backward dog...

Alright, straight up.  This is gonna be my most controversial post yet.  And longest.  Like real long.  I may lose a few of ya as a result.  I may go down from low 20 readership to like, the teens.  We’ll see…

I have tried yoga a couple of times.  It will kick your patootie.  Don’t doubt it.  I heard about it and thought it was going to be all serene and low key and relaxing and it’s not.  Oh, no, it’s not.  It hits you way different than aerobics which is just a bunch of uppy downy movement that makes you huff and puff and sweat and jiggle.  Which is frustrating because you are working really hard to stop the overall jiggle so jiggling feels counter-productive.   And useless.  Not yoga.  Yoga is about stretching.  It’s about pulling at areas deep in your body that are long neglected and forgotten and don’t really appreciate being remembered.  Because you foresaked them and now they are all bitter and resentful and atrophied.  And then there is the added stress on your guts that in the quiet, soothing environment as you are stretching out all kinds of parts of your body, including your intestines, a little air might now have freedom to travel to your exit parts and make some sort of sigh noise on the way through.  Or some sort of snort.  I’m talking about tooting, people.  Yoga may well cause you to toot while doing it.  And its sound will be exponentially embarrassing because of the quiet and the soothing and the low-key and the relaxing and sereness.  I don’t like to toot in public.  I don’t like to talk about tooting.  And I don’t like to exercise whether it’s uppy downy or stretchy.  So what are we talking about again?

Yoga is controversial.  There are some who believe in it purely as exercise and are in it to win it.  Somehow yoga makes people look good.  Probably they have done it more than two times but I’m just speculating here.  And probably they have the kind of diet that eliminates tootage so that they don’t have to feel self-conscious and worry about being all clinched up at the same time as trying to unclench.  Then, there are other people who believe that yoga started as a form of worship for deities other than God and regardless of its mainstream acceptance, its still fruit from a poisonous tree.   I think that it can be either.  I think that it is a really good form of exercise and truly, some that my body would benefit from should I ever take up the idea that the benefits of exercise far outweigh - uhm, anything at all.  I also think that there are still some individuals as well as some belief systems that do use it as a form of worship to googly moogly multi-armed type unforgiving, unhopeful type deities.  I think meditation, which can be a very integral part of yoga can be dangerous.  I think opening your mind to the universe opens your mind up to ALL forces of the universe – and not all things in our universe are all kind and benevolent beings.   Because if there is wet, there is dry.  If there is clean, there is dirty.  If there is sugar, there is salt.  If there is good (God), there is bad (opposing God).  I was doing my research (remember – random online  search which used to be primarily a Google situation but now I  just do all my navigation and searches through swagbucks.com because about every two weeks I earn enough points for an Amazon gift card- curiosity should always pay –off folks.) and found out that there is Christian yoga.  And there are people who scoff at Christian yoga saying that it is an oxymoron.  And you know what I think? I just don’t believe in legalities.  I don’t believe at coming at each thing and figuring out what God’s decision about everything and anything is our job.  There’s too much.  There are nuances and facets and more than one side to every thing.  Only God has the ability to see anything and everything in it’s entirety and make judgments – what with His ability to see things in the context of past, present AND future seeing as how He, you know, invented the beginning and the end and all the stuff therein.  I think that when we concentrate on trying to figure out God’s stance on stuff, we are way out of our element and I think that we are becoming religious.  Or religulous.  Which was a movie that Bill Maher made and I will never see because it is all about being ridiculous to have faith but I’m using his term and saying that it is ridiculous religion which is kind of silly because my whole point is that…I think that religion is a little bit awful.  I think that religion, that the religious, have probably done more to turn people off from God than nearly much else.  Yep.  God has rules.  And you know what?  You have to follow them.  No, for real.  Lots of His rules have somehow or another made into the secular world and are laws.  So, whether you feel called to call God the end all, be all, you still gotta follow lots of His rules.  Or else after like 17 strikes they throw you in jail for like 2 years.  You aren’t allowed to kill people.  You aren’t allowed to have affairs after you crush on someone else’s husband or wife.  You aren’t allowed to take stuff that isn’t yours.  Like a husband or wife.  Or my chocolate.  And also, with regard to the other rules that aren’t in our actual legal systems with all the kinds of penal sub-sections and foot notes, the reality is that if you go against THE rules, even if you don’t believe in them or even maybe don’t know what they are, you get all jammed up.  Heartache and pain comes a lot from going against the grain of how we were made.  Like from the beginning.  Even sweet little Anne Frank believed in the concept that we were inherently made to be good.  So not being good – it’s bad.  It’s bad for all parts of you.   I don’t believe in Baptist or Pentecostal or Lutheran or Presbyterian. I don’t have a thing in the world against the people who flow in those buildings.  There are good people doing good stuff.  I just don’t believe in any necessity in picking one of those (or any of the others not mentioned above – not targeting a few here…) and calling yourself one.  And I just don’t believe in the addendums that religion can feel called to add on to interpret the information that they learned from in the first place (aka the original word o’ God, the Bible).  Wine was wine – not a euphemism for grape juice.  Nobody has to yell at you during a Sunday service to get God through to your thick skull.  Speaking in tongues is actually confusing and perhaps frightening to an 8 or 9 year old little girl who just wanted to spend a little more time with her friend and ended up at their church on a Sunday and got freaked out by the way her 8 or 9 year old friend’s eyes kind of rolled up into her head and made her start talking all funny and weird.  Uhm, moving on… And then there are the Mormons and the Scientologists.  Those people are crazy.  I’m sorry, but if your “faith” incorporates aliens or levels of attainment or auditing and top secret ceremonies and people who don’t let you quit – you should get out now.  That’s now how God called it.   Right about now, you might be thinking about that whole thing about how we aren’t supposed to judge, only God is supposed to judge.  But that’s not the way we down here on Earth operate, now is it?  And I’m certainly not here to tell you about how I’m perfect and sinless and I have it all figured out and am all enlightened and such.  Nope.  I’m a sinner.  I’m someone who is voicing my thoughts and my beliefs.  And you have total freedom to disagree and even be pissed with me.  But really, why would you?  I mean, aside from being a crazy Mormon or Scientologist, what do you care about those rules and what I think of them?  They comfort you.  They give you a sense of belonging and they direct a path.  And that’s totally cool.  But God never mentioned picking a religion.  He said pick Him.  He said pick His Son.  Follow His rules – and not just the 10 big ones that made it to the big screen with Charlton Heston.  All of them.  There are none bigger or smaller than the others.  They all count because He took the time to mention them. 

