3rdragon

Today has been a cut thrice sort of day. Luckily I was working with small pieces of cloth and paper in bookbinding, so I didn't ruin any giant sheets. But after I miscut my fifth piece this morning, I decided that it might be a good idea to leave this project until next class . . .
But in good news, I may have finished my first book. I'm not sure, sure, but it looks like a book to me. Mind you, it's the quick-and-easy kind of binding that I don't like so much, but I think that I'll be finishing the three that have been properly sewed pretty soon, too.

Last night I had an interesting discussion with Pepi. There was a movie about an Amish woman on tv, and so we started talking about the Amish. Over the course of the conversation, we covered:
-Amish as related to Mennonites
-Amish as closed religious community (living simply/worldliness, rumsprika and shunning, Pennsylvania Dutch, genetic problems and exchanges for young people)
-Mennonites \neq Amish
-My opinions on Amish life
-The greater Mennonite Church and GMC
-religious rules and norms in GMC, Lancaster County, and the wider Mennonite/Brethren in Christ community.
-free love (I think that we also touched upon the fact that Pepi does not consider sex to be The Original Sin, but the conversation was galloping rapidly and I we never got back to that point to clarify it)
-sex outside of marriage, my opinions thereon
-single parents
-my love life to date
-divorce
-the nature of homosexuality and homosexuals in the church
-gay marriage
-lesbian couples in Lancaster County, general lack thereof
-homosexual couples adopting and/or having babies, or adopting children of adolescents.
-the nature of family

We were managing pretty well until the last two. At that point, I think we encountered a fundamental rift in our understanding of what constitutes family. Pepi was worried about children being confused about parental roles, and I think that for her, a family is a mom, a dad, and some kids. Or possibly a single parent and some kids, if it's necessary. And I didn't know what to say to that.

Since I've already discussed differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, politics, war, abortion, bullfighting, and religious freedom in schools with Ana and/or Pepi, if I cover why I am a pacifist, LGBTQ people in church leadership, and transgenderness (what do you mean that's not a word? It should be), then I'll have covered something close to all of the Big Questions.

And completely unrelated, I have a wordcount!