Sheesh, getting all that Crazy out really cleared the air around here. I’m back to the right perspective of appreciating progress for its own sake and cutting myself just a bit of slack.

And, this week, I’m getting inspired.

My fridge is covered with words that other people said, some inspiring, some entertaining, some downright corny. Literature, politics, song lyrics, poems, greeting cards - I love them all. The immortal timeliness of words written down is fascinating to me.

As I stand on the edge of lasting change, I am increasingly drawn to quotes that, at one point in my life, would have seemed too dangerous.

“This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem…” - Walt Whitman

Rise by Eddie Vedder - Such is the way of the world / You can never know / Just where to put all your faith / And how will it grow? / Gonna rise up / Burning black holes in dark memories / Gonna rise up / Turning mistakes in to gold / Such is the passage of time / Too fast to fold / Suddenly swallowed by signs / Lo and behold / Gonna rise up / Find my direction magnetically / Gonna rise up / Throw down my Ace in the Hole

There is danger in such thinking, I still see that. Danger that the status quo will no longer be acceptable. Danger that you might have to actually do something in order to get from where you are to where you want to be. But the danger I used to be afraid of? No, it is not there. God is either big enough to handle close examination or too small to matter. My heart is capable of big dreams, and those big dreams are not to be dismissed out of hand. I can examine my soul with the same critical thinking skills that I apply to everything else and find that there is truth hidden among The Crazy.

I can sift the gold from the dross and trust the truth a little bit more.

I am in the middle of reading The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela and I came across this great passage:

“‘How beautiful the revolution! Even in its most barbarous aspect it is beautiful,’ Solis said with deep feeling. Then a vague melancholy seized him, and speaking low:
‘A pity what remains to do won’t be as beautiful! We must wait a while, until there are no men left to fight on either side, until no sound of shot rings through the air save from the mob as carrion-like it falls upon the booty; we must wait until the psychology of our race, condensed in to two words, shines clear and luminous as a drop of water: Robbery! Murder! what a colossal failure we would make of it, friend, if we, who offer our enthusiasm and lives to crush a wretched tyrant, became the builders of a monstrous edifice holding one hundred or two hundred thousand monsters of exactly the same sort. People without ideals! A tyrant folk! Vain bloodshed!’”

And then I turned on the news to hear that we, our country, right now, are selling arms to Saudi Arabia in hopes of stabilizing the Middle East. I listened for a moment, nonplussed, wondering if anyone else remembers the Taliban, those folks we supported to protect us from the Russians, or Saddam Hussein, who we supported to protect us from the Iranians, or later, when we sold arms to a known enemy, Iran, to secure the release of hostages and then used the money from those arms sales to support South American rebels.

I’m not even trying to be revolutionary in this commentary, I’m just saying that this particular strategy has been tried, with lackluster results, and it should worry thinking citizens on either side of the political aisle to hear that we are trying it again.

I am consistently dismayed to find that the things I complain about in other people are, too often, the things about myself that I most wish to hide.

I signed Andrew up for a co-op preschool next year - and was transported to the world of The Waiting List. Immediately I start in on myself. If you were on top of things, he wouldn’t be on the waiting list. You have been talking about this for months, why didn’t you call sooner? You could have to wait until August for the final class roster. What if he doesn’t get in? He’ll never learn the social skills he needs to be successful. You are failing. You are not good enough.

This is exactly the sort of mental bullshit I was planning on avoiding for the next three years (and the rest of my life). Do I think Andrew would benefit from a preschool experience next year? Yes. He has a lot of energy and the socialization would be great for him. Are our lives going to be ruined if he doesn’t start preschool until he’s three, or four, or if he skips preschool all together and jumps straight in to kindergarten? No. And if they are, then there is something desperately wrong with our lives.

