2008 life summary (our christmas letter)

December 2008
Greetings and salutations to our dear friends and family! This past year has been one of transition and change once again for our budding family. 2008 began with some back trouble for me. It was a nightmare because I was working onmy chaplain residency at a KC hospital, working 55-90 hours a week while all this went on. My hubbie was a lifesaver and helped me through it all. I'mfinally able to do normal things again (as long as I watch it).

A. went from working for the University of Kansas as a computer nerd jack-of-all trades to working at the corporate office of Payless Shoesource rolling out new computer systems for Central and South America doing bilingual technology support. In September, I began work at a hospice in Lawrence, KS. and I love the work. After a year at a level one trauma hospital and seeing all sorts of extreme cases, the pace at the hospice is just right. I work with the patients as well as with the families, including following up with the families for a year after the patient's death. I have been approved for ordination by my denomination and will be getting ordained this spring sometime.

We moved into my mom's house in Lawrence and began renting with the hope to buy it. Mymom moved to Charlotte NC to work with a different land conservancy agency. Moving into our new home was an adventure in and of itself but it helped 3D, our doggy-daughter feel more at ease now that she can run around outside without needing a leash. She still seems to have a love-hate relationship with the neighbor dogs on two sides of her yard, but she still has lots of fun running figure eights and circles when she isn’t trying to run down squirrels and rabbits in the yard. It also made space for some late season gardening of cherry tomatoes and basil. Plans for a larger garden are in the works for next spring.

During the recent hunting season, A. successfully hunted a deer. It only took 20 minutes before bringing home the venison on opening day of the Missouri firearm deer season in November. We also started attending my old karate class. It helped her back heal faster and A. attained a yellow belt, after only four weeks of classes.

In August, we took a long awaited vacation/honeymoon driving through the Smoky Mountains. We camped in the Mark Twain National Forest and went to see Indian Burial grounds in Kentucky. A highlight for A. was figuring out how to use a power inverter to air up an air bed for camping while also running a camping fan all night to make camping out a little more comfortable in the tent (imagine the steamy August nights). Then we spent a few days in Tennessee perusing the local folk art and music, drove through the National Park. A. as always, took lots of photos and a few videos and even has a short video of me playing a dulcimer while they were in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The finale of our trip was visiting my mom and Mark. We enjoyed their wonderful swimming pool and hiked up a local mountain to see a beautiful waterfall.

A.’s mom is doing well. We continue to visit her and the plethora of animals (goats, chickens, ducks, geese, dogs, cats, etc.) about once a month on the farm in the Ozarks. Since her purchase of a neon green Artic Cat ATV, she is doing even better around the dairy goat farm now that she has a “green goat” to make tasks easier to do.
We hope you are doing well and look forward to hearing from you soon!

Blessings,
Jaded Mystic

Is God Perfect?

I read the Still Speaking devotional today (from UCC website). Because of Lent, it is of course dealing with sin, quoting 1 John. She makes quite the emphasis about God being the only one that is perfect, and therefore Jesus, being both God and man, was the only perfect human. This really troubles me. I'm of course a raging Process feminist, but that doesn't mean i don't believe in sin or repentence. I just choose to think about perfection differently. The way she was describing it, perfection is jsut another dichotomy/hierarchy to separate us from God and Jesus. When you think of God being perfect, do you think of us humans being imperfect? To me, that doesn't make sense. I tend todefine her way of thinking as more "worm theology" (me lowly worm:God magnificent greatness).

Humans are perfect in their humanity. To compare us to God is a bit futile, I think. I want God to be perfectly God, in the way I think of God (aka perfect love, perfect relatedness) but I'm a co-creator with God, created and creating. Sin exists, but to say that we are not perfect means we are failures from the beginning and smacks of original sin, which is not my gig at all. To say there is pre-determined perfection is to say the entire existence of the universe is already predestined and categorized into good and evil... and that's definitely not my gig.

Now, really I'm breaking down the etiology of perfect, when really what the author means is the popular understanding of perfect... which may seem inocuous, but there are underlying roots of inaccuracy and inconsistency in using that word. It really really bothers me. It sets us up to fail. Her message is to depend on the perfect God because we can never be perfect. i understand where she is coming from, but it's a slippery slope to imply or directly claim those things. I rely on God to my support and comforter for things I have no control to change. What do ya'll think?