Are You a Dirty Mennonite?

Heehee.... here's another quiz.... my results weren't too surprising, but I am only 27% Mennonite (if I was full blown I'd be a very dirty Mennonite indeed) .... Forward this to your Mennonite friends!!

Click here...

Quizzical (Revised)

You know those little quizes you can take.... the "What's My Personality?" quiz, the "What's My IQ?" quiz, the "What Does My Room Say About Me?" quiz, the "What's My Shopping Style?" quiz... (excuse me while I puke)... [Ok, to be honest, I have taken the IQ quiz and various personality quizzes in my lifetime, but I will NOT take a shopping quiz.]

Well, here's a quiz with a little more substance; at least it gets us thinking about theological issues and our views. Granted, some of the answer choices are far apart from the others, leaving little middle of the road options, but they're all right for the most part. And you can choose "Not sure." Basically, it's a "Which Denomination Would Fit Me Best?" quiz. (Because it's all about me, right?) Kind of fun. Especially if you manipulate answers your second time through to really wacky choices and see which denominations are the wackiest!

Click on this...

(And if, perchance, you don't like to be pigeonholed into a particular denomination, you may find the article "Christian Protoypes" in my April archives to be helpful - it is a very insightful depiction of categorizing Christians .... 'cause hey, we know we're not all the same!)

My Results...
1: Presbyterian/Reformed (100%)
2: Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England (92%)
3: Congregational/United Church of Christ (87%)
4: Eastern Orthodox (83%)
5: Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic) (80%)
6: Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God (61%)
7: Lutheran (56%)
8: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (56%)
9: Church of Christ/Campbellite (47%)
10: Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist (46%)
11: Seventh-Day Adventist (46%)
12: Roman Catholic (43%)
13: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (27%)

Strange... I made one or two changes when I took the test again today, and all of a sudden I'm more Presbyterian/Reformed than Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic)... who knew...

Lisa, on the possibility of adopting a retired Greyhound dog

"I think it would be ugly enough to be able to love if it was my own. "

Dihydrogen Monoxide Numbers

Got water?
$46 billion - Amount spent per year globally on bottled water
$1.7 billion - Amount needed per year beyond current spending to provide clean drinking water to everyone on earth
More than one billion - Number of people worldwide who lack reliable access to safe drinking water
80 - Percentage of world illnesses due to water-borne diseases

Source: Sojourners SojoMail, The New York Times

Big My Secret

I found the most intriguing, beautiful, and heartwrenching blog... and I barely know how to describe it. One guy has invited people to share their secret. The rules are that it must be true and it must be something they've never told anyone else and they can write it on a homemade postcard and mail it in to him, where he posts the images and secrets on his blog.

The website is www.postsecret.blogspot.com.

Some of the secrets make me chuckle; most make me cry. And, like some of the comments at the bottom of the site attest, I haven't felt this much compassion for strangers in a long time. There's something about finding out that other people are also human -- also vulnerable, also afraid, also sorting through these strange and unpredictable experiences of life -- that endears me to them. It's easier to love them and accept them. I'm convinced that's why Christ wants us to live in community, because we all know how hard it is to love others when they're strangers and seem to have nothing in common with us. When we have shared experiences though (hurts, traumas, dreams, and goals) we can better sympathize and empathize... in other words, show grace.

Some who have written comments about the site indicated that they did a similar thing: wrote or decorated a postcard and mailed in their secret, and expressed that it was incredibly freeing for their secret to finally be out, even if it was anonymous. Another person wrote that she did the same with friends -- they sat in a circle, each wrote down a secret and put it in a hat, and then took turns reading the secrets, and then owning them. And she said the resulting conversationg was better than any therapy session could ever be. One person calls PostSecret "a beautiful sorrow, a virtual wailing wall."

Of course this makes me question, What's my secret? And, Should I tell? Will someone recognize my writing and know it's me? I can remember two separate instances offhand where two different people shared with me something very personal, something that not many (if any) others knew. And I remember their reservation and guardedness as they told me. But in those two instances, I decided to tell them each a story of something similar that had happened to me, a way that I could relate to them. So I told them each a Big Secret of mine, something that I had never told anyone. And I will never forget the look of relief on their faces that there was someone else who understood and had experienced their sense of fear and guilt. I hope that people who send their postcard to PostSecret also get that shared feeling and know that they aren't alone. Because isn't that such a crafty thing that Satan does? We know our sin is bad in the first place, but then he convinces us that we're the only ones who do it and we had better not tell anyone, ever.

That makes me want to tell everyone my secrets and be completely transparent. So let's whisper to each other our secrets some time. Or write them on a card and have a little group therapy session. Or maybe instead of that I'll send one in to PostSecret.

Priceless

There's really something to be said for reading instructions. On high school exams, especially departmentals, we learned to read instructions and we suffered the consequences (ie. a wrong answer) if we didn't. I generally pride myself on being an instruction reader. When I get a new gadget or piece of equipment or something that I'm not exactly sure how to operate, I read the instruction manual first. I pretty much never just wing it, because it's important to me to do it properly.

Tonight I was minding my own business, paying some bills online when I did the stupidest banking thing I've done in a long time, and ALL because I didn't read the instructions. Hey, I've done this a million times, click, click, click, bill paid.... WRONG bill paid. Try $300 paid to a credit card that had no balance! [Cue Michelle being frustrated and wanting to wring someone's neck... except that I had no one to blame but myself and no one's neck to wring but my own .... But I'm not one for self-mutilation, so cue Michelle swearing and yelling.]

I called my bank. It would take 7-10 days just to get the request to the credit card company, let alone receive the money back into my account. I called the credit card company, but it will take 8 days for them to make a payment to the other credit card company or to refund the money to my account. In the meantime I have a bill that needs paying, but thank God there's no interest and I still have the money to make a sizable payment on it.

So my lack-of-reading-instructions-leading-to-great-frustration really didn't turn out to be a horrendous problem. Here's where I could leave off with "Rest assured I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world," or do the Bible school thing of ending every story with a little lesson of what God taught me. I'm not going to do that here, because I'm still annoyed with the whole situation, but the truth is that I'm prideful and too easily frustrated at times.

So rest assured I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world!