Olympics past and present

Last night I watched Chariots of Fire. Eric Liddell’s story of gold medal and world record-breaking glory, synergized with the current Olympic spirit, has left me feeling particularly inspired today.  The Olympics rouse us on myriad levels: it has us rooting for our country, our commonalities; we are reminded that the beautiful axiom of “practice makes perfect” really does pay off; the strength of the human mind and spirit lays witness to achieving the impossible (thank you Michael Phelps); and it’s satiates our affinity for competition, for winning.  I find myself thinking to my own athletic endeavors.  I don’t know that I can honestly say I feel God’s pleasure when I run but I do feel something akin to the spiritual when I’m running fast, pushing myself beyond my normal regime, beating my own personal bests.  It’s a reminder that when our reach does extend our grasps, it ups the ante on our grasps.  As we continue to reach for and achieve our own “impossibles,” we’re toppled by more possibilities.  It then becomes a dance of humility, as we give ourselves away to the possibility of our lives or potential—to our God-initiated selves.  And I think when we can see one area of our life began to truly take shape it gives us courage to trust this process in another area of our life.  And this, in my mind, IS the spirit of the Olympics: realizing and risking dream after dream, into reality after reality.  

Currently listening to: All These Things That I Have Done, The Killers.  

Current mood: inspired  ;)                                                              

Current community: Watercooler Wednesday!              

The Sacred Blur, an exerpt

I am finding myself drawn more and more to poetry in recent months. A favorite poet of mine is William Stafford.  A friend left this verse on my Facebook wall earlier today. (Facebook and Stafford—a postmodern paradox that would make Bono proud, I’m sure.) 

Charles Simic in an essay about Stafford said: "At the end of his great poems we are always alone, their fateful acts and consequences now our own to consider."

Alone but for the poem. There is a sense of respect and confidence in his leaving us to our own devices, to ponder questions we are somehow freer to ask ourselves. Give, exit: this is the respectful way Stafford engages his reader. When we are passive, or flaccid, we miss it; Like most Sacred encounters.

An Archival Print

God snaps your picture -don't look away-

this room right now, your face tilted

exactly as it is before you can think

or control it.  Go ahead, let it betray

all the secret emergencies and still hold

that partial disguise you call your character

Even your lip, they say, the way it curves

or doesn't, or can't decide, will deliver

bales of evidence.  The camera, wide open,

stands ready; the exposure is thirty-five years

or so --after that you have become

whatever the veneer is, all the way through.

Now you want to explain.  Your mother 

was a certain --how to express it?--influence.

Yes.  And your father, whatever he was,

you couldn't change that.  No. And your town

of course had its limits.  Go on, keep talking --

Hold it.  Don't move.  That's you forever.

-William Stafford

For more deep, light and creative jags click here. It's Watercooler Wednesday!

August 2 - my first whassup to the world

Today is my birthday.  It’s been a lovely day, one of those days that come in equal parts of fun, active, lazy and familiar.  And it really hasn’t even begun yet.  I’m in a few stand still moments to myself—my best friend just left and I have two solid hours of quiet to hang with the dogs (Churchill, my friend's black lab, is staying with us; yes, I have quite the motley canine crew right now—Churchill and Mother Teresa) before the festivities get underway.  I started the day at 7:30 am going on a fifty-mile bike ride with friends through the muggy, picturesque countryside of Nashville and Franklin, TN.  It was enjoyable, as biking on sunny days in sleepy neighborhoods usually is.  My ever-thoughtful friend John was committed to get me to draft properly.  I kind-of did for a long stretch of rode.  We both celebrated.  (It’s nice to have somebody celebrate your accomplishment with you, as if it’s his or her own, don’t you think?) I came home to my BFF hanging with the dogs, ready and always willing to do whatever.  We putzed around for a bit. My phone has been buzzing throughout the day with text messages, phone calls and Facebook shout-outs, chirping birthday tunes and wishes.  I feel happy and blessed by all the thoughtful, gorgeous souls that make up my life.  Tonight friends are throwing a soiree, complete with scrumptious food and spirits, games and dancing –some of my favorite things. I’ve been instructed to nap, as I’m often a pumpkin when the clock strikes 10.  So that’s my agreement: I promised to nap so I can stay up late.  Not bad, eh?  Did I mention that my A-team are total rock stars?

I love birthdays.  I love remembering other people’s day of reckoning, the day they unwittingly announced themselves to the world. It’s like a big “I’m glad you are here!!” fest and, because life has its share of challenges, I think we ALL need to be celebrated now and again.  I hope your birthday is meaningful this year, a cause for you to celebrate the many lovely things in your life, including yourself.  And if it doesn’t feel like there are many lovely things in your life, the lovely thing must be you.   And I’m glad you’re here!! Okay, I’m turning on the blog-sap.  Cut me some slack –it’s my BIRHTDAY!!

I’ve got to hop in the shower.  The sweat and bike grease glued to my body—not so lovely.

Happy day!  

Bizarro-dream vacations

Today a client told me about a TV program on FX entitled “30 Days.”  Do you know about it?  Morgan Spurlock, brainchild behind the 2004 documentary Supersize Me, is the conceptual mastermind behind this reality TV show.  It’s not a far stretch from his 30-day fast from food not McDonalds. (Gross.) Basically, it takes people in two different stratospheres of life and settles them in together, for a month.  Examples: An ardent hunter went to work with the president of PETA, for a month.  A pro-gun guy goes to hang in a pacifist Amish community.  Morgan himself went and lived on an Indian reservation for 30 days, to chill Native American style for a month. 

As my client and I were talking about her experience of sadness this past week, she said that strangely, she felt a bit sad watching this TV show.  She saw an episode of Morgan living with the Native Americans, in scraps of leftover land, with little purpose and too much beer.  My purpose here is not to write a diatribe about Native American culture.  Rather, I love the concept of this TV show and the ways it evoked some soul-level response from my client.  It made me think about what culture I would put myself in, in an effort to expand my own prejudice, or lack of understanding.   What would mature me? Swell my own sense of empathy? Be hard and funny, soul-stirring, maybe life changing and of course, prime-time fodder to swap at dinner parties?  I’m thinking that working on the PTL Network would be a good stretch for me.  Or living in a retirement center.  Maybe wearing a fat suit for a month would better help me understand weight issues; or living on a polygamist commune and wearing those God-awful gunny sacks for dresses.   I am attracted to anything that is hard but has the ability to enlarge my capacity to empathize and “get it,” from a perspective other than my own.  Or maybe I just think I’m attracted to such challenges.  I’ve never actually had to live too far outside of my own comfort zone.  Not for a month anyway.  I know that even thinking about eating McDonalds for 30 days makes me and my arteries want to spew.  What would your 30 days be? Has anybody seen the show?  It’s on FX Network at 10:00 PM EST, Tuesdays.  I guess we can call this bizarro-dreaming: what would you NOT dream up doing for a month?  And then, would you do it? (And if you say swimming with dolphins or hiking the grand canyon, I call bullshit.)

This is part of Watercooler Wednesday.  Check it out!

The journal entry

“By indirections we find directions out”

                 -Hamlet, II. i

Two questions that were once presented to me and now I often present to my clients are these: Who are you? What do you care about?—Thoughtful questions to touch base with throughout our lives.  Today I’m revisiting these questions for myself.  I’ve been battling a blank muse for hours—okay days—now.  So I’m back to the drawing board: Who am I? What do I care about? Ugh. 

Why does a little Monday afternoon soul searching have me craving milk duds, Coldplay and a crawl space?

And why are these basic self-analysis 101 questions so daunting and intimidating? What are we afraid will come out? Or are we afraid of the things that might remain concealed? Perhaps a point-blank look on our truest selves calls us to something raw, something real and gritty, and something true.  We get squirrelly with truth.  Truth is transforming and transformation takes courage.  We are often a timid people who feign courage; most people are quite convinced by our pretenses.  We hide how bad we are; we hide how good we are.  Then we spend a bulk of our lives hoodwinked by our facades. Bless our poor little phony hearts. Blech.

