Purposeful Growth

I attended the Columbus Writer’s Conference recently, and realize that I now consider myself a writer. I used to think of myself as a coach who also wrote. Sometime during the last month, beginning with a brief writer’s workshop by David Bell at the local library, including becoming a member of a writing group, and culminating with the Writer’s Conference, I became a writer.

Gathering ideas and learning from writing professionals, along with 300 + other writers helped. But what really did it was that I declared myself a writer–to myself. That declaration, as with every other powerfully stated self declaration is what makes it so. This brings home to me the power of the “I am” statement. This is how we create. I now realize I have created a writer, and I now naturally and energetically go about accumulating the tools and tips of the writing trade.

Anything I desire to become requires this declaration step before it is really so. I can obtain the external trappings of something, such as a certificate of training, but until I declare that this is who I am, I am not. And as soon as I commit that this is who I am, I am that.

What an adventure!

From the Associated Press, August 20, 204: An 8-year old girl who suffers from a rare digestive disorder and cannot eat wheat has had her first Holy Communion declared invalid because the wafer contained no wheat, violating Roman Catholic doctrine.

Does God really care? I can’t believe so. Men care. Rules set by corporate, religious, or educational institutions and rigidly enforced to the point of absurdity defy common sense. In the case of religious rigidity, such rulings seem to imply that brotherly love is a forgotten component of the very institutions founded to promote it. We don’t necessarily expect brotherly love to be a component of corporate, educational, or government rule interpretation, but shouldn’t it be a fundament driver of religious doctrine application?

Such actions drive people away, not only from the church, but from businesses, schools, and even families which cannot apply rules with flexibility and love. This same situation occured in 2001 to a 5-year old with this disease, who was also denied permission to use a non-wheat wafer in Communion. The family left the Catholic Church. So, who wins in these situations? As far as I can tell, only the person whose pride requires rigid rule enforcement.

Does God really require a small child to risk illness to participate in a religious ritual? I doubt it. What would Jesus do now? What would love do now?