The preschool that I signed him up for has weekly summer playdates at local parks. I went to the first one last week and was confronted with every preschool-mommy stereotype you can imagine. There was the mom who laughed as her child threw wood chips at other children and ran off with their toys, the mom who hovered and policed all the children to ensure that her child was always protected, the mom who polled everyone she met on whether or not they knew what place they held on The Waiting List, and, of course, the mom who stood to the side critiquing all the other parenting techniques while secretly congratulating herself on how well she was doing. (Yes, that was me.)

What is it with us? Why all the competition? My friend Alecia talked about it with great eloquence in a liturgy piece she did at church a few years ago:

Mother’s Day Observation 2005

I’m Alecia Kleiner. Deviating from our typical liturgy this week, I’m not bringing a poem, or lovely piece of Motherly prose–but rather an observation.

Being a mother is terrifying.
Writing about being a mother is terrifying.
Standing here sharing what I’ve written about being a mother is so terrifying I may die and miss Brunch.

There are many misty eyes stories of my journey to motherhood. But if I cry today, it’s over for me. I’ll be banned from speaking at church–a big Scarlett Letter P for Pentecostal on my chest.

So I’m not even going down that road today.

My observation is that the business of motherhood is NOISY.

The physical auditory assault is real. Ask anyone who’s ever ridden in my van. It’s part hip-hop, part beauty, part conflict, part laughter, part infantile assertion–pure madness. But more than the physical NOISE, it’s the cultural, spiritual and personal noise that threatens my sanity daily. Sometimes I feel like a borderline schizophrenic. Voices and images flooding my mind. The beautiful, primal act of mothering is often reduced to this in my head…( imagine loud, distorted, guitar ramblings with me yelling over the top…)

AM I ENOUGH? WILL I LOVE THEM ENOUGH? WILL THEY LOVE ME BACK? CAN I FORGIVE MY OWN MOTHER? WILL VACCINES KILL THEM? IS PUBLIC SCHOOL GOING TO RUIN THEM? THEY’LL BE LIFELONG UNDERACHIEVERS. DID I HOLD HER TOO MUCH? NOT ENOUGH? WILL SHE ATTACH? WILL SHE KNOW HOW MUCH I WANTED HER? FAMILY BED, BABY BED, WRONG PRESCHOOL, WRONG COLLEGE. WE ARE ALL GOING TO NEED VERY EXPENSIVE, INVASIVE THERAPY.

Am I alone? This mothering business bring out the kooks and their opinions. Everyone has a theory and a 5 step plan to parenting bliss. Amazon had over 65,000 hits for parenting–over 17, 000 for mothering alone. Some of my favorite titles are:

-Perfect Madness: Motherhood in th Age of Anxiety
-The Mommy Myth: The idealization of motherhood and how it undermines women
-Buddha Mom
-Confessions of a Slacker Mom
-Mothering by Heart
-Mothering against all odds
-Natural Mothering
-Mothering Ourselves
-Good Enough Mother?
-The Impossibility of Motherhood
-Primal Mothering in a Modern World
and my personal favorite:
-Medieval Mothering

Even if you don’t read, you can NOT escape the voices…your mom, your grandma, your husband, the news, Oprah, magazines, Nancy Wilson (of Idaho, not Heart) your college professors, each other. As women, and moms, we are some of the loudest and strongest influences on each other. And the things we choose to say to and about each other are terrible.

We have the teaching part down:
“When mine was little, I helped him sleep by…”
“My vast research shows that vaccines are of the devil…”
“Here’s my detailed spreadsheet of my grocery store and each items cost…”

We have the rebuke part down:
“I’d never let my child drink…”
“Your child cries every week in the nursery, is something wrong?”
“You let your child drink THAT?”

It’s the ENCOURAGEMENT part that we suck at. Loving each other enough to be quiet. To allow the other person to just BE. Without judgment and superiority. I’m firmly convinced that as mom’s we secretly like it when another mom is losing her grip. It makes us feel better about ourselves. Sick but true. I may be about to lose my mind, but at least I only have five piles of laundry and I know where all MY kids are.

