Fun Stuff - Julie Clawson

Who’s this “God” you speak of…

Posted on September 12, 2008July 10, 2025

So since I have had zero time this week to blog (wishing I could just upload straight from my brain without all this stupid having to sit at a computer and type business…) I thought I’d just post a few amusing pictures.

Wendy sent me this one from The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. I’d really love to know what that sermon series was about. I’m picturing an anti-emergent tirade about all of us Kingdom theology people…

and then Karen sent this. Who doesn’t want the Sarah Palin action figure?

Missional Failure

Posted on October 20, 2007July 9, 2025

I stumbled across this funny yet challenging post by Lainie Petersen (whose blog I will be checking out now). I’m posting it here because I think it’s great, but you can find the original here.

Top Ten Ways to Fail at Being Missional

10. Be very annoyed that some people belong to religions other than your own. Express this annoyance freely.

9. Don’t bother becoming a “regular” at local businesses. Just shop/dine/get- your-clothes-drycleaned at whatever place has the best sales that week. If, by some unfortunate coincidence, you do become a regular at a local business, don’t get to know the owner, employees, or other patrons.

8. Fixate on the quality of your missional targets: Focus on the local Unitarian Universalist minister, Mormon bishop, and Wiccan high priestess (who also owns your town’s only occult bookstore). Don’t give a second thought to that rather ordinary looking lady who you see every morning on the train. She doesn’t have a large enough sphere of influence.

7. If you see a problem in your community, don’t bother to check out what other organizations or individuals are doing about it. Just start your own project: You’ll get a lot more accomplished if you are in charge!

6. Don’t waste your time reading the blogs of other missional folk. So what if they share their own struggles, hurts, joys, and ideas freely? You take all your instruction from God, directly.

5. Never, ever, check out primary source materials produced by representatives of other cultures, subcultures, and religions. Christians have already written all you need to know about those unbelievers, and besides, cult members will have a bias that you want to avoid.

4. Avoid being “unequally yoked” with unbelievers by not engaging them in conversation, learning about their families, having lunch with them, inviting them to your home (or accepting a similar invitation), or working together to address community issues of common interest.

3. Be sure to email (from your work account, while at work) your “unsaved” work colleagues (especially those that you don’t normally interact with) with regular invitations to your church and its activities.

2. Never consider offering financial or material support to other folks engaged in missional work. After all, you need all your spare cash for your own personal ministry. Besides, most of them don’t have their own 501 (c) 3 corporation, and not getting a tax deduction would be poor stewardship on your part.

1. Learn every evangelistic technique, theory, and strategy out there, and work hard to perfect your practice of them, even to the neglect of every other area of your spiritual life. What does the Holy Spirit have to do with drawing people to God, anyway?

10-20-30 Virus

Posted on October 14, 2007July 9, 2025

So Sonja tagged me for a really fun meme. A six degrees of separation/where were you sort of thing. It looks fun, so I’ll play.

The question is – What were you doing ten, twenty and thirty years ago? Or as it was described –

It’s an experiment to see how many degrees we can separate (kind of like Kevin Bacon, only it’s relevantblog). Even if you’re not tagged, don’t be crabby, just take up the baton and run with it. Here’s what I ask: Have folks post their 10-20-30s, and then link back to the Mother Ship (www.relevantblog.blogspot.com) or write a comment here, saying where you heard about this experiment and sharing where you blog. This isn’t to build my empire, it’s to find out how far we can expand the blogosphere. After all this talk about blog tours, it got me thinking. How many people can one blog potentially reach?

So here’s my story…

Ten Years Ago (Oct. 1997) I had just begun my sophomore year at Wheaton College in Illinois. I had really not wanted to return to Wheaton that year, wanting instead to stay home and go to UT in Austin. But I went and had the craziest semester ever. I was taking something like 21 hours and literally had days when I started classes at 7AM and did not have a break until I was done at 10PM. It was nuts. But this was the semester when my entire worldview started to change. As I explained it to the guy (not Mike) I had a huge crush on at the time (who told me later he never asked me out because he thought I was a lesbian – long story), my Romantic/Platonic understanding of the world was falling apart and I didn’t know how to piece it back together. He, who already understood the implications of postmodern continental philosophy, just told me that was a good thing. Let’s just say I took a lot of comfort in reading the visceral modern poetry of T.S. Eliot at the time and spent hours embroidering my jeans with deeply meaningful lines from my favorite poems. Um, yeah.

