Sometimes I Write

Part of me is glad to say goodbye to 2007. The part that wishes I could do a lot of things over, do them better, and maybe have some different outcomes. But rather than dwell on what I can’t change in the past, I’m going to focus on today and make a better tomorrow. Yikes. I sound like a campaign slogan! We had a hard year, but it was also sprinkled with many blessings. Here’s to counting the blessings:

January – We began SEVENS, spent some time on the streets and prayed over the areas we would be working in. We also focused on raising financial support. I attended the Whole Hearted Mother Conference in Colorado Springs with my friends Paula and Carmen. We stayed at the luxurious Broadmoor hotel, and had a great time. I wrote about it in this post.

February – The highlight of February was the day one of Benny’s dreams came true and he bought a motorcycle. He enjoyed working on it and making it his own. The plan was to ride it back and forth to Boulder during good weather to save us money on gas. It only lasted a few months, then needed some expensive repairs we couldn’t afford. That’s one of our goals for the Spring is to save enough money to get it fixed before summer comes around.

March – Was one of my favorite months of 2007. One of my dreams came true when we decided to use part of our tax refund to buy me a laptop. I had been wanting one for a long time to make my writing time a little easier and also for ministry use. Our friends Alyssa and Brian came for a visit from Indianapolis. I spent a wonderful day in Buena Vista with my friend Linda. I traveled to Kansas City to spend a few days with my best friend Tawnya. We went to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit and had a good time hanging out and eating at our favorite restaurants. It was so good to spend time with her and made me miss the days we lived closer to each other.

April – Was a month of great sadness and joy. Benny’s grandpa died so he and his brother Rex traveled to Texas for the funeral. They took Max, Zoe, and my niece Lilli along for the road trip. Petey and I had some time at home alone. Being the youngest child hasn’t allowed us as much one on one time as he needs, so it was a fun few days for us. The week after the rest of the family got back from Texas, we celebrated the best milestone in Max’s life. On April 21st, Benny and I had the honor of baptizing Max together. It was a wonderful day and we had a big party at our house.

May – Benny and I celebrated 14 years of marriage. Zoe was in the school talent show with one of her classes. We spent a fun day with our friends Joe and Heather Hughes and their kids at the Erie Fest. We got up at 6 a.m. to watch 60+ hot air balloons launch from a field near their home. It was amazing.

June – Was our busiest month of the year. It began with Graduation and the promotion ceremony for our Friday School group. Benny had a good time visiting with Tim Chapman (from Dog The Bounty Hunter) Tim was our speaker for graduation and the father of one of our graduating Seniors. Katherine, our summer intern for SEVENS, arrived to spend 6 weeks with us. The kids spent a week with Benny’s parents in Buena Vista so they could attend their VBS. Petey and Zoe spent a week in Wyoming with Rex and family while Benny, Max and I went to Oklahoma City for Zenith. The day after we arrived home, Benny performed the wedding ceremony for our friends Corey and Tricia. The day after that I got to be part of a murder mystery birthday party for my friend Wendy. Two days later we celebrated Benny’s 38th birthday. Yeah…it was a very busy month.

July – We spent the week of the 4th up in Buena Vista with Benny’s family. I got to meet Benny’s brother Ronnie and his wife Teresa, and of course visit with Linda. Our friend Andy (from Houston) was here for a week with part of his youth group. Our kids participated in VBS at Foothills Community Church. Several people from our church family at The Journey came with us to Boulder and we had a big dinner in the park for our streetkids. Tawnya came to Denver for a few days to spend my 35th birthday with me, and we toured Celestial Seasonings. I threw myself a birthday bash and some of my favorite girlfriends joined me for a progressive supper at Carrabbas, The Cheesecake Factory, and Starbucks. It was a GREAT night.

August – I went to Wisconsin for my little sister’s wedding, and was able to spend a few days with my parents and one of my brothers. We geared up for the start of a new school year. We missed Katherine being here.

September – We began classes at FACE. Benny is teaching a class this year which is good on many levels. It’s nice to have him there on Friday mornings and it offsets our cost of the classes our kids are enrolled in. I took on more of an administrative role by accepting the responsibility of keeping attendance records for the school. I also sub for a few of my friends who are teachers. I attended Women of Faith with a few of my friends I don’t see often enough. We hosted 9 little boys for a slumber party on Max’s 8th birthday. THAT was an adventure!

