I want to take a moment to feature a fellow blogger. I’ve been reading “Code Yellow Mom” for about three months now and well, I’m amazed. This darling, wonderful woman has packed up her entire household (including her two small boys) and moved to Kiev, Ukraine with her husband. I find it challenging enough to navigate Dallas with my kids, I can’t imagine acclimating to an entirely different culture. However, she seems to be doing it with grace and humor. Reading her stories of adjustment are not only amazing, but make me appreciate the life we have here in the states. I really encourage you to stop by her blog and read of her adventures.

I received my first advertising check today. This is sort of a momentous occasion in the blogging world because it means that enough people have come to my site to warrant them actually cutting me a check. It also means that for the first time in my life somebody has paid me for something I have written. Now granted, this isn’t “REAL” publishing where I actually have to be a good writer, but it is probably as close as I will ever get.

When I was in 5th grade I wrote a book of stories featuring a squirrel and I pledged that I would grow up one day and become a “writer”. I graduated with a bachelors degree in Creative Writing and upon completion realized that I was a dreadful writer. Perhaps it is because I haven’t experienced enough true hardship, or perhaps it is because I’m just not that interesting. I don’t know, but writing a novel is not in my future. I have lots of ideas for screenplays and perhaps someday I will actually get around to writing them (my current idea is a modern retelling of Northanger Abbey).

In the meantime, I’m relegated to hiding out in the blogosphere and like a minstrel, standing on my box and spinning my tales. I think I’ll take my earnings and go take the kids to McDonalds.

This has a slow start, but this is why I love the Internet. In no other medium would we be able to view and share this cool video.

EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

This is the final chapter describing my need to get to know God and somehow still survive in my culturally diverse family. Here are links to Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3. At the end of chapter 3 I had read two interesting books and neither one was the bible.

I Meet REAL Christians
David comes from a rather large family. I always wanted a big family growing up and when I married David I got it in spades. His mother is one of eight children and all the aunts, uncles and cousins get together regularly. (As a matter of fact they are all coming to our house this weekend). This “small” gathering of individuals usually numbers somewhere around 20 on a slow day. They were all raised Christians. They were all raised going to church weekly. They were all raised making Christ the center of their lives. This was very scary for me.

I was very nervous meeting David’s family because I knew they KNEW. They knew my mother was Jewish. They knew I didn’t attend church. They knew I had never been baptized. They knew I wasn’t Christian. And I knew how they would react — or at least I thought I did. That is the most beautiful part of this story — they didn’t react. They didn’t care. They opened their arms, their hearts, their homes and welcomed me. They embraced me for who I am and in everything they did and do they show me what being a Christian is meant to look like. They never judged me. They just loved me. They will never know how much that meant and means to me. That is not to say that they are perfect – because they are not. As all families go, and especially big families, they have their own short-comings and problems and are very fallible. The beauty of their family comes from their bottomless well of unconditional love and their boundless ability to forgive – and that comes from their faith.

I Have An Epiphany (We Find A Church)
I stood for awhile in a soup of contemplation. I had CS Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, my mother, my years of education, and various members of David’s family all floating around in my head. All those years of being judged by people who presented themselves as “good Christians” and now seeing a different type of Christian I was lost. What did it really mean to BE Christian? I no longer knew.

This entire time David and I still went to churches. A new one every couple of months. There was always something wrong. David didn’t like the minister or the music or it was too conservative or too weird or whatever. We were several years into this journey of looking for churches when we stumbled into Preston Trail Community Church. I’m not going to give you details about my church but I will tell you that they say with regularity “No Perfect People Allowed”. And with that all the pieces fell in place.

1. People are hypocrites
2. Their hypocrisy is not my problem – it is God’s
3. Me judging them for their hypocrisy is as bad as them judging me for not believing
4. My faith is my business
5. Having faith, being a Christian (or Jew) is like dieting. Every day you get up and do the best you can to live by the rules outlined by your faith. Sometimes you do great and sometimes, not so much. The key is though that you try everyday and God does appreciate the effort.
6. Christ most definitely wasn’t a nut-job since I fundamentally agree with everything he said
7. Thus, he seems like a good guy to follow
8. I guess that makes me a Christian — Hmm, who would have guessed?

Loose ends
I still haven’t gotten all the questions answered. And that is part of my journey that is left to be taken. I still struggle with the bible. I can’t, as a scholar, believe in its inherent infallibility. Especially when you put it in context of other contemporary books, myths, the oral tradition, translation errors, etc. However, I do believe it is filled with lots of wisdom and something worthy of study. It fundamentally relates historical events mixed in with a fair bit of fantasy – typical Medieval text. Will I teach my children that the bible is the infallible word of God? Wow, I don’t think I have the answer to that question yet.

Then there is my Jewishness. I can’t hide it, deny it or give it up. I’m Jewish. My mother is Jewish. My Grandmother was Jewish. My Great Grandmother was Jewish. They were persecuted, they fled their country and they sacrificed everything for religious freedom. How do I continue to honor that and yet still pursue my own spiritual path? I’m not sure, but I’m trying every day to do that. I was so honored to host my first Passover Seder with David’s family in attendance and I hope to host future Passover Seder’s.

The Big Finish
Sometimes I wish I was one of those people that could believe without question. But my faith doesn’t come because somebody told me to believe that way – or because my parents insisted I believe a certain way. No, my faith has come from research, thought, and reflection and I believe that makes it stronger. Although I will guide my children spiritually and openly share my own beliefs I hope that they don’t shy away from questioning their beliefs. I want my kids to be critical thinkers, independent thinkers, the kind of people who are not scared of forming their own opinions based on research and careful reflection. A faith that cannot face challenge, that cannot face doubt, is not a faith that warrants followers. I’ve embraced Christianity because at the end of the day it still stands.

