I am having a serious difficulty knowing where to begin in my blog posts. So, I am going to give a bit of background about myself and how some of my "thinking" got started here. Maybe that will clarify some things for you, and maybe it will help me decide what order I want to release my many and various thoughts...
If you read my previous blogs, you already know something about my and my beliefs. Just a bit. If you came to this blog from my other blog, "Rainbows & Earthquakes," then you might know a lot more about me. But my other blog is primarily about thoughts and feelings and experiences of the last year of my son's life, his death, and thereafter. This blog is definitely a bit different.
This year I have sort of felt like I have been slowly "waking up" and making a "Rip Van Winkle" sort of discovery that things have changed. What "things" am I speaking of? Hard to know where to begin. But the most shocking changes have been in the world of faith and religion.
How did this escape my attention? Hmmm. Well, of course, there is the fact that change is often subtle and gradual and takes us by surprise in that way. That might be part of it.
Then there is the fact that there were 2 & 1/2 years where my son lived and died and I was pretty much in every waking moment consumed with dealing with that reality. The two years prior to that I was taken up with the birth of our first born child and staying home and caring for him. The two years prior to that were taken up in getting married, moving, finding work, etc. And before that there were three years spent teaching on a reserve in Northern Canada. (And no, it really wasn't like an episode of "Northern Exposure. And yeah, living on a reserve up north will put you a bit out of touch with the rest of the world)
In short, the last 8 or 9-ish years of my life I have been both pre-occupied and out of the loop, so to speak. And this year, well, it has been strange for me. I feel like I have had much to think about, and been blessed with the time to do it.
The odd thing is that so much of it is inter-related and converges and recurs... It is kinda hard to explain. But here is one reason that makes it hard to know what to start writing about... I am afraid whatever I choose to write about, someone I know will feel I am writing particularly to them, about them, and for them. If they have a suspicious nature, maybe they will think I created this blog solely as a platform to talk about that.
But while my discussions and experiences with everyone where these topics meet together has molded and shaped my thinking and desire to write, it is not any one in specific that has motivated me, but rather everything as a whole. What do I mean by that?
Well, take for example, the whole emerging/emergent church movement. It's been coming at me from different directions and connects to so many things... So that, when I finally get around to writing about the emerging church I find it is, in places, connected to Catholicism, and it is connected to my experiences with Rob Bell. And my friends who like/use Rob Bell videos or books will perhaps think "Hey, she's writing this to US!" But then I have friends who are Catholic and I have a friend who once was Protestant and became Catholic and I also have a friend who is seriously considering becoming Catholic. And I worry that each of those people will think I am somehow trying to subversively engage them in a dialogue I am afraid to have face to face. Which I am not. I mean, I'm happy to talk face to face with any of you, but that is not the point so much of this blog.
But the thing is, I am finding more and more that so much of what I have been thinking about is... connected. I've been trying to pick it all apart, strand by strand, but it is pretty difficult. Postmodernism connected to the emerging church connected to interspirituality connected to mysticism and both connected to Roman Catholicism. Also mysticism connected to meditation which connects to "new spirituality" as well as to "vintage Christianity" which connects to the desert father which connects to the Roman Catholic church once again. And meditation connects to prayer. And mysticism, meditation, prayer, faith all connect to the whole experience vs. rationality debate... And I think I don't need to fill in how authority and the church and the Bible might connect here. But maybe you are beginning to understand what I am finding difficult in all this.
And the strange thing (or maybe all things considered, it is NOT strange) is that simultaneously I have friends examining Roman Catholicism, people I know practicing meditation (a rapidly growing phenomenon), a church I used to attend that introduced Rob Bell videos to me, and other situations and nuances too many and varied to list.
And I realize that once again this blog has written me instead of me writing it... I had meant to give you more of the background, the personal background, of my start in researching and thinking about all this stuff. But somehow the act of writing has carried me away off in another direction, and now I think this is a natural place to stop. And continue another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment