The Journey Begins

It's been a while since I've addressed my spirituality. I've gone for some time turning a blind eye to it, but recently I've been confronted with it and realized the void.

How does one turn a blind eye to spirituality? Accept the practices and behaviors with out questioning and meaning. Recite them and rehearse them to avoid being "called out". This means going to church, saying the canned things you say in church and ignore the ridiculously irrelevant things the pastor feels fit to talk about for 30 min. It is not spending the energy to understand what is relevant. Avoiding a discussions about why I think the safe church topics are irrelevant.

What confronted me? Several things actually. My wife and I have began an effort to emphasize right brain thinking in our lives. For my wife its her new found love of photography. As a gift over the Holidays my wife bought me a drawing set after looking through my college sketch pad and the journaling I did along with it. I went back over my journal and remembered my flirts with the art of seeing.

Our family has started getting to know some acquaintances from college and discovered we get along quite well. These friends are very interested in spirituality, but not in the traditional Christian Church sense. He is an atheist but has moved from militant to agnostic. They are also very involved in a movement. Discussions have challenged me to articulate what resonates with me.

The lack of effort expended to define my own spirituality has left me with little more than feelings about what my stance is. Starting drawing again has re-awakened the need for the spiritual part of myself to be nourished. I have two kids that are going to church school and church and absorbing all those things I ignore at church.

So what will I do about it? I want to rediscover what resonates with me. I want to pull myself back from the technical left-brained details of my daily work and start looking at the wholeness of the environment, the people, the relationships, the meaning of the work. I want to read up on philosophies that resonate with me and that seem to articulate what bugs me about "the church".

Here is my plan:

• Embrace drawing when I can (it takes a lot of un-interrupted time that is hard to come by with kids).
• Read literature about spiritual things that interest me (and commit to finishing the books I start).
• Write about my experience here.
• Keep an eye on the right-brained aspects of work.

For my first reading assignment I'm re-reading a book that I realized had a strong influence on my when I was younger and addresses spirituality along the way: The Tracker by Tom Brown Jr.