How about we make the top post on this blog not quite so depressing? What say you to that?

So the last time I wrote about the events in my life was July, way back when I got back from camp. You may not know this, but I actually blog after exactly thirty-six noteworthy events happen in my life. (Thirty-six is my favorite number, and also how large my event buffer is. Blit!) This is why sometimes I post twice in a week, and sometimes I go three months. It just happens when my thirty-six events occur. This also explains the staggering stability in my blog length. Go back and check. Every post has the same number of words, same number of characters, and same number of prepositions.

I'm not really sure which events these thirty-six are, or whether I'll actually write about all of them. Some must get filtered out remaining unknown to you, else you would organize a world-wide election for king of the United Nations with only my name on the ballot, and I just can't handle that kind of responsibility.

First, let me just say that I am astounded at the ease with which someone can devalue a piece of writing. Everyone I had read that last post told me they felt weird because it was depressing, and yet they felt it was a beautiful piece of writing. "I think you just need to get laid, mate." Really? You think that's what will fix things? Thanks, Anonymous. Jackass.

If you hadn't gathered from the last post, my pills don't work anymore. I don't know if my body adjusted to them, or decided to fight and win against them, or what, but I feel exactly the same as I did before I started taking the pills, except that food never sounds good. I thought I'd try upping the dose, since I was on such a low dose to begin with. My mood did change, and perhaps I was a slight bit more stable. I was consistently angry at everything. That's not the kind of stability I was going for. I dropped it back down to 100mg per day. The bottle is nearing emptiness, so I'll lower it back down to 50 until it's gone, and then find a new doctor. I'd go back to the doctor I was seeing, but my insurance will be changing in a day or two. Come to think of it, I don't know how quickly I can use my new insurance. I doubt it's immediate.

Anyway, that's been frustrating. For a couple days, it was so bad, that my mindset was as if I'd already committed to ending my life. I wasn't planning on it. I guess you'd have to understand the inner workings of my mind. I'm really good at putting myself into a situation. Suspension of disbelief is one of my greatest abilities. I can watch the least believable movie, and as long as its rules don't contradict themselves, I have no issues with it. A couple weeks ago, I imagined myself fantasizing. It was bizarre when I realized that's what I was doing, but not at all surprising to me. So just because I imagined, or was in the mindset of, having already committed to offing myself, it doesn't mean I was planning on it. So, while in that state, I began writing a suicide note in my head before I fell to sleep. Part of me wishes I had just stayed up to write it all out on my laptop, rather than just trying to remember it for later. The next day, I'd left that state of mind, and while I tried to write the letter, it didn't feel genuine at all. When writing isn't genuine, it isn't good. I still have the letter, what I wrote of it, saved, but I doubt I'll ever finish it.

It's a funny thing, really. I've always wanted to write one. It's sort of a way to lay it all out and explain to everyone everything that you could never say before, because there would have been consequences. Most of the things I had to say were good, too. Like telling three of the guys I work(ed) with that they're my favorite people to work with, and that they always uplift me when I see them, even if they're having a bad day. Halfway through what I did write, I realized that I hadn't said a single negative thing about anyone, at least not overtly. There was one case, where I used the concede a point and rebut its implications argumentative writing technique. I guess what I'm saying is, since it would have been written to everyone, I couldn't divulge what I would want to. That kind of defeats the purpose. Sure, there'd be no consequences for me, but the people I wrote about would all know everything I wrote about everyone else. There would be consequences between those people, and I would feel bad in advance.

And that's funny too. I would feel bad in advance. This is a suicide note and I'd feel bad in advance. One thing I did realize while in that state, and it really holds true even outside of that state of mind, is that I don't hate my life. I don't hate the people in it. I don't hate the circumstances. I hate life itself, often, in a way that's similar to a child's hatred of vegetables. I have no disdain for the people who enjoy vegetables, and I know that vegetables are good, but I hate life. Also, I'm in pain. I'm almost constantly in pain, sometimes worse than others, and sometimes in so much that it drives me to want to end it. That is the only reason I can think of that I might go through with it. It's never been about circumstances, at least external ones.

What's funny is this was meant to be a good post to combat the bad one that's sat there for the past couple months. Also funny, is that I do think this is a good post. I'm just guessing you don't. There comes a point where this stuff is easy to talk about matter-of-factly, though I do understand why it would make most people uncomfortable.

