I can say that 2009 has been a topsy-turvy year for my religious and spiritual journey. Being born and raised in an adventist environment, I am who i am spiritually greatly due to my upbringing and not because I bothered searching for what it really means to me. Religion/Spirituality is not a typical conversation topic, that's why I seldom think about it. It's something personal and I don't feel comfortable sharing my thoughts during casual superficial conversations with random people or even with friends for that matter. Only when I'm alone in bed trying to go to sleep do thoughts like this surface in my head and also when I'm talking to my husband =) I'm grateful that I have him in my life, someone I fully trust and can share my inner most thoughts and ideas with. no matter how bizarre and unintelligible i sound at times, he's always there to listen and share his knowledge with me.
I do credit Johnson for making me think outside the box. Since i'm so used to following rules and traditions, I do things because I feel "at home" and not because it makes or doesn't make sense to me. Being with him for the past few years encouraged me to think differently, and I'm thankful for it. Now i can slowly comprehend things out of my comfort zone.
I am definitely still a work in progress. I don't even know if there's a category for where I stand now, for what i do and don't believe in. And I'm pretty ok with that. It is an incredible and frustrating journey, because unlike the medical field where I'm used to immediate and tangible results, my quest to find meaning in my spiritual life really is just emotionally abstract. My impatient-result-oriented nature is still digesting and adjusting to this new found knowledge.
With all that said, I find this journey very fulfilling, because now I can claim that I believe in something or someone because of an active quest for it and not because I was programmed to believe in a specific way.
I just want to end this entry with passages from a book im currently reading: The Case for God by Karen Armstrong:
"It was possible to move forward only if you had the courage to let go of the present, unsatisfactory state of affairs, sink back into the potent confusion of the beginning, and begin again".
"In our society, rational discussion is often aggressive since participants are not usually battling with themselves but are doing their best to demonstrate the invalidity of their opponent's viewpoint".
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