Looking back

Today I stumbled back into some old online journals that have been tucked deep away in the dusty corners of the internet. I spent too long reading over them. But instead of feeling embarrassed I felt oddly connected to the Brooke of 4, 5, 6 years ago. I liked that girl, and some of her words still resonated with me. Like this bit I wrote on religious identity almost 4 years ago now:

 Sometimes I am startled by identity. Startled that anyone has an identity. How did I get trapped (pulled? embraced?) into mine? How is this who I am? By birth I suppose. And by choice too. But how much of the choice part has to do with the birth part? I don't know the answer. It is an interesting thing.  I do not regret it or resent it. I find it rich and fascinating, if not a little strange.

Sometimes I am caught off guard by the peculiar language that surrounds me. It is so familiar, and yet at times it becomes so foreign. People say: holy ghost. the spirit. high priest. Like: salt shaker. laundromat. earmuffs.
Sometimes it makes me feel ancient. Sometimes it feels like a glorious game or an epic play I am a part of, where we all believe in the mystic and the impossible and the bizarre. And then sometimes I embrace it all, with my whole heart. not ironically. not bitterly. not partially—because in the end it is an inextricable part of me and I would feel too false to deny it.
Sometimes, though, I feel estranged.

The question remains: how to reconcile the estranged parts (of which there are many) with the core instinctively familiar all-embracing parts?

I am still working on that, and do feel like I have made some progress in the last 4 years. but life still feels like a very large exercise of reconciling, balancing out, working through impossible paradoxes... Opposition in all things I suppose.

Good night.