And here is the thing about faith.  We take it personally.  That’s why this is going to be offensive.  We take up God’s cause and we fight the fight for Him.  We defend Him.  And it’s awesome.  And it’s unnecessary.  We talk about being spiritual.  We call our faith, our beliefs, our religion personal.  We don’t want to get into it.  We don’t want to be challenged in case it’s delicate and shatters at the slightest question.  We don’t want to offend anyone.  It’s not PC to prefer one faith to another.  They should all be honored and they should be privately held.  And you know what?  That’s a crock.  Your faith, your religion, your belief system should never have secrets or necessitate darkness or closed doors.  Your faith should never involve harm to yourself or another.  Or severed chicken heads.  Or goats.  Because that is gross and creepy.  Faith should be shared.  It should be in the light.  It should be celebrated because in the end it is just one thing – the one thing it was always called to be – good news. 

My kids show me a lot about the nature of God.  They show me the depth of good news.  There is the miracle of Scooby who couldn’t talk until he was 3 years old.  God gave him a curious mind and active insides that can’t sit still.  That kid taught me about being a voice for the voiceless.  The way God made Scooby called forth a warrior in me that became an advocate for resources that gave way to a kiddo who came so far that he was complimented on his vocabulary in the first grade.  I love the way his mind works.  It’s different and creative in ways that are foreign to me.  Much like God.  There is the miracle of Princess who came to us in the most devastating of circumstances.  We had lost our perfect 13 month old daughter (a story you and me have not shared yet and a story for another time…) and I just knew that I needed to feel life within me again.  So, along came Princess.  Who had a problem.  Her little umbilical chord was supposed to have 3 vessels and only had 2.  We had to keep a watchful eye to make sure she got enough to eat in there.  And then she had another problem.  There was a problem with her heart beat.  And my friends gathered around and did a day of fasting and prayer the day before I was to go in for a more in depth test about her heart beat.  And that next day, her heart was perfect. Two tests had determined the problem and then two tests revealed that there was no longer a problem.  She showed me that God truly does heal.  When she got here and she didn’t need it anymore, her umbilical cord’s deficiency was a moot point.  And then she just loved me up.  Overwhelming and humbling in her love – like God.  And we thought that was the end of our birthing tales but it was not.  God had a little more in store for us and surprised us with another pregnancy.  I knew that it was going to be a boy.  I knew it.  But there was some spidey-sense stuff happening in my core that told me more.  Like twins more.  I was getting all kinds of signs and signals that there was a two-fer happening.  I was terrified and excited.  And I prayed for them.  I wanted them.  I asked again and again for twins.  And it wasn’t until our first ultra-sound that it was confirmed.  Twins.  A sister for Princess and a brother for Scooby.  Peanut is our youngest.  She is fierce.  She is small and feisty.  She has the best giggle in the world.  I don’t care what kind of mood you are in, that giggle will create a groundswell of joy in you.  And it will become a wave and swallow you up.  When I give in to thinking about God, what He has done for me in my life, that’s the same kind of joy I feel.  And then there is Big Stuff.  I have called him Skunk before.  But he really has always been Big Stuff around here.  He showed up just before his sister with this tiny elfin face and sweet disposition.  I decided to call him tough names like bruiser and big stuff so that he wouldn’t feel so tiny and cute.  But he is adorable.  I love all my children like crazy cakes and I truly don’t have a favorite – it just seems like it to the kids (Just like how we see God having a favorite but really, He doesn’t.  He is incomprehensibly able to love each and every one of the 7 billion of us – I don’t place much stock on the accuracy of census and what-not so I’m accounting for all those that likely weren’t counted last time they did the big to do).  But Big Stuff captured my heart.  From the start I felt gentleness in him and he adores me in a different way than princess.  He delights in me and pretty much just sees the good in me.  There is a pureness and innocence in him that reveals a truth about God that I don’t see much anywhere else.

