Contemplation

So, I've been trying this blog out for several months now. It was an experiment originally, in reaction to the death of a long-running message board and to the rapid-fire bullet thoughts from the sites that took its place.

I find it very helpful to process my thoughts in writing. To discover my own ideas. The blog has been extremely effective for this. But the second part of the process is the sharing of those thoughts. I also find it very valuable to read others' reactions to my own, and to move forward in conversation, dialectic. That is where the blog has not been so great.

The reason for this is not surprising. I figured it would be the case. People have to actually take the time and interest to read a blog. And this one is far from interesting to most people. I recently bit the bullet and posted a link and an invitation to read on Facebook. The responses confirmed this.

But that's ok. I don't expect many people to like it. Still, in case anyone else does happen to find this, I wanted to talk a little about what Contemplation is to me...not the blog, but the practice. It is a way of life. It's more than simply musing like many modern people, including many bloggers, use the term. Contemplation is a term that to me describes a life of circumspection. A constant attempt to live simply and in unity. Ideally, there should be no real distinction in my personality at work, home, church or any part of my life. My faith and intellect and emotions and physicality should also all be unified. Body, soul, spirit. Contemplation is the way of life that helps accomplish that.

Since all good things proceed from God and we are unable to fix ourselves, it only makes since that the primary goal of Contemplation is to know God better. This is the dry explanation. The actual experience of it is much harder to explain. It truly is a very romantic sort of thing, better described through metaphor than empiricism. I'm sure many people have actually experienced something like it at one time or another, or maybe just echoed it in a movie or book once. It is a world of emotions, overwhelming, confusing, magical, concrete, all rolled together. Truly the best metaphor is that of a lover and his beloved. Like Romeo and Juliet, Jack and Rose, Edward and Bella. Contemplatives have written love songs and stories about it for centuries. It is not the kind of thing to really be understood, but experienced.

If you are on that path, if you have had that kind of experience and perhaps not understood it, or if it simply intrigues you, then this blog might be interesting for you. And I would love to hear from you. If you don't want to comment, at least use the one-click reaction buttons at the bottom to let me know what you think.