This is a morning for illuminations and green tea. I think illuminations are almost like revelations, only on a smaller, but on a more enlightening scale. They're sort of more practical and less divine by status, but equally amazing in nature. Carson McCullers (a brilliant Southern author, perhaps most famous for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter) said this about writing:

"It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses. … I understand only particles. I understand the characters, but the novel itself is not in focus. The focus comes at random moments which no one can understand, least of all the author. For me, they usually follow great effort. To me, these illuminations are the grace of labor. All of my work has happened this way. It is at once the hazard and the beauty that a writer has to depend on these illuminations. After months of confusion and labor, when the idea has flowered, the collusion is Divine.”

I think life is an unfurling floral vision like that. It is not restrained to a specific season, but it wanders throughout hearts of time, blossoming in fragments. Anyway....

It is Mother's Day, it is also Sunday, and I am not at church and will not be. This is a habitual realization, and not considered odd. The last time I was at church was Easter. I went to Believer's with my family, and, to be loquacious on a level of sheer truth, it was almost not worth going to for. A part of my soul feels terrible for sitting here in my pjs and eating icecream like I've mistaken today for yesterday. But really, I have never stopped loving God - that is impossible. I have only stopped supporting, what I believe to be in some ways, fallacies. I have never been a "church" person. And perhaps that is because church has never been a God thing. If I could find a church, I would be entirely blissful, but another visit to Believer's would crush me. I don't understand the influx of diehard Believer's fans. Rarely, and I am talking about rarely, do I ever glean anything applicable from a sermon. I am so incredibly sick of insincerity. And I think the world is as well, perhaps not the vast majority I see flocking to ride the half million dollar Carousel (a frivolous new addition to Grace Fellowship Church, but the minority of contemplative hearts, with quiet needs of sincere comprehension.

Friday I went to my friend's graduation. The speaker was the youth pastor for 180. Two minutes into his speech, it was a religious bromide. Sure he's cool, he's hip, he's on the same level of communication with kids, and I don't doubt he loves God, but why does he have to speak like he's a man on caffeine pills, trying to hard to address the audience as if they were kindergartners with enormously short attention spans? Halfway through I turned to my friend and said "This is why I haven't been to church in a while."

I find generalities extremely insulting. Just because my age leads me to fall into the "teenager" category, does not mean that I am a hyperactive fool, who cannot sit still and listen to something imperative without being entertained for 85 percent of the time.

Although, I am not Catholic,and do not agree with their doctrine, I have always found the Catholic churches to be located in the core of sincerity. There is something immense about a Catholic church, something so serene and undemanding and revealing. There is ancient fascination surrounding their traditions that produces a comfort and a trust. I dunno.

I'm talking to Alex right now. The whole religion rambling has kind of disconnected and now my crazy mind is flying on to different subjects.