I don’t like cats.   I believe that there are dog people and there are cat people.  And cat people are wrong.  Cats are arrogant and independent.  It’s a one sided relationship.  You dig the cat and the cat expects you to attend to its every need and whim with no return on that investment.  We are dog people.  Which is good because I have at least 2 children that are probably allergic to cats.  So, even if they were cat people, they are medically called to be dog people.  I have a dog.  I have two dogs but only one is MY dog.  That dog adores me.  He seeks me out all the time.  He waits for me outside the bathroom door.  He wants to sleep on my head.  He always wags his tail when he sees me enter a room 49 seconds after I left it.  He is a little off if he hasn’t checked in regularly.   He is intuitive about my moods.  He wants to lick my tears.  He is confused and hurt when I yell at him and has forgotten my yelling at him about a minute after it happens.  He forgives me every single time that I accidentally step on his toes.  He always has an awareness of where I am in the house and if he can’t be with me, it’s only because I have cut off his access because he is always trying like the dickens to be with me.  He gives me the illusion that he needs me but really, he could survive on his own.  He has apopleptic excitement about me coming back to him.   He is jealous of anything that steals my attention from him.  I belong to him.  And that is why God spelled backward is dog.  Because in this world, not much else will have the ability to teach you more about the nature of God, the nature of His abiding love and grace and enthusiasm of you than a dog.  I have to go now because my children won’t leave my dog alone and he needs rescuing.  You can take that literally or ponder whether it’s a metaphorical loop back to something else I said way back up there.  

juice...

