I've been working on a few posts lately, but seem to lack the focus to follow my line of reasoning to it's eventual, academic conclusion. I am excited by academic ideas, that is ideas from my education, but more specifically, ideas from critical theory, postmodern ideas about the social construction of identity, ideas I don't use every day now that I've completed my university education and have entered the work force as a professional. I want my practice to continue to be guided by these ideals, so I speak about them to other child protection workers with my specific education. We remind each other of how we felt when these ideas were first presented to us; our epiphanies echo in our emotions. I try to articulate these complex thoughts that, a year and a half ago, were the subject of an award-winning essay I wrote for my university. I feel less smart.
But more than just feeling "less smart" than while completing my BSW, I feel ground down, burnt out, exhausted. I feel like an empty well, like I have nothing left to give. So I reach for literature to fill the empty spaces inside me, the spaces that were once filled with passion and a drive for justice.
Recently, I read a novel called Lamb by Christopher More, written at the turn of the millennium. It is the story of Christ, or Joshua, as the narrator calls him, written by Biff, his childhood pal. It is irreverent and funny, but also quite profound to someone who is nominally Christian, but has never practiced or identified with a specific Christian church. Oh, I know most of the stories, I accept Christ as a great spiritual teacher, the champion of compassion, but I cannot identify with the Christianity I see on the television, the Christianity associated with so many conservative Americans, the Christianity that hates.
In Lamb, Biff write about Joshua's life from age 6, through his adolescence and early adulthood, when he and Biff travel in search of the 3 wise men who attended his birth in the manger. Biff and Joshua go to Kabul to meet Balthasar, the Ethiopian wise man who is in search of immortality. From there, they go to China to study with Gaspar in a Buddhist monastery, where Joshua befriends a Yeti. Finally, they follow the Ganges to Tamil, where Joshua studies Vedic meditation and yoga with Gaspar's brother, Melchior, and Biff studies the Kama Sutra with a prostitute. From there, Biff and Joshua return to Nazareth following the death of Joseph, and Joshua begins his ministry.
A friend recommended it to me, and she has indicated that there are priests and pastors who use this book as a teaching tool, to prompt discussion. If I were to be more than nominally Christian, it would be these churches that I would want to attend, to these people I would want to listen. I also think about the Quakers, who do not have priests or pastors, but instead look to their community membership.
I am not sure if there is a connection between these two updates, these two thoughts. I know that I feel trapped by my job, my debt, my family, but I also know there is no place else I really want to be. I know that I find freedom in literature, in the escape from my ordinary, everyday life. My imagination can soar after the mundane chores of existence. I know that I chose my career from a higher sense of purpose, a calling, if you will, a passion for justice, for equality, and end to grasping greed and bullying. Maybe the connection is compassion, the compassion of Christ as seen by his deeply flawed childhood pal, the compassion Christ could have had for him, if he were real. Maybe that is the compassion we are called to have for ourselves, if we are to truly be moral beings. Maybe we all just need to give ourselves a break.
Maybe I just work too hard.
