looking up...

[2eclipse]

is something people rarely do
figuratively or literally. i have been making a concerted effort to not stay focused on my own issues this week and it has helped a lot.

i don't know what i would do right now if i couldn't be in school. i get so much of my sense of self-worth from proving to myself that i'm not dumb. and it gives me so much to think about. there's nothing like a good brain-stretching when you feel like you are on an emotional roller-coaster.
today i am very much in love with my systematics professor/degree adviser, kendall soulen. the man is quite simply a genius. he articulates easily even the points of view he doesn't agree with. it is one of the best classes i have ever had, and i have had a lot of fabulous classes.

last night we talked about particularism, inclusivism and pluralism as paradigms for understanding ultimate reality. wow. i am a lot less open-minded than i've always thought i was, but so is everyone else even if they don't know it.
because everyone takes a position about reality. we have to. and there will always be people who agree or disagree with you, and are thereby included or excluded by your view. kendall soulen has a really complicated religious way of applying this and explaining it that i really like.

so i am stimulated as hell and kind of disturbed because my inclinations are to be inclusive. i spent my summer involved in interfaith work. i believe that no one person or religion has a monopoly on the truth, including my own. but i also believe in the truth of my own faith, i have to stand for something and against something in order for my faith to have any significance (and mesh with my concept of reality). it is a problem that i have been struggling with for a long time...and while it is satisfying to struggle, i will need to come up with an answer this year, or at least enough of one to write my credo paper (40+ pages of "this is what heather believes as of now").

i guess going through a break-up is a good time for anyone to do some serious soul-searching. i went to a counselor with z this week and it was extremely productive and extremely frustrating. productive because i learned some important things, frustrating because the counselor (who is a friend of the family and REALLY fantastic) is focused on fixing things, while i am focused on ending things....okay maybe understanding them to, but i am also determined that as wonderful as he is, i am not going back to z. and my mother put me on a huge guilt trip beforehand, which didn't help. i have a nasty tendency to get so wrapped up in other people's feelings that i forget to pay attention to my own.

so i high-tailed it over to abby's. abby is a godsend. i have not made such a friend in years. her man is pretty kick-ass too.
speaking of which, i have added people to my friend's list that i have met through her, or think i need to know better. i hope no one minds.

Comments

[ashoe.livejournal.com]

:big kisses:

we love you much, darling.

~a

[doc-rorshack.livejournal.com]

Mind it? I was going to request it had you not done it sooner or later...

*HUG*

[keisolo.livejournal.com]

You've made me curious about this class and topic you're discussing here.
I agree entirely on the brainstretching bit - one of the most frustrating things about my current reality is that I've subsumed most of what I love, and most of what I wanted/wish to pursue. Sometimes I worry that my mind will atrophy from disuse.
Then I realize that there are a lot of things I do that actually require thought, some of it complex, they just aren't school or prototypical learning.
But I digress, this is a response, not a rant.
Where did you end up with the inclusive truth vs self-belief truth?

Hope you aren't minding this someone back-raiding your journal bit - I just figure one should start at the beginning and work one's way through.

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]


If anything I’m a bit charmed by the fact that you are going through my old entries. I would have made them private if they were meant to be private. I subscribe to the idea that if my thoughts about life or any detail of it can help or stimulate another person, then that is something to be celebrated.
It does make me curious about you though. I checked out your journal and it seems to contain a lot of quotes and scattered thoughts that often seem disconnected from the thoughts that motivated you to include them. I would be interested in what a rant from you looks like. Also where you live, if you know mark baird ([Bad username or site: ”sidhebear” @ livejournal.com]) personally or just through lj, and who you want to be when you grow up.

I enjoyed my classes in systematic theology so much that I completed an emphasis in it along with my emphasis in Christian ethics. I still wrestle with the question of ‘how does one maintain one’s own faith while being respectful and solicitous of learning from the faith of others?’(faith being intimately connected with one’s concept of reality) I am committed to doing them both and have settled down with the idea that it is one of those life-long processes rather than something for which there is a short answer.
However if you are interested in long answers, I have 2 offers for you.
If you give me an e-mail and an indication of your interest, I can immediately send you a copy of my credo(the afore-mentioned 40+ page paper based on the class discussed which includes my conclusion about ultimate reality) and after time enough to find and scan the documents, I can send you a copy of the paper by a theologian named dicosta who influenced my conclusion and put the problem in a very neat way.

[keisolo.livejournal.com]

As I stated, always seems a better idea to start at the beginning and work my way through. Gives me an idea of a person over time, rather than just in the moment. Over time I've become... not neccesarily less patient with people, but more choosy in who I interact with, be it over the web, or in real life. Being sick taught me, among other things, that I need to be more cautious with where my time gets spent. That doesn't mean I've become completely anti-risk or anti-people entire, but my drama threshold and tolerance has dropped dramatically. It's one of the reasons why there are friends only and specific group only posts on my journal. I don't want to get drawn into anything or anyone I don't choose anymore. I have a bad habit of being magnetized in until I finish figuring something out, and then not knowing what to do with the individual who still wants the same intensity of focus - if they turn out to be someone that I don't feel like delving into or exploring with further.

