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.  

Unexpected blessings...

I totally made a mistake.  I made a cookie bar.  I took my favorite cookie mix and added white chocolate chips and salt.  Remember when I was talking about the fudge?  Well, I had the same idea.  My friend Sarah makes an impossible cookie bar.  And it's got salt in it.  It's perfect.  She sort of got me hooked to the point where I went through my stash and had the nerve to call her and ask for a fix.  Seriously.  I don't know how much it would take for me to look all sweaty and have the shakes hovering furtively around her door.  So, I was trying to do my thing.  I made a big deal out of it to the kids.  I fed them a new dinner.  I'm a big fan of rice (think Ready Rice or Rice-a-Roni) mixed with a meat product (chopped up cooked chicken, ground round, Italian turkey sausage).  I'm probably playing that card a little too often lately.  Tonight it was the Italian turkey sausage crumbled and browned with Parmesan and Romano cheese Rice-a-Roni.  It was fine.  5 out of 10 Jenny's jewels.  It was sustenance.  And sometimes, that's all I hope for.  But I made the cookie bar - using two boxes of mix and my biggest pan and it showed very big promise.  It was successful in getting 3 out of 4 to eat their dinner.  That's right.  I bribe 'em.  We all gotta do what we gotta do.  This is what I do from time to time.  It came out and I proudly served it up.  Then I got mine and took a bite.  Salt.  Lots of salt.  Too much to be a pairing for the sweet.  Bugger.  Princess didn't even finish it.  Scooby finished his but made sure to go on about it being too salty.  Hubs was lovely.  He lied.  So I made a powdered sugar glaze and drizzled that over the top.  Then I made another batch of powdered sugar glaze and poured that over the top.  I just took a sampling.  Unless some sort of miracle of osmosis occurs, I will be throwing these out.  And making regular cookies with no additional ingredients involved tomorrow.  Scooby and I have dubbed this batch Bikini Bottom Cookie Bar.  Not good y'all.  Not good at all.  3 out of 10 Jenny's jewels only because every now and then there was the ability to discern a chocolate chunk product.

Okay.  Let's talk Black Friday.  I didn't anticipate going out for anything.  But the pull was just too strong.  So strong, in fact, that I started the night before.  That's right.  I went out shopping on Thanksgiving night.  Sure, okay.  Some of you are thinking that's like sacrilegious or something.  I understand.  But I would prefer to consider myself patriotic instead.  I am doing my part to help our economy.  Let us not dwell on how many products have a made in a foreign country sticker or stamp on them.  I did the very best I could to avoid slave-made products.  Next year, I will do even better.  I am happy to report that other like-minded patriots were out en force to boost some NASDAQ numbers.  Actually, no, I have no idea what I'm talking about.  I was there at 11:00 pm at WalMart.  I know.  WalMart sucks.  But they had Leapsters for $25.  And since I was buying 3 of them, that's a significant savings.  Those were part of the midnight sale.  There was another sale that started at 5am.  I kid you not.  There were people who brought or borrowed lawn chairs and camped out next to the pallets for some of the items that went on sale - in 6 hours.  Laptops.  I thought I was hardcore.  Nope.  Not even close.  From there, I went to ToysRUs.  Not anywhere near the insanity that was WalMart. But that is only because the crowd had moved on.  Next up, Target.  Oh.  My.  Word.  I have truly not seen anything like it.  I have been out on Black Friday before, believe it.  But this was a whole new animal.  I didn't take a coat out with me.  I don't know what to tell you.  I didn't plan on being outside much.  I planned on parking and walking in and getting all hot in the stores and then walking to my car.  No need for a coat to slow my roll.  I pulled up just about 4 am.  The doors opened at 4.  This is a big Target.  Not a Super Target but still.  There are 2-3 stores next to it.  Small ones.  Then there is a Staples store.  Then there are a few more stores and then there is a Panda Wok or whatever at the end of the strip.  I hope this gives a fairly good idea of the distance I'm talking about here.  So, I pull into a spot.  I am looking to just kind of wander in but I can't.  Because the line extends to the Asian food establishment at the end.  There were people who stopped at a point to flow in when told to do so.  You know what I did?  I said, "screw this noise!  I am freezing!!  I need to keep moving!!".  That's what I said.  So I walked all the way to the end and started walking in the direction I had just come from so that I could go in.  I was still cold.  But at least I was moving.  And the pisser is that those people that were waiting at the point where I made the oh so smart decision to go to the end?  Yeah.  Those people were nowhere to be found.  They got in.  I was in line long enough to see people come out - with big ol' TVs.  One guy couldn't even put it into his car because his doors had frozen shut.  And when I got in there, there was this swarm around a bin that you would have thought had free gold in it from the activity surrounding it.  It was $2 gloves.  Those people were looking to warm up and I mean right now.  Which I get because I am now the proud owner of a super cute reversible pink/orange puffer vest for $7.50.  I picked up all the bargains I could find.  I got 2 $85 dual screen DVD players for the car for our road trips.  I got a hard drive for Hubs.  I got pjs and jeans for the green giant that is Scooby.  Now, I will try to explain the line to check out.  It was a very very large square that ran through the store and started doubling up on itself.  My strategy at this point was to find a cart for all the things that were straining and breaking my arms and fingers.  Also, to look like a thief as I made my way past the checkout area to the Starbucks to get coffee and a croissant for sustenance so that I may continue my quest towards giving them my money.  Also to look and look and look for more items because the longer that I wandered around, the shorter the line would get.  Which of course became problematic.  Because I walked out after $450.  Yeah.  I know.  It's okay.  I returned alot.  Including the dual screen dvd players. Both of them.  It was nuts.  And I loved it.  It was totally up my alley.  Hubs can't shop.  It's just not in him, at all.  He physically depletes as he goes.  I have seen it happen and it is so fascinating.  I don't mean that to sound as though I delight in his discomfort.  It's just so contrary to what I feel like when I go shopping.  I get more energized as I go.  So, the 6 hours I spent from Thanksgiving into Black Friday gets 7 out of 10 Jenny's jewels.  If I had had a coat, a bottle of water and a few snack bars, I would have ruled the school.  Not in a camped out in lawn chairs looking like hobos around some pallets kind of way but still...

