There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 (NIV)
I've been listening to Pete Holmes in conversation with Rob Bell, Richard Rohr and Pete Rollins. I am wondering why I missed him in my journey until now. Maybe I missed him, or maybe it's perfect timing to listen to his conversations with three people who have already had a significant impact on my journey thus far. Pete Holmes offers a different perspective, a different vibe and opens up new avenues of inspiration with the voices I'm so familiar with.
One recurring theme is reconstruction. It's a idea that I didn't want to hear about for the last few years. I was content to just tear down the walls of the structures that didn't work for me and stand in the rubble. I felt no need to build anything new.
I've recently had the joy of seeing the stages of a new construction. My nephew is building a house. He is going beyond what anyone else in his family has done. He is doing his own thing and building something entirely different for his new family. I am proud of him. I get to see it again today. For him, the time is to build. He has seen a lot of destruction in his life and it didn't stop him from dreaming bigger. In the words of the author of Ecclesiastes... there is a time to rebuild.
But what does that look like for me in my journey? What have these conversations of these influential men taught me about the need to keep going? What does reconstruction look like for me?
Alongside my daily readings of AL, I am also reading through what might be called my "reconstruction". In 2024, I wrote what I call "I'm Still Somewhere". It is a collection of 44 short essays or chapters of how I see life now that I am past the letting go of what I how I used to see life. Some thoughts are consistent with how I've always seen life and some thoughts are just realized and now have the freedom to be in my expressions and in my understanding.
After some years of letting go of the stuff that didn't work for me, I felt I needed to put into words what was working for me. Even if I would end up being the only person who read it. So far, I am the only person who has read it.
Pete Holmes, Rob Bell, Richard Rohr and Peter Rollins seem to have one thing in common that interests me from an outside perspective. They all seem to still value the Bible as something still worth accessing as a resource. They have all either departed from or never had the Evangelical Christian idolization of the perfection of the document. But they still find nuggets within the pages of the story.
I wonder sometimes if I will get to a place in my journey where I will go looking for nuggets again. I am still not interested in picking up the Bible in any format for any duration of time. Right now, it would be like diving in to the very waters that I saw in a Drew Binsky video yesterday. For me, those waters are still polluted, septic and insanitary... and yet, I see people swimming in them with joy.
Maybe I don't have to swim in those waters... maybe a cruise along the channels in a boat will give me something more one day. For now... I am just watching others head in that direction and for some reason, they are able to navigate those waters with a lot of grace. Maybe there is hope... I did open up this blog post with Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.
