Sorry for lack of posts!

Things are just fine here in Kinsi world. I’ve been diving more into the political world as of late, and started up a political blog with a friend over at http://perimeterprogressive.wordpress.com – i’ll still post over here for the spiritual stuff.

And I gotta say, I’ve been doing the political blog for 2 weeks and have already been offered 2 tickets to go see John Oliver from the Daily Show at Punchline Atlanta. How freakin’ cool is that?!? Woohoo!

Things are better

For those concerned,

Things are much better, with the help of church and a friend from church.  Although I’m struggling to find a better way of saying “thank you” as those two words just don’t seem strong enough.  Although life won’t be the same, I’ll be a better person coming out of this thanks to she-who-shall-remain-nameless.  So life won’t be the same…but it’s going to be an improvement.

I’ll have learned a lot from this week.  As she-who-shall-remain-nameless told me on the phone, your times of deepest pain are the most meaningful times you grow.  If only I can somehow convince my heart of that.  And she even got me to laugh for the first time this week.

So, although details will probably never be posted, rest assured no one died and I’m healthy.  And I’m going to take steps to get back on the beaten path.

I might have found God as a last resort.

Things are better today than yesterday.  What looked to be a particuarly hopeless situation has some glimmers in there.  Which is good…yesterday my thoughts drifted places they hadn’t in a long time.

Last night when I got home from work, I grabbed a bottle of wine.  But before I could get the cork off, I was already crying.  I found myself feeling pretty hopeless, and I did something I didn’t expect I would – I prayed.  To god.  To God with a capital G.  I won’t get into details of what I prayed about, because I still don’t feel comfortable talking about it.  I muttered my thoughts, my desperations, and my flaws.  I asked for help, for guidance.  I don’t even remember everything I prayed in retrospect. But I prayed.

I eventually stopped crying and went to bed, after chatting with some folks online just to get my mind off me for a few minutes.

Today, that little glimmer of hope and help came, and something that seemed unsurmountable might just have been made surmountable.  There’s still work to do, but now I can see the path whereas before I was lost in the dark forest of despair.  I can see some milestones ahead in the distance to get me out of here.

I don’t know if God listened or not.  But before, instead of just getting so fustrated with myself  and as a result breaking down, I kept it together.  And part of me is scared to admit that another part of me is chalking that up to something divine.

Today is Mardi Gras, the day before Lent.  I’ve decided to honor Lent this year.  And instead of giving up something on the periphery, I’m giving up something that’s become a part of me – diet coke.  On a daily basis, I must drink about a 2-liter of diet coke.  Thats right, 2 liters of diet coke daily.  So, I’m going to do my best, to show some strength in a time where I feel like I have none.

The most innoculous, terrible question with the harshest lie

“How are you?” asked by Barbara, the cashier at Publix.

Such an innoculous question.  The automatic answer “Fine” comes out without a concious thought nowadays.

I once vowed to always answer that question truthfully.  But today, I’m having just a terrible day.  And I really don’t want to talk about it.  But it’s up there on the worst-days-list.  (Don’t worry friends, no one died.)  Today, en route to that Publix, I was on the verge of tears.  But I pulled myself together, as I must, as I was taught growing up, and went inside to buy my Axe body spray.

Then she asked.   Then I froze.  And I had to force out a reply – “fine.”  That must have sounded like the surliest “fine” she had ever heard.  She looked confused, but let it go.

I couldn’t tell her “I’m doing terrible.  Thanks for asking.”  Besdies the inevitable follow up questions which I did not and still do not want to answer right now, I’m then placing an unfair burden of guilt on a stranger.  Yes, I know “well, she did ask.”  But a) very few people who ask that really want to know the truth, they just do it to be polite (maybe that’s just a southern thing, I don’t know) and b) I don’t feel like I have the right to make someone worried or concerned.

I originally had something else as b.  But the more I think about it, the more that the new b might just be right.  That, I can blame partially if not entirely on my upbringing and coping with so many deaths at such a young age.

.I felt like I heard a nail, nailing yet another closet door shut, like part of me just died a little.  And I know that every time I answer “fine” to a question, I only make things worse.

I had a discussion with someone at work, a Korean female, who I knew was having a terrbile day.  I asked how she was, and she said “fine.”  I knew it was clearly a lie, so I told her that she didn’t have to lie to me, and if it was a terrible day than she can say so.  She told me that as a Korean female she just isn’t allowed to have a bad day, and especially not allowed to tell others if she is.

I thought it was nuts.  But now I know exactly what she meant.

Wow. Go Iceland. A huge GLBTQ moment.

Iceland has a pretty crappy 2008, with the near bankrupcy of the government.  But I’ve got to say I think that there is at least one bright spot to come out of the terrible, terrible financial problems the country is having.

