{"id":515,"date":"2011-02-08T09:05:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T09:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2011\/02\/where-do-you-go-for-inspiration.html"},"modified":"2011-02-08T09:05:50","modified_gmt":"2011-02-08T09:05:50","slug":"where-do-you-go-for-inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/02\/where-do-you-go-for-inspiration.html","title":{"rendered":"Where Do You Go For Inspiration?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

A friend of mine (and
\nreader of this blog) recently wrote an email in which she asked,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

“Does
\nChristianity\/Christian practice\/ the Bible work for you as any sort of
\ninspiration to keep your mind on higher things, let’s call them?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve long wanted to keep
\nmy focus, as best as I can, off of the mundane and the petty, the poor
\nbehavior, the laziness, all these things you might call sin, and turn that
\nfocus to the best in relationships, to hard work in pursuit of things I can do
\nto help the world, to generosity, kindness, bravery, modesty and such.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

But for me, moments of
\ninspiration come infrequently and randomly: a line from a poem. Someone’s
\nobituary in the NYTimes<\/i>. A passage in a novel, or yes, once or twice in the
\nBible. I feel very jazzed for a moment and behave in a way that makes me happy,
\nand then the energy, the inspiration, dissipates and is long in coming again. I
\nwant a source of such inspiration that is continuous or renewable and I
\nwas wondering to what degree religion can serve as a dependable source for some
\npeople. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Do you find religious
\npractice helps you focus on the higher things in life? What practices
\nspecifically help? Do those practices sometimes feel empty,
\nlike you are going through the motions only? And do they sometimes feel very
\nfulfilling?”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Check back in tomorrow for my response. Meanwhile, what would you say? <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend of mine (and reader of this blog) recently wrote an email in which she asked,   “Does Christianity\/Christian practice\/ the Bible work for you as any sort of inspiration to keep your mind on higher things, let’s call them?   I’ve long wanted to keep my focus, as best as I can, off…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere Do You Go For Inspiration? - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/02\/where-do-you-go-for-inspiration.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where Do You Go For Inspiration? 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}