My God, It's Full Of Stars!

My God, It's Full Of Stars!

Spent three hours on the toilet. I'm trying to figure out what this might have to do with the chicken vegetable soup I made from scratch last night. With a lot of curry powder. All I know is I woke up with something akin to Elmer's Glue coming out my bunghole, and I thought I had bricks in my colon.

I didn't leave the house until 1PM. Called off work and went back to bed. I also hadn't slept worth a fuck all night.

I still feel kinda like warmed over dogfuck, but I'm functioning.

A very nice weekend. Spent Saturday alone, pretty much letting everything go. Quite relaxing. Sunday I went back to the Quaker church, which was interesting. I sat in on their business meeting (which they do instead of regular "discussion" on the first Sunday of the month) and while most of it was pretty dry, I enjoyed hearing the clerk (who "runs" the meeting", but every decision is made by group consensus, something they take seriously) reading letters from four students. They have a scholarship fund (education being something else they take seriously) and four college kids were writing asking for assistance, and letting them know what they were up to in school. It was rather inspiring to hear these kids talk about school, further cementing my own desire to go back.

One of them came in after her letter was read. She (and probably half the room, maybe 8 people) is a distant cousin. I've met a few of them now up there.

She talked about working with a disabled lady who has to use a similar system to what Stephen Hawking uses to communicate with people. She has a variety of problems that keeps her in a very restricted lifestyle, but she apparantly has a very sharp mind and wants to be a writer.

The silent service was broken only once, by a man I'd talked to beforehand who told me about leaving the Catholic church to become a Quaker. his own story of dissatisfaction with relgion leading him to this place was similar enough to mine that I hope to talk to him more. Very cool guy.

He stood to speak for a moment about a football player (I can't remember the name) that he'd seen a profile of on television. The guy was also a preacher, and became increasingly dissatisfied with organized religion. He compared him to George Fox, the founder of Quakerism. Interesting.

I read some of their current political literature, and was very impressed by the idealistic but realistic approach to peace and environmental concerns.

It's very strange that while part of me is doing it's damndest to get the last traces of my religious upbringing out of my head, I'm finding these people so enjoyable to be around. They are truly unlike any "Christian" group I've ever encountered. I made a crack to one of them that "my current prayer is 'Dear God, deliver me from Christianity', yet I somehow ended up here."

I'll be going back.

Damn, I'm almost out of time. I need a connection at home. I've got to tell a very cool Katie story from Monday.

Love,
Dougie