Putting our lives on hold

When I first started exploring Christianity, one of the teachings that was most surprising and counter-intuitive to me was the notion that we are called to live other-focused lives.

A product of secular culture, it seemed obvious to me that the way to find fulfillment and meaning in life was to be self-focused (not necessarily selfish, but self-focused). The way I used to see it, serving others was only one of a variety of good and worthy a person might choose to do with his or her free time. By default, you made your life goals based on pursuing personal interests and maximizing comfort; if possible, you would try to find some ways to give back to others, but to do so for any extended period of time would be to put your life on hold.

When I first heard that Christianity taught that our lives are not about ourselves and our own wants, that we are to look to serve God and others before serving ourselves, it was a radically different message than anything I'd ever heard...so radically different, in fact, that it sounded crazy. I resisted it. Wouldn't spending too much time focusing outside of ourselves lead to misery? How were we supposed to accomplish all our big goals and do all those fulfilling things we planned to do if we never optimized around our own desires and wants?

Yet, in the process of resisting this teaching, I began to take a second look at the self-focused philosophy I'd had all my life.

I began to realize that introspecting and focusing on my wants never brought me lasting peace, and that it didn't seem to work for anyone else either. I began to notice that as I started accomplishing some of those big goals that were going to bring me so much fulfillment...I didn't feel as fulfilled as I thought I would. I'd heard before that this Christian teaching about living to serve God and others was not the personal philosophy of the religion's founders, but an objective truth. I'd heard the claim that this, like all the other Christian teachings about moral law and how we are to live, was an articulation of the law that is written onto every human heart by our Creator, a statement of truth about what is best for each individual and for the world as a whole. When I first heard these claims they sounded like so much grandiose religious posturing. Yet more and more I realized that my way wasn't working, and I started to wonder if these Christians might be on to something.

I decided to give it a try. I'd make an effort to spend a whole lot less time searching for meaning and answers within myself, making all my plans for the day, the year, and the rest of my life based on what I felt like doing. Though I would set aside time for prayer and time to myself to recharge my batteries (as religious orders do in their rules of life), I would start to think of my purpose here on earth as nothing more than to serve God and others. Honestly, it kind of sounded like a recipe for misery. But I had learned over and over again that every time I thought I knew better than God and his Church...it turned out that I did not know better than God and his Church. So I gave it a shot.

Almost immediately, I began to see the power of this teaching.

Even with my halting, far-from-perfect efforts, things began to change. For one thing, ironically, I found that everything I sought by focusing on myself and my own needs -- peace, joy, fulfillment, direction, feelings of security about the future -- I began to find only after I stopped looking inward and started looking outward.

The biggest thing I noticed, however, was that to be other-focused is to create an economy of love. Every single time we set our gaze outside of ourselves seek to serve others, whether it's something overt like volunteering at a soup kitchen or something more subtle like simply saying a sincere, kind word to the checker at the grocery store, we add a little bit of love to the world. Through these actions there is more love in the spiritual economy than there was before. The other-focused life is, ultimately, a life of love.


I've been thinking about the power of this teaching a lot lately, noticing how differently I see the world now that I understand that serving God and others is not one of a variety of nice options we might pursue with our free time, but is actually our very purpose for existing.

All of my scattered thoughts on the subject were brought into relief the other day when I had a conversation with an immediate family member (whom I don't want to identify directly). He seemed depressed and uneasy about something, and when I asked him why he said it was about his retirement account. He's deeply distressed that he won't have enough money to afford anything other than a government-run nursing home in his old age. I reminded him that my husband and I would love for him to move in with us when it gets to the point that he doesn't feel comfortable living on his own. We weren't even talking about a situation where he might need intensive medical care, yet he flatly refused to even consider the notion.

"I would never do that to you," he said. "I would never have you put your life on hold like that."

We've had this conversation many times before, yet this time, the first since my conversion to Christianity, I was hit by just what a profoundly sad worldview this reflects. I've always wanted this family member to live with us when he can no longer live on his own, and he's always refused on the same grounds. That part is nothing new. Yet this time I saw clearly that the situation goes beyond an unfortunate refusal of help: it reflects a worldview in which well-meaning people like my relative believe that the best thing they can do for their loved-ones is to not burden them with their presence, where the very meaning of life has been twisted to suck love out of the world.

One of the logical results of the self-focused worldview that is so common in the secular world is that, if we assume that the best use of our lives is the unfettered pursuit of our personal goals and interests, we therefore don't want to get in the way of others doing the same. It creates a situation in which we're all constructing our own little self-sufficient desert islands, not wanting others to get in our way but also not wanting to get in others' way. It leads us to believe that if we were ever to lose our self-sufficiency, our presence would not just be an annoyance but would in fact prevent our loved-ones from fulfilling their very purpose in life.

When I compare my life with the self-focused worldview to my life with the other-focused worldview, the difference is striking. Not that I am anywhere near some saint-like level of always seeking to serve others before myself, but simply understanding that that is the goal, that my own life isn't about me, has changed everything. It's counter-intuitive, it requires sacrifice, and it isn't always the most comfortable path. But it is clear that, truly, this is how we were designed to live. After all these years of trying it my way, it's like I'm finally operating my life according to the instruction manual. And it is ultimately a manual for how to live a life of love, written by he who is Love itself.


UPDATE: A Part II to this post is here.

Some announcements

Yaya is here all week. Imagine, for a moment, that you wake up one morning to find that a circus has invaded your house -- it's noisy, chaotic, extremely messy, and yet you can't help but enjoy yourself. That's what Yaya visits are like. I feel like having her here for a week will mean something for my frequency of posting, but I'm not sure what. Depending on how it goes I'll either be updating like five times a day or will find myself barely able to dash out one post that simply reads, "Help! Chaos!"

Speaking of not being able to write coherent posts, I spent all my free time yesterday writing something, only to realize upon re-reading it that I didn't even know what my own point was. I almost published it anyway just because I was mad that I spent so much time on it, then I remembered that other people can actually see those words that show up on the screen after I hit Publish. Maybe one of these days I'll borrow Veronica's idea and write up a list of posts that I spared you all from having to see.

Anyway, here are some announcements I've been meaning to make:

• Author seeking interviewees: Author David Seidman is writing a book about teenaged atheists. One of his chapters includes advice for teenagers who come to faith after being atheists, and for that chapter he would like to interview teenage ex-atheists and ex-agnostics. If you fit that description he'd love to talk to you. You can contact him at davidseidman |at| earthlink |dot| net.
  
