Wiener POW!

Word to the wise. Don’t do anything that would put you in danger of losing a wiener. It’s just not worth it. This PSA brought to you by Jarrett.

Speaking of wieners, when my friend Matt and I flew back from SLC a couple of weeks ago, we had the option of going through the normal metal detector or the x-ray vision body scanner. We, of course, went for the x-ray vision scanner and wondered if this meant the TSA lady would be able to see our privates. Matt was going to ask if he could get the digital image to use as his Facebook profile picture, but I think he didn’t want to hold up the security line. To answer your question, we are both in our 30’s.

Speaking of Facebook, I just now got my first spam friend request from Rita Southers. Her message to me reads, “Howdiey Guys, sooo much pain, I got something periced last night. I cant show you on here but click here too see my profile! (let me know what you think).” Sorry Rita, I have a feeling that your “pericing” is the last thing I want to see.

Airing the dirty family laundry

I have some sad news about my big hair. Both items come from two of my sisters. My oldest sister Laurie, informed me that the picture was taken in 1993 before she went on her mission, which is when I would have been a sophomore in high school. I wish I could say that I left that hair behind in middle school, but apparently not. No wonder I had such a hard time finding a locker partner my sophomore year. Everyone was probably afraid I’d take up all the space with my hair supplies. Sometimes I forget how far into the 90’s it took us to get over the 80’s. And now the 80’s are back again. Full circle.

The other bit of information comes from my younger sister Tara, who informed me that this is the family picture that I used to try to convince her that she had been adopted. She’s the only one with blonde hair in the picture and apparently I tried to convince her that this meant she had been adopted. I have no memory of that though. It can’t be proved. Plus, Tara was always kind of dramatic as a child. If ever we upset her at the dinner table, she would storm away to her room. Then she would probably realize that her dinner was still at the table and so a few minutes later she would emerge with a blanket over her head. This allowed her to finish her dinner without taking a hit to her pride. I guess in some ways she was very innovative. She thought of the invisibility cloak way before JK Rowling did.

And to not leave my brother out, I actually didn’t have the biggest hair in the family. Matt did. By far. When my brother was in high school, he grew his hair out long and permed it. It. Was. Huge. I think next time I’m at my parents, that’s the next picture of a picture I’ll have to take. This was also around the time when he owned a turtle and let it roam free in his room and would burn incense. Tara was always afraid to go to his room to ask him for help with her math homework. One, because he was scary to us when he was in high school and two, the smell of the incense.

I’m realizing now that I didn’t really share anything embarrassing bout Laurie. The only thing I can think of is once when we were on a family vacation riding our bikes. I was probably around 12 at the time (Laurie will be able to tell you the exact age). I rode up beside her on my bike and said, “Pardon me, ma’am, but do you have any Grey Poupon?” (I know, lame joke. Leave me alone. I was 12.) She just looked at me and told me that she didn’t drink wine and sped off. Apparently, she had never seen that commercial. I guess it never aired during Little House on the Praire. I’ll leave my youngest two sisters alone because they are still in middle school and at that age, embarrassing stories are still pretty devastating.

Big Hair

I have been asked to post something new so that the first thing you see when you come to my blog isn’t a creepy doll. So instead of a creepy doll, you get this, a picture of me circa 1991 or 2 ish:
A while back, I posted about some of my childhood/adolescent eccentricities. One of them was how much time I would spend on my hair. For some reason I was self conscious and thought my head was too small; which is funny, because I have a large head. I used a hair dryer and lots of hair spray and made my hair pretty big and puffy. When I was in SLC a couple of weeks ago, I found a family picture that demonstrates the ridiculousness that was my hair. The big round glasses probably don’t help either, but that was the style. I swear.

Also, this is interesting. Christina’s birthday was last week and she got a book. I can’t even really remember the name of the book or what it was really. Just about weird Portland things? Honestly, I was too busy gorging on chips and guac from Por Que No? to pay much attention to anything else that was going on. Anyway, I paused inhaling when I heard something about a self cleaning house. Apparently, there is some lady named Frances Gabe in Roseburg who has a house that cleans itself. Everything in her house is waterproof and she has some kind of sprinkling system that houses down her house and then the floor is slightly angled to the corners so that the water can drain and it has blow dryers to dry everything off (and make stuff big and puffy in case she’s self conscious about it looking too small). I googled this house today and found this NY Times article. I wonder if she’s still around. The article was published in 2002 and she was 86 back then.

Chucky POW!

