Namaste

Yesterday I visited Namaste Bookshop. But maybe I should back up here. Why would I, someone who has not seriously considered religion in 3 years, willingly visit a store filled with Buddha statues, healing crystals, and books on meditation and yoga instruction?

Over the past year, I've been reading a lot of self-help books. I know self-help books get a bad rap, like the people who read them are miserable, pathetic souls who can't handle their own problems. I disagree with that. Self-help books are amazingly helpful, written by doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists with years of experience and research under their belts. I am also a big fan of therapy for everyone, not just "crazy people." (We are all crazy.) But that's neither here nor there.

I also began rereading the manga series by Osamu Tezuka on the life of the Buddha. I first read it in 2008 and loved it. As I was rereading it, some of the precepts of Buddhism called out to me and made sense.

Serendipitously, at this time I received an email about a new book club beginning that would focus on self-help type books that are spiritual in nature. Naturally, I joined. I'm currently reading our first book by Lama Surya Das and really enjoying it. More about that later.

So all of these things came together to spark my interest in going to Namaste bookshop. I had never been there before but always vaguely considered it to be a new offshoot of East West Books, which used to live around the corner from Namaste and sadly closed down.

The Comeback

It’s funny how life changes. People change. Everything changes.

Seven years ago I started this blog to wrestle with the questions about faith and spirituality that had plagued me for a long time, and were especially potent at that particular time.

I kept on with it for years, even as I drifted away from its original purpose. I lost interest in spirituality. I got tired of it. I stopped reading books about it, attending religious services, talking to friends about it. I moved on to other things - love, travel, career, intellectual pursuits. At a certain point, the blog’s name didn’t even make sense anymore. I started out on a sojourn (journey, adventure, trip, voyage), but was I even on one anymore? If so... towards what?

Then it died off. Why? For a number of reasons. I had shared it with friends, so there was only so much intimately personal info I could put here. I had not shared it with other friends, so very few people knew it was still here or being updated. I ran out of interesting things to ponder under a pseudonym that was not so pseudo.

But life is funny and I’ve learned that it comes in stages and phases and can wrap around like a boomerang. Just as I’ve been vegetarian, then meat-eating, then vegetarian, then vegan, then somewhere in between again, I keep coming back to places in my life where I have been before.

All of a sudden, I’m reading spiritual books. I’m talking to spiritual people. I thinking about this stuff. A lot.

With that, I bring back Sojourner’s Truths for its original purpose. Some of you will have no interest in this, and that’s okay. Some of you will. There may be people out there who never read before who are interested now. By reviving the old, I am making this new and freeing myself up to share even more.

Welcome. Or welcome back. I hope you’ll stay a while.