In Melting Snow

Last night it snowed. I live in Tucson, Arizona, so snow is a bit of phenomenon. While walking to a restaurant yesterday you could hear people laughing with delight, and see children writing their names in the snow on the ground, next to saguaros and prickly pears sleeping under this most unusual blanket.

Today, of course the snow has been cleared away in a bath of sunlight. Mondays are my day off, and I thought, why not take this most beautiful day to start a blog.

I have been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a while, partly inspired by the writings of an old friend, petitpoussin. My ambivalence about a blog has been much like my ambivalence about a tattoo. What will I get, where will it go, what will it mean?

Like many people I have an old relationship with writing. As a teenager with mental illness writing was in many ways my salvation. And I was good, though of course with that lovely disclaimer of, “for her age.” As I grew up and learned to live with my depression I stopped writing. I didn’t know what to say when the genre of confessional no longer seemed to be my only identity. I became a bit of an intellectual, a bit of an activist, and a bit scared to try to know myself in that intimate fashion that comes from being a writer.

But here I am, starting a blog. There will of course be the requisite posts on my life, politics, feminism, poetry, and that which makes me incredibly angry. I hope to also link to and post about what is new in progressive religion. In my work as a Director of Religious Education with children and youth I see how central spirituality is to the human experience, how important it is for us to explore our faith development, and how hard it is for us to articulate where we are on our own paths, and where those paths fall in relationship to religious tradtion.

And thus my blog title – Ranting and Rejoicing. Cause while there is so much that is painful, hurtful, and just plain wrong in our world, there is also, beauty, love, and those moments of wonder that help us truly feel alive.