reflection on the journey

There are times when things just snap into focus, when you look around and realise where you are...you look back and see how you've gotten here and how strange a journey it's been.

When I was growing up, my church was the primary font of theology and pastoral wisdom.  I was 'lucky' in that I went to a private, protestant school who taught some rather different things from what my church taught.  This gave me the first inkling that there wasn't just 'one, right way'.  That the word 'truth' shouldn't be capitalized.

I've done a lot of walking between those days so long ago and today.  Some things have changed and some things haven't. 

I am more willing to accept living without certainty than I have ever been and more willing to say 'I was wrong'.  To me, those are all matters relating to letting go...of releasing control. 

I am more willing to recognise that other people who hold radically different views from my own are just as right, holy and earnest in their attempts to understand and live within the Divine as my own paltry endeavours.

I have become more emotional and filled with passion, not just for a single cause but rather for nearly everything and everyone.  I think that these are part of a growing recognition of  the Net of Jewels, not just on an intellectual level but on a heart-level.

I am full of faith and entirely without faith, depending on your definition of the word.  If faith is a belief in things unproven, as many of the Fundies will define it, then I am without faith for  I know, not believe.  If, on the other hand, one considers faith to be confidence or trust in someone/thing else, then I have an abundance of faith.

My personal Credo is as valid and important to me as it was years ago when I came upon it through meditation and prayer.  To hear from other faiths (which I had not had contact with) that I 'reinvented the wheel' is heartening, as it is an example of parallel and convergent evolution.

I am still sure, perhaps now moreso than before, that Dad's got something planned and that I am to do more.  Whether that is a specific call to the presbyterate or the diaconate...well, when She let's me know, I'll pass it along.  There's a lot more road ahead, but the more I walk down this road, I realise that there are others who are going my way and the conversations as we walk are most heartening.

Thanks to all and thanks be to God