  
• Dappled Things: After seeing my recent post about finally getting poetry, Bernardo Aparicio emailed me to introduce me to his Catholic literary magazine, Dappled Things. I enjoyed reading through the current issue so I wanted to pass on the link in case anyone else is interested in checking it out.
  
  
• Prayers to the Holy Spirit: A nine-day series of prayers ("novena") to the Holy Spirit starts this Friday. Tausign is inviting others -- particularly seekers and those who feel lukewarm in their faith -- to join him in doing the novena, and each day he will post reflections and invite discussion. You can find the posts here. I think this is a great idea. I'm in!
  

Happy Tuesday!

How do you decide which charities to support?

Tomorrow is my day to go through mail and pay bills. One of the things I always dislike about this activity (other than typing all those large numbers into Quicken when the student loan check comes up) is that, each week, I have to make the painful decision to discard a large stack of solicitations from worthy charities.

Even disregarding the ones that are suspicious and/or get a low charitable commitment rating from Forbes, there are a lot of wonderful organizations out there! Just last week I received pleas for help from reputable charities that help everyone from impoverished Native Americans to the elderly to abused children to women in crisis pregnancies to kids who need scholarships to the poor of America to the poor of the rest of the world. Every time I'm done going through mail I have this discouraging feeling of "SO MANY people need help SO DESPERATELY and I have SO LITTLE to give!"

I always struggle with whether to give a little bit of money to a lot of charities, or to focus on giving as much as possible to just one or two. Currently we're going with the latter strategy. We decided on Food for the Poor as our charity of choice and planned to give large amounts (by our standards) to them...although the effective outcome has been that we just blow our charitable giving budget because I end up writing lots of smaller checks for all sorts of causes that I just can't say no to.

And now Shannon and BooMama have me yearning to sponsor a Compassion child, which is going to mean re-thinking how much we give to other organizations in order to work it into the budget (after we look at other ways to cut back as well, although that's a whole different story).

So I ask you: Does anyone else struggle with this? If so, how does your family deal with this dilemma? Do you give a little bit of money to a lot of different organizations or reserve your available funds for just one or two? And advice?

Finding God in 5 Steps

I occasionally get emails that say something like this:

I'm what you could call "agnostic." I'm open to the possibility that God might exist. I've even been sort of seeking and have tried praying, but nothing has happened. I'm not any closer to believing in God than I was before, which I take to mean that either God doesn't exist or doesn't care if I know him.

I'm about to give up and just forget about it. I saw in your archives that you were in a similar place a few years ago and wanted to know if you have any advice before I stop what has so far been a futile search for God.

I know exactly how it feels to be in this situation. While it's important to understand that any kind of powerful experiences of God are a gift, that there's not some magic formula we can follow that will guarantee that we'll hear the voice of God or have a major religious experience, there are certain things we can do to make more room in our hearts for God's presence.

Based on lots of reading, advice from trusted friends, and plenty of personal experience of doing it the wrong way, I do have a few tips that might help anyone who feels like their search for God isn't going anywhere. For brevity I titled the post Finding God in 5 Steps, although a more accurate title would be, 5 Things I Learned the Hard Way That I Believe Fostered the Right Disposition for Gaining a Better Understanding of God but Since I'm Just Some Fool With an Internet Connection and Not a Pastor or a Theologian You Should Take This and Everything Else I Write With a Big Grain of Salt. So here it goes:

1. Seek humility first

If you feel stuck in your spiritual search, set aside the search for God per se and seek humility instead. The importance of this step cannot be overstated. Pride is one of the most effective ways to block God out of our lives. Throw all your efforts into becoming a more humble person. For inspiration, read up on people throughout history who were known for their humility. If you're not exactly sure what true humility involves (I definitely wasn't), this is an excellent article that explains that humility is not the same thing as low self esteem or thinking that you're bad.

2. Go on a cynicism fast

Commit to a period of time during which you'll fast from all sources of cynicism: give up watching TV shows and reading websites that make jokes at other people's expense (even if it's about celebrities or politicians); try to change the subject or say something positive if such conversations come up in person; avoid making cynical jokes or comments yourself. You might be surprised at how much this fast will transform your heart.

3. Read the great Christian authors

While a transformation of heart, a turning of the soul toward God, is the most critical step in opening ourselves to God, it's also important to realize that seeking God does not mean setting aside logic and reason; as I mentioned in this post, quite the contrary is true. Asking tough questions and hearing what the great Christian thinkers have said on the matter will only bring you closer to God. Some authors I recommend are C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo (I recommended some specific books that influenced my conversion here).

4. Do the experiment

I believe that God's existence can be "proven" in a certain sense, as long as you understand that God = Love, and what you're trying to prove is Love itself. This is not something you can know about from analyzing data or reading books alone. To get the "proof" that you seek, you must enter the laboratory of your heart, and actually conduct the experiment: live, for a while, as if God did exist. Pray. Follow the Ten Commandments. Show love and kindness to everyone, even your enemies. Read the Bible. Give God the thanks and honor and respect you would show him if he did exist. As Pascal suggested, just try it for a while, and see what happens.

5. Pray frequently

This is by far the most important step. I know, you feel like you're talking to yourself. You don't see the point of it. I was there for a long, long time. But there is no substitution for humbly, regularly turning toward God with an open mind and an open heart. If you're stuck for words, consider reciting something like the Prayer of St. Francis, or just pray, "God, I want to find you. Show me how. I'm listening."


The bottom line is this: seek, and you shall find.

This statement is true. If you understand what it really means to seek (using both your mind and your heart); and if you understand that the finding part doesn't necessarily happen immediately, that you're beginning the long process of building a relationship that will continue to grow and change for the rest of your life, you will find God.

Also, I would be delighted to include anyone in this situation to my prayers. Please feel free to leave a comment (anonymous is fine) if you'd like for me and other readers to pray for you (thanks to Tausign for that suggestion).

Approaching Atheists: What Can Christians Do?

The next installment of my interviews over at The Cynical Christian is up, this one on the topic of what Christians can do or say to evangelize to atheists.

Welcome, new readers!

Quite a few people have mentioned via email and comments recently that they're new readers, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a moment to introduce myself and welcome you to my blog.

First of all, thank you for reading. I would be delighted if you'd take a moment to introduce yourself over at this post -- it makes my day when I see a new comment there, and I hang on every word of all of them.


ABOUT ME
I'm 31, married, and have three children ages three and under. I have a background as a web designer/developer but am now Director of Chaos Management for my household.

