Girl, you can call me anything you like...

My road trip south begins this Friday morning. I am very much looking forward to it. If you are reading this, live in the South, and would like to be a part of this adventure, let me know. We'll fellowship.

Life has been decidedly more pleasant recently, especially the last few days. I'd gone a while feeling like I'd gone astray, or at the very least, lost. Recently I've felt much more at ease and I've been granted a peace that has been rare these past few years. It's been nice. Getting my license back Monday has also done wonders for my mental health and happpiness. I no longer feel like a burden to everyone in my path. This is a good thing.

You know who was a pretty awesome band that didn't really catch on? Hazen Street. They're kind of a weird situation because if I had to assign them a genre, it would have to be the incredibly lame and tired rap/rock. But it's just so well done and fun that it's very enjoyable. I've always liked them. Their song "Trouble" just came on my shuffle and I was reminded.

I've been thinking a lot about my spirituality and faith lately. It's been a while since I had these kinds of conversations with myself and questioned these sorts of things or even thought about it at all to be honest.  I'm still not exactly sure where I stand on the whole thing when it gets down to specifics, but I am pretty sure that I don't think it's necessarily about the specifics. When things as big as life itself are at stake, does it really make any sense at all to nit-pick? No. That's a lesson that I think everyone should take to heart. That's always been a trouble I've had with finding a church to attend regularly. Every one that I've ever attended seemed to be preoccupied with establishing the reasons why its particular beliefs were superior to those of other religions, sects, or churches, whether that was done obviously or subversively. I'm sure that I've made the mistake of getting hung up on the trivial things a time or two myself, but in general, I like to think about big-picture kind of things. In my experience, the message is pretty universal. Specifics and exclusiveness only seems to get in the way of the entire point.

Though I have yet to find a church to attend regularly, or even attended church regularly since I actually gave a crap, I have never wavered  from two basic belief: that God exists in some form or other (I personally think of it more as an energy or something than an old man with a white beard), and that Love is good. I have always and likely will always believe these two things to be true and am trying to build my life around them like ivy grows on the sides of buildings. I can't say that I've never questioned the existence of God or a higher power; I definitely have. With so much hate and pain and badness in the world, it's nearly impossible to maintain a constant and devoted belief in the omnipotent and ever-gracious god that I was taught in Sunday school. But I keep coming back to the incredibly intricate and intelligent designs of things and the feeling I get when I'm standing overwhelmed in the midst of creation. I cannot account for these things without attributing them to a power beyond my ability to comprehend.

"Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that. If natural things are beyond it, what are we to say about supernatural things?" ---Pascal