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not getting hurt, protecting myself, not being gullible

the basket is disingenuous, pretending to doubt, “because it is after all a basket of doubt.” It is a basket of analysis, of critique, of acceptance. In it is “the apple of shame, the orange of  embarrassment, the banana of regret. It is a brightly colored basket.”

The basket was empty for a long time; I was not permitted to put anything in it: so many certainties I was not permitted to question, which now fill it: how big is God's love? why blame God?

fear, negativity, limits, dryness, realism, inter-compass, courage, a way of doing nothing or something smart, asking great questions, or not settling for what you're told

How -- (useless, stupid, fat, awkward, dense, unlovely) can I be? All these negative descriptions can move together to form my pattern. To change the design by changing the adjectives would destroy the basket. Scary.

Doubts that I struggle with: a historical personal God, the afterlife, world and humanity in a positive evolutionary growth.

My doubt comes from three sources. In my journalism career, and as a critical academic, I was scrutinizing sources, verifying, finding holes, exposing them, not being trusting. As a professor @ a Franciscan college,  I was questioning tradition and teaching my students to do the same. As a creative writer, doubt was a way of imagining alternatives.

I have a series of related questions; the basket never gets less full.

I am just riding and riding with an overflowing basket of fireflies, nearly lighting me up, seeping into my eyes, nose, body, illuminating me by the fine fire, elusive and illuminated.

A specific item in my doubt basket right now: A New Kind of Christianity, on how to read the Bible, threw some doubt into what I thought I knew.

“I doubt that I matter to you. I doubt that I can let you matter to me. I doubt that God inhabits your inner space. I doubt that we have much in common.”

In my basket are a set of tools: flashlight, googles, mask, something to check for radiation--things to stay safe. A pen and pad to write about the experience, a cell phone to talk about it, a bubble of silence.

Doubt comes from experience. It could be disappointment about a job, a dress that doesn't fit, a role or position that doesn't work any more, all of which I'm determined not to repeat. It follows the initial glint of desire. I do not want to repeat an unsatisfactory experience.

Thorns, dust, distance, locks…."The bad (?) news: The key to the universe hasn't been found, despite extensive and continuing searches in all suspected places. The good news: It isn't locked." There’s a lock in the basket; doubt could be the key.

I doubt a lot; I go through this a lot, preparing students to engage in social justice; believe that you can be a part of it, don't buy all of it….

In the basket, it’s just turtles all the way down: each discovery provokes a new question. So the basket of doubt—questioning what is—is also the basket of faith—knowing that, always, there is something more.