Day 6: Labels are good for puzzles, not people.

It seems ironic that on Day 6 both Jean Meslier and Kate Cohen show up to inspire me.  

Jean Meslier, a Catholic priest, hid his atheism for his whole life.  His writings were only discovered after he was dead.  Kate Cohen, a former columnist with the Washington Post,  wrote a book encouraging people to embrace the label of "Atheist" if it was safe for them to do so.  I have both voices in my head at this juncture of my life.  

This is what I wrote in 2023 on Day 6... 

"I have to admit, it is easier to call myself an agnostic than an atheist, even through I may literally be both.  When it comes to labels, The agnostic label is a lot softer than atheist and requires less explaining.  It's why I don't like labels because they rarely define me or my journey. I don't know what lies beyond my senses, and I often don't know what lies within them.  I also can't navigate my life without  believing in something beyond myself... I just don't call it "God" and definitely don't call it the "God" I embraced for most of my life ... thus applying the atheist label, I guess."  ( RN - Day 6 - 2023) 

I am still there on the label idea.  I think labels work for puzzles.  I was at a senior's facility recently and I saw a puzzle that I might want to get one day.  I took a photo of the front picture, but realized, I needed to get the name of the puzzle as it would be easier for me to find it to order it.  

Labels don't work so well for people, even though Kate Cohen thinks they might be helpful in some circumstances.  A puzzle is what it is... a human is more complex and when looking deeper in to a person's story, it really can't be labeled to match such a mass defined term as "atheist".  I'm Ruby... I'm not Richard Dawkins, or Matt Dillahunty or Kate Cohen.  I think the biggest problem of labels for me isn't how Webster's defines them, it's how other people define them... because those definitions are much more varied than the ones you find in a dictionary.  

I am thankful for perspectives like that of Neil Degrasse Tyson.  He doesn't need a label either to describe himself.  He just tells you how he sees life.  He doesn't need to be confined to a label that can lead to so much misunderstanding.  

"I think I am scared of people.  What other explanation do I have that keeps me from being honest?  I must be scared of them.  The other option is low self-esteem.  Maybe I still don't feel like my perspective matters as a whole.  Maybe in my own world it does, but when I step out of my space into someone else's space, I am a lot more cautious.  It's not because I think peoples opinions are more valid than mine.  I can see through a lot of bullshit now, but that doesn't mean I am good at calling it out.   Kate thinks if I can... I "should".  Now I just have to figure out if I can... then doing it might actually be possible." (RN: Day 6 - 2024) 

Day 5: Giving up the need to hide myself... if only for 45 days.

 Today, I spending more time on a Sunday morning organizing my Authentic Lent posts.  I have been reading the corresponding days from the last four years each morning before I write my blog post for the day.  My organization chore is to make that process more accessible by having links for all the matching days available in a Pages Index without the need to go through the archives and find the days.  

I realize that at a touch of a button, this whole blog could disappear.  I am grateful and reliant on whoever runs Blogger to keep all my content up and available.  I could copy every blog post I've ever done into a medium that I can secure myself, but am I even going to read it once it's in storage.  Probably not.  I've written so much that most of those writings may never see the light of day again.  So I will continue to use Blogger as long as they keep the program running.  

This is an exercise of living in the moment and not having too much hold on the future.  I realize that in 5 billion years, the sun will explode and if there is still an Earth to be dissolved at that time, there won't be any memory for anyone of anything left.  Even the legacies of Tom Hanks and James Cameron and everything they've done will be gone.  That realization makes it okay to just write and not be too concerned about longevity.  

Authentic Lent isn't about having something profound to say every day for forty five days.  It's about having a space to be authentic when I don't feel like I have much space for that during the rest of the year.  I would hope that for others too.  I guess that is why my ramblings are on a blog platform and not in my computer on a Pages document.  I would hope that if anyone actually reads my words that maybe it will encourage them to find their own space to be authentic at least to themselves.  Maybe I'm not the only one who needs forty-five days to "give up the need to hide herself".  

Day 4: No truth of my own

I feel my eyes may deceive me today

I see you, but I don't

What are you really

Will I ever know beyond what others tell me

Is that the only hope I have for most things I know

That others have known them first

Am I only the carrier pigeon of someone else's discoveries

If that is the case

Then I have no place to stand

No defence

No truth of my own

Maybe my only response this morning to this picture is poetry.  I am excited at the prospect of the Artemis II mission.  I was and infant and a toddler when humans were exploring the moon up close.  But I keep my enthusiasm close to my heart.  It is only a story I embrace in my limited understanding.  I have not platform, no podium, no place to proclaim.  I can only embrace what others have discovered as what might be.  

