oh. well then.

That last long winded post? That was number 100 for me.
Look how prolific I am.
I wish I had more to say lately, but this fabulous new job is really making me work my 40 hours (and I adore every second of it) and then I get home and truthfully? my husband and my son are darned entertaining. So there's that.
OH! I won a contest! An awesome contest. The Marvelous Leigh, is sending me a one of a kind wire sculpture that I will promptly be hanging in my office and when one of the very wealthy women who donate to the theatre come in to tour our facility and ask me where I got such a fabulous piece of art? I shall tell them "Leigh Pennebaker? She's this artist based out of New York...you haven't heard of her? ohmygod. She's it. She's THE. THING. You have GOT to get one of her pieces. Although she's very exclusive, I could maybe let her know you're interested..." And thus I will pimp out my darling friend Leigh (can we call it a friendship? One of those strange tentative bonds that form through the wonderous tubes of the internets? Having never met her in person can I say I am just in awe of her marvelousness?...and her child, who is edible, and her husband who is brilliant...okay, I'll cop to it, I totally have a crush on her whole family and now I'm just coming off as wierd....She is so going to pick someone else to win her contest now. "Meg? Meg who?" sidebar done.)

That long paragraph up there? that is what my mind looks like about 90% of the time. Do you see now why I had to get the words "BE STILL" tattooed on myself? in large letters in black? in an obvious spot?
yeah.

Also I'm going to Texas for Thanksgiving the third year in a row. I think it's going to be our thing, we go to the Republican stronghold, I eat myself silly, I have a relaxing drama free holiday, I think I like this tradition. Plus Luke gets his drawl back when we get there. It's sexy.

It's a bittersweet symphony, this life...

Yesterday was...a joyful day. A day for feeling energized and hopeful and downright good about living in this country. It was a day to celebrate not just the fact that my guy won (but after eight years of losing it did feel nice) but to celebrate the fact that America has come so far from the tangled thorns of our past to elect a President who looks completely different from the 43 men who came before him. A President who spread a message of hope and renewal unlike one I'd ever seen before. It was a day to enjoy...
And yet, as the day went on and I watched the returns on Prop 8 in California, as I watched my boss (who just married his partner of many MANY years in a ceremony in Palm Springs) sit and watch his computer screen, face clouding over, falling and eventually settle into a mask, and I thought of the 2 women I have loved in almost the same way I love my husband, the women whom I used to make plans with about driving to a state that would let us be together legally...my stomach became twisted in knots. And the golden glow to the day became a little tarnished.
How is it that we have traded one fear for another? How have we come so far only to stall out? WHAT THE HELL IS THE PROBLEM WITH TWO PEOPLE WHO LOVE EACH OTHER GETTING THE SAME DAMN RIGHTS AS EVERYONE ELSE?!?!?!?
sigh.
I know the arguments on the other side. I know that there are people who very truly believe that the love my boss and his long time partner have together isn't really love at all. That the love my dear friend L. shares with her partner A. is not as valid as the "love" Britney Spears had for that boy she married in Vegas. I know that there are people who believe that marriage is for people who can have babies, who will have babies, and lots of them. I know that there are people who believe that giving gay people the right to marry would make the "proud tradition" of heterosexual marriages meangingless. That marriage is for a man and a woman and that's all. They really and truly believe these things with all their heart.
And I wish I could say that I get it. That I get where they're coming from. I can say that to the incredibly passionate pro-lifers I know. I can say that to the people I know who support the death penalty. I can pick up what those people are laying down. I don't agree with them but I get it.
But the position that two consenting adults should not be able to join their lives together (affording them all the privilege and rights and ceremony that comes with a marriage contract) because they are the same sex? THe position that because two men love each other or two women love each other what they have together is not love by virtue of their sex?

I think that's fucked up. I honestly and truly do.

And I know there are people who lunge for their Bibles when they hear the words "Gay Marriage" uttered. And they wield that beautiful document like a weapon of righteousness. They use their God like a sword to cut out the things they don't like, the things they are afraid of, the things that are different. They talk about loving the sinner but hating the sin. They talk about judgement. They interpret God's word to serve their hatred.

