Flannery O'Connor

Well, I have a couple of thousand quotes from the letters of Flannery O'Connor that I would like to share with you. Don't worry! I'll do it a little at a time! I enjoy reading her because she cares so passionately about writing and about her religion, and muses often about the intersection of the two. Here's a quote from her about orthodoxy, which has been on my mind since I attended a couple of sessions of the Sunstone Symposium for the first (and probably last) time yesterday. (I'll give you more about that in another post.)

Anyway, F O'C talks to her friend about orthodoxy, "which I remember you said was a ceiling you had come through. I take it that what you have come through is some expression of orthodoxy. I have come through several of those myself, always with a deepened sense of mystery and always several degrees more orthodoxy."

This is interesting to me because I like to ponder the ways that I change in my faith and practice as I move through life. One of the women I heard yesterday postulated that people, as they mature, move away from specific religions and more towards general religiosity. (I guess she would say that people break through orthodoxy--or, as Dutcher would put it, reach the other side of their river in their little boat and then abandon it for another.) I don't necessarily agree with her--at least, not with her generalization. Some people become more dedicated to their specific religion as they age (she would say, I suppose, that they are simply aging and not maturing). Others of us (and I hope I'm one) don't necessarily move beyond specific religion or more tightly into the specifics of our religion, but rather broaden our definition of the things that we believe our religion encompasses. What do you think?