This is not part of the Resurrection Appearance series. The next, 4th, Reflection in that series will be posted on Wednesday or Thursday.
Like anything that arises from our hearts, our intuition, our search for meaning and beauty, and, most of all, our search for love, I believe that we come to faith in markedly different ways. And the faith that we find may be different than the faith of others, even those of the same religion. No two people come to faith in quite the same way. And so I think that what we can do, perhaps the best that we can do, when someone asks us about faith is to share a bit about our own coming to faith story.
In a way it is not unlike the people in Alcoholics Anonymous who come to a meeting and share their stories. Through sharing our stories we learn that we are not so very different after all, but, at the same time, ironically, that each story is itself unique.
What follows my story. I don't write it assuming that it will fit you. It may not fit you at all. Mostly my journey to faith was taken in my mind, which was why it took so long. So I offer you an outline of one man's journey to faith. Mine is a journey that lasted for a half of a century.
I had gargantuan struggles when trying to think my way to faith. I was convinced that faith would be found in the next book, or in the next guru at whose feet I studied. And I often confused him or her with my ultimate goal, only to realize that I was in love with the mind of my mentor and was putting my very soul in the hands of a person and not in the hands of God.
So then I tried more education, because surely, I thought, I would find faith somewhere in the world's knowledge packaged neatly into courses and seminars. It mattered not to me if the courses were in political science, political theory, constitutional law, philosophy, biblical studies or theology. Whatever the course I would look for the faith or lack of it of the teachers and the writers of the texts to see how others handled that great mystery that continued to elude me called faith.
But in my pride in my hard work that resulted in straight As through my graduate programs, and the kudos that came with them, I confused my own success with faith. I got to thinking that maybe, just maybe, faith could be found within me. But my better angels told me that I was not really the "Other" that Rudolf Otto spoke about, and so with more graduate study than anyone needs, I still had no faith.
So I read deeper into all those German theologians I so much admire, particularly Barth, but also over a dozen more. And I found faith everywhere, even in places where they had denied it, like in Bultmann, hiding out in a German seminary, teaching what even he thought was not faith; but even he, as I read between the lines he wrote, had the faith I was looking for. But still I didn't. Only in Barth and, most of all, in Schweitzer, did I feel the sense of wonder and love that I believed faith would evoke in us. So much of the rest was sterile dissection of theology until it lost all its form and any identifiable substance.
But I was beginning to get a glimpse of what my faith could look like. It was just out of my grasp, I thought, because none of these great German theologians explained where their faith came from. They just assumed they had it and you had it and both of you knew it. And so I often blamed them for not showing me the way to faith. Yet, I was feeling like faith, finally, was possible, since these giants of theology who did so much thinking about what they wrote, still clearly had faith.
So it was on to Schleiermacher where the idea of the need for piety took form in me. That was finally something that I could understand, and even practice in my own not quite orthodox way. Piety was not faith, but it was a way of living that faithful people I admired had.
From there it was on to Kierkegaard, and his words flew off the page as I read. Here was an existentialist, yet a Christian, who understood what I had never been told, but always knew intuitively. Yet I feared what I read because there was no way for me through sheer force of will to do what he said was necessary to have faith.
He said that we must make a leap of faith. This existentialist understood what was needed, a leap, a blind jumping into the meaning of life, an opening of one's heart to let in the unknown, a trust beyond the existential, a trust opening self to mystery. Mystery. The mystery of the Other, the kind and prescient Rudolf Otto again reminding me from the grave.
And this Christian existentialist, this Kierkegaard, reminded me not only of Otto, but of dear St. Anselm. Anselm, speaking not this time about The Ontological Proof of the Existence of God, which is no proof at all, but about theology and its relationship to faith.
Anselm was speaking to me through the centuries telling me again something I had already heard him say but had dismissed as irrelevant. This time I remembered. This time it had meaning for me. This was something far simpler than his ontological non-proof. He said simply that theology is "faith seeking understanding."
That opened my eyes as never before to the futility of what I had been doing. It let me see that all those years I had it wrong because I was seeking faith in learning, in trying to understand. I thought that if I only could understand then I would have faith.
