Dear God,
                Christmas is fast approaching, and I must say that my efforts for a Christmas spirit are being sidetracked into general loudness, and unwanted enthusiasm. My lively renditions of 'Joy to the World' led to a more sombre (but ultimately more interesting) spell of  'Hashivenu," which I found out is a song of mourning.
           On that note, my reflections of Christmas haven't been very enlightening. I'm going to say now that I know that Christmas is about new beginnings. It is the start of a new life, and not just any new life. It is the start of Jesus, and of a new era of seeing beyond the ends of human logic.

Christmas is about birth, dawn, and change. The little child that emmerge unto the world on Christmas day certainly brought about all those three things. Maybe this Christmas, that child will bring them to me too.

Cheers.

Dear God,
                 Christmas is less than 10 days away, and I am yet to enter the holiday spirit. The world must sound of the triumph of the Lord risen again; it must be transcended with contagious joy. And that just is not happening for me; the sky is overcast like it's mourning, and I haven't encountered even the slightest breath of fresh air in more than 24 hours.
                   My family hasn't done much to cultivate the spirit of Christmas ever, but I'm not going to let that get to me. It's going to be Christmas music everywhere, and true reflections of what this time of the year means to me. The Christmas tree isn't just going to be a lanky eyesore; it's actually going to mean something this year.
                The problem is just that after all these years of immersion in society's ideas and my family's inattention, I just don't know what Christmas really means to me. Society has always told me that Christmas is about snow, Santa, and presents and I believed it(even though I've spent most of my life in the tropics, am scared of Santa, and have rarely received Christmas presents). My parents have told me that it's about neat, fancy, new clothes, and listening attentively to the priest as he goes through a Christmas mass, and I've followed (even though my new clothes are usually scratchy and/or far too distracting, and all I ever did during Christmas mass was stare vacantly at the priest as he went through is meaningless words and actions).
                 I know now that Christmas is not about beautiful clothes on my squirming body or dainty presents under the tackily decorated tree; it isn't about a certain sled-borne gentlemen who squeezes through chimneys that are too small for him or even about going to mass because it is an obligation.
I know what Christmas is not, but I don't know what it is.

This next week is going to be my Christmas boot camp; I will find my holiday spirit and I will ground it on the truth.

Cheers.

Dear God,
                 I think most of us Christians are not worthy of your name. Not too many of us can truly say that we are the followers of the purest Lord Almighty.
             If we really did care for and love the one another and the world, we would be less passive. A typical Chirstian goes to church, prays, is always nice to his/her loved ones, and is very charitable with money. That would all be well and good if our role model was someone who did all of those things, and only those things. But Jesus was a revolutionary; he didn't sit around hoping other people would change the world; he went out and did it. Jesus was caring and passionate, witty and loud. He didn't pray piously then sit back and relax: he both prayed and went out into the world. He was no delicate Auntie Annie, he was the face of change.
             None of us who dress impeccably for church and give money to the poor can truly call ourselves Christian because we are fulfilling only one part of the requirement: loving those around us. The other one: loving the world and wanting to make it a better place for everyone, we (most of us) completely ignore.
            I want to be a part of change Lord, and I am convinced that just praying isn't enough. I want to be the instrument of all the prayers like Jesus was, and still is.

Cheers.

Dear God,
                Christianity is seen as rigid, orthodox, and plain snobby. The ideals, and the doctrines themselves, are really not so, but that does seem to be the general facade being put up by the people. Pope Francis is the antithesis of this facade (though you'd expect him to be the facade), and I'm really glad that he's leading the church in this time of questioning norms. But even with a strong, flexible leader, the church is losing fans fast.
           Christians drag your name into everything..
"We live by good Christian values, I stay at home and do all the work while he [my husband] goes out and makes a living," says (something like that) one housewife on Wife Swap.

"God doesn't approve of, or love, gay people," say the protesters outside San Francisco's city hall. 

"It is more important to be Christian than love," a comment on a Youtube video reads.

They bring You to shame.
It is not "good Christian values" to oppress women; You love everyone regardless of their sexual inclination, and being Christian is all about loving!!

Christianity is anything but orthodox and snobby. It's about loving everyone regardless of society's ridiculous standards. We, as Christians, must learn to accept and understand and love. Compassion is the core of our ideals.

I don't like the way Christians behave in society: rising to every taunt of the atheists (who are probably just disillusioned), posting hate comments of the internet, and protesting against minute details like birth control, abortion, and gay marriage.
       I cannot say that I am innocent of any of these "Christian Crimes," but I will try to be a better Christian, and a better human, in the future.

Cheers. 

Dear God,
                 I honestly really like church; it's a stimulating atmosphere. I suppose I should thank our parish priest for that: he's amazing :)

Anyway, this is my interpretation of the Walking on Water scene (This is strange because I'm always standing at the doors of the religion and defending it, and questioning any insults or misconceptions; I never really come inside it to question it).

The water is supposed to represent all that is a slippery slope: all the thoughts that can lead you to question things you really don't want to question (or else you'll find yourself dangling from the edge of the cliff that is your faith - one just has to accept that one doesn't have all the answers).

Outside the water is all that is right and good. All the comfort of being a Christian.

When Jesus told Peter to come out into the waters, He was really telling him to come and live in the world with so many different opinions, skeptics, and self-confident non-believers.
Jesus told Peter that if he kept his eye on the prize (Jesus), he would be able to walk on that water without falling into doubts and existential crises...

The world is like the water; not drowning is a challenge in itself, but walking on water?
If you want to survive in this world, you'll learn how to swim; if you think that this is too much ado, and you just trust in the Lord, then you can make it: just keep your eye on the Prize (Jesus).

