Two years ago today, my uncle committed suicide. It's incredible to see the impact this has had on my family.

I've seen open discussions about emotional issues between members of my father's family who have not really talked in years, and certainly not about things like this. I've seen other people pull away and become almost inaccessible. I've seen guilt, and anger, and blame, and tears, and laughter, and serious consideration of what it means.

It's caused my parents, who have always been incredibly open about how much they love us, to stress that even more. We talk about Herman all the time. I've seen my father struggle with a lot of anger towards a man that would dare to kill his brother, whom he loved, knowing all the while that they are the same man. I have heard him tell stories about his brother, and heard the fondness he has for him.

And I have thought about the confusion over my uncle's strong faith and high involvement in his church community, and how even then he committed suicide. I have thought about how important that community is, how that is probably the most important thing. But I have also thought about high expectations and the need for leadership to appear strong and happy and without fault, and how these things can turn even the safest haven into a trap.

I have seen my parents' relationship grow stronger because they were hurting and turned to each other, seen them reinforce their relationship as a safe haven itself. And I've seen them make an effort to turn that love outwards, to myself and my sisters, to my cousins, to my aunts and uncles, to our friends, and I have appreciated it more than you can imagine.

So, Uncle Herman, you stubborn and funny man who never missed a chance to tease me when I was little, we miss you.

Cat, Mehrdad and I went touring around the city today exploring buildings usually closed to the public, thanks to the goodness of Doors Open. Lots of pretty stuff, and more tomorrow! Tragically, my pictures from the 64th floor of Toronto Dominion Centre are mostly obscured by smog and reflections off the thick glass. Beautiful view though, you can see all of the Toronto islands from up there!




I also found this random statue tucked between some office buildings:

This week has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, but I've been thinking of this poem a lot:

Al Purdy: Poem

You are ill and so I lead you away
and put you to bed in the dark room
— you lie breathing softly and I hold your hand
feeling the fingertips relax as sleep comes

You will not sleep more than a few hours
and the illness is less serious than my anger or cruelty
and the dark bedroom is like a foretaste of other darknesses
to come later which all of us must endure alone
but here I am permitted to be with you

After a while in sleep your fingers clutch tightly
and I know that whatever may be happening
the fear coiled in dreams for the bright trespass of pain
there is nothing at all I can do except hold your hand
and not go away

I'm not going to say much about this week, except that I'm hanging out with Chris again. It's complicated, but good.

I'm going to Doors Open this weekend for the first time ever! Somehow, I've managed to be out of the city for it all the other years that I've lived here, or I didn't know about it. It'll be lovely, I'll take lots of pictures (where I'm allowed).

Went to the Toronto Islands today, and it was grey and cold for much of the day, but there was also a large group of people in tutus wishing everyone a happy May Two-Two/Tutu, and that made me laugh.



I've been working on this blanket for baby Fuerth for the last few weeks, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out!



Room 101 Games: Games You Play Sitting Down was a rousing success, and Luba attended with me, and there was a very cute boy there who looked like a cross between Norman Reedus and Nick Moran, and Sanda, you know that's more than reason enough to move to Toronto, so get your butt over here already! No more of this "I'm moving to Hamilton!" nonsense, young lady! :)

Also, on my way over, a crazy woman yelled at me for smiling at another woman, hit me repeatedly with two bags of chips, shouted that she was going to crucify me, and accused me of stealing her dollar. In case you're wondering, bags of chips do little to no damage, and are thus a rather poor weapon of choice. Well, unless you are planning on freaking out at me in public, in which case I highly recommend them.

Yay, something a little brighter! I got to playing with this photo from the picnic in High Park last week, and one thing led to another... Now that I use CSS and SSI, I only need to edit two files to overhaul the whole site, and that makes redesigning very tempting. Something tells me I'm going to be tweaking colours for a while though. I live with two graphic designers, women who expect me to understand the inner workings of colour palettes and Photoshop. Sadly, these things are still a mystery to me. But I will learn!

This Sunday is Games You Play Sitting Down! I'm going to bring Mancala and make strangers play it with me. There will be free snacks and it will be good.

