Fencing Bear at Prayer

So, I'm having one of those arguments--ahem! conversations--that you get into on Facebook sometimes. You know the ones, where one of your friends posts something that he or she thinks everyone will agree with and then you weigh in out of the blue with your take on how the whole question has been posed the wrong way and make everybody uncomfortable because you simply won't let go. That's the great thing about having a blog; you can make the whole thing public! Today's topic: "I'm spiritual, but I'm not really religious." Okay, disclaimer: I am an historian of Christianity, so this kind of thing is almost certainly going to rub me the wrong way, but arguably not for the reasons that you (at least, those of you who don't know me very well) might expect. Not because I believe that there are not great truths to be learned from other traditions (I do; Jaya Ganesha!); not because I am convinced that the Church in its hierarchy has always made the righ...

I don't want to be like this but somehow I can't help it. "Patience, Grasshopper. You must learn to walk the rice paper ." "But I want it now! Give it to me now! " I've worked so hard, and yet the opening does not come. I make it difficult for my friends because I cannot simply be happy for them when they beat me. Is this original sin? It feels so petty, not big enough to be evil, just a three-year-old's temper tantrum. Grow up, already! I am but a child and cannot seem to put away childish things. It's the same feeling of frustration that one had when one was three and one could not control things the way that one wanted. An illusion, being an adult: that it is possible to be in control. But I've learned to do so many things in these 41 years; how is it that it is so easy to be 3 years old again? I want a different character, one that is happier and doesn't take things so hard. But this is the one God gave me. Is it some kind of joke...

A friend of mine has asked why, on my blog, at least, I take the form of a bear. The easy answer would be that someone was selling little white bears dressed as fencers at a tournament several years ago and I bought one and, in proper fencing fashion, put my name on its lame. But this is rather like saying that the reason I became a medieval historian was because I took Latin in high school. It would seem to explain something (why I have a toy fencing bear, why I am able to read the manuscripts that I have been looking at this week in the British Library), while in fact leaving everything of any real significance utterly opaque. What was I doing at the tournament in the first place? How, for that matter, did I come at age 38 to pick up a foil? What if, after we moved when I had just finished ninth grade, my new school had offered German (my original preference) rather than Latin? To what extent is the person that I have become an accident as opposed to a choice? According to the...