When my son's dad brought him home after his weekly overnight, he had a funny story to tell. DS made him play "Hunting Bears" for an hour, which involved turning off all the lights and tiptoeing through the apartment looking for all kinds of bears-- Mommy Bears, Daddy Bears, Gaga Bears (that would refer to my BFF, Daniel), giraffe bears, flashlight bears, car bears... Did I mention DS is 2 years 9 months?  Apparently they were all to be found in the bedroom and then moved (via mime) to the living room, still in the dark. Bless Daddy's heart, he just played along for a solid hour!

I started thinking about all the strange little games we make up with our families or our friends when we're little that no one else played.

I don't make friends easily.  While people always like me right off the bat, I don't seem to cultivate real friendships.  The ones I've had over the years have faded away as our lives drifted apart.  Now I live with my BFF and I'm friends with his other BFF & his awesome wife, known here as cgisele12 (who sadly lives halfway across the US from us), and I have been "adopted" by my BFF's family who live locally (my family is scattered across the US).  But that's it.  And I'm fine with that.

I know I want better for my DS.  I want to teach him the value of true friendships, and help him develop those friendships (unlike my mom who always undermined my friendships, saying, they don't really like you, etc.-- yes, she had problems).  DS is only two now but I'm already thinking about it.

Let's jump into something religious.  Oh, calm down!  OK, look, breathe, that's right, find your center or your third eye, I'm not crazy, and not out to drive you crazy.  Just a UU who thinks a lot about my relationship to the Big Whatever and studied the Bible a lot in my youth, emphasis on studying, really getting into the nuts and bolts of it.

And yesterday in Salon.com they had an interview with Elaine Pagels, who wrote a fascinating book on the Gospel of Judas, recently unearthed.

I gagged at The Da Vinci Code, I'm a snob, I know, but otherwise apochyphal texts intrigue me because it seems like any glimpse further into the beginnings of Christianity opens up the meaning of what we already have.  But I was really struck at how the message of this Gospel of Judas was so similar to some ideas I'd been working on in my own gray matter, and I wanted to share.