I was an atheist my entire life until around age 26 -- I never once considered the possibility that God might exist, not even as a child. I saw no absolutely no proof for God's existence and couldn't imagine how a person could believe in an unseen deity.

Around the time my first child was born I started to think that maybe I should take another look at the question of God. Upon investigation I was shocked -- really, really shocked -- to find that Christianity had some compelling data points in its favor. I came to a dry intellectual belief in God but didn't know what to do from there. To make a long story short, my husband and I both converted to Catholicism in 2007 and today I am thrilled beyond words to be a Christian.


ABOUT THIS SITE
I started blogging about religion shortly after I became interested in Christianity. I had a lot of questions but didn't know many Christians, so I did what web developers do when they're seeking answers to life's biggest questions: I started a blog. I've been blogging about it ever since, so most of my conversion is chronicled in the archives (on the bottom left sidebar).

Though the main purpose of this blog is to simply share my experiences with religion after a life of atheism, there are certain topics that I've been particularly interested in lately. Here's what's been going on so far in 2008:

Bringing peace to daily life
Shortly after the new year, I got to the point of "being sick and tired of being sick and tired" -- I was tired of feeling overwhelmed and behind, living life a day late and a dollar short, and was desperate for change. I began to see that modern technology tempts me to overspend my time just like credit cards tempt me to overspend my money, and realized that I need some "hard stops" in my life. I decided to do something radical and structure my days around regular prayer times. I called it a "reckless experiment with prayer," the "reckless" part because I supposedly didn't have one extra minute to spare for prayer. It worked better than I ever thought it could and I've been doing it ever since. You can read all the posts on the subject here.

Lent and spiritual growth
This was my first Lent as a Catholic. When Ash Wednesday rolled around I realized that I love times of sacrifice and penance. When the half-way point rolled around I realized that I love times of sacrifice and penance for a few weeks, and then I'm over it. Some untimely temper tantrums and cat vomit made me realize what it means to "die to self," I ruminated on my future as a Christian, and thought up an analogy for faith. Then, some technical problems made me realize just what is involved in truly trusting God. It all culminated in a joyous Easter which marked my one year anniversary of becoming Catholic.

Motherhood, community and isolation
A big topic of interest for me is the isolation that those of us who are outside of the workforce experience. I recently wrote about an average day in my life, with an emphasis on the lack of casual social interaction with other adults. I followed that up with some thoughts on how the internet can provide a much-needed outlet for social interaction, and asked for tips about how we can get more real-life social activity as part of the natural course of daily life (don't miss the comments on those last two!)

Scorpions
The first time I saw a scorpion in my house, I could have never imagined that there would be any kind of upside to that situation. As it turns out, however, blogging about scorpions brings a lot of traffic to your site. My posts about scorpions in my bedroom, scorpions in my baby's room, scorpions in cups in my kitchen THAT WERE PUT THERE BY MY MOTHER-IN-LAW, and angry, undead scorpions have been some of my most popular posts. The entire saga can be found here. Though I haven't talked about it yet this year, scorpion season starts soon so I expect to be talking about it again any day now.


In general, though, I mostly write musings about what it's like to be a passionate Christian after a life of atheism. (You can find a sampling of these types of posts in the "Most Popular Posts" section on the left sidebar.) This is the diary of my ongoing conversion. I've often thought that a good tagline would be: Selfish, lazy, hard-headed atheist converts to Christianity and tries to be a good Christian. Hilarity ensues.

The readers of this site include atheists and agnostics and people of all faiths, and I appreciate every one of you. Welcome to my blog, and thanks for reading!

Art: the secret handshake of the soul

I had a major revelation yesterday morning: I think I might finally get poetry!

Poetry, like all forms of art, is something with which I've always had a love/hate relationship. I love few things more than a moving piece of music or painting or writing; yet the whole concept of "art" has often left me frustrated. I was never sure how to define what makes good art, or even what constitutes "art" at all. I knew what I liked when I saw it, and even felt like there was some universal line in the sand between "true art" and "crap that is called 'art,'" but could never quite articulate why I liked what I liked or where to draw that line.

At some point after my conversion, I heard about the concept that true art is beautiful, in some form or another, and that in order to be beautiful it must convey truth. I didn't get it. How can art be true? Though something sounded vaguely right about it, I had more important concerns to address, so I promptly resumed being ambivalent about art. Until yesterday, when I discovered a poet.

The always-interesting ProBlogger had a great guest post by a man who happened to be a poet. On a whim I clicked through to his website and, long story short, I ended up spending most of my free time yesterday just reading poems -- something I have almost never done before (his free e-book is here). It was one of those "ah-hah" moments when it all came together. I think I finally "got" poetry, and art in general. I think I now understand what it is, why we create it, and why it matters, and what it means for it to convey truth.

Let me see if I've got this right:

All good art, by definition, conveys truth. That is its purpose. But we're not talking about truths like "the grass is green" or "the sky is blue." We're talking about the truths that lie outside the material world, the truths that you'd have to have a soul to know about. For example:

• All beauty and goodness has a living Source. In modern parlance, we call this source "God."
• The closer we get to God, the closer we get to perfect joy.
• We have a strong tendency to drift away from God. Yet further away we get, the more unsettled and miserable we are.
• When other people drift away from God it makes our lives more difficult.
• The pleasures and comforts of the material world seem like they will make us happy, but don't.
• We love other people, but not as much as we should.
• Acts of evil are shocking offenses to the way things should be.
• There is evidence of God in the material world, and our hearts soar when we see it.
  

And so on. All of these conditions are true objectively (they're not "your truths" or "my truths"), all have been known in some way or another to every person who ever lived, and none can be discerned from the material world alone. It delights us to share our experiences of these truths with our fellow human beings, because it creates a bond that surpasses our animal instincts and connects us at the level of the soul.

And that's where art comes in.

Art is the secret handshake of the children of God, the inside joke among those with souls. The spark that is ignited within us when we are touched by a work of art is a spark of recognition: the artist has brought us a souvenir from our homeland beyond the material world, the place that none of us should know about, but all of us do. To connect with a piece of art is to connect with the artist as a fellow traveler, to realize that you are both walking the same rocky road, and that he is homesick too. And it matters because true art, art that seeks a connection of souls, makes it harder to devalue and dehumanize one another. It reminds us what it means to be human.

I think I'm finally starting to get Pope Benedict's Contemplation of Beauty, the Catechism's statement on Truth, Beauty and Sacred Art. I think I now understand why the Church understands one of its jobs to be to keep art and beauty in the world.

