Personal 01 Jul 2007 01:09 pm
Journeys
Being at the US Social Forum has been giving me lots of food for thought. It’s not as much because of the content of the workshops, but because of what identities I have brought with me to the different sessions. In the one I gave, my identity was as an free and open source software advocate. In the panel I was on, I was a progressive faith blogger (and secondarily, a techie with blogging technology expertise.) At another workshop I attended I was mostly just myself, with a little bit of the faith blogger. At yet another workshop, I was a member of a nonprofit organization that needed to think about fundraising.
All of which has made me think a lot about the journeys I’ve been taking over the last few months, and where those journeys might be leading. It also made me think more about what I wanted to write about here, and what I wanted this blog to be.
I was inspired by the workshop done by the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Their perspective - that the huge social change that is necessary to steer us as a species away from the course we are now on requires spiritual awakening - is one that I have basically agreed with for quite a while. And it’s made me think about what my perspectives on social change really are. That’s another journey - my activist journey, from anti-nuclear activist in the 80s through the different movements I was a part of (gay rights, AIDS, pro-choice, prison issues, anti-war, etc.)
One of the memes of the progressive Christian community is the notion of “living the questions” - that the most important questions of our lives don’t have easy answers, and the only way we actually can answer them is by living them. I think that’s part of what I want to think and talk more about - how do I live the question of what that spiritual awakening underneath social and political change would look like? How would I manifest that in my own life?