i've never felt too bad about having no particular belief system or methodology, when it comes to knitting, writing, or my eternal soul.
a t-shirt, a blog button, a charm on a necklace, a place to sit down for an hour -- people love to follow something rather than nothing, and to advertise that they are doing so. there are people who will absolutely fly apart at the seams if not swaddled in "the way", and they can only seem to grow in their faith by racking up the numbers of people who have SEEN or HEARD or READ ABOUT them participating in it.
i find that it is as important, if not more so, to avoid what you do NOT believe in, rather than sign yourself up for believing in anything in particular. push yourself away from everything that stinks, and soon enough, you may find emptiness -- scary emptiness -- but it won't stink. i feel have as much of a responsibility to myself to reject the things i do not believe in as i do to try to immerse myself in what is right for me. if there's nothing to immerse myself in at times, so be it -- it often takes all the energy one has to avoid the crap.
to paraphrase c. montgomery burns, i'm no critic, but i know what i hate. mr. burns was lucky enough to be able to follow up immediately with and i don't hate this! but we are not always so lucky. it's still healthy to embrace the hate, lance those aesthetic boils, and kick free of the sticky gossamer argument that "everyone is entitled to believe in what they want to, and the things that aren't important to you are just as meaningful as what you care about."
no they aren't. they're nowhere near as important. but people are afraid of fallow periods and they'll fill them with anything -- arena-rock knitting, oprah's book club, or, that ultimate banana peel, faith.
or... a combination thereof!
i'm going to have an empty-along. have you ever done that thing right before you fall asleep -- i call it "unspooling" -- where you just get very alert to any image that flashes on the insides of your eyelids, and you don't make any effort to understand, remember, or maintain any of it. just let it keep going and going. i'm going to (when bub is finished, maybe) have a knitting empty-along, divorce myself from any thoughts of what i have planned to knit, from any pattern i have seen, from any yarn i own, and see if anything knitted -- or anything that i can knit -- shows up.
who's with me? -- nobody!!! right again!!!
...at least, some of the time.