Spiritual Tramp » Blogtherapy

At Sea

sroche — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:40:39 +0000

I’ve been at sea (figuratively) lately. Lost. Struggling in a number of ways. This is hardly a new phenomenon for me. If you’ve known me more than a few months you likely know that I struggle with moodiness, depression, etc. etc. My faith walk is one area that suffers the most as a result of this. Or… if not suffers is perhaps a cause.

In any event this one was and remains particularly persistent. While I do feel better today than I have in some time, there is still a gauze over my spirit. Where once there was a crystal clear connection to the source of my beliefs (if battered by the occasional static), there is now for all practical purposes, nothing.

I was talking to a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) about this and he said that he was experiencing something similar. In fact, if I’m not mis-characterizing what he said, he never really felt the same sort of emotional connection/resonance with God that I often talk about and that forms, or rather formed, the core of my faith. For him it’s more of an intellectual process.

I’m reading a couple of books by NT Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God and Surprised by Hope) and they’re quite good and helpful. He presents some excellent arguments in my mind for the reality of the resurrection (if you want to deal with his arguments I suggest reading the books). It all feels more … intellectual than I’m used to though. Apologetics, even really good ones, seem less relational than the walk I’ve had with God to date.

We’re talking about the fruits of the Holy Spirit in church and the most recent one we talked about is patience. I’m having to rely on that to know how much longer I’ll be at sea. I’m not in my home port yet. Until then, expect me to drop the occasional note filled bottle over the side of my poor excuse for a sailing vessel.

photo credit Jimmy Coupe

At Sea is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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Keeping Up Appearances

sroche — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 18:43:08 +0000

I just tweeted a little bit ago that, “There are times when having an anonymous twitter account would be such a release.” I followed up that gem with, “Of course that leads me to question if I’m cultivating a reputation and wish to guard it or if I’m just afraid of people knowing who I am.” Then again perhaps it’s a bit of both.

There is at least one person in the Twitter ‘verse that I can think of who I thought was doing just that. Then I met this person and they had me convinced that the forward face we saw was it. Now I’m not so sure. In any event this is about me and not about them. It’s just that… I’m fairly certain that we’re all doing that to one degree or another in real life. It might bother some of us less than it bothers others and there are probably a few blessed souls out there who are exactly what you see. The question is, how much of it is healthy?

My good friend Mae said “there is a diff(erence) between being who you are fully and giving into thought patterns and attitudes that are not who you wanna be”. I think that hits pretty close to the mark. I shouldn’t be afraid to be who I am, so long as in the process I don’t become someone I really don’t want to be.

working…
working…
working…

Yeah, clear as mud.

So I guess rather than have an anonymous twitter account, I should probably just be who I am and do as good a job with that as I can. On the off chance I’m wrong and it’s good to have a safety valve and you have a thick skin and a good sense of humor then … look around. Maybe you’ll find it.

Keeping Up Appearances is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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Grief

sroche — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:52:50 +0000

I got a call from my brother this weekend.
Okay quick bit of Spiritualtramp trivia, for those of you that just pulled the “quizzical dog face”.

My mom was married four times. The first time lasted a couple of years, the second a few months, and the third something like eight years. Number three had two children by a previous marriage. They would come visit us from time to time and I quite looked up to them both and in spite of the distance of years and the relatively brief amount of time we spent together I’ve always held them in my heart and mind. So much so that I refer to them only as my steps by way of clarification.
Wonder of wonders I got a call from Big Bro ¹, a few weeks ago and we caught up and I exchanged info with him and my sister, including pictures, etc. etc. They are both doing well and have big families with beautiful children. So back to the call this weekend. Apparently our dad passed away. I’ll spare you any details since I don’t know much and they’re not important. I’m also not posting this to elicit some sort of sympathy response (then why are you?). Mom and Dad divorced when I was twelve and I haven’t done much communication-wise with him since.
When Big Bro told me I didn’t really feel anything personally and didn’t really know what to say. I was sad for them certainly, though none of us had a great relationship with him. I suppose I did a great deal of grieving post-divorce. Whatever the reason though, I can say that grief is a truly weird thing. I’ve never lost anyone very close to me. So in that sense I don’t know what grief feels like. If I grieve for anything in this situation it is that Dad didn’t really know anything about me or my family. Perhaps he would care, perhaps not.
Given my spirituality I also grieve for his lostness. Whether or not he knew God in those final hours of his life is something only he and God will know. Given what little I do know about him, he lived a life that was about as lonely as you could get. My prayer is for his mother who survives him and for Big Bro and Big Sis who have to deal with far more emotional and physical fallout than I do.
“May grace and peace be yours in abundance through full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” – 2 Peter 1:2
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” – Matthew 5:4
image by tanakawho
¹ Not his real name.