It only took 31 years, but I think I'm starting to get the whole art thing. Am I on the right track?

Reason, wonder and Pope Benedict XVI

Yesterday afternoon I found myself sitting on the edge of a foot stool in my living room, transfixed as the television showed the faint lights of a plane coming in across the Atlantic from Rome.

I didn't intend to watch much of Pope Benedict's arrival to the United States: it was during my kids' naptime -- my one chance for free time in the whole day -- and I had many other things I needed and wanted to be doing. And yet, there I sat. For about an hour. I'd never thought about it in detail before, but when I felt a sting of tears in my eyes as the jet safely touched ground, I realized just what an impact Pope Benedict XVI has had on my life and my conversion. To understand why, a bit of background is needed:

The beginning of my religious conversion was a lonely time for me.

I'd spent my whole life as an outsider to Christian circles, and it was hard to imagine that I could ever be comfortable being "one of them," the people whom I had firmly categorized in my mind as "other." I'd come to believe in God on an intellectual level, yet I felt stuck, unable to move forward from there. I'd known many Christians in my life, of course, but had never shared that part of their lives with them. It made me feel out of my element to even contemplate doing so.

I had this lingering impression that Christians and Christian culture were different from anything I knew. In my house growing up, the climate was one of a love of learning and reason, of wonder at the universe based on science and facts. As early as elementary school my dad would read books like Carl Sagan's Cosmos to me at night; when Halley's Comet was visible we drove ten hours to get to the best place to view it, and stood in the cold for hours, just gazing in awe at the sky; we'd visit our astronomer friend and look with great interest at the latest meteorites he'd collected, animatedly discussing the mysteries of the universe over dinner. There was a strong, distinct culture of wonder based firmly on the foundation of reason. On the rare occasions that the topic of religion came up, it was only to note that it was a shame that people let superstitious dogmas hold them back from the fearless pursuit of truth.

Ironically, it was this very idea of fearlessly pursuing truth that led me to Christianity. As I've said before, I didn't have a "personal encounter" with Jesus or a thunder-and-lightning conversion experience. I just did some research and thought it was true. And yet, that left me in a strange position. I had no idea how one gets to "know" God -- how can you know someone you can't see? I didn't understand what it meant to "have faith" -- did that mean setting all reason aside and believing all sorts of dogmas without question?

Many of the great Christian authors helped me gain an understanding of these concepts, yet one stood out from the rest. There was one author whose writing had a very familiar ring to it, whose way of thinking reminded me of the people I knew growing up, who built a bridge to unite in my mind the intellectual culture of atheism and the intellectual culture of Christianity:

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, whom we now know as Pope Benedict XVI.

Once I made the decision to become Catholic I figured I might as well find out more about our current Pope. I was aware that he was an academic who'd published many books, so I started to learn more about his writing. It didn't take much reading to feel an instant connection to this Pope. An example from a speech he gave in 2005:

From the beginning, Christianity has understood itself as the religion of the Logos, as the religion according to reason...Today, this should be precisely [Christianity's] philosophical strength, in so far as the problem is whether the world comes from the irrational, and reason is not other than a 'sub-product,' on occasion even harmful of its development -- or whether the world comes from reason, and is, as a consequence, its criterion and goal...In the so necessary dialogue between secularists and Catholics, we Christians must be very careful to remain faithful to this fundamental line: to live a faith that comes from the Logos, from creative reason, and that, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational. [Thanks to Wikipedia for the excerpt]

Though I'd read work by other Christians who laid out logical, reasonable cases for their beliefs, there was something about Pope Benedict's particular style that reminded me of the people I knew growing up. Many times I thought that if my father and his scientist friends were to become believers and write books about why they believed, this is what it would look like. When I read his encyclicals, excerpt from speeches and books like Journey to Easter and Jesus of Nazareth, I didn't feel so lost in the Christian world anymore. I learned what it means to have faith, and that faith and reason go hand in hand. I learned that the zeal for knowledge and truth that I'd seen in my nonreligious upbringing could not only be found in Christianity, but was in fact one of its defining characteristics.

My new home started to feel as comfortable as my old home.

I've often quipped to my husband that Pope Benedict would make a good atheist. Not just because of his emphasis logic and reason and insistence on looking at the evidence that supports his faith, since that is a hallmark of many great Christian thinkers, but because of a certain je ne sais quoi that I recognize from the world of intellectual atheism. I see in him a particular combination of wonder based on reason, an ability to convey his passion for his beliefs without even appealing to emotion, and a completely fearless pursuit of truth that I've always seen in many of my atheist friends and family members whom I admire.

As I sat in my living room yesterday, watching the light of Shepherd One slowly grow brighter as it neared the American airport, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude for our Pope. I've heard the term "JPII Catholics" used to describe the generation of people who were inspired by the great Pope John Paul II. I think I'm a "BXVI Catholic." This Pope has spoken to me in a way I never thought a lifelong believer could, and has inspired in me an excitement about my faith that I never thought possible. When I saw him step off the plane, it was with deep emotion that I welcomed to my earthly home the man who helped welcome me to my spiritual home.


RELATED POSTS: Some other posts about Pope Benedict's writing are: The desert experience; Having it all in prayer; A reckless experiment with prayer.

Thoughts on atheism

A while back Jason at The Cynical Christian contacted me about doing a series of interviews about atheism. He's a lifelong Christian, and since atheism is an increasingly popular topic these days he wanted to learn a little bit more about atheists and atheism. Our first interview is up here, and his introduction is here.

I hope I threw in enough caveats to make it clear that my attempt in answering these questions is not to offer The Final Word on Atheism. Since it's the only belief system I knew for my entire life up until recently and I have many friends and family members who are nonbelievers, I thought that sharing my experiences and observations might offer some food for thought for those who aren't familiar with the subject. For anyone else who is unfamiliar with atheism but would like to know more, I encourage you to use my answers only as a jumping-off point for discussion and not as a perfect statement on the subject.

Comments are open over at Jason's blog.

Dying to self

Speaking of Christian concepts that used to baffle me, the idea of "dying to self" was high on that list.

This concept was one of the first things I got from reading the New Testament and books by Christian authors, and, honestly, it sounded kind of depressing. There were surely some good things about me, and it seemed a shame to have to get rid of it all. I eventually understood that it is only by dying to self that we show Christ to others, which did make it sound more appealing. But even then I pictured that if all Christians were to completely die to themselves and be perfectly Christ-like, that we'd all basically be identical drones. I thought of all the different talents and personality types out there -- poets, artists, engineers, comedians, etc. -- and it seemed sad to whitewash all those unique characteristics.