What else? Work's going well, but as always, I'm NDA'd. We're all excited about the Win7 release. I'm looking forward to buying a couple copies myself when the company store again has them in stock. I need two copies, and my mom needs one. One copy I'll get for free from the company, so that's pretty awesome. My own product is going very well. We've come a ridiculously long way in the 10 months we've been working on this. We've pushed hard and have made an amazing product that I'm proud of, even if I didn't work on a lot of the more important features. I think it's a lot like the pride I felt for my soccer team after winning the Wenatchee tournament even when I know I was perhaps the least valuable player on the team.

I've been hanging out with a new friend, Athena. Racist nickname? A little. She's the UI person for my project. I make the website work. She makes it pretty. This is, of course, within the confines of the master template, itself. All the portals must look the same, so the green, blue, and white stands. I like it, at least, I like it more than the orange and deep blue we had before. I tend to be a man of unpopular opinions.

Speaking of unpopular opinions, the opinion that Revenge of the Sith is the best of the six Star Wars movies has gotten Athena, her husband Helo, and me into some pretty long arguments. I think their (mostly his) argument comes down to there only being three Star Wars movies in the first place. I enjoyed them all. All six of them, in my opinion, were good. The acting was awful, dreadfully awful, in all six. I don't watch Star Wars for acting. My suspension of disbelief lends itself to acting, as well. I see the raw forms of the characters (as well as the hotness that is Natalie Portman) rather than the actors who play them. Helo makes the point that any movie where someone dies of a broken heart is automatically bad. I see some small amount of poetry in it, but then, I've never been a poet.

Athena and I have been going through Battlestar Galactica, with Helo when he's around. It's been good. It's been better to hang out than it has been to watch the show which is a little too dramatic and depressing to try and put it on the same level as say Chuck or The West Wing. Even Heroes, in its prime, was a better show, if I may offer yet another unpopular opinion. Less frequently, as it requires coordination of three schedules, rather than two, the three of us have been at my apartment to watch The West Wing. This is my eighth time through. I've finally picked a favorite episode: Season 1 Episode 6 "Mr. Willis of Ohio". Helo has seen up through season four, I think, but this is Athena's first time. If I blamed people for not watching The West Wing (which I really don't), Athena would still get off easy because she's Canadian, much like Cylons.

One of the first times I went to her place, we picked up Arby's on the way there. She wanted a certain burger, but it was unlikely that we would have it considering the name was The Canadian. So, she went on the website, looking for something she would want, and happened upon an identical sandwich named The All-American.

My sister has a new boyfriend. He seems like a good guy, and I do like him. It just seems like every time I'm around him, I happen to be in an off-mood, or surrounded by family that want, or at least expect, me to talk to them. (Man, that is not how you're supposed to word that sentence, but I can't figure out where the "to whom" goes, so that it won't end in a preposition when take off the "them".) I feel bad, because I don't think he thinks I like him, and I can tell that's something he cares about, since he is, after all, dating my sister.

I finished the Sword of Truth series quite some time ago, now. It was good, definitely worth reading, but I don't know how I feel about the ending. I reiterate that I still recommend it, but one of the things he did at the end kind of offended me. Part of that is due to his ignorance, and part of that is due to the Church's unpleasant history. Also, post book eight, he was a little heavy on the repeating of what Richard did for Nicci. Yes, we get it. Richard showed Nicci what life should be. Once, maybe twice per book if you need to specifically emphasize it in a situation, is sufficient. Every time Nicci thinks about Richard and every time Richard sees Nicci is a little overkill.

