Ouch.

i kinda like that in cyber world i've been frozen in the permanent gesture of "ugh." for several days.

it's a poignant metaphor for how the family system is doing.

sunday -- the last of advent -- lynn and i were sprawled across the couches in the living room trying to keep our eyelids up high enough to regret missing the last sunday in the liturgical cycle -- enough to make sure that jae & add weren't taking the keys to the minivan and hitting the road. lynn said she was worried that someone would just find our bodies all huddled together in the house together.

we've never been sick at the same time in eleven years of cohabitation & now to be facing this crud with two small humans fairly dependent upon us. lets just say that all my moral objections to convenience food were overwhelmed in the struggle to survive.

(also a revelatory incident about who gets to complain about mass/kitsch culture...only we who have the werewithall to see it from above...instead of from inside...)

(hmm. on second thought, if i had a strikethrough key (or knew the html code for it) i'd psuedo-undo that comment, its a bit smug, isn't it, to imagine that you have the better vantage point...i've been thinking alot about vantage points, knowledge and membership these past few days...)

my friend Gary recommended this graphic novel --



and so i just opened it at our christmas celebration this morning (thanks, baby!). i'm almost halfway through already.

and that's the OUCH. from the title.

The author (so far) writes about coming of age in evangelical fundamentalism. a terrain more familiar to me than any other.

and I realize that what's moving me so much about reading this book is to realize that this total stranger -- who has survived enough to put together an amazing novel -- experience(s/d) these wounds that i feel so profoundly.

I said to Lynn: and sometimes I just look around me at the evangelical world and it looks like more people than not are just signing on the dotted line, saying, hey, yeah! me too! i want in for another generation!

and i can understand that rationally but i can't feel it very well at all.

i usually use cynicism and irony to talk about growing up in the church. it's a much more comfortable stance in response. but this guy's writing is doing the other thing. what seems like the faithful thing. He's just saying --

ouch.

i'm gonna write more sometime here...but not today...its the andy-lynn-jaelyn-addison Christmas -- we're off to the farm tomorrow and Michigan after...

peace~