I thought this instruction was so odd, in fact, that I would sometimes wonder what kind of weird religion this was that I was exploring here. "How could a good religion tell people that they're bad, that they need to die a death of sorts in order to grow closer to God?" I'd wonder. It was only because I had an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of this belief system being the box top to life that I was willing to move forward and set aside my concerns for the time being. It was probably one of my first leaps of faith.

Slowly, I began to understand that to die to self was to die to the willful, selfish, sinful parts of ourselves; to let go of our plans and what we want to do based on comfort and convenience. Even this, though, sounded dangerous. The skeptic in me had to wonder: if I attempt to empty myself of all these lifelong tendencies that are supposedly sinful, if I set aside my to-do lists and goals spreadsheets and make no plans for the future, what will be left? Isn't that a recipe for ruin?

I was surprised to find that it was not.

As I slowly began to empty myself of so many of the things that composed life as I knew it -- my plans, my goals, many of my habits, (what I thought were) ingrained personality traits -- I found that I was not left empty. Rather, there was immediately Something there to fill me up, Something whose presence increased as life as I knew it decreased. But there was something else there as well, something that had been lost that I'd never tried to find:

Me.

I've mentioned that in the past I sometimes thought of "finding myself," but I thought of it in terms of finding what I should do with my life, what I should accomplish. It didn't occur to me that there was some other, more pure version of myself than the one I already knew. Perhaps because I never used to believe in the soul, I always figured that the chemical reactions that fired in my brain at any given moment were "me," that there was no one set of chemical reactions that represented my true self more than any other. It's been with some amount of surprise, then, that I've begun to see that the process of dying to self is a process of stripping away layers of sin encrusted with selfishness, and that glowing underneath all those layers is the true, complete version of who I was designed to be -- the real me. That's probably another reason I feel younger these days: the closer I get to God, the closer I get to the original version of myself.

I now see "dying to self" not as something a person does because he thinks he's bad; it's something he does because he knows he's good, and wants to find the Source of all that is good. It's not a whitewashing of unique characteristics, but the shining of Light through them to make them more beautiful and true. Dying to self, I think, is a purging of all that is not love; it's a process of breaking down the walls that block out Love himself; it's a way -- the only way -- of truly finding ourselves.

What does it mean to "turn it over to God"?

When I first started looking into Christianity, one of the things that most perplexed me was the concept of turning a situation over to God.

When I would receive advice like, "Jen, you need to just turn it all over to God," it kind of sounded like a bad idea. Being the dense person that I am, I took the statement a bit too literally. I thought that that would mean setting all reason aside and taking no further actions of my own free will. Basically, I pictured myself lying in bed in my pajamas, waiting to do anything at all until I heard the booming voice of God give me detailed instructions.

I think that this concept might be at least somewhat confusing to others as well. I frequently get emails from people who are looking into religion for the first time, and one of the things I often hear is confusion about abstract concepts like this one. (As one reader put it, "So often in this journey I'm completely lost in abstractions, like there is some decoder ring needed to discern what real things I can do to learn and grow.")

In case it's helpful to anyone else, I thought I'd elaborate on what I've learned. Here is an example of one of the first situations that I attempted to put in God's hands, including specific examples of the actions I took:


Background: Early last year, my husband and I desperately needed a house. We'd been living with my mother for two years while we got our business off the ground, and while it was a wonderful experience, we both felt that it was time for us to move on. We both felt strongly that we wanted to buy a house near my mother's so that we could still see her frequently. Our budget was very limited, however, and it was going to be hard to find a house in our price range in the specific area we wanted.

We had been leaning this direction for a while, but when we discovered that we were expecting our third child (when our second was only five months old), I started to feel panicked. Not only were we cramped already, but I was growing weary of being a housewife living in someone else's house. Yet there were so many options swirling around in my head: "What if we can't find a house that meets our needs? Should we rent an apartment? Should we stay here?" I didn't know whether I should be looking at local apartment complexes, looking at houses for sale, trying to find ways to make it work to continue living with my mom -- I was so overwhelmed and confused.

After spending a couple months agonizing over the situation, I decided that I wanted to let go and turn it over to God. But what would that mean? Should I stop looking at houses? Should I try not to think about the situation at all? After getting some great advice from wise friends I finally felt like I had an idea of what it would mean to turn this situation over to God. Here's what I did:

1. Followed the path of peace: First, I began to pray regularly for direction on this matter. When I contemplated the logical arguments for and against each of our choices, I found that only the option of buying a house gave me a sense of peace. Even when I approached the other options in a positive, "can-do" way, they left me feeling uneasy. I was cautious not to assume that that therefore was a sign that we were meant to get a house, but just took it to mean that this was the path we should pursue at that moment.

2. Stopped pursuing paths that unnecessarily distracted from living my vocation to the best of my ability: Another way to phrase this one is that I "stopped banging my head against walls." My old way of searching for a house would have been to stay up until the middle of the night surfing real estate websites, let thoughts of mortgages and closings consume my mind, walk around grouchy and irritated because I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, etc. A big change in my behavior after turning it over to God was that I only worked on house research as time allowed. I trusted that if we were meant to get a house, I would find time to do the necessary legwork without having to set aside the foundational work of my vocation like taking care of the children, keeping some semblance of order in the house, going to church, etc.

3. Kept the ultimate goal in mind: What I found was that to turn the housing dilemma over to God was, ultimately, to set my goals higher -- much higher -- than the details of the situation at hand. Early on in the process I thought of my goal as, "TO GET A NEW PLACE TO LIVE! NOW!" To turn it over to God was to focus on the fact that my ultimate goal in this or any other situation is simply to know, love, serve, and grow closer to God.

We ended up finding a perfect little house at a great price. We found it by driving through our desired neighborhood on the way home from running some errands one weekend -- the owner had put the For Sale by Owner sign up less than 24 hours before. When we told him we wanted to make an offer, he said a bit hesitantly, "I hope you guys don't think it's weird if I tell you this, but I really feel like this is an answered prayer." So did we.


So, if that's helpful to anyone, those are some specific details of what I did when I turned a dilemma over to God. I should note that my actions weren't really as perfect as I described there -- I glossed over a lot of ups and downs for the sake of brevity. Also, just because that's what I did doesn't mean that that's the perfect way to do it.