Alexander gave me another book while I was in the middle of Sword of Truth called the Magic of Recluce. I started reading that, and it was decent, what I read of it, but very, very slow. On October 3rd, I visited him and Frank for their birthdays. There, he let me borrow another book called Mistborn. That book was brilliant, and I finished within a week. I then went and bought the whole series (and a stand-alone book written by the same author, Brandon Sanderson), returning to Alexander the new copy of the first book, since I'm a little rough with softcovers. The series took me exactly one week per book. I think the author got sick of slow story lines in fantasy books and decided to just jump into action or important dialog on every scene, much to my appreciation. There were a couple elements that lacked a certain literary touch, but the magic system was original and intelligent (even if he dumbed down some of the descriptions, while "implementing" the intelligent way anyway). That coupled with its pace easily redeemed those couple minor literary faux pas. It's not like he did something as blatant as revealing a character's fear by giving them a nightmare. However, at the end of the second book, and the first four chapters of the third book, I was edging irate at one of the developments, because it basically ruined the entire series, particularly literarily. However, I judged too soon, and while it may have been better, certainly different, had he not done what he did, he still handled it very well, and it wasn't quite the travesty I anticipated from, and which would have relegated him to, a lesser author. I've loaned these books to Athena and Helo (hence forth known as the Agathons, to make this awful alias complete). Athena is midway through book two now. I'm not sure Helo has started, but he's a fast reader. Next up is The Magic of Recluce, rereading and finishing the Wheel of Time (especially now that Sanderson is finishing the series and book 12 just came out), Sanderson's standalone book, Elantris (probably not for a while), or Song of Ice and Fire, which Alexander loaned to Frank, and Helo always brings up when we talk about books. Or, I might give fantasy a little rest and read something more academic. A while back I bought a book called Heaven on the recommendation of one of my bible study friends. I've not actually opened it, but it's a lot thicker than I expected it to be. I can't tell, by the cover, if it's a reference book/text book or something easily readable. At any rate, my life puts almost no weight into heaven, and I wonder if it should. I've always placed it aside as something I can't imagine, so why bother trying? Still, it appears there is enough known about it to write a many-hundred page book.

Probably most notable in my last couple months, is that I finally landed myself a church. I happened to see Isaiah online, and ended up talking to him. I asked if he'd found a church, and he pointed me to Bethany Community Church in Seattle. His crazy work schedule makes it hard for him to attend with any regularity, but when he can go, he does. He did tell me, though, that another mutual friend of ours, one that led worship at CCF in college, also goes there, so I txt messaged him up, and he said he'd be there that coming Sunday, in the worship band, in fact. So, I visited. I was skeptical because of how big it was. I wasn't expecting to find a church I liked with more than 400 people, and this one is about three times that size. (Sorry, but the word thrice makes me feel pretentious. You read it over once, and you don't realize until you're three sentences further that rather than comprehending what you're reading, you're thinking, man, this sure is a yuppie of an author. Then you have to go back and read the sentence, and the sentences that followed it, over again, cringing when you get to the word "thrice." On a side note, I'd never actually known the definition of yuppie until now. I sort of fudged it from context, but it actually fits this situation well.) Anyway, I really enjoyed my first visit. The pastor there is a phenomenal speaker, in more ways than one. There are people who are good at speaking and have nothing to say. There are people who have plenty to say but can't speak, much like a text book. This man consistently has both. The worship is great, too. It feels a bit like CCF used to, which is wonderful despite what some people might say about maturity. The one drawback is that it is very large, and so no one knows if you're new, making it harder to feel welcomed. Also, it's right next to the UW, so much of the congregation, especially the evening service I attend, is made up of college students, who frequently come in groups, thus less likely to introduce themselves to someone in a different clique. It's not intentional, just sort of the nature of the beast. Anyway, after several visits, I decided to stay. One of my favorite things the pastor has said is, "No one ever runs a marathon for the shirt."

He loves hiking and he goes to second hand shops to look for these marathon shirts that are excellent at pulling sweat off and away from you. When he and his wife go hiking, occasionally someone will say, "Oh! You guys run marathons together." He responds, "She only walks them." (Which is true, but he doesn't run them at all.) So then he explains why he has the shirt. The point is, no one runs the marathon for the shirt. No one becomes a Christian in a meaningful way so they can go to heaven. We become Christians because God can transform our lives, can heal us, can give us something to live for. That we get heaven in the end is icing on the cake, in a way. It's the shirt from the marathon. I don't mean, and I don't believe the pastor did either, to downplay the magnificence of heaven. But it's not why someone should become a Christian.

Things are a little awkward now between my old church and me. I don't know how to deal with it either. However, I'm almost positive blogging about it is not the answer, just like it wasn't some four and a half years ago when I broke up with Eowyn. If you're interested, talk to me.

Last night, Eowyn was supposed to spend the night here and we'd hang out all of today. She got sick, went to the ER on Thursday night, and had to cancel. That is a different story. However, it did free my day up, and having already cleaned my apartment to cleaner than it's been since I originally moved in, I had nothing at all to do today. I'd have kept going in the West Wing, but I'm trying not to without the Agathons. So, I stayed in bed until 4:30, though I first woke up and was ready to leave bed, had I a reason, at 11, and was awake and rereading QC on my laptop since 2:30. At 4:30, I called Pizza Hut, ordered a pizza, got in the shower, brushed my teeth, dressed, and then the pizza man knocked on my door. I am a master of timing, especially considering the pizza got here ten minutes ahead of schedule. Anyway, while I was in bed, Taramgii invited me to her church, and that sounded like a splendid idea. A few times after that, people asked, "What are you doing for Halloween?" I got to respond, "Church!" Sometimes I do love playing the stereotypical, too-religious, Flanders Christian.

