11 Questions - Part 1

     One of the main reasons I've undertaken this blog is because I'm tired of a lot of the language that traditional religious and spiritual writing uses. Such words often seem tiresome, overused or emptied out of feeling or soul. The words lack heart. I think life's too short for that.
     Fresh language about the deeper things of life is always getting made or spoken, but we're so close, we often miss the depth. For me, one great source of such new language is poetry. Whether your taste runs to Anne Sexton, T.S. Eliot or Amiri Baraka, poets seem to just get it about connection and meaning. They give us some original ways to see and touch and feel our world, inside and out.
     "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things," wrote poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, whom no one could accuse of writing trite words or tiresome images. Our experience of life, deep down, is much more immediate and strong and new(at least to us) to be captured in cliched words or exhausted images.
     My hunch is that a lot of us spend more time picking out just the right greeting card than working to find the words to express or communicate our most important experiences and feelings. By reading this and thinking about such issues, you've already begun to do it differently. Here's a set of questions I've used with people to help them discover at least some elements of their unique spirituality. Have some fun with them!
     1. What song (or novel, biography, play, film, kid's book, piece of art etc.)  has a special  place in your heart? Why?   
     2. Name a few people you admire, inside and outside of family & friends. Say why.
     3. Look at a time you've overcome a difficult event or situation in your life. What got you through? What were the gifts in that hard time?
     4. Do you ever have a sense of gratitude for your life? What are you grateful for?
     5. If there were a novel or film made about your family, what would be the themes?
                                                 To be continued