If I lived in a world where everyone embraced the possibilities, it would be safe to share my enthusiasm.  But not everyone embraces the possibility.  So I get to stay in my own little corner of the Earth and maybe find one or two that also embrace the possibility and then we can share our excitement.  

I have lost hope that humanity as a whole will ever understand a common "truth".  There will always be discord in that which is.     

I have a Robert G. Ingersoll quote in my quote book... but he talks about God, not the moon.  But the same idea is there.

"Is there a God? 

I do not know

Is man immortal? 

I do not know

One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact.  It is as it is, and it will be as it must be."  

 

Day 3: "I don't have to be anything."

This is a picture of Twinkel sleeping on my desk this morning.  Something in me wishes I could sleep as long and as often and as free as he does.  I slept in today... to 6:20 am.  Well that's not entirely the whole story.  After being awake a few hours after my 8:30 pm descent into bed, I was just trying to catch up.  It's been three days of interrupted sleep.  

My cat lives in the moment and I wish I had more access to that superpower.  I wish a lot of things didn't matter.  I wish humans had the freedom to just be in this world.  I wish, I wish, I wish.... But that is not who we are.  We have the blessing and curse of being aware of who and what we are.  I look at humanity and see billions of coping mechanisms to try to deal with that.  It's not easy.  Life isn't as easy as find food and shelter to stay alive long enough to procreate and then die.  

I found the following in my AL readings today.  

"Dad read the National Geographic and Mom read children's books to her children. So maybe all I had coming out of my childhood was an appreciation for nature and some bible stories. They couldn't give me the wisdom of great thinkers anymore than they could give me blonde hair and blue eyes. I guess I can forgive them both" Day 3 - 2022

After 4 years of trying to figure out who I am in forty five days, I am a little more envious of Twinkel because he doesn't have that burden.  He just is.  Maybe my approach to other humans needs to be a little more like that.  Just be.  No need to be right, no need to be philosophical, no need to be defensive, no need to be understood, no need to be liked in the moment... just BE as much as you can BE. 

 Maybe that is the lesson I can take forward from this season  of Authentic Lent reflection time.  I'll be 58 in a month and nine days. Why do I need to be anything other than who I am.  

Day 3 of 2024 gave me Abraham Piper.  I will leave with one more thought... (and a Youtube Link) 

"I don't have to be anything." Abraham Piper.  

 

Day 2: Arthur's Car

"In my world, I feel if I use the word "God", I have to add a two thousand year old, virgin born, resurrected Jesus to that identity.  I have to add church as a necessary place to find that "God".  I have to perform rituals proving that I believe and follow and worship.  None of those things connect me anymore with the source of who I am and where I am.  I understand I am connected to something, and my agnostic brain says that I have no clue what that is, how big it is, how old it is or how involved it is.  All I have in my arsenal is admiration for an artist that made something incredible.  Who or what that artist is... no clue."  

RN: Day 2, 2023 

Hubby and I were on a road trip to drop off a heater in a tiny rural community not far from Drumheller.  Across the road from the house where we dropped off the heater we noticed this car.  Hubby immediately identified it as a Rolls Royce.  We were on our way back home when we remembered we forgot to drop off one part to the customer.  We headed back.  Thankfully we were only a few miles away before we remembered.  

It was on our return trip that we mentioned the car to the customer.  It was then that he told us it was actually "Arthur's Car".   Arthur was a movie from 1981 starring Dudley Moore.  In that movie he was driven around in  a 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith touring limousine.  The car somehow had made it out to this little Alberta community seventy years after it was built and forty five years after the movie.  

We were both interested.  I took a picture of it.  I wasn't sure who would even care about our story.  It seemed significant at the time, but maybe old news.  To us, it was a Wow moment, but we didn't get to excited to tell anyone else.  I guess some Wow moments are only meant to enjoy in the moment.  

As I was reading through the Day 2 readings today I came across something that made me think a bit more about the way I look at life now.  Does it really matter, to anyone else than me, how I understand life?  Should it really matter?  I am one of eight billion people on this planet and there are eight billion different views of life out in the world.  Just not all of them have a megaphone or a platform for convincing others.  Each human sees life through a different set of eyes and conforming to any dogma or belief system doesn't change that, it only causes it to go into hiding for a lot of people.  

What if we all had Wow moments in our own journey that were special, honourable, and worth the time to reflect on... but didn't need to be immediately broadcast to the rest of world or even to friends and family.  What if that was that was just a way to do life?   

