The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I've been trying to get in touch with my spiritual side lately. As I consider myself an agnostic (ex-Catholic), this is proving to be more difficult than imagined. There are a number of "secular community" groups, pseudo-churches like UU's, and hobby groups, but they just don't do it for me. I have some optimism about attending a Quaker meeting, but I have yet to make my way to one. I know many of you maintain spiritual practice of some kind. Any suggestions for venues I can seek this connection? I want a place I can go to regularly where the sole purpose is to reflect on what is important in life, remind me to act virtuously, and exist alongside others. I suppose I could just go to mass and LARP, but that's sacrilegious and I'd rather exist in a space where I can be authentic in my beliefs.
Is it? I've never been Catholic (have considered, at least), but all the high church traditions I'm familiar with are very sympathetic to doubt. The biblical story of doubting Thomas doesn't condemn Thomas for it, for example.
Certainly, I could physically attend mass. As far as sacrilegious-ness goes, most people point to the Eucharist and note that non-believers are not to accept it. That's one thing, but there are many other parts of the mass that include professions of faith and prayer that I would essentially be lying about if I participated in. Ultimately, I could attend and sit quietly in the back with no trouble, but I'd rather be able to participate fully someplace.
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