catching the wave

After listening to a radio program this evening with Christopher Lydon (show host of The Connection, now Open Source) I became feverish with a sudden thought --the potential usefulness of the internet! If you didn't catch it, the topic of today's show was focused on the idea of "doing religion" on the web. More or less it was a focus on how the internet has changed the idea of religious or spiritual inquiry, and how it may serve to help or hinder people in developing faith or spiritual curiosity. As I am currently entranced in my own spritual and religious queries I found this idea to be fascinating and enlightening. More importantly though, it stirred inside me the excitement of how wonderful it would be to connect with others who are also on a journey, spiritual or otherwise.

In recent years it seems that I have sadly become disconnected with friends and family, and have embarked on my own adventures alone, often regretting those faded connections. The loss of sharing ideas and investigations with others has affected me deeply. Hence the impetus. I decided to begin this blog in hope that others will join in and engage in a diaglogue about their own spiritual journeys of life, sharing what in their daily lives moves them to thought, prayer, meditation --stirred voices inside, given them a light. I wondered if there were any other folks out there living curiously and ponderously, loving and questioning life for all it's beauty and sadness. Simply, Seeking. Friends, I ask you to join in and write if you feel moved. Perhaps we can still create a community of support if not in real space, but in cyberspace? Please feel free to share anything that seems relevant (or not). A song lyric that made you happy. A funny noise your dog made. A revelation, a good cry, a story, a movie, a blog, a website!!

I'll start us off, by ending this first entry with a quote from a book that I'm reading. I read this page last night, and for some reason it was so germane that I just had to read it several times over and over. Slow, fast, backwards and frontwards; I just couldn't get enough. Beautiful, lyrical, truthful, sad.

excerpt from 'The Awakening' by Kate Chopin

Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory impulses which impelled her.

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,--the light which, showing the way, forbids it.

At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome her the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight--perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

Thank you Kate Chopin!!