Take Two

What's old is new again, or so it seems.  This is my second stab at a blog, having just closed down my first Lollards site because, for my purposes, it was not only dead but also defunct.  I kept the old name, though, since I couldn't come up with a title I liked better than "In the Company of Lollards."  "Reduce, reuse, recycle," says Al Gore, and who am I to argue with a Nobel Prize winner?  I must admit, it does feel a bit like ravaging a corpse for spare parts.  Gruesome but necessary. 

Lollards Sr. was a blog mainly devoted to helping me sort out my thoughts and frustrations as the church I was attending slid down the spiritual rabbit hole into a place where illogic and despotism reigned supreme.  Unfortunately, I failed to handle the transition with Alice's aplomb and found myself rather at sixes and sevens with the whole mess.  But that's all behind me now.  My husband and I left the church and returned to a world where things make a good deal more sense, and the remainder of the church, as far as I know, dwells cheerfully in Wonderland still.  I guess it could be construed as a happy ending for all involved...you know,  if I weren't still so bitter.

 I'm sure I'll get into all that eventually.  Baby steps.  For now closing down that blog and starting anew just seemed like the thing to do.  (I apologize for that terrible rhyme.  Bad poetry creeps up on me from time to time.)  I have a whole new set of issues and questions that I finally feel ready to explore in a semi-public forum.  My spiritual woes are perhaps a good deal less dramatic than they were two years ago when I started Lollards the First, but they are more complicated and maybe even more heretical, depending on who you ask.  I'm in the metaphorical wilderness at the moment without much of a map to go by, but I think I'm finally ready to search for answers and risk deepening my doubts.  I've found I have a real talent for doubting, so this is no idle gamble.  I really think I could come away from this exercise with less faith than the paltry amount I have going in.  (And I can totally imagine my old pastor admonishing me that this is what happens when you insist on thinking about things instead of feeling with your feelings.  The brain is clearly an instrument of immense evil.)  I want to believe in the religion that was drilled into me from childhood.  I want the assurance that comes from simple, childlike faith.  But I think I've decided I want the truth more.  Here's hoping faith and truth wind up leading me to the same place.