If You Build It . . .

I started writing this blog on an emotional whim when my first “baby”- the bearded, 6’2″ baby with curly red hair, left the nest. I expected it to be another form of a journaling for me, which I now realize I have been doing most of my life in one form or another.  At first, I told just a few close friends and family members that I had started a blog and then before I knew it, my readership started to grow.  For some reason, the movie, Field of Dreams with Kevin Kostner started popping into my head.

In the movie, Kevin’s character looks out into a vast cornfield in Iowa.  He is considering building a baseball field and he hears a voice whispering to him.  Now for the longest time I thought the line that he heard was, “If you build it, they will come.”  The ego part of me was getting excited about other people being excited about my blog and I would repeat that line to myself on the daily.  Then I would refocus myself, reminding myself that while it was nice for other people to affirm my writings, in the end, my blog was a tool for me to grow and to learn and to self-reflect.  Readers were the “cherry on top” who had really come to read the blog to support me, but also to hopefully glean some understanding about their own feelings and insights during this transitional, uncomfortable, skin-shedding, middle stage of life.  I now realize that together, my readers and I, are creating a community of awareness, familiarity and comfort, and of shared experience and emotion.

I looked up the particular Field of Dreams scene on YouTube and it turns out the quote really is, “If you build it, He will come.”  Some claim that this is a biblical reference and some claim that this refers to the ghost of a past famous baseball player.  I consider myself less of a religious person, but very much a spiritual person.  I see God not as a he or a she or an “it”, but an impossible to put into words, all-loving presence who is implanted into the hearts of all of Life.  I believe God is in all of creation.  So, it easily follows, that “If you build it, He will come.” God loves creation.  God is creation. I believe that God is in the heart of all of Creation.

In the end, I have this blog that I love writing.  I have a community who seems to enjoy relating to it.  I still have a voice whispering to me, “If you build it . . . ”  I have my blog of dreams.