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Liturgy Practicum 1: Domestic Cult Practice in ADF, Question 4, Entry 15 11/20/06 - A Thanksgiving Alone Initially, when I mis-read the requirement, I thought this would be my last entry. Wow, it's totally not. I have another month to go. And I don't honestly mind. It's funny, but this week began in a rather disheartening way: I tried to create something tailored to a specific learning style, and ended up in an argument about things that were unimportant or misunderstood. Interestingly, I found that it sort of "broke" my vocation. Considering that my vocation centrally calls for me to provide avenues of accessibility for a variety of learning styles, I will likely abandon this particular learning style soon [ed. note, six months later: I did abandon the moodle project on my site, entirely, primarily because one person was vehemently against it. My respect for her opinion made it not worth the fight]. This led me to thinking more about my vocation, though, which means that the failed project really was a good thing in the long run. What I learned was that my vocation really is, centrally, about helping folks grow in their spirituality. The abandonment of the project basically showed me that sometimes, there will be folks who disagree with my vocation's manifestation. I also learned that there are people important enough to me to get me to break down like that. I also learned, though, that giving in doesn't help as often as you'd hope: we're still at odds over this, and even though I gave in, it's still evidence that I somehow overreact to disagreement, or something like that. After a while of thinking about it, I think I've had to decide that I spent the Thanksgiving weekend alone, following Mazi's suggestion that I just take time for myself. It helped a lot that the girlfriend and my roommate were both out of town, as were nearly all my friends. I actually took nearly the whole weekend off from ritual. I learned to do this at festivals and trips, when I would leave my altar behind. If we see spirituality as work, then we need to consider that our spirituality also needs to consider things like "vacations". Lots of people, it seems, think about their vacations from mundane life give them an opportunity to focus on the spiritual. I, though, have always seen my mundane life as integral to my spirituality: as such, if I go on vacation from one, I generally go on vacation from the other. So for four days, I found myself not doing ritual. And I think that I would certainly suggest this to anyone, particularly around this point in time in their LGSP studies, because while it's great to work at your spirituality, you also need to take some time off from it. And that's what I did this week.
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