Gay Prom

My sister, who is not gay, and her female friend, who also is not gay, wanted to go to our city's free gay prom to show their support of our city's gay youth.

They have some homosexual friends, some of whom will be going.

Angela has a real heart for gay rights, and has chosen to do many of her summative school projects on the topic.

She is not the sort of person who is into "experimenting" and is one of the most obsessively sexually pure people that I know, even though she's not a Christian. Thus, I do not think that sort of environment would tempt her to run off and have sexual relationship with another girl.

I think its great that she wanted to go. I think it shows what a beautiful heart she has. I also think that if Jesus walked the earth today, its the sort of place He would hang out at.

It didn't even occur to me that this would be a controversial thing in our family until I came up the stairs to my Mom telling Ange she couldn't go. I stood up for Ange, saying its where Jesus would hang out, and my Mom said, "yeah, to preach to them!" I said, "No, Jesus ate with sinners. He was their friend." The conversation ended.

Apparently my Mom and Ange talked later though, and my Mom said she couldn't go because she didn't want Angela to support homosexual sex.

Personally, I feel, using that logic, the same can be said about going to a regular high school prom, only you're supporting premarital sex, which we're supposed to see as just as sinful.

To be fair, I should include that my Mom did suggest that alternatively, she should invite her homosexual friends out for lunch instead. Since they're already friends though, I would imagine that sort of thing happens all the time anyway.

To me, this situation seems pretty cut and dry. I think she should go. But I get that not everyone would see it that way.

So, what do you think?

A Sense of Belonging

Lately, as I have begun a new job that I feel pretty inadequate at, and as I get ready to start at my fourth new school in four years, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the importance of the feeling of belonging.

In early high school I went on two Brio missions trips. Brio, for those who might not know, is (well, was...) a Christian girl's magazine put out by Focus on the Family.

The term Brio Magazine used to describe its subscribers was "Brio Sisses". They would use that term over and over again and I loved it. It made me feel so connected to something bigger than myself, something where I had a lot in common with the other people in the same network. I think a part of the draw for me to go on these missions trips was the appeal of actually joining up with other "Brio Sisses" so I could soak up how wonderful it was to be surrounded by people who understood where I was coming from.

Words cannot describe how great it was to talk to these other girls from all over Canada, the US and various other parts of the world and have conversations like,
"What's your favourite band?"
"Superchic[k]!"
"Me too!"

I think... I did a good job of being the ultimate Christian subculture poster child.

But now, just like a whole slew of others, I've awoken up from it all and realized that that world is not the point of why Jesus came. And that its a "world" with all its own drawbacks and evils, just like the one it tends to shun.

I think, though, that in desperately wanting to be a part of that world, I was simply desperately searching for community. And I'll probably always be doing that in some form.

Now I am somewhat in between catagories, I think. I like to think I'm a Christian hippie in the making, or something like that. I don't feel cool and artsy enough to be a real hippie, but I'm not conservative enough or as in touch with what's going on in Christian Subculture Land to be a part of that world either.

But does anybody really fit in to a rigid catagory? Should anybody fit into a rigid catagory?

What roll does conformity play in authentic community, if it plays a part at all? And does authentic community even have anything to do with labels like "Brio Sis" or "hippie"? Or is it about doing one's best to have all the different labels of people feeling accepted and loved under the same roof? Or something else entirely?

Yay life!

Lately I have been getting a lot of spam in my inbox, and today was no exception. One of the e-mails was from Sarah E. So-And-So and all I read on the subject line was "Congratulations!" I thought I had "won" some "contest." But then I opened it... and VOILA!
Dear Gloria,

Congratulations! I am pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to the Arts, 4-Year Liberal Studies program in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo for the Fall 2009 term.

And I've been bouncing around ever since I opened this! :D

By the way, for those of you who don't know, I want to double major in Peace and Conflict Studies and Religious Studies. :)

Ugh.

Sometimes, the best way one can express emotion is through a grunt. That's what I think.

Right now I am standing in a gust of whirling thoughts and I'm not sure which one to grab onto and focus on.

(After much contemplation and editing...)