This is what I often believe about myself: I am too much.  Too much mood, too much emotion, too much desire, too many words and ideas, too many existential fears and complaints, too much, too much!  Do all women feel burdened by an interior world that has outgrown its visceral walls?  Do we seep out of ourselves, trying to plug the leaks; afraid that what’s evolving inside is too messy, too unpredictable to be seen by reputable bachelors, or conventional husbands and friends?  I wonder if our best selves are often stuck in a self-contemptuous purgatory; we know too much to fall back, we’re too afraid to move forward.  We hate what we know because it only illuminates our longings for something real.  The more we know and feel, the more at odds we are with ourselves—we stop fitting in.  We’re in vertigo with Alice, dropping down the rabbit’s hole full of wonder, mystery and fret.  

Freedom and Anxiety -the two heavy's, always duking it out.

I am currently reading a little devotional by Henri Nowen entitled, The Inner Voice of Love.  In one vignette he writes, “Be patient.  When you feel lonely, stay with your loneliness.  Avoid the temptation to let your fearful self run off.”  What about when, at baseline, our fearful selves overbear the calm, collected and emotionally savvy self?  This is what scares me.  Fear is a hungry shark in a home aquarium.  I am a minnow.

I believe this is the ogre we (I) must wrestle with.  We must look deep into our little David selves and confront our Goliaths.  We must stop getting busy and indignant when life doesn’t submit to our requests.  Rather, we must pause, evaluate and find meaning in our little shard of world.  We must allow truth to penetrate us, to make us courageous, to set us free.

I’m realizing in my own life that the goal isn’t to pine for what’s ahead but rather to find meaning and life in what is.  Can I live in the parameters of my own gifts and insecurities: bowing up to my anxieties, taking refuge in laughter and smack talk with friends, steady on in the small ways I can affect change and be changed?  

Who am I? What do I care about? —These are the questions that continually define and refine who I am.  These are the questions I’ve given my life to.  I think, at various points in our lives, we all should.  

Odd Pride

I was perusing a few blogs yesterday during some illegitimate down time (I was really procrastinating on a writing assignment) and saw one entitled “odd pride” where this girl talks about things that have given her an “odd” sense of pride in herself over the years.  I loved this thought.  It got me to thinking about the atypical things I do or intuit that give me that cozy sense of well-being.  Of course we all, or we all should, have the obvious successes in our lives, but what about our oddities? Our peculiar ways that, given a dose of reflection, make us think, “Damn glad I’m me.”  I’ve listed a few of mine.  Indulge me friends –what are yours? 

I can remember the detailed plot of someone else’s life, often times better than I can remember what I did yesterday.  ie: I will remember your boyfriend from 8^th grade, his name, and the restaurant you told me he took you to before the Sweetheart Ball.  I might remember the particulars of your life better than you do, and I mean the nit and gritty– like what you were wearing when you saw Grease 2  in the theatre and  if you ordered a Diet Coke or just Coke. (But if you asked me what movie I saw last weekend, you’d have to help me break it down.)

I can really pack a car.  If you think all the suitcases can’t fit in the trunk, with the bike rack and the bulky bags of recycling, I, my friends, can make it happen. 

Sometimes I’m a little clairvoyant.  If the phone rings, and I see who the caller is before I answer, I have this weird intuition about why they’re calling.  And I’m often right.

I make really good oatmeal.  It’s not hard, but I have a knack and secretly, I like the way I make steel cut oatmeal better than any I’ve tasted, even my MOM’s!

I’m almost always nice to airline people, even when I’m cranky or THEY are cranky.  Even when I have to be body searched for razor blades at 6:20 am and my flight leaves at 6:30 am.  And I can make the impossible madcap dash from one end of the airport to the other, stringing along my carry-on’s, with the determination of an Olympic hopeful, to catch a connecting flight. 

I know how to mix mortar and use a wet saw to cut granite tiles.

