Metacentricities

It’s been a fairly grueling trip - as well as a deep and wonderful trip. We didn’t get a chance to have internet access quite so often, so it’s been a few days since I’ve had a chance to blog. I’m uploading a few new pictures to flickr - but be patient - I’m on dial up! We decided not to stop in New Orleans after all, so we cut our trip short by a day or two (although it had been lengthened by a day or two by the weather in New Mexico and Texas.)

We’ve made it to North Topsail Island, North Carolina, staying in a house that has wonderful view of the ocean. We’ll be here for two weeks - we’ve found out that we can move into our new house on February 12th. It’s nice to slow down, and be in one place for a while. It’s going to be our home, before we’re really home.

I’m in San Antonio, Texas, warm and dry at a friend of Ruth’s. We’ve had a great, but too brief visit, and we’ll be on our way to New Orleans this afternoon - a short driving day today, after a harried day in really bad traffic in West Texas. The pictures of some of it are now up on flickr - so you can get a feeling for what we’ve been through.

We’ll be in New Orleans on Thursday, and in North Carolina sometime over the weekend.

It’s been an adventure!

Update: We decided to stay in San Antonio for another night - we’re pretty tired, and a rest is a good idea. So, we’ll be on our way tomorrow morning.

It’s been a trip so far full of adventures, and things that are new to me. After Mercey Hot Springs and seeing dear friends in Idyllwild, we drove on I-10 through Arizona and New Mexico, and stopped for a brief soak at El Dorado Hot Springs, in Tonopah, AZ. It was great - we had a private pool, and we spent a nice hour in the early evening before heading back on the road for a stint.

We then stopped at the Triangle-T guest ranch, in Texas Canyon in the Dragoon Mountains in AZ, just looking for a place to stay for the night. It has a lot of interesting history (including being a place where Japanese officials were interred during WWII.) We had to go into the saloon to find out if they had any room for the night - it was full of people in cowboy hats dancing to country music.

After that, we went onwards and stopped at Faywood Springs, near Silver City NM. We spend most of the afternoon and stayed in one of their cabins overnight. Very sweet place, and some really nice soaks.

I’m getting to really like hot springs, but sadly, they don’t really exist outside of the part of the “Ring of Fire” that’s in the Western US.

Technorati Tags: arizona, hotsprings, newmexico

Well, there was a storm in Southern New Mexico. We woke up to a few inches of snow, and expected some slow driving, but we didn’t quite expect them to close Interstate 10. So, we’re stuck in Deming, New Mexico. It’s not terrible, though. We’re staying at a chain hotel, with really good WiFi, and it’s amazing how easy it is to keep occupied when stuck in a hotel room with nowhere to go.

We expect to get back on the road tomorrow, heading to San Antonio, to visit a friend of Ruth’s, then off from there to New Orleans.

Technorati Tags: snow, newmexico

Well, we got a great introduction to winter - the morning after we arrived at our friend’s house up in Idyllwild (in the San Bernadino Mountains) we were greeted with snow!

We finally got everything packed up, and were ready to leave late Wednesday - and we stayed Wed. night in a place called Mercey Hot Springs. It’s a sweet little place in the middle of nowhere, about 2 hours south east of the Bay Area. See the pictures that I just put up on flickr. We left there yesterday, and after a harrowing drive through LA rush hour, arrived up in Idyllwild, to a wonderful welcome, a warm fire, and great conversation.

We’re heading out tomorrow morning, to who knows exactly where. We are aiming for San Antonio, to stop and visit a friend of Ruth’s, but it will take at least two or three days to get there (Texas is a Big State.)

This is the first day of real down time in a good long time - time without a drive, without stuff to pack, or lug, or errands to run. And I can really feel the fatigue. It will be nice to take a long meandering trip (stopping in neat places along the way) and have a nice restful time in North Carolina, before we head up to Western Mass, to unpack, and settle in. There’s lots to think about, and metabolize, plans to hatch, thoughts to think.

My to do list is long, the boxes are piled high, and my energy is low. As moves go, though, this one has to be up there as one of the easiest, for sure, of the cross-country moves I’ve made in my life (this is, basically, the 4th.) It’s easier for a variety of reasons - I have a lot less stuff, since I jettisoned so much of it almost two years ago. It’s mostly already packed, since I moved just a month ago, I’m moving back “home” which feels great, and last, but certainly far from least, I’m moving as part of a process to create a life with my partner, which makes the move amazingly wonderful and meaningful. So, I’m tired but happy, a little stressed, but calm, and we’re getting things accomplished, step by step.

