Clarity

What an amazing week this has been: a week of profound growth in my self-awareness. As you probably know from my earlier posts, this past week began with a sense of serious angst as I grappled with whether or not there was a place for a non-creedally oriented person such as myself within the emerging cultures. I thought I arrived at a place of personal understanding and acceptance yesterday via my electronic conversations with Karen Ward. Today, however, within two conversations (one with Richard Foster via his book "Celebration of Discipline" and one in a face-to-face conversation with my friend Laurene) I had a much greater understanding of my place. Let me take a moment and let you know how I found this place. Several years ago I began to struggle to find a location for myself within the modern, mainline culture. Much of this had to do with the sense that the defining piece of their spiritual experience seemed to lie in their intellect. As a person who had been seriously marginalized by the modern, mainline church; I began to seriously grapple with whether the God-given intellect could - in and of itself - really provide the kind of deliverance it espoused (i.e. overcome the various -isms and oppressions). What I found is that in reality such an intellectually driven model often settled for simply exchanging excluded groups (i.e. "Now we'll accept gays and lesbians but drive out those with a different theological understanding than we have such: translation Evangelicals and/or Republicans"). Needless to say, as a person who had experienced and known the devastating pain of exclusion first hand, I was not a big fan of this approach. So I dug into my theological explorations from seminary and began to explore the historic traditions of evangelicals. The initial appeal was that in their early days in the United States, the evangelical community was among one of the most progressive presences on the continent! Their efforts to embrace the dynamic workings of the Spirit caused them to push aside many of the traditional practices that excluded folks like women and people of color - both within the church and the larger society. In the 19th Century, the evangelical community was light years ahead of most folks within the Christian community in envisioning what the Reign of God might really look like. Their participation in the Social Gospel movement was theologically and culturally revolutionary. "I want to be a part of such an expansive and visionary faith movement," I thought. There was only one problem with that notion, however. We no longer live in the 19th Century. The more I explored aspects of the contemporary evangelical communities, the more I found that many 21st Century evangelicals tend to define faithfulness largely by adherence to a particular interpretation of the Scriptures and through allegiance to the historic creeds. While I respect the earnest and faithful attempts for folks to live out their faith within such communities, I realized this movement is not where my heart lies nor where the Spirit is leading me. Today, I realized the essence of my spirituality lies primarily within the tradition of the mystics - a tradition that emphasizes the first hand experience of God. The moment I came to this realization following a 3 hour conversation with my amazing friend Laurene, there was an amazing sense of peace and joy that washed over my soul - to quote John Wesley, a "warming of the heart". It's not that I no longer want to use my intellect. Far from it. It's just that I want to spiritually balance the role of the intellect with the other ways in which we experience God. Nor is it that I will be dismissive of the sacred writings of our tradition or the historic creeds. I will, however, see them as expressions of others' experience of the God of Jesus - expressions that invite me further into my own first hand experience of God. The implications on this for my unfolding ministry? I realize that the role of a pastor is to join individuals on their spiritual paths and walk with them on their journey. I believe my increased self-awareness will allow me to better do that. I can walk with folks from a variety of mainline and evangelical perspectives and celebrate their experiences of God without feeling pressured to adopt their driving/defining values as the basis of my own ministry. I know this probably sounds like old hat for many of you reading this entry, but for me this location of myself within the tradition of the mystics was truly an epiphany. Ironically many of the things often identified as postmodern (i.e. aversion for labels, an understanding of God that transcends the individual, etc) have been defining features of the mystics for millenia. It only took me my first 40 years to figure this out :) Thank goodness God is patient with me. While I've read the first three chapters of Richard Foster's "The Celebration of Disciple", I'll save those reflections for tomorrow so as not to overwhelm you. Thanks for allowing me this space to process important insights that will guide me through the last five weeks of my sabbatical and well beyond. Til next time...