A Lightkeeper's Log

Just finished Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America by Jeff Chu. I have a lot of thoughts about this book, and not all of them are completely coherent.

1. I felt that this book was aimed more at queers or allies trying to grapple with the church than for churched Christians trying to figure out what's up with The Gays. However, as a lesbian Christian, I might have a skewed look at that.

2. I think this book has taught me more about compassion than anything I've ever read. I really love how he travelled and talked to every one and listened to them. I know it's his job as a journalist, but it must have been difficult for a gay man to go up to Fred Phelps and hear him out. I think that he really did this, and not only heard people out, but had empathy for them and did his best to tell everyone's story as best he could. I love that he also kept his voice and his story throughout.

3. (Related to 2). I really appreciated the cry for if not unity than understanding, the cry for dialogue. I know that I, as a member of a left-coast liberal church, have often dismissed the voices of more conservative denominations. They failed to pass my litmus test (usually they think I'm going to hell for loving my girlfriend, and I think if I go to hell, it'll probably be for something else), so I don't want to deal with them. At all. I think from now own, I'll try to listen, to find the light in every soul, as I want others to see the light in mine. There's value in self-protection, but I also think that I'm privileged to not come from a spiritually abusive background. My faith is strong. I can and should reach out.

4. I really appreciated how he highlighted the doubt and discussion within more conservative denominations. We queers tend to look at say the Southern Baptist Convention or the Church of Christ and see a monolith of hate. The in-depth discussion of Harding University's response to queer students really helped me appreciate the variety of opinion, and how even seemingly unsympathetic denominations really struggle with faith.

5. I feel like the author somewhat lacked patience for queer people who just wanted to be insular. He criticises the Metropolitan Community Church and online communities who don't want dialogue. I know from his interviews else where, that he respects that some people are cautious of the church, but that didn't seem to show up as much here, maybe because the emphasis of the book was opening dialogue.

6. I didn't really feel like my story, as some one who is a non-self-loathing queer, and who never has been, and who is happy in her church and always has been was reflected. I don't know if that was an intentional gap, or if he just didn't meet anyone like that or what. Other gaps were black churches (which he mentions having difficulty accessing), Latin@ churches, and Catholics. Mostly this book was about white or mixed-race Protestantism.

7. There's not a lot of theology here. If you're looking for 100 level Queer responses to the Bible, look elsewhere. He mentions at the beginning that he wrote this book because those books already existed in plenty.

8. There is a lot of storytelling in friendly, accessible and often humorous ways. I loved how light and expressive Chu's writing was.

9. I'm sure there's a nine, and I'll be kicking myself later for leaving something out, but mostly, I REALLY LOVED THIS BOOK. I have thoughts. You should read it too and have thoughts with me.


Anyway, now I'm taking a break from everything serious and reading the Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice series, which features a thirteen-year-old Obi-Wan Kenobi tearing around the universe getting in trouble, a somewhat bemused Qui-Gon Jinn worrying after him, quite a few female OCs, and rather a lot of h/c. Whoever wrote this, had my id in mind.

Next I plan to read Emilie and the Hollow World by Martha Wells, which I just got my hot little hands on yesterday. I have also been talked into reading The Lost Prince, and should finish my gloomy theology book about how being a Good Friday People is Bad.

Finished Fullmetal Alchemist a couple of days ago. Overall, I really enjoyed the series. It hasn't moved me to throes of fannish delight, but it was a fantastic read, and I'll probably run through it again or watch Brotherhood at some point.

Got volume two of Sailor Moon from the library, but haven't looked at it yet.

Just finished The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation by Barbara R. Rossing, which I got a church book sale. If you feel frustrated with Dispensationalism and The Left Behind series' take on the Revelation of John, and want to see it taken apart brick by brick, this is the book for you. The author clearly and passionately pokes holes in more or less everything Hal Lidsey, Tim LaHaye and company have every written, with special emphasis on ethics and internal inconsistencies. On that level, I found it satisfying, if slightly laden with WRONG ON THE INTERNET (though notes say she was commissioned to pick apart LaHaye, so I guess she did what she was hired to do).

