Finding a Direction

This weekend I saw the movie "Julie and Julia". I liked it. I liked both halves which merged to me into a happy whole. I would like to say that the movie inspired me to cook. It did not. I need no inspiration to eat, alas. But it did inspire otherwise. You see, Julie, the 2002 woman who cooks her way through Julia Child's famous book on French fare, decides to blog about each recipe and the day in which the recipe bloomed.

I have not been entirely happy with this blog. It has lacked direction, a center around which all the entries revolve. Last night, reading a book by the hermit monk William McNamara, The Human Adventure, I realized that much of my daily concern is taken up with trying to take steps to be in a good spiritual place when my time comes to shuffle off this mortal coil. Let me offer this image as an example of how I think about it. I don't want the last thing I do on this earth to be say, yelling at somebody on the highway who cut me off, or using one of my regrettably favorite curse words. I have heard, and I may have even written here at some point in the past, that the last word that people often say before they die is "Sh--!" Nope. I don't want that. And without a lot of work, it is a real danger.

So it occurred to me that my daily struggle is worth writing about, at least for me, and maybe for the odd reader. It's not going to be a holy blog. I am just not holy. I'd like to be. And that's the essence of the change of direction in this blog. Trying to be holy and failing more often than not. Trying to be holy doesn't mean boring. I promise. Well, I'll try not to be boring while I am trying to be holy. But this approach will help me in my writing. Yeah, just like there are a million pundits about politics, I know there are a million sites focusing on religion or some version of spiritual growth. And I am no spiritual guide, that's true. Maybe that's what will be different, who knows? That I am just this djinn from the Bronx, long dwelling in Los Angeles, who just like a whole lot of people is trying to find meaning, just mine happens to be as a practicing Catholic aiming toward the saint's friendship with God.

If today was any measure, it is indeed going to be a long and bumpy dark night of the soul. But then things of value do tend to come at a high price!