Fearless Wonder

Right now I am reading a book called "A Chosen Faith."  Its sort of a primer to the Unitarian Universalist faith.  I am thinking about formally joining our local congregation.  (I already sing in the choir.)   Unitarian Universalism seems to line up with where I am right now.  However I find myself still in the awkward getting to know you stage with the congregation.  Folk are fairly friendly and there is a lot to do and a lot to get involved with.  However there are not a lot of younger childless couples in the church so its a bit harder to form those easy friendships one does with ones peers.  This has me thinking about the place of awkwardness in the spiritual experience.  We'd all like to be up on the mountaintop, blissing out to a spiritual high, but life is not often made of moments like this.  I think the Buddhist view of the present moment helps.  i.e. "Dwelling in this present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment." Thich Nhat Hanh.   If I remember

This is a response to my friend's comment on my last post. Yes, I have heard the lunatic/liar/lord argument.  I know there are scholars from the different camps who have written extensively on the historical Jesus, some to give evidence for faith, some to destroy faith, and some who simply want to examine the facts honestly.   For me, to parse out the truth of what happened 2000+ years ago is an hopeless task.  To call myself even an amatuer history buff would be too much.  I enjoy history but only have devoted myself to it sporadically.  Yet even if I did devote myself fulltime would the conclusions I come to be any more valid than the countless other historian who have gone before?   I have trouble enough determining what is true in the here and now, let alone seeing the truth in a distant path, where much knowledge has been lost and forgotten. In truth I haven't given a lot of thought to the historical Jesus, to either prove or disprove his worth.   It has always been t

My blog is a bit mad at me for ignoring it for so long, and it went and collected all kinds spam comments to show me that it's feelings were hurt.  Well, I cleaned up the comments and now I need to go one step further and post something so that my blog can finally forgive me.  (Sorry to Noah, whose last comment was accidentally deleted while I cleaned up spam.) Sooooooooo....um......life, and meaning, and religion, and er.....stuff.    I recently finished both War and Peace and Anna Karenina.  Tolstoy got me thinking about a lot of things, but I fear that if I start in posting about what I've learned from Tolstoy that this post will end up the same length as War and Peace.   I am also reading a book on Unitarian Universalism since I am thinking about joining our local congregation.  I already sing in the choir.  But since I am still making up my mind about the UU I don't have anything clear to say about it.   I could post about my adorable kindergartners and