cause me fear and anxiety. But sadness is deemed a more acceptable emotion, so I feel like I'll get taken more seriously if I frame it that way. I've been doing that subconsciously for weeks and didn't even realize it.
8.
I figured I should add in here that even though I'm processing and struggling with the stuff I was told by my church community growing up (and still get told when I occasionally venture back in), I don't think any of them intended harm or wanted to hurt me. I think a lot of people share faith as it works for them. They lean on the things that got through to them or motivate them throughout their lives. My identifying something they said isn't an attempt to attack or pull them down or implying their faith experience is a lie or anything like that. But the way they choose to motivate is often deeply demotivational for me, the way they speak of God is often deeply disheartening for me, and too frequently one person's interpretation of God and the Bible and the Christian life is taken to be the sole way of viewing God and the Bible and the Christian life, so any disagreement or dissent or even "uh, maybe phrase that differently" is viewed as a direct attack on God.
That's not what I am doing. This is for my own processing purposes, and perhaps for those who feel a similar disconnect and discouragement.
9.
Independence Day weekend is always a little rough for me. I'm definitely not going to be watching my former church's service this weekend, as they nearly always lean way too hard into the patriotism for me to be comfortable with in a space meant to focus on God.
But it's hitting harder this summer with the pandemic and the protests, where it's become clearer to a lot of people that we are really bad at taking care of our own citizens, and when there's a decent chance I will either be locked away forever or will get sick and possibly die because of our country's strong sense of individualism and staunch refusal to lay individual rights aside, even temporarily, for the sake of others. It's an attitude that, while obviously not only in the US, is very baked into our soul - freedom is our entire rallying cry, freedom is our innate good in and of itself. And it's one that I believe to be antithetical to the Christian faith.
I'm not in favor of, like, surrendering all rights ever to the government. But as people cheer for the freedoms of America this weekend, I'm mostly going to be remembering all the people I know who would rather die than wear a mask. There's a very good chance that some of them will die, and kill other people in the process. Maybe me.
Independence Day is just going to be difficult.
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