Why We Let An Atheist Join Our Church:

Because life is an ineffable mystery, religion speaks in pictures and symbols. To accept or reject the symbols literally is to miss the point from two different sides. Those who fight over whether God exists are like foolish pedestrians who praise or curse a red light as they step into oncoming traffic. The question isn't whether God exists like a brick exists, but rather "what part of our experience does the symbol 'God' reveal and what parts does it obscure?"

The problem with most religious discussions is that we are usually swimming in a sea of undefined terms. What sense does it make to ask whether God exists if we don't define what we mean by the term "God." For some it's easier to reconcile themselves to the universe by picturing a large person overseeing the process, while others reconcile themselves to the ground by using impersonal elemental images. These approaches are in conflict only when we forget what we are trying to do in the first place, which is to harmonize with the ground of our being...

As William James pointed out, religion is not merely hypothetical opinion about the world. Religion is most essentially a decision to be engaged in a world that cannot be understood and offers no guarantees. "God" is a symbol of the truth that stands outside our widest context. "God" is a symbol of the reality deeper than our ultimate concern. "God" is a symbol of the mystery that lies between the poles of our clearest rational dichotomy. The point is not to affirm the reality of the symbol itself, but to affirm the reality to which the symbol points.

More and more, I'm starting to think that the liberal religious people are onto something. There's this treatment of God as a symbol and not an actual being (sort of) that I've been completely unfamiliar with, and I'm starting to see how it could be useful.

It's funny, I find myself identifying less and less with the online atheist community. So many of them are so reactionary and so hateful towards religious people. I understand that they're angry, and I understand that most of them don't live in a place as open and varied as Toronto, a place where I can be religious or non-religious without any consequence. I don't envy the bible-belt dwellers! But then I see discussions about how they find it impossible to have respect for theists and I can't believe what I'm reading. I just don't get it. Maybe because I remember how natural it was to believe in God. How could I lose respect for theists without losing respect for myself? It wasn't so long ago that I was one.

I found the Internet Infidels discussion forum to be really helpful when I was first leaving Christianity, but now it seems silly to me. There are so many arguments that I've seen rehashed over and over for years. I don't need to rant about all of that anymore. I'm significantly less angry, and I'm starting to see more variations of Christianity, variations that I would be much more comfortable with than the evangelical sort that I grew up with. I do find it interesting that these variations use practically the same vocabulary, but they use it so differently, and it makes it almost impossible to get a discussion going between the two. So many of the rants I find online are so simplistic, they assume that all Christians are like this, and all atheists are like that, and it just doesn't work that way. There are so many ways of being Christian, and so many ways of being atheist, and even some ways of being both.

I've been thinking about grad school lately, and considering an ethnographic study of evangelical culture. It would be a good project, almost guaranteed to get funding, but every time I think about it, I cringe inside and think, "I'm never going to get away from them, am I? Isn't it time I move on? I would have to go to church!" I was talking a friend last weekend who used to be Christian (like practically all my friends from home, you bunch of heathens!) and who said that he never thinks about it anymore. I don't know how he manages it—I think about these things constantly. Sometimes I wish I could just turn it off.

Fistful of Love by Antony and the Johnsons is simultaneously absolutely beautiful and incredibly creepy.

Someone got to my website today by googling for "bad things about terpstras in canada". For the record, there is nothing bad to say about Terpstras, particularly Canadian Terpstras, at least in my experience. I lived on residence with a Terpstra who had a party barn back home on the farm (a barn for PARTYING, completely separate from the barn for WORKING), and who lent me baler twine when I needed it for a prank. You can't go wrong with mischievous Dutch boys!

Also, Heather B. Armstrong says "crayon" totally wrong. "CROWN"? Crazy Americans.

This is what happens when you ask Metafilter whether or not you should become Christian. You could also ask Metafilter how we know whether or not the Bible is fiction. Look! Atheists and Christians engaging in snark! Everyone gets offensive AND defensive! The internet is fun! Actually, there were some constructive comments in both threads, moreso than I expected. Still not as useful as this thread on losing faith, which was quite nice (four years ago!).