Grief is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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500th Post

sroche — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:08:51 +0000

I’d like to do something really profound here, this being my five hundredth and all, but I don’t feel quite up to it. I thought about linking to some of my most commented on posts, but there was no easy way I could find to do that.
As it was the five hundredth was almost an Archangel podcast and that would have been fitting since it has become the biggest raison d’etre for this here site. I couldn’t get the audio edited last night though so that didn’t happen. Yeah, yeah I should have built a buffer. My apologies to those of you who are waiting on Episode 11, it should pop up tonight.
As it is I need to engage in a little writing as therapy. I know I should be writing interesting posts about spiritual stuff, since that’s supposedly what this site is about, but frankly I started blogging as a way to spew my emotions and along the way picked up some readers. Thanks for reading. For some reason it’s comforting to know that even crap like this isn’t going into the ether unignored. I have folks that read this that I consider friends, some I consider brothers. For you and you know who you are, thanks in advance for the prayers and kind thoughts. If you know me at all you know I’m prone to bouts like this.
So why am I blue? Well, I suppose the primary reason is I’m freakin’ tired. I was up at 4:30 this morning sending my wife to the mountains for three days. I’ll miss her (reason two), especially when it comes to the more mundane things like putting a meal on the table (which she does so well) or helping brush the Rochelings’ teethses, so there’s that too. Where she’s going is to a home schooling training session. She’ll be tutoring our homeschool groups’ kids in grammar starting in the fall. This will pay actual money, though not a lot, and I don’t mind telling you that she’s a bit nervous, in spite of the fact that she is hands down one of the best teachers I know. Still, nervous is not a bad thing.
There are a host of other reasons, including a sense of being overwhelmed both by things I want to do and things I don’t want to do. The less details there the better so forgive me my crypticality (yeah I made that word up, go poetic license go!)
Still I’ve got good things going on. We’re moving (eventually, living amongst boxes is reason three) to a much larger house in the same great neighborhood. Folks are listening to my podcast. I’m having a blast in an online RPG. My spiritual life is about the same as ever, but I am being challenged at church when it comes to thinking about how I can be involved in the community when it comes to matters of social justice. So while it is not “all good”, I really should be counting it all joy.
So I end this entry, actually one in spirit with the reason I started blogging, a little better off than I was before I started it. Seems appropriate enough to me.

500th Post is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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Grumpy Old Man

sroche — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:24:05 +0000

The above are some little critters that my wife and youngest daughter made this morning. I can only imagine how much fun that was. K3 is three and miiighty cute.
So this past weekend Leigh was working and I was alone with the kids. I was apparently pretty grumpy about it too. I told the kids to go off and play on their own and so they did. They would periodically check in and I would thunder at them to go in their rooms or outside, anywhere just so I could vegetate.
Seeing the above picture reminds me that when I do stuff like retreat into my grumpy old man mode, I miss so much. Now, making aliens or play-dough snow men probably isn’t on the same level as attending soccer games/school plays/weddings. I don’t think that because of that one Saturday my kids will require years of intensive therapy. Still, my kids won’t be this little forever. In fact I’m pretty sure that if I squinted I could actually see them grow in real time.
Thus, while I’m not big on resolutions I will say that one thing I’d like to be in this coming new year is less of a GOM and more of a play-dough alien builder.

