A heart like mine

Today's topic of discussion is me, facebook, and my twisted relationship with Jesus Christ:

It started last week, when I posted the following image with the comment that, well, he did lose his shit that one time and curse the fig tree:

I only got ONE like for that comment, ONE, which proves that my friends are either more devout and reverent Christians than I am or they're just not welling to admit that they're twisted enough to think that's funny.   Cause if you think about it, making a tree wither and die because it wasn't bearing fruit when you wanted a snack? 

Seriously? 

I think I get to say that.  Saying it on my facebook wall doesn't make it worse.  He has met me.  Kind of like my friend apologizing for complaining about his parent's behavior post divorce in the nave of our church-- really?  It isn't like he doesn't know you're upset with her.   It isn't like he doesn't know I swear.

And it isn't like cursing a fig tree because it doesn't have tasty figs on it isn't at least on the surface a bit much.   I think I get to say this kind of thing by now.   Especially considering I identify with this: 

Sometimes kicking and screaming.   And I don't think God hates figs.  I think that was a case of 'whelp, might as well drive the point of that parable home a little hard today'.   I'm cRaZY, yes, but Noah was a drunk, Peter was an impetuous ass who made promises he couldn't keep, Moses was a murderer, and David was a real jerk when he decided he wanted someone.  My god ran around with whores, rednecks, crazies and government employees.  

I don't think normal is normal in the Kingdom of Heaven.   I think it's the one place my behavior would be considered toned down.   I once had someone ask me what I would do if I was drinking alcohol and watching a horror movie and Jesus came to the door.   I told her I'd do the only appropriate thing to do: 

Invite him inside and offer him a glass!

Edit:  In reference to how I think God sees people, good or bad, repentant or not, I believe with all my heart that God sees each of us and says "this is mine". 

Or see below, thank you facebook:

Who are my mother and brothers?

I come from a traditional family.   My parents have been married for forty years.  My grandparents were married for longer.   The only step anything I have are nieces/nephews, and one cousin, who I do not call my step cousin, just my cousin.  I have seen--and benefited from--effects of a traditional two parent home.   I know what it means to belong without actually fitting in to a family.   I have also noticed that the older I get the more I realize how absolutely blessed I am to have been born to these people.   We have our problems, same as everybody else, but at the core of it we still love each other and when it hits the fan, we back each other up. 

I'm convinced that's what makes my family functional.   Functional in the sense  that at the moment everyone is speaking to everyone else and that we're all part of each other's lives.   Today's gospel reading made me think today that maybe Jesus' family was functional in the same way.   They may have thought he was nuts, but in the end, especially in the end, they showed up anyway.   Jesus, likewise, seems annoyed but uses the moment to make a point:

  Mark 3:31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.
3:32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you."
3:33 And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"
3:34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!
3:35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

Notice that the ties that bind could not have possibly been severed completely because we have his brother James showing up in the Book of Acts at the Council of Jerusalem and his mother follows him to the cross.  No one is throwing anyone away here.    He's just widening the circle.  Widening the circle big time.

I once had the big brass lady balls to say at church that my family never shows up and I have no one to spend Midnight Mass with.   I was immediately corrected.   I say big brass lady balls because those people have been putting up with me since I was 15 years old.   I should know by now that those people are my family.   Put a qualifier of church family on it if you must, at this point, I think we're stuck with each other.

There's more than one way to be family.   I saw La Cage aux Folles Friday night with my good friend and her fiance and saw that played out on the stage.  The crazy maid, the straight son, the drag queen mother, and the father trying to play referee between his son's desire to get past his future in-laws and his partner's need for recognition for his role in raising the boy.   What makes a family?  Is it children?  Long suffering each other's company?  Who was more of a mother?  We didn't see much of her, but I think Ann's mother was more interested in keeping that corn cob in its place than in making her daughter happy.  I think in that family it was the mother.  He wasn't just his father's partner, he was the one who turned their house into a home.  That deserved respect.   Jean Michael deserved respect too.  He turned out different than his parents without turning his back on them, and dealt with all the trauma and drama that comes from the way people reacted to his family when he was growing up.  

There's more to raising kids and living right than being in a traditional relationship and having the equipment to produce offspring.  I know families that are incredibly dysfunctional that are not broken homes in the sense that the parents are divorced.  They are broken in the sense that the love just isn't there.   The father tries to kill the daughter and no one, especially not the mother, calls the cops.  The daughter doesn't think she has any business getting angry about not being protected.  It's just broken.  Never mind that there's not a divorce decree involved, that family is broken.

So what makes a family?  Blood?  Affection?  In the case of Jesus, whoever does the will of God?

The Divine Baseball Bat

I was at work yesterday when I suddenly realized it was the sixth anniversary of the death of Will Norton. Will, I'm sure I've mentioned before, was my first adult friend who had absolutely nothing to do with my parents. Six years ago yesterday he died from complications related to AIDS after having suffered from the disease for 19 years. I decided to tell my coworker Vicki this on a whim and after telling her who Will was to me she asked me a strange question: Have you always been accepting of gay people?

In a word, no. No, I was not accepting of gay people when I was a teenager. I had been raised to believe it was wrong because (always ambiguous) the Bible said so. I remember someone showing me the story of Sodom and Gomorrah to prove it, along with several other random places in scripture that seemed to make their case. I didn't think much of it. The only gay person I knew that I knew was gay was a pot smoking man whore who could barely read. Back then, if you're wondering, smoking pot made you a total dumbass in my book. I didn't think God was ready to wipe out out the plague of homosexuals from the earth or anything. I kind of ranked it in there with other naughty things you weren't supposed to do associated with sex. Which, honestly, kind of fall into the same category as smoking cigarettes and drinking booze in excess for me. (Not something I'm going gouge my eyes out if I see.)

I laughed several weeks ago when I heard my coworkers mocking Chaz Bono and told them that they'd better learn tolerance or God was going to teach it to them. I didn't tell them that I knew this from painful first hand experience. God, I'm fully convinced, has a Louisville Slugger baseball bat with my name on it. The minute I think I know something about what God likes or doesn't like, he takes it out from behind the seat of his pickup truck again and whacks me with it. I think God doesn't like gays? WHACK! I completely do not understand Lesbians? WHACK! I giggle at the idea of my bishop finding out one of his deacons is going to have gender reassignment surgery? WHACK!

The more I think I know about God the more I know I don't know anything. I'm so glad I don't know what I'm talking about. How horrible, boring, and scary would it be if God fit into that tiny ungracious box I tried to fit him in all those years ago?