Heh. Heh heh. So ... I just got back on Xanga for the first time since I wrote that last post. Wanna hear something funny? I ended up not taking any of those jobs. A couple days later, I was offered a better job that could guarantee me at LEAST 40 hours a week as well as an amazing benefit package. Been working there for two weeks, and although training sucks, it's the type of thing I could learn to really enjoy.

So ... I'm more or less very, very happy. Except I just feel really restless, but I don't know what I would change. I have a good job that I'd like to stay at for a while. I have great friends. I don't want a relationship right now. Yes, I'm still living with my parents, but I'm starting to realize that that's a choice that I have made and that I'm okay with it. I'm staying here until my car is paid off, and I am satisfied with that. I'm finally at peace with the realization that I'm going to be here in the US for an indefinite period of time and I'm not going out of my way to change that.

I am just doing a whole lot of "stuff" right now. Besides working 40+ hours a week, I'm also teaching children's church, leading a middle school girls' Bible study, doing the whole youth sponsor thing, and commuting to the big city once a week to intern with a children's choir. I am definitely over-committed. And that's why my "flat" is completely trashed up, I am too wiped-out to ever just have a night of fun with my friends, and I haven't done any reading on Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris.

But I think that I still want something to happen that will totally shake up my world. I feel like I'm waiting for some ONE to come in and turn it all upside-down. In a good way. I feel like something is coming. Something big. And I'm so ready for it! I don't want there to be a possibility of my becoming comfortable where I am. But I'm starting to realize that "settling down" doesn't mean getting comfortable. It means commitment, which is exactly the opposite of being comfortable.

I'm starting to think of "commitment" and "settling down" in completely different lights, but just *starting* to, mind you! These terms are not synonymous with being boring or comfortable. They aren't the "easy way". Quite the opposite. They're the "hard way". If God asked me to keep an open mind and do something crazy and out there, never settling, always roaming, I would jump at the chance. But if God said, "Stay and settle down," that would be uncomfortable for me. It would take a sacrifice of my will. Whereas I always thought that commitment was like giving up on ever achieving better, I'm starting to realize that when I commit myself to something, I'm making MYSELF better. I enrich my own person. In that light, commitment is starting to sound better to me. Maybe, just maybe, I can begin to commit to some things in life. Starting with my job (scary as that sounds) and to investing in the girls in my Bible study. I think I just might like that ...

So ... many of you know I went on a roadtrip recently. Got back just over a week ago. Here's something I kinda journaled about while I was on the road:

THE MUFFIN MAN = LIGHT OF THE WORLD?

On our roadtrip, we stopped to spend Tuesday night at the home of my mom's brother, Pastor Gene, and his family. My two youngest sisters and I started out the night in one of their guest rooms. (I say "started out" because I left to find a couch to sleep on around 1:30 because the younger girls kept laughing raucously and making jokes about gnomes.)

On the shelf in that room, I found a most interesting book entitled "The Christian Mother Goose Treasury". Feeling shocked - and a little violated almost - I pulled it down and learned it was only the second volume of a larger treasury. I began leafing through it and saw all sorts of bizarre corruptions of classic children's rhymes. I felt like a piece of my childhood had been stolen. They no longer sparked my imagination. Animals didn't play instruments anymore. There were no impossibilities made believable.

Old Mother Hubbard DID go to the cupboard, and the cupboard WAS bare, but after begging her neighbors to no avail, she returned home to find a bag of bones with the sign "God Wants Us All to Share." The "Rub-a-Dub-Dub/Three men in a tub" became three boys scrubbing themselves clean to make their mothers happy. The mulberry bush became a "miracle" bush. Peter Piper may have picked a peck of picked peppers, but Peter Postle picked a pack of preaching prophets. The pussycat who sat under the queen's chair apparently sat below the Queen of SHEBA and heard the story of her trip to see the riches and wisdom of King Solomon. The "Star light, star bright" became the Star of Bethlehem the Wise Men followed. London Bridge may be falling down, but God's precious Cornerstone will hold it up. Oh, and did you know that Diddle Diddle Dumpling, My Son John PRAYED in bed with his stockings on? There were dozens upon dozens more, but my favorite was the Muffin Man who gave out "Manna Bread" on One Way Lane.