I have no idea what was so funny, but this has to be one of my favorite sounds. When they both get tickled it cracks me up.

This particular year has brought quite a few Halloween revelations.

1.) You can’t really dress up as a cowboy or cowgirl in Texas because people will not be sure if you are wearing a costume or not.

2.) Apparently if you are a grown woman and you want to buy a costume you are also a prostitute because every costume description starts with the word “sexy”. In addition, it is amazing what normal vocations can suddenly become a sexual fantasy world – everything from witch to viking to nurse to teacher. Wow, what if I was a sexy septic tank cleaner?

3.) When decorating for Halloween do you go cute and fall generic? Or is your family a spooky, scary Halloween family? It is quite evident that you really need to choose sides.

4.) Even with children it is hard for an adult to justify wearing a costume without a party to attend

5.) Toys versus candy. I’ve opted for little toys this year. I ordered from the Oriental Trading Company (which translates into cheap toys made in China) and I’m going to mix those with a couple small bags of candy. This way I don’t feel guilty about having all that candy in my house and if I don’t give them all away I can reuse them next year.

6.) I’ve only had my Halloween mums a week and I’m already killing them. Wow, my black thumb follows me into every season. Perhaps I should try a fall cactus instead of mums

How is Halloween shaping up for you?

This is part 3 of my testimonial about my faith. You can find chapter 1 here and chapter 2 here. I’d like to say this is the last chapter but alas, I don’t think it is. When we last departed I had moved to the bible belt, realized it was full of people going to church and then I met my husband who was not going to church.

I Make Some Big Promises
As David and I closed in on the realization that we were probably going to spend our lives together we started having some serious conversations. One such conversation was around religion. Although David also was struggling with his faith he knew he wanted to raise any of his future children in church. I knew that I didn’t want to leave my children with no clear direction on this issue and so I agreed to raise our kids in the church. Of course I had no idea what this meant and I didn’t know how I would do that, but I loved him and love makes you do some crazy things. I promised David to raise our kids going to church and he promised that we could still celebrate Hanukkah and Passover. It was a good bargain. We decided to seal the deal on October 14th 2000. Rings were involved as well as an oath to love each other until we died.

I Read Two Important Books
At this point I still didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ. However, I liked going to church and I liked the idea of belonging to a church and so I began dragging David to churches. Around this same time I was given two books. The first book was from my father and it was titled “The Jefferson Bible”. Thomas Jefferson felt that the bible was filled with too many parables and peripheral information. He felt that the real point of the bible is Christ and that we should focus on what Christ says and nobody else. So Jefferson, being Jefferson, took everything out and only left Christ’s speeches. It is a very powerful read and it is from this book that I realized a couple things about Christ. He was an amazing leader. He understood how to motivate people and how to lead people. The first rule of leadership is to lead by example and be willing to take responsibility for the mistakes of your team. My father is what some might call a “management guru” and being raised around somebody who stresses the importance of good leadership and management skills it was easy to spot these two things in Christ’s words. He lead the Jews by example — showing them what being a good Jew really meant. And then, when trouble started brewing he didn’t point fingers. He stood up and said this is my responsibility or more specifically “forgive them father for they know not what they do”. I can respect that.

The same time I received “The Jefferson Bible” from my Dad, I received “Mere Christianity” from my mother-in-law. I love C.S. Lewis. I read the Narnia series several times and as a scholar you really can’t escape his critical essays and linguistic knowledge. It pervades the field. The thing I love about this book though is that it is logical and for an analytical thinker like myself that is paramount for me. There were several passages that really stood out to me, but I want to quote the one that made the biggest impact on me and my beliefs:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 

And there it is. I had spent my whole life saying; “I don’t believe in organized religion. Jesus seems like a great guy, but I don’t believe he’s God. I mean, he seems like he had good things to say, but not divine”. And there was C.S. Lewis, a respected scholar, telling me that I was making the most absurd lapse in logic. He was right. I mean, if he’s not divine than why would you believe some crack pot who is going around saying “hey, I know what God REALLY wants. He told me.” No, you’d be like “that guy is a crack-pot”. So either he’s a total psycho or he really does understand the word of God.

This is the point where my education takes over. You cannot study the Medieval period without also studying the history of Christianity and what you cannot ignore is the far reaching and long lasting influence Christ has had on humanity. Like him, hate him, but ignore him you cannot. Which meant that at a minimum my life long assumptions and attitudes about Christ were wrong.

David is out of town and when he is I stay up late. I can’t stand going to bed when he isn’t here. I can’t really explain why but it all seems so lonely and desperate without him. So, here I am in bed, with both kids and my laptop. Lucy refuses to go to sleep so I’ve made her lie here quietly while I “work”. I figure I’ll bore her to death. In the meantime I thought I’d catch you up on a couple of things.

Kids and I went to the mall tonight and I bought two new make-up brushes for $60. Now, before y’all are like “$60 are your serious?” I’m going to tell you why this normally frugal person spent $60 on make-up brushes. Well, I’ve had my current make-up brushes for approximately 23 years and I read recently that more than likely they are probably covered in some sort of mold or fungus. Since I’ve had my current set for 23 years I figure the $60 is a wise investment. I bought them at Sephora, they were pricey, but I love them.

I’m really disgusted by this election. Every time either candidate opens their mouth I want to scream. I watched 40 minutes of the debate last night and I didn’t hear them address one issue that really mattered to me. They talked about name-calling. They talked about how they should be talking about the issues and they even made the shocking discovery that Americans aren’t too fond of politics as normal but neither one decided to address any of these issues. I finally turned it off in disgust and watched “Jerry Maguire”.