Twenty Years Ago (Oct. 1987) I was in 4th grade at Martha Turner Reilly Elementary School in Dallas Texas. I had decided in third grade that I wanted to be a writer, so I spent much of my free time writing plays and stories – usually based on whatever I was learning in school at the time. I remember one story was a mystery about a group of kids who were kidnapped and had to use the Pythagorean Theorem to help them escape. Another play was about someone traveling back in time with a nuclear bomb and helping the South win the Civil War. Really good stuff there. I attended a very conservative large non-denominational church in Dallas (Northwest Bible church) and thought that people who didn’t go to my church weren’t Christians.

Thirty Years Ago (Oct. 1977) Well my mom was 7 months pregnant with me (yes I am turning 30 in a couple of months). So there’s not a whole lot I can say about this period. We were in Dallas, I was the firstborn in the family, they considered naming me Barbie…

Now. Oct. 2007. I am a church planting pastor in the Chicago suburbs. I am very involved in the emerging church conversation and enjoy learning more everyday. I’m a mom to a 2 year old. Fun times.

So where were you? If you are reading this, consider yourself tagged. Just let me know if you play!

The Bible

Posted on October 13, 2007July 9, 2025

I liked this poster. Maybe because I’ve worked my way through too many IKEA manuals. Maybe because I’m sick of people trying to make an ancient near-eastern document fit into modern and postmodern categories of knowledge. But there are days when I want to do some serious bible banging on those who seem to think its a step by step instruction manual for life. Have you ever even read it? (ht to Eileen)

Personality

Posted on August 17, 2007July 9, 2025

So I got to spend the day wandering around a Pioneer Farm/Fun Park with a bunch of toddlers. With train rides, hay rides, and other such activities the kids had a great time. Emma decided that she liked the fake horse on the carousel better than the real pony ride horse (the carousel one apparently goes up and down in addition to going round and round) – it was a tad disturbing. So then I just got to spend a full two hours trying to get the overtired little one into bed (an hour later she is still singing songs to herself). So given that my brain is on full mush mode and can’t think of any of the stuff I meant to write tonight, I’ll finally get around to doing this personality test thingy I’ve been seeing everywhere.

Different questions than I typically encounter, but the results are the same. While I was still in school I always tested as an INFJ, but since leaving the structured world of education I have consistently scored as an INFP. “The Dreamer. INFPs are introspective, private, creative and highly idealistic individuals that have a constant desire to be on a meaningful path. They are driven by their values and seek peace. Empathetic and compassionate, they want to help others and humanity as a whole. INFPs are imaginative, artistic and often have a talent for language and writing. They can also be described as easygoing, selfless, guarded, adaptable, patient and loyal.” Accurate in many ways although that last sentence sounds more like they are describing dogs instead of people.

According to their stats, my personality is the same as the fictional characters of Anne of Green Gables and Dr. Julian Bashir of Star Trek: DS9 (my favorite ST character ever) and historical figures such as William Shakespeare, A.A. Milne, Mr. Rodgers, J.R.R. Tolkien, and apparently Mary mother of Jesus (how they figure that is beyond me). And for those of you who know him, I had to laugh that Mike’s (INTJ) was the same as Gandalf and C.S. Lewis. And according to my multiple intelligences apparently my career choices should be Psychologist, Philosopher, Writer, or Theologian. Interesting.

Eight Random Things

Posted on July 5, 2007July 9, 2025

As I continue to post silly personal things…

So Mike tagged me in the 8 Random Things About Me Meme. I think he did it with malicious glee since he hates the things. The official rules for this one are –

The rules of getting tagged are simple. If you get tagged…

* Post eight random facts about yourself.
* Tag eight other bloggers (hopefully those who haven’t been tagged before).
* Post these rules.