And we have a great trip to look forward to. We’re leaving on Tuesday. We start with a stop at some hot springs near Fresno, then, to the mountains of Southern California, then a drive through Arizona and New Mexico, a stop in San Antonio, Texas (and the first time I will have driven through the bulk of Texas), New Orleans (which I haven’t seen since before Katrina), then a long stop in North Carolina, before heading up to Massachusetts. I’m actually looking forward to our trip through the south. I’ve never gone that way before, and somehow, for some reason, I’m curious to see how it is, and how it feels.

We have a long stop in North Carolina because we can’t move into our house in Shutesbury until sometime in early February (we actually don’t even know when, exactly) so we’ll be chilling at a house on the beach (I know, you all have a tiny violin for us.) And there is no broadband there, except when we have occasional forays to a resort close by that has wifi.

So it will be an interesting trip, for sure. Don’t expect to see anything more on this blog until we actually get on the road early next week.

There is the annual brouhaha about Pat Robertson’s supposed predictions based on what God told him. Except, well, he admits he’s been wrong:

In 2005 Robertson predicted that Bush would have victory after victory in his second term. He said Social Security reform proposals would be approved and Bush would nominate conservative judges to federal courts.

Lawmakers confirmed Bush’s 2005 nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. But the president’s Social Security initiative was stalled.

“I have a relatively good track record,” he said. “Sometimes I miss.”

So, his predictions are from God, and have to be always right, or they don’t come from God, they come from his head. Or, I guess, worse still (for them), God isn’t omniscient?

Sometimes the lack of extremely basic logic among fundamentalists is staggering.

Technorati Tags: evangelicals, God

I’m following Rachel, here are my 10 favorite posts of 2006, in chronological order:

• Leaving Unitarian Universalism - “Some of you have read my piece about returning to Christianity. That path, that process, did not in any way preclude me from continuing on in UU ministry. In fact, there are plenty of UU Christians who are in ministry. So why am I leaving UUism? …” (this post, by the way, would be one of the top 10 most popular posts, and caused what was at that time a huge spike in blog traffic.)
• Sacred Text - “I love, I mean love, getting my mind blown in seminary. This week is the week I get my mind blown in two different directions by approaches to sacred texts. …”
• Faith vs. Practice - “ … In my mind, one of the most dramatic (and amazing) differences is the difference between the roles of faith and practice in spiritual life. For Jews, practice is central, faith negotiable. For Christians, faith is central, and practice is negotiable. This is an oversimplification, for sure, but I think it has a nugget of truth in it. …”
• Making Choices - “ … This is not to say, obviously, that in any way, I denied my ethnicity, or denied that I experienced racism. And it’s not to say that I don’t identify as African-American. It’s just to say that culturally, I tend to feel more lesbian than I feel African-American. Of course, in the end, I’m both, and they are inseparable. But the realities of our society seem to often mean that I have to make a choice. …”
• Means and Ends - “As I said in my post about writing, there have been several things in the past few weeks to make me think a lot about what this blog is for. One of the things that has happened quite recently is getting into a bit of a argument with the folks over at Talk2Action. The gist of the argument is covered in the discussions on my post on Street Prophets. There’s no point in going over it here. But suffice it to say, I found myself in major disagreement with allies, and it has in a major way crystallized my thinking. …”
• Barak Obama, faith, and the Democratic party - “As I said, one of the things I am interested in is the ways in which religion and politics plays out in the US. There has been quite the blog storm about the speech Barak Obama gave a few days ago, at Pentecost 2006: Building a Covenant for a New America conference. …” (this post was linked in Slate, and caused a big surge in traffic, and would be the #1 most popular post on my blog.)
• Blog Worthy - “ … Today, I am, for the first time, going to break that pattern. I’m going to tell you what I ate for breakfast. I had a cinnamon roll. Not just any cinnamon roll, mind you. It was a cinnamon roll from a gourmet grocery store in San Francisco. You might ask, why is this important? Why is this blog worthy? …”
• Creating a Life, Part II - “Not so long ago, I said that changes were afoot. I feel finally ready to blog about the most recent results of a process that I’ve been going through for the past few weeks or so. This is just another leg of the journey I started over two years ago, in my decision to go to seminary. Which, of course, is part of my lifelong journey of creating a life that is fulfilling, of service, and full of spirit. …”
• Ted Haggard and Me - “For some reason I can’t quite figure out, I’m a little obsessed by Ted Haggard. I read lots of news items and then blog posts about the whole situation. I’ve seen the videos of him, and Mike Jones. At odd times of the day I’ll think about what his life is like right now. I feel sad and feel compassion for what he is going through now as America’s current most famous fallen Christian. His life is a complete mess. …”
• Spiritual Community - “ … I’ve begun to build in my head what I really want from spiritual community. And as I think about it, I’ve come to realize that it possibly doesn’t exist yet. There are some communities that seem to have come relatively close …”

Technorati Tags: metacentricities, politics, seminary, religion, tedhaggard