But Anselm said that was backwards. First have faith and then seek understanding. It started to come together for me, but since I could not will it to be, I felt lost. I continued to refuse to allow my heart to tell me what my mind still doubted.
Ultimately, none of these, the greatest continental thinkers of their day, got me there. But there was one from Britain, one who came to faith after years of his own struggle, one who first gained fame and notoriety for his profound understanding of English Literature, not theology, a simple man with a complicated mind who could make the complex sound clear and simple to folks like me.
And this man was willing to admit his own struggle in his journey of faith as he went from atheist to believer. He spoke of it openly and happily. So C. S. "Jack" Lewis prepared my heart to open a bit more and I read every scrap of paper he ever wrote about faith. Lewis, of course, did not give me faith. He said that no man could do that, echoing Kierkegaard.
But now, finally, my heart was open enough to allow for something else to come in other than what I generated in my mind. And then my prayers began in earnest because I was pushing 50 and worried that the one thing I had always wanted was slipping out of my grasp.
So I told God exactly that. I told him that I had journeyed long and tried hard to find faith, but I needed a rewiring, a change of attitude, a way to get beyond my mind and out of the books long enough to be receptive to the moving of the Holy Spirit.
I told him that he was the God that I wanted to love and honor; and I also spoke my need directly to Jesus, this God made flesh that I wanted to believe and follow. For two years my prayers were sent out or up or where ever they go. And nothing happened.
But I kept praying for the thing that eluded me for half a century because I had worn out all of the paths I knew to take. During this time of persistent prayer I did not lose heart, but instead persevered. I was at the end of my spiritual rope, and prayer was what was left. So I clung to prayer.
The search for faith, a half a century in the making, came to an end one day when I woke up and realized that I had it. Yes, it was that simple. Sorry. I wish I could make it more dramatic. There were no angels singing, or church bells ringing, no booming voice speaking to me out of a cloud, no seraph flying at me with a sacred coal to burn my lips, nothing like that. Just the cognition. The gap, the chasm, between my mind and my heart had closed.
Had my faith been there all along? Had it crept up on me and infused me slowly, so slowly I could not even feel it happening? I don't know. I never will know. I just knew I had it. And I knew that after the years, the decades, of searching for it, God simply gave it to me.
One thing I learned is that faith does not come from within. The freedom that we find in faith, the love that faith can bring into our lives does not come from us. Rather it comes from the willingness to be open to the Other, to allow the Other to come in and dwell within us.
Faith comes with the willingness to surrender ourselves to a power and a love far greater than ourselves, a power so great and a love so complete that we will never capture but a hint of that power and love with mere words.
Ultimately, I finally came to believe that just as Christ surrendered his life for the love of us, it was now time for me to surrender to his love so that I could be truly free. I found spiritual love and peace in my surrender to God.
God bless,
Monte
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(I too am a fan of C.S. Lewis.)
I've been a lover of Lewis for years, and only recently read his autobiography. Like you, he can describe intimately his path to salvation, but the exact moment, he passes over because he can't describe it. A lot of the problems he describes along his journey are very alien to me, but the place he describes ending up seems very familiar, which makes sense - people come from all directions, but Grace is the same.
I'm so glad you shared this with us! I am always deeply curious about how people come to faith. I'm glad you pointed out how unique each faith experience is --
I'm sure the knowledge you gained through all your reading and studying and meditating on the Great Thinkers -- all of this has probably served you well (and served others well through you and your ministry!) and maybe you needed that knowledge for reasons other than faith, and once you had the knowledge you needed for Life, Faith appeared.
It really is all a mystery, isn't it! I guess if it was all cut & dried we wouldn't need faith.
Wonderfully thoughtful post, Monte!
I have to take a shower (I hate to take an evening shower. Someday I will have to figure out why. ;-0) and get ready to go to bed early for me (2 am) so I can get up at 10 and hopefully get my feet cooled down enough to make the 100 mile trip to the Cleveland Clinic tomorrow without the misery of a flare up.