And lastly, the number one thing that I have an odd sense of pride about is this: I pretty much know all the Enneagram numbers and their meanings by heart.

Just happy to be nominated

The great thing about being a therapist:

Sometimes, when you are hung-over from a sleepless night, feeling a little vulnerable and guilty that your clients may suffer your inevitable fatigue, they surprise you.  They string words together about their own lives—so rich in insight, wisdom and judgment—you are left wondering how it is that you’re the one getting paid in the transaction.  And surprisingly, you don’t feel tired, even though you are.  Rather, you feel honored that they picked you to be on their team.  And you revel in the reality that you actually get paid to go into the recesses of humanity: excavating messes, aiding in tears, exposing vices, naming weighty patterns, giving new words to tired desires, preying on truth, forgiving the bad, plucking out the good and laughing at what’s funny.

And you have days when, one by one, people enter your office, share [with you] their beautiful and profound “ahha” moments, marvel [with you] in the many paradoxes, and laugh [with you] about their own playing field and the universal playing field (and plight) that connects us all. 

On those particular days you have your own private moments in-between clients or at the end of your work day, when you feel like you could actually burst open with all the gratitude you've gathered in the course of a day.  And you feel thankful for a job, and really a God, that carries you along, even on days that come after sleepless nights.  You feel happy and sleepy and you impulsively want to hug a tree or listen to a praise song or something, even though you're not really the type that's inclined to do either. 

You settle in on a nap.  And a smile. And a sleepy thank you for this day prayer, where your mind wonders around, but knows God is present all the same.

Celebrity wedding musings

I went to a second wedding the other night.  Both bride and groom have been married 10 plus years to other people, as evidenced by the seven children they brought to their union (bride –three, groom –four).  The experience was a first for me.  Being a star-studded wedding –the nuptials of country singer Sara Evans and former Alabama quarterback Jay Barker—it was my first “celebrity wedding.”  But even more curious was the fact that, if my memory serves (which it often doesn’t), I think this might be the first wedding that I’ve been to where both parties have been divorced.  There were many beautiful elements to this experience, namely: the venue (a farm on a lake close to Leiper’s Fork), the mint juleps that were served as we stepped off the shuttle (we were shuttled from Cool Springs, TN), all the sassy black dressed ladies and sharp suited men (invites requested all black), the elegant décor and ambience of the open air barn, doubling as a cocktail hour suite; I could go on.  The night was both eye-catching and fabulous.

That said, what has lingered in my minds-eye is the actual ceremony. The groom was courted to the front of the outdoor alter by his three gorgeous children, no groomsmen.  Sara, a stunning bride, was walked down the aisle by her son, and greeted by the groom, her other children, and his children, her loves—old and new.  It was a family affair; the vows and ceremony took on an air of reality, in turn making everything that followed thoughtfully devoted, honest and real.  I have never been married so I can’t say, from a visceral perspective, that I understand what it must be like to promise life and death and then live an in-between that ultimately serves divorce papers. Nor do I know the weight “I do” takes on a second go ‘round. I can connect in small ways: I have the soul-window of my therapy office to inform me how long-suffering a hard marriage can be; I have my own experience of men and dating, narrating my desires and reservations about giving myself forever away to someone; and I have divorced friends, with whom I’ve walked intimately, trekking their own harrowing paths of failed marriages and second-chance, grace-driven dreams.  Jay and Sara’s ceremony was not embellished with early life idealism and hallmark moments.  I was struck by the humility portrayed in the hand-written vows: I will do my best to love and respect you; I will love your children as they are my own; I will listen and do my best to understand your dreams; share; be faithful; pray; be thankful.  Everyone, including myself, was holding back tears—an intuitive response to the truth, vulnerability and mindfulness to how hard life can be, yet we still love, we still hope, we still believe, we still laugh; a soft spiritual sobriety echoed through the picturesque backdrop of twilight on a tranquil lake and gently sloping farmland, God’s merciful embrace.  More than a sentimental moment it felt awe bearing, perhaps even sacred.  It was as if the couple, with fear, trepidation, wonder and mercy, was bartering with the gods: We know how hard this is.  We won’t take it for granted. Thank you for a second chance.  Thank you!

