“and if the things we believed as kids were true
could you believe it all for me
’cause i would believe it all for you”
-Derek Webb

“Red and orange
Or red and yellow
In which of these do you believe?
If you’re not sure right now, please take a moment
Cause I’ll need your signature before you leave”
-David Bazan

“Seeking to know is only too often learning to doubt.”
–Antionette du Liger de la Garde Deshoulieres

Tomorrow I will be attending a church for the first time in a while.  It’s probably been… a year?  Or close to it.  I guess probably the last time I was in any church was when I went with Jon and Kim to their church in FL… but that was with no intention of possibly continuing to go to said church, since it wasn’t local to me.  Even so, that would have been in April (I think), a solid 6 months ago.

Aside from just specific people (all of whom I met through the church), more than anything I miss since leaving Burbank is the church I was attending there.  I get the sense that it’s changed a bit since I left, but I’m sure I’d still feel I belonged there.  I’ll get a chance to visit it before too long and know for sure.  I can’t wait for December!

In any case, the church I will be attending tomorrow sounds like it aspires to be something that Central Avenue Church was.  And that is the main reason why I loved Central (again, aside from people).  A place where you can belong and seek God no matter what you believe.  I don’t know if they’ll live up to it… From visiting their website and watching some youtube videos, a lot of their language still feels very churchy and evangelical to me.  But they also strike me as genuinely wanting to just love people and have community.  If they can live up to what they say, then I just might find a spiritual community in which I feel I belong again.

For me, it is all about being free to doubt.  It’s about being free to disbelieve in things that, if I had to believe them, would cause me to abandon any connection to Christianity whatsoever.  If this is a place I can hope that God is real, and that he loves us and suffers with us, then I’ll be right at home.

“To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.” – Thích Nhất Hạnh

“Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.” –
Jack Kornfield

“Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.” –
Pema Chödrön

I’ve been realizing more and more recently the need for me to begin practicing mindfulness in my day to day life.  I feel like at some point in my journey through life I realized who I wasn’t, but forgot to figure out who I actually am.  And so I hold on to aspects of a person that I thought I was .  Perhaps it’s because I am afraid of who I might be.  Or perhaps it’s simply that I haven’t been willing to do the work until now.  I know there are things that I have long said I believe that I am afraid perhaps I don’t believe.

What I do know is that I can’t continue to walk through life with only part of an identity.  Perhaps the things that I don’t like about myself are the things that aren’t really me.  And I definitely have my fair share of moments of self-loathing.

The past couple of weeks I have had some pretty big swings in terms or happiness and sadness, depending on how I happen to feel about something in a given moment.  That seems to me to be very unhealthy, and I think the root cause of it is perhaps that I am not grounded in my own identity.

I’ve also begun having trouble sleeping again, something that seemed like it was behind me for awhile.  The last time I was struggling with it, it seemed that taking 5-HTP helped, which may indicate the problem is a lack of serotonin, and well, that may contribute to my negative moods as well.

I’ve decided to take a break from the world… at least as much as is possible, to center in on my self and do some hard work on me.  I again deactivated Facebook – along with all my social media accounts – this time with no announcement to anyone beforehand.  I’m not only not looking for attention, but this time I am trying to actively avoid it as much as is possible.

Earlier tonight I listened through a guided meditation on mindfulness, and it’s rather amazing how much peace that 15 minutes brought me.  I plan on making that a big part of the forseeable future.

I don’t know how long I will continue with this withdrawing to look inward, but I can already feel some value coming from it, so I will continue for as long as I believe it to be a benefit.