So today, in honor of Mother’s Day–we will repent. How’s that for warm & fuzzy? Please pray with me:

Lord God, We have sinned against You and each other. Some of us do not value the role of mother enough and WE REPENT. Some of us value the role too highly and WE REPENT. WE REPENT of the ways we speak for YOU–making methods out of your righteous principles. WE REPENT for not loving each other. WE REPENT for not trusting YOU fully and for not being quiet and still so we can hear YOUR voice. Thank you Lord for your forgiveness that floods us today. Thank you for your gracious redemption. Amen

I hate the part of me that sees the worst in an innocuous preschool playdate. The part that compares herself to other mothers and comes up lacking. The part that compares her child to other children and finds fault. The part that sits back in self-righteous hypocrisy and thinks, “Well, at least I don’t do ______.” I hate the part of me that assigns so much importance to things that just don’t matter.

It’s no wonder that, for the most part, mothers find themselves mentally unwell. We construct a system to give ourselves and our occupation value and worth, but, when all is said and done, all we want is to know that we are doing a better job than someone else. It is sick and regardless of our religious tradition, we need to apologize and change.

I think preschool may be more of an education for me than it is for Andrew.

*C’mon - someone else listened to MXPX in the ’90s.

Patriotic holidays are hard for me. They have this nasty habit of ruining a perfectly good three day weekend and reminding me to think about our country - past, present, and future. For the most part this sort of thinking scares the crap out of me.

Being an American is such a tricky endeavor. I love this country. I really do. But I hate it, with the hate that only comes from love. I want to work for change and I want to run away and disavow any connection with anything American. This tension makes appropriate patriotic celebration legitimately difficult.

I saw a bumper sticker on the drive home from the beach. It had a picture of an American flag with the words “It wasn’t earned to be burned” next to it. Now, I know this may be a little nit-picky for some, but wasn’t freedom of speech one of the Top Ten Reasons America Is Cool? Oh, wait, I just checked, it’s number ONE on that list. So, if I may point out the obvious, the flag was just as much “earned to be burned” as it was earned so that people could have ridiculous bumper stickers plastered across their cars.

God bless us. Every one.

My dad always taught me that Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. Someone should have taught that to the person who put the following phrase on the sign of their church:

Classes de ingles begin next week. Call for more information.

I’m just guessing, but I think if the people can read the sign they probably don’t need the classes.

Honestly, people. THINK.

One of the public elementary schools in our district raised their WASL scores by 30 points, earning them one of ten $25,000 awards given statewide to schools that show the most improvement.  This school, which has a very high population of non-native English speakers and draws its students from a number of low-income and transient housing locales, has consistently been in the middle to lowest ranks for test scores in the state.  This accomplishment is a testament to the motivation and persistence of the students, parents, teachers and administration of this school.

Today was the assembly to honor that achievement.  The president of the Federal Way School Board, who, incidentally, has never been to visit this particular school before, was there to present the award.  These were a few of her comments:

“Hello.” (students respond back, hello) “Hola.” (students respond back, hola) “[mangled greeting in Korean]” (silence from the students, at which point she looks at a Korean boy in the front row and asks him how to say hello in Korean.  He says it quickly and she responds…) “Whatever.”

No. Wait. It gets better.

“I can’t believe that you raised your test scores 30 points.  The class before you only had 40% passing rate and you had a 70% passing rate.”

Nice. I’m sure the kids in the 40% group feel fantastic about themselves.

And here’s my favorite:

“This is such an accomplishment.  Nobody ever thought you could do it.”

At which point one of the teachers stands up and says, “I knew you could do it.”

Thank goodness for that teacher.  If we are really going to leave no child behind then we need to fill the schools and the school boards with people like her, people that allow kids to dream outside of their circumstances, who believe that every child can learn if given the right opportunity.  Unfortunately, what we have in most classrooms and school boardrooms are people who take one look at a child’s ethnicity, socioeconomic status or grades from the previous year and immediately decide whether or not that child is worth their time or effort.  And, trust me; the consequences of these decisions leave children behind every single day.

