[I have a difficult time with creeds, so I created my own. I've posted it here before, but just felt like re-posting because I read this in church today and it was wonderful to be able to publicly, verbally voice my stance on faith. I wrote this following a suggestion of my late friend David Gentiles.]
I am a terrible Christian. Because if being a good Christian means serving a God that needs me to defend him, primarily on Election Day by voting down liberals, I’d rather be a heathen. Secondly, if being passionate about Christian social justice requires a presupposition that conservatives are narrow-minded bigots, I will be apathetic. And if being a model Christian equates merely to climbing a social ladder within the gilded sphere of those who are anointed, appointed, and correct, I choose to be anathema. Furthermore, if being “a new kind of Christian” only means keeping up with the latest trends, practicing slam poetry, and endlessly debating soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology, well, I’m just going to barf.
I choose to skip out on all those classes. I need to get off campus and into the wild. I want to roam a weedy trail in the backwaters of spiritual civilization. I want to stay in the woods after dark. I want to climb a tree in the middle of a storm and feel how God’s wind bends even the strongest, most firmly rooted trunks of religion. I want to skinny-dip in a stream to feel the Current swirl around my limbs and joints, pulling away the religious soil I’ve accumulated. I want to stand clean and naked in a meadow, raise my arms and yell in primal joy, in thanks for beauty, peace, and acceptance that doesn’t make sense.
I choose to live my spiritual life off the grid, beyond the tired matrix. I will exercise a love that devours sacred cows to make room for sacred possibilities.
And if that’s heresy, so be it. But I am not alone.
Thanks for the centering your brought with this to our meeting Sunday, and it was great sharing lunch with you all. Peace.
Ha ha, the rhythm from paragraph two onward sounds pretty slam poetry…
Climbing a tree in a storm, reminds me of that piece by the famous naturalist in California….ahhh, can’t think of his name…google – “famous California naturalist” first hit, Wikipedia on John Muir.
i meant take the YELLING away …. its too early to be posting
“in a meadow, raise my arms and yell in primal joy”
take the telling away and have a contented look on my face, and add a light breeze, and that is a mental picture I have had many times in my life …. to me that is freedom.