Happy Birthday Mom...

Today would have been my mother's 52nd birthday.
My mother, Sandra Ann Box, passed away May 21, 1995. I may be 31 years old, but losing my mother to cancer was the most life-changing event I have experienced. I have a lot of unresolved "mommy issues." It influences everything about me: my relationships, my fears, my insecurities, my aspirations. I plan on getting a tribute tattoo in honor of my mother. (It won't be a heart with "Mother" written on it) November is tough. My mother's birthday, the loss of my grandfather, holidays without loved-ones. I hope that the tattoo will be cathartic, a therapeutic way of helping me to heal and go about living my life. I am not sure when I will get it. (I still need to come up with a design) But when I do, I will post a picture.

Sandra Ann Box
11/29/55 - 5/21/95

Every Christmas TV Special Ever Made!!!

If you are a big fan of Christmas specials (like the Rudolph claymation or the Charlie Brown Christmas) then you will love this. Someone compiled clips of all the best Christmas specials and posted them on their website. There are 101 different clips. Some are broken for now, but should be up soon...Make sure you check out my favorite: "The Year Without Santa Claus"

You can check them all out here

oh, and you're welcome!

Goodbye Grandpa...

My father called me last night to let me know that my grandfather had passed away. My grandparents were always a big part of my life. I was the first grandchild on my dad's side of the family, and to be honest, they spoiled me a bit. I am sure he had his moments, but to me, my grandpa was a kind, loyal, loving, and accepting man. He never judged me when I came home with earrings or tattoos. He never expressed disappointment over the many stupid choices I made in my teenage years. Grandma and he were my number one fans when I played basketball.

I will miss him very much. I know that this is tough on my dad too. He has been through so much; from the loss of my mother, to the loss of his mother, and now the loss of his father. I know the grief and heartache that death brings. I also know the comfort and hope that family and faith can provide. I pray that my family supports and encourages each other. I also pray that those of us who have faith in God, will be able to provide hope for the rest.

Please keep us all in your prayers.

Some thoughts...

I haven't been very good at updating this blog. I could blame it on any number of things, but honestly, I am just lazy. For the past few weeks I have been updating my diet blog here .

I have a lot on my mind, and will hopefully spend some time typing them out. These range in topic from movies, books, and politics, to theology, religion, and the state of American Christendom.

For now, I will leave you with a quote from the new Brian McLaren book, "Everything Must Change." You can purchase it at Amazon.com .

Even in the United States, where church attendance figures are comparatively strong, church leaders can't help but notice the rapid decline in local church involvement among younger generations and wonder what to do about it. Church leaders often begin by criticizing the young people: "What's wrong with them?" But eventually, some leaders ask a more productive question: "What's wrong with us?" Typically, they proceed on a rather superficial level, talking about cosmetics: musical styles, ambiance, and lighting, digital projection, dress codes, various ways of getting "cooler" or "hipper." These are of some importance perhaps, but certainly not the whole story. Then some thoughtful leaders go a little deeper, addressing the need to be relevant to culture and to contextualize their ministry for today's world. But they're still barely dipping below the surface.

Eventually some leaders begin to realize that many young and alienated ex-churched people originally dropped out of their churches after attending college (or getting out on their own where they could think for themselves) and learning about the dark side of the Christian religion's track record...the Crusades, witch burnings, colonialism, slavery, the Holocaust, apartheid, environmental irresponsibility, mistreatment of women.

These young people started caring about these issues, but they didn't find their fellow adherents to the Christian religion very concerned. Too often, they realized, Christians through history have played on the wrong side of these issues. And even when Christians in recent decades concerned themselves with contemporary issues, they focused primarily on personal and sexual matters, simultaneously neglecting larger societal and systemic injustices that caused unimagined suffering. And even in regard to their narrow range of "moral issues," they were consistently less effective in making a lasting, constructive difference. In so doing, they created an image of the typical Christian believer as tense, judgmental, imbalanced, reactionary, negative, and hypocritical.

...for the millions of young adults who dropped out of their churches in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the Christian religion appears to be a failed religion...it has specialized in dealing with "spiritual needs" to the exclusion of physical and social needs. It has specialized in people's destinations in the afterlife but has failed to address significant social injustices in this life. It has focused on "me" and "my soul" and "my spiritual life" and "my eternal destiny," but it has failed to address the dominant societal and global realities of their lifetime: systemic injustice, systemic poverty, systemic ecological crisis, systemic dysfunctions of many kinds.

A message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this.

[What people wish for is] a vibrant form of Christian faith that is holistic, integral, and balance--one that offers good news for both the living and the dying, that speaks of God's grace at work both in this life and the life to come, that speaks to individuals and to societies and to the planet as a whole." (McLaren, Brian. "Everything Must Change." Pp. 32-34)

Some interesting thoughts to wrestle with, argue about, be challenged with, and come to conclusions regarding. It is hard for many to hear Christianity being criticized, but if we are going to be honest about who we are and what we represent, we must honestly look in the mirror and acknowledge our failures as well as our successes. Christianity is not flawed, however, our representation of Christ often is.