Today I saw my middle school crush. He was driving. I was biking. We were at an intersection. I'm pretty sure he saw me too because he looked over at me when he drove by. The experience made me smile because it made me happy seeing that I have concrete examples in my life of being able to put certain obsessions totally behind me.

I liked him for 3 years. Half that time we didn't even go to the same school anymore. For a twelve year old, that's dedication.

My crush was an awkward, Christian nerd back then. He grew up to be a gorgeous body builder though, and he writes things on his friends walls like, "Yo dawg! Let's go to the cluuuuuuuuuuub 2night! The laaaaaaaadies love me!" Personally, I liked him better when he was awkward.

The Roast Beef Miracle!

So I was weighing and packaging roast beef on wax paper, like I might do any other day at work... when I looked down and WHAM! There, starring right back at me, was a rabbit! My co-workers agreed. My boss took a picture which is going on the Facebook group for our store. It was quite exciting. If only it had been the face of the Virgin Mary... Oh well. :)

My Grand Adventure

I did it! This is how it went:

This was our shbeal: "Hi, I'm Gloria" "And I'm Michelle" "We're doing random acts of kindness today and we wondered if there was anything we could do for you! Housework, weeding...?"

We alternated taking turns speaking. It was my friend's idea to stick in the "random acts of kindness" part because that's a little more acceptable to people then "we're trying to show love to you".

At first we received a slew of rejections. Weirdly enough, a lot of people were like, "Actually, I JUST finished ALL my housecleaning now." Really? Sunday is cleaning day? Who knew!

A few people were nice but politely told us they couldn't think of anything for us to do. I suppose I understand. I don't know how I would react if someone had come to my apartment door asking me if she could do some housework for me.

One lady looked at us horrified, abruptly said, "No!" and closed the door on us. Then about 5 seconds later she opened the door again and told her little girl who was playing with the other kids to come inside. She came at the end of about 15 rejections, so even though I wasn't expecting people in general to be anything but weirded out, I was still a bit disheartened.

We went to a few more doors and were rejected a few more times.

Then we saw one Chinese lady out on her front lawn holding her baby. My friend said, "Let's go to her!" So we did. She couldn't think of anything, just like everyone else, but she asked if we were students, what we were doing this summer, where we lived, why we were doing this, etc. She then said, "Well, I can't think of anything today but I have been looking for a tutor to teach me English." Eager for SOMETHING, I said, "Okay!" She invited us in. So we came in and she chopped us up some watermelon and we talked with her for the next half hour or so! It turns out she has a phD and she's a professor at the university teaching some sort of business course. She doesn't know much about Canadian culture and especially wants to know about the culture of Canadian students! So, we arranged that every Sunday I would come for an hour and teach her about Canadian culture among young people!

AND She figured out I was a Christian from what I'm studying next year and asked what church I go to. It turns out, she's not a Christian, (she explained that most Chinese are atheists) but she's looking for a local church to visit! She said she wanted me to teach her about Christianity and that she was "open to it!" Whoah. I was NOT seeking to do that but that's SO cool!

So that was ABSOLUTELY LOVELY!

Eventually, we headed out and knocked on more doors. We had a lot more trouble with people actually answering their doors this time and we wondered if word of us got around and people just didn't want to deal with these two weirdos. Then we figured out that maybe we were starting to enter an area of the neighbourhood most occupied by absentee students, because a lot of the mailboxes were jam packed with mail.

Then we knocked on our final door. A girl about my age answered, we did our shbeal, and she couldn't think of anything at first. My friend suggested weeding. She nonchalantly was like, "Sure." We got a plastic bag from her and ecstatically started weeding - FINALLY! A job to do! The residents of the house didn't interact with us at all. At one point though, we filled the bag so I knocked on the door for another one. Some other guy answered the door and I was like, "Hi, we filled up our first bag, can we have another one?" He was like, "uhh... why are you weeding our lawn?" I explained that we were doing a random act of kindness. Apparently the first girl didn't tell anyone about us. Confused, he got us another bag and said, "uhh... thanks for doing that, eh?" That made me feel good. When he left the house a few minutes later he didn't even look at us though. I guess they didn't know what to do with these two randomers who wanted to do their weeding for them! Oh well.

So all in all it was quite an adventure. I would say that despite the many, many rejections, it was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon and I would totally do it again.

Yay for experiments!