#local construction

I volunteered for a couple shifts at my church's firework stand last week. It wrecked my sleep schedule but I did almost nothing but sit in a camp chair reading. We earned $10,000 and got to eat authentic home-cooked Mexican food. A win is a win.

My sister had a Really Bad Medical Event a couple weeks ago and we're all still kind of cautious about lingering effects. But she was well enough to participate in the firework stand and even passed out balloon animals!

I've been having a migraine episode for the past week. See sleep schedule. I made some unwise choices regarding my caffeine intake. I slept through most of the 4th. I think yesterday was a postdrome day. Not much today. Cautiously optimistic.

I'm in my community theater's production of the SpongeBob musical! It's messy and time consuming and fun. I need pirate jokes. See migraine.

I'm trying to work through my local library's summer book bingo. I've checked off 7/25 items but I didn't do them in order so I still need a few more items for any lines or columns. I'm struggling to find a genre of literature outside my comfort zone. I've checked out a textbook on evolution. Maybe that counts, even though it's more the topic than the genre.

I'm supposed to have Gnolie licensed with the country before I can sign my lease but it's been pending for almost two weeks despite having all the documents in! Sure hope that doesn't turn out badly for us!

I sat through a pastors' appreciation day message that was more about divinely-ordained hierarchy than about love or service. I sat through a sermon on Ephesians 6 that included the command for children to obey their parents, but not the reciprocal command for parents not to provoke their children to wrath, or the more troubling one for slaves to obey their masters. I heard about sin and punishment and how parents are ashamed when their children do wrongly. I looked at my mother and wondered if she was ashamed of me. In spite of everything, I don't think she is.

Over time I went from enjoying my long hair as a child, to obsessively wanting longer hair as a teenager, to intense and sometimes violent discomfort (I think also gender dysphoria) with my long hair as a young adult, before reaching where I am now. I find some things about it inconvenient, and it isn't my personal ideal for my appearance, but I can live with it and it doesn't cause that distress anymore. I don't feel (like I used to, during that stage of deconstruction that in retrospect was marked by OCD related rigid thinking) that I'm doing something harmful and regressive by keeping my hair long.

One unexpected source of comfort for me has been the Confucian ethics of the Chinese historical dramas I watch. Historically, both Chinese men and women kept their hair long, because your body is given by your parents and long hair shows respect for that. So the people who cut their hair short would probably be monks/nuns or criminals.

The single biggest reason I've never cut my hair during this process of tearing down and rebuilding my faith is that I know it would cause my dad pain. I know my mom would be very upset if I cut my hair, but ultimately we could have some conversations about it and learn to live with our different convictions. I cannot do that with my dad. He's a pretty rigid thinker himself. Honestly, he's come a lot farther than I expected on me talking about being queer (something I did very publicly, without warning him in advance. In retrospect that's something I wish I'd handled differently.) But in my dad's mind I think cutting my hair and wearing pants would be "worse" than me getting gay married. He would not be able to escape his fear that I'd go to hell for it. And I don't want that for him.

I know that I'm the one who gets to decide what to do with my body. I know that it's appropriate for adults to set boundaries with their parents, and that I have no obligation to follow my parents' wishes for me to share their religious beliefs and practices. And yet I find that I haven't cut my hair, because I'm not willing to cut my hair, because I'm not willing to cause that pain to my dad.

I really, really have begun to feel something sometimes in prayer. I felt it during the Good Friday service when we prayed silently. During the baptism part of the vigil, I felt drawn very strongly. I think, theologically at least, I'm getting closer to ready to be baptized. Socially, I think it will be very difficult for me to tell my familiy if I have a Trinitarian baptism (and of course the very nature of baptism is to be public). May God guide me and give me courage.

I took communion during the vigil! It's been years since I'd taken communion--the last time had been at college chapel pre-pandemic. I stopped taking communion at the UPCI congregation when I noticed I had significant differences of belief. It's been a matter of scrupulousity for me, since many open table communion churches are actually open to all who have been baptized, and I had a Jesus-only baptism. So even though the ELCA's position is more ambiguous than, say, the Episcopal church's, I've tried to err on the side of caution. But at the communion part of the vigil the officiant was very clear that there were no exceptions at all, so I took him at his word. I'm still not taking communion in regular services, but that was such a good experience (if awkward, as I was the cantor during communion and had to time things very carefully)

The gospel reading for Easter, John chapter 20, was the alternate text because the minister didn't want to read the shortest ending of Mark, where the women tell nobody what they'd seen because they're afraid. I love John 20 but I felt a little sad to not hear Mark. In my Resurrection class we talked about how the abrupt ending of Mark, which never resolves how the word about the resurrection got out, makes the reader (who's been in on the Messianic secret along with the narrator this whole time) an active participant, spreading the news they've just read. I find that so theologically rich.

I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian! I believe in and love Jesus! I read the Nicene creed today and I believed in what I was reading! I've spent years in doubt and alienation, in critical examination, in apathy, and in despair. I have experienced spiritual abuse and its resulting trauma. I've gone through times when I did not believe in God, and times when I thought the rot within Christianity went too deep for it to be salvaged. The faith I have now is very different from the way I once understood the world. (But I have faith! I have faith! I believe in God and I care that I believe in God!)