Personal Value

God has been getting mixed up into everything I’ve done since leaving the monastery. I’ve been taught that knowing God is the definitive condition of a worthwhile life. In the eyes of the people around me, religious or spiritual devotion is valuable. I believe, as long as I proclaim my spirituality and get others to believe it, then I am valuable. Believing in Jesus Christ holds tremendous prestige in this society. It kills me that the Jesus I know is not the generally accepted stereotype.

This is the story of my life: am I a good person? Getting kicked out of a monastery absolutely ruins any semblance of self esteem. Deciding for logical and moral reasons to disengage from the Roman Catholics causes many of the catholics who were previously your friends to shun you. There goes the self esteem again. But to have self esteem just because I do, now that is the trick I want to learn.

To be real honest, I think I need to let go of my dogmatic God in order to find peace as a well loved divine creation that "need do nothing."

At 4 am this morning, I ran a beautiful slow 8 miles on deserted streets in the small town I live in. I have been watching the weather all week because I have tomorrow off and I want to go on a 5 hour run. The weather prediction had showed rain drops for tomorrow, but that has changed to afternoon T-storms, which won’t hinder my running. My car needs maintenance so I am taking it to the shop in the city tonight in order not to lose time on the running tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, I will get up pretty early even though it is my day off in order to get the running done before the rain. I’ll scramble around the house mixing sports drink, packing up Gu, putting various clothing items together in case I want to switch around during the run. Then I’ll drive down to the river, park my car and go. Hopefully it will be 6 am, dawn just breaking. I will treat myself to a sunrise in the countryside.