Hiking, PCH, Honesty and Loneliness.

This Sunday, a good friend of mine and I headed down the coast for a good hike in the Canyon. You can’t beat a view like this:

What I like about this particular friend is that our friendship has been like a smooth wine or a sharp cheddar cheese in that it has gotten significantly more valuable to me over time. We have grown into one another, which has felt like an unexpected surprise and I like that.

Aside for my growing affection for this person,  I love that recently she has had a growing sense of self-awareness. She is asking some really hard questions about herself, including, “Am I hard to get to know? Am I a warm open person? Am I friendly? What type of  experience do people have when they first get to know me?” She isn’t asking to be affirmed, but really wants to know if there are areas where she needs to grow.

On our hike, she was mentioning that over the past few years she’s really battled a long and hard war with loneliness -constantly feeling left out, forgotten, not connected, and anxious about it. It’s like that feeling of junior high never left. However, in the past few months she’s  come to a place of acceptance in her war with loneliness.  It’s like a ghost that follows her around. A ghost that used to scare her. And now she simply turns to it and says, “Hi Loneliness. I know you’re there. And that’s ok.” Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who are frequent readers, it might not come as a surprise that the conversation we started about sex might need some revisiting. The S-E-X article is one of the most read and most commented on, with all of you falling in various parts of the spectrum. Even several months after posting the piece, I am still having new people join the conversation. So I think it’s fair to conclude that we struck a nerve.

Knowing this I have wanted to do a follow up post, but for a long time I didn’t have anything new or profound to say about it. Last week however I read this really interesting article in Christianity Today by Mark Regnerus (which was sort of a big deal because normally I find Christianity Today WAY too conservative for my tastes). His article was called A Case for Early Marriage, and you can read the full piece here.

Regnerus takes the whole conversation of single Christian sexuality and adds an interesting twist, refocusing the conversation into something different than mere sex.  He points out that as a Christian culture, we are highly focused (and maybe over focused) on physical conservatism before marriage, but we are missing the larger issue. Instead of being focused on how to be able to wait longer and longer to have appropriate sex within marriage, he argues that we need to see the value of, and support young Christians entering into marriage. He illuminates the shift in culture away from marriage and commitment, happening both inside and outside of the Church.Yet at the same time, we haven’t allowed for any shifts in our thoughts surrounding sexuality. We have been left with an entire generation of Christians who are trying all of the virginity commitment gimmicks they can muster, while needing trying to abstain for a continually elongating period before marriage. And in the midst we are wondering why the Church’s 80% sexuality rate isn’t that much behind the world’s 90% rate.

In a single statement, Regnerus says that we don’t need to learn how to be more pure, we need to learn how to get married. Read the rest of this entry »

I recent came across this video on ConversantLife.com via one of their columnists, Sean McDowell (yes, he does share DNA with Josh McDowell, the man that wrote Evidence That Demands a verdict and  More than a Carpender, which are both good books. Dear reader, please do not get confused and think that Josh McDowell is the same person who wrote I Kissed Dating Goodbye. The credit for ruining an entire generation of Christian daters has to go to Joshua Harris. McDowell does NOT equal Harris. I know, it is easy to do).

I’m not completely sure how this video hits me. My first instinct is to be sad. I’m not sure if its just because Atheist Camp doesn’t have the same ring as “Vacation Bible School” where kids hear felt-board stories about a huge God who loves them and wants to be buddies. In comparison, having a camp where children learn that there is no God seems…well, bleak.

I do think it’s interesting that the camp does focus on philosophy, morals, and making good founded decisions, apart from God. I find it interesting to derive morality and standards of being a “good person” aside from God. Granted it’s not the first time that I’ve heard it, it just hit me funny this time. I do believe that people that don’t believe in God can be great thinkers, philosophers and people. And I do like the idea of atheist kids not getting left out of the summer camp experience.

But, I can’t shake a feeling of sadness. Maybe that’s not PC. Maybe that makes me a close minded person to be sad for these kids. What do you think? Atheist Camp? How does that sit with you?

This past weekend I went to the movies and saw Funny People  with my boyfriend, HNB.  Was it good you ask? Hilarious. It was a bit long, but between Seth Rogan, Adam Sandler, Jason Schwartzman, Jonah Hill, and other comical cast, they deliver exactly what you’d want in a Sunday afternoon bro-mance film.

Now I’m sure you all know the premise of the film. But if you live under a rock, I can give you a recap: the film features a bunch of characters who are aspiring comedians and actors. Sandler is an established comedy actor, and finds out that he is dying with cancer. He connects with Rogan and they both go on a little journey learning about fame, fortune, life, disease, love and what is important in life. Horray bro-mance movies.

The reason I talking about this post today is because there is a turn in the story line that puts the audience in an interesting place. The main character is a famous comedy actor, George Simmons (Adam Sandler), and when he finds out he is dying he tries to re-connect with an old love, Laura (Leslie Mann). The thing is, Laura is married. But as the story is painted, you find out that Laur’s husband, Clark (Eric Banna), has been cheating on her for years. And not to mention that there are several scenes where Clark openly disrespects Laura condescendingly. In one scene, Laura teary eyed confesses to George that she loves him more than her husband and wishes that she never would have married Clark.

It’s from this point that the complication begins to weave itself in my mind. As a viewer, I felt incredibly guilty cheering for George in his pursuit of Laura. Part of me wanted him to get her, to love her and have them ride together into the sunset. But the other part of me looked at her beautiful children, her home, her family, and her life and just wanted to scream at George to stop. To leave Laura alone and let her figure out her own life. To not satisfy himself in his need for her, and not destroy her family in the process.

It was an interesting moral split. And the story doesn’t end there – there are 146 minutes of weaving the complicated web, and then leaving you with an adequate sense of closure.

But my question is this: Do you feel bad rooting for the douche bag husband to get cheated on by the beautiful wife? Or do you want the main character to loose so the less popular character wins?

Either way, kudos to the writer, Judd Apatow, for keeping me engaged and divided throughout the course of the film.

What do you think?

Tonight while on a jog  around the bay, the night was so clear that the moon made mirror images on the water. Seeing that it’s a full moon at the moment, it was bright and the night was purple and blue and black – some of my favorite tones.

And while I pumped out all of my energy from the day, a memory resounded through my mind. A few years ago I was in the midst of another dark night lit by only the moon. I remember this moment very vividly – not only for the emotional significance, but for the astonishingly sharp visual that seemed to pair with it. It was the middle of the night when I was en route to New Zealand. In leaving LA, I was leaving behind a host of problems, my life was essentially in wreckage, and I was holding it all together with McGiver-style bubble gum and tape. Little did I know that when I landed in New Zealand I would promptly be deconstructed and begin the process of slowly piecing my life back  together. That moment on the plane was probably one of the darkest, more anxiety ridden nights of my life.

As I flew through the dark night, thousands of feet in the air, the darkness was piercing black. But the moon was soft white, illuminating the ocean as a blanket of sparking diamonds. The night was so clear that even from my height, I could make out the tiniest islands down there in the in the massive blue, and I could see the white caps of waves washing over beaches. It was honestly one of the most beautiful sites I have seen in my life. I remember specifically with tears in my eyes I whispered under my breath, “God I don’t know where you are, and I am scared sh*tless, but here I am.” Read the rest of this entry »