They have the first openly gay head of government of modern times with newly elected Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, a lesbian who has a civil union with her partner.  That’s just freakin’ awesome and extremely inspirational.  Wow!

Yes, I can be a UU and know that if there’s holding in the endzone it’s a safety

Last night we had a superbowl party.  About a dozen unitarians all crowded around snack food and watching the big game.  I had decided to root for Arizona, being the underdogs, and had a couple of people rooting for Arizona with me.  There were some others rooting for Pittsburg, for their political leanings.  Even those Arizona lost, that was a hell of a game, and a much better game than I was expecting.

I’m a Unitarian.  I like sports (Most notably NFL, College Football and Basketball.)  That doesn’t seem hard to understand, although the person sitting next to me at said party was dumbfounded when I was yelling at the TV about some of the bad calls made by the refs (I’m sorry, but at the end that should have been an incomplete pass, not a fumble by Warner.)  She made the comment that I’m a unitarian – why the hell do I know stuff about sports?  It was in jest (I hope) but the thoughts still there.  (Hence, my Pop-UU from a year or two ago.) And it’s aggravating.

I would rather watch football then go to the symphony.  Does that make me a bad UU?  It just might, but I think it makes me like an overwhelming majority of Americans though.  (That might me one of the few things I’m in the majority of!  heh.)

I take back the asterix

As UUCA (Atlanta) has surpassed UU Dallas as the largest congregational presence on facebook.

*starts to strut*

As of just this second, UUCA has a whopping 207 members in our facebook group!

*struts*

Time to brag – my church is #1* on facebook

Ok, so Chutney spilled the beans.

A year or two ago (4/13/07), I quietly started up a facebook group for our church – Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta (UUCA.) I started off with inviting folks from our young adult group, since they were the only ones who knew about facebook in the firstplace.  Slowly and steadily, more folks from church found the group, and it had a pretty stable, but small growth rate.

Around midyear last year, our group had a little explosion.  We broke 100.  A large group of folks, parents of youth group members mostly, discovered facebook.  I started looking at other groups, and saw that we were pretty neck and neck with All Souls, DC for facebook group status.  The UUs up in North Carolina banded together to have a statewide group (sneaky), and the rest were national groups.

But due to a stupid error of not pressing the next button, I recently saw we were about 10 down from All Souls Tulsa.  And 1 down from All Souls, DC.  A week later, word spread (ok, with a little nudging and help from the youth group of which I am an advisor of) and sure enough, as of right now we’re the largest congregational facebook group.

Now, I know odds are that might not last, especially when Tulsa and DC read this, or Chutney’s post (I wanted silence!  He wanted smack!) and I fully expect a counterattack.

Ok, now to give some disclaimers.  UUCA has the largest facebook *group*

I know that’s a very technical brag.  Because I also know the Dallas facebook *page* has about a dozen more fans than our members.  (We have both, our facebook *page* is about 125 at this point, but the UUCA group is more easily findable due to the acronym.)

Stil.  Our church is medium-sized.  I don’t know how we stack up against others, but I’m pretty sure Tulsa, DC and Dallas are all a fair bit bigger than us.  So I’m stoked, not just for the hyper competitiveness that came out early this week and the couple of congregations who have sent me a message about getting their church started on facebook, but for a big victory for our little group.

In addition, if any one wants to get any advice about unitarian universalist congregations on facebook, shoot me an email or leave a comment here.  I’ll hep out as best as I can!

Next goal: Beat Dallas for total number of fans/group members (eep), hit 200 (I think this’ll happen by Sunday), somehow surpass that North Carolina statewide group, and then take over the world.

Remember compassion, remember yourself.

We’re going to start this post with imagination – a key in life.  I want you to imagine three people.

Imagine a boy, John, growing up having never felt compassion.  Imagine the hatred he must feel for his fellow man.  The loneliness and solitude he must endure.  The lack of love in his life, both giving and receiving.  The hollowness of just another day as a waste of space.  The isolation, the depression, the cynicism.   John takes a walk down the street and passes an injured kitten.  He noticed the injured kitten, knows exactly how it feels, and walks right on bye.

Now imagine Sue, a child growing up surrounded by compassion.  Everywhere the child goes, the child is warmly welcomed, and people bend over backwards for her.  She is the apple of everyone’s eye, and whenever she has a problem, people are constantly there for her so she can be loved and welcomed.  Everyone is compassionate towards her, without it reverting to pity.  She grows up, constantly seeking the compassion she grew up with.  She passes the hurt kitten on the street, but is too caught up in herself to even notice.

These two cases seem like opposite ends of the spectrum, and neither are ideal.

Imagine a little boy, Lee, growing up with compassion when needed, but more importantly being taught to be compassionate when called upon by his community.  He has experienced great compassion from his fellow man, so he can future the compassion by being loving and caring to both friend and stranger.  He passes the same injured kitten on the street immediately stopping, trying to see if the kitten needs help.   He discovered it’s really injured, and starts to ask passersbys for help.