I watched a fascinating documentary on Netflix the other night.  It's called "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead".  I like documentaries.  I like to fool myself into thinking that they are unbiased reflections of the world at large.  They aren't skewed in any way, I tell you!  I don't know what drew me to this one in particular.  It mentioned steroids and maybe that was it.  Hubs and I watched a doc about wrestling and maybe I thought that the steroids in this movie were going to be the same kind as in that movie.  But they weren't.  The steroid was prednisone.  I have an intimate knowledge of prednisone although my knowledge of it isn't really first hand.  I think I took it for some malady, briefly.  But I can't recall with certainty.  My asthmatic mom had to be on it for years.  Years.  Before they realized that no one should be on prednisone for years.  God love her (and He does), that stuff puffed her out.  But she had to breathe and such so she suffered through.  Hubs just had to finish a round of prednisone because he got exposed to some wicked poison ivy/oak/sumac type situation and it would NOT go away.  We had a dog that had to be on prednisone.  It made him crazy, ravenous and thirsty.  I think it might have affected me the same way.  But I can't recall with certainty.  So, in the movie, this Aussie dude Joe decides that he is going to confront his health.  He was a very successful business man who ate and enjoyed life to excess and ended up with an auto-immune disease that made the histamines in his body go nuts and gave him a frequent, unpredictable, painful rash.  He decided to do a juice fast for 60 days to clear out his system, lose weight, and try to cure his disease (or at least lessen his dependence on the medications for it).  Short of any sort of creative editing or possible behind the scenes aid from medication or surgery, this movie was compelling.  Because not only did Joe lose a boatload of weight, he got off all his medications, stopped getting the crazy rash and found energy and health.  From juice.  On top of that, he met a truck driver who had the exact same auto-immune disease who agreed to do the juice fast for 10 days and wound up doing it for 30 (if not 60 - memory issues, people - old) days.  He lost a boat load of weight, got off all his medications, stopped getting the crazy rash, found energy and health AND started a juicing club at his local health food store.  Now.  I'm not fat.  But I have bumpy parts.  And some bumpy parts sit on top of other bumpy parts.  Especially when I'm sitting.  Or standing.  Not so much really when laying down.  I don't think.  And lots of my bumpy parts aren't supposed to be bumpy.  Now.  I'm not sick.  At least, not terminally or chronically.  But I have stomach issues a little too frequently.  I don't have energy.  I am a sugar addict.  I am a coffee addict.  I'm totally chagrined about the increasing amount of processed and convenience foods that enter my home and my body.  And nearly dead?  Not right now, but who knows what the future has in store for me?  I want to wake-up and not feel like my get up and go has got up and went every morning.  I don't have much in the way of willpower and I don't know that I could just stop eating sugar and caffeine on my own.   But I believe in these 2 things, even prior to this propaganda:  1.  God did an extraordinary job creating the body.  Because that is how He does everything - extraordinarily.  It is built with the desire to restore and perform.  But we rob the body of it's innate abilities regularly - with smoking, drinking, sugar, drugs, no veggies, excess fat, bags and boxes of various foods, etc.  2.  Sugar is, for all intents and purposes, an organism that feeds on itself.  Now, I know that it is not really a living organism.  At least, I don't think it is.  It comes from a plant (or a plant, depending on whether you are buying real or fake) and those are living things but all living things essentially die when cut off from the source (oh, how philosophical I could wax right now about how we, as humans, essentially die when cut off from THE Source... another time...) so, it's not living or an organism at that point, right?  But I still firmly believe that it feeds on itself.  If you have never eaten it, you don't have to worry about it.  If you have a bite, that bite sits there and wants to become more, bigger, and it sets up a yearning, burning desire for not small quantities of Graeter's Buckeye Blitz pints or quarts or uhm, 8-10 packs of candy bars that are selling 10 for $10 at the grocery, or uhm, guzzled Hershey's syrup - in a can because it's so much richer and delicious in a can than that dang plastic bottle.  And the more you eat, the more you want.  I'm using alot of "you" language.  I'm just making assumptions about your experiences.  I have none of my own to point to... at all.

But here is the flip side.  Every so often, I get a wild hair - likely a gray one because those are unpredictable and unnerving and make me panic and look for a fountain of youth or some sort of next fulfilling thing.  It is nearly always, as Hubs can tell you, a train wreck.  For instance, I became a member of a pyramid scheme rep for a multi-level marketing company that sold too expensive ways to preserve memories and instill traditions for your family.  I was supposed to form clubs and do home parties to sell their wares.  I thought that I was brighter than the company because I was encouraged to do booths at different craft fairs and what-not so that I could drum up more opportunities to do home parties.  But nobody goes to a craft fair to look for home parties.  People go to craft fairs to buy crap.  But nobody wanted to buy into my crap.  Because it was expensive crap.  And not terribly crafty.  What with being made in China and all.  I spent gobs of money and was left with a BUNCH of products nobody wanted to shell out money for in order to learn that those pyramid schemes home party businesses have really done their homework and have spent the time to come up with a system that works from the top down and not the bottom up..  And Hubs saw me through.  I was doing my purees and have dwindled that off quite a bit.  By the by, my bleeding beet ombre is not going as expected/hoped.  And also, probably when you are using regular dye, bugs aren't attracted to it.  You know.  The way that bugs are attracted to food.  Anywho.    I go all gung-ho ahead about whatever scheme or notion or trend that I latch onto and sink time and money and enthusiasm into it and then get burned out (burnt out?  Doesn't either work?  Doesn't a fizzle dying and extinguishing become a burnt wick of some sort?  Hmmm...).  And the longevity varies quite a bit.  No rhyme or reason or predictability about the success rate - or lack thereof.  So I asked Hubs to watch the documentary to be a voice of rationale in my whirling dervish ways.  Because I'm all about the rationalizing but none too much about the rational.  He hasn't watched it yet.  Ahem.  But I'm anxious for him to because I need to get my fine quality juicer and kale and make the mean green juice and get started.