October– Zoe turned 5 years old. She gets more beautiful every year. Benny traveled to Chicago to speak at a youth weekend with our friend Kevin. October was low key for both our family and our ministry.

November – Benny’s Great Uncle John died, so he traveled to Texas for the second time this year for a funeral. I was asked to be on the Board of Directors for FACE. Our streetkids began to migrate from the streets to other areas for the winter. This means a bit of a change for the winter months both in location and focus. I saw Pride & Prejudice on stage at the Denver Performing Arts Center the week before Thanksgiving. Heather, Paula, Sarah and I went and had a great time. I love all things Jane Austen! I reconnected with an old college friend and she has blessed our family by creating a new logo for our ministry. It will be revealed to all sometime soon.

December – All three kids were in the Christmas program. Zoe was Mary, Petey was a wise man, and Max was a boy helping his brother tell their other siblings the Christmas Story. We were “off school” this month. Max and Benny both had root canals with Max’s tooth needing to be pulled. (fun fun) We fought illness all month long and ended up spending Christmas Day at home instead of our usual tradition of eating Chinese Food out and going to a movie.  It was a good day anyway.  Petey turned 4 two days ago.  He says he’s a little boy now and I can’t call him my baby anymore.

Thanks for sticking with me through this long post, and all of the other ones I’ve written this year. You have blessed me with your presence, challenged me to stretch and grow, and encouraged me with your comments. I wish you many blessings for the new year. It’s New Year’s Eve and the kids are planning on staying up until midnight. We’ll see if they make it. 😉 I’m off to work on my new planner for 2008, do laundry, and bake cookies. Many blessings friend!

Benny and I finally saw the movie a few weeks ago. It was good…if you haven’t read the book, and even then, I guess it was good. I know, I know, some of you are rolling your eyes at me. You knew I was going to say that. There were a few things in the movie that filled in some blank spots in how I imagined the story, so I’m glad I saw it.

If I had to choose a favorite thing about the movie, it would be Sam Elliott. There is no one on the planet that would be a better Lee Scoresby. The man rocks in everything he’s in. Period. Several of his lines in the movie were better than his lines in the book. I loved it. I enjoyed seeing some of the creative means of travel come to life on the screen. The Gyptian boats and the zeppelins were especially cool. I thought most of the casting was a good fit for the story (I loved John Faa) with a few exceptions. I also liked the look of the alethiometer. It was beautiful and mysterious, and much bigger than I had imagined it from the book. The scenery was amazing and I love cg art. Computers have done amazing things for cinema.

Now for the negative. I thought the movie was rushed. There wasn’t time to develop feelings about the characters, or for the characters to develop the friendships found in the books. Lyra and Lee Scoresby would be a good example of this. He shows his loyalty and protection of her, but moviegoers who haven’t read the books don’t have the background of the friendship that developed over time between the two, and how many times he comes to her aid.

I was also disappointed with all the liberties the screenwriter took with the script. So much gets lost in translation to the big screen. Maybe it’s my love for writing and being surrounded by writer friends who agonize over how to present their characters, settings, plot lines, etc. but it really bugs me when lines and actions are given to a different character in the movie than they were in the book. If the author of a book takes the time to repeatedly use a certain physical feature to describe a key character, why on earth would you decide to do the opposite for the movie? Such was the case with several key characters. It must be really hard to maintain literary integrity and also make things more appealing for the big screen. Benny thought that a few of the inconsistencies that bothered me were necessary for the flow of the action in the movie. Maybe I’m just a book snob. 😉

The movie ended 3 chapters shy of where the book ended which totally sets us up for movie number two, whenever that will be. The book ending leaves you hanging more effectively than the movie ending, but whatever. Time constraints, yada yada. I still think the story is too dark for children, but Benny and I enjoyed it as the fantasy story that it is. We sat in the theater as the credits rolled and I filled in the plot holes for him as he asked questions about this and that. I tried hard not to annoy him with my book snobbery. lol He told me I should always see the movie first. Nonsense.