Throughout the night, I ended up talking to a bunch of people, mostly Taramgii's friends. It was freaky how many people reminded me of other people. There was a girl who looked a lot like Eowyn's sister. Another femme (Athena's posse and I decided the female version of 'guy' should be femme, since 'girl' is too young and 'woman' is too staunch, like 'man' is) reminded me of Missy who went to Jamaica with me. Another, a mixture of Bra's ex-girlfriend and another femme with whom I went to high school and college. Another had a striking resemblance to Alexander's sister, though she was a little taller and didn't have the Bugger's accent. Another was a LatR's pastor's wife lookalike.

I wasn't prepared for the church to be charismatic. Until tonight, actually, I'd never attended one. It wasn't unbiblical overcome by the spirit, speaking in tongues charismatic, but it was certainly high-energy and Southern Baptist amensy. I have the spiritual gift of discernment, but it was failing me tonight. That's a worry all on its own, considering it's not my gift in the first place, so it's not like it was something as simple as getting out of bed on the wrong side. It wasn't failing me; I was failing it, or rather the Holy Spirit. Or, quite possibly, it was God's will for me not to have it at that point in time. Anyway, I didn't know what to think. Ordinarily, I can say this is a holy gathering; this is exactly how it should be or this is wrong; these people are faking it because they've been told that this is Christianity.

It was also an interesting day for me to come. They'd had this change drive going on for the last 7 months, where they'd save all the change they had accrued in that time, and tonight give it toward a missions group of some sort. Also, it was the last week of Pastor Appreciation Month, and so they were having a special thank you dealie for the pastor and his wife. These two experiences shed an interesting light on things, or at least made the problem swimming in my head a little more complicated.

Worship was good, comparable to what Harper in Port Orchard is, though significantly more upbeat and energetic. There were days, though, when Harper used to sing songs like these, too, although back then, these songs were Ancient of Days, I Will Celebrate, Be Bold, and The Battle Belongs to the Lord. Veteran Christians will be laughing about now. The rest of you with your blank looks should just ignore this and move on. On a few of the songs, when the professional singers sing them, they kind of go into their own little thing, right? Sort of like if the background singers keep singing the chorus and the lead singer sings his own version of it, or his own bridge, or whatever. Those are typically parts that don't appear on the PowerPoint slide at church, because it's awkward. Sometimes the worship leaders will still sing those parts, and the congregation will remain silent, which I find awkward enough, but it's far worse if the words do appear on the screen, and it's expected that everyone try to sing this ridiculously difficult off-beat harmony. Anyway, I don't count that as bad, as in evil or anything, or even something stop me from going to a church. It's just funny and awkward.

The pastor, during the last worship song, got up and grabbed a mike from one of the backup singers on stage, and started singing with them, walking around up front. He's a decent singer. Then during a lull, he started praying. For a portion of it, he was speaking from God the Father's point of view. I couldn't tell if he was prophesying or if he'd said something like "The Lord God says this, '...'." None of the things he said I disagreed with. They weren't unscriptural. But neither were they direct quotes from the Bible, so I'm not really sure how I felt about it. What's frustrating is there's nothing I can point to and say, "that's wrong." He clearly wasn't calling himself God. Speaking from God's point of view is something a lot of singers will do, and that's never bothered me. It's just that I don't understand it, and so I'm uncomfortable.

A few other times, he got up and said that he felt that 'a young lady' or 'a man' was feeling such-and-such and told them that God was going to work through their tough circumstances and not to give up hope. Often times, I think this is a sham. But, I've done it. I do it rarely, and sometimes I can't even tell if I'm shamming myself, but I don't think I am. I sincerely feel like God wants me to go stand next to this guy who looks lonely, or go say something I don't understand to someone whose circumstances I don't know. Sometimes I've done it, sometimes I haven't, and wish I had. I couldn't tell if the pastor was legitimate or not. That frustrates me.

