I can't sleep. Oh and it's John.

I can't sleep. It's ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as Brittany, the 9 year old my landlord sired, handling the cats in this house.

I know, I know, what the heck, right? Well, cats can take it, so calm down. Anyway, Brittany likes to tell me everything about the cats: what they're thinking, what they like and dislike, what their meows translate to, etc. So I was putting away groceries and notice Sophie (the tuxedo cat) sitting on the dining room table. She scares easy and I thought it would be fun to mess with her, so I go over and start petting her. Brittany is at the other end of the table. She sees me petting Sophie and gets jealous, so she starts calling the cat over. Sophie, assumably afraid of something like the picture above, leans into me a bit and starts meowing. Brittany tells me Sophie hates plastic bags and is likely freaking out on the inside that I'm holding one. I wad the bag into a ball and throw it hard onto the table in front of the cat. Both cat and girl flip

out. It was glorious. Brittany lunges over, grabs the cat [see above] and starts "comforting" her. She's stroking the cat rather forcefully saying, "It's okay Sophie, it's okay, I'm here, it's okay, that was a fake bag, don't worry, that was a fake bag..." Oh man, LOL to that.

Normally I try to blog when I have some sort of spiritual or life epiphany, as few in this world want to hear my discussions on what I ate for dinner or what child/animal I most recently messed with. Sadly, no profound moment has hit me in the face recently, which probably means I'm due for one, which sucks because those are often borne from life's rough spots. So I guess I'll share some mini-piphanies and musings from my head recently.

Common misconceptions about Christ and spirituality:

1. Touch is really, really important. Jesus spent His life healing people through touch, in doing so He broke down walls of community castigation and social rejection. He commanded his disciples to lay their hands on the sick. He didn't tell them to meet with them and pray. The direct command was to literally lay hands. A friend of mine recently witnessed a healing that was borne through prayer. This fellow was suffering from advanced cancer, and had people all over praying for him, but my friend administered prayer by laying his hands on the sick man and it changed everything. The cancer went into complete remission immediately. An amazing story, yes, but an amazing lesson as well. We need to be a lot more generous and liberal with touching. Kids are always touching, hugging, and holding hands. Maybe this is a small part of what Christ meant when He told us to come as little children. An innocent child isn't afraid to express love.

2. Jesus hated organized religion. Hated it. His ministry basically consisted of teaching people about God, healing the sick, and lambasting the religious elders. Jesus basically came down and told the Hebrews "you're doing it wrong!" He denounced the religious institutions, showed compassion and love to women, offered forgiveness and transformation to sinners, all in a culture that was rabidly religions, hyper-punitive, and sexist. I really like that. He didn't work with the religious institution, He worked in spite of it.

In conclusion, I guess my goal for 2010 should be to be more aligned with these mini-piphanies. If Jesus were to come speak to us today, would He be happy with how one's faith is generally determined by which building you go, which book you read, and how often? Would He be happy with us hiding behind comfort zones and meaningless sociological constructs of "personal space?" I think not. My faith needs to be lived outside of the church, where I can literally touch the lives of others.

Oh yeah, and we're moving! Another adventure awaits in LA. We're looking at a couple different places, and they're both places where I could meet more people just by milling about. Since I work from home, it can be a bit tough to meet new people, so this will be a nice change. I'm sure that can work in concert with these scary realizations I'm having.

One more thing, it's really storming. Look at this low-quality cell phone picture, you can see the sidewalk is completely under water!