3/7/06
i don't know why certain churches teach us certain things. like how to fear the world and how not to get our feet dirty. like how to mistake a culture for the Divine. like how to give answers to questions that don't have any.
maybe they do it to give us structure as children, a handhold on this mystery that can only be grappled with but never quite grasped...
this is a strange place to take an entry, and i know i'm going to be talking in terms that are more figurative than i'd like. because what i'm trying to say now is real and physical. and spiritual language doesn't suit it. that said...
as a child, i remember my mother talking about the freedom we have, and how tradition is often a dead thing we wear around our necks like millstones. she was at a place where it meant something. i was at a place that let me justify inner rebellion and play the part of some hippie-flower-God-child, with never the guts to act out but always the audacity to be smug, because i could if i wanted to.
and now?
it makes sense that this is where i should be now. i look around and the landscape looks new and unfamiliar, but i know that the earth under it has not changed. what i had before worked for what i knew about life, then. what i have now is sufficient for where i am now.
i wonder what my mom will say when i tell her that i've recently begun using the Book of Common Prayer, that i'm observing Lent, that i'm considering prayer beads. makes me laugh a little to think about it. (good lord! my daughter's becoming liturgical! but that's just the outside.) but anyway, after all this bumbling around, here it is:
when the world got too confusing and tragic to handle, Christianity finally started to make sense...
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