So much for regular updates

Over on Google Reader, my friend Artslave asked me for my thoughts on this article from BoingBoing: "Show us your saints."

There's just one problem with this request. I don't have saints, and I don't really connect with the idea of saints. This is probably due to my having grown up in a very Protestant household (although these days my mother has said to me that she doesn't want a religion that tells her what to believe, and my father has always been a "Deitist"), where the whole idea of needing an intercessory presence to talk to God was not looked upon with favor. And yes, I see that the person on BoingBoing is talking about the saints as teachers, but even then I have trouble wrapping my mind around the whole idea.

Which is posing me a problem, since I do believe that there is something of the divine in every person (Yes, even Hitler Fred Phelps whatever dictator or unpleasant person you're thinking about. The gods are not always nice people). I suppose I have trouble with the idea that somehow the people we call saints are more special than the rest of us (just as I'm starting to have trouble with the idea that certain dates are more "holy" than others). And I think that comes back to "Everything is Sacred, and Nothing is Sacred."

Another trouble I'm having with this post is that, although there are people who both inspire and terrify me (Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Salvador Dali, Freda Kahlo, Leonard Bernstein, Frederik Chopin, Sir Ian McKellan, and that's the short list), the bulk of the people I would call my "teachers" are not distant figures, meaningful to many people, but are people I know and have interacted with on an intimate level. Two UU ministers, and one person who I think has finally obtained her M.Div. but I'm not 100% certain. Two of the lay ministers I worked with at a former church. The friend who is a professor at a university. The friend who has been unfailing in their support over the years. My parents. My sister. People I work with and interact with on a nearly daily basis, or did when we were proximate (sadly, I have lost touch with one of the two ministers, and have fallen badly behind on my correspondence with all the others).

I guess I find it easier to learn from people than from texts; and the distance between me and the people I list up there in the parentheses kind of renders them into texts rather than people.* By this I mean that I "read" their actions as reported by themselves or by others in much the same way that I read a book, aware that I'm interpreting what I see through my particular filter. People I've been face-to-face with, I know their flaws. They're "real" in a way that someone who I know only through their work can never be. Not in a Velveteen Rabbit sort of way. I learn from them in the way they are with other people, both good and bad, and from what I have seen in their lives and how I see them deal with events. I sometimes wonder if I didn't initially think I should become a minister because two of the strongest influences on my thinking have been ministers; but then the other influences are mostly teachers in a more literal way, as well.

In any event - I don't have "saints," but I do have teachers. And I learn something new every day.

*It is not out of the realm of possibility that I could meet and befriend Gaiman, Bradbury, or McKellan, but suspect the odds are not in my favor. Although I do follow Gaiman on twitter. The others, unless time travel becomes a possibility, pretty much no.)