When I was in SLC for Christmas, I went and visited my grandma. I saw this on display on one of her bookshelves and asked what the crap it was. Oh, it was her doll when she was little. My next question should have been, "Were you ever afraid this doll would kill you in your sleep? I think it must have been the first model of dolls with the feature where the eyes close when you lay it down. It obviously hadn't quite been perfected yet, so the eyes have not only half rolled back in it's head, but they are also sunken in the sockets. This one is especially for you, Ruth. I know of your affinity for creepy dolls.

Skye's Sweet Onions of Forgiveness

So this is turning out to be the third of a three part post (see Love Defined and Spider Love). I didn’t really plan on a trilogy, but it’s turning out that way. Hopefully they’re not getting progressively worse, like the Matrix Trilogy. Actually, I probably shouldn’t say that, I don’t think I ever saw the third one. I don’t think I had any desire to by then.

In the other posts I (with a lot of help from of Catherine Thomas and Martha Beck) explored the idea of possessiveness in relationships and allowing space in our relationships with others, space for others to define who they are and who they are in relation to us, as well as space for change to occur in them and in their relationship with us and I kind of don’t want to end this sentence so that I can see how long I can make this run on sentence that I will leave as a paragraph unto itself.

At the suggestion of a Gemini, I recently read an article by my friend Skye that she wrote for the Sunstone magazine. It’s called The Sweet Onions of Forgiveness. Go read it, it’s not very long and how often do you get to read something with the phrase “Sunday School vogue”? For those of you who are too lazy, it’s about how growing up her brother was famous for not liking onions. Whenever they would have any kind of dish with onions they would tell him he won’t like it because it has onions in it. Until one day he exploded, saying that he actually now LIKES onions. Here’s what Skye had to say about what she learned from that experience about forgiveness:

My own experience in something as simple as a family gathering is evidence that it’s extremely difficult to behave differently than others expect. Despite moments of resolve, it’s very hard not to believe the subtle and unspoken suggestions from others about who we are, what we are worth, and what we will become. Perhaps it’s one of the reasons “bad” kids sometimes stay bad, criminals often stay criminals, abused children frequently grow up to abuse.

Jesus knows that if he wants his lost sheep back, it will have to be a group effort. He needs us to expect the best of each other, to honor the divinity in each other, to treat each other as though we’ve already moved on from our hang-ups. He needs us to keep passing the plate of oniony goodness, even if we think it will be refused. Because people can change. And it’s our job not only to let them, but to pave their way by treating them as though they already have.

As I’ve thought about my last two posts, it’s occurred to me how my trying to lock others into a relationship or displaying that suffocating spider love actually can play a role in being a stumbling block for others on their quest to become whole and can contribute to hampering their attempts to change. Allowing that space and eliminating assumptions about others actually draws people in. Allowing that space for change and room for forgiveness actually creates opportunities for stronger and more enriching bonds. I love taking two seemingly contrary ideas and combining them to land on a greater truth….allowing space to create greater closeness. Hmm, where else could the combining of contraries apply...

Spider Love

There is one word in the book excerpt in my last post that I want to explore more. Possessiveness. Especially as it relates to relationships. It’s an idea that has been coming up and presenting itself lately through different conversations, email exchanges and things I’ve been reading. The idea first presented itself to me exactly two years ago when I read this article by Martha Beck. She refers to this possessive type of love as spider love. It’s more about capturing and binding the object of our affection. Some may literally do that, but I think we sometimes are blinded to ways that we do seek to possess and bind others not so literally, but more emotionally. Obviously, not a very expansive or fulfilling way to love.

I’ve heard the opposite of spider love described as “desire without attachment”. I also recently read this article on marriage and it called this same idea “spaces between togetherness”. When I was using Google to try and find the article, I found this great quote by Kahlil Gibran: “But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”

I thought I might try my hand at describing this same concept. Be forewarned though: mine won’t be a concise, well written description that evokes beautiful imagery. It will be long and clunky. Deal.

I think the tricky thing about relationships is that we are always trying to label and define them. Brother, sister, mom, dad, best friend, acquaintance, coworker, spouse, lover, etc. We all have an idea in our heads of what a person in any one of the listed roles should be. We have unwritten rules about how different relationships should work and what we think we can expect from them. We like to have all of this well defined for us so that we can go on cruise control and settle in to start receiving the benefits we think are coming our way based on the unwritten rules and beliefs we have about relationships.

Because we call someone best friend, we try to trap that someone into our idea of what a best friend is. Maybe we think it gives us rights to know everything about that person and that they should know everything about me. Problems arise when the other person has a different definition of what a best friend is. Sometimes friendships get deadlocked or caught up in the struggle between the two parties trying to get the other side to conform to his or her idea of the role the other should be playing. Sometimes that struggle is one sided. Either way though, it can be frustrating. We end up forming bonds of anguish instead of bonds of love. We also end up limiting the possibilities of our relationships and where they can go and what they can do for us.