From a religious aspect, I thought the Magisterium was more wicked and powerful in the movie than in the book. It is not THE church, but an arm of the church and their goal is to wipe out free will and free thinking. That is something I would oppose as well. It is not a matter of “choose whatever you want to believe and it will be right”. It’s still very much a good vs. evil tale, at least in my mind. When I watch a movie and the bad guy is a police officer, an airline pilot, or a priest, that doesn’t mean that those professions/lifestyles are under attack, the bad guy just happens to be those things. I think the same is true for this movie. The bad guys happen to be an arm of the church. I don’t think it represents the community of believers I’m a part of or THE church – God’s redeemed people. There are churches out there that I would consider evil and their goal is total control of the people. The people who drank poisoned kool-aid so they could be picked up by their spaceship hiding behind Halley’s Comet comes to mind.  I think it would be crazy to have them be compared to God’s church. I see the comparison to the Magisterium and God’s church just as ridiculous.

Let’s talk about the daemons (pronounced demons) for a minute. I have already said that I didn’t like Pullman’s choice of the word. I’ve read that is was based on the Greek word for companion. He could have chosen another word and it would have worked just as well and there would have been less controversy. The whole idea of a person’s soul being on the outside of the body is interesting. You have to remember this is taking place in a parallel universe, not our own. It makes me think of Gary Smalley’s personality type assessment with animals representing the different personality types. His theory says there are four basic personality types which are represented by the Lion, the Otter, the Golden Retriever, and the Beaver. Just thinking about those animals probably gave you an instant picture into what traits those particular animals might represent. You can read more about this and take a quick test to figure out which personality you may be HERE. I think I am a Beaver with Lion tendencies. IF I lived in Lyra’s world, my personality – a part of who I am deep inside me but existing on the outside of my body, would look incredibly silly if it were a lion/beaver mix. I hope you get the idea. I wish I would have thought about this when I wrote my review of the first book. The daemons in the story are not demons (as in Satan’s angels) from the Bible. I hear that “rebel angels” appear later on in the series. There is a clear distinction and I can’t think of any other way to get that point across. Lyra’s daemon Pantalaimon, called Pan in the movie more often than in the books, is named for a saint in the orthodox churches. His name in Greek means “all forgiving”. (I read that on wikipedia)

In short, people I dearly love sit comfortably on the opposite side of the table on this issue and I have to respect their concern and opinions. My friends can boycott the books and the movie and that is fine with me. I did not find it the sinister piece of film some of the commenters from earlier posts might. I said in my very first post that you will probably find what you are looking for in this story. If you go looking for good vs. evil, you will surely find it. If you go expecting to hate the movie and be offended by it, you probably will be. If you want to view the story as anti-religious, I can’t change your mind.

So far, I believe it to be a good story. It’s an entertaining work of fiction that spins an adventurous tale. The themes of loyalty, friendship, and a fight for the good run strong throughout the story. I’ll be posting my review of the second book, The Subtle Knife, next week. As for the movie, I liked it enough to watch the second movie when it comes out, though the book will still be better. 🙂

My friend Jan is discussing the Santa debate on her blog this week. She asked me to join in and since I already have a post written regarding that topic, I directed people to my own blog to read my opinion. Wasn’t that nice of me? 😀 So, If you’re here from Jan’s blog, or IF you care at all what I think about Santa, then click here to read that post. I will say that I wrote it last year and as our children grow, our holiday traditions evolve and change. This year is going pretty much as we’ve been celebrating the past few years. We’ve already talked about next year looking a little different.

Back to the discussion at hand here on MY Journey. I’m pleased with the responses so far regarding the questions I asked in my last post. I shared them so we could discuss not only what I’ve been thinking about, but to make you think as well. I’ve already said that, but there are still a few that think they need to take this opportunity to lead me to the “right” answers. That’s not where I’m going with this discussion. Even I am not trying to lead you to the “right” answers. Yours may be different than mine. I’d like to keep the discussion going. And let me just jump ahead of a few of you here. Based on previous comments, I know where you’re headed mentally and I’m NOT saying there are no absolutes when it comes to “right” answers. There certainly are. But the tension usually comes from discussing the gray areas.

I’ve been talking with God and I’m confident that I’m to stay on this path…asking questions. I’m going to see The Golden Compass tonight with my husband. I’m still reading books 2 & 3. I’ll be sharing my thoughts and observations as I finish each one. If you tire of the discussion surrounding the books and movies, my hope is that you’ll still stick around to dialog about the deeper issues that they bring up. I appreciate your comments and the wrestling through the faith discussion. Don’t feel you have to agree with me, but please do remain respectful. I’m glad you’re here, and thank you for your input.