And I think that's fucked up. I honestly and truly do.

I am not a brilliant woman. I am not a scholar of God's Word. I am not a political genius. I don't do well with numbers or history or remembering passages.
But I am a person. I am a human being. I believe that we all were made in the image of some spectacular Divine Being and because of that I can unequivocally tell you that God don't do fucked up. Because of that I believe that love is love is love. Male female gay straight, if you love, you love and that's it. Because of that I believe that we have a mandate to treat everyone on earth with respect and to love them. That means affording every single person the privilege and rights and ceremony that comes with a marriage contract. That means we lose the crap about hating the sin and loving the sinner and leave bullshit language like that out of our interactions with people and just love them.
Is it hard to do? Damn straight it's hard to do. Is it terrifying sometimes? sure is.
BUT IT. IS. NECESSARY.
I know that most people who stop by my little blogging space in the ether feel I'm preaching to the choir. You get it babies, you do.
And so I urge you to support the folks who are doing everything they can to fight Prop. 8 in CA. send em' money, send em' letters, go to marches. Tell the world you've had enough of the whole seperate but equal thing when it comes to gay couples who want to get hitched.

And as for my pastor who encouraged everyone at my church to vote Yes on 102 here in AZ because as Christians we have to protet the sanctity of heterosexual marriage?
I think Kyran said it best:
"You want to know what weakens and violates the sanctity of my marriage? Denying it to people who love each other as much as we do."

President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama

now we start becoming the America I was taught we could be:
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations." -A. Lincoln

Compassionate, brave, determined and good.
Yes, we can.

What is it about Birmingham? What is it about Buffalo?

hold me down
i am floating away
into the overcast skies
over my home town
on election day
what is it about birmingham?
what is it about buffalo?
did the hate filled want to build bunkers
in your beautiful red earth
they want to build them in our shiny white snow
and now i've drawn closed the curtains
in this little booth
where the truth has no place to stand
and i am feeling oh so powerless
in this stupid booth
with this useless little lever in my hand
and outside
my city is bracing
for the next killing thing
standing by the bridge
and praying for the next doctor martin luther king
it was just one shot
through the kitchen window
just one or two miles from here
if you fly like a crow
a bullet came to visit a doctor
in his one safe place
a bullet ensuring the right to life
whizzed past his kid and his wife
and knocked his glasses right off of his face
and the blood poured off the pulpit
yeah the blood poured down the picket lines
and the hatred was immediate, yeah
and the vengence was divine
so they went and stuffed god down the barrel of a gun
and after him they stuffed his only son
hello birmingham; it's buffalo
i heard you had some trouble down there again
just calling to let to know
that somebody understands
i was once escorted
through the doors
of a clinic
by a man
in a bulletproof vest
and no bombs
went off that day
so i am still here to say
birmingham
i'm wishing you all of my best
oh birmingham
i'm wishing you all of my best
oh birmingham
i'm wishing you all of my best
on this election day

playable right over there----->

Election Day

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
--Robert Kennedy.


Go to your polling place and vote...and just in case you've forgotten what I'm talking about -it's the f*ing election


Also thanks New York Times for this fabulous piece of widget...a scrolling page of the feelings America is having today whether they voted for McCain or Obama (and because I'm biased check out how positive and joyful the Obama feeling words are)

housekeeping

you might notice that the number of "politics" tags has alarmingly decreased. you probably didn't. BUT just in case you wanted to read about how much I'm a liberal and love Barack Obama look under: "what's next" and if you're a West Wing fan you'll totally get that reference.

inked

Last night a lovely man named Bob drove needles over and over into my skin for about an hour until the words "Be Still" (from Psalm 46:10 - "Be Still and know that I am God") emerged on my skin. And while I forgot how viscerally I react to tattooing (sweating and shaking) it was the perfect way to make permanent at tenet that I plan on embracing.