The calendar reads January 2015, that initiates the start of
a third year of blogging for me . . . perhaps it is time to tell something of
myself and what prompted me to begin this writing of serious thoughts rather
than choosing a more usual topic.
I am a writer. I
discovered that when an older friend gave me a diary for my 10th
birthday. Every day for the next decade
I was more faithful about writing in my diary than saying my prayers (and I was
very faithful about my prayers!) Those first ten diaries (plus two more) still
exist with not a single blank page; only when I got to my final year in college
did I begin missing an occasional day (the plus two more). Perhaps all my writing energy was going into
essays, papers, and projects written into the wee hours leaving me too
exhausted to face the diary demand.
Writing lost its obsessive quality yet the diaries continued
until I married, then there was a lapse of a few years. Why the lapse? Was I reluctant to keep secrets and unwilling
to share private thoughts? Or was I too
busy developing a career and learning to be a wife, then a mother? Or did I think it time to ‘put an end to
childish ways’? It’s too far in the past
to know the answer but I remember at times during that lapse feeling an
uncompromising need to sit and write about something . . . a dream, a
happening, a thought . . . something . . . and that need evolved to journal
writing. That was long before journaling
came into popularity and there weren’t the pretty journals that now exist, so I
began (and have continued) with plain college notebooks; one a year for 50
years.
I began to write for publication after becoming a full-time
homemaker to my growing family—four babies in eight years. I had a few ‘light’ articles and poems
published but then realized it wasn’t satisfying for me, I was more drawn to
serious issues. How had I missed that
when in college? My focus changed and I
delved into intense study, focusing especially on new scientific discoveries,
psychology, philosophy and theology—which raised troubling questions in
conflict with my religion. From early
childhood I’d been a God-seeker.
Religion was important to me, but so was science and they seemed to be
in unresolvable conflict particularly when considering evolution, the Big Bang
theory, and reproductive issues. Two
conflicting ‘truths’ can’t coexist, what must I give up?
It was my discovery of the writings of Teilhard de Chardin
that ended my faith crisis and tied science and religion together, bringing a
new understanding of all of life’s interconnectedness. I spent an entire year studying his Phenomenon of Man with dictionaries and
encyclopedias as my elbow. Later I went
on to read The Divine Milieu. I have heard people speak of books that
changed their life, those two changed my whole perspective.
Teilhard, a French Jesuit Paleontologist, made me realize
science and religion are not in fundamental conflict; rather, our way of interpreting the knowledge base of each that creates the problem—they are two sides of the same coin that gives
understanding of what it is to be a human in this amazing world located in this
awesome universe. I found it incredibly
exciting. Like Galileo’s discovery changed
the fundamental knowledge of the structure of our universe, Teilhard’s discovery
changes our fundamental understanding of man’s place in the universe.
I vowed my writing would draw from the new understanding
that was emerging. My goal was to find a
way to bring it from the ‘ivory towers’ to the ‘man in the street’. I was working on a story line for a novel
when my life took an unexpected turn; my husband left the family and moved to
another state. In his words he was
“starting a new life” and wanted no involvement with the family. The demands of being mother, father, and breadwinner
for four children under 9 left little time for writing. Eventually I did some professional writing
and published a text book while teaching at Palm Beach Junior College.
(to be
continued)
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