Resurrection > Zombies

About a year ago I read a blog post by some blogger that I was not familiar with and therefore cannot recall who the blogger was. It was just a one-time reading-thing, you know? Her post stayed with me, though. That is because her post was about a conversation she had with her husband after driving past a cemetery titled Resurrection Cemetery. The thing is, she and her husband had a discussion about why a cemetery would have such a title because to them, resurrection equals zombies. At the time I found it a bit odd that this blogger really had so little knowledge of the Christian doctrine. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me that somebody who didn't practice Christianity wouldn't really get it.

Then I saw this post on Fail Blog. And I knew a blog post was in order.

So first I checked out Dictionary.com's definition of resurrection because I figured it might be really basic and shed some light on the Christian concept, but it doesn't really. In fact, I found the definitions to be rather useless in defining the theological aspect.

In short, Christ was resurrected and Christians believe that everyone will be one day. That means we will all get our bodies back, just like Christ did. Now, Christ was resurrected after three days in a tomb, and when he was resurrected he did not come back as a zombie. He came back in a glorified state, and his choice of food was fish and honeycomb. It is important to note that Christ's body was not decayed; it was perfected. This means that after all of mankind is resurrected, we will all be able to enjoy our bodies in a glorified state of perfection. There are numerous cemeteries titled Resurrection Cemetery. (FindAGrave lists 71, but I'm sure there are more that are not included on the website.) The title serves as a reminder that death is temporary; not only will we live again, but we will live again with perfected bodies, and all of the physical ailments we endure in this life will be gone.

Uncanny Resemblance

Tonight we watched Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, which neither of us had ever seen. To be honest, it didn't do a whole lot for me. I'll take Rear Window or Vertigo any day.

One thing that did amuse me. As soon as I saw this character:

I thought of this one:
Agreed?

The SLDs

I have two older brothers. One has gotten a lot of face time (or at least mentioning-time) on my blog. (Here. Here. Here. Here. Here.) He is John. He is about eleven years my senior.

My other older brother is Steve(n). He is only nineteen months older than I am. Almost all of my childhood memories involve him. And yet I don't talk about him much on my blog. This is because I don't talk TO him very much. He lives in Texas, about a block away from my folks. He has one very adorable little baby, and an awesome wife whom he has been friends with since he was 12. She and I were also very good friends in high school.

When Steve and I were little, we played together all the time. I don't remember what we played, but we played. He teased me mercilessly. I always wanted to hang out with his friends. Before he started kindergarten my mom started teaching him to read, and I was jealous that I was not also getting reading lessons that my mom started teaching me at that time too. Pretty soon I caught up to Steven, but right before I was almost caught up to him, my mom had him practice reading with me. We had a book that had several short stories that were perfect for learning to read, and one was about a monkey and a bee. We loved that story.

When we were very small our family had to refer to the Disney film Robin Hood as "R.H." because we loved to watch it as often as possible. Steven introduced me to The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I remember this distinctly because I loved to watch Sesame Street which came on at the same time as The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I thought his show was pretty dumb, but pretty soon I discovered that The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was totally radical, and Sesame Street was for babies. When we pretended to be Ninja Turtles, I was Donatello, the purple turtle whose weapon was big sticks. Steven was... either Leonardo (blue with a sword?) or Raphael (red with two little knives?). I can't remember what he liked to be. But we both agreed that Michaelangelo (orange with nun chucks) was the coolest of the turtles.

We also loved to watch Johnny Dangerously. I don't remember what it was about, but we sure thought it was awesome.

As we got older, I drove Steven crazier and crazier. This, in turn, drove our mom crazier and crazier. We learned to fight quietly to stay out of trouble.

At our church, each year there was an annual one-day conference for kids who were 12 and 13. This was basically to make up for the fact that the 12-13 year-olds were part of the youth group but were excluded from the weekend-long conference that happened for the older kids. Ordinarily the conference was held at such a time that we wouldn't have both been the right ages to go, but the dates were changed. My first conference happened to be his third, which meant we would be going together. At the end of the conference there was a dance. We decided we would make up a dance to do together sometime in the middle of the dance. We spent weeks making up our dance. It was completely ridiculous. We composed it and performed it in front of our mom. I think she was probably just glad that we were getting along. We performed our dance during the dance. Nobody really seemed to notice.

We were champion wheel-barrow racers. One time we were having some activity with the youth of our church which involved wacky relay-races. Steve and I DOMINATED the wheel-barrow portion of our race, but I don't think either of us told anybody that we actually wheel-barrowed around the house reasonably often.

In high school I'm pretty sure Steven didn't really like me. But sometimes he would go out of his way to embarrass me, so maybe deep-down he really did like me.

