"I simply put a tiny pin hole into one side and the light that started to pour in wouldn't leave me alone," was the essence of what I said back. I spoke of having met with an Episcopal priest, who I called my friend, (his kindness in a season of need lives in my heart deeply) and I shared how in our early conversations we would talk about the picture of my life being more liken to a trapeze bar with my fingers white knuckle gripping it than anything else.
Questions had been posed seasons before by a brilliant spiritual director; asking me, who I was outside of ministry. Who was Mims Driscoll? Deep echos arose within me with a whisper that became a shout that then found a voice. But the rumblings started just with the words; "I can't do this anymore."
I couldn't touch ministry like a business any longer.
I couldn't touch the fact that the usage of social media and marketing strategies felt a tad like selling out.
I wondered what did it look like to really know God and not some image of Him I had created or been told to know because I live in a Westernized culture and that was the image that God was...
I wondered and I battled and I drove myself crazy with questions.
Brene Brown does a brilliant thing in her book, The Gift of Imperfections. She takes Emotional Breakdown and crosses it out and writes over top of it the words, "Spiritual Awakening." I vacillated between the two and laughed with my therapist as I would hold up my quote fingers and say things like, "yeah, right 'Spiritual Awakening,' my a$$."
The one action I didn't take was I didn't and haven't stopped. I didn't give up. I didn't look back. Well, at least not enough to become a pillar of salt. My heart ached for the proverbial Egypts I had known. I felt eaten alive by the questions reverberating within the walls of my body. They were stretching my heart to desire freedom at all costs. Some of the costs landed upon my soul with weights of sorrow and fatigue.
Longing and desire would end up trumping those moments that disturbed sleep and awake times alike. Questions would only continue to gain steam. Wonderment would only continue to break apart decades worth of religiously holding on to my culture's (non-denominational Charismatic Conservative Christian) sacred cows.
My culture's sacred cows?!?
Why had I never heard a sermon that addressed the reality of the feminine nature of God? If I am made in the image of God and there is terminology that would call the Lord, the many breasted one, look it up.. the Hebrew word, El Shaddai. Why don't we recognize that non-liturgy is a form of liturgy? What would it mean to take the celebration of the Eucharist with a reverence and awe due it's reality? Is all the activity we spend our lives on really the Lord ? How much of it is? What about silence and stillness? Does the pursuit of Holy Spirit always have to end in some external manifestation? Why is a service shown up to be better than another if that happens versus if the movement of the Lord was upon something less visually grandiose?
What role does social media and marketing really play within ministry in the 21st Century? What about the reality of Oneness and the High Priestly prayers of Christ? Why haven't I heard more sermons on that subject? (more on that in a bit.)
Then came the one that grabbed a hold of me with a tenacity that would not let go, what about my faith was because I lived in the society I did? What about my expression of Christianity wasn't authentic? What about my faith wasn't based upon who Christ really is? What about my Christianity was because I was saved in the West? What about my faith was because I was an American? What about my faith was a table waiting to be toppled? What about my faith and who I saw God as was more of a golden calf formed by the hands of man versus a God that truly existed upon a fire full mountain? Or everywhere around me for that matter?
The questions only continued...
But then so did a couple prayers begin to emerge...
The first prayer, which if I knew where it would have led me, I am not sure I would have started praying it over a year ago is found in the sixteenth chapter of John's gospel. Standing upon on the statement that the Holy Spirit will come and lead people into all truth, I began to pray those very words. The rumblings of the earth that was my life was going to experience an earth quake that would blow the Richter scale away.
The second prayer would do nothing less. Based on the prayers that are attributed to St. Francis of Assisi; "Who are you, Lord, my God and who am I? I wanted and want to know that which is God not based upon my own human understanding but based upon the fact that I do actually believe there is a God who Created and that found human form in Christ and is also represented by Holy Spirit. Who is that? Versus who is the that I would want it to be? Or culture or church has taught me? And in light of those questions and possible answers, who am I?
What is that reality?
I had read Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outlier, years ago and in a moment back then had wondered what would it look like to focus the 10,000 hours upon knowing God. Knowing Him not based upon theological study or service alone but sitting with Him in silence, in movement, in Creation, in nature, in cathedrals, in hospitals, in caves, in forests, in cities, in towns, and the list continues. Knowing Him sitting with the elderly, sitting with infants, sitting with friends, sitting with enemies, sitting with others of different faith expressions, sitting with others from different cultures, sitting with men, sitting with women, sitting with the poor, sitting with the rich, sitting with the illiterate, sitting with the well-educated and that list goes on and on.
