turn turn turn

new things happen in soil of my soul. Things sprout up that i hoped for, but i don't remember planting.
Last night in our townehome was the night i always hope for but can never generate...

I had the time, energy and mental wherewithall to play outside with Jujie. To throw and catch the yackleball, to chase and play Scooby Doo. He was velma and i was shaggy. When we made it back to our house after having outrun the monster, i told him that he was such a brave and cool girl.

He said, yeah, I am .

Chris made dinner, I vacuumed the living room, I bathed Judah. We went to bed on time.
Like Becky said: satisfying.

Women is Survivor. As a student: Thriver?

i am adopting a hard-hitting journalistic attitude in my blog title. enjoy!
This is how i feel about my paper that i really care about: it had a good concept driving it but...i just didn't have the time dedicated to it to do my concept justice. overall, it was fair. i expect a low B.
sad.

i am actually thinking about re-doing it and re-submitting it just for kicks and for some real feedback about the ways i am processing and developing concepts. we'll see.

I felt really good about the Unitarian Universalism paper, but i didn't care quite as much about it. it was shorter and easier.

more later. it'll be busy week.

To answer CV's question

I do think that there are fervent UUers. I am still working this out, on paper, but i suspect that, much like Judaism, UU is a "religion"primarily of practice, or praxis- if you want to get academic about it.

So in both, and there is scholarly research to support this grouping of the two together, the emphasis is on doing Right (v. believing the right thing: doctrine).

of course, Judaism is monotheistic and dogmatic in ways that would make UUers sick.

Still, UUers live by 7 principles and the first is that all beings have worth and should be respected. I feel sure that no UUer worth any salt would convert to a hateful regime.

IN the research i did after i posted, I read that UUers are practicers of a Different Religiosity. They are quite different from traditional religions. For example, UUers as a set value spiritual growth highly, but value "Salvation" so lowly that it almost qualifies as a disvalue.

not your mama's Faithful, now, huh?!

Did i mention i love this stuff?

and the winner is

i attended the 9 am service of Naperville's fine Universalist Unitarians.

I am about to hammer out the first draft of my paper, which is for psychology of religion. My prof, who happens to be my age, wants to us to evaluate the religion in terms of what it has to offer, psychological appeal.

It is fairly obvious to me that Universalism is appealing in that it allows one to maintain an openness to others and their ideas. Universalists are committed to religious pluralism- and doesn't that sound awesome right now?

Really, wouldn't it be amazing to be able to give everyone and everything the Benefit of your religious and existential doubt? how peaceable, at least in my mind! Without dogmatic commitments, one is free to "learn". the only responsibilities that UUism places on its followers are ones that any mature adult would gladly take on: to care for the earth and for others, to pursue knowledge and spiritual growth. For real, if that is all there is to it, i am practically UU.

Except.

there is an exception. I happen to think that choice and commitment mean saying no to somethings while also saying yes to Something Else.

UUism never had this choice! It can be anything to anyone, it can synthesize any religious belief. And i have to say that this strikes me as such:

to be everything and anything to anyone and everyone is to be no thing at all.

but that is just my initial thought....

9:48.

today i signed myself up for a long overdue root canal. that i have known that i have needed one for more than three years is balanced out by the fact that i am not in pain yet, so my upcoming surgery is, for all measures and purposes, preemptive and therefore a sign of my developing practicality and good sense.

straws are grasped.

I have a major paper due, two really, but one is so much more major that it eclipses the other, both are due April 16th. Today being the eighth means that i should already be panicked but i can't muster it and panic rarely helps.

future crisis foreseen.


Judah is coming down the stairs to remind me that he has no intention of letting me be on my own for fifteen minutes together.

Blog is abandoned.

sneaking it in

I have to be at work in tweny-five minutes and my hair is crazy, cray-zay. I am still in my pjs. I am listening to Andrew Bird's Plasticities catching up on bloggies.

I want to send Becks a shout out: I didn't completely understand, maybe even misconstrued, your last post. I didn't mean to, but i know one of the best things about this blog thing is being comprehended. I usually feel i do comprehend you. so, i re-read it all, i think i get it now.

for me, the worst thing about being Pulled, is that in the struggle, in the ways it works out in my head and in my home, i often forget that i am being pulled by things i love and want and need. I need Judah and Chris and i need school, i need to work, for the challenge and i need these moments, in front of the computer, listening to Sarah McLachlan's Blackbird, and generally feeling like myself, in my life. feeling present and feeling forceful for the day ahead. I want to be be myself, a wife, a mother and a student. all of it, but the challenges sometimes get so gnarly they only feel like struggles.

still, still, what else is worth spending all my energy on?