A surreal weekend

What a surreal weekend.  The Super Bowl is playing right now.  I don't have a TV and so it is not playing in my apartment but I can't avoid it with the way it has taken over social media.  The Seahawks are playing the Patriots.  I've never been a big football fan but I will cheer for any team that is playing the Patriots for many reasons that I won't get into here, even better yet that their competitor is a woman controlled team.

But honestly, I don't think many people actually care about the game that is being played this year.  I'm not even sure the commercials that are usually the other focus are all that much of a focus this year.  Really, today, they are the side show to the musical entertainment.  The acts chosen to perform, Green Day as the opener and Bad Bunny as the halftime performer, were so clearly chosen to send a message to this administration.  And it's a message they got so clearly that Turning Point is putting on their own counter show with Kid Rock, a very interesting choice for an organization that calls itself Christian.

And this is the same weekend the Olympics opened in Italy where US athletes are publicly making statements about having mixed feelings representing this country and people from all over the world are booing our Vice President.  The very definition of patriotism and whether it includes criticizing what one feels is going wrong in our country or whether blind loyalty is required is being debated across many forums.  Is love without honesty really love?

It also happens to be the same weekend that in the middle of the night, our top leader posted a racist video of former President Obama and his wife which seems to have resulted in my social media feed being filled with clips of the Obamas demonstrating dignity and integrity, almost as a counter-balance.

And all of this came up at church today, right along side the planned sermon about dinosaurs.  Did you know that some Christians believe Noah brought dinosaurs onto the ark with all the other animals?  He supposedly somehow fit two brontosauruses measuring 75 feet long each (plus two of all the other dinosaur and non-dinosaur species) onto an ark that was roughly 450 feet long by 50 feet wide by about 45 feet high (3 levels).  

No, I don't go to a church where the Bible is read literally.  With all its contradictions within itself and its contradictions with the verifiable facts we know about our planet, I don't really understand how anyone can take it as the literal truth.  That's been a recurring topic in the sermon series that ended today at my church.

Here are a few quotes from my Pastor that have really stuck with me from today's sermon.  

"When we already know the answers, the questions don't matter."  How often do we decide our bias is fact and go looking for evidence to confirm our views?  This was in the context of the Bible and the way the Bible has been used inappropriately but it really fits so well in a much broader context.

"Our faith is far more mystery than science, more curiosity than facts."  

"Wonder at the possibilites of a God who is far bigger than anything the church has ever imagined." This last quote brought a few tears to my eyes.  I honestly don't know what I believe about God.  I've had a very love/hate, on-and-off-again relationship with the church.  I only joined this one for the choir and the community after I felt comfortable its values aligned with mine.  I appreciate that they encourage questions and don't pretend to have all the answers. My doubts feel like they fit right in.

But when I stand on the edge of a canyon or walk through a forest or sit with a bird, I can't help but feel a connection to a greater power, something larger than I can even imagine.  It's that wonder and curiosity that feed my soul.  So to sit in a church willing to contemplate something larger than any of us could possibly imagine or understand felt right.

The irony that this was all over a discussion about dinosaurs, something so near and dear to my ex-husband's heart.  And that despite his intrigue with dinosaurs, he seemed unable to grasp that wonder and curiosity in life.  Too many people today are completely unable to grasp the importance of wonder and curiosity.  Maybe that is part of what has lead us to where we are today.

But despite all of the chaos of the weekend, a robin and a towhee sang a call and response melody outside my window this morning, one last bud on my Christmas Cactus is threatening to bloom, and the sun was a giant, magnificent red ball just before it fell before the horizon.