Who is this God? Who is the Lord? Who is He as He exists? What makes Him/Her happy? I have to use both pronouns. English sucks at words to express the reality of God at times. I do not believe barring that Jesus was a man that God has genitala. God is spirit and made both male and female in that image. The feminine and the masculine qualities that reverberate within both male and female; why don't we talk more about these things?
Why don't Christians talk more about the amazing High Priestly prayer of Christ towards the end of His life? The one in which He goes into Oneness. Why? What causes so much fear of being deceived that we don't look at the truth of the powerful reality of Oneness?
I have found in my journey that we, as Christians are so afraid of getting it wrong that we don't attempt to get it right in so many arenas. We stay small and within the boxes we carve for ourselves and the starving faithful. I don't want to stay small. I don't want to be deceived either. But my belief these days are at least two fold if not more.... First, if God is who I believe and want to believe that God is.. Then my belief MUST be that God is more capable to keep me from deception and will not let me be led astray if every day I am praying for the Holy Spirit to lead me into all truth. Scripturally I am asking for bread and I am told I will not be given a stone. Secondly, if God so loved the world.. then I have to believe that God is sooooo much bigger than anything I could ever really comprehend and yet in that grand largeness is made known... But it is that largeness that holds mystery and I can't dwindle that down to simple or basic concepts just so I can sleep better at night.
So in my conversation with my friend that I spoke of in the beginning of this journey into this post... I said things like this....
I have learned from the Native Americans and their songs and understanding of spiritual matters. I have learned more from them about the idea and concept of Oneness of all things than I ever have within the church. I have come to understand Christ more and the passion that the Father and He shared with Holy Spirit. The passion that we would understand how ultimately connected we all are even unto Creation. We were formed out of the ground! The goodness of God is invested within it all and the very goodness of God within humanity. This I have been taught not in the church but through my touching another culture. A culture that is willing to touch and see the Spirit of God in ways that Western church culture isn't.
I have learned more about living in the now moment and not worrying about tomorrow from Buddhist writing and yoga practice. I have learned about non-violence towards self and others. I have learned how to love myself and then love others as I love myself more through a few months of yoga practice then years within Christian service. I have learned to honor the fact that when God spoke that we are the Light of the world that the deposit of light is within me and within those I see and to honor that reality is beautiful and true not heretical. I have learned more about loving - kindness and how to express it not in a performance oriented structure based on hierarchical foolishness but in the reality of earthy, practical means.
I have been moved by music and expression of other cultures and faiths and brought more fully back into my own. Pema Chodrin, a Buddhist nun, goes into that. The boat I know to be the boat that I am to live and worship upon is the reality of Christ as the expression of God upon the earth and that which that entails. I just know it is so much bigger and full of love then anything anyone ever had the courage to teach me....
People stay in boxes. They are safe. They are predictable. They enslave. They enclose. They suffocate. I didn't blast through my box. I opened a pin hole and the light shined in the darkness and that has made all the difference... It isn't deception it is life... It isn't heretical it is love.. People stay in boxes for many reasons. I just couldn't sit in the dark any longer..... Holy Spirit brooded over the chaos of my life and God spoke let there be light and the light arose and is washing away the dark spaces that boxes had created....
I didn't just have to go out of my own non-denomination denomination, I had to be willing to step larger than my own faith was willing to teach me.... not negating my faith but appreciating the courage and wealth that is deposited within others......
Journey your own journey...
Begin a prayer walk and see where it takes you.. I had no idea it would take me where it has but the prayers asking Holy Spirit to lead me and God to reveal who the I Am actually is and then who I am actually is has left me altered and more... I am more than I was before... I love Christ more than I ever have and am freer to do so then I ever was... Not asking or waiting for the permission of men to venture out into the deep darknesses but trusting that the call to the mountain of God is better than hanging around with humans forming golden images. I don't want a golden image of a calf. I want the real..I have been added to and not taken away from... I have watched perfected love come into my existence and wash away more and more and more fear....
For that I am grateful..
And now the journey continues.....
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