Another thing that frustrates me is that I don't know why I want to figure this out. I'm probably never going to go back to that church, so I don't need to know if I should guard myself or not, which was my original reason for wondering. Do I just want to label it? Do I need everything in black and white? You'd think I'd want to label it white, if I had to. I want to want to label it white, but I suspect that deep down I don't want to. If this energy is real, if this use of the Holy Spirit, of spiritual gifts is real, then what are we doing? Everything I've known and trusted would be missing some key element. A lot of churches, Harper included, seem to believe that spiritual gifts exist, and if you can find a way to use them that's non-disruptive, then good for you, but otherwise we're just going to ignore them. Oh, except that the pastor must be good at speaking -- that's the same as the spiritual gift of teaching, right? There are no good teachers or speakers that aren't Christians and thus wouldn't have that spiritual gift.

During the change drive, he held up a bucket, and with a bit of leading and trailing pomp, said that he could (almost) guaranty that the Spirit would move us to get up and put change in that bucket. I had 52¢ in my pocket. It didn't move me. Not even an inkling. Maybe it was because I was cynical, but I don't think so. Usually when I'm cynical like that, the Spirit does move me just to spite me, I think.

The last bit, the part where the pastor was honored in light of Pastor Appreciation Month, was the most revealing. One of the women in the church got up and talked about how she came to be at that church and how the pastor was instrumental in it. The thing that struck me about this speech was one line where she talked about how this was the only place she'd been where "they" (the pastor?) would prophesy over the children. That confirmed to me, mostly, that what he had been doing was prophesying, but again, usually I can "detect" that when it happens. There was a time a group of us were praying at a CCF worship team meeting, and one of the guys who runs sound spoke in tongues. It was the first time I'd actually heard someone speaking in tongues, and there was no doubt in my mind that it was of the Spirit, though there was no interpreter there. There was nothing definitive when the pastor was prophesying like I expected there to be. Anyway, at the end, as all churches, I expect, would do, the leadership got up and surrounded the pastor to pray for him. They asked the congregation to get up and surround him with them. This was maybe the most disturbing to me. This has nothing to do with the church, and everything to do with me. I didn't move. I could easily have gotten up, but I didn't. I didn't feel comfortable about it. The excuse I would have given had someone approached me (which would have been awkward in and of itself), was that I didn't know the pastor. That probably would have flown, but it shouldn't. So what if I don't know the pastor? I can still pray for his well being and God's guidance in his life. I don't understand why I didn't get up. Earlier, when he had been walking around up front and praying, one end of his arc was directly in front of me, and I don't even really remember what he was saying at that point, but whatever it was, I was guarding myself against it at that moment and he stared at me in the eye for a good 10 seconds, before looking to Taramgii, and then repeating his arc. Somehow it felt like a challenge, or not that it was meant to, but that somehow I was challenging him. It was unpleasant, and I don't believe it was his fault at all. This is not something I understand.

I've noticed that when, overall, I enjoy an experience, I talk most about the few things that I didn't enjoy, and the opposite about things that overall I didn't enjoy but had a couple redeeming qualities. So, you might say that given this, overall I'm glad I attended the service, even if it was different. I especially enjoyed hanging out talking to folks after the service ended. It was good to be around a bunch gabby Christians again. Since I'm not in a bible study right now, and since the church I'm at is unintentionally cliquy, and since I'm no longer at camp, I don't get a whole lot of fellowship. I do intend to find a new bible study here soon. We will see. It was a little weird, because most of the people there were young, a lot around my age. And it seemed about half were married. And about half of those had kids or were expecting. There was a very pregnant woman there, and I knew she was young, but something struck home when I noticed her shirt had a giant 87 on it. The femme that looked like Missy was affianced. I don't feel old enough for this situation.

A couple things, phrases I guess, stuck with me from tonight. One was that one of the guys (I don't believe it was the pastor) said that God thanks you for giving to something (missions I think). God thanks you. I'm going to chew on that a bit more. The other thing was a thought that had little to do with the service. I was thinking about wrestling, because that's what everyone tells me to do: keep wrestling with God. And the thought came to me: why does God fight back? Jacob wrestled God in Genesis. Not only did God fight back, but when he wasn't gaining ground, he resorted to cheating. I don't believe I've heard a satisfactory explanation of this, despite numerous studies. Sometimes I wonder if I should be coming up with these satisfactory explanations -- reading the text, doing research, thinking. Maybe I should, but I've never been able to before. Every now and then, something witty will strike me when I'm reading, but wit is a squirt gun to wisdom's fountain. Most, likely all, of my wisdom is borrowed. Borrowed, churned, repeated. Blogged.

