In my dashboard, I have three unfinished blogs that are too angry, too over the top to be published and I've let them block my writing, as I have moved through so many emotions and processed through so many situaitons in the last two or three months.

When you write a blog that is deeply personal, deeply introspective, this happens. It's not a diary blog of cooking, family life, vacations, travel, but rather, a blog of the experiences of someone who has lived very far from her home and worldview, and has watched the definitions of home and worldview change and evolve and maybe even warp a little over the 20plus years of living not in my passport country.

And watching the current events unfold in my passport country have made things even more facinating in the last couple of weeks....I refuse to be political, or at least avertly so in my publishings, but it is easy for me to state at this point, fo the first time in my adult life I'm deeply considering not voting.

I sat on the 4th of July a few weeks ago in a notary's office as we worked through paperwork of a sale, and since the owners and buyers all sent lawyers to represent them, it was just us. Some of the bank transfers took time (as they always do) and even more during the summer months, so as we sat waiting for final confirmation of thousands of euros flying through the internet, we talked.

The topics were sometimes surprising, and my colleguge being educated adults don't always ask me instantly where I'm from (which is the usual first question after I open my mouth) but eventually even the notary himself, a larger than life older man who always loves to hand out fatherly advice in a lovely way, found out I was an American and was pleaseantly surprised.

But instead of 20 years ago when we were plagued with questions on election day as to why we would vote in a president that lies (W Bush) I was allowed to engage in a genteel, educated conversation about current events and politics in both of our countries.

Sadly, what I see, is that these conversations need to occur more, and not less, and in many parts of world, instead of conversations around a table, there are insults hurled, thrown and returned like bad boomerangs. And sadder yet, those men and women who claim to follow Christ, tend to be some of the loudest and least willing to discuss and have an open mind about anything.

This, from my stance on the oppositie side of the pond, I believe is rooted in this us. versus them idea that has been preached from pulpits far too long. That, a certain group of people hold all the answers to any question, and that this group of people is right and everyone else is wrong.

Sigh.

Not what I see when I read the Gospels. I see the Good Samaritan visiting someone of the "wrong"religion in the hospital.

I see Jesus, a man, speaking with women, and worse, women whose morals of the day were highly questionable

I see Jesus picking his intmiate friends, both men and women, with workers, terrorists, poor and wealthy people, eating and drinking and sitting around tables, in the book of Luke, 8 different times at banquets  and walking and talking, and pretty allergic to those formal settings like snyagogues and temples. When he is shown entering them, he has a potent reaction, and turns over tables, and reads prophecies and tells them the buildings are going to be destroyed.

And when he dies, the veil that divides man and God's Holy of Holies is ripped in half, top to bottom. The divsion between the sacred and the sacriligious is removed.

And I see Jesus equally rejocing in those who have faith and weeping over those who think they do and do not. And I feel the same.

How many times have I wept this last few years over those whom I know and love that have appeared to hold up morality more than love, black and white views over compassion, control over generosity. I wish I could count the tears. And for a long time, I have felt extreme guilt over those tears, until some long, long, long letters with someone I know understands where I and my husband are at. And the discussion of the tension of lament and rejoicing was born.

Violence and grace, this theme is tied clearly with lament and rejoicing. I rejoice over provision, care, love, community, faith, protection, love, and do I say it again love.

But I lament over the judemental mentalites, the idea that in order for us to be who we are, we must follow a set bit of rules, norms, and methodologies.

And I follow the Man/God who came and broke those rules, he talked to women, those norms, of only being with Us and never Them, and saying that the Methodologies of Relgious Thought, were there to help, but are not the end all be all.

I live in this tension, and while doing so, lament the treatment I and others have recieved, and rejoice that I and others get to walk together and seek healing with the hope that there is a God greater whose love is so wide, deep and long that we will never leave it.