"Will you follow the Muffin Man?"

"Yes, I will follow the Muffin Man."

I wish I could say I made that last part up.

What happened to the four-and-twenty blackbirds that still sang and flew after being baked in a pie? The cow who jumped over the moon? The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker? They were all glossed over to create images of pious, smiling children who went to church, obeyed their parents, and never let their heads be filled with any sort of imaginary fiddle-faddle.

It hurts me as a follower of Christ, a writer, and a former child that someone read the Mother Goose rhymes and thought that they just weren't good enough for "Christian" children. Let's use these same rhymes, take out all the "nonsense" and replace it with stories of baby Moses and cradles that the Lord kept safe, rather than let fall. And, bless their hearts, all those conservative, Church-going mothers who must've thought it positively grand to replace their children's regular bedtime stories with "CHRISTIAN Mother Goose" rhymes. It just goes to show that you can sell ANYTHING by sticking the name of our precious Redeemer and the Son of God on the label and re-market the product as a "Christian" item.

Apparently, the probably well-meaning re-designer of nursery rhymes hadn't yet figured out what I have recently learned; the term "Christian" is not synonymous with the idea of mentioning God or any sanctimonious, "religious" acts every chance you get. You cannot take a classic rhyme or story that has lasted for possibly hundreds of years in the hearts of parents and children through the sacred moments of playtime and bedtime, make them a nice Jesus-friendly slipcover, and not blaspheme the name of child-like imagination.

The only consolation I feel is realizing that since these books came out well before I was born - and I am now on the brink of my 22nd birthday - and this is the first I've seen or heard of any "Christian" Mother Goose rhyme, it's probably safe to say it was not a popular treasury. There probably weren't many copies sold or many children raised under these Pharisaical works of self-declared holiness. When I have children, you can most certainly believe that we will recite the classic, imaginative, "nonsense"-filled Mother Goose nursery rhymes. And then, once they're a little older, I'll probably read to them from treasuries of folk tales, science journals, and the Bible - but NOT from a Bible-based storybook! Children understand more than we give them credit for, and even more than a fair number of adults! They have the ability to glean more truth from stories than us old folks, and they don't have to be consciously aware of it. I suggest we let children discover truths in their own natural ways, rather than force-feeding it to them in the guise of a harmless nursery rhyme.

The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.
-Madeleine L'Engle

In case you haven't noticed, I adore Madeleine L'Engle. I want to be her. She was not a hippie, but she brought peace between all sorts of battling opponents. She was not a New Age believer, but she argued strongly for the paranormal and the energy which abounds throughout the visible and the invisible. She was not a scientist, but she delighted in the workings of plant cells, galaxies, and the human mind.

Madeleine was an artist. She pondered and worked her curiosity through her writings which pervaded the hearts and minds of society. Her ideas have stretched across the nation and beyond. She transcended the mundane everydayness of life to leave her mark on higher levels of thought, some of which are only frequented by children.

Madeleine was a theologian. Many people would not think of her this way, but she sought out truth in all corners of creation and basked in unexplainable mysteries. As all truth belongs to God, she sought out his heart while delving deep into his mysteries. She found joy in discoveries large and small, and found no reason for anything to contradict her belief in a God so complex, that he encompassed all that she didn't understand.

I want to find joy in beauty and truth and show it to the world in every medium I can. I want to discover the magic of everyday life and attribute every lovely moment or idea to an ever-present, ever-loving God. I want to show the world all the wonder this life has to offer and give hope and strength to those who have lost it. Most of all, I want to love the way that Christ loved and find a piece of his heart buried within everyone I meet.