High and Low

The ISP hosting my website offers me a free logging service so I can see how many people have been visiting the various pages of my site. And while there are a number of people logging on from AOL reading one of my old AFBD columns -- namely the one that describes my visit to a Times Square peep show and mentiones bestiality -- I know there's no one reading this weblog, even though I feature a prominent link to it from the front page of my site. In fact, I excerpt it on the front page of my site -- which means that of all the people who hit the front page, almost nobody clicks through to the weblog.

So I can say just about anything here. I can talk about religion or pornography! I can describe my co-workers in unflattering terms, or post gossip about people I used to be in Street Patrol with. All with complete impunity!

Talk about freedom of speech.

I'm probably talking about spirituality too much. Or about sex too much. Probably if I talked about one or the other, I'd get an audience on at least one side. But there probably aren't too many religious people who can stomach the proximity of all the sex, even though I don't think I've talked that much about sex in the blog. In any case, all you AOL people looking for bestiality info -- welcome. I'm sure this isn't what you're looking for, but here you are anyway. It wouldn't hurt you to read something else besides that one column.

So let me confront this issue for once. How can a person who is as serious about his spirituality as I seem to be, also be a pornographer?

In other essays on this site (like here and here) I talk about why I write erotica, or pornography, if you will: because sex held my interest long enough for me to develop my writing craft, and because there's a market for it (however small and totally not lucrative). I haven't really talked much about where I am with my spirituality or how I got here.

Briefly, then, because it's not a very unusual story: like many people, I was attracted to monastic spirituality through the writings of Thomas Merton, Kathleen Norris, and others. I visited a few monasteries and started attending a Benedictine spirituality group in San Francisco. I attend a Lutheran church and try to integrate all these various influences into something resembling a practice, although my discipline is horrible.

Perhaps the thing my spiritual practice and my writing have in common is an almost total lack of discipline. I'm very bad about doing things regularly, even when the notion appeals to me, as in the Liturgy of the Hours or a regular writing time. I let myself get distracted too easily. I'm lazy. My mind wanders. I want to stay in bed a little while longer.

So I'm not trying to present myself as a terrific writer or a terrific Christian on this website. I'm just using the site, and this weblog in particular, to work out some thoughts about both disciplines. (What do you call a discipline you're not disciplined at? Don't even ask about my totally lapsed practice of tai chi chuan.)

Today: a gorgeously clear winter day. Wish I'd spent it outside, but of course I worked all day, it being Monday. On the other hand, Sunday was beautiful, too, and I didn't spend much of it outside either. See? I suck at things I know are good for me.