If you've vaguely heard about the Rapture and controversies surrounding the Book of Revelation, and want to know more, this is probably a decent place to start. It lays out what the Rapture is supposed to be, why people believe in it, and where the idea came from. It also takes great pains to explain why it's wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong, and not in the Bible at all. Maybe don't pick up if you don't want to talk into the middle of a pretty heated theological debate. I was already pretty familiar with most of this, but found some compelling new ideas as well.

If you're looking for the author's own interpretation of the Book of Revelation, well, it's there and it's interesting, but it's very much in the NOT THIS, but this tone. Again, that's what she was hired to do, but I went in looking for more of her take on Revelation, and found mostly what she did not agree with. I also think that she was perhaps a little Augustinian in her interpretation (if she couldn't read a text so that it advocated charity, she bent it until it did). I'm not entirely sure that's with respect to the intention of the original author, but it's an interesting take.

I would recommend this book, possibly in combination with Marcus Borg's Reading The Bible Again for the First Time for people looking for a liberal theology take on Revelation, or for people sick of Dispensationalists.

Made it about thirty minutes into the first episode of Labyrinth (The mini series based on the Kate Mosse book, not the idtastic Jennifer Connelly-David Bowie musical), then bailed due to a combination of generalised irritation and lack of caring. It managed to have both Bucky and Draco in it, which should have warned me off from the start. The fact that I pitched the book at the wall ten pages in should also have been a bad sign, probably. I was hoping the film would be less silly. Sadly not. They also managed to make the archaeology even worse. I also find a) feuding sisters, b) highly-sexualised evil women, c) basically anything to do with the holy grail but especially pertaining to d) lost books of secret revelations, extremely tiresome. I should probably just avoid Cathar-related material entirely, which is too bad, because the Cathars seemed cool.

Though seriously, what was up with the "Gnostics" Christians? They're like the Loki of early church history. There's two camps: They were wrong wrong wrongity wrong, and had very bad no good beliefs, and they probably shouldn't have been slaughtered wholesale, but still WRONG! OR (and no middle ground here), they were poor misunderstood woobies who were right and alone knew the true meaning of meaning, but the more powerful forces of greed and evil oppressed, murdered and then misrepresented them. Oh, and they weren't called gnostics, that's just a label the Holy Mother Church slapped on them while they were misrepresenting them. I've pretty much never met or read anyone who wasn't firmly in one camp or the other, and a lot of the discussion seems to descend into flame wars pretty quickly.


On that topic, I finished Growing into God: A Beginner's Guide to Christian Mysticism by John R. Mabry (who really didn't like the gnostic Christians, except the Valentinians, who he says weren't gnostic anyway), which was mostly pretty good, if not quite what I expected. I thought this would be an academic history of mysticism and an outline of the major beliefs. This was more of a self-help books for aspiring mystics.

Given that, I found it pretty useful. The prose was chatty and accessible, with a Q&A appendix for each chapter, clarifying many points I'd wondered about within the chapters. I read it straight through, but I'd recommend reading by topic: the chapter, the Q&A, then the quotes by mystics.

It's definitely a beginner's book, which is where I am on this topic, and it's orientated towards people who are or can be part of a Christian community. I found that last point a little frustrating because I was looking for something an unchurched person can do (in that there is no church in my area).

Still, I did find the book insightful, and will probably read it again.


I tried to read Pegasus by Robin McKinley, but didn't finish. It just sort of meandered about with no declarable plot, and considering I'd been spoiled that there was no proper ending and no sequel in sight, I gave up.

I'm currently reading a Marcus Borg book about reading the Bible, the memoirs of a Palestinian-Canadian war reporter, and several books on diesel engine repair (one of which likes to explain everything through mathematical equations, which I don't find deeply helpful).


