valleybrook onward

maybe i will be blogging more during the thesis. although i got tons of research done this morning, i have had some trouble moving forward with my essays.

i've been writing about two things lately--the first is rescues--i'm documenting all sorts of rescues (my glacier, among others)--which has been great fun to write about. the second is a charismatic sector of the Christian church that believes in miracles, raising the dead, traveling through time and space, manifestations--i.e. the Holy Spirit showing up in/on somebody's body and prompting them to do all sorts of things. this has been a really interesting process for me as it's forced me to evaluate and think through much of what i do actually believe--what's foundational to my life, i suppose.

i just heard from a friend, a good friend, who has some ethical qualms with my work--mainly she has ethical qualms with taking a researcher perspective in regards to matters of faith. she brings up a good point--and one i hadn't thought about in awhile. how ethical is it to write about something you're not entirely convinced of--to show an other, so to say, as being an other. and how ethical is to step outside faith and look at it: she would probably say that's not helpful, that it objectifies something that shouldn't be objectified.

as i've written these essays this year, i've become much more convinced of some things in that tradition as things i value--living in bodies (presbyterians pretend they don't have them), feeling freedom to be spontaneous and creative, speaking words over people's lives; i highly value the freedom that these churches espouse--and the faith--it takes incredible faith to believe that modern day miracles can happen.

on the other end of the spectrum, i have seen things that i'm not convinced of--manifestations, for one--people in toronto, canada are falling on the floor and acting like animals, prompted by the holy spirit. i can't wrap my head around this. even reading a book by rob bell last night, sex God (it's good)--i was reading this chapter where he said the great danger for humans is to become too much like angels or too much like animals--and we weren't created to be either. something of our humanity is lost when we give into animal-like impulses or when we try to pretend that we are angels, and don't have human desires.

i didn't have a great answer to give her other than to say this writing has changed me in some significant ways, and i hope that this change (as muddled as it is) will be conveyed in the process of reading. at the same time, i also understand her caution, to be wary about writing of things that we don't understand--maybe the key is to convey that too.

this is a long post, but as i've been thinking about the writing today, i've also been thinking a lot about valleybrook church--the church i went to in college. i led youth ministry there, was involved in a leadership team and it totally changed how i thought about faith. at valleybrook, we focused on the basics--that God's the Creator, that he's in love with people, that he wants to redeem and restore everything--and we can part of that, with our whole lives. That's it. a lot of people thought that was a negative thing--that there wasn't enough theology, perhaps. but it was so refreshing for me to not have all the other stuff weighing me down. anyway, i think writing this thesis has brought me back to that simple stuff as being the main stuff i'm about again--and a lot of other stuff--maybe how exactly that faith works itself out--feels less important.