Faith Journey

I am going to start posting and, maybe, blogging (in the active verb sense) on faith (and whatever else comes to mind, if I have a mind to[o]). Specifically I will post some of the stuff I create during my current work, what I call my Project. Posting will require me to write something about my project (writing a record of the project is a major component of the project) so I have something to post.

Basically, I am remembering, examining, or reexamining, recreating, reimagining my faith, or really, my whole life. Maybe I am looking for grace or to see the face of God. Or maybe I am just looking for an understanding of the world and my experience that satisfies me. Modestly, I just want to see where I stand and have a record of that.

The idea is to examine God, Jesus, the Christian faith, the Christian right, the world situation, politics, the local and global, the way the world seems to work, and my experience—how I came to be a Christian, left Christianity, came back to Christ and the church—and the practical, intellectual, and theological influences throughout this convoluted, long-winding process.

I will probably keep some of my deepest feelings just between me and God and Pam. But, regardless of this, the project requires me to be honest and open emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually to the trinity of myself, the rest of creation, and God, and my writing should reflect this process truthfully and freely.

This writing will likely be tedious, digressive, disordered (Isn’t recording an effort to order and understand the surfeit and chaos of experience?), and repetitive. It might be boring to others, but it is my project of figuring out my place in the world and, hopefully, becoming something other than I am and more myself at the same time. Paradoxical.

My story, when does it begin? When I was 5? My earliest memories are from somewhere around 4 or 5 years old and they are pretty sketchy. And I am not always sure if I remember the time or only a story of the time that I heard in family conversations.

How about when I was baptized? The church teaches that there was an ontological event that occurred in my baptism. It was a sacrament. I was cleansed from original sin and brought into the body of Christ.

How about when I was born? Does my story begin with my birth? Or when I was conceived? Biologically or imaginatively? And conceived in the imagination of my parents or in the imagination of God (Psalm 139)?

Obviously (and thankfully) my story hasn’t end yet, but how did I get here? Where am I? What about all the injustice and hubris surrounding Christ? Afflicting the world? How about love?