The Innocent and The Shy

Do you remember when I wrote about the small Voice of God? Well, I met up with the little girl who triggered that small gift of grace on the bus the other day.

She told me that she was singing a bus song. You know, that is what we need more of. Songs for every occasion. Bus songs. Work songs. I love you so much it hurts songs...

Oh wait, perhaps we have too many of those last type already ;)

Anyway, this little girl is just a little bit of a thing and she and her mother are pretty shy. Without the girl, I doubt I would ever have been able to talk to the mother. So her mother recognizes me from the last time we met on the bus and shyly says that the song in question was "The Wheels on the Bus".

Thinking of my OOPBGB list I asked her what her name was. She shyly said it was Divya. Welcome to my OOPBGB list Divya, I hope that you and your mother grow in the spirit and learn to break the silence, take a relational chance and get messy.

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If you ride city transit, you will know that there are lots of unspoken rules that everybody follows, like "Don't look at anybody else", "Don't touch anybody else's stuff" and "Never talk to anybody you don't know". I'm tired of these rules and try to break them when ever I can. I LOVE looking at other people and trying to guess what kind of people they are. I have also decided to break the silence too.

It´s Blog-citing!

All sorts of interesting things in the Blogoshpere. I just added a meta tag for locating my blog source on the planet and discovered who my net-neighbors are. You can click on the GeoURL link below to see who else is freezing their butt off in this nasty cold snap.

I also added myself to blogwise, a site for categorizing web logs by self-attributed keywords and geographic locations. I am not registered yet as they have a backlog of 1200+ pages to view (!). I wouldn't want THAT job.

I got both these ideas from visiting Ms. Frizzle's blog. I haven't looked at it too closely yet, but she seems to be a teacher in a middle school. Guess what, she uses the same template as me! She gets WAY more hits than me. She also seems to post twice a day.

Phone Phobia

Note, I wrote this in my paper journal on Jan 17 but entered it today.

Last night, Mo shared an "Oprah moment" she taped recently. Actually the Oprah segment she taped was about financial security, but she also taped a Dr. Phil show about a woman who has a phone phobia. Mo knows me pretty well, but some of you may be surprised to hear that I also have a phobia about calling people on the telephone.

The guest on Dr. Phil's show doesn't like answering the phone and talking to people. She gets her husband to answer the phone. She never returns calls to friends who call her and leave messages for her. She always worries that she will get bad news when she answers the phone. She rationalizes that if she doesn't talk to people on the phone, she won't jeopardize her relationships with those people. From outside her phobia, it is obvious that she jeopardizes her relationships MORE by NOT answering the phone or returning peoples calls.

MY phobia is using the phone to get information from strangers (and to a minor extent phoning acquaintances who are not expecting my call). I get very flustered, don't know what to say, miss important questions and get the details confused about details because I just want the call to be over. I often feel like I am stuttering too much and that the person on the other end of the phone thinks, "Who is this moron, anyway?"

My anxiousness is usually strongest just before picking up the phone. The mood of the person I am calling is totally unknown. I can't tell if I am interrupting them or catching them at a bad time. I feel like I don't know the proper protocol and feel incredibly stupid.

I have developed some coping mechanisms over the years to mentally prepare myself for calls that just have to be made. I am much better than I was. I often try to get Mo to make calls to the doctor, order pizza, make reservations and the link. If she catches on, sometimes she forces me to do it myself.

Facing the fear is hard. Not using the phone is also hard in the modern world. Each time I face this fear, it gets a little easier to do. I still don't like it. I still have to work up my courage and get as prepared as I can before picking up the phone. But I do it.

Do you have a fear that immobilizes you? Is there something you face every day that drives you to do irrational things?

New Phase

I am beginning to think that it is time to retire the PBGs. They have served me well in the past, but now I am a bit more comfortable with saying 'God' I don't really need my own personal pair of gods.

That said, my own brand of gods have brought me a long way. I am so glad I was able to formulate my own understanding of the 'More' than physical referred to by Marcus Borg in his book "The Heart of Christianity". Having my own grounding in what I believe makes it much easier to evaluate what others have written about what one should believe.

It is very surprising to find that many of the ideas related to me by the PBGs (I can't really take the credit for the ideas, can I?) are very similar to the ideas I am now reading about in Borg's books. His writing makes being a Christian much more palatable for me.

On the other hand, I can see how his viewpoint is like stirring up a hornets nest in the 'earlier paradigm' crowd. I can hardly wait until my book study group starts discussing the chapter on Jesus.

Revisit the Past

Well folks, I spent a moment or two and updated all the posts in September of this year. Wow, I wrote a lot of entries in September. That seems to be the time of year when I blog the most. I like to think that it is because the PBGs have more 'material' to speak to with me with (i.e. everything isn't all covered with snow). Mo proved me wrong in this regard the other day by finding a three sided bottle.

It was great to go over all the posts from September as I brought them into the new site. There is a lot of great stuff in there and I tend to forget how things developed and what went on before.

Hopefully revisiting the past will inspire me to post more than once a month (like in December).

Will Blogging save the World?

The PBGs don't think so, but The Cluetrain Manifesto thinks that the internet will serve a very big role in the future development of business.

Literally, gotta run.

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Now it is later and my run is over. Due to the freezing rain we had on the week end and this morning we thought our valley run would be pretty treacherous. It turned out to be relatively good footing and the temperature was just right.

You never can tell what the path will be like until you get out there and do it.

Hmmm, that sounds like something the PBGs would say, doesn't it?

Native Spirituality II

Prayer of Approach  Quoted from my church bulletin

O Great Spirit whose voice we hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear us. We come before you as your children.
We are small and weak; we need your strength and wisdom.
Let us walk in beauty and make our eyes ever behold the red and purple sunsets.
May our hands respect the things you have made, our ears be sharp to hear your voice.
Make us wise, so that we may know the things you have taught your people,
the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. We seek strength not to be superior to our brothers and sisters, but to live in harmony with ourselves and all of your creation.
Help us to be ever ready to come to you, so when life fades as a fading sunset, our spirits may come to you without shame. Amen.

Traditional Native American Prayer

Benediction

We have heard God call our name here. But this is not the only place God speaks. We listen each day for the voice of God, calling out our names. God is with us, always.

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Old words, new feelings; others have passed this way before me.

God be with you also.