The Mandelbear's Musings

When I started -- more than a month ago -- to write a post about my spiritual beliefs and practices, I suddenly noticed that I was actually writing a chronological memoir. I changed course and prepended a fairly crisp summary of what I believe, then posted it separately. This is the remaining memoir. I tried several different verbs in the title, including staggering and stumbling, but, well, Yeats. There was never much uncertainty about the "destination" -- the concept of "awareness" comes from Reformed Druidism (which I'll get to in a few paragraphs). It is more ambiguous and has fewer connotations than "enlightenment" or "revelation". But in any case I don't claim to have arrived at it. I'm still journeying.

It's mostly about stories.

I'm not particularly happy about how this has turned out -- it's long, but leaves a lot out (meaning it may be too short), and it's somewhat disorganized. But I started it last month and haven't worked on it in the past week, so it's what it is.)

( Cut for length. Content warning: death (body count: four), and a little religion. )