[imported from the livejournal and backdated]
Bleeding again. Not fun. Hope it goes away soon and is not my period coming back >_<
Last
night was call the parents night - although Josh kinda forgot coz he
was watching a movie. He usually calls first and then I'll call coz
Christmas Island is one hour behind Perth time.
Uncle Mike
actually answered the phone coz he was the only one to hear it, they
were doing some kinda kareoke night at my parents' place o_O I had a
brief chat about motherhood with him (he asked, specifically, how am I
finding motherhood), he would remember best I guess, he has two little
boys aged 5 and 7. Or something like that. Maybe a bit older, I don't
remember.
I had a really nice long conversation with my mother
about a whole lot of things, and eventually (inevitably perhaps) the
conversation turned towards baptism.
We'd had the question before from absolutely everyone. "When is he going to get baptised?"
The
original response to that question was "He's not." This was met by
barely contained outrage on both sides of the family (it was probably
barely contained by my look, I seem to be really good at the "You'll be
wasting your breath" look). I don't believe in "forcing" a child into a
religion which is what baptism in the Christian sense comes across as
being. You get some cold water poured over your head, priest says
you're a few words and WHAM you're a Christian (enter whatever
denomination in front of it) and you're expected to act like one and
believe whatever they believe. Everyone else is wrong. I didn't like
that and figured that if Tiny had any religious inclinations he could
pick the one he got along with best. After all I was "born" Christian
and all the stuff I do seems to be a lot closer to some forms of
paganism.
Anyway my mum gave me a book all about Christian
baptism which I flicked through but never actually read and told me to
think about it.
So I did.
I've recently read The Da Vinci Code
by ... erm ... Dan Brown I think. There's a bit in there where he's
decribing how Christianity was deliberately masculinised by a bunch of
stupid [censored coz parentage might be reading ;)] way back when (which
is why although I think there is a fair bit of artistic license taken
to make the fiction interesting, I think the Bible is a bunch of great
stories documenting how a certain religion came about and am rather
amused by the zealots that take it at face value). In the book it's
reckoned that God (by the name given in the Bible, I can't remember what
name it was) lived under the temple in Jerusalem (I think, yeesh I suck
at this) with "his" female counterpart who had a long name. But when
they re/wrote the Bible they kinda conveniently forgot to add this female
counterpart in, otherwise it would defeat the purpose of trying to
create a monotheistic patriarchal religion, or maybe the Christian god
really is that patriarchal (though I'm more inclined to believe the
former considering the glaring discrepancies between Old and New
Testament...they shouldn't have let me do Bible study type stuff if they
wanted me to unquestioningly swallow everything they tried to put
across as some kind of supreme truth). Alternately they may have
stumbled onto the concept of a living universe, conveniently labelled it
"God" and decided it was male because they're stupid.
How true or otherwise this is I have no way of finding out and no real
desire to. I believe in a whole lot of gods and goddesses. I think
"God" is a convenient term to describe that something in Absolutely
Everything (though humans have a nasty habit of trying to make
themselves special by saying that they have this something and other
races/religions/creeds/animals don't).
I have no real issue with
the religion, just with the church. It's stuffy and doesn't practise
what it preaches and I think it's just there as a control mechanism.
All religions have almost everything in common, just the deities have
different names and the rituals vary, but the underlying message is
almost always the same.
The people at kung fu or who know about
related philosophies smile and say "cool" or something along those
lines when we tell them what we named our baby. Everyone else, once
they finally manage to get over that it's not "Dale" (I was pronouncing
it Tay-o so I can see how they could make the mistake, then switched to
Taa-oh but people are still managing to make the mistake o_O Probably
because I use a sound that's partway between "t" and "d") they want to
know what it means. The answer me and Josh usually give these people is
"Everything" or "Balance" or "The Way" and let them figure it out if
they feel the inclination to. We are trying to work everything to
something like a yinyang and lead a happy balance in life in general,
say in having enough of the modern life (electricity, cars, computers,
running water etc) to be comfortable but taking care of the environment
as much as possible (cloth nappies, we're trying really hard to set up a
waterwise permaculture garden, recycling, not littering, trying hard
not to beat up anyone who does etc), art in my case of having the hard
and soft of kung fu and tai chi and the soft of digital art (I suck at
traditional. We want our son to be happily balanced as well, walking
the line of take as much as you need and give that much back, enjoy
life, respect nature etc.
