Have you ever found yourself on a journey of sorts, but truth be told, you didn’t have much of a destination in mind? Rather you were just wandering around. Often in our college days my wife (although not married at the time) and I would do this very thing. We’d pile into the car and set off for unknown destinations. Driving around; or as we explained it, we were exploring Canton. More times than not, we’d set off on our mini-travel adventures later at night. I guess we thought we’d look less suspicious this way. I don’t really know. Those adventures produced some fond memories, and generally entertaining stories.
Lately, I’ve been feeling as though I’m again on one of those late night wandering adventures. At least spiritually speaking. As I really can’t pinpoint a moment in time this all began, I’ll just say for a while now I’ve been wandering around the spiritual landscape of who God is trying to lead me to be. I say “trying” not to suggest that God is struggling to lead, rather I’m not always apt to going in the ways he directs.
Lately I’ve been finding that my perspective on things is shifting…
Lately I’ve found that the pool of like minded people I swim with is less and less…
Lately I’ve been looking at the whole of life differently, wondering about what’s truly important and what is not necessarily so…
Lately I’ve found my nose in books I’d never given the time of day just a year or so ago, but now I can’t read them fast enough…
Lately I’ve been spending my time thinking about the way things are and the way things ought to be according to the true dichotomy of God, verse the dichotomy of God we produce of our own making but claim as his…
Lately I’ve found myself challenged in my thinking, acting, speaking and living, and to be honest, I’m not sure what to do with it all…
Lately I’ve been trying to find any good excuse to not share the journey, but I continue to come up empty in the excuse department; thus I share…
I realize this may seem a bit abrupt. Truth be told, I think I’ve been using my Project 365 as a way to avoid a deeper level of sharing. After all, blogging is such an interesting bird. I’m someone who needs the space to process out loud, and I like to share and explore within community. It’s how I learn best. Yet, there is something that seems so very narcissistic about blogging about myself, my thoughts, my feelings, my processing.
I don’t know what the right answer is. Or if there even is a “right” answer. But I do think the days of keeping my thoughts mostly to myself or more behind me than anything else.
So I’ll leave you here with a quote. These words are the whole reason this post and likely many others even exist. These are the words that have pushed me over the edge.
We live in a culture of sickening consumption and self-indulgence, that masks the starvation of our souls by filling us up with things that will never satisfy but keep us from realizing our desperate need for the true Bread of life.
-Jamie Arpin-Ricci in The Cost of Community
I just can’t read a statement like that and continue on about my day as if I’m somehow no different than I was a moment ago. I can’t possibly keep those words from making a scar on my heart. I can’t keep my mind from jumping straight to the things cluttering my Christmas Wish List. I can’t help but think about my Compassion child who I’ve not written in months. I can’t be the same person I was prior to reading those words. I don’t want to be that person, but now what? What’s the next move? And the move after that… and after that?
What a wondering journey of sorts I find myself on.
iamRYNO 