I saw "The Expendables" the other night.  I had high hopes.  I am a fan of testosterony movies.  I came up with a phrase for those kind of movies that probably someone else came up with already.   Plus, it's kind of naughty.  I won't tell you what it is but I will allude to it and you will get the idea.  You know how they call Rom-Coms (that's romantic comedies to you lay folk...) chick flicks?  Well, I would refer to Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Mickey Rourke, etc movies as Richard flicks.  Only I would use a nickname for Richard.  And it would rhyme with flick.  And it wouldn't be Rick. I told you it was naughty!!  But truly, these are movies that are all amped up and bad ass and macho and heroic and what not.  And I dig those movies.  It had some good casting.  But Stallone was a co-writer.  Which I would have thought would have been good as he has been in so many of these that he would know what to write but then I realized that he would also be responsible for dialogue and he's never been much of a talker in his movies.  Put him and Keanu together and you really might as well do it as a silent film for all their speaking contributes to what they are doing.  And Sly looked awful.  I don't know what was happening with his hair but it was weird and the botox has not been kind.  I like Jason Statham.  I think that he is charismatic and truly lends himself to the movies he does but  it was painful to watch him trying to carry this film as Sly's best friend.  And Dolph Lundgren?  Ouch.  If they could have at least attempted to make fun of what they have done in their roles, that would have been crazy awesome.  But they weren't.  They were serious.  They were really trying.  The only one who actually looked comfortable was, God love him, Eric Roberts.  Because he has done the same role in the same kind of movie for pretty much his whole career.  It was so bad that I actually fell asleep during the climactic near ending.  2 out of 10 Jenny's jewels.

