What I Learned This Year

Okay, Mr. Canary, start from the beginning.
Could you please tell me again about
those really freaky dreams you're having.

Another Year Is Coming To An End...

When you get older, the years become blurs, but this one wasn't. It seemed like a LONG year and so much happened. Good things and painful things took place this year, and I learned a LOT!

If you're like me, life is about capturing experience in little sound bites. You read something here, you hear a lecture there, then you see something on the History Channel, and everything combines to widen your mind.

The Story of 2004...

I did keep a journal during my last two summers in college. Now, this year, 22 years later, I started keeping an electronic journal again at the beginning of the year. In May, I converted my journal to an on-line blog. It is more fun to blog knowing that anyone in the world can read my thoughts. I'm sure that as I write this, President Bush is in his private study in the White House, sipping on coffee, reading my blog, and going, "What the..."

Moments of Epiphany

There were many this year, but I'll just hit the two biggies:

• Humans Are Not Flawed - I heard this at an Ishamel presentation in September. The famous book by Daniel Quinn, I would say this is the single, most important work of the past 20 years. Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household, all my life I was taught that there was something wrong with humans. But look at your dog, look at your pet bird, go to the zoo and view the animals. Is there anything "flawed" about them? No. Is there anything flawed about humans? NO! We are what the Creator made us, and we should rejoice in that; not spend our entire lives feeling guilty. Yet, even though we are NOT flawed, are irresponsible ways surely are.

• I Am Not A Bad Person - Once again, dealing with all the fundamentalist Christian guilt buttons that were installed in me has been the greatest struggle of my life. The objective is to make you feel like a rotten person whenever you don't conform to the "correct interpretation" of the Holy Bible. So, all this time I've been feeling like a bad human for questioning the religion and culture that I was born into. But then just two weeks ago I read an article in the Faith section of the newspaper, which was written by the ministers of five local churches in a community of Atlanta called Druid Hills. The theme of the article is that ALL Christians shouldn't be stereotyped by the vocal Religious Right. When it comes to the war, abortion, and other critical issues, these ministers appeared to have a similar outlook to myself. So, I squealed with delight because I realized that I may be a Christian after all — I just have a far different view from the traditional, Hard Right Christians. In fact, much of what I learned about compassion, unconditional love, and acceptance, I learned from my parents, my former pastors, and from the Bible. It's just to me, it appears that many in our country play the role of the Moral Christian, but their indifference on key issues and their brutal hypocrisy on other issues tells me a far different story. This is one of the main themes I've blogged about all year.

Humans are not bad and I am not bad!