More tests and a whole day gone by the time the prep, driving, testing, doctor visit, blood work, driving home is done. So far so good with the tests. Nothing impossible showing up, but I have a tendency to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. Need to work on that.
Anyway, I do appreciate each and every comment and thank each of you very much.
Monte
Secondly, I think people who find their way to faith on their own journey, as opposed to having it force fed are more genuine in their faith. I never had it force fed on me and I've always had it. I still do. I can read post after post against it and respect the blogger's right to their feelings as long as they respect mine.
I've wanted you to write this for a long time.
RATED!!
Some day, maybe, it will be easier. My walk has always been a slow, up hill climb. Fraught with many times of feeling lost. I don't know why I don't immediately know to look upward to find my bearings again. Some how, through the grace of God, I always find my way home.
Thanks for your story. So true...we all have our own.
kisses,
glou
Rated
Not being "religious" I tend to not think in the same terms that many followers do. For me, faith is simply knowing in my heart that G-d is there. The G-d that I believe in is not the same as many of the organized religions teach. Still, it's my belief and that's all I really needed after all. So, reading about your struggle to find faith resonated with me. While you and I took different paths I think we wound up with the same conclusions. That is always a comfort.
I admit that I was totally shocked to scan down through the comments and see BBE had helped propel this post out beyond the OS-verse (even though I know, I KNOW, I got a Digg shout out on this, I just totally forgot). BBE, you never cease to amaze me. I find that while I may not always agree with you I'm damn glad you're around.
Thumbed, faithfully.
Second, there were a couple of years in my life where my faith just vanished. My religious teachings at the time told me that faith was a gift of the spirit. So, like you, my only option was prayer. And eventually the gift of faith returned. Why did it disappear? I do not know. It's the only time in my life that I seriously considered believing in spiritual warfare (an idea made more real to me by a supernatural experience I encountered). Thanks to the Grace of God, my faith has remained with me since. Thank you for this post.
Your journey may not be dramatic but it is real and inspiring. All those 50 years you kept on reading and pondering and WANTING to have faith.
I'm wondering how you knew you wanted faith that much, how it felt, why you kept at it despite teh frustration. Why didn't you give up?
Was it that "God-sized hole" that Lewis talks about (I hope I'm remembering the phrase correctly), that gap in our souls that only God can fill?
Because I'm not really sure what's the difference between wanting to have faith, and faith itself.
(No pun on my name intended.)
So, first, thank you, Leeandra. There are a lot of us Lewis fans out there, aren't there?
Thanks, BBE, much appreciated. I did get out last night and got two pages of OS posts on Digg dugg and a couple of them I sent some shouts to a few people I knew would be interested too.
Lea: I know that faith can be illusory, but I see the sweetness in you that surely comes from somewhere.
Hi, again, Allie, good to see you reading here. Perhaps you are right and I had it all alone, or at least for a long time. I really don't know about that. Certainly I never consciously thought I had it but maybe I was working so hard to get it, to feel it in my heart, that I didn't listen to that quiet voice. I have read two biographies about Lewis and he was a fascinating fellow. His journey was quite different than mine and yours, but you are so right, we all end up in a similar place. I think not exactly the same place often, but pretty close.
Thanks, suzie, for reading this and commenting. For many years my head was so full of information and I was stuffing so much more in there all the time than I doubt if I really took much time to sort it out. Later I have done that but it has taken a while for it to all settle in and allow itself to be really understood. You hit on something that is a key for me and that is the mystery of it all. Until we can accept mystery and that there are some things that we are not wired to know then I think faith has a very hard time coming to us.
Hi, annette, if I can be of some way a help to you and others on your own journeys then that is all I ever hoped for with this post.
Hey, Steve, I will look you the Santayana book which I have not read. But the title sounds like something I will thoroughly identify with.
I am going to have to stop now and pick up the rest of the comments when we get home. Thank you all very much and I will be back in the evening.
Monte
As you well know, Islam means "surrender". Aint it apropos that the West is up against this at this period of history? Their surrender is "different " than ours, some will argue. Hardly...
