Dear John
Do you see that warm little cabin tucked in the midst of those lovely snow-flocked evergreens? Imagine I’m in that cabin, sitting at my keyboard in a faded flannel and sorta baggy Levis, just waiting for you to ask me anything, anything at all. If you can imagine that, even if that takes a stretch, then that’s the first step in this little experiment of mine.
The second step is to actually send me a question. My promise to you is that I’ll respond to your question in a frank and hearty manner. Here’s what I’m thinking. Two or three of you send me a question, shucks, there might be nine or ten of you if I’m lucky. Then starting the week of Thanksgiving and leading up to Christmas, every other day or so I’ll post your questions here with my response. Think of this as a Dear Abbey/Dear Sugar/Ask Amy kinda thing but the responses are coming from a lower middle class white male on the backside of forty, married for twenty-something years to the same lady, father to three pretty decent kids, former pastor turned poet (so think more spiritual lulu than guru) who believes at the end of the day its all going to be alright. I am not a licensed therapist but I am a licensed driver in Colorado and I own a beagle.
Okay, John, any parameters? Fair question. If you need financial advice, there are qualified people out there (Lord knows not me) who can help you. And if you’re interested in the answer to some theological conundrum that folks have been warring over for millennia, then I’m not your guy either. Its not that I won’t respond to your question, because as promised, I will, but if you’re looking for some clear-cut answer then I guarantee you I’ll frustrate you. Apart from that, ask away.
You can send your question to johndblase@gmail.com. Address it to Dear John and I’ll repost it with some clever signature – whacked-out Winnie or cynical Cyrus or something like that. I reserve the right to edit your question a little, that’s just how it is. And just so you know, yes, I know what a traditional Dear John letter is, but here’s our opportunity to poke tradition in the eye.
So I’ll put another log on the fire in that little cabin and wait to hear from you. Thanks!
My question. Do you have peace thinking outside the conservative Christian box? Or does that send vague shivers of fear down your spiritual spine?
Dear John,
How many times do you have inspiration for a poem and lose it before you get to write it down?
Carol
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What life events or experiences have been most influential in forming your understanding of God or humans (or both)?
What’s the magic of twinkling stars?
Dear JDB- what’s your take on gender- (besides obvious anatomy, and women having babies & nursing), how would you as a warrior poet describe the differences between a man and a woman? Also, are the differences based more in “nature” or “nurture”? Thanks … have a great day!
Only one–is that your cabin? It’s lovely.
John, I have not been getting your poems lately. I do not know why, but they stopped mid October and I am suffering from withdrawal. I have no idea how to fix this issue. Any suggestions? I have tried unsubscribing and subscribing agaln, but that did not work.
Dear beautiful due,
I don’t know if I have I lost my spiritual way….or simply found it differently. I’ve certainly lost my way with the institutional church, not the community, but the language of dogma. Worship drowns me in words, beautiful with the ring of eternity, but I struggle to connect them with life’s complexities. It is not doubt so much as loss I feel.
This letting go of church is, for the most part, a relief, a loss long overdue. But, with that loss comes grief, a hidden grief so hard to share, so hard to name in words. And an aloneness. For also lost is connection in Christian community. I stand on the edges, uncertain if I really belong, yet suspecting I am not alone. Fitting faith to life is so difficult these days I cannot stand alone. Others in these pews must surely share my loss. If only we could reach across the pews to name our grief, share our loss and dry each other’s tears. Such is the community I long for.
And with tradition’s loss of words to speak of faith, the concrete realness of my God relationship slips by. But then the liberal church so rarely puts flesh on God these days. Talk is all of spirit or, at best, a slippery, amorphous God—a catch-all for the mystery. Even Jesus is likely to be flayed of flesh, reduced to ideals of social justice.
An aura of insecurity invades my prayers. The embodiment that makes for real relationship is gone. Unsure of who or what it is to whom I pray, words felt but difficult to name float light upon the air, untethered, uttered to a ghostly, disembodied mist. Who or what is this God that I pursue? I long to know the flesh and blood of real relationship….
I still feel, at least at times, a sense of God as present. When I let go and sink into just being, what many long to know can come to me as grounding. Reassuring as a sense of presence can be, seeking a feeling does not seem right to me. Surely, God is more than just a feeling?
My mornings of reflective writing bring me closest to a sense of living, trembling, fragile-filled relationship. Though I never think to call the morning’s calm a prayer, these times are grounding times. But that too seems self-centered. Surely, God is more than self-knowledge.
So, if God is not a feeling and God is not self-knowledge…or at least not just either of these things alone, who or what is this God that I pursue? For still I wonder….
I don’t want to fall into a hole with all this wondering, to try too hard to analyze or define. I know that God is also absence…and nothingness…and everything. And grace. I am able to just let it be but need to name it here, to put it down in black and white, words on page, that I might claim my loss.