Becoming Human

You know how I go off on these rants on "those" people who tick me off? (just scroll down a couple of posts). Well, they're all still wrong, and they all still tick me off, but I will concede that the reason that I get riled up is that something is going on internally and I'm trying to process it and my first instinct is to point out the speck in my neighbor's eye. Fair enough.

I've been thinking and discussing with friends lately about my lack of patience with theoretical theological discourse and trying to figure out where that comes from because it used to be something I was really into. Part of it is certainly a life stage difference, because I was in seminary and we would read Tillich, and Barth, and Volf, and Moltmann, and all these important thinkers and discuss them ad nauseam until the worlds problems were solved and we could sleep peacefully knowing we had it all figured out. Or not. But at least we read the books and talked about them.

Nowadays, if someone wants to start up that kind of conversation, it's hard for me to orient myself to what planet they might be on and I pretty much just want to throw things at them. I was with a group of folks at a wine bar an one dude busted out with, "So, do you think Moltmann is a Universalist?" WTF? Anyway, what I'm saying is not that these thinkers and their thoughts are unimportant, but that they are not part of my journey right now.

My journey is taking a decidedly foreign direction that most of you out there call "feelings." I can only describe what's going on now as an integration of my cognitive and emotional selves, which have long been separate. I've worked on this for years, and now it's starting to really happen. Periodically, there is this wet, salty discharge that spews from my eyes - does anyone know what that's about? Kidding. Sort of.

I think when I express my frustration with the theoretical and speak in favor of the actual, is that I'm realizing that for me now is the time to get out of the books and deal with the people. I want to hear there stories now, not that I didn't before, but that I'd rather hear them now than do other things, which isn't the norm for me, Queen Introvert. While I'm swinging way the opposite of where I've always been, I think it will lead me to a more balanced approach in the end.

How about a hug?