Me with Wentworth Wigglewhiskers, 4 SEP 2011
I am St. Val the Eccentric.
I make no apologies for this.
My herd of six guinea pigs (all named for characters in Jane Austen’s Persuasion) send their regards.
I love being St. Val the Eccentric (God said someone had to do it), but that blog and its voice have taken on a life of its own, though that life is very often composed of a composite of voices. The blog has become my soapbox, my bulletin board, my refrigerator gallery for thoughts and ideas — thoughts and ideas not just my own.
It’s a beautiful thing, and though it wholly reflects me in thought and taste, I have an edgier side…a grittier side…a more deeply contemplative side.
Because the sassy social justice maven is much noisier than the prayer warrior, much brassier than the L.A. METRO missionary quietly keeping divine appointments on public transit. There is a quieter side, the cloistered one — the “urban monastic” as my real-life friend Carolin christened me in her birthday card to me last April. That side of me is more deed than word. She’s the one with a servant’s heart who thinks “CSJ” would be an almost-fitting suffix (except for the tiny detail about no longer being Roman Catholic but Presbyterian…).
Her quieter side needed space, so here it is. The other site will still have its space, but here is a place for an introspective contemplative to breathe a bit more freely.
Just. Me.
(and the guinea pigs too, of course!)
Blessings, VKS
St. Val the Urban Monastic 