looking closely at Looking Closely

I established this blog to "look closely", to examine my world, and to evaluate if my life is indeed indicative of the world I want to live in. The Alice Walker quote in the blog title box pretty much sums it up.

Recently, I have gotten off-track. Some recent posts seem to be motivated more by anger, hurt, and despair than by love, healing, and hope. Now, I want my writing to be true and to reflect my world, and I don't want to sugar-coat serious ills, problems, hypocrisy and even evils. At the same time, I do believe that words are powerful. And they do shape reality. And as I examine my world, and record it, I have the opportunity to use my words to shape the future I am constructing.

As I wrote in a response to a recent anonymous commenter,

I don't want my world to be one where I use sarcasm as a weapon. I don't want my world to be one where my past wounds and past hurts cause me to wound and hurt others. As I "look closely" at [some of these posts], I see my writing motivated by hurt and anger. And life lived in hurt and anger is not the "future I dream of".

I intend to be more mindful with my words, to continue to strive at becoming my better self, and to construct my dreamed-of future in my everyday life.

belated blogging

These past few weeks have been so very full. I have started many blog entries, yet not posted any of them. Even the ones that I completed, I did not post; I seem to have acquired a weird obsession with chronology with this blog.

Anyway, here are the last few weeks, all in one swoop...

Blogs I Read

So RevGalBlogPals wants to know what blogs I read regularly. And I am supposed to limit it to only five. Yikes! I have over 30 subscriptions in my Google Reader alone.

So I'll start by saying that I read the blogs of many of my friends, check out their recipes and cute pictures of their babies. I read what's in their hearts and on their minds (and in Lisa's case, in her fridge). But I won't list those blogs among my five though these friends often do challenge me, inspire me, and make me laugh.

That said, these are the blogs (by people other than my friends) I regularly read:

Reason, Skepticism, Atheism:
As a person with a complicated relationship with organized religion (at times, I have hope and believe that religion can be a positive and healing force in our world and in the lives of individuals, but I have also seen how, too often, religion and faith can be so destructive to people, to communities, and to societies at large), I am drawn to writers who engage me on an intellectual level, challenge my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) and force me to wrestle with my understandings of self and systems and the world. I am especially interested in the discussions around ethics and morality from a non-religious perspective. First of all, I think the dialogue around ethics gets much more interesting and complex when you move beyond "'Cause the Bible tells me so." Secondly, I am discovering that without a god to blame or a god to forgive, people are challenged to articulate and to live into their ethical values in more integrated and consistent ways. My favorite blogs skeptic/atheist blogs are Unreasonable Faith and Pharyngula.

News and Politics:
I am a political junkie. The US election is over, but still I check DailyKos everyday. Sometimes several times a day. And recently, in my desire to learn about the Canadian political scene (I do reside here in the Great White North) despite my inability to vote here, I have begun to read InformedVote. I may even start writing for them!!

Friends' Health:
I have several friends recovering from injury or illness. Last year, when working at the Children's Hospital, I discovered the CaringBridge website which allows families and patients to update their friends and loved ones about their status. It's a great service they provide, so I am happy to plug their site. I do check in on my friends Grant and Anna everyday.

Humour:
So I must confess my guilty pleasure: laughing at these photos of cats and dogs and silly captions (with horrible spelling and grammar). I was pleased to learn that I was not alone in this addiction to the adorable LOLcats.