Grumpy Old Man is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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500th Post

sroche — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 23:00:00 +0000

As it was the five hundredth was almost an Archangel podcast and that would have been fitting since it has become the biggest raison d’etre for this here site. I couldn’t get the audio edited last night though so that didn’t happen. Yeah, yeah I should have built a buffer. My apologies to those of you who are waiting on Episode 11, it should pop up tonight.

As it is I need to engage in a little writing as therapy. I know I should be writing interesting posts about spiritual stuff, since that’s supposedly what this site is about, but frankly I started blogging as a way to spew my emotions and along the way picked up some readers. Thanks for reading. For some reason it’s comforting to know that even crap like this isn’t going into the ether unignored. I have folks that read this that I consider friends, some I consider brothers. For you and you know who you are, thanks in advance for the prayers and kind thoughts. If you know me at all you know I’m prone to bouts like this.

So why am I blue? Well, I suppose the primary reason is I’m freakin’ tired. I was up at 4:30 this morning sending my wife to the mountains for three days. I’ll miss her (reason two), especially when it comes to the more mundane things like putting a meal on the table (which she does so well) or helping brush the Rochelings’ teethses, so there’s that too. Where she’s going is to a home schooling training session. She’ll be tutoring our homeschool groups’ kids in grammar starting in the fall. This will pay actual money, though not a lot, and I don’t mind telling you that she’s a bit nervous, in spite of the fact that she is hands down one of the best teachers I know. Still, nervous is not a bad thing.

There are a host of other reasons, including a sense of being overwhelmed both by things I want to do and things I don’t want to do. The less details there the better so forgive me my crypticality (yeah I made that word up, go poetic license go!)

Still I’ve got good things going on. We’re moving (eventually, living amongst boxes is reason three) to a much larger house in the same great neighborhood. Folks are listening to my podcast. I’m having a blast in an online RPG. My spiritual life is about the same as ever, but I am being challenged at church when it comes to thinking about how I can be involved in the community when it comes to matters of social justice. So while it is not “all good”, I really should be counting it all joy.

So I end this entry, actually one in spirit with the reason I started blogging, a little better off than I was before I started it. Seems appropriate enough to me.

500th Post is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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Grief

sroche — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 23:00:00 +0000

I got a call from my brother this weekend.

Okay quick bit of Spiritualtramp trivia, for those of you that just pulled the “quizzical dog face”.

My mom was married four times. The first time lasted a couple of years, the second a few months, and the third something like eight years. Number three had two children by a previous marriage. They would come visit us from time to time and I quite looked up to them both and in spite of the distance of years and the relatively brief amount of time we spent together I’ve always held them in my heart and mind. So much so that I refer to them only as my steps by way of clarification.

Wonder of wonders I got a call from Big Bro ¹, a few weeks ago and we caught up and I exchanged info with him and my sister, including pictures, etc. etc. They are both doing well and have big families with beautiful children. So back to the call this weekend. Apparently our dad passed away. I’ll spare you any details since I don’t know much and they’re not important. I’m also not posting this to elicit some sort of sympathy response (then why are you?). Mom and Dad divorced when I was twelve and I haven’t done much communication-wise with him since.

When Big Bro told me I didn’t really feel anything personally and didn’t really know what to say. I was sad for them certainly, though none of us had a great relationship with him. I suppose I did a great deal of grieving post-divorce. Whatever the reason though, I can say that grief is a truly weird thing. I’ve never lost anyone very close to me. So in that sense I don’t know what grief feels like. If I grieve for anything in this situation it is that Dad didn’t really know anything about me or my family. Perhaps he would care, perhaps not.

Given my spirituality I also grieve for his lostness. Whether or not he knew God in those final hours of his life is something only he and God will know. Given what little I do know about him, he lived a life that was about as lonely as you could get. My prayer is for his mother who survives him and for Big Bro and Big Sis who have to deal with far more emotional and physical fallout than I do.

“May grace and peace be yours in abundance through full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” – 2 Peter 1:2

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” – Matthew 5:4

image by tanakawho

¹ Not his real name.

Grief is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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