There is something beautiful about getting married young.  With a life ahead of you and a partner with whom to share and experience, there is a vitality, vigor and youthfulness that infest the wedding experience.  The promises are made with hyperbolic excitement, a sense of: this will be perfect and amazing! Most young couples with whom I’ve worked or lived life clutch to a strident optimism that they will beat the odds.  And it’s good.  I’m sure I would have been the same way.  I was the same way. At a time, early in my life and closer to a marriage possibility, I was that bright-eyed, romantic girl, believing I—or we, rather—had the edge on all aspects of communication and connection: verbal, spiritual, mental, physical. 

At any given age, you only know what you know. 

That said, there is something equally as beautiful, and perhaps, as we get older, even sweeter, about second chances.  Seeing a couple give it a go again—you know they’ve had their share of suffering, which we know builds character, temperance and perseverance.  The vows take on a different dimension, a melody of sobriety, hope, humility and gratitude.  We (wedding party and guests) have the opportunity to understand something of God’s true character.  God really IS the God of second chances, and third and fourth.  God doesn’t run out of grace, hope or patience with us.  God really is good.  And we experience God’s goodness through our humanness, not our super-humanness.  He or She comes around and makes things good again, even after we eff things up.  He forgives and heals.  She loves with mercy, without shame. The Blood and Body make us whole.  The Spirit sets forth a path where we can find our rhythm. Dance. Play. Move forward. And relax.

A celebrity wedding has its obvious perks.  The music was outstanding.  Marcus Hummon, who penned the Rascal Flatts song God Bless the Broken Road, played a baby grand piano and sang his very apropos song.  The reception was a blast.  Celebrity or not, I love, love, love a good dance party and a rocking DJ.  Sheryl Crow was on the dance floor, dancing with me, and the gaggle of hip-hoppers, with whom I aligned myself. Trumping our polite small talk bonding, “I know so-and-so, do you know…bla bla” was when Peace Up, A-town blasted through the airwaves and Usher’s song Yeah started in. Auhhh yeahhh was my m.o. We were all, stars and lay-persons (aka me) alike, on the barn-made dance floor shaking our 30 and 40-something year old booties. The music was the perfect blend of classic rock, 80’s hits and current hip-hop.   I danced, with and without my date, until our respected shuttle picked us up, and I was reminded of the truism that Prince pointed out in his classic hit, 1999: Life is just a party but parties weren't meant to last.  We were given a down-home cherry pie as a party prize, and then, shuttled back to the Hampton Inn, we got in our car and turned on the radio.  Party over.

I went home that night, splayed out on the grass with my dog and sussed out the constellations while chatting up the night on the phone with a friend.  I came in and read this quote before I went to bed:

At the heart of any real intimacy is certain vulnerability. It is hard to trust someone with your vulnerability unless you can see in them a matching vulnerability and know that you will not be judged.  In some basic way it is our imperfections and even our pain that draws others close to us. -Rachel Maomi Remen, M.D.

Then I washed my face, brushed my teeth, put on my pajamas, fell soundly asleep and missed my bike/run race the following morning.  It's hard feigning the life of a rock star and a quasi-athlete; late night fun and early morning exercise calls don't really go hand in hand.  Unfortunately.  But that, my friends, is another blog.  

This is a part of Watercooler Wednesday.  Check out other creative musings!

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a 

sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.

Amsterdam

About a decade ago, age 25, I found myself tooling around Amsterdam in the freezing cold December winds, with two male friends.  We had just spent six months working in England at L'abri, a Christian artist retreat center. We went to Holland for a last little hoorah before heading back to the states. On this specific night in Amsterdam we were lost, I was cold, and being cold and lost is the perfect brew of crank for me.  Oh yeah, and somebody spilled a beer on me earlier in the night as well.  Cold, lost, crank and wet. Good times. I think I was complaining about something or other when Sam, my friend, stopped in the middle of our aimless amble in the red light district, weary of my whining, took my hand and said, “Ang, Be. Here. Now.”  