So, here is what is happening on our quest for a different Christmas this year.  It got sketchy right away.  As a reminder, our goal is to take all the gift money from all the gift giving parties and pool it together giving each child 3 presents each.  So.  It started with the Leapster.  If you buy one, it doesn't have much to offer on it's own.  You need the games/cartridges.  So, I got three.  Each.  I've already gone over the 3 gifts each situation!!  What the hello kitty is it that I am supposed to do now??  So, after some breathing and some coffee, we decided that the Leapster with the games is a gift - gift number 1.  So, for Princess, her next gift was to be a craft like product.  But it felt so LAME to just hand her a Color Wonder packet or something.  It totally wouldn't be a Color Wonder packet.  There is nothing wrong with those but she's way more crafty than that.  We agreed that bundling 2 or 3 crafts together would constitute gift number 2.  And that's what we pretty much did for the remaining presents.  I know.  It totally looks like I fudged it all.  But here is exactly why I feel so at peace with how this turned out.  It made us really consider what it is we are buying.  As I said, my nature is to squeeze as much present as I can out of every dime and we end up with tons of crappy stuff that isn't even noticed or played with.  Hubs and I really thought through each gift.  Here is a for instance.  Big Stuff is getting an Imaginext Bat Cave.  I know.  Totally awesome!!  But at the same price, they also had this Imaginext Aircraft Carrier.  It was killer.  I bought it.  I also bought the Imaginext Space Shuttle because the shopping strategy for Black Friday this year was buy it all right now and return most of it later.  Whatever.  It worked.  The Bat Cave was a no-brainer.  That's a keeper.  And we were going to keep the Aircraft Carrier as well.  But then I came across this Buzz Lightyear backpack.  It looks like Buzz's space ship.  And I thought about all the pretending that Big Stuff likes to do and I decided that I would get him binoculars and a cool flashlight and turn it into an adventure pack because he likes to say "I'm goin' on a adventure!" and then he does.  It was going to cost a little more than the aircraft carrier but it is going to be so much fun for him.  That aircraft carrier was really cool.  And it was a good price.  I have a little bit of returner's remorse.  It's stuff like that - we just really thought about the gifts this go round.  The next reason I am at peace is because I fully believe that we have spent far less money on Christmas than we normally do and that is a direction we want to continue going in.  Our children have been mentioning how kind of bummed out they are about only getting three gifts.  I could focus on the fact that they are being materialistic greedy little so and sos.  Instead, I look forward to the morning when they are surprised by the quality of those three gifts and how satisfied they can be with less.  And the final reason - Yes.  Three gifts was good enough for Jesus and therefore, three gifts is more than enough for our kids.  But God's love is abundant and surprising.  He is not stingy.  He looks to bless us at every turn.  And that is a facet of God that I truly want to share with my kids as we celebrate the greatest gift He ever gave us.  Which, by the way, is what Christmas is actually about.  Ahem.  Anywho....  Staying the course and seeing our Christmas plans through gets 10 out of 10 Jenny's jewels.

This is what I have to tell you.  I shared how much our church raised for the 4 initiatives that we are trying to accomplish.  That number has actually gone up.  By about another mil.   Hubs and I have actually already seen some amazing, unexpected financial blessing as a result of our walking out in faith and committing God's money right back to Him.  It wasn't huge but the reality is that if you don't see it coming, anything can be generous.  And this is generous.  It means that the commitment we made to start making good on our pledge by the end of the year is a little less nebulous.  Some of it fell straight into our hands.  It's every indication to me that He truly does just want to know and give you the desires of your heart.  So if the desire of your heart is to please Him, He totally just pleases you right back and gives you the means to the end.  There's this diamond cut called the Gabrielle cut.  It is 105 facets.  Based on my extensive research (inclusive of a google search and perusal of about 2-4 sites to verify...), this is the most faceted cut for a diamond.  Imagine that God has ever shifting infinite Gabrielle sections. And every time that He allows me to gaze upon one of those facets and glean a better understanding of who He is and what He is about - it's a sweetness like no other - with no salt to be found.

Holy Rollah...

