A New Blog

I'm going to try this again, for a third time. Sometimes it takes a while to get things right. When I first started blogging it was with the intention of weeding out those who read my Kolkata journal simply because it landed in their inbox. I was frightened by the overwhelming response that came from those who read my mass emails. I figured that if I moved to a blog I would loose the majority of my readers (and that would mean less praise, less critique, and more freedom to express myself).

But after a few months I stopped sharing the significant parts of my experience. They had become too personal, too rich. The distance between reality and my abilty to communicate that reality was, I felt, too significant for my readers to cross. And even more scary than the nausiating (secretly craved) praise I received, was the idea that someone might misunderstand or trivialize the depth of my experience (since it could never be conveyed with mere words). That has been one of my most consistant fears in life, and it has too often kept me from being honest in my relationships with others. I feel I must protect my story from those who would cheapen it. I must protect myself, protect my life at all costs. Somehow I do not think this is the way of Christ.

When my Kolkata blog address leaked out to too many people, I shut it down completely. Everything at laughwrinkles is hidden now. I started a second site with strict instructions to a select group of friends not to tell anyone else about it "on pain of death." (Well, not quite.) But that didn't work either. Now I'm wondering if perhaps I should stop trying so hard to hide my thoughts from others. Perhaps I should begin this third blog using a new and more vulnerable approach. Dan Lamberton used to say that my poems were like spiritual riddle. They were verticle prayers, illusive to everyone except (maybe) God. Well, I didn't want Dan critiquing my heart anyway, or sitting in on my devotional experience. No thanks.

Perhaps this is one reason why the monastic life appeals to me so much. I would very much like to live the life of a wandering pilgrim, or a hermit on a hill writing of her private mystical encounters. But God has not called me to be a nun (yet). And if he ever does, I know it will not be a cloistered endeavor. I must take the more humble route, and learn how to share. I must accept that my journey is no more special than anyone else's. If even God has stooped to tell his story through narrative, poems, pictures, and especially the Incarnation, why should I remain so bashful? Who do I think I am, anyway?

I really must get over myself.

So here it is friends, my new blog. Share it if you must. Or don't. It doesn't matter. But whatever you do, thank you for listening to what I have to say.