Normally, when I write, I begin by reviewing my previous posts. Especially during this Lenten journey as I attempt to post daily, I’ve been going over all my previous posts this Lent. Something triggers a thought I can write about. But today, this can’t happen. I’m at work with a network that is completely down, no internet, no access to my servers, no access to my previous writing. IN short, I’ve been trying to figure out some way to occupy my time for the past 2 hours. Things with our system are worse NOW than they were 2 hours ago!
So, I know you are asking yourself, how did you post this then? Well, here’s what’s going to happen. Once I’m done writing, I’m going to see if the internet is up. If it is, great. If not, I’m going to copy this file over to my Nook Color. Then, when we go to church this evening for Scott’s band practice, I’ll connect via the church’s wifi and post from there!
But first… first, I have to come up with a post about my Lenten journey.
Some years ago, my walk with God went through a particularly dark spell. By that I mean that I lost clarity in my journey… it’s hard, really to explain. I lost faith in God. But I didn’t. As I’ve written elsewhere in this blog, I operate under a certainty in God’s existence that not all people are capable of. I KNOW God exists, but I have had periods when I wasn’t sure how to express or experience that knowledge. I wasn’t really sure just WHAT God is.
I remember in seminary that we covered this kind of thing in one of the classes I took. I really remember very little of a specific nature, but I remember talking about the stages of belief, how we begin by believing because we’re told to believe. It’s a bit grey as I say, but I remember that they spoke of having to come to a place where we were no longer certain of the faith we had brought with us to seminary, and then to begin to rebuild our faith based on our own experience and knowledge of God. I think that bests describes what was going on. I know that, to some degree, that occurred for me at St. Meinrad.
Then I returned to Omaha, and the church I belong to here encouraged a different type of faith in me. I don’t really want to categorize it as one thing or another because I don’t wish to diminish what it was… it was right for me at that time. But I’ve always been on and have always experienced my life as a spiritual journey, seeking God, Who God Is, What God Means to me. I read voraciously of many different spiritual masters. And then I read a book wherein the author (a very good, and Godly man by all repute) “deconstructed” my traditional understanding of God. Had I read this man’s writing under closer guidance from my own spiritual director and others who could have held me accountable, that would have been better, but as it was, I read his stuff alone, and held myself superior to most of my associates… I, after all, had graduated from Seminary! Well, the writer deconstructed my understanding of God. And then, I stopped reading his book. So, I never discovered how or even if he reconstructed an understanding of God that I could identify with.
My orthodox christian view of God crumbled. Along with that image of God went belief in original sin, replaced by a conviction that God created us all in Original Beauty and Grace. Therefore, I questioned the reason behind Jesus death and resurrection. And then, my understanding of what heaven is also disintegrated.
I’ve struggled ever since with the aftermath of that effort. For a long time, I questioned my faith, but never that knowledge that has been deep within me that God is. God IS. My walk with Jesus didn’t really suffer too badly, I prayed daily. I continued to acknowledge Jesus as Friend, Brother, Savior (though how that worked itself out, how Jesus saved and from what did suffer.) And in the midst of all this, with my understanding clouded as it was, and my ability to comprehend heaven and what heaven is severely challenged, my mom died.
How to put God back into a context I could identify with seemed always just out of grasp. I didn’t really know who to turn to. But I worked with my pastor, a good man, perhaps better for this task because he was somewhat unorthodox, or at least so I perceived him to be.
I’d like to tell you now that all of that is behind me, but that would be a lie. It’s not. I still am unsure of God, but now I’m at peace with being unsure of God, because I STILL KNOW that God IS, and I am experience that God daily in my walk and in my life, and so it’s okay if I can’t return to my original belief. Jesus and I still walk daily. I share with Jesus my struggles and my doubts and my confusion, and because I know He Lives, I can still rely on Jesus, even though I don’t know what it is I believe about his death and resurrection (and yes, I believe those things.) I’m okay in spite of my lack of understanding what life hereafter is. Will I see Mom & Dad again? Will Scott and I be reunited in heaven after our lives here are finished? Heck, is there really a Rainbow Bridge where my pups gambol on the shores of some river waiting for me to come and collect them and walk on with them into our rewards? I don’t know. I don’t care! I know this: Whatever happens, God’s got my back, and that is all I care about.
This much I have shared. I’m not sure what beyond this I am capable of sharing, how much I want to talk about this or anything. Putting this out there where people I love… and here I especially mean my brothers… is taking a lot of courage for me. Though, just maybe, depending on how things go, I might relate tomorrow WHY I brought this up. Or today’s post may just serve as a referrent now and again in the remaining days of Lent.
On The Road II 