the existentials

So, despite all aversions to structure and whatnot, I ended up at some kind of art and spirituality retreat thing this weekend, in part because it was close by and I could bail if needed. It wasn't that good things weren't discussed, or that people weren't nice, I feel so profoundly square-peg even among those who'd consider themselves different from the norm, and averse to anything that remotely smacks of group therapy or whatever.

Part of this is leftover from certain church functions in my teens and in college where I went along to get along and then realized afterwards that I felt like it was all pretty ridiculous or just an exercise in navel-gazing/motivational absurdity with a spiritual veneer. I guess I don't totally trust other people, I analyze things a whole lot, and somehow I've evolved from a timid wallflower to someone who's still uber-introverted but way less averse to saying what I really think instead of tiptoeing around, sometimes to my detriment, in this case when I dropped some profanity in said explanation and was utterly misconstrued.

And it's strange being in this position, being the outlier among outliers, and yet much more doctrinally-traditional than my peers, emotional as anything, yet profoundly unpentecostal, not really buying into the narrative of marginalization of creatives in religious circles, maybe because I really believe in the whole one-body-many-parts thing, that we can't just say that other people who don't understand our artistic vision don't know anything, that we all have one common denominator, but a multiplicity of functions and giftings, and to be honest, the people I worship with love me in spite of my weirdness and encouraging me to do more with the art I do.  I like that where I go on Sunday morning means that I end up drinking coffee and sharing pews with people from completely different walks of life than my own, where we take each others' strangeness and warts in stride, that our politics and personal appearances and aesthetic preferences are secondary rather than primary.

So what was I left with? I guess I learned what works and what does not for yours truly, that for me the creative process is solitary, and that what seems like it'd work on paper doesn't always, that I feel like so much of this sequestering and self-separation is so overrated, and I wish I didn't feel like I was so damn contrary all the time.