There's no easy way to rebuild your worldview. This year has been rough. Very rough. I find myself just as exhausted tonight as I was at the beginning, and I feel like I've made little to no progress—at finals week, it's striking me how precious little I've given to or received from the classes which once drove me to willing, happy slavery. What happened? Where did I lose my perfect, energetic, inspired self in trying to find myself?
How do I fill the void which was at one time so richly, amply supplied? The words to In the Middle of Me by Todd Agnew once cheered me and now taunt me. So this is the price of truth, of craving with everything in me to just stop…lying…though the world was so many times sweeter when I could rest on that drug.
It seems like an apt time to perhaps share a little of the beginning of my story. Well, glad you asked…
Monday, April 30, 2012
Friday, April 27, 2012
Packing Up
The school year is wrapping up, which means it's time to do what I've done at least once a year, every year, for the past seven years: pack.
I really like packing. Packing is when I get to cull through my treasures, soaking in memories, smiling or puzzling over some little scrap that tugs at my mental libraries. I get to rewrite my history, occasionally tossing things which have lost significance, but always replacing them with a few new things I've collected. Some people have scrapbooks. I have an assortment of papers and odd objects that anyone else would put in a junk yard.
I came across my old study Bible tonight. It was given to me in middle school at a private international academy. I flipped through it with a certain fondness, noting verses I had highlighted or memorized. I smiled at the puzzled questions I'd written beside verses in Genesis. It's at least 7 lbs and the size of a textbook, but I can't bring myself to part with it.
I really like packing. Packing is when I get to cull through my treasures, soaking in memories, smiling or puzzling over some little scrap that tugs at my mental libraries. I get to rewrite my history, occasionally tossing things which have lost significance, but always replacing them with a few new things I've collected. Some people have scrapbooks. I have an assortment of papers and odd objects that anyone else would put in a junk yard.
I came across my old study Bible tonight. It was given to me in middle school at a private international academy. I flipped through it with a certain fondness, noting verses I had highlighted or memorized. I smiled at the puzzled questions I'd written beside verses in Genesis. It's at least 7 lbs and the size of a textbook, but I can't bring myself to part with it.
One Beginning
On July 12, 2011, a Christian at Olivet Nazarene University hit an end and would never be the same. That was about ten months ago. At the time, I took deep consolation from the blog Leaving Eden, written by a girl an hour up the road from me. In some ways this blog is started tonight with the same motivation as her: to extend consolation to those who have broken the boundaries of a Christian university culture and feel the isolation that accompanies. But in other ways my story is very different.
As I mentioned, it all really ended and began ten months ago. So unfortunately, the journey I've experienced since then may come out in bits and pieces. Sorry for all you obsessive chronological folk. :) At some point I may get around to writing out more of that history. Suffice to say, I started at atheism, then existentialism, then nihilism, then kind of evened out at agnosticism for a while. Most recently, I've taken up the label Christian agnostic. We shall see where that goes. In the meantime, I dedicate this blog to anyone else whose faith has, at some point, hit an end, and who has been faced with the overwhelming prospect of building a brand new worldview from scratch.
As I mentioned, it all really ended and began ten months ago. So unfortunately, the journey I've experienced since then may come out in bits and pieces. Sorry for all you obsessive chronological folk. :) At some point I may get around to writing out more of that history. Suffice to say, I started at atheism, then existentialism, then nihilism, then kind of evened out at agnosticism for a while. Most recently, I've taken up the label Christian agnostic. We shall see where that goes. In the meantime, I dedicate this blog to anyone else whose faith has, at some point, hit an end, and who has been faced with the overwhelming prospect of building a brand new worldview from scratch.
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