Celebration. I like your approach to that.

If there's anything in particular or specific you are curious about - ask. Previously noted here concerns aside, once I decide to speak to someone, I'm pretty open. "Brutal honesty" is something I've been accused of/a character trait, depending on who you ask.

I friended you, as I saw you noticed, which opens up rants and the like. I think I'd actually gotten around to setting all the writing snippets aside in a special group, for by request only access - as much so that people could choose to see it as to allow me to choose who could see it.

Mentioned where I'd met sidehebear - though that's not the name I think of him by. Of course, his "Real Name" isn't the one I think of him by either. One of the things about the internet is the utter profusion of aliases and secondary names.

Who I want to be when I grow up? That's a more difficult question. There are a number of things that I would really like to have done, but they aren't neccesary for me to have been moderately satisfied with who I was this round. I guess I primarily want to have done some good. Maybe enough to balance out the bad done to me and to others I've known. But that doesn't really cover it.
Long answer. I'll get back to you.

Your response to that question is the sort of thing that gives me hope for Christians/Christianity. Nice that I've garnered some of that as I've grown. My foundational introductions to it were fair horrid.

I am interested in the long answers. I'd actually been considering asking for the opportunity you mentioned because I was curious.

Hm. Arguing with AIM proved futile. So I'll stick an eddy here and get rid of it later. kei@plutospeaks.info

[2eclipse.livejournal.com]

it is interesting that you follow that pattern and i thank you for the warning. it is flattering to have someone show such interest, but i will not expect it to characterize you.
i almost never ask questions to which i don't really want the answer. at least not from people i'm not dating. i really am curious about what is making you sick, and also if it has changed how you view yourself in addition to how you spend your time.
i know mark baird in person. i met him because my husband and several of his friends used to work at the renaissance festival together. mark still does and plays music there and for weddings and such. but i don't know him well.
i will also pretty much answer anything you ask.

i'm glad that i can show a positive light on christianity for you. doing just that is a chief part of my calling and one of the reason i am not getting ordained. most of my friends(and my husband) are non-christians; atheists, agnostics, jews, neo-pagans...and many of them have been wounded by the church.
my first taste of christianity was lousy too. full of cheap platitudes and authoritarian-asshole adults who thought i should do what they told me and shut up. i left the church. i know what it's like and it means a lot to me to be an example that not all christians are fundamentalists or close-minded (though we are all hypocrites). i feel i would be able to do that less well if i were ordained. also i have a bit of a problem with authority.

[keisolo.livejournal.com]

Not so much a warning, in your case, I don't think. There's enough of substance and interest and vibrancy in you that I don't think you'll end up being one of the children's puzzles some people turn out to be. And that statement is not meant as anything egotistical, it's just... often true. Bleagh.

Being sick was a very different way of facing death than any I'd experienced prior. I've faced people trying to kill me, and I've faced things done to me that could have turned into death. But the prior data had all been the direct sort - where there was someone or something you could actually fight, focus on. Even most injuries are like that. I've given myself stitches before, because it is right there, in front of you, and there are actions you can take, bits of experience you can control. Being sick was different. There was something wrong, no one could figure out what it was, and it was killing me. There didn't seem to be a damn thing I could do about it - and that was really hard to wrap my head around. I learned what apathy was, for a bit of it - and that was one of the most disgusting emotional states I have ever tasted. And I hope to never find it again. It burned me down to my core, I think, and some of the things I had learned to do to deal with the world are gone now. They feel like a waste of time, some of them. I can still do diplomacy, when it feels worth it - but I've lost a lot of skill with day to day social lubrication. So many of the games seem pointless.
As far as how I directly view myself? In the end I came out of it stronger. Learned something else I can actually face and not go insane. I learned that I could, in fact, continue to function and even respect myself when I couldn't move "properly" - and that there is enough mind and spirit here to make up for losing the capacity to be a physical guardian, if it ever again comes down to that.
It was a lesson I sorely needed to learn.
There's more floating around, but I'm probably going to overflow this comments field if I keep train-of-thoughting about it.

*chuckles* From what I know of the origins of Christianity, it began, in part, as a problem with authority - or such was expressed quite thoroughly, in the beginning - so you should be in good company with that.
Congratulations on qualifying, so far, as religiously/spiritually sane in my paradigym - dubious honor, by some assessments - but so far, you have it.

The church has wounded so many. I'm just glad I've met wounded who, like me, are willing to keep their minds open to the chance of good within that which hurt them.