Smart Phone

I got a smart phone.  This makes me feel "more connected" than ever before.  I don't know how I feel about that; I know it doesn't make me feel happy.  No more getting lost by bicycle or other means.  One step further from my once-hermetic life.  Will I rely less o other people now that I have this little machine?  Will I spend less time with my own thoughts?  I've gained this piece of technology.  Who will I lose?

Sundays

I feel infinitely left out on Sundays because I am still unsure of Deity.  I want to enter into the conversation, but I feel like a little kid again, with older siblings and adults carrying on a conversation without ever so much as looking my way, except maybe to "shush" me and ask me to wait until later - a later I'm sure will never come - a later they will forget about in the meantime.  But when they do remember, long after we've parted ways, they will pray that I will "just get it" in my own time.

Meanwhile, I will take the conversation about the Myth of Redemptive Violence and file it away with John Paul Lederach and the study about how children as young as six months can identify and show preference toward "helpful" characters and my own theses on the impact of violent hero characters in the media on our children's character development, perpetuating this Myth.

My narrative differs from the narrative of the church-folk conversation and, despite my fancy high-heeled church shoes, when I leave this place I hope to put my foot to the ground and travel slowly, carefully, through the woods, listening to the land.  I learned today that after Cain said to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God answered, "Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground."  I will listen.  The ground and the rocks will cry out.  I want to halt my ongoing conversations of everyday life for this.

This attentiveness to the land, to the purpose of land and the tragedies of the land, this is why I travel by bicycle.