Later on in the day the teacher who spoke up in the assembly was talking to her current students, this year’s fourth graders who, frankly, won’t be able to replicate the accomplishment of last year’s class (it’s one thing to go from 40% to 70%, quite another to go from 70% to 100%).  One of her students commented that she seemed sad.  She replied, “I’m not sad.  I am mad.”  The student asked her what she was mad about and she explained how comments like the ones made at the assembly can hurt people.  A boy raised his hand and said, “So, you’re saying you really believe that we can pass this test?” “Yes,” she said, “I really do.”

And that is what being a good teacher is all about.

As I filled out my absentee ballot earlier this week, I was surprised to find that the only foreign language instruction sheet included in my ballot was in Chinese.  Now, no offense to the good people of China, but there are other languages prevalent in the state of Washington, for example Spanish, Russian, and Korean to pinpoint the big three in my neighborhood alone.  I was confused as to why there would only be one set of foreign language instructions included in the voting packet?  Does it not seem like a better idea to include a list of places to obtain more information in a number of languages? 

I was sure that I was missing some part of this equation, so I went to check and see where the instructions in other languages were available.  During my search, I found this handy little piece of legislation: the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA), which was drafted by a bipartisan committee shortly after the 2000 election debacle.  Washington State - in keeping with the provisions of the HAVA - enforces the following criteria concerning non-English speaking voters, “the state or county must provide voting registration, notices, forms, instructions, or other materials or information where there is a 5% population of citizens of a single language minority.”* The bleeding-heart-liberal in me immediately balked at this, but practicality had its say and I was almost convinced that it would be a logistical nightmare to provide all of that information in every conceivable language.  Almost, I say, because the more I thought about it I realized that we are still potentially excluding a large number of voters from having the opportunity to fully understand and participate in the electoral process. 

According to the US Census Bureau estimates for 2005, Washington State has a population of 6,287,759 with 24% of that number being under the age of 18.  So, theoretically, there are 4,778,697 people that are old enough to vote.  Remove those that are barred from voting for other reasons, are not registered to vote, or are not citizens, and it is probably safe to assume that 3,500,000 people may be voting in any given state election**.  5% of that number is 175,000, which means that any non-English speaking group that has less than 175,000 citizens in the state of Washington does not have voting instructions or other information regarding elections available in their language of origin.  That’s potentially thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of votes that, if they are made at all, might have been made without a full understanding of the issues on which they are asked to vote.  Are these votes somehow less important to the well-being and future of our state than the votes of the English speaking population?

If we are going to encourage every citizen to register to vote, and then dream of a day when every registered voter actually votes (not to mention expecting them to cast their vote with conviction and clarity), should we not provide the resources necessary to attain that goal?  Or do we really believe that the Chinese-speaking citizens among us are the only people who could possibly need instructions in their own language?  Okay, I know that last question was reducing the argument to its absurd conclusion, but is that not implied by only including instructions in one language? I know that true equality is really hard, if not almost impossible, to achieve in many areas of life but I think that voting instructions are one area where it would not be hard at all.  Here’s my solution, let’s really help every American vote by taking the exact same piece of paper that is filled with all the voting instructions in only one language, erasing it, and then printing the following phrase in any number of different languages:

Voter’s Guides and instructions are available in (insert your language here) by phone or online (insert phone number or web address here).

I know that many non-English speaking groups provide translation resources through community centers, libraries and churches.  I know that English is the official language of the United States, but the fact is that many of our citizens have only a working understanding of the language. Their fluency lies in their native tongue, and while they can function on a day to day basis in our English speaking society, many do not yet understand the political jargon that fills the voter’s pamphlet. (Hell, I’m a political science major and sometimes I don’t understand the political jargon that fills the voter’s pamphlet.) I also know that you have to be a citizen to be a registered voter, and that to be a citizen you must pass an exam written in basic English.  But, again, there is a huge difference between memorizing the answers to a bunch of questions and reading, with comprehension, the information in a voter’s pamphlet. 

