After a very needed session of yoga this evening, I’m retiring to bed with one particular topic on my mind. Reconciliation. In the past 8 years, maybe even a bit longer, I’ve been to each end of the spirituality spectrum and back. After forays into everything from Buddhism to Wicca, and ending up back in the Christan realm, I find myself at odds with most orthodoxy I come in contact with. I’m coming to except that this is a journey, not a destination, and that it is taking steps forward that matters.
What I’m wrestling with, is how to reconcile some traditions and practices that I still find valuable with my world view as filter through the lenses of the Biblical story and Jesus’ love. Having a crisis of faith once a week is healthy practice or me. It keeps me humble. Such is life in a relativistic culture, where one questions absolute truth every 5 seconds or so. At least I know I don’t have all the answers, I never will, and understand that it’s okay.
I’m a big fan of yoga, herbalism, meditation, environmentalism, and a few other odds and ends that frankly, don’t mesh with most people’s idea of what a Christian is. Most have a very “New Age” connotation in current culture. Really though, that is not important, since it is my journey. I realize that there are others out there, just like me, who are forging new paths for themselves and proving that faith can and does look different from the way popular media portrays it. In fact, it looks a whole lot different for me in all ways.
I had lunch with one of my professors and a few fellow classmates today. After making the comment that I was glad I wasn’t the only one who spent sleepless nights awake after reading The Flight of Peter Fromm, he looked across the table, smiled and said, “I think we have very similar histories”. Which is half true. His journey took a much more extreme venture to the fundamental, conservative, orthodox side of the religious spectrum. I don’t doubt that had my adolescence been different, I could have ventured there. It is comforting to meet other people who’ve been down this road in some facet. I seem to have made many new friends this year who have struggled with these same issues. I know in time this will all work itself out. It is true that ignorance is bliss. Once you cross that line from ignorance into knowledge, there is no going back.
Once you know, you can not forget.