Usually the embarrassment consisted of him "walking me to class." That is, he would wrap his arm around me and announce rather loudly, "Excuse me, please, coming through! I've got to get my little sister to class! Yes, excuse us. Excuse us. We're on our way to class! Don't want to be late now." And then he would deposit me AT MY DESK and sometimes even leave me with a kiss on the cheek.

We often went to church dances in the same groups of friends. He usually would dance at least one dance with me. We always sang really loudly when we danced to U2's With or Without You.

After Steven graduated from high school, I was suddenly pretty cool again. We did lots of stuff together. Sometimes he would take me to lunch at the restaurant where he worked. Sometimes people would think I was his girlfriend. This freaked both of us out. Sometimes people told us that we definitely looked related. Other people told us we didn't look anything alike. I tend to think somewhere down the middle.

As siblings we couldn't be much more different than we are, but maybe some people would argue with you. I know Rhonda used to always comment on things that I did or said just like him.

These days Steven and I don't interact together a whole lot. We certainly aren't as close as we were in my last two years of high school (and his first two years out of high school), but I often think back on these (and many other) memories, and I remember that I'm a pretty lucky kid sister.

Feelings

Disclaimer 1: This is a late-night-I-have-lots-on-my-mind post. You've been warned.

Disclaimer 2: This post is in no way meant to be a criticism about anyone. It is merely observations of myself and differences people often have.

Disclaimer 3: This post has too many disclaimers, but I am going to publish it anyway. Because I used to be less inhibited about the things I said on my blog, but since having more readers I have found myself more and more reserved. If only for tonight, I am returning to some inhibitions. You should probably just stop reading.

Most of my life when I have been around somebody whose feelings have been hurt or somebody who is upset, I was the hurter or upsetter. Sensitivity has never been a strong point of mine. I usually wasn't purposely trying to hurt anybody, but it happened a lot more than I'd really care to admit. Which is why it surprises me that there have been a handful of times lately where I have been around a person who is upset in which I was not the cause. In some ways, this may be proof of my progress as an individual to be more aware of other people's feelings and the babble that comes shooting out of my mouth before I stop to think about that babble. In that aspect, it makes me happy. But in my experiences in the last six months or so, I have learned that even though I am more sensitive than I used to be, I still feel really incapable in areas of emotions.

That is, I still feel like I don't really get people. I just think entirely different than everyone else. Or at least that's how it seems. (I really am thinking about a number of experiences that I've had in about the last six months, both recent and far past). And in almost all of these experiences, I've expected a person to feel a certain way and been completely wrong. Generally, the person is upset, and I can understand why they are upset, or so I think. But when the person really starts discussing it with me, I realize that I was completely wrong to begin with. It has really dawned on me that everyone is really different. We all have such different backgrounds that it's nearly impossible for all of us to feel the exact same way about the exact same situations. And yet I still find myself sometimes being quite surprised/intrigued by the way somebody feels or reacts to a certain situation.

Example: A person is worried about what people will think about them. My thoughts? First of all, nobody is actually going to think that about you. And who cares if they do?

It is apparent that I sometimes just don't get it. And honestly, I don't know if there are times when I ever really will get it. But I have learned much better how to just listen and try to get it. Usually I feel completely inept.

I think this is why I don't talk to people a whole lot about my own feelings, besides happiness. Everyone gets happiness. Usually I don't even get my own feelings, and I find that a lot of times other people don't really get me either. I can think of a handful of times in which I have discussed a troubling situation with somebody, and the person responds with sensitively stated sentiments about how that probably makes me feel, and they are off. I just don't feel the way I am expected to feel about the event. So obviously, I am the anomaly in this whole feelings business. I see things from a very different lens than most of the people I know.

Now all of this is not to say that I want people to avoid me with talks of feelings. I really don't mind talking with people I care about who are having a difficult time (either with life events or with a particular person). I really appreciate that you trust me as a friend, confidant and calmer-downer. I apologize that I don't always get why you feel a certain way, but I am always capable of listening.

And as I listen my eyes will be opened to the fact that we human beings are all very different individuals, which will give me opportunities to learn how to better operate with my fellow humans, especially the ones I love the most. And maybe I will gradually begin to feel like a normal person.

Doorbell ditching

Look at what just showed up at our door. (Yes, just. At 11. Don't worry 12 is our bedtime.)

Inside the bag was another bag wrapped around two candles and two knives.

And the knives have me utterly perplexed. Who would just give away two knives? Was the bag wrapped around the knives just so they wouldn't cut up the bag that was holding the carving tools? Is this one of those pass-along things? If it was, there is not letter indicating such, and no ghost sign for us to put in our window so other givers do not target us again. Also, we only have two days left to give it away!

Well, we are going to have fun carving anyhow! Thanks, stranger!