I've been working from home the last couple of weeks, and while it's good in that I don't have to sit in a freezing office and I don't have an hour-long commute, it's bad in that my bed is so close to my desk, and also my books and my roommates and my snacks and oh! so many distractions! Maybe I will start taking my computer to a coffee shop and doing work from there, without Internet access. That would cut out 90% of my distractions in one fell swoop.

Tonight was Indian food at Dhaba (very good!) and a date at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra with Linda and Kathy. Ah, a reason to dress up! And a reason to gaze at a certain trombonist! Secretly, the symphony only costs $12 if you're 29 or under, thanks to the tsoundcheck program. Yet another reason that I (and my meager budget) love this city! Oh, and this dress I wore tonight? This dress with undeniable inherent sauciness? Yeah, that was only $20. I paid in cash and therefore paid no tax—yay for Chinatown!



Tonight's music at the symphony included:

1. Sinfonietta, Op.52 by Albert Roussel
2. Sinfonia concertante in E-flat Major for Violin and Viola, K. 364 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
3. Symphony No. 100 in G Major, "Military," by Franz Joseph Haydn
4. Overture to La gazza ladra by Gioacchino Rossini

I hadn't heard Roussel before, and I quite liked it. I'm going to have to hunt around for some mp3s. The Rossini piece made me really wish I was still in a concert band. It looked like so much fun to play!

Who knew that the most interesting thing I've read about true love all week would be in Dinosaur Comics? Utahraptor, you may be on to something!

Digit Jones (technophile) vs Sarah Bellum (librarian with attitude). The librarian prevailed!


Sadly, most of the rest of my photos are just blurs of motion, especially the ones of the amateur fights, because those girls are crazy!

The PFL was really funny. According to the program they gave us, the original Pillowfighters were members of Skin Tight Outta Sight, a Toronto burlesque troupe. Now, knowing me, I'm going to watch it with a bit of an academic bent, so I'm watching all of these female archetypes come into the ring -- the sassy diner waitress, the stern librarian, the Veronica Mars type with all the gadgets, the Martha Stewart type, the trailer park chick, the backbiting model, the feisty Asian, the sultry Eastern princess, the mystery woman, the catwoman. I might have to research burlesque stuff a bit more, see what's going on there. At first glance, it looks like an overt and tough female sexuality picks up a lot of the stereotypical male attributes. The fighting, the spitting, the harassment of the ref, etc. I do have to admit that the female role I was most interested in was the woman who was running around all night giving instructions to all the men—she was never on-stage, had no public role, but she was clearly in charge. If this place is run by a woman, why are all the speakers (Fight Commissioner, Announcer, Ref) male? Maybe she just knows that that's what will work the crowd up the most. Or, maybe it has to do with the fact that deep voices are easier to hear over the crowd.

Other than that, it was just a lot of fun. Very entertaining! :)

York has started referring to me as a graduand, a funny little word that I have only ever encountered in my previous jobs assisting with York's convocations. Basically, you are a student while you are in studies, a graduand when you have finished but have not yet been conferred a degree, and a graduate after the degree is conferred. How curious that we would have a term for that! A quick look at the OED tells me that it's a gerundive of 'graduare' ('to graduate') from Medieval Latin, and that we also have a word 'graduatical,' meaning 'Of or pertaining to graduates.' This seems like an over-abundance of graduation-specific terms. Also, my access to the OED is going to be terminated after I move from graduand to graduate status, and I feel like playing around with it while it's available.

Cat and I had a picnic today in High Park. It simply had to be done! The trees are in bloom, the ducks are swimming around, the sky is a brilliant blue, and there's no way I could have spent today in a cold little office. When there's a huge beautiful park, a picnic blanket, and weather like this, you just have to go for it. :)

Practically every night, I go out with people and at some point, I look around and think, "I didn't know any of these people last semester. How very odd." Tonight, I didn't know any of these people two weeks ago. Has it always been this easy to meet people? What have I been doing for the last four years?

I feel myself changing. I keep thinking about how things could have been different—if Chris and I hadn't broken up, if I hadn't moved in with Agnes and Sam, if I hadn't gone to the poetry reading last week and met all these new people, etc.—would I be a different person? Even just slightly?

