Y'know, those Gap (RED) campaign t-shirts are just begging to be ironically re-interpreted. As in, rip-off t-shirts that say things like:

UNINSPI(RED)
BO(RED)
TI(RED)
FLOO(RED)
SCA(RED)

Who'd wear them? Well, I would, for one. If I didn't think I would get my behind sued to kingdom come.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about faith.

This isn't some abstract theological musing. Rather, it's shaken out of the dynamics of my life, radically affecting every aspect of my thought and existence.

A prophetic word in church, coupled with a phone call from my brother, really sharpened my perspective recently. This is what I believe it comes down to, for me as a Christian, and in some sense, for every human being:

There are two alternate realities, two alternate perspectives, we can live and believe in.

This afternoon I went to see Amazing Grace, the film version of the life of William Wilberforce. As an English parliamentarian, he dedicated most of his life to abolishing the British slave trade, finally seeing it banned throughout the colonies just before his death in 1833.

Today I made my grandfather’s special heritage Italian sauce, the amazing secret recipe handed down in our family for at least three generations, and probably, in some form, for generations more back in the homeland.

From EdwardMonkton.com.

Over the last week, I've been immersing myself in graphic design again, the result of the freelance work assignment I blogged about earlier. I've been rolling up my sleeves and getting back into the world of choosing fonts, adjusting CMYK colour values, aligning elements, and creating paragraph styles.

Last night I left the house to go out. My landlady was hosting a scrapbooking workshop, which meant that the driveway was filled up with the vehicles of women who'd come to scrapbook. It's a bit complicated to explain, but normally from where I park, I'd reverse into one of two spaces and continue forward down the driveway, which is winding and very steep.

A friend and I were talking about what we value most in friendship, and agreed that it's reliability.

One of the things that consistently annoys me is people who say that they'll do something or make promises to get together, then either change plans or never follow through. You can't rely on their word, it doesn't mean what you think it means, and you never know where you stand. Some people seem to do this serially.

I stopped by the bank to deposit a check into the ATM, and a man was there ahead of me. He was impossibly tall, with about six miles of legs. Ugly dark knit stocking cap, rather elderly homely face with one snaggle tooth visible in his crooked mouth, huge Steve Erkel glasses. The miles of legs were clothed in skinny black-and-white houndstooth kitchen pants, well-soiled with labour. His enormous boat-like black-and-white sneakers looked like they'd first seen the light of day in the 80s, as did the black denim Southpole jacket.

Me, at home group, highly amused to see our hostess putting out teabags in pink wrappers titled "Pregnancy Tea" and "Mother-to-be Tea":

"Why are you putting out your pregnancy tea?"

Hostess, the only pregnant one there: "Well, SOMEBODY might want it."

I LOL'd.

What have the two to do with each other, you ask?

Well, I've been experiencing excessive amounts of both recently. Actually the unemployment has lasted over a month and a half, but the snot is a recent development.

I am a positive river of snot. I have never seen a human being produce such copious amounts of the stuff. I've been decimating Kleenex at prodigious rates, about one every second. I think I will be responsible for its extinction soon. The outer skin cells of my nose have long ago said goodbye.

Photos from the Newfrontiers Canada Leadership Conference 2007 are now online at the Newfrontiers Canada site. With the exception of the first one and last six, I took all the photos.

It was a great learning experience; going forward, I'd move around more and try for a little more variety in the people I captured. But it was a lot of fun, and I'm fairly pleased with the results.

Tonight I went out for sushi, a ridiculously impractical move given the fact of my unemployment, but partly to distract me from the fact of unemployment. It was also an effort to stave off the driving restlessness of finding yourself with an evening alone when you'd rather be out with others.

Your snotty Kleenex freezes in your pocket when you go running.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to follow Jesus.

Specifically, I've been thinking about it in the context of my possible move to Canada to church plant. I'm 99% certain that this is where God is calling me.

While I'm excited about that, thrilled by the possibilities, and thankful for the opportunity, it is going to involve a cost. It will be painful. It will mean saying goodbye to people that I love, and to a church that I have become passionately committed to.

I did something today I never do: quit.

After more than a month of joblessness, two staffing agencies called me at once yesterday with job offers that began today. I initially said yes to one which would last three days, but when the second called with a two-week assignment, figured it was the better option.

Either I wasn't paying attention to the job description, or my conception of it was overly rosy after weeks of unemployment, but I had a rather hazy idea of what it was actually about.

Today at Marshalls I joined a checkout line behind a mother and her three kids. Two, a boy and a girl, the girl the oldest, were standing behind her. The youngest was in the seat of the shopping cart.

The two kids were rather noisily playing with little plastic dinosaur figures. The cashier, a kindly older Indian man, engaged them in friendly chatter, the high-pitched, pleasant sort you do with children. From his fatherly manner you could tell he liked children and probably had some of his own. The mother told him, "They just found those, they didn't have any price tags on them."

Recently someone commented to me that he thought I had "single girl syndrome". It wasn't intended as a compliment. In fact, he seemed miffed at my independence and self-sufficiency and somewhat shocked that I do things like take long road trips by myself. His tone of voice implied that I really rather ought to be a delicate and fragile flower who relies on men to take care of her and daren't take a step without male protection.

This past weekend, I attended Newfrontiers Canada's second annual leadership conference in Oakville, Ontario. It was fantastic to be back "home" and to see so many beloved friends again—well worth the 11-hour drive. Fortunately I was able to carpool with a pastor from North Berwick, Maine, and two young guys from his church, which made the drive much more tolerable than the times I've trekked it by myself.

I've finally registered a domain name. And, I'm learning Drupal, a great open-source content management system. So, here's my brand-spanking-new blog to add to the fifty gazillion floating around in cyberspace...