The technology is available, the bandwidth is available, translators are available (the work for the public schools or the court system), why is voter information not available in the native language of every citizen in the state? 

Does this bother anyone else? 

By the way, I am using this as a starting point for my letter to Sam Reed, the Secretary of State in Washington.  I am curious to see what he says about this issue.  I will let you know if I get an answer (or if I don’t!).

*You can read the pamphlet for Washington State elections and voting FAQs here. 

**I could be completely wrong with this number (3,500,000), but I think my example still stands even if the number is considerably less.

Is it just me or does it seem like the sun shone a little brighter this morning?

I’m sure that phenomenon had everything to do with the election results and nothing to do with the clear skies that are forecasted over Western Washington.

John Mayer has a new song called Waiting on the World to Change.  It’s catchy as hell and, since I like John Mayer, I was happy to hear it. 

But, the more I think about it the angrier I become. 

Here are the lyrics: 

me and all my friends we’re all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing
and there’s no way we ever could
now we see everything that’s going wrong
with the world and those who lead it
we just feel like we don’t have the means
to rise above and beat it 

so we keep waiting waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting waiting on the world to change 

it’s hard to beat the system
when we’re standing at a distance
so we keep waiting waiting on the world to change 

now if we had the power
to bring our neighbors home from war
they would have never missed a Christmas
no more ribbons on their door
and when you trust your television
what you get is what you got
cause when they own the information,
oh they can bend it all they want 

that’s why we’re waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting waiting on the world to change 

it’s not that we don’t care,
we just know that the fight ain’t fair
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change 

and we’re still waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change 

one day our generation is gonna rule the population
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change 

we keep on waiting waiting on the world to change

This is exactly the kind of lame-ass attitude that makes the establishment discount the opinions of young people. 

Hannah Arendt said, “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”  It is easy to desire change when your class is suffering.  Unfortunately, once that change is accomplished, it is also easy to forget about the other groups that are now being underrepresented. 

This is most clear, to me, in my parent’s generation.  My mom was part of a group that closed down I-5 in protest of the Vietnam War. Theirs was a generation that really thought things would be different once they were in charge.  They were not content to sit and wait for the world to change - they took drastic action to produce the change that they felt was needed. 

And then they sat back and relaxed and became conservatives.  If the Kennedy generation can sit in government today and endorse an ambiguous (and dubious) War on Terror without remembering the horrors of Vietnam, (weren’t we making the world safe for democracy there too?) why do we think our generation is going to be any different? 

The problem is that young people believe the lie that we have to sit and wait for the world to change until we are powerful enough to take on the establishment.  And once that day comes, we look around and realize that we are the establishment and that our lives are pretty damn comfortable and maybe we overreacted just a little bit when we were young and impetuous.  And another generation of stay-the-course conservatives comes to power. 

So, yeah, John, one day our generation is going to rule the population.  And the only way things will be any different is if we are content to sacrifice some of our niceties for the greater good. If we can learn to listen to differing opinions and admit that we made a mistake or that we need help fixing a problem. If we can remember how it felt to be unheard and ignored and bulldozed by power and somehow find a way to avoid doing that to others.  We have to vote, not just in presidential elections but in every election.  We have to stop getting excited and encouraged by increased voting numbers among young people (saying to ourselves, “oh good, the problem of voter turnout is being solved) and realize that a 47% voter turnout among 18-24 year olds and a 56% turnout among 25-35 year olds in a hotly contested presidential election is still DISMAL.  We need to stop whining about having no power when we are too bloody lazy to even vote.  (Aside: Did you know that you can sign up online to get the ballot delivered to your mailbox?  It is really not that tricky.)

