The Five Things Most People May Not Know About Me:


1. I like to sing. In the car. Not the shower (do I look stupid? Water amplifies sound!), but the car. Frequently. Hymns, songs from the radio, Christmas carols, songs from musicals I’ve been in or seen too many times – anything familiar enough for me to know at least half the words. I used to sing while I cleaned the Korean Church( In Buffalo), because it was old, had a marvelous arched ceiling and pretty decent acoustics, and because it was normally empty. Pastor Hong caught me once, but didn’t say anything. Shortly thereafter someone asked if I wanted in on their production of “Messiah”. During a short lived delivery job, I once rolled into a downtown parkade polishing off “ amazing grace” . The burly, grubby loading dock guy greeted me with a strange look on his face, and at the end of our interaction, added, sincerely, “you have a nice voice.” It hadn’t dawned on me that if bad hip-hop could escape the plastic-and-steel confines of a vehicle, my pipes might as well.


2. On the subject of strange things coming out of my mouth…( is there any worse way to begin a sentence?) I sometimes indulge in that pentecharismatic practice referred to as “Speaking in Tongues” or something that might be like that. This one is not commonly known, even in my church circles, because I keep pretty quiet about it. Perhaps because I retain a fair bit of Baptist/ Rationalist suspicion of the practice. This might freak some people out, but perhaps it’s easier to relate to feeling a need to pray, or express something, but having nothing intelligible to say. If you think I’m trying to look particularly spiritual, I’ll tell you that my first experiences along these lines occurred at times when I would otherwise have uttered an obscenity. Or on the toilet.


3. Another thing: I am a Nerd. Not the modern, socially-acceptable COOL kind. I am a completely authenticated nerd. The Battlestar Gallactica is just the tip of the iceberg. I was a painfully shy and awkward child/teenager. Seriously. PAINFULLY. I know this is unfathomable to anyone who knows me now - But I was a full-scale, greasy-haired, tape-on-glasses NERD in school. Really. Don’t look so surprised.

4. Anger. JeremythePolite has more of it than you might expect. A few of his friends are unfortunate enough to have experienced this first hand. In fact, while it usually takes quite a bit to get him there, he feels a bit more like his “real self” when he’s angry. He likes to think of it as righteous anger, though. Because it sounds better.


5. I love The Church. Meaning not just my particular little chunk of church, but the big messy mass of people who tend to go places on Sunday and call themselves Christians. I know very few people ever hear me say anything NICE about “The Church”, but I do love it. Sometimes I love it the way you would love a close relative who lied, cheated, and stole his way out of the rest of the family’s good graces, has used, insulted and belittled you your entire life, who wrecks your car in a drunken binge, sleeps with your wife, and then shrugs and says “ What? I’m only human! What did you expect?” More to the point, I sometimes love the Church like you can love a married pastor and father figure who gets “ A little too close” to your girlfriend, uses and abuses his authority to try to cover it up, and ends up destroying something that you (and he) and whole bunch of other people poured years of their life into. In other words, it sometimes makes me very, very ANGRY…but its family. It makes me angry because it hasn’t always been kind to me or those I care about, and its positive contributions to the world often seem outweighed by some pretty big negatives…It makes me angry because I have this sense of what it COULD be…but so often isn’t. Like so many things, it makes me angry BECAUSE I love it. The way only something you love can. I love it because I am part of it – IT… is me. It’s where I belong. It’s family. And I love it because, despite all the things that infuriate me, wherever I have gone in the world, I have found some very, very GOOD people among its ranks.





There. I did it. For real. I’m not such a rebel now, am I?

Now the fun part.

List Five things people don’t know about you. I tag….

Chuck

Erika

Amanda

Sadie (I don’t think you have a blog. I’ll accept a paper, 500 words or less, in my hands by next Tuesday)

Matt (maybe this will shake him out of his blogging slumber)

And, if I may…

Elaine.