I'm trying to decide if I should just go right ahead and rewatch Sinbad immediately or wait a bit. I guess there's no word on a second season? I have ordered a library book entitled When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty By Hugh Kennedy as period research. This is going to be one of those FML fandoms, I can tell. I can't believe I'm doing period research for a show that fails basic geography. (They got from Basra to Malta between one episode and the next, in a boat, in 800 CE, without apparently taking the time to sail around Africa). I just really like the characters, okay?

May rewatch Highlander a bit while I'm deciding.

These two quotes were in the same chapter of Sproul's Guide to the Bible.

Contrary to this thought, even contemporary theories of evolution affirm that there was a beginning—a time when things were not and a time when things were. Of course, these theories hold that by blind chance, all matter in the universe gathered into a single point and then exploded, leaving us with swirls of matter that would eventually condense into suns and planets and all living things.

These theorists have more faith than I do. To believe that all of this took place with no Creator, no grand designer, and no one shouting, “Runners to your mark,” takes a great deal of confidence in pure speculation. In fact, scientists’ own law of inertia makes a case against them. Even Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music knew better than this when he crooned, “Nothing comes from nothing . . . nothing ever could.”

The presupposition that “things at rest tend to stay at rest” begs the case against this sleeping nothingness suddenly and without notice coming together to create something: and not just something. Nothingness exploded, spontaneously formed light, billions of galaxies, the Grand Tetons, alligators, and eyelashes. Although they would not like to be given this distinction, these are people of great faith.

When our children were small, sometimes they would argue with my decisions, especially those decisions that affected them. Sometimes, after my unsuccessful attempts to build my case, I would simply say, “It’s going to be this way, just because it is.”

God is eternal. He has no beginning and no end.
He was not created; He was the Creator.

This is not an argument for the existence of God that I'm fond of making, but the fact of the Creation and the reality of the Creator are true just because they are. Given the alternatives to these truths—like the “Big Bang” or natural selection—my sincere hope is that you will simply come to the point of believing that God is and that He was the Creator . . . just because. For there to be a beginning, there must be something or someone who has the very power of being itself first to start the cosmic process in motion.

I love how he pretends he understands science, but mostly, as theology goes, that's really fucking shaky, dude. (Nenya: The logic is not strong with this one) And please talk to some Rabbis about the first lines of Genesis.

In happier news, check out San Diego Comic-Con Cosplay Spotlight: Gender Bent Justice League. Power Guy would be my favourite thing ever if the Flash wasn't. SMOKING.

Someone linked to this video last night, which is nerdy and kind of awesome, and admittedly is "an anachronistic daydream asking the question, 'If pop producer Timbaland had sought to build consensus around declaring independence, what might he have produced?'"

It's nerdy and awesome in a number of ways, not the least of which is the fiddle solo.

Tonight, I went to a dinner at my church, which was followed by a talk about the history of the United Church of Canada (basically starting with Luther an moving to present day). It was a pretty fast summary, to be fair, but it still made almost no mention of First Nations people (when it did, it was about how the UCC now campaigns for Aboriginal rights).

After, in private, I told my minister that I thought he'd somewhat erased First Nations and Inuit peoples. He said that it was a theological history, which it was, but it was a history of what he said was a social justice-orientated church in North America. What we are is formed and informed by the land and people that were here when our ancestors arrived. This church would not be the same without the First Nations and Inuit peoples, and that gets left out.

And, you know, the bit where he skated right by the residential school issue, without so much as a mention. I'm always in favour of owning up to that one.

And this is where it ties into the otherwise awesome video linked above: my minister referred to the church on new ground. The first line of the song is, "Halfway across the globe, and we're standing on new ground."

But this isn't new ground, is it?

New to Europeans, certainly (discounting the Vikings), but that never seems to be the implication.

It's also rambly and long, so I'm cutting: ( On Profanity )

I kept a journal while I was at the Relay.

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