Still Looking Around

So... here I am, 8 months past my final post on One Joy, One Sorrow. I am in a new town. I am in a new home. I am in a new lifestyle setting (staying at home instead of going to school/ working).

And all of this has helped to create a space and time that is both full of possibility and poised for springing in multiple directions, while also being rife with rut-i-ness and the dangerous pull of inertia that sometimes accompanies the necessity of self-discipline and an internally imposed sense of direction.

In short, I feel a bit directionless. I also feel a bit clearer. Perhaps clearer than I ever have in the last 10+ years of my life. I have started to notice things about myself, my perspective, my assumptions, my interpersonal interactions and habits, etc. that warrant deeper introspection and spur me on to make some sizable and more positive changes in my life.

One such change: getting back to blogging. There was something deeply meditative, spiritual, grounding, purposeful, connected, and fulfilling about doing my first blog. That blog was tied to my sense of feeling called during a Unitarian Universalist service - and the resulting ups and downs of the year that followed as I made a series of decisions that took me toward and away from such service... changed my direction within my counseling program multiple times... and had me looking all over the place for a spot to land.

The end result: I have decided I am not a UU. It's not the right fit for me, though I do love many aspects of the way the services, mission, and activist outreach of that particular faith are set up. I think, ultimately, it was perhaps still too Judeo-Christian in focus for me. Which is not to poo poo those expressions of faith. I believe spirituality or religion must be suited to each individual - and that there is no "right" or "wrong" along whatever path one may choose to take (including atheism). Do what works for you.

What works for me is starting to look more like an interfaith or Buddhist perspective. But time and exploration will tell if those assumptions are correct.

In the meantime, I think it will be helpful to have a space within which to more formally and publicly share the meditations and ruminations coming up lately. And I do still think I am "supposed" to serve in some way. Perhaps it's through writing.

More on that next time, I think.

In the meantime, enjoy the shift of weather that has begun so markedly for many of us. I don't know about you, but for me the approach of winter brings with it an intense array of sense memories, nostalgic feelings, and happy recollections. There is so much I love about this colder time of season... cinnamon, the smell of wood fires, crisp air, apples, the scent of wet leaves, the hush of night.

May warmth and remembered joys find us all.