I’ve found that my most rewarding and enriching relationships are those where, instead of trying to settle into a defined role, I allow the relationship to remain suspended in the unknown. I allow the other person to be. I let them define who they want to be and how they want to interact with me. I also try not to assign meaning to shifting and evolving relationships. During times of shifting, the temptation might be to more rigidly adhere to our unwritten rules of relationships as a desperate attempt to hold on to what we think is slipping away. As a result, we unwittingly limit where the relationship can go and the ways that it can teach and feed us.

So yeah. Possessiveness. It’s not good.

Love Defined

The following is an excerpt from a book by Catherine Thomas entitled Light in the Wilderness:

What the world generally refers to as love is an intense emotional condition, combining physical attraction, possessiveness, control, addiction, eroticism, and novelty. It’s usually fragile and fluctuating, waxing and waning with varying conditions. When frustrated, this emotion often reveals an underlying anger and dependency that it had masked. That love can turn to hate is a common perception, but here, an addictive sentimentality is likely what’s being spoken about, rather than Love; there probably never was actual love in such a relationship, for hate stems from pride, not love.

Pure love is unconditional, unchanging and permanent. It doesn’t fluctuate—its source isn’t dependent on external factors. Loving is a state of being. It’s a forgiving, nurturing, and supportive way of relating to the world. Love isn’t intellectual and doesn’t proceed from the mind: love emanates from the heart. It has a capacity to lift others and accomplish great feats because of its purity of motive.

Love, then, has an irrational quality to it; that is, it is not based necessarily on reasons to love another person, but is rather a choice as to how we are going to encounter the world around us. It is an attitude that we are going to establish, a “state of being” that is independent of what others choose to do.

Every person in Zion will have to come to understand that Zion can only survive if love and at-one-ment are the established dynamic in each heart.

It’s then possible to “one with another,” for there are no longer any barriers. Love is therefore inclusive and expands the sense of self progressively. Love focuses on the goodness of life in all of its expressions and augments that which is positive—it dissolves negativity by recontextualizing it, rather than by attacking it. As love becomes more and more unconditional, it begins to be experienced as inner joy. This isn’t the sudden joy of a pleasurable turn of events; it’s a constant accompaniment to all activities. Joy arises from within each moment of existence, rather than from any other source.

Here’s some more Catherine if you liked the above.

Big Heart

This weekend a friend of mine passed away. I attended his wedding in September. I got to know Matt when he started dating my friend Emily. He moved up to Portland this past summer so they could continue to date and they ended up getting engaged. While Matt lived here, he rented a room from a guy just a half mile from my place. I got to know Matt and his heart very well that summer and Matt had the biggest heart of just about anyone I knew. He had no guile and was always so inclusive. He knew about me and my situation. I felt like I could open up to him completely and never was there any awkwardness. He just loved.

He read my blog and would ask me about it occasionally. He noticed that sometimes I wouldn’t use a person’s real name and asked me why. He said that if I ever mentioned him on my blog, to use his real name. He wanted me to know that he was proud to call me friend. My friendship with him, though brief in this life, was very healing for me. Those of you who have wrestled with an attraction to the same sex, know what a gift that type of friendship is. And even if it’s other things you wrestle with, you know what a gift that type of friendship is. That language is universal.

Over the 4th of July weekend, Emily was out of town on a trip to DC with some friends that she had been planning for a while. Matt and I hung out a lot that weekend and I think that’s when our friendship was sealed. He and I, along with a large group of friends experienced the Blues Fest, Candye Kane and the toddler doll. He and I also went to see a movie that weekend and I locked myself out of my condo. Matt was able to break me in in about five minutes flat.

If we can’t have Matt’s huge heart here with us now, I suppose I’ll settle for having him pulling for us on the other side. I have been forever changed and so have the up to 9 other people who received an organ from him. I love you, Matt, can’t wait to catch up on SNL skits and listen to some MJ.

BOM BOM POW!

Happy twenty ten. I hope to eventually post something of substance but life is kind of busy right now and substance posts take some time. I have some stuff brewing though. In the meantime, here’s a picture sent in from Ruth. She lives in Utah County, but you may have already guessed that from the picture.

Unfortunately, the read-a-thon already happened. I probably should have posted this sooner. At first I thought it was strange that this was being held at a reception center. After giving it some thought though, I think some shrewd business minds might be at work here. Maybe the read-a-thon is doubling as a speed dating activity. You get a bunch of LDS singles together to read the BOM at a reception center and POW, you have lots of love connections. All these love connections are for sure going to want o have their wedding receptions at the place they initially met. At the Colonial House with the tacky marquee.