LOVE WINS: Love, Lynn

It's taken me a LONG time to figure out what to do with this blog. A LONG TIME. Now, as I delve into Rob Bell's Love Wins, I think I've got it. See, at first my perfectionist, over-achieving mind thought I needed to do something monumental with this blog. Then, my self-deprecating, doubtful mind told me that I shouldn't even bother. So I didn't. Until my loving husband told me I was wrong, so I wrote something for him. And then nothing. It's amazing how often that critical mind wins. Some time later I watched the movie Julie and Julia, and thought again that my blog had to aspire to some grand goal or fulfill some deep purpose.

Well, here I am finally reading this book I rushed out to buy the first day it came out, only to find that it was not available at Barnes and Noble. This book whose title perfectly sums up the last eight years of my life. This book that has become the target for religious libel all over the internet, even before the book was actually released. I'm reading it now so that I can discuss it. Coincidentally, Bell introduces the book with the same tone, "If this book, then, does nothing more than introduce you to the ancient, ongoing discussion surrounding the resurrected Jesus in all its vibrant, diverse, messy, mulivoiced complexity - well, I'd be thrilled" (Bell, xi). So this book whose assertive title, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, has freaked out many Christian conservatives and stirred up more press than Bell ever imagined, begins humbly. And so I begin my blog discipline humbly. No over-inflated ego or obsession with syntax. No flowery or guarded language. No B.S. Or at least that's my hope.

Since I was nine years old it was clear to me that I needed to write. That need is burning inside my chest right now. And I suck at discipline. I tend to let my actions be dictated by inspiration, and, well, most of the time I just don't feel that inspired! May this be the first step towards a life of discipline that honors God's love for me. May this open the door to discussions that I have shied away from, discussions that I may be scared as hell of. May I keep an open mind and an open heart, always, and may God's truth always be my guiding light.

May you be blessed today. May you know the love that surpasses all understanding, the love that leads us to question, the love that always wins.
Love, Lynn

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."
- Rainer, Maria Rilke,
Letters to a Young Poet