It was a pretty good day.  I woke up later than I wanted but was somehow able to hit the ground running and remain in a pretty good mood.  I got the lunches made, ate breakfast, got kids off to school, went to one appointment, went to another appointment, had a blood draw (I'm fine.  I'm fine!  Don't worry!), picked up some prescriptions (I said I'm fine!), picked up some .49 chex cereal at Kroger (that's right.  I got 12 boxes of chex cereal AND a marked down salad to eat for lunch for $7.17 AND that machine spit out a coupon for to get some lady care items for free), picked up the kids, brought the kids home, chilled and ate my tasty $1.29 salad, picked up some more kids, brought all the kids home, plowed through some papers and crap looking for some receipts that Hubs really really wants me to turn in to get reimbursed for, battled my son while he did homework.  My mood deteriorated a little at this point.  But I pushed forward and made some s'getti using turkey Italian sausage, jarred sauce, 1 cup of pureed beets and 1/2 cup of pureed zucchini and served that sauce over the new Ronzoni Garden Delight rotini because they sneak vegetables in that pasta and I thought that all the subterfuge would work well together.  And it did.  It was mighty delicious.  I give that dinner a total of 8 out of 10 Jenny's jewels.  What?  It's not chocolate mousse and I had to make it myself.  It's not getting 10 jewels that way!

After the kids were settled into bed and Hubs and I were settled into our regular spots on the couch and settled into our nightly habit of ignoring all the sound upstairs so that we don't have to get out of our regular spots on the couch and go kick some patoot.  Hubs picked a movie to watch and I agreed because I was pretty agreeable today.  I'd like to figure out what made that magic formula today so that I might get into my little laboratory (which I pronounce like lah-bore-ah-tory - with long Os to sound sinister and mad-scientisty) and replicate that.  I like being agreeable.  It makes life flow.  There's not a follow up adverb.  Not flow better or flow nicely or whatever.  Life just flowed today. 

So, we watched Legion.  I didn't have a desire to see this movie.  I decided a while ago that I wasn't interested in investing my time into movies of a particular dark nature.  Don't get me wrong.  I like dark.  Dexter is one of my all time favorite shows.  I'm drawn to the Crimes and Trials portion of the news on Yahoo news.    I'm fascinated by how different kinds of people maneuver through what our world has become.  But I don't do possession stuff.  And I don't do haunting stuff.  And I don't do what I think is referred to as the "torture porn" genre.  I mean, really.  Were we so hard up for shocking that we had to come up with stuff so bleak and nasty that the term "torture porn" had to be coined?  As for the other two, here's the deal.  Personally, I believe that there is an opposition to God and that is scary to me.  I watch movies to escape and watching movies that glorify or entertain about some topics just ain't my bag.  And I was worried about where Legion fell on that spectrum.  And it rode a fine line.  I don't know how much I should say, because if you are all interested in seeing the movie, I don't want to take that away from you.  But here is what I will say.  The movie portrayed God in a way that I wasn't crazy about.  But there was some redemption involved in how they handled it.  No.  You know what.  It wasn't.  I'm thinking about it all over again.  And I take it back.  Maybe.  Okay.  Here's what happened.  So, if you want to see it and you don't want me to blow it for you, go read a cereal box or something. 

Michael comes down to earth to protect this woman who is very pregnant.  She is not married, she doesn't want the baby and there is a dude who is totally in love with her that she doesn't really love back.  She lives in a teeny tiny town that consists of maybe around 7 people.  And they run a restaurant and a garage.  I'm not really sure how they stay in business but you don't question these kinds of things - it's a movie.  Okay, so, there's a rich stranded couple there with their late teen rebellious daughter, a cook with a hook for one of his hands, an unwed pregnant waitress, the crusty bitter owner, his lovelorn, frowny face man of few words son - the mechanic, and a dude who is passing through town on the way to a custody hearing who happens to be carrying heat.  The only reason we know that he is going to a custody hearing is so that we can have context for all the times he falters and doesn't kill the evil child demon angel and risks his life as well as the lives of others because his heartstrings got all tugged.  So,this old lady comes in and orders some food and is all sweet and kindly  But then flies start swarming around her and her extra rare steak and you know something isn't right.  So she starts talking some ugly talk and turns all evil and wants to kill everyone and gets shot dead.  And then Michael shows up and says some bad stuff is going down because God is all mad at us again and before it was a flood but now the angels are coming and they are going to do an extinction.  But this pregnant chick is carrying the baby that is the hope for all humanity and everyone has to be all brave and kill all these angels who are acting like evil possessed people who are trying to kill the baby.  And it turns out that Michael stopped being an angel the night before because his orders were to kill the baby but he didn't like that so he quit.  And you could tell he was serious because he cut off his wings AND he stitched up the wound.  I don't know.  I guess if you don't take the time to stitch up the wound with a handy curved needle and thread that happened to be in the first aid kit he found in the dimly lit bathroom, those suckers can grow back.  So, Michael decided that he wasn't going to give God what He asked for, he was going to give God what He needed - which was the same faith in humanity that he, Michael, had.  So, everybody shoots up all the evil angels and gets tempted and confused and then sees the light and starts sacrificing themselves for the good of the baby and Michael gets killed by Gabriel who came to obey God and kill the kid.  But Michael comes back just in the nick of time to save the heroic lovelorn dude who was protecting the unwed now mother and the baby.  And Gabriel is all like - wait!  I killed you!  How can you come back as an angel after you dissed God.  And Michael is all like - hey Gabriel - I told ya.  You gave Him what He asked and I gave Him what He needed.  And Gabriel tells Michael to go ahead and kill him and Michaels says no, you can't boss me.  He doesn't say that but he galliantly refuses to off Gabriel so that he is a good example and such.  And both Gabriel and Michael ascend into heaven and the unwed mother falls in love with the lovelorn dude and they drive off into the sunset with a crap-load of semi-automatic weapons in the back seat for protection.  Aaaaand scene.