I would love to hear from readers as well: What is an example of a situation in which you made the choice to "turn it over to God"? What are some specific actions you took (if any) after making that decision? How did it turn out? Long comments welcome. :)

Getting older...getting younger

My husband and I came across some old photos the other day. It was fun to take a trip down memory lane as we glanced through our pictures from a 2003 vacation, but I was surprisingly caught off guard when he made the passing comment, "We look a lot younger there!" We happened to be looking at a photo of me, and my initial reaction was to think:

I was younger there?

I did a quick double-take and noticed that I was indeed chronologically less old when I stood on that street in Prague. Yes, of course, what was I thinking? This photo was taken five years ago. I was not only younger, but also a few pounds lighter and more "carefree" with fewer responsibilities. And yet, the picture registered as if I were looking at a picture of an older, heavier, more burdened version of myself. How could it be, I wondered, that I could be five years older, fifteen pounds heavier, and have all the responsibilities of a wife and mother who just had her third baby in three years, yet look at this old picture and feel younger, lighter, and more free now than I did then? The one-word answer is this:

God.

Here's the longer answer:

Sometimes I come across old pictures that bring back memories of times of difficulty; usually, as was the case with our 2003 vacation photos, old pictures bring back memories of laughter and love and good friends and good times. But one universal feeling I have when I look at photos from more than a couple years ago, no matter whether they were taken in times of challenge or joy, is a sense that this picture was taken in the wilderness. It's a sense that, regardless of the actual location of the photo, I was standing in a no-man's-land of trouble and even danger; that, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was carrying burdens I didn't need to carry and wandering directionless across rough terrain when there was a marked path waiting for me. To the girl looking back at the camera, I feel like saying something like, "Hang in there."

In the past couple of years since the beginning of my conversion I've gotten a couple more wrinkles, some new gray hairs, and am starting to feel some aches and pains that weren't there before. Technically, I've gotten older. But I've also come to believe in God, and have begun to understand that my only purpose here is to know, love and serve him. And if to be younger is to be more full of life, more willing to love, less burdened by cares and worries, and somehow closer to the beginning of it all, then I am younger now than ever before.

The Adoration List update

On Friday I told you about the idea of keeping an "Adoration List." The idea first came to me in the beginning of March, so though it was frustrating to have to wait almost 30 days to see the fruits of the habit, it was a great relief to have a way to let go of the little daily worries that linger in the back of my mind. At least once a day I thought of how eager I was for the first Friday to roll around!

When Friday finally arrived, I was so eager to get down to the nearest Adoration chapel and go over this list. It had grown rather long, and I couldn't wait to see what I'd find through prayer: what would I find to be the big issues worth addressing? What would turn out to be things that seemed like a big deal at the time but are really not worth worrying about at all? There were so many scattered thoughts scribbled down on that paper, I was glad I wrote everything down since it would be impossible to remember it all.

As I prepared to get out of the house, things were already Not Going How I Wanted Them to Go™. I had let time slip by and it was getting late. I didn't finish some things I wanted to get done before I left. My mother had made a wonderful last-minute offer to babysit so that my husband could go with me, but the kids were uncharacteristically fussy about us leaving, and it required the skill of a snake charmer to extricate ourselves from the chaos without all three of them having simultaneous meltdowns. When we were finally in the car and on the road, I still felt tense and stressed, but took great comfort in knowing that I would finally be able to bring my long list of worries before the Lord. I will leave it up to your imagination as to how I reacted when I realized:

I forgot the list.

I. Forgot. The. *%@!&#. List. And there was no turning back -- it was already late, we were more than half way to the church, going back in the house would get the kids all wound up again, and I had no idea where I'd left it anyway. I was beside myself. I had been looking forward to this every single day for weeks, I really felt like it was an idea I'd been led to through prayer, and now it was all for naught because of an absent-minded mistake (it was with bitter irony that I recalled that one of the items on the list was "Am I too forgetful?").

To be honest, I'm not sure if I would have even gone to Adoration if my husband hadn't been with me. The self-pitying, control-freak, not-trusting-in-God side of my personality had been kicked into overdrive by this situation, and I was so frustrated about it all that I wanted to just forget the whole thing and go pout somewhere. At some point it did briefly occur to me that perhaps I should turn to God in calm trust that this was part of his plan and he'd lead me where I needed to go, but that thought was quickly drown out with more important concerns like, "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO HAVE A PRODUCTIVE ADORATION WITHOUT MY LIST?!" (That is what John Paul II emphasized in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, right? That Adoration of the Eucharist is supposed to be productive?)

Anyway, when we arrived at the church my heart softened a bit. Outside the chapel was a write-on/wipe-off board where people could list their prayer intentions, and just reading through all the things that other people were praying for helped put it all in perspective. I added my own note to the board and was about to head into the little chapel when something else caught my eye: the schedule of people who had signed up to sit with the Blessed Sacrament while it was exposed for Adoration.

I'd known about this, but until I saw that schedule I'd forgotten that the consecrated Host is never left alone, so in order to offer Adoration a church has to make sure that at least one person will be there at all times. I was amazed as I looked at the schedule for the 24 hours of Adoration: there were names next to the slots for the 1:00am - 2:00am hour, the 2:00am - 3:00am hour, the 3:00am - 4:00am hour, and so on. It was so touching to see all these people who were willing to get out of their beds in the middle of the night and go sit with the Lord. It reminded me of why I think of churches as places of hope.

When I walked into the silent chapel, I saw the man who was scheduled to sit with the Blessed Sacrament that hour sitting in the back row. I noticed that he wasn't reading or doing anything. He was just sitting quietly. I took a seat and immediately set about the task of trying to mentally review my forgotten list. But it wouldn't work. I just couldn't. It was like my mind was being blocked from doing any efficient, analytical thinking. I am the type of person who always has about a million different trains of thought running through my head, and for the first time in a long while, all my scattered thoughts were silenced. My mind was quiet. The only thing I felt like doing -- really, the only thing I could do -- was bask in feelings of overwhelming appreciation of God's presence.

I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was not meant to bring a list. I wouldn't have looked at it even if I'd had it.

For the longest time all I could do was offer prayers of thanksgiving and adoration. I didn't feel like I needed anything anymore. The only thing I needed at that moment was to give God as much love and gratitude as possible. (I've gone back and forth a few times about whether or not to mention this next part because it sounds kind of odd, but here it is anyway...) After a while I felt strongly drawn to pray for a specific person. Here's the crazy part: it's someone whom I never knew, who was not a believer, and who died in 2005. The only connection I had to her was that I read her blog a few times. But I spent the rest of my time at Adoration praying for her soul.

