A New Vision

The process of growth is long, often arduous and seemingly never ending. This can become discouraging at times unless one is willing to accept that growth and change are essential parts of life. In fact, I would say that the reason that we're all here has a lot to do with growth and transformation on all kinds of scales, from the smallest to the largest, from the individual to the cosmic. Somehow, with that perspective in mind, it seems like a worthwhile endeavor to be an active participant in this whole process.

I find myself wanting to express so many things but it becomes very challenging when I think of the possible implications and complications of some of the things I feel would be valuable to share with others regarding my own spiritual journey. I really only have a few options: 1) I can share nothing; 2) I can share what I feel passionate about; or 3) I can share something that I find less meaningful but also less divisive. And while I don't enjoy generating conflict for the sake of conflict I have developed a much greater appreciation for friction and criticism, when enrobed with compassion and an honest and authentic desire to pursue truth.

The journey that I have undergone, especially within this last year of my life, has been one of compassion and grace mixed with frustration and fear. And now here I am. Every step I've taken has been a slow and graceful progression towards a vision of reality that I could not have imagined.

My insights are not unique, only my understanding and relationship to them. I want to offer encouragement and support to those who may feel afraid to engage with their own questions, afraid that they are alone in their wandering search. I assure you, you are not. I want to offer some kind of refuge, maybe because that's what I am searching for, too.

For a long time my faith never made sense to me, the God I believed in came to be a God I did not understand or wish to devote myself to. But it wasn't a problem with God, only my perception and understanding of who God is. Or is not.

My faith and spiritual journey remains centered in God but it has turned out to be a much different God than the one I thought existed. In the past, I felt like the only alternative to my understanding of God within the Christian tradition was to believe that there was no God at all. Ha, ha, silly me. Well, it made sense at the time.

One of the most freeing things I have discovered is that even within my own tradition of Christianity there have been those, throughout the centuries, who have believed in a God far different from the God envisioned by the popular majority. Mystics within all of the great monotheistic faiths - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - have offered glimpses of a God who is not a distant and separate being but who is the essence of all that is - the Ground of all Being. This is the God I now believe in.

And I know that I am not alone.