Here's my deal.  I don't like that the angels were portrayed as evil.  I get that angels could be intimidating and it frightened people when they showed up because they were total bad-asses and, also, because they were, you know, not from earth and stuff and appeared out of nowhere and said that God was telling them stuff.  But I don't think that they are, nor have they ever been black-eyed, sharp toothed menacing creatures that were looking to say vile curse words and pretend to be children to lure people into a position of vulnerability so that they could kill the one lone hope of the world.  That is just not jiving with what I know of the bible.  And granted, I'm not a scholar, but this feels for real off base.  Now, the other side of this is that God gets totally over us and I could see that.  We do some wicked stuff down here.  And it seems to get worse rather than better.  But I don't think the rainbow was a promise of never flooding again.  I don't think that He was being all fancy with His wording so that there was some wiggle room.  I think He really did mean that He was promising that He wouldn't ever wipe us out again.  In any way, at all.  Ever.  I don't think you take yourself, pour yourself into a human form, go through child-birth - which I feel certain isn't a picnic for either party involved, and also - God is all infinite and He squished Himself into a baby size which I have to believe was a little cramped up for Him, go through painful, awkward puberty, become a man and face ridicule and opposition and scrutiny and cruelty and betrayal and death to show someone (which in this case means EVERYONE - including you) just how in love you are with them only to decide it wasn't worth it and it's back to the drawing board.  I mean, He could.  He's God.  He reserves the right to WHATEVER.  But it just doesn't make sense.  What's the point?  So then, I was thinking, okay, so, Michael changes God's mind.  And I believe that can happen.  I believe that even though God knows how things will go, His heart can be moved.  He can change the nature of things so that they can turn out differently.  Now, this could for real scramble my brain if I think about it too long - if He knows how things are going to go, is it going that way because they were originally going a different way and then He changed His mind and all that is part of the process of how it ended up going this way in the first place?  Do you see what I mean??  But then, what bothered me is the portrayal that Michael knew better than God what God needed.  It makes it sound like Michael is wiser than God.  And I'm not into that.  And then it occurs to me that this is an awful lot of consideration about a movie with an Oscar-nominated actor or two (hollah to Dennis Quaid and Paul Bettany!) and a B-list script at best. But, I think that soul-searching can often times come in the most unexpected places.  So maybe I'm just exploring my stance in some ways right now - and being a bit surprised with the results. 

I would give the way that my mind is spinning and processing right now 9 out of 10 Jenny's jewels.  I like when the juices get flowing and synapses fire in new ways.  And no, I'm not giving Legion the satisfaction of more jewels as if the movie specifically gives the credit for that.  It gets 4 out of 10 Jenny's jewels and that's that. 

I gotta pack it in.  I think I'm supposed to go dust off my bible and memorize some verses now.  For real though, check out Isaiah 1:17 to be inspired.  It's a really big verse for my life right now as I amp up for an extraordinary event called Unbound.  So.  What's inspiring you these days?