And yet, with all of this talk, this still isn't the most pressing of my spiritual dilemmas. At the end of last week's service at Bethany, I got to thinking about the main point of the sermon, which was that, since we are free of the Law, we can be "all things to all people." We can be Jews to Jews and gentiles to gentiles and Seattlites to Seattle and liars to Apple's marketing department. So, I went up to ask him if he thought, that since we were given freedom from sin, if it's okay to sin in order to witness to people. He kind of smiled and said, "No, I think what I was trying to say is that there's a lot of things we think are sinful, but that aren't." And continued talking about drinking and reading Harry Potter, and how it's appropriate to read Harry Potter at Seattle Pacific University, but not appropriate to drink, even though drinking is not a sin. If you went to Germany, however, drinking would be entirely appropriate, and if you abstained for "religious reasons" you'd be doing the Kingdom a disservice. I told him that I don't drink at all because both sides of my family have a history of alcoholism. He said my choice was a wise one. I asked if I went to Germany if I should drink. He again kind of smiled and said he didn't think so. A day or two later, I started cyberstalking him. He has a blog, a church website, and facebook and twitter accounts, yet I could not find his email address. I wanted to email him another question I'd thought up, but then remembered you could facebook message someone you weren't friends with, and took that route. The question was "If your point was that a lot of things we think of as sin actually aren't, where does freedom from sin come in at all?" After typing that I realized a subtle difference. This whole time I'd been saying "freedom from sin" when the sermon was actually on "freedom from the Law." So I appended that bit to my question and clicked send. The next morning I had an answer saying that he was indeed talking about freedom from the Law. I then responded asking something I probably wouldn't have asked, but my state of mind was off, as it often is without working medication. I wrote,

I guess my next question, then, is where does freedom from sin come in? I've been a Christian nearly all my life, and I'm not sure I've really ever figured it out or gotten a straight answer. I know I have it, but that doesn't make it useful to me living my life, ya know?

I've not yet received a response. I'm going to guess that the email got misplaced somehow. It happens, and I'm sure he gets a lot of it. Playing both parts of this conversation later on, I asked myself, "Well, if you don't understand this, what makes you a Christian?" I gave myself a fairly lengthy answer even I was surprised I could give off the top of my head, including (but not limited to) my belief in the divinity of Jesus, in that he came to earth as a human, lived a perfect life, died for the sins of all mankind on the cross -- granting us just forgiveness -- and rose from the grave before ascending to heaven. At that point I realized there's another subtle distinction to be made. Though the two are tightly coupled, forgiveness of sins and freedom from sin aren't the same thing. Forgiveness of sins, for the most part, I think I understand. I understand why I have it, I understand why I need it, and I have at least a rudimentary understanding of its implications -- direct relationship with God and eternity in heaven after earthly death, for example. Freedom from sin is something else. I've heard it explained before that before being forgiven, we were bound by sin, and we could not help but sin. And now that we've been forgiven, we've also been freed from those bindings, and so now we can break out of addictions. It still seems to me that I cannot help but sin. Some people give the other side, so I don't know why they even bring it up under the guise of freedom from sin, saying that it doesn't mean we can just go on sinning because now we have mercy and forgiveness. Romans 6:1-14 makes this point, and makes it better than anyone I've heard give this point. In this passage it seems like Paul briefly touches on what freedom from sin is, but I don't believe that it gives the full extent of what should be its changes to our lives. Anyway, I told Hime about this, and it turns out she's never been able to figure it out either, so now there are at least two of us waiting for his response.

Another thing that bothers me, is if you read back through this, every paragraph that has mentioned Christianity, has mostly been oriented around me. This may not come as a shock considering this is my blog about myself. But Christianity has a lot to do with serving and being selfless. I don't know that there's any evidence of this in this post. I have done selfless things. I do do selfless things. There are more selfless things I could and probably should be doing. Is personal spiritual growth exclusively about other people? Christianity isn't one to balk at paradox. I just have a hard time believing that everything that can be learned about Christianity can (and should?) be learned through serving other people. Clearly that isn't the case since we go to church and listen to sermons, even if the majority of those sermons talk about service. I feel I'm missing something here.

Well, I just found a flea on my arm, which means it's time for the cats' flea treatments again, even if there're still a few days left of their month. Fleas in the bed is not an experience I wish to repeat. After that, we'll take notice that it's 4am, which is really 5am adjusted for DLS, and even though I've only been out of bed for twelve and a half hours, I am tired, and my legs are sore from sitting and being cold. Why haven't I turned up the heat yet?