And I thought well, maybe getting him
baptised isn't such a bad idea. But none of this in a church bullshit.
I remember when me and Josh were getting married, I desperately wanted a
nice outdoor ceremony, to the point where we were going to have a civil
ceremony so we could do exactly what we wanted (which included inviting
the elements). Of course the parents wanted a church ceremony and Josh
had preference for a priest but didn't really mind all that much.
Apparently priests weren't allowed to perform outdoor weddings. I wrote
to this priest at the cathedral asking why. He gave me back something
about how unions overseen by God should be done in God's house. I wrote
back wouldn't it make more sense to celebrate God in something that God
made (ie nature) rather than undermining it and insisting that it be
done in a man-made structure? I got a fairly nonsensical response.
Least Mum agrees with me on that front. They got their church wedding
(I didn't really care, I got married to the one I love, the ceremony was
beautiful, the reception was great, we're happy, that's all that
matters ;). But along those lines, seeing as we want Tao to grow up
respecting nature and finding a balance between modern conveniences and
not completely raping the planet (which those brain dead morons over at
People Before Planet seems to think they have a God-given right to do
due to some stupid line in Genesis), it kinda made sense that he should
symbolically become more a part of Everything (the baptism thing takes
care of the symbolism, humans love symbolism).
My parents were
quite happy to hear about my change of heart, although I made it quite
clear that it was going to be done out of doors, no ifs, buts or maybes,
and if we couldn't find a priest who would do it out of doors then it
wasn't going to get done (by a Catholic priest anyway, we're quite happy
to do it ourselves but for some reason the certificate of baptism is
important to the parentage). Apparently that can be arranged on
Christmas Island so we be better off doing the baptism there than trying
to convince a priest here to do it outdoors. Only downfall is our
friends here would miss out then. But I guess it will be nice for my
parents having both his first birthday and his baptism there seeing as
they don't get to see him much. It was actually a lot easier talking to
them about my belief system than I thought it would be, and I shouldn't
have been so surprised to find that although there are obvious
differences and differences of opinion as there was bound to be, our
respective belief systems are actually closer than I thought. Just goes
to show that some things aren't nearly as bad as you think they are.
So
apparently they're going to talk to Father Chien (the priest that
conducted our wedding ceremony) about the baptism, coz he might be there
around Christmas time. I was thinking the 20th of March when we were
going to do it ourselves, if we're going to do it on Christmas Island
then probably the 20-25th of December or on his actual birthday. See
closer to the time I guess.terrycat and
kowren
are supposedly coming around sometime soon (accidentally woke them up,
forgot it was a public holiday and Tiny doesn't understand the concept
of sleeping in, although we did successfully sleep in til 9 yesterday
;), I rang at 10:20 and they said they'd be a couple of hours. We might
go into Freo but I just remembered that I have a single quilt and quilt
cover which is completely useless to us as we don't have a single bed,
we could probably slice those in half and Karen could make two floor
rugs, one for Tiny and one for her future child. It's entirely possible
we may end up going to Freo or maybe just to Bunnings or City Farmers
to find some hessian or canvas for the bottom of said floor rugs. See
what happens whenever they decide to get here :)
Speaking of
Tiny, he's been primarily sleeping and eating since this morning. He
played the jumping game for a little while with Josh and had a really
long conversation with us (SO damn cute when he coos and makes other
associated cute baby noises :) and went to sleep after a nappy chance
and being fed. And he's just been doing that all day. He woke up once
coz I think he had a bad dream, got his nappy changed, went back to
sleep. He woke up again not long ago and had a feed, supposed to check
if he needed a nappy change afterwards but he went back to sleep again.
Either he's finding it good sleep weather coz it's a bit humid or he's
going through a hell of a growth spurt. He's also started recently
pulling the blanket up to his face and snuggling against it which is
very cute. I am going to fet his footprints today. Had a nice period
of time where Karen kept forgetting to bring the inkpad and when she
finally brought it over I kept forgetting to use it. Not this time.
Hopefully.
And finally...a question that has been plagueing
humans for centuries, how the hell is it possible for a small baby
(~60cm/5.5kg +/-) and a smallish cat (4kg +/-) to take up an entire
futon? :)
Josh was going to read on the futon but couldn't find any decent amount of space to sprawl in around these two :P