“I don’t want to; that’s the problem,” was my curt response. 

He smiled, comfortable in my honestly, and gave me a well you are so deal with it look. I knew he was right. And, of course I didn’t WANT to; I’m justified, right?  I mean who wants to be in the skeezy red light district in the middle of winter, with soul-searing shamelessness (which dials in as sadness for me) all around: pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, peep shows, a sex museum, a torture museum--not really the leisurely bike rides through tulip fields stretching out to Anne Franks little attic hideaway that I’d envisioned, when signing up for an Amsterdam trip with the guys.  I wanted to be anywhere BUT that moment.  Strangely though, Sam settled me.  I remember doing a quick self-assessment: I was pissed at no particular somebody, just the dangling carrot of my tulip expectations.  I remember challenging myself to stop complaining. My mental check-in went something like this: I’m cold.  Okay.  My pants are wet with a beer stench.  Okay.  I’m with two young guys hopped up on all the red light decadence and perversion. Okay.  What else? It was as if there was some clever mastermind behind my protests, not even willing to settle on a check mate.  It was all true and still God gave me the big so what back.  Not a so what, I don't care but rather a so what about this can we not handle? Or perhaps a so remind me again about your entitlements? 

Slowly Sam’s words morphed into a lovely nugget of wisdom that I’ve since remembered.  He wasn’t suggesting that I pay for a peep show and get stoned by virtue of “when in Amsterdam” rhetoric, consequently being someone that I’m usually not.  But rather, he challenged me to just relax and let go of that which was out of my control.  We were there.  And there were no plans to leave anytime soon, it was early in the night. (A little sidenote – there was a small rat in our hotel room, so I was freaked to go back to the hotel alone.  Yeah, it was a great trip!) So there was some tough self-love and a big dose of let go let God that needed to happen.  I did need to deal with it, reckon with the reality of my situation, as Sam, in his unassuming insight, pointed out. Ultimate freedom would’ve been to gracefully accept it.  I can’t remember if I got all the way to acceptance.  But I did chill out and let the guys have their mostly innocent fun without being the judging naysayer or their self-appointed conscience.  They were smart young men, not responsible to me.  Or for me.  They were really good friends and I knew they wouldn’t let anything happen to me. (They didn’t want to go back to the room and deal with the rat either.)  

In the end I sauntered around the red light district, letting go of my own dis-ease the best I could, realizing that most of the people around me were much more lost than I.  It turned into a sociology experiment that I actually, on some weird level, enjoyed.  Or at least found interesting.

This is true freedom: when you (and when I say you, I mean me) have the ability to regulate your own anxiety, self-soothe (versus expecting everybody else to make you feel better) and realize that being in the moment, even if the moment totally blows, is not the worst thing. Worse is resisting the moment and slapping a pissy, self-entitled mood on a less-than-ideal situation.  That just adds insult to injury. 

This is the long version of my last entry, perhaps the difference between ego and soul.

Stop by Watercooler Wednesday to check out other creative blogs!

Oh, hi.

It’s way too late for me to be blogging right now.  I have a heap of things to do tonight as I’m getting ready for a trip to Los Angeles tomorrow after eight one-hour therapy sessions.  Much of my load has been computer related (tardy responses to emails, overdue invoices – I have the most gracious, patient client load!) so I’m sitting here with my Mac and for the past five days I have been indulging in a New York Times article, a 10-page exposé about one girls rise and fall in the blogosphere.  Tonight I’m reading the onslaught of comments that have been posted in its wake. There is a lot to take in, primarily this prevailing zeitgeist in which we are living, where personal significance is often only encountered through public acknowledgement. Of course this is a false notion but have we bought into it, unwittingly? When I look to see that my blog readership is growing I feel some sense of satisfaction.  In part this is due to my own craft of writing and feeling the creative marriage of cause and effect.  But it does beg the question: Do I feel more relevant, more important, because I’m being noticed or read, essentially believing my own press? Do I buy into the sound-bites that people, who don’t really know me, feed me on Facebook, Myspace, my blog,etc. It’s an easy place to live, this cyber Disneyland of quippy one-liners and one-upping. And it’s fun.  And it’s a whatever dude sort of thing, except when it’s not.  When we start taking it too seriously is when it gets creepy. 