I always feel really stupid trying to think of eight (or seven or five) facts about myself. So I tried to think up a theme to play along with. I toyed with the idea of crazy stuff that has happened to me in foreign places (mugged in Naples, car stolen in Barcelona, certain incidents with tequila in Cancun), but there weren’t quite enough to make eight (that I am willing to share). I already did the seven books I’m reading now one and a list of my favorite books would just be too hard. But I like the book theme. So I’m going to go with the “Eight Female Fictional Characters that I have Most Wanted to Be.” Okay, I’m sure that it says something weird about my personality and that I have serious issues that I want to be like characters in books, but I do it anyway (and not all of these are from when I was a kid!). I never wanted to be the typical choices either. All my friends when I was a kid went around pretending to be Princess Leia, Anne of Green Gables, or Madonna (yes it was the 80’s), but I chose lesser known characters to emulate. (I probably would have wanted to be like Anne of Green Gables, but I think I was too much like her to begin with…)

So here my list of really cool female characters I aspired to be –

1. Betsy. There are two types of women in the world. Those who grew up loving the Betsy/Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace and those who have never heard of them. I would check these books out of the library over and over again during my childhood (they have since been reprinted so I have my own copies now). Set in pre-WW1 Minnesota, they tell the story of a girl, Betsy, as she grows up and sees her world expand into the modern era. She is outgoing and loves to write. Her experiences as a teenager, falling in love, and traveling abroad shaped my conceptions of life. Part of me truly thought that high school would hold dances where one filled out dance cards and selected who one danced the waltz with. Or that hanging out with friends for entertainment involved reading Shakespeare, writing stories, and singing around a piano. I think I was most shocked by traveling to Europe when I was 12 and realizing that it was a modern as the USA. Not that I really expected different, but the descriptions I had come to know through reading Betsy and the Great World were ingrained in my mind. I loved Betsy because she was a writer – my dream as a child. She also had no limits. She was encouraged to live life fully – to pursue her dreams, to travel, to follow her heart. I wanted to grow up and be like her.

2. Meg from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Another go to again and again book from my childhood. Meg was smart, but not in the way that fit the system. I always did exactly what was expected of me and did it well. I wanted to do more than that – to be creatively intelligent and find myself on adventures. Meg wasn’t a fearless hero, but she never gave up and did things out of a love for her family.

3. Aerin from The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. The quirky misfit princess who trains herself to become a dragonslayer and saved her Kingdom. Although most of my Christian friends have issues with her because of the way her relations play out in the book, I still love her for her courage. She didn’t fit the expectations of a princess and never gave up trying to discover who she really was. I love that she broke the mold and took on the most dangerous tasks because she was the only one who could.

4. Vicki Austin from Madeleine L’Engles’ Austin Family books, especially A Ring of Endless Light. So yes, the books about her are total coming of age, discovering oneself, and falling in love books. I so wanted to be Vicki when I was in 5th grade. She was a more normal person than the others on this list, but she got to hang out with family and friends that sat around discussing literature and philosophy. She also got to help do scientific observations of dolphins (this was my I want to be a marine biologist so I can swim with dolphins phase – 5th grade remember…). I wanted a life like hers – full of neat experiences and good conversations.

5. Mara Jade from the Star Wars Expanded Universe created by master Star Wars writer Timothy Zahn. So she is just an awesome, super sexy, totally independent, Jedi Master (who ends up marrying Luke Skywalker). The part of me that wants to be a kick-butt I’m going to save the world type of girl loves Mara Jade (same reason I love Sydney Bristow, but I’m sticking to books here). She’s fun and the exact opposite of my conflict avoiding pacifist nature. But then again if you know me only as Mara Jade from The Ooze, the description sorta fits.

6. Eowyn from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Another kickbutt girl who is determined to fight for what she believes in. I love her passion even as I understand her uncertainty in who she is as a person (even though I hate the way Tolkien resolved her character in the end – he CANNOT write women). I share her fears of life becoming “A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.” She appeals to the part of me that wants to make a difference in this world.

7. Liadan from Son of the Shadows Book 2 of The Sevenwaters Trilogy by Juliet Marillier. This book is a retelling of the Tam Lin tale – a Scottish poem where the damsel rescues the prince. I love most Tan Lin based novels, but mix in Celtic healing lore and ancient tribal factions, and this becomes more than just a feminist love story. The pagany side of me enjoys stories of wise women who are attuned to the earth and the natural power of plants. I like the idea of that sort of connection and would enjoy having that sort of knowledge.

8. Phedre from Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series. Um. If you’ve read the books, you may understand. If you haven’t, I really don’t want to explain.

Update – The picture is me as Eowyn back in 2003

As for tagging. I’ll leave it open. It you want to be tagged (for 8 Random Things or 8 Characters that you Want To Be…), consider yourself tagged. Just let me know if you decide to continue the meme.

