The Index post

This used to be a blog about recovering from fundamentalism (Christian, in my case). I'm now some sort of mishmash of Christian/Buddhist/Agnostic, and if that sounds complicated, let me just say that you have no idea. Then it was a blog about going back to school in your forties, which I did so that I could finally finish my Master's in English. In fact, I was in my late forties. I turned fifty in grad school.

Now it is just a blog. At the moment it doesn't have a particular theme, although usually I post about books/literature, spirituality, religion, very rarely politics, and whatever else I can think of.

So for the most part you can find posts that are related to any of those topics by clicking on one of the labels over on the left. But for a long time I didn't know how to do labels, so I created this index post to help me find things--and maybe it will help you find things, too. The labels are over there on the right if you scroll down, way down. If you click on a label, to read them in chronological order, you have to scroll down to the bottom and read "up" (and sometimes you even have to click on "Older Posts" to get all the way back to the early ones).  I wish they'd fix that, but currently there's no way around it in Blogger.

The ones about going back to school when you are way too old for it are labeled back2school (applies to anyone going back to school as an older adult) or gradschool (about my specific experiences in English grad school).  The ones about faith and spirituality are labeled Groundwork, Lent, Easter, why I still go to church, gays and Christianity, etc. If you just want to hit the high points without reading all that mess, try the one on Abeyance, or click on the label for Easter.

If you're new to this blog and would like to read through only the ones involving fundamentalism, here is a partial list from back before I figured out how to use labels. Some of these are so old that I would probably word them differently now, but here they are. Note: this is my third blog (click here if you want an explanation of that), so the older posts have been moved over from my first blog. Confusing, I know.

part one of my history (11/04)
part four of my history (1/05)
(parts two and three were about my forays into New Age spirituality. If you're interested, let me know and I'll see if I can still find them.)
while reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" (08/04)
thoughts after taking a Belief.net quiz (10/04)
why this is not a political blog (11/04)
concerning sin (4/05)
concerning agnosticism (5/05)
while reading "The Spiral Staircase" (04/06)
After listening to Julia Sweeney (12/06)

part 1 of trying to figure something out (01/07)
part 2 of trying to figure something out
I never really figured it out, but here are some ideas

don't know what to call this one
a technical aside (6/07)
inerrancy part 1 (6/5/07)- background
inerrancy part 2 (6/21/07)
inerrancy part 3 (7/9/07)
inerrancy follow-up (8/07)
after trying to read Blue Like Jazz
thoughts on faith
trip to a Christian music festival (there are a bunch of these in the last week of July07 and the beginning of Aug07, but the main ones are Creation 1 Creation 2 Creation 3
another (12/07)


January 2009 update: rather than creating a new index post for last year, I thought I'd just add on to this one. Here are the relevant posts from last year:

fear (1/08)
Buddhism- Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Bob (2/08)
The Problem of Wineskins (2/08)
religion/spirituality (2/08)
the infamous Easter posts (4/08) second one third and another follow-up
(infamous to me, anyway)
(it might be easier to read those if you just click on April 2008, but then you have to scroll down to the bottom and read up to get them in order)
a short one that's important to me (8/08)
Trust (8/08)
posts inspired by The Shack: first second third

Posts of interest from 2009:
why fundamentalism?  part 2
on a friend's birthday
two stories
interview with Bart Ehrman
What I think of as God
belief/unbelief  part 2  and the fear that goes with it