How was that? I even made a pictorial representation (this is probably because my father rejected my conjecture completely while favoring our -admittedly awesome- priest's version (which I have forgotten)

The world is like water you can sink into, but keeping your eyes on Jesus will help you like it helped Peter

Cheers.

Dear God,
                This is regarding the poor little girl with cancer I dissed today. I suppose the only reason I was a bit mad about her was because my mother mentioned her to me, and I have trained myself to reject any of my mother's religious advances: they don't seem genuine to me (which is crazy because she is so sin conscious- she's NOT a bad person, but I don't think her type of religion is the same as mine- which is also crazy because we are both Catholics, and she brought me up: we're supposed to have the same faith system).
          Anyway, I shouldn't have been so angry that the little girl prayed for her hair to stay on even after chemo, and got her wish granted. It's just that I was jealous, and also that I needed to prove myself to be a wicked person to my mother (why do I do that?). I ask for things, but I don't ask for things that seems so trivial...I mean hair? really? (but then again, she was a little girl, and she was a brave one. Cancer at an age when the only consequence of the disease you can think of is your impending hair loss? That's a harsh one..)I shouldn't have judged what she asked for, and I shouldn't have been bitter that she got it.
I shouldn't have said that there were people who suffered far more, and deserved this help. It wasn't my place, and I understand that. This is a full apology: I shouldn't have judged whose wishes You grant, and whose wishes You don't. I'm sorry.
        I just think it's unfair that not a hair on that little girl's head fell off (though her health did deteriorate, I heard), when there are homeless veterans, and women in the middle east who can't leave their houses. I just think that suffering and happiness is imbalanced in this world; I wish everyone had the same amount of suffering as they had happiness. I suppose the homeless, and the imprisoned could ask You for help, but they're just so disillusioned by the world; they can't believe in a higher power of goodness because they can't believe in anything. It's always the comfortable and the happy that can believe in God. I mean, I was born a Christian (luckily), and brought up comfortably- only good things happened to me, and that's why I'm so very Christian. I don't know what I would be if I weren't brought up Christian, and good things didn't happen to me. Maybe, I wouldn't believe. I don't really know.
        I want to pray for all those who can't believe, who won't. Life has been tough on them, and I feel guilty leading a better one, and judging them for not calling out to You. I pray for them instead of them. I pray for all of them- can You please make them feel like someone is praying for them? You have a way with those kind of things :)
       
I can't judge people who won't pray, because I know that they deserve miracles too. I'm not angry that that little Christian girl got what she wanted, but I want a little non-Christian girl who has lost her ability to believe to be able to get her miracle too.

I'm a selfish girl myself, but I'd really love for a miracle to happen to a random faithless stranger because I endorsed it. I'm sending my vibes.

Cheers.

Dear God, 

                I just realized how funny I sound, like one of those exclamations mothers (okay older women) make when they're distressed..."Dear God! That child has wet himself again!" Well what else can I say? Anything I write would be just as tacky...

       Anyway. I'm just here to talk about an annoying, piece of interpretation that I read this morning that just won't leave me alone. Here it is, that one passage from Slaughterhouse five by Kurt Vonnegut:

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again: Oh, boy—they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

I don't think this is a flaw in the Christ stories. This is a reiteration of how awesome they actually are. That Christ, who "didn't look like much" (though, personally, I believe that Jesus was that magnetic type, hypnotizing people when he was high, and freaking them when he was low. All evidence shows that Jesus was a bit bipolar...and I mean that in the best possible way! I admire bipolar people- they're the idealistic ones, the ones who believe in their dreams, the ones who fall when they see the real world), was the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe (I prefer calling You God..). Jesus was sent down on Earth as a mere missionary: a wayward, young prophet. You let Your partner be reduced to that (I, for one, am proud of what Jesus is. He felt. He had that fire in Him.
There were so many things about Jesus, so many types of him:
A. The miracle-worker: Tirelessly performed miracles on the ailing because He could, and He really loved them too much to say nothing in the sidelines when he knew of them.
B. The Chosen One: Seeking out the crowds, going from town to town, and showing us the way to eternal life.
C. The Contemplative Quiet One: Who's that sneaking off to the Mount of Olives to pray again?
D. The Brave Young Prophet: Starting fights in the temple in a rage (Religion becoming a profession, and not a philosophy really irked Him), coolly answering the Pharisees, and then preaching His way (a way so contradictory to the leaders of the umm temple?) to the impressed, and awed, bystanders.
E. The Very Very Human One:
"Father, if it is your will, take this cup [of suffering] away from me. However, your will must be done, not mine." Luke 22:42
That was a moment of breaking down...a moment showing just how human Jesus really was.
F. The Loving One: Jesus always preached love- He loved intensely, and passionately. Rebuking Peter when he tried to talk (worldly) sense into Him.

If I'd seen Jesus' eyes, I would be able to say that there was something in them; He was a beautiful disaster waiting to happen; a flower waiting for the right moment to burst into flames....but I haven't seen him, soo nevermind me haha).

I kinda went on a tangent, but in short I want to that Kurt Vonnegut was wrong when he said the problem with the Christ stories is that Jesus was the Son of God. That's the highlight, that the Son of Gd would come down on Earth and show us how to really live. If He was anyone else, it wouldn't have been as authentic..
What people thought when they read that Jesus had been "lynched" is how even the best people cannot survive in the world. This is because the most important detail about Jesus was not that He was the Son of God, but that He was an incredible man. Sometimes it was easy to forget that He was supposed to be the Christ!

Cheers.