friday reflections – feb 5

I wrote and erased — and wrote and erased — several paragraphs about religion and the Church today. But I don’t feel ready to post those paragraphs just yet. I’m not able to articulate my thoughts quite the way I would like.

So I’ll say instead that I have returned again and again recently to this short quote by David James Duncan. In recent years I have felt more and more connected to the wildness of the outdoors, to being outside. It’s where I feel most connected to the spirit of the deep, which is to say God. Along with books, of course, and writing and walking with Jason; along with the brilliant light outside my window as I write in the late afternoons; along with watching my kids leap triumphantly off the railing at the park as the blue heron leaps triumphantly off the roof over our heads.

I would love to hear what you think of this:

“As for my having left institutional religion behind without bitterness: how in the Name of the Lover of field lilies, the poor, the prostituted, and His own murderers, could I be bitter about having traded self-righteousness, pharisaism, judgmentalism, and church pews for sunlit river banks and rising fish and moonrises over Rocky Mountain ridges and the path of intuition and salmon runs and great literature and world Wisdom traditions and abiding friendships and the incessant following of the sweet scent of love?”

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PS — the day after last week’s reflection, Jason and G came home with pho for lunch. Coincidence? Jason swore up and down he hadn’t seen my post (I believe him, he doesn’t even know I write these, I don’t think. He doesn’t read them anyway) and he also confirmed that he wasn’t sick of the potato leek soup, which I was planning for Sunday night. I dunno. Seemed fishy. But I still ate it.