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Alan Creech
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aaron klinefelter
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June 30, 2004
> 10:44 AM
absolution > 10 things I have received absolution. My wife told me today that it was OK - that I didn't have to blog every day. I suppose she is right. I don't one way or another, but she's right. I told her that I was having trouble knowing what to say these days. I suppose that's OK too, except maybe what I mean by that is that (and I've talked about this before) I am having trouble coming up with significant things to say that will impress people. Yeah, that's a little goofy. Of course if I have something to say, and I say it, and it is said well and people are "impressed," then that's fine. But to search your mind for something impressive to say in order to impress is askew. We had our community meeting last night. I'm not talking about getting together to discuss the neighborhood watch on Pueblo Court. I'm talking about our "church" getting together for our regular meeting time. I choose to use the word community as much to retrain my own mind as to be ass/thorn in the side of those who don't think about such things. Anyway, we met, and then Matt and I ended up hanging out on the deck till midnight, talking about all manner of things - good time. One of the things was a bit related to the stuff in paragraph one - about how we as Christians and as "church-goers" have this dire and intense need to keep learning new things and how we have or do gauge how good a church is by how much we feel like we're learning. I understand this, but I really do come down on the side of rejection as relates to this notion. I think (and this is an arbitrary number) that really there are only about 10 things to learn in the spiritual life. There aren't just thousands of things. And within those 10 things there is great depth. So, yes, learn the 10 things, and realize that that's sort of as far as that goes, and then settle down into going deeper in them. Now, the process of going deeper in your knowledge (real life knowledge) of the 10 things is quite a different thing than merely gathering information. It may involve figuratively sitting in one place, silently, without being what you think of as "challenged" for a very long time. It may well involve your giving up this idea that you have to constantly be striving after more and more knowledge, higher and higher planes of learning. I'm convinced that most of this is a result of the kind of faith and spirituality we've been fed for the last long while. HEY! Don't get carried away there and start developing some big response to my "anti-intellectuallism" - eeeEEErrKK! (that's a car stopping noise) I'm not going there. I'm not really even talking about education. I'm talking about what could be called spiritual greed - lust for gnosis. I'm talking about if you have the 10 things, you probably have all you need. Feeling like you're getting more than that is only feeling. It's not real, because there is no more to get, at least not as far as breadth goes. Depth and solidity - that's where to go next. And mostly that process doesn't feel like picking up great new revelations, so it doesn't feel like what we want it to feel like, so many times we get bored and give up - we pull the rope 3 times and signal the guys above to bring us back up to the surface. "Well, it didn't feel like I was getting anywhere." Hmmmm. Don't come up too quick - you might get the bends. Stick with it - there are some freakin' cool fish down there. 0 Comments:| permalink | e-mail me | 
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