And, in the quest for trying to move forward responsibly with regard to my interest (possible new obsession) with juicing (a new thing - being responsible in my quests!!), I have realized something fairly monumental about myself.  I don't get excited about much.  It's like there is an apathy disease sitting on my cells.  It's all humdrum.  I don't know what gets me stoked about anything - what gets my juices flowing.  Hubs and I went to a U2 concert 2 weeks ago.  It. Was. Awesome.  The only thing that could have truly made it perfect for me was if the Black Eyed Peas opened instead of Interpol.  Interpol was pretty dang good but I love me some Will.I.Am and Fergie who is fergalicious.  But this concert was not about me or for me.  It was for Hubs.  He turned 40 last year and I told him that we were doing it.  I think 40 is a big deal and should be treated as such.  This was once in a lifetime type stuff.  So we bought the tickets, made the arrangements and even got to spend the night at a hotel.  Alone.  Mad props to the in-laws for coming through.  And it.was.awesome.  Hubs and I were all giddy on the way.  Okay, I was giddy.  Hubs was a more macho, manly version of giddy - probably excited.  On top of that, some sort of cult-like following was watching women's soccer like it was the royal wedding.  Japan vs. U.S..  Women's.  Soccer.  Who knew?  But there everyone was at home and then in the hotel lobby and bar glued to the screen like it was going to transform the world to see the outcome.  Or maybe they were just all waiting for some cute athletic chick to strip her shirt off after making the winning goal.  I don't know much about this cockamamie event but I do know that happened before some years ago.  So, between both these things, an epic concert and an apparently epic soccer event, the hotel and my husband were abuzz.  And not for nothing because I love my country and I am patriotic in my own ambivalent, not excited way, but I was happy for the little country who could.  They have had a tough time of it ladies and gents.  I don't mind them counting small victories where they can.  Anywho.   I was happy to be there.  I was happy to have Hubs to myself.  I was happy to be going to the concert - I dig U2.  I dig lots of their songs but they are no Shawn Colvin, my friends.  Or Black Eyed Peas.  Or Lady Gaga.  For goodness sakes.  I wanted this for Hubs.  And I had a great time.  But I go to things like this - events- big or small- like concerts like the one I go to every 2-10 years) or parties or gatherings or celebrations and I'm not in it.  It's kind of like a whir around me and I feel suspended above or  surrounding it from a petunia like stance against a wall.  I don't know what that is about, exactly.  I think that unexcited and unimpressed might go hand in hand.  Not much is really impressive anymore.  I mean, they closed the flippin' space program!  Are you kidding me?  Because there wasn't much more to see at this point.  It's not impressive anymore that rockets attach to a mega-airplane space craft and blast it into space.  It's not impressive anymore that there is a station IN SPACE that spacecraft take people to to live and repair stuff (all the time. Apparently not alot of shelf-life on products when in space).  Really?  Not much new happening there.  The moon?  Yup.  Been there, done that.  Claimed it.  Own it.  Until a little green dude shows up, we just sit around waiting for the technology to catch up with the next great frontier.  Imagine that being the train of thought a mere 55 years ago.  What if we were as caught up in the frontier we live in right here in our local atmosphere, our local hemisphere?  I dunno.  I'm just speculating.  I'm not trying to be a downer.  I'm just keepin' it real.  This is me.  This is how I'm seeing things.  This is me noticing that my senses are dulled by instant gratification and new and improved and out with the old.  I'm putting this out there - in case you see it too.  But I'm not resigned to staying this course.  I'm looking to flush the apathy off my cells.  Perhaps with some sort of juice product.  I'm determined to fixate and go full tilt into sinking time and energy and enthusiasm into noticing the details around me and not to stop looking because it doesn't jump out at me.  And I'm using my position of influence and power, such that it is since I have your attention and you made it this far.  I'm using my juice to encourage you to do the same. Seriously.  Go look at a giraffe.  No, for real.  I'll wait.  A giraffe's body does not make sense.  All science and logic says that they should drown when drinking.  There is nothing that is supposed to work about their make up.  But they do.  And they are extraordinary.  They are beautiful and impressive.  Go look at a book.  Muggles?  Butterbeer?  How impressive that a human mind came up with a world so rich with detail and fantastical animals and heart-breaking circumstances AND made my then 9 year old son jazzed about reading..  And that is just one book.  There are millions of books.  There are millions of individuals that invite you into their own stories or the ones that they invented.  Listen to a song.  Close your eyes and hear the words.  And consider how often you know those words in your soul because you are a human too and we all have our conflictions.  And we all have our triumphs.  Triumph is exciting. And either we aren't having enough triumph or the bar is too high for what we consider a true triumph to be.  If you woke up today and you are reading this now, That should be exciting.  It is to me, anyway.  I mean, what the heck am I doing here otherwise??  Dammit.  I just fell off my soap box.  I'm gonna have to soothe myself with an ice-pack and some chocolate 'til Hubs watches my documentary and I can fix myself up with all myriad of fruits and veggies...