Fear and Freedom

Today my son said something beautiful.
  "Mom, what if the universe is just a painting. What if it is just a painting that God made up. What if God created it and it's just a story?"

It reminds me of another conversation I recently had with another adult. This adult told me that his response to creation and evolution was to wonder if we are all just a fantastic story. If this life is a story world like Tolkien created. I love that my formative years were spent with this adult, my father.

There is so much fear about the unknown in lots of Christianity. It's something that saddens me deeply. I have never really been afraid of the unknown despite my religious background. I am so thankful for this. I am sure this lack of fear comes from my love of story, art and science. Though I haven't been afraid, I haven't felt freedom either. I am just now starting to enjoy freedom.

I have a good friend who frequently finds herself in arguments with Christians. She likes to tell me about it and we laugh a bit and shake our heads. She is always confused by these arguments, she doesn't understand the intolerance and even ugliness towards different ideas. I say the same thing to her every time,
   "You have to have patience and compassion. You are talking to people who have been taught since a young age that listening to or even entertaining different ideas will start them down a path of faith compromise."

This was brought home to me recently in a conversation I had about evolution. It would be bad form to share who I had this conversation with and why so I will just share the little thing I felt so sad by:
  "We don't want our child to learn about evolution in school. We want to prepare her to be able to stand up for herself in college. We are encouraging her to go to a christian college but she may choose to go to a secular school. We want to equip her with the tools she needs to stay strong in her faith."

It's heart breaking really. You won't believe how many times I have heard sentiments like this. Here is something I find encouraging:

 “We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men.

Unamuno might be describing the artist as well as the Christian as he writes, "Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”

-Madeline L'engle

The Utter East

"Where sky and water meet,
Where the waves grow sweet,
Doubt not, Reepicheep,
To find all you seek,
There is the utter East."

I can't believe I am about to do another blog post. I just did one last night. I am pretty sure I have several reasons for doing so and I am going to share them in numbered points because my friend Nash keeps sending me texts with numbered points. I find it very amusing.

1. I am hopelessly ignoring another writing project that I am supposed to be doing. I am not doing it because it is terrifying me. I decided in the bath tub(where I do all my great thinking) that writing is writing and the best way to write is to just write. 

2. A teenager told me last week that blogs are out of style. This makes me instantly want to blog everyday. I do kind of hope it's true, mostly because I am tired of being directed to the blogs of my peers. It seems to me that most of them are about child birth, crafting things, gluten intolerance, gluten intolerance during child birth, crafting with your after birth, etc. It's all very exhausting. I am sure they probably feel the same way about this blog. So cheers to my peers and their blogs! (I still hate them..)

3. Chris Rock tweeted last week that Facebook is for people who can't write blogs and blogs are for people who can't write books. That sounds like me. 

I call this blog Paddling East because I hope, like Reepicheep, to find all I seek in the utter East. I am trying to paddle along in my little boat. (When I think of this I picture myself in a walnut shell for some reason.) I cherish Reepicheep. He represents the hope I am certain of, the hope that even a small and noble mouse can enter Aslan's country, a hope that the smallest are really the most honored. When I enter in to the blackest of times I find myself thinking, "Doubt not Reepicheep, To find all you seek, There is the utter East."

Truth

I haven't written about faith in a long time. Mostly this is because I am very sensitive. I only want my words to help people see, to shed the blinders. It isn't my intention to cause pain and struggle. Although, if I am really honest with myself, I have to admit that the shedding of my blinders has been a very painful experience. And when I say painful I don't mean just hurtful, I mean the whole pain experience. I think I am ready to write about it again.

I stopped going to church. I stopped going for several reasons which I will share at some point but mostly I stopped going so that I could find truth. I am deeply committed to finding truth and I can't seem to get at it with all the Christian culture stuff distracting me. Here is a quote that I found today that sums up things nicely.

      "There is not much truth being told in the world. There never was. This has proven to be a major disappointment for some of us. When I was a child, I thought grown-ups and teachers knew the truth, because they told me they did. It took years for me to discover that the first step in finding out the truth is to begin unlearning almost everything adults had taught me, and to start doing all the things they'd told me not to do." Anne Lamott

I am working on the unlearning. It is full of pain and joy. I pray for Christians around the world to throw off their fear of the unknown and try it. Maybe we will all find the truth.