bye bye bye

About me: I've never wanted to be buff. Strong is fine, but I'd rather stay lean. No big muscles, no desire for them.

Today I saw maybe a few dozen naked people on and off bikes. This made me think of a lot of things. 1. I feel pretty comfortable supporting public nudity. 2. Bodies are sweet. Men and women bodies. I don't mean that in a sexual way, since I'm just not sexually attracted to men, but I really do appreciate bodies in general, and I'm fascinated by how they work and move. 3. It bothers me when I hear both men and women say that men's bodies are ugly, as a rule, or just not attractive. Not common to hear, maybe, but I've definitely heard that point of view, and reject it.

It's becoming harder and harder for me to understand the desire in many Christian circles to avoid certain materials because of explicit sexuality, violence, cruelty, darkness, or confusion. Perhaps I'm understanding more and more how reading or viewing those materials has helped my understanding of life, myself, God, and others, and how they've helped me to heal in some ways. I just think it's important that the stories we tell are stories about actual life, which means they touch on the dark and confusing aspects of life alongside life's goodness. Then again, some things are just trashy.

Last saturday morning I got a phone call that one of my friends had been killed in an accident. I've never had someone that close to me die before. Here's something I was talking about with one of my friends, though: it's important to not lose track of Patrick by trying to remember him. Patrick was great, and I love(d) him, but he wasn't superhuman, and trying to turn him into a superhuman figure actually reduces who he was and is just not accurate. I knew some of his darker sides, too, and love those parts of him, and I think acknowleding those aspects of him along with why he was so sweet actually honors him way more than anything else I could do. And yet...I can recognize that with death we recognize what is actually important about a person, and that the parts of Patrick that were unpleasant or annoying are just not very important in light of his death.

Happy solstice, everyone.