Write Now!
This blog started as a 'Lenten Writing Project', where we wrote each day in Lent. Now that Summer is here, let's keep up the discipline of writing with a weekly writing challenge! A prompt will be posted each week and anyone is welcome to join in and post their writing here or participate just by reading it.
Every writer has their own special light to add to this blog and all of your writing offerings are appreciated, whether poetry, prose, essay, thoughts, lists or comments and encouragement.
I think that over the years with all of the reading and listening and reflecting my understanding of God became much richer and fuller and complicated and even confusing at times.
ReplyDeleteBut that's a younger man's game - I seem to be headed back to the simple and fun and intimate and bold trust - at least for today!
I'm not sure very much, actually. Well, I don't think praying puts a band-aid on all wounds any more, or will necessarily determine if a miraculous change will happen (though I do believe such things have happened to others and I try not to be jealous...). As a child, I distinctly remember knowing without a shred of doubt that God was right there with me. In imaginary friend style. I know that now, as a "grown-up," I have a more human-made tangibility to what I believe/know of God through theology and experience, but really? My core still tells me that God is my non-imaginary invisible friend hanging out with my community and me all the time - gnarly bad, awesomely good, and all the messes of the rest of it :)
ReplyDeleteHa! I have written a 3 page answer to this question for my Clinical Pastoral Education application, but I don't think everyone wants to read 3 pages :-)
ReplyDeleteThe short of it is that my understanding has gone through many different twists and turns. Or maybe it is more appropriate to say that it took many twists and turns for me to finally come to a place where I realized that my understanding of God is just as legitimate as the understandings of those around me who have a very different understanding.
Jesus holds my hand -
ReplyDeleteSpiraling joy, darkness, light;
Becoming new again.
Lenten Prompt #11 March 3 2012
ReplyDeleteMatthew 19:14
Many people read the Bible stories about Jesus telling the Disciples to have faith like a child. In my experience, they usually interpret that to mean an unquestioning faith in God, and in what God allows to happen in the World.
ICor.13:11
As one who is a Child Development Specialist and a Mother of 2 (now grown) children, I do not agree. Children naturally ask questions. Usually the question is, "Why? Why? Why?" They are inherently inquisitive. It is part of their God-given nature. Jesus embraced this, and children, just as they were.
It is OK to ask about things, and not just stand mutely or begrudgingly about, in "acceptance" of everything Life hands out.
It is also logical that, with age, should come some Wisdom and Understanding, if you've asked the right questions--and so, with God's help, I've acquired some.
ICor. 13:12a
From my childhood, on through adulthood, I have never accepted "pat" answers about God or anything that seemed a canned or merely convenient answer. (eg.I would ask, "Why AREN'T there any women artists"...poets, scientists, important women in the Bible or Church History, etc. "What HAPPENED to the Deaconesses in the Lutheran Church?") The standard answers were always a muffled reference to nonexistance or disappearance from lack of use. You can imagine my scepticism. There had to be at least ONE!
I was just a teenager. What did I know?
Deep down, I knew the whole truth just wasn't out there, so I watched and waited and studied, as new archeological research techniques began to discover new catacombs, and uncover previously undiscovered cities , Biblical Scrolls, Ancient Civilizations with their customs and relationships and goddesses.
I watched and listened as the roles of women in the Bible, and in the Ancient World in general, developed from merely a footnote mention, into an essential and sometimes even honored role in history books(eg. I found out in 1974, that a woman named Mary was the first person to hear and tell others the Gospel).
ICor.13:12b-13
So, my understanding of God has actually evolved from someone with the many rapid-fire questions of a child, who wanted immediate answers, and was mollified by ruffled adults who were supposed to have those answers(not my parents, by the way...luckily, they always welcomed my questions and challenged my findings); to now, a usually more quiet person, with some accumulation of Wisdom, and, at least, knowing where I can find answers when I do have questions. I also know with whom I can have a good, healthy Biblical discussion. Even better than that, I know that some questions have no answers in this world, and must be accepted by a Leap of Faith...and I'm OK with that.
s.h.
The biggest difference between my faith as a child and my faith now, is that as a child, I felt that no matter what I did, God was on my side because I was one of the ‘good guys’, not a ‘bad guy’ and God was on my side no matter what. Very black & white thinking about good and bad. It distorted into an ‘I’m already a good guy, so I don’t need to worry about anything – I’m on the side of good’ whether I made a mistake or not’. Later, I became conscious that it was my choices that determined if I was what I perceived to be ‘good’ or not. I was capable of being a ‘bad guy’. Eventually, I worked it out to what I believe now – that everyone has good and bad in themselves and it’s a constant choice. I am not a ‘good guy’ or a ‘bad guy’, but neither is someone that I perceive as a ‘bad guy’ the ‘other’. We are all mixed up with many choices that we make every minute. Though one may have built up ‘bad’ choices (which that designation, in itself is completely subjective), it doesn’t mean that they themselves are bad. Two things that I feel in my heart are: we as humans are not to determine what is good and bad in others. Also, when we all get to heaven (all of us with our goods and our bads inside us), we will cease to see through a glass darkly and go through our own hell before heaven by knowing all the pain we caused and then knowing all the joy we participated in. Through that baptismal fire, and in seeing the face of Jesus Christ who loves us, we will be welcomed into heaven if we so choose, but I don’t think everyone does choose that. I think that God gives us every chance though. (disclaimer: I have no idea how this would apply to other faiths that don’t believe in heaven. I also know that I can’t – in this lifetime – comprehend what is going to happen. If we could fathom what is going to happen and how magnificent God was, our heads would explode. Speculating, however, is fascinating.)
ReplyDeleteby Pat Mason
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child I didn't know there were other religions or that not all people worshiped as we did in the local Lutheran church in Kirkland, Wa.
I have enjoyed learning about the religious beliefs of others. If anything, my understanding has grown as has my awareness of how unlimited God's presence actually is.