Otto was constrained by his Kantian head. The ideograms are a cute idea, but cmon, man! The need to conceptualize the unconceptual-izable is strong in Western man, but all the silly constructs we come up with MUST be approaching some Teilhardian Omega pt.....per Teilhard, yah, it's cosmic (or is it: comic cosmic) Christ....but this is experiential, not numinous. Cloudy word, that: numinous....
Numinosity is ok around this neck of the woods. We strive for holy experiences all the time....even the old trick of doin the damn dishes mindfully......looks like we're heading off into eliadian territory, eh, old pal......? The sacred and the profane meet in the raw existential moment.....who wins? This is an attitude only....
an attitude toward experience. If it is met with what used to be called "faith", but which I have renamed
Trust, for now, til we're ready for real faith, those of us pagans in the wild Dionysian AMerican night...
The Christ event is always happening, but where? Search the skies, and you'll get exactly nowhere, alas...glad YOU got to the place where at least the BIG questions are answered....now let the horsedogs of Reason loose to
define the Field....Field equations, por favor....The Encompassing, which was who was that's idea........Jaspers...it has a horzon, o? but it is ever morphing and moving, and the mind that sees it is continuously called into question
over tittybaby legal and semantic issues. Vines grow over the palace of wisdom, but the machetes of the mind are sharper than ever, thanks to modern day...goddamn...well, st augustines like you...yeah, im goin with augustine here...
at the end of a civilization you stand, as did he...the barbarians are comin and they will not have mercy unless....by some miracle.....they are not disrespected...
James E
Ut audiam vocem laudis
I too love C.S. Lewis and Kierkegaard. Two of my favourite sayings by the latter are:
"Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living."
"Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards."
I am not sure that I understand it yet, but I am living life more fully.
I like to think I am as respectful as possible toward people for whom faith is important…although that always has to be viewed with the understanding that I always intend to comment on why I see religion as a net negative for humanity.
There is an excellent blog about faith by Chicago Guy. Here’s a link. I think you will find it interesting.
http://open.salon.com/blog/chicago_guy/2009/05/18/president_nails_doubt_to_the_church_house_door
Depending on the results of the blood work today it looks like we are at a maintenance point where I will need blood work every three months to be sure that none of those life threatening disease start to show up. It is not likely but possible since my med issue sometimes are harbingers of those kinds of bigger problems. Usually my med issue are found to be ideopathic which means they have no clue why I have them. All the tests, and I have had a zillion, so far show not the slightest indication of being a precursor of something worse.
So, what it amounts to is that my local internist can have the blood work done here every three months and instead of seeing the doc at the Clinic every two months I can see my regular doc every three months and only go to the Clinic maybe twice a year, or when something shows up either my med condition change or something shows up bad in the blood work. That sounds good to me because the 200 mile round trip and wasting almost a full day every two months is something I don't relish.
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Hey, George, sounds to me like you have gotten to a very good place on your journey. I am glad for you that could happen. We ultimately to have to 'let go and let God" handle the big stuff.
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Hi, Blue: Isn't that an absolutely gorgeous sunset?!! I think that people who find their own way do feel like their faith is genuine because they have to work so hard for it. I am glad that I wrote something that you have wanted to see. It tells me that these posts are connecting with people on a personal level. Thanks for that.
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Gracie, nice to see you here knowing the busy life you lead. Thank you. Slow, up hill climbs make us appreciate it when we get to a place that allows to take a breather and realize that the climb and what we can see from up there is really worth it. You said something that resonates with me. I too have time and again when in difficulty or pain turned inward rather than looking up. It just seems to be in my psychological make up. I waste a lot of worrying days and nights when I should have just turned over some seemingly impossible thing to God.
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Thank you so much, Buffy. Boy, I can tell you that I did not close that gap, that Grand Canyon, between my head and my heart for decades. Call me stubborn or silly but I was sure I could find it using my head. I can't tell you how good it felt when I finally let my heart get at least equal billing with my head!
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Hi, Bill, you got here in plenty of time. There are many paths to that place where our heart is open