Status Report

I am trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing.  My writing is scattered, as are my thoughts to some degree.  

There's no going back to being closeted and probably no going back to being christian.  I say probably because there are bits and pieces of christian culture, belief and practice I have realized I want to take with me.  None of it particularly dependent on christianity per se, but things that exist in the secular world, but are not dealt with forthrightly because of their close association with christianity.  The details of that are probably best left for another time, as I am still working out how to talk about it myself.  But there is a baby in that bathwater (a metaphor I am desperate to replace), and I don't think it's wise to throw it out.  And I want to intelligently strain out the ideas I want, but I am not exactly practiced in rigorous philosophical thought.

The more I marinate in the secular world the longer I realize it contains many of the same problems as the christian one.  Problems of pride verging on hubris, an obscene level of unearned self-regard for one's intelligence and uprightness, an odd confidence in the shape and character of those elements of the universe still hidden by shadow and fog, an easy demonization of the other, a subtle addiction to in-grouping, inquisitions and purity crusades, a love of false dichotomies, sexism, patriarchy and blind hero worship;  all these are just as present in the world outside the church as in it.  On a bad day I think of it as the blind hating the blind.  On a better day I just laugh at the absurdity of people who have so much in common pretending that they are from different worlds.  We fight because we're the same, so much the same.

The golden line I followed out of the closet has disappeared and I am once again searching for it. But I have not found a new purpose yet and while I have gathered a few kindred spirits I'm not sure I have found "my people" yet.  A group I can cleanly point to and declare affinity and resonance of spirit and commonality of purpose.   Or maybe I have and I am too deeply engaged in my omphaloskepsis to see how much the same I am too.    

And I vent about the complete lack of humility in America in the year of our lord 2014, but I am not overflowing with the stuff myself it seems.  Still too eager to tell everyone else what they're doing wrong on any given day if my twitter feed is any indication.  And while my frustration with the hypocrisy and unkindness and general shittyness of the culture at large has not really abated, it seems more and more ridiculous to complain about it endlessly while never changing myself.

I still entertain too many delusions of grandeur and not enough disciplines of habit.  A sense of purpose is a powerful thing.  But I have been swept up in so many purposes that were not my own I am hesitant to jump in again, for fear of being carried farther away in the wrong direction, whatever that is.  So I have not been getting an E for Effort.  More like a G for Getting by.

Even so, I have an inner world I want to act on in some fashion.  Ideas, stories, music I want to express.  Career options I want to explore.  Resonances to sound out.  Existential anxieties I want to resolve, or at least enter a good working relationship with.  I'd like to die knowing I gave it a good shot, and passed on some good ideas.

Currently having troubles with the world to self interface though apparently.  Please stand by.