Thank God it's Monday!!

When I was in Mary Kay (a lifetime ago) I loved Mondays because we had our weekly sales meetings which were so positive. Now I love Mondays because my friend Lily and I go out (or stay in) for dinner and talk and pray. I had a weekend and a day of heartache and rejection, from my friend's broken heart on Friday to direct hits on "I don't think the OD is preaching the gospel" from a friend who used to go to the OD and from a friend who is Catholic and wants to know why I "left the Church." Oh my. I know I need to learn to be more diplomatic...I think I assaulted the first friend and will have to build a bridge. Why is it easier to disagree about God with my non-Christian friends?? I am the happiest at the OD than I have been at any church--I don't have a lot of friends but BJ and John support me and I'm meeting new people, people that I think are staying for the long run. It's a sifting out, I guess. There's a children's book called The Big Orange Splot by Daniel M. Pinkwater. (He also wrote the Hoboken Chicken Emergency.) It's the story of a man who lived on a nice street where all the houses looked the same and they all liked it that way. But one day a bird drops a can of orange paint on Mr. Plumbean's roof. His neighbors can't wait for him to clean it up, but he sits with it for awhile and then goes to the nearest Home Depot store. He gets palm trees and a hammock and he paints the outside of his house so it looks like a desert oasis. One by one, his neighbors visit him with the intention of bringing him to sanity, so their street can be a nice (read uniform) street once more. But they sit outside in the hammock and drink lemonade and Mr. Plumbean says to them, My house is me and I am it. My house looks like all my dreams. And one by one, each neighbor builds their house to suit their dreams: a museum, a cruise ship...and people come by and say, this is not a nice street. And the people who live there say, "This is our street and we are it. Our street looks like all our dreams." (Now you'll have to go to the book for the direct quote, it's a lot more poetic than that, but you get the gist.) Here is Jessamyn West's synopsis: The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater
"My house is me and I am it. My house is where I want to be and it looks like all my dreams" So sayeth the main character in this book for children, who paints his house all sorts of nutty colors [and adds a clock tower] after a bird drops a can of orange paint on his roof. Neighbors complain that the street is no longer a "neat street" but after having late night lemonade over at Mr. Plumbean's house -- while trying to convince him to straighten up and fly right -- they all decide to let their freak flags fly in their own special ways. [+]"

And so it is with the OD. Finally, I belong to a church that reflects my personality in its eclectic traditions and its committment to the visual arts, a church where I have seen lives changed for Christ. It is a church, finally, that I would love my non-church-going friends to come to, because for me, it is the coolest place to be. I'm not always good at defending my views--I am a people pleaser and I want people to like me, so I often cave to their opinions and feel bad when I don't agree with their ideas. But I think what I'm learning right now is that I have an opinion that counts and I have friends that support that in me, even if they are not near me geographically or attending my church. My sphere of influence is opening. It's very exciting, actually.

My dad liked that I had this poem on my blog, and it's a good one, so I'll repeat it, because it bears repeating, and speaks to what the past couple of days have been like:

"He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the will to win
We drew a circle that took him in!"

--Edwin Markham