Walk
I used to do this thing…and a picture of my dog.
I used to do this thing all the time.
I used to walk across campus while I was in Berkeley, CA. I dictated to my phone. An entire essay or article I was working on. I’d be writing it in my head until there was just too much to hold onto. Then I would pick up my phone and dictate into it.
In a sense, that’s what I’m doing right now. I‘m walking and talking. I’ll clean it up later and post it.
I have not done this in years. In some ways I haven’t been able to. I can’t keep the focus. I don’t know if it’s because of my meds or something else. But keeping focus like that is incredibly difficult these days. And by these days I mean the last four or five years. Is this my lingering Covid?
One of the reasons why I have not been able to do this is because I haven’t needed to do this. There would be so much going on in the doctoral seminars and lectures that I would have to decompress and put something out in the universe.
These days, there’s not enough input and my brain is running on fumes.
This is just how things are. It’s on me. I should be reading more books or watching documentaries or something. But I’m not. I’m cruising the Internet instead. Sometimes I encounter something interesting and useful. Most of it is pretty banal. My algorithmic cul-de-sac is not all that interesting. There are a lot of kind people. But scandal eludes. Ha!
Do I really need scandal in order to write something compelling? Do I need to be surprised? Does it need to be novel? Or is it that the things that I find deeply compelling and interesting are simply too painful to read right now?
How much longer will this kind of grieving last? I’m done with it.
I used to write about eschatological musicking, sonic sacramentals, and such. Now, I write about my dog or my medication or my mental health. I feel like I used to have something to say, and now all I do is ramble.
So, I am sharing this post on Substack because it’s lengthier than my usual Facebook post, and too long for an Instagram post. I’m just trying to get myself started again.
If you are new here, please know that I am trying to do better. Please know that most of my posts will not be like this one. And I am more than open to your creative feedback. Thank you for reading this
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First, this Dog Mom thinks Duke is adorable!
Secondly, all of us are overwhelmed with life today and not being able to focus is not a personal failing or a health issue. Think of all that has happened to us collectively since the Orange Menace came into office in 2016. We have been physically assaulted by the COVID plague and by violence in our streets and halls of power. We have been emotionally assaulted by wanton murder by "law enforcement," by violent images of war and natural disasters.
What matters now is tending to our humanness, our human relationships. I, too, have been a past "mover and shaker," full of details about my little church-world and its sordid politics and scandals. Today I am more detached spiritually and emotionally, not from compassion fatigue, but from a deeper sense of the ephemeral nature of life, the universe and everything. Suffering still exists and must be care for, but the pain lessens when shared.
Now I can sit on our covered patio with my husband and enjoy beautiful weather, big, fascinating Texas skies and the frolic of life all around us. Our two little dogs chase rabbits and squirrels and birds and butterflies on the lawn, a glorious mixture of buffalo grass and innumerable weeds. The Shumard red oak we planted in 1997 in gratitude for my cancer survival is now 30 feet tall, wonderfully shaped and full of green leaves.
The deep questions seeking answers are still there, and are still unanswerable, but are woven into the fabric of our living. If COVID taught us anything, it taught us that we were addicted to life in the fast lane, and that there is more to life than increasing its speed and its accumulations.
So take a deep breath and relax into the eternal now. You are loved, first by God and then by many others. You are precious, and the very fact of your existence is a unique miracle in a wondrous universe. Let all else fall away like drops after a rain, and go forth in joy.
Can I go off-topic and ask your community to comment on the role of ChatGPT in communicating the church’s message?
In the post ‘An Artificial Sermon’ at https://faithclimate.substack.com/p/an-artificial-sermon I asked ChatGPT to respond to the following request to do with next Sunday’s gospel reading,
Write a sermon based on the gospel from John 3:1-17. Include a heart-warming personal anecdote.
Its response was good. So, what are the ethics to do with a preacher having ChatGPT write his sermon?
We all have our favorite Bible verses. I think that the most important for many of us is going to be Pilate’s response to Jesus, “What is truth?”
BTW: How do you know that this comment wasn’t written by ChatGPT?