When I left the Adoration chapel, I felt lighter. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. My only concern was how I was going to do this more often. Later in the evening I was still marveling at how powerful the draw had been to spend most of my time in silent appreciation, to just be, and then I checked comments to my post about taking a list to Adoration. I was amazed as I read through others' experiences with this devotion.

Patty wrote:

It seems that whenever I go to adoration with something in mind to do (reading, journaling, decision-making, etc.) I end up just being quiet with Jesus, because that's what I really needed--some quiet and just to BE and not DO, because that's all Jesus wants is just plain old ME, and turns out what I needed most was Him.

I always leave peaceful. You're going to love Adoration, I'm sure of it.

Anne Marie wrote:

Adoration: My favorite devotion. Period. Like spending time with, well, GOD. I've been known to bail out of a particularly difficult day for a few hours to run up to the perpetual Adoration chapel an hour away from us just to get some perspective before returning to the fray...Perspective, yes, that's what's needed, perspective. Adoration is just the ticket.

Laura wrote:

Adoration is like a drug. Once you get a taste of it, you need to keep going back for more....I cannot even begin to expound on the graces that have come to our family because of our commitment to adoration. Give it a try and you will find yourself desiring it more and more!

Elizabeth wrote:

You might only have the opportunity to go monthly, but it will quickly become a much-anticipated ritual for you...I'm still not entirely sure what I should be doing in that first 40 minutes....but there is something undeniably moving about being in a still church with others in the presence of God...The best way I can describe it is that, short of attending daily Mass...it's the next best thing to keeping that Sunday feeling all week long. You are in the presence of a miracle.

Tausign wrote:

If you find yourself oozing out 'Praise and Adoration' do NOT stop, keep it up as that is the highest form [of prayer]...I'm sure you had a blessed time this evening. The Lord falls over those who spend time with Him.

Carol wrote:

I've only been to Adoration twice, but that was more than enough for me to get "hooked" on it!...I've noticed that while I take things along with me to do, in the end I tend to just fall silent and "be" there.

I can't remember where I read this recently but there was a little, old man who would spend hours and hours on end in Adoration. He was asked once what on earth he was doing in there for all that time and he replied to the effect of - "I look at Jesus and He looks at me and we are happy together."

Ashleyrae wrote:

Adoration will bring a certain kind of peace to you life...What I found out the first few times I went was that it's ok to just not do anything, to just be still. I think the Lord will guide you in your Adoration prayers. You may find yourself coming with a certain prayer in mind or with a book or journal and then God says, "I'd rather you do it my way." Funny how His way always gives you exactly what you need.

Those are just some of the comments where others shared their experiences with Adoration. What struck me all weekend as I watched these comments roll in is how precisely they pinpointed what had happened. It was uncanny to see how closely my experience of Adoration matched that of others. "Do these people have crystal balls or something?" I joked to my husband at one point.

So, back to the original subject, I don't really know what to make of the Adoration List. I still think it's a good idea and plan to keep that sheet of paper out in my kitchen. Maybe I'll try to take it with me again next month. All I know is that going to Adoration was like a spiritual cleansing, that even though I forgot my list and didn't think about solutions for any of my worries and the only active praying I did was for a deceased person whom I never met...I walked out of the chapel knowing that God had given me what I needed. I didn't (and still don't) know what the exact solutions are to any of my little problems...but I don't feel as much like I need to know. I'm starting to think that maybe all I need is more quiet time in front of the Lord.

The Adoration List

One of the things I've realized in my ongoing quest for peace in daily life is that I tend to worry and second-guess myself a lot, especially when things are overwhelming. I frequently have all sorts of "am I doing this wrong?" or "would it be better for the kids if I did XYZ like my supermom friend does?" type dialogues running through my head. None of it causes huge amounts of stress, but there is a sort of low-grade angst that's frequently haunting the back of my mind, especially on tough days when I'm mentally maxed out anyway.

I've been trying to address all these little worries individually in prayer, but realized that I stress about so many random things that it's hard to remember to properly consider each one when prayer time rolls around -- especially here at Casa Chaos. A few weeks ago I started to feel like all these little straws on the proverbial camel's back were starting to get awfully heavy, and an idea occurred to me: start an Adoration List. I don't know whether it was the prompting of the Holy Spirit or just some crazy idea I pulled out of my hat, but here's what it involves:

• Keep a sheet of paper in the kitchen where I can jot down a quick note any time I find myself worrying.
  
  
• After making the note, resolve to let go of my anxiety about the issue for the time being.
  
  
• Plan to have my husband watch the kids so that I can go to Adoration the first Friday of each month (the two nearest churches only have Adoration once a month -- which is perfect for me because then I can't procrastinate).
  
  
• Take this list with me. After spending some time in silence and prayer, consider all of these issues both individually and as a whole: what are the genuine problems that deserve my attention? What are the things that aren't really problems and I need to stop agonizing about? And so on.
  
  
• Leave the Adoration chapel with a written list of the few issues that are significant enough to warrant further action or consideration; resolve to let go of anything that is not on that list.
  

Having this Adoration List on my kitchen clipboard has already been a help to free my mind from all the little distracting thoughts I have throughout the day. Some of the items that are scribbled on this month's list in various colored pens and with stains from various types of toddler-friendly food next to them:

- Kids watching too much TV?
- Not getting enough exercise?
- Necessary to force the issue of potty training? If so, when? This can't go on until he's 20...right?
- Parish Mother's Day Out program -- good idea? Bad idea? Too expensive?
- Have been trying to get to household projects like pantry reorganization, garage cleanout, etc. for more than a year, really bugs me that it never gets done
- Spending too much on groceries?
- Not looking at spending vs. budget each month -- are we over budget? How to get more time to focus on this?
- Kids eating too much processed food?

To give you an example, last week I got home from the grocery store and all the kids were tired, hungry and fussy. Standing in a sea of grocery bags and listening to a symphony of shrieking I thought about how our grocery spending has been increasing lately, and wondered how far over budget we were. Not able to listen to much more noise without losing my mind, I brought out my secret weapon: the bag of Goldfish. As the toddlers sat happily munching on the little orange crackers, I wondered if perhaps my pediatrician was right that Goldfish are not actually the fifth food group, and wondered if I resort to feeding the kids processed foods too often. Then I remembered that I was worrying about our grocery spending, so I got back to that. But while I was putting away the groceries a bunch of cans fell off the shelf and I was reminded once again the our pantry is a disaster area and I've really wanted to sort through it for more than a year yet it's never happened. I was trying to focus on the "my life is out of control because my closets, pantry and garage are overflowing and trashed and I never have time/energy to do anything about it" stress when I saw the kids eating Goldfish and remembered that I was supposed to be stressing about that, and then I saw the grocery receipt and...well, you get the idea.