And farther back, what if I wouldn't have joined that crazy church in high school? What if I hadn't had friends/family who weren't Christian? What if I had taken something other than Linguistics? What if I hadn't known so many friends' parents who died of sickness or suicide (seven off the top of my head)? What if I would have taken different jobs and never met those work friends? What if I would have managed to stay Christian? What if I hadn't been raised in the church at all?

Would I still be me? What is me and what is my circumstances, my influences?

It's such a comforting thought right now that I am not the same person I was in December. I was not happy then. I'm feeling so much better recently! I'm realising that this doesn't stop, that we are always changing. My father sometimes talks to me about growing older, and the young man inside him looks out at me, startled at the idea that his daughter could be twenty-five years old. "But I don't feel older," he says, marvelling at it. I can't deny it; I've watched my parents change just as much as I have over the last three years. Their knowledge of what they're capable of, the way they interact with each other, their plans for the future, it's all still changing (for the better!). It's funny that this is a surprising realisation for me, but I think we all have this childhood notion that adults know exactly what they're doing. It's strange to realise that we're all still growing up, the whole time.

P.S. George Bowering was absolutely enjoyable tonight. I only wish he had read longer!
P.P.S. J'aime Jean Leloup!
I lost my baby:
Ah! Je ne peux pas vivre sans toi (Ah! I can't live with you)
Et je ne peux vivre avec toi (And I can't live without you)
Mais tu peux trés bien vivre sans moi (But you can live very well without me)
Je suis foutu dans les deux cas (I'm screwed either way)

The Pillow Fight League: Yet another reason to fall in love with Toronto. Real women. Real fights. Real funny.

Dub Poets Collective: I can't go to their reading on Saturday because I have to dress up all saucy with Linda and Kathy and lust after a certain trombone player at the symphony, but in the future, I'm totally there. According to Wikipedia:

Dub Poetry is a form of performance poetry consisting of spoken word over reggae rhythms, that originated in Jamaica in the 1970s. Unlike Dee Jaying (also known as Toasting or Chatting) which also features the use of the spoken word, the Dub Poet's performance is normally pre-prepared, rather than the extemporised chat of the Dancehall Dee Jay, and in many cases the Dub Poet will appear on stage with a band performing music specifically written to accompany their poems, rather than simply perform over the top of dub plates in the Dancehall fashion.

Dub poetry is mostly of an overtly political and social nature, with none of the braggadocio often associated with the dancehall. The odd love-song or elegy appears, but dub poetry is predominantly concerned with politics and social justice, commonly voiced through a commentary on current events (and in this it does share much with Dancehall and 'Conscious' or 'Roots' [reggae] music).

Tomorrow I'm going to hear George Bowering read his poetry at the Art Bar Poetry Series. I'll also be going to a book club meeting and playing chinese checkers. It should be a good night!

Today I got the Feeling Good Handbook, a cognitive therapy book that has been recommended about a billion times on Ask Metafilter. I haven't been feeling depressed lately, but I feel like I could go that way if I'm not careful, what with my friends being busy or moving and finishing school and everything changing. Friends are having babies and getting married and starting new jobs, and I'm ... not sure what I'm doing. So I'm deciding to work through this book, maybe figure some stuff out, and to keep looking around for new people to hang out with.

The weather's been so nice lately! Even when it was raining last night, it was a NICE rain. I'm going to enjoy this while it lasts, before the humid smog of summer sets in.

What the Left Behind Series Really Means: Article on implications of the popularity of the Left Behind series (fundamentalist Christian end times fiction) for American culture. "If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of the last book in the Left Behind series, Glorious Appearing, and publish it across the Middle East, Americans would go beserk. Yet tens of millions of Christians eagerly await and celebrate an End Time when everyone who disagrees with them will be murdered in ways that make Islamic beheading look like a bridal shower."

DKT International: Social marketing used to make condoms available and affordable in the third world, easing poverty by making family planning possible, and reducing the spread of AIDS. Brought to you by the same people who run Adam and Eve, one of North America's largest online sex toy retailers. I heard an interview on the CBC a few weeks ago by the guy who runs both of these, and it was very interesting. I would totally work for DKT, that's awesome.

