Nones, Dones, and Knots

There seems to be a lot of blogging, tweeting, talking, and just general buzz these days about different categories of people's religious and spiritual experiences.  We have the "nones" or "spiritual but not religious" people who do not identify with any institutional religions but still claim spirituality.  Closely related to nones are the "dones" who have been, and perhaps still are, part of institutional religion but are tired of traditional church and the way things have always been.  These people are done with business as usual and are looking for new ways to "do church," or "be church."

I want to add another category to this mix - the "nots."   The nots are the people with whom the dones are done with and the nones have nothing in common.  Nots are the people who are not going to change, as the old saying goes, "come hell or high water!"  Nots are happy right where they are and most of the time could care less about the nones or dones.  However, nots also see "the way things have always been" slowly slipping from their grasp.  So, they hold on tighter.

In many ways nots are like "knots" in a rope that get tighter or loose depending on which parts of the rope are pulled.  It you've ever untied a knot, especially a tight one, you know pulling at it from both ends only makes it tighter.  You must get in the middle of the knot and work or massage it, then pry and pull to create some space in the entangled loops.  Once this space is created the knot is easily untied.

I am not sure where all of this leads, except to suggest that perhaps the Nones and Dones of the world, whether in religion, politics, education, business or any other institution, may need to make sure they/we are not pulling from both ends and tightening the Nots.