I will also be blogging about other topics during this faith discussion. The dialog about TGC stuff is not my only focus. Life is happening all around me and I’m not just an observer, I’m a participant. Coming up next week: My review of the movie, a review of August Rush, where the Nowell family is at this holiday season, some really great song lyrics, and more discussion about tough faith questions. See you then!

I’m still receiving “helpful” articles about The Golden Compass from friends far and wide. It appears some of my friends are concerned with my apparent lax on Christian virtues and beliefs and their being attacked by this “atheist heathen”. ~sigh~ I have had more scripture quoted at me in the past two weeks than I have in the last year. I’m talking directly at me – not while I sit in church. It’s hard not to want to throw my hands in the air and scream “give me a freaking break!” I’m trying to hold my tongue and reign in my emotions and come at this topic with probing eyes and not just spout off a bunch of pious platitudes.

I have questions…lots of questions. Deep faith questions that require exploration and examination of what I’ve read, been taught, always believed, and do not fully understand. The only thing this has to do with Pullman is that the controversy surrounding his books and the movie have catapulted me into a place of defining more clearly who I am and what I am about as a follower of Christ. I have begun to dislike using the word Christian to describe myself because it so often shuts down conversations with those who have been hurt by Christians. Part of who I am is being a woman that God has invited in to love on people who have been spit on by the world – including being spit on by Christians, and wounded Christians themselves. It makes me more careful with my choice of words. But it seems my choice of words is also getting me into trouble.

So the conversation continues…not because I want to get everyone on my side and think as I do, but because I still want to get you thinking. So these are some of my questions that I’ve been thinking about. I encourage you to ask yourself the same things. Don’t just give a flippant answer of what you’ve always thought and believed. Ask yourself why you would answer the way you would. Put some thought into it, then feel free to share a few of them here. Ready?

1. What does it mean to be a follower of Christ?
2. Does it mean that everyone who is has to have the same core beliefs? If so, what are they?
3. What does it mean when we can’t agree on what the core beliefs are?
4. Can two believers be convicted by different things?
5. Can two believers be convicted by different things when the focus is on the same subject?
6. How should I handle conflict when I disagree with another believer about a conviction?
7. Can we still be friends, or have I just made an enemy or lost my witness with them?
8. Is it my responsibility to make someone choose Christ?
9. If someone hasn’t made that choice yet, what is my responsibility then?
10. What does it mean that it takes some longer than others to make that choice – if they ever do?
11. How should I treat someone that hasn’t or doesn’t want to choose Christ?
12. How do I show compassion towards others?
13. Can I choose to look for God and his message in all things?
14. What do I do if I find Him in something not meant to be about Him?
15. What do I do if I can’t find Him in something not meant to be about Him?
16. What do I do if I can’t find Him in something meant to be about Him?
17. What is the difference between dialog and debate?
18. Is it my job to change people’s minds if they don’t agree with me?
19. What is the proper way to handle being told I’m not really a Christian?
20. Who is my enemy?
21. What is judgment and how often am I guilty of doing it to others?
22. What is the phrase, “causing your brother to stumble” really about?
23. What is the meaning behind the scripture about whether or not it’s o.k. to eat meat sacrificed to idols?
24. What is fantasy/fiction and is it o.k.? (Fantasy as in characters and situations that don’t exist in our world)
25. Is it o.k. to think about things through the lens of fantasy fiction that wouldn’t be o.k. in real life? (magic, ghosts, witches, etc)
26. What does it mean to explore life, human nature, spirituality, and how they are intertwined?
27. If I’m displeasing to another believer does that mean I’m displeasing to God?
28. Is it o.k. to have questions about and struggle with faith?
29. What kind of spirit did God give me and why?
30. Are my sins covered by Jesus’ blood or not?
31. Can they be uncovered once they’ve been covered ?
32. What does it mean to work out my salvation with fear and trembling?
33. What do I look like to other believers?
34. What do I look like to unbelievers?
35. Am I loving as Jesus loved?
36. Do I have the right or responsibility to rebuke the pharisees around me?
37. Is that a form of judgment?
38. Why is it important to me to dialog with other believers?
39. Am I surface or am I deep?
40. What am I doing to bring the kingdom of God to those around me?

~deep breath~

That’s a lot, I know. I had a good cry on Saturday while mulling these things over and talking to Benny. Both always make me feel better. Talk about releasing emotion! O.K. play along…it’s your turn.