I've been updating Faith Dissolved a bit. Not sure how much more I'll add, but I figured I'd give you all a heads up. Reading old journals is a perilous thing. Also added a section from bpNichol's journal, a book that all of you are more than welcome to buy for me if you can find it anywhere. It's out of print now, and I'm so tempted to steal one from York. They have three, after all.

The last episode of LOST was insane. Poor Hurley. I won't put spoilers up, but Doug, we must discuss. Find me on MSN!

1. All Things Go: Sleep Mixtape - I will be watching this mp3 blog based on this mix alone.
2. Andrew Bird's Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs - lovely!
3. The Art Bar Poetry Reading Series at the Victory Café - next week, George Bowering is reading!
4. The always unsettling but not unwelcome realisation that new friends are reading my website. Uh, hi! (frantically thinking about what I have written lately)
5. Dim sum was consumed yesterday for the first time, and it was good, and I burned my mouth and laughed at boys.
6. I ran into a friend from my first year of bible college at the OCAD Graduate Exhibit and got updates on various Kitchener-Waterloo friends. Also, I was looking through sketchbooks at this event and recognising people from parties at our house.
7. We're starting to really plan for Janice's bridal shower now. We're really old enough for this, aren't we? Gosh.
8. It is warm and I want to wear skirts, but my office is freezing. I have an emergency sweater in my office, and I use it every day. How am I supposed to type when my hands are shivering?
9. I'm reading Self by Yann Martell and it's excellent, but I must have forgotten to read the back before starting it because I was totally thrown off-guard by the narrator changing gender half-way through the book. It was a bit startling.

York sent me a letter today saying that they're giving me a rather substantial bursary. Also, my tax return this year is pretty sweet. You know that old joke about needing the universe to give you a sign, like a large deposit in a Swiss bank account in your name? I'm not sure what this sign means, but I'm hearing it loud and clear!



Added an excerpt of Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm. This book is only about sixty pages, and I've read it countless times. When I was Christian, it bothered me because she writes things like, "Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split." It bothered me because her god was not my God. Now I find it equally challenging because she has a god at all. However, in sixty pages, she manages to weave metaphors and symbols in such a way that I notice something new and powerful every time I read it. Maybe it resonates with me because it draws on Christian symbolism, on myths that I've always been familiar with. Somehow my lack of faith doesn't preclude me from an interest in the holy.

I've been getting in theological discussions a lot in the last couple of months, and I'm always torn about it. On one hand, I have this left-over interest in it, and a lot of background reading. On the other hand, isn't it time that I be getting past this? Why do I still spend time on it? What does an atheist care about the Garden of Eden?

They're not the typical "oh yeah? well, you're wrong!" type of atheist-christian 'debates.' I'm in the "have you heard about liberation theology? process theology? how does that work with feminism? are we considering heaven/hell to be physical places?" types of discussions, mulling over whether it's possible (or desireable!) to redeem patriarchal stories in the Hebrew texts. I'm being challenged to consider the power of symbol and myth as explanatory tools, not as "truth."

I'm considering reading the Gospels again. It's been over two years since I read the Bible regularly, and I think the anger has died down to a point where I might be able to read it without quite the same level of fury. Frankly, I'm curious what Jesus might seem like now. I keep talking to people who say they look up to him as a moral teacher of some kind, but I can't think of much he said that was original. I understand the desire for a Christ figure, but when you strip the myth of doctrines like original sin or an afterlife, I'm not sure what else Jesus has to say, besides the ever-ridiculous sentiment that hate is the same as murder and lust is the same as infidelity. I can't say I find that incredibly useful.

Just don't get any ideas that I'm reconverting. I know there are people back home who are "expressing concern" about the state of my soul. Oh you silly people, cleverly disguising your gossip in Christianese. If only I had the snarkiness to hand it right back to them. Of course, if I were to try to convert them to my way of thinking, that would just be rude. When they do it to me, it's because they care about me. Nice how that works, eh?