Still re-acquiring my sea legs here.

We went to Liturgy this morning, and after fellowship hour we drove to my husband's parents' house for some Mother's Day festivities. We are so blessed to enjoy such warm, positive relationships with our respective sets of in-laws. Every year, I realize more deeply how rare that is.

Father Ted and I have been having some fruitful discussions about music. Since our trip to Germany in December, we're both coming to feel that any music not done for the glory of God isn't really, eternally worthwhile. Such music may be beautiful, says Father, but it can never be sublime. This is one of the reasons why my conversion to Orthodoxy coincided almost exactly with the end of my serious involvement with opera; I was increasingly uncomfortable with the intensive self-promotion involved in the pursuit of such a career. Perhaps if it were possible to forge a career singing only oratorio and sacred song, things might be different, but that's basically impossible to do without involving liberal schmears of opera and art song.

I'm kind of taking a razor to my life, here. Does a pursuit or activity have as its goal a deepening knowledge about and glorification of the Holy Trinity? Then it stays. Otherwise, it's going the way of the dodo. That's the goal, anyway, although I expect to fail often.

I sometimes think that many people avoid me because they're uncomfortable with my lack of pop-culture interest. You can't talk about funny Superbowl commercials with me because I haven't seen them. We do have Netflix, but I haven't seen any contemporary TV shows and often don't even recognize the names of the stars. It's not that I'm saying that these things are inherently bad; I just have no interest. I get bored. Is there really that much depth to this stuff?

It seems to me that a lot of our pop-culture obsession is a subconscious effort to keep our heads stuck in the sand by expending all of our energy on pointless crap so we don't have the mental capital to think critically about what really matters.

There, I said it.

In which I pick myself up and dust myself off...

For most of the past year, I've neglected this blog; half of the time, I'd forgotten about it completely. I have quite of collection of aborted blogs in various corners of the internet; when I begin them, I'm full of get-up-and-go, but it usually goes blotto after a few tentative entries. I don't want that to happen with this one; I write frequently about my journeys in Orthodox Christianity in several LiveJournals, but as this venue is more anonymous I'm hoping that I might exact a bit more honesty from myself. Often, I filter the content of the other blogs in an attempt to avoid a confrontation with certain Orthodox clergy and faithful; they almost always make good points, but sometimes I'm just not ready to hear the message. Also, I can be rather fearful about being wrong, so part of this is a copout. At least I admitted it, right? Right.

Been doing a lot of contemplation about abortion. I am firmly pro-life, but throughout my adolescence and young adulthood I've flip-flopped on the issue many times.

My thought for tonight is this: Many people who hold a liberal stance on abortion will say, "I personally would never have an abortion, but I also don't want the government to tell me what I can and can't do with my body. A fetus is just a bunch of organic matter, anyway. It's not a person." This argument has Gibraltar-sized holes in its logic, but tonight I just want to address the last statement. So many people will tell you that they're not bothered by abortion because they believe the fetus isn't a person. The thing is, they don't know that the unborn child is not yet a person, so they're taking a huge gamble. I say to them, "I understand that you believe that a fetus isn't yet a person; are you willing to assume the risk that it might turn out to be a person after all, and you are therefore committing murder? Are you willing to accept this responsibility?"

Me thinks that's far too great a gamble to take.

More later. Bed calling.