We must not only be compassionate, but we must also teach how to be compassionate.  We also must teach how to accept compassion when we need it, which is something our pride gets in the way of.  We seem to always be wanting to give compassion, but when its offered to us we shy away from it.  If we expect to give it we must be prepared to receive it.  I know others out there have the same trouble I do accepting compassion – I’m always ready to give it and never ready to receive it.

Compassion is only a third of our second principle, but don’t take that as it’s a small amount of our faith – being compassionate is something essential to our faith.

How we accept and how we give compassion leads us to who we really are as people.  Remembering these acts of compassion lead us to remember our history, our life, our true self.  Now, I want you to remember acts of compassion in your life that you received.  Not that you’ve given, but that you’ve received.  Go ahead, think about it for a minute.

Remembering compassion is to remember who you are as a person.  Remember to give compassion, receive compassion, and teach compassion, well, for it is what makes you, you.

Entropy and the Laws of Life

I was thinking about how I’ve recently given my apartment a deep clean, and how I always struggle to keep it clean.  It made me think of entropy.

Yah, I know.  A little odd, but there you go.

Things that are organized have no stability; hence, the universe tends towards disorganization, as it likes stability.  How’s that for entropy made simple?

Sure, this is a nice and easy way to get out of cleaning my own apartment, but I’ve been thinking about this disorganization is stability concept.  How often have we tried to plan out an event only to have something go wrong?  Did we freak out about it, or just let it ride as the Universe righting itself?  Lord knows I’ve freaked out about events going awry – I was determined to have every single aspect of the event organized before the event.  Thinking about it further, I can’t think of any other way than saying I was trying to one-up the Universe.

How often have we tried to plan out a day, only to have it go horribly off track?  That’s certainly happened to me, more often than I can count.  Part of me cringes at the mere thought of an organized day going off track, but the mere derailment of an organized day doesn’t mean the day is lost – sometimes, it ends up better than originally planned, sometimes worse, but either way it’s the Universe kicking that organization to the curb.

Taking this even further, how often have we tried to plan out our lives only to have it go awry?

I’ve got a friend going through this turmoil right now – his life isn’t where he had planned for it to be, and it’s clearly causing him some pain.  I’ve certainly gone through that, as my quarter life crisis posts suggest from over a year ago.  I would say I’m out of that phase now.  I can’t say its anything active on my part, but I think a large part of it is acceptance that, yes, life won’t ever be organized to my desires, but a large part of that is clearly out of my control – gravity will pull the blocks down no matter how high I stack them, and liquids will always fit the shape of its container.

So maybe I shouldn’t really try to plan out the next few years of my life, the next few decades of my life.  Part of me is already anxious over that thought – odd, since I really don’t have any sort of plan, but the mere thought of not having a plan causes anxiety (now that calls for future exploration.)  Besides the inevitable anxiety over the plan, and anger when not meeting the plan, the universe is pretty clear that organization won’t last.

It’s easy to say I’ll just leave “it”, aka my life, up to the Universe, well, easy to type, but it seems extraordinarily difficult to actually believe and accept.  Accepting that your organization will inevitably fall like Newton’s apple means that you’re powerless.  And it’s not appropriate to feel powerless in our society.  It’s easy to fight against the Universe, and make grandiose plans on where you’ll be in ten years.  Easy to fight against, but impossible to win.

You have on the other hand, those that say the Universe helps those who help themselves.  Maybe the right method is to have a general direction of where you’d like to go without the specifics that you become too attached too.  But, then again, when running a business, how often do you need to have that specific plan for the long term.  But is there any such thing as long-term success in the corporate world?  Inevitably, all businesses will fail at some point – nothing’s permanent.  So while the short term (short term could even be on the order of decades and centuries mind you) needs a plan for corporate success, no long-term plan can cure that inevitable death (either corporate or human.)

For those with the continual five-year plans, I wonder how happy they are in comparison to those without detailed plans, but floating through the universe without a pile of blocks to be knocked over.  Because isn’t that the goal for all of us?  To find happiness, no matter what our definition of happiness may be?  If my blocks keep getting knocked down by the Universe in its desire for disorder but stability, I won’t be happy as I have to constantly restack them.

But maybe stability isn’t what everyone wants in life.  They want to stack up the bocks to get to their highest potential, and if the universe knocks them down, they find joy in rebuilding.  I’ve come to realize that stability means more to me then great heights.  [Part of this, I’m sure, was the severe instability of my childhood – and the desire to find stability for once.  (“My happy little ruts.”)]  I find comfort, and dare I say happiness, in the stability of my life.  Maybe I need to try to fight the Universe a little less often and try to listen to it more.