Scares the BeJesus out of Me (L)

I love facebook, I love finding old friends and connecting with current ones in new ways. However, one weird twist to this for me is that I have a couple of people from my long ago Bible Belt days in Tennessee. It was strange during the election to be timid at first about posting all of my Palin slams (which you know I did) because my southern contingents and their string of friends were clearly McCain fans (as demonstrated by their "I'm a fan of John McCain" newfeeds). I'm betting that they had a prayer meeting in their church basement after the election results. One of them was my best friend from childhood. Getting to know her again and then meeting her in 1995 was amazing, it was like seeing my southern reflection. I was impressed that at such a young age we had actually found in each other true kindred spirits. She was smart and a rebel by southern standards (she has a secret tattoo) and had grown far from the awkward cute girl with braces I once knew, into a beautiful southern woman. I like to think I'd be better looking too if I lived in the south and was forced to keep up with all those standards. We still had an inordinate amount in common, though raised in very different lives.

I just clicked on her facebook "books I'm reading" page and saw a book of raising kids by the Bible and some other girly-too-flowery-even-for-Oprah book. I felt...betrayed, defeated, disengaged. It turns out, there are some girls you can't take the south out of and certainly can't take the Jesus out of.

Recently, I went to a gathering at someone's house I hardly knew. She greeted me and my friend at the door with a sweet fake hug and we stepped into her huge immaculate house filled with candles, angels, china dolls, and hand stitched Bible quotes strewn about like land mines for sinners, and I wondered if I was stepping back into my past. As I scanned for time portals, I studied her closely; she was blonde (fake), wearing baby blue and delicate gold jewelry, her make-up was thick enough to hide her gender, if necessary. Later in the evening, as we sat in her living room that looked like a staging set for a Sears portrait studio, I asked her where she was from originally, thinking here's the answer to it all...When she replied a town further south in Maine, I was scrambling to make sense. Then I realized it was not a southern connection, but a Jesus one.

This, if nothing else, will keep me from another altar call to the Baptist front--because, apparently, when you take Jesus to your heart he brings the QVC with him. Why is this? Is there no such thing as a cool hip Christian with a penchant for vibrant colors and clutter who likes to read intelligent funny literature?

I realize I am judgemental, I'm a judmgental biggotted anti-Christian fundamentalist (it's just the fundamentalists I'm a'gin). If they could read this blog, they'd send their Christ minions straight up here to try to cleanse my sinning soul and place collectible gnomes throughout my house.