I recently had a colleague that reads my blog tell me, “I like everything about it but I don’t totally buy it.  Life is not that grandiose, fun, sexy and happy.  There’s little ordinary on there.”  He told me that he felt seduced as he moved into my personal public space. But he knows me well, too. He takes my press, affectionately, with a grain of salt. It gives me pause: Do I give off the perception that I have fashioned an existence with no real down-time? That life is all merrymaking: exercise and dress up parties, hilarity, curiosities and contemplation? And in turn, do I enable others to feel their own inadequacy by virtue of my bravado?  

By no means am I'm trying to promote blog guilt. I haven't turned into an anti-blogger, as is evidenced by the medium where these ideas are posed.  Even more, I like to blog.  And I like to read blogs. And I like my little blog community. But I am also a therapist.  I'm a sucker for deeper meanings. And it's always good to keep in check with the ways culture sneaks up on us, manifesting in our DNA, and flattering us with all the virtual that's unfortunately NOT reality.

My opinions are not sharp-edged or finely honed for that matter.  It’s just interesting to think about.  And I will.  When it’s not midnight and I’m not looking down the tunnel at a full day of therapy, a flight across the country and a late-night toddy on the beach with my bff and my cousin.  So, when the mood strikes up again, more on this. Sorry for the abrupt ending.  I’m just tired. That’s real life. Not sexy.

Go here if you are interested in the NYTimes story.  And if you get through it and have thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Just realized it's Watercooler Wednesday. (Consider this post a creative rant.) Go check out what everybody else is thinking about!!

Penthouse gets pious

Penthouse and Christian on-line dating have become bed partners.  How was this missed on me? Penthouse Inc. is apparently the proud and promiscuous parent of BigChurch.com, a Christian dating site that “brings people together in love and faith.”  I guess if that doesn’t work they can skip over to their Big Daddy’s other websites, LikeMyNudePhoto.com and AdultFriendFinder.com for something well, maybe a little more...immediate. Penthouse has the franchise on it all: Mr. Right and Mr. Right now.  

On the flip side, when the porn and licentious sex loose their luster maybe the definitive Damascus road moment will bring the Adult Friend Finder to the other side: BigChurch.com.  Isn’t it GK Chesterton that said; Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is really just looking for God. God does work in mysterious ways. 

So I went to BigChurch.com, sleuthing it out to satiate my own weird curiosity: What does a Christian dating site that is owned by the porn industry look like?  Sadly, like what you'd expect of one not owed by the porn industry.  There were no glitz or glamour or subliminal “We love God and we love kinky sex” messages that I was shamelessly hoping to unveil. Actually, after perusing the dating hopefuls on this site, I sort of wanted to write a “profile handbook” for the gents, outlining a few simple do not’s for the opening line.

For example, don't say:

"Christian man seeking serious relationship!!!!!!!!!!”  Too many exclamation points my friend.  It looks like you just clicked over from Adultfriendfinders.com.  Slow down cowboy; it’s all good.

“A true deciple”  Spelling is not everything, but it’s something, especially when there’s this little thing called spell check just a click away.

“Just looking tired of finding no christ like women”  This one speaks for itself.

“Jesus Freak looking for a friend”  Sorry buddy, that little quip is sooo like 1992.  I mean, who says Jesus Freak anymore?

And my favorite:  “Where’s my future!!!????”  Uhhh…  Not sure any sweet female Christian marriage hopeful is going to take THAT on.  (Refer to comments on exclamation-crazed guy.)

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This post is part of Watercooler Wednesday (if it doesn't get banned).  Check out other creative posts!