Spiritual Unlearning

I wanted to title this before I wrote it, give it a direction. But that is not happening today. So often blogging takes on a life of it's own. Today there is unrest in my soul. And I want to move that from inside to outside. Put it in print and out of my head/heart. But I don't know what path my writing will take, hence the unrest. So today is blog first, title later.

As the Easter season approaches I am taken aback at the changes in my soul, in my core beliefs, over the last year or more and how this affects my ability and desire to celebrate Easter. I don't really have a desire to go to church this year. I am conflicted. Some of this is because I don't have a "church home" anymore. And that's a topic in and of itself.... church shopping is hard work. Finding a place to land where you might be willing to expose your inner self enough to build relationships and worship God to the best of your ability.

I believe that there is a God. A source. Absolutely. I believe I'll never understand it. and yet. I want a God that I can understand. Because I can no longer believe and understand a God who doesn't meet us where we are at. That isn't my experience. I was raised in an extremely conservative environment. Homosexuality is wrong. That is the biggie. The game changer. But there are other extreme stances that I can no longer support. Those hateful things said about people who are poor or on welfare. But the sexual "lifestyle" view is the one I can no longer swallow. Maybe it's because my kids are not just supportive of people who are different from me, but two of them struggle with sexual identity (one has not figured out who she is.... at 11, I don't think she should know that, and the other one, well, I would say it is not figured out because when she talks about knowing who she is, it is like shifting sand, always changing. That is why I use the word "struggle"). And I think God loves them with a feet-on-the-ground kind of love. I think they are loved in a deep and personal way. Not from the other side of some metaphorical chasm all the while wagging a judgmental finger and saying, "I love you, but I hate your lifestyle...." Really? Because the people who love me to the point of making me want what they have.... they just love me. Where I am at. They may not be cheering about every decision I make, but they aren't going to "lovingly mold me" with hate and judgment. I will no longer want to to hear what they have to say.

So I'm aware that in so many ways I am saying that because my beliefs are changing I am looking for different people. People to commune with. But I also don't know if I still think that Redemption comes from one man nailed to a tree. Because I'm told that if I do believe that, I believe that mental illness is a sin and suicide will result in eternal damnation. If I do believe that I am creating a chasm between myself and some of the people I love the most.

I am to the point that I believe in Good. But what form that takes, I just don't know.

That's the slice of my life today.