Our Christmas card list is kablooie, so if you are reading this because you know us at all and are interested in getting a Christmas card, please email us your address! You can use the Contact Us link on the right hand side, or just send us an email using the normal address.

We decided to gather up the clan and go get our H1N1 shots today. The clinics were quiet, and we just walked right up to the desk without waiting in line at all. The longest part of the whole thing was filling out all seven forms.

Everyone was a trooper. Rachel was a bit upset (mostly fear rather than pain, I think) but getting to choose a sucker colour fixed things up pretty well.

I chose to get the flu shot as well, so I got one in each arm. It’s our little experiment. We’ll see who gets sicker this winter, Jenn or me.

I bow my pathetically small-bearded head in shame.

Boing boing had a contest in which you had to write a 100 word story on the topic “Found in Space” in order to win a well-appointed computer server. Entries were posted as comments. Typing a story right into a comment box sure puts the pressure on, and 100 words is crazy short. Here’s my try at it:

Thanks Fred.
EYE CONTACT!
Wow, 25 years! If you’d have told me then that I’d be married for 25 years I’d have laughed. Or punched you.
PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER
I don’t remember them opening the capsule. When they pulled me out of the suit, I was a mess. They said I’d never regain consciousness. Then never walk. Or talk.
PAUSE, TAKE BREATH.
You wish.
PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER
I saw the dark. I felt the cold take my feet.
Jenny, I know it’s been hard. But you brought the warmth back. I love you. Thank you.
WAIT FOR APPLAUSE.
KISS JENNY.

Even a 10 minute exercise like this makes me remember how much fun this is. Try one! Post it on the contest, but post it here too so we can see it!

Many of you have been hearing things about us from various sources, and some of you have contacted us to express concern or to ask about what you’ve heard.

To put it plainly and clearly, we have left the Christian church. We consider ourselves, in varying degrees at various times, agnostic, atheist, humanist, or like the great catch-all answer in a multiple choice survey, “Not Sure”.

This is not a sudden thing. It is not caused by a trauma or single event. We feel that this is the natural continuation of our spiritual journey of many years.

Through much of our journey as Christians, we often felt that we didn’t quite fit in with our peers. There have always been some major issues of Christian doctrine and practice with which we didn’t agree. As we matured in our faith and our lives, we began to study these areas and also discovered more of them. As we progressed in our study, we moved further and further from mainstream Christianity as our doubts and concerns took us away from the “accepted position” in more and more ways. Evangelism. Worship. The infallibility of scripture. Creationism. Homosexuality. Abortion. The church’s role in society. The existence of evil. Too many more to name.

I was hesitant to list any examples because that implies that if we only had “correct” answers to certain questions we would return to our life of faith, and that would be putting far too simplistic a face on it. It also implies that we are now 180 degrees opposed the the normal Christian position on those topics, which is also entirely incorrect. Our thoughts on most of those topics usually start with a phrase like “Well, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but…”, and that’s not very acceptable on some of the essential tenets of the faith.

Our decision to leave the church and our faith was one that took years to reach, had hundreds of hours of research and discussion behind it, and was the single most difficult decision that we have ever made. It’s not a step we took lightly or quickly. Actually, I would call it a realization rather than a decision. Over time, we realized that we didn’t believe most of what we said we did by our use of the name Christian, and we didn’t support most of what we said we did through our association with the Christian church.

The intermediate step we took was to begin home churching, thinking perhaps that would help. We began to slowly strip away the parts of expressing our faith that we objected to, or that we felt we couldn’t do in good conscience. After a while we realized that there was nothing left to strip away; we had left it all behind. This was an incredibly hard thing to do. We both reached the conclusion independently at approximately the same time, but were reluctant to tell the other out of fear. When the truth came out and we were each looking at the other with a relieved “You too?” expression, we both knew that this was right for us.

There are some things that we want to clarify for those of you who have expressed concern or have worried about us:

First, nothing has changed except what we call ourselves. There are very few things that have changed about us in the past few years. We have just put names to what we have been feeling and thinking all along. We’re still the exact same people, with the exact same ideas. The exact same things make us laugh and cry. We enjoy doing the exact same things. We still have our same skills and weaknesses. We still want to talk about the same things. We’d still love to spend time with you.

Which leads to the second thing we want you to know: We’re not angry, bitter or disillusioned ex-Christians. We’ve realized that we don’t believe much of what we professed in the past, but we don’t demand or expect that everyone should do the same. This is our decision, not yours. We still respect you and your beliefs, we still acknowledge your decisions as yours to make, and we will fight to let you make them as you see fit.

Thirdly, I’d like you to know about our sorrows. We have been living in fear of the big reveal. We’ve compared it to “coming out of the closet”. Much of our close community is conservative Christian and when we put out some early hints to people, the reaction was painful and severe. We are well aware that our choice will be too much for many of you to accept, and we may never hear from you or see you again. This is our greatest source of pain and sorrow. Taking the steps to deliberately alienate ourselves from the only friends and community that we and our children have known has been the most difficult thing we have ever done, but the fact that we chose this road despite the consequences should indicate how seriously we take our choice. No person would willingly put themselves through this much pain, stress and heartache unless they were truly sure of their path.

We have been avoiding this announcement for months. We knew it was coming, but kept trying to put it off. We know that having this in writing means we have crossed a line that will separate us from a large percentage of people that we consider friends. But we also know that we are happy. We know that we can teach our children what we believe without guilt or a feeling of duplicity. We can be true to our own thoughts and feelings. We know that we have made a decision that is right for us.

My hope is that this message will have no impact on our relationship with any of you. A naive hope, perhaps, but an honest one.

Thank you to those of you who approached us with your concern and questions, we appreciate your thoughtfulness and worry. I apologize to those that approached me that I haven’t responded to (you know who you are and you are loved for it) because we hadn’t sat down to really put any of this together in a single place. I’m sorry to raise this in such an impersonal way, but a broad announcement seemed to be the best way to get it done, like pulling off a band-aid quickly. If you’d like to talk further, we’re here.

If you are interested, we will still be posting regular family updates, photos and information at http://wonderfulpages.com

Thank you for reading.
Kirby and Jennifer and the Crew.

Edit: Welcome to folks from The Meming of Life (and thanks to Dale McGowan for his kind words). We’re still struggling with how to follow this letter up, but we have a series of posts planned on how “it” actually happened and what various reactions have been, and the struggles that we’ve had and are still having because of this letter. Feel free to check back to the main page for more later, or subscribe to the RSS feed so you don’t miss anything.

Also see a followup from my wife here.