Easter Saturday 2013

This year, I am wearing shades of blue because they are beautiful, and sometimes you need to wear beautiful colors so that every time you look down you are lifted up.  I have no idea if this is an appropriate seasonal color liturgically.  It's probably not secularly, either, because I am not wearing spring-y pastel blues, weak and watered down.  I am wearing dark, rich jewel tones: peacock, teal, turquoise.

I am celebrating Easter by going to church on Saturday at a place that is not my local church.  It is more than half an hour away, and the drive was crowded, the roads oddly packed.  The day started out wet and sloppy, but by now it is bright with sun and 10 degrees warmer than the professional weather guessers predicted.  Water from the thaw runs in the gutters, pools around the grates, rages onto convergence points, carries away trash and newly uncovered  flower clusters hidden for this day when I am celebrating resurrection and new life. 

One year, I wrote a poem about Saturday and how wretched the day before Easter must have seemed to all of the people who loved Jesus.  Today, I doubt I could be in that same somber, sober place.  There is too much light and warmth and the stink of new life everywhere.

Tomorrow, the weather guessers tell us, it will be cold and miserable and dark and snowy.  This sanctuary will still be bright with all of its windows, and early service attendees will be blinded if there is sun.  I hope there is sun because I think we all need a good spring blinding to remind us it's not all winter.

The joys of being hit on in retail

I'm having a bit of a hard time at work.  I used to be the only female at the store that didn't get hit on.  I was allowed to use my natural reserve as a barrier.  I could help people without being ridiculously, fake-y chipper.  Recently, my RetailEstablishment instituted new policies, and I was basically told I had to harass customers in a specific, scripted fake-cheerful way, or I would get fired.

Since then, I've been hit on 2.5 times this week.  Once by a possibly senile man in his eighties, once by a semi-regular customer, and once by a new customer who asked another employee what my name was, so he could hit on me but was then overcome with shyness and only asked me if I was active on any internet sites or forums (should've given him this one, eh?).  I heard about that last one later.  Apparently, when I pointed out a not-well-posted sale I thought he might've been interested in, he thought I was kind of cute.

I wonder if I'm the only one not-at-all flattered when people hit on me, no matter who they are.


Why do you suppose so many people can't tell the difference between fake retail/sales friendliness and actual, genuine interest (possibly of the relationship variety)?

"I Want to Love Like Breathing"

This song is on Out of the Gray's album Diamond Days.  You should go read the lyrics now.  They're a sort of prayer for me right now especially because one of the questions I've been wrestling with lately is as follows:

"Can I love?"

By this I mean, "Am I capable of loving?" 

I am wired quite oddly.  If you want to understand some of my quirks, I recommend the entertaining and interesting book Party of One: A Loner's Manifesto by Rufus.  Some people are created to enjoy their own company way more than the company of others, and I'm one of them.  I like being one of them.

But there is a part of me that is so very cold and detached that it scares me spitless sometimes.  If I let that part take over, well, bad things could happen quite easily.  This icy numbness leaks through when I don't hide it.  I don't really have the energy any more to hide it.  It is much easier to be a stone than to drag one around with you.

Since the "emotions" I deal with don't seem to conform to those of the people around me, I wonder if I am capable of loving them in ways that they recognize or that are meaningful to God (and me). 

Some day, I will pull together a fabulous essay about this topic, full of epic realizations and smooth transitions.  But for now, I will keep praying and writing one sentence questions as they occur to me.  I look forward to the day when I can be me and still "love like breathing."


Are you, too, sometimes so distracted by trying to do things right that you freeze up?  Do you think too hard about the meaning of things like love because you can't seem to grasp what it feels like?  Do you know what I mean when I talk about that cold observer part of myself?  Any other comments?