In that moment, it was a great relief to simply get out my Adoration List and start writing. Though there was that control-freak voice in the back of my mind that said "YOU MUST FIND THE PERFECT SOLUTION TO EVERY ONE OF THESE ISSUES NOW! NOW! NOW!", I was actually able to make a conscious choice to just let go and revisit it at Adoration.

Today is the first Friday of the month, so as soon as my husband gets home in a couple of hours I'm going to take my little list and head out. I've never tried this before -- heck, I've never even been to Adoration before -- so we'll see how it goes.


P.S. If anyone has any thoughts / experiences / stories about Adoration, I'd love to hear it. I know a lot of people find it very spiritually fulfilling but, like I said, I have no direct experience with it.


UPDATE: Click here for the update.

The viewing

Yesterday I found myself alone in a room with the body of a deceased person.

My husband's grandfather passed away this weekend after a long illness, and we went to the funeral yesterday. We arrived at the funeral home an hour early, and I went inside to use the restroom while my husband gave the kids some snacks in the car. As I walked through the lobby to the restroom near the little nondenominational chapel, I realized there was nobody else in the building. It was completely silent.

As I walked back toward the lobby, I saw someone in the next room. I was startled to realize it was my husband's grandfather, lying in an open casket in the viewing room. I hadn't expected there to be a viewing, and I only met him a couple times, but it felt somehow rude to just walk by. So I crept into the room and stood next to the white coffin for a moment. Everything was so still. My breathing was the only motion, the only sound in the whole building.

As I said a couple prayers for his soul, I realized that this was the first viewing I'd attended since I was an atheist.

What surprised me about that was that it didn't feel all that different from the last time I went to a viewing before a funeral, back when I was a teenager. Not that I expected a chorus of angels or to hear the voice of God or anything, but I guess I thought it would feel noticeably different to see death face-to-face now that I'm aware of God's existence. But it didn't. It didn't feel different because seeing death so close up, then as now, stripped away any high-minded theories or explanations I might try to invoke and left me only with a certain unmistakable feeling, a feeling that came from some primordial part of my mind.

Yesterday, I was able to put my finger on just what that feeling was. I realized in that moment, standing next to a body in an open coffin in a silent room, that I was aware of something at the very deepest level of my consciousness. It was something simultaneously obvious yet easy to ignore, like the fact that there was a ceiling above my head and a floor beneath my feet. It was something I'd felt before, when I looked at my grandmother in her coffin as an atheist teenager so many years ago:

This is only a body. The soul lives on.

In that room yesterday, I didn't think that that man had an eternal soul because I've read about it in theology books or because it says so in the Bible. It wasn't that I wished or hoped or wanted this death to be a separation of the corporeal body from the incorporeal soul; rather, it was something I was simply aware of. I was aware of it on such a fundamental, primitive level that it surpassed the need for words. It would have been easy to let more loud, conscious thoughts distract from it (as I did when I was a teenager). If there had been anyone else in the room, anything else going on in the building to attract my attention, I might not have noticed this awareness at all.

I've heard a lot of theories about why every known group of humans throughout history has had belief in some sort of spiritual realm. Some theories suggest that perhaps evolution favored people who were religious, others posit that the wiring of our brains gives us the need to come up with comforting stories about death, and yet others theorize that spiritual belief systems provide means for people to wield power.

Yesterday morning, it was so simple, so clear.

We humans don't come up with spiritual beliefs because of some complicated interaction of evolved needs and wants. Cultures where illness and death are rampant don't tend to be more religious because people need nice stories to tell themselves. Humans believe in another realm -- and seek religion to find out more about it -- because of the fact of the soul, a fact that one only needs to see a lifeless body to be aware of.

I realized yesterday that if I were to have lived my whole life in a cave, that if you stripped away all cultural and educational influences, even my ability to use language to make sense of the world, I would be left with only the most basic, ancient knowledge of only those things that are inscribed on the human heart. And one of those things is that life does not end at death. Even if I'd always lived in the most isolated and primitive of settings, when I saw the body of a deceased human being I would be aware that I was looking at a separation, not an end; that it is only because of the limits of my five senses that I can no longer see the life that once animated this body. I know this not because of books and philosophies, but for the same reason all my ancestors going back to the first man and woman knew it: because we're human. To be human is to be aware of the soul.


I suppose this story wouldn't be complete without adding a footnote to tell what happened next, which proves that even the most solemn occasions can be turned into what my husband calls "Jen moments": I returned to the car to tell my husband about the prayers I had said for his grandfather, and the powerful time that I spent with him. He informed me that we were at the wrong funeral home. That wasn't his grandfather. (Have I ever mentioned I'm really bad with faces?)

So, to the gentleman with whom I spent a few quiet moments in a little funeral parlor in Waco, TX on a misty Wednesday morning: requiescat in pace. I may not have known you in this life, but may we both end up in the place of peace, and meet again on the other side.

Let's talk about you!

Our recent discussions about community reminded me of something I've been meaning to do for a while: start a post to add as a permanent link on the sidebar where readers can introduce themselves. I've seen more and more bloggers doing this sort of thing (Kat and Tertia are two examples) and think it's a great idea. Not only would I love to know more about the people who are kind enough to drop by my little blog, but I also think it would be interesting for readers to get a feel for who else visits this site.

So, whether you're a regular commenter from way back or a brand new reader who just lurks, I'd be delighted if you'd take a moment to leave a comment and introduce yourself. Here are five questions for your consideration:

1. Tell me a little bit about your own spiritual journey: what were your religious beliefs when you were younger? What are your religious beliefs now (if different)?
   
   
2. Where are you from?
   
   
3. What is one book* that has had a great impact on your life (other than the Bible)?
   
   
4. Tell me a little bit about your daily life: what is a typical day like for you? What's your favorite part of each day?
   
   
5. If you have a blog, feel free to indulge in a little shameless self-promotion: what's your URL? What do you write about?
   

Those are some things I'd be particularly interesting to know, but all questions are optional. I look forward to "meeting" you!

*Yes, fellow bibliophiles, you can list a few if you just can't keep it to just one.

UPDATE: The paging for the comments to this post doesn't seem to be working in the HTML format of this page. To read them all, click here (notice the "Newer" link at the very bottom).