I've written so much about how I see life and yet, I worry about what to tell people if they ask me directly about my journey.  Maybe I should just redirect them to my words and if they don't want to read them, they don't get to know.  Maybe I need to give my written words the light of day instead of struggling at an impromptu explanation that is so inadequate.  

"If you want to know my thoughts... read them.  I haven't hid them from anyone.  A quick internet search under my name will bring them up."  

It sounds like a good way to move forward.  I have lots of stories... and I have written a lot of them down.  If someone takes the time to read my words and wants to have a conversation after that... I might entertain a deeper dive.   If someone asks me one day if I've seen a Rolls Royce, I can say yes.  If they ask me what the story meant to me, I can tell them that I wrote about it... and tell them were to go and read it.  

Day 1: Starting the Journey again

It's Day 1 of Authentic Lent... otherwise known as Ash Wednesday.  It's -26 C and I am tired from all the snow shovelling I had to do yesterday.  We had a significant dump.  Maybe a foot of snow over the day, maybe a little bit more than that.  I didn't have the tape measure out yet.  With the wind, it's hard to get an accurate depth.  In some places there are two foot drifts.  Those are even more "fun" to shovel through.  

This is the fifth year of Authentic Lent.  Three of those five years was spent in community with Peter Rollins and the AFL participants.  This year, I will travel through the next 45 days alone.  If I see the view numbers on my posts gain some ground, I will assume that it is internet fuzz more than interested humans in my journey.  I probably won't be notifying anyone that I am back on the blog trail.  Experience has taught me that it seldom produces any feedback or community.  So this year... Authentic Lent is once again the diary of my time during Lent.  

This morning I read the previous Day 1 posts from the last four years.  There were different takes on the beginning of the journey.  Maybe I will read my blog again and catch up with my thoughts over the last four years.  I don't know how the next six weeks will unfold as my fingers take to the keyboard again.  

I've added a picture of a jigsaw puzzle that I am in the process of assembling.  It has been a frustrating assembly for the most part, but I haven't given up on it yet.  I just put it aside when I get frustrated and work on something else.  I was initially attracted to the image because of it's colour and sunset image. But what's left doesn't add much colour to the puzzle.  There is a lot of blue, green and brown.   I don't know if it will be finished, but as I reflected on it this morning, I saw my own life in the story of this puzzle.  

Life, in general, has not been an easy one to add a piece to every day.  Some pieces are easier to place than others.  The image doesn't give me as much hope as it used to.  I feel like the best days are behind me, like the easiest pieces are behind me in the puzzle.  

"Words connect with other words and that is how stories are born.  Words connect with other words and that is how we share our feelings.  Words connect with other words and that is the invitation for me to share my narrative."  (RN September 9, 2024) 

This is a quote from a book I wrote last year called "I'm Still Somewhere".  There is only one hard copy of it, written and read only by me, and it sits at my desk.  It has 44 chapters and one section of quotes.  It sounds like a great way to spend Authentic Lent.  I can read a chapter a day and then on Good Friday and Easter Weekend, I can peruse the sections of quotes I have collected at the end.  Maybe I will keep up with the other four years of Authentic Lent and find some more inspiration from those readings.  All I really know is that I don't know if I am ready to stop writing, just because I believe that I am the only one reading my words.  I still like to write.  Maybe those words I stuck together over the years don't mind being read again by the author herself.  

Today is Day 1.  What have I concluded?  Not much.  But I started.  Sometimes, I just need to start and then tomorrow will be easier to continue the journey.  

Day 45: Bad Friday's new tradition.

 

I decided to incorporate Jesus Christ Superstar: Arena Tour 2012 into my day today.  I first watched it last year on my birthday which coincided with Bad Friday.  (Oh yeah... ditching the Good label for this day... it seems so unfitting) 

It is still pretty powerful.  I can't get over Tim Minchin and Ben Forster's vocals in this production.  They both are amazing vocalists and this show is such a tribute to their skill.  

I am glad I am at the end of this forty-five day journey.  I think I'm done thinking about thinkers.  Time to focus more on collecting  postcards and connecting with people from around the world.  

Today, I got to chat with someone from Egypt who is sending me some postcards of the pyramids, Sphinx and the Red Sea.  I am wanting to expand my knowledge and use the opportunity that the postcards give me to learn more about the countries I am hearing from and writing to.  

I still have Courtney's book to finish... Looking forward to getting caught up and back on track with the last two weeks of chapters.  It has been a helpful read and a fine companion on this AFL journey.