I get that we are all busy.  That democracy is a slow and frustrating process. That we might all register to vote and, by majority or court decision, our opinion of choice might be defeated.  But I refuse to sit quietly and wait for the world to change.   

Best quote I have heard in a while:

“This country is run by extremists because moderates have shit to do.”

I just purchased the Dixie Chicks new album. I have been a Chicks fan since Wide Open Spaces, they are writing more and more of their own music (a mainstream country music rarity) and flat out kick ass on their instruments.  I liked each of their subsequent albums more than the one before, this was no exception.

Amid all the controversy and publicity I didn’t know what to expect.  I wanted them to produce a quality album and still thumb their noses at the government and the country music establishment. The reviews that said they were moving away from their country roots posed a bit of a dilemma for me because I actually like country music, at least I used to. I liked music that I could sing along to, music that celebrated the simple things in life, music that didn’t make me feel depressed or angry.  That is what country music used to be for me.  But sometime between 9/11 and Bush’s 2004 re-election, someone in Nashville decided to lay down some new ground rules for country music.  Apparently, the recipe for a successful country song now includes a minimum of three references to the might of the American military, two vows for revenge and five reasons why we know God wants the world to be American and blesses all the works of the Republican party and the Bush administration.  I have a hard time singing along with such hawk-like rhetoric and the thing that I liked about country music - the part where it didn’t make me feel angry or depressed - that doesn’t seem to apply anymore. 

I know, I know.  Keep your boots on, real country fans.  I am making generalizations.  I know that I am talking about mainstream country and that there is a whole lot of great music in the alternative country, bluegrass and independent scenes. There are even some mainstream country songs that don’t fall in to that mode.  They are sung by such artists as Tim McGraw, an out of the closet Nashville Democrat, Kenny Chesney, who doesn’t want the whole world to be American because we would ruin his tropical beaches, and some others who are often mistaken for adult contemporary music.  But most mainstream country music these days abides by the above rules.  So I don’t tell too many people that I like country because I don’t want to be associated with the crazies that currently represent it.

The biggest issue I have with country music world’s reaction to Natalie Maines’ comments two years ago is that it is indicative of a bigger problem throughout the political right.  Dissention cannot be accepted, listened to, or even politely ignored. It must be squelched, silenced at all costs for the sake of retaining the appearance of unity.  This administration, and those who blindly support it, appear to fear queries and disagreements so much that they lash out with boycotts and retaliatory mud-slinging at the slightest provocation. 

Why can’t the right-wing be secure enough in its own decisions and policies to shrug their shoulders at the comments of a celebrity?  Why can’t they (the constituents and the politicians) give a reasoned answer to the criticisms directed their way?  Why does everything have to turn in to a War On _____?

I have had it up to here with George W Bush.  I really have.  I am tired of the lies and broken promises, tired of the sound-bites and over-used platitudes.  I don’t know who I am going to vote for in 2008, I have a good case for Hilary.  I will cautiously jump on the Obama bandwagon, although I do think he is too young (politically).  I would even give Gore another chance and listen to what John McCain (or any other Republican that gets nominated) has to say. 

I want an administration, not a monarchy.  I want to feel like my voice is at least being heard, even if it is voted down.  I want to feel like it is safe for a celebrity to criticize the government without receiving death threats.  We are not a one-party system for a reason.  There is strength and truth to be found in debate and discussion.  People who have different opinions and experiences often have something valuable to add to a conversation.  I want the Dixie Chicks album to stay at #1 not because of the controversy, but because people like the music and are listening to the lyrics and using them to spark creative conversation.  We should listen to music (and movies and authors and sports figures and anyone else with a voice) not so that we can emulate their beliefs but so that we can form our own.  We should give as much credence to the opinion of a celebrity as we do the stranger on a bus, or the person holding a sign on the side of the road, all of these people are strangers who have done nothing to deserve our trust.  We should think and learn and seek truth through trustworthy sources, without being afraid of the consequences.

