the better angels of our nature

what the heck is conviction anyway, and what is its best application? the word is full of contradiction. this post is not trying to be anything. it's maybe a little appeal to the better angels of our nature, to stay friendly, and keep listening, in the midst of debate.

sometimes i blog because (admit it) i like to be agreed with occasionally. and sometimes because i can't sleep, and sometimes because Little did something cute that i want to remember, and sometimes because i just can't rest for wondering. isn't it sometimes painful? i've been hit hard by some questions of faith and reason lately and there's an impulse to run for the protection of conformity, or at least, the oblivion of past assumptions. i just can't escape from myself, tho. do you feel this way? like on the outside you're a nice gal with a ponytail, but on the inside a screaming banshee swinging a crowbar over her head? just kidding.
sort of.

tonight, here's something to wonder about: is it more valuable to be right, or to have the ability to change? and to become a new creature (ideally a better one), don't we have to be pretty brave and pretty, um, unlike ourselves? doesn't it require us to cast off from our parents and our history, and from the pretense of our own convictions, and enter that scary land of not-so-sure, where (if we're doing it right) we have no ground beneath us: where we give it all up to truly ask, and honestly receive?

on sunday with my beehives we talked about the harsh beauty--the gift--of weakness and arrived at the inevitable admission: that in our vulnerability we are closest to god.

always, despite the agony that comes with uncertainty, i have to believe that a yearning to know is innate and divine. and that humility isn't about not having stuff; it's having nothing of one's own but a want. a dogged desire.

and isn't that where the real work of change is done? not really in our debates with others, and even less in the delicious vindication of agreement with our allies, but in the debate within ourselves.

i have wanted to be like martin luther,* and i guess i still do, to say with all the faith and conviction in the world, "here i stand. i can do no other." certainty feels sooo good. and sometimes i really do feel that way. it feels like something great and important. something to build on. hey, what about this?? what if the philosophy is true: that we invariably end where we began. and who we are is who we have always been. if so, our internal changes may be nothing but a fiction that, like the best literature, helps us to truly understand others--if only for a minute.

*of course, half the point is that he changed too. big time.

i can rely on one constant: i'm inevitably challenged by more questions--the need to rethink, retest, reimagine. it can feel exhausting, even discouraging. self-doubt? or just a pretty sure feeling there is something larger yet to discover? sometimes i wonder if this is what winston churchill called the black dog. painful or not, it's an impulse we can thank abraham lincoln for indulging when he fought to maintain a union in the midst of blood, hatred and fear. he, for one, didn't think he was right all the time.

i've started too many questions to answer any of them, but if you're up late like me, then you're probably more interested in musing than accomplishing anything anyway. so, goodnight. i'll most likely kill you (post) in the morning.

take it away, abe:

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."