Five Things I Dig About Jesus Meme

Posted on June 19, 2007July 8, 2025

So I’ve been tagged…

This one was actually started by John Smulo and is called 5 Things I Dig About Jesus. Here’s how it works:

1. Those tagged will share 5 Things They Dig About Jesus.
2. Those tagged will tag 5 people.
3. Those tagged will leave a link to their meme in the comments section of this post

Fun stuff. My first reaction though was the very evangelical – aren’t we supposed to like everything about Jesus? Anyway, here are 5 things that I find really spiffy.

1. Jesus was all about relationships and stories over lectures and arguments. I’ve sat through enough pointless sermons amongst the braindead sanctuary crowd to know that I greatly prefer Jesus’ approach.

1. Jesus accepted women as his students and supporters. Gives me hope that one day his followers might actually do the same.

1. Jesus questioned God and worked through his questioning instead of ignoring or suppressing it.

1. Jesus wasn’t afraid to promote the Biblical values of peace, justice, and love even in the face of Empire

1. Jesus gave everyone a chance. He accepted those who were not just like him (or the cultural moral majority) and called them his followers.

My choices are of course influenced by my cultural and historical perspective, but its still hope for today.

Yes, I am a Nerd

Posted on June 11, 2007July 8, 2025

A few fun blog things today.

Nerd test – How Nerdy Are You (HT – Songs of Unforgetting) –

And to prove that I am indeed a nerd –
Trekkie Test

What does it mean? You know Trek, and you love it. You may not dress up in uniform every day, but you’re dedicated to your series, or two, and happy with being entertained by it.(make that 3 series that I love, and yes I have dressed up in uniform and been to conventions)

Here’s to hoping that the new JJ Abrams Star Trek series actually happens. I mean JJ Abrams and Star Trek – two addictions in one, its got to be good right!

Randomness

Posted on May 18, 2007July 8, 2025

Too crazy at the moment to actually think… so I’m resorting to random blog stuff –

First the meme from Mike. Here’s how it works –

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth full sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

My answer after realizing that the first 6 books I grabbed either didn’t have 161 pages or didn’t have 5 sentences on page 161. This is from the third book down my to read stack –

Even in these biblical accounts, which were obviously written to demean and debase her actions, the description revealed that she took part in the sexual customs of her own free will and that she viewed them not as an obligatory or compulsory duty but as pleasant occasion, rather like festive parties.

Hmm. Interesting. Thats from a discussion of Hosea and Gomer from When God was a Woman by Merlin Stone.

Then I found this from Brother Maynard

Which Star Wars character am I?

You scored as Leia Organa. A princess who uses her political powers to help the rebel alliance. You are calm and cool no matter the situation and always willing to fight for your beliefs. Now if only you could get those cinnamon buns off your head.

Leia Organa

88%

Yoda

75%

Obi-Wan Kenobi

63%

Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader

63%

Luke Skywalker

56%

Darth Maul

50%

Padme Amidala

50%

Palpatine

50%

Boba Fett

25%

Han Solo

19%

Which Star Wars character would you be? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.

Fitting I think. (but of course Mara Jade wasn’t on this list…)

And on the topic of Princess Leia – let me introduce you to the Miss Entertainment Pagaent In their words – This “is the beauty pageant for the twenty-first century. No more sleazy judges. No more crusty old men serenading the winner. No more Donald Trump. Only you can crown Miss Entertainment!

In our pageant’s first round, you will vote for the hottest woman in the worlds of television, movies, video games, and comics. In our second and final round, you’ll choose Miss Entertainment from amongst the four category winners from round one. Round one is underway and twenty lovely contestants are vying for your vote.”

But how do I choose between Princess Leia and Eowyn???? At ant rate the promo videos for each contestant were fun to watch…

Enjoy the random fun.

My Library

Posted on October 19, 2006July 7, 2025

So I found this really cool new blog toy thingy. Check out LibraryThing – a place where you can create an online library of all of your books. Adding up to 200 books is free ($25 for lifetime unlimited listings). It is a cool way to see what others are reading or (if they are like me) how they define themselves through books. You can see a random sampling from my library over on the sidebar. I’ve had fun entering favorite books and books that “represent me.” Enjoy.