So check out the album, it’s really good.  And, in case you were wondering if they managed to stick it to the establishment, here are the lyrics to their first single from the album:

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I’m not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I’m still waiting

I’m through, with doubt,
There’s nothing left for me to figure out,
I’ve paid a price, and I’ll keep paying

I’m not ready to make nice,
I’m not ready to back down,
I’m still mad as hell
And I don’t have time
To go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

I know you said
Why can’t you just get over it,
It turned my whole world around
and I kind of like it

I made by bed, and I sleep like a baby,
With no regrets and I don’t mind saying,
It’s a sad sad story
That a mother will teach her daughter
that she ought to hate a perfect stranger.
And how in the world
Can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Saying that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice,
I’m not ready to back down,
I’m still mad as hell
And I don’t have time
To go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I’m not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I’m still waiting

I just finished reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey a few days ago and (as with most things in my life right now) I am of two minds about the whole controversy. I might work out my arguments here at a later time, maybe before February book club. But for right now, I will just share two of the quotes that really impacted me and say that, regardless of the truth of his account, there is truth to be found in the story.

Page 46-

I look around me. There is blackness, there is alcohol, there are drugs. There is an abundance of all of them. I know I’m alone and there is no one to stop me. I know I can do as much as I want of whatever I want. As I reach for one of the bottles, something inside of me tells me to stop, that what I’m doing is wrong, that I can’t do it anymore, that I’m killing myself. I reach anyway. I grip the bottle, bring it to my lips and take a long deep draw that burns my mouth, my throat and my stomach. For the briefest instant I feel complete. The pain I carry with me disappears. I feel comfortable and at rest, confident and secure, calm and composed. I feel good. Goddamn it, I feel fucking good.

The feelings are gone as quickly as they came and I want them back. I don’t care what I have to do, what I have to take, what I have to endure. I’ll do anything. I just want them to come back.

Everything I felt that was good has become bad and it has been magnified beyond any point of reference or comprehension. My only option is to try and kill. Kill what hurts. Kill it.

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An Addict is an Addict. It doesn’t matter whether the Addict is white, black, yellow or green, rich or poor or somewhere in the middle, the most famous Person on the Planet or the most unknown. It doesn’t matter whether the addiction is drugs, alcohol, crime, sex, shopping, food, gambling, television, or the fucking Flintstones. The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy. There is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession.

I was talking to Jen last night about the importance of naming things in our lives. That Biblically, Adam was given the job of naming the animals and that we are called to imitate that and properly identify and name the things that surround us. While I still seek to justify and rationalize my behavior, I must name myself an addict. I am addicted to food. I use it to numb myself, I plan my days around it, I cry when I read James Frey because he accuratly expresses my feelings.

I know that the truth does matter - isn’t that the point of this blog? But I am not sorry that Frey has had so much success with his book. Even if the events are not true, the story still is.

I went to a concert recently at a large, mainstream church. Usually I avoid large mainstream churches because, when in them, I tend to seriously consider killing someone - and I don’t think that would make God very happy with me. Plus, there is always the possibility that I will have to sit next to the person I killed in heaven and that could lead to some awkward questions.

But, this singer/songwriter that I love (www.andrew-peterson.com) was playing at a large mainstream church and since he has come to the Pacific Northwest a total of two times in the last five years we decided to go. AP was great!

However, the opening act is still annoying the crap out of me two weeks later. Instead of singing any number of good cover songs, or even better, any number of sub-par songs that he wrote himself, the man decided to cover Damien Rice’s The Blower’s Daughter. I love Damien Rice. I REALLY love that particular song. I just don’t think that, a) a song that ends with the line “I can’t take my eyes off of you….until I find someone new” is exactly appropriate to sing as worship to God and b) that one should change the above lyrics to suit their own purposes.

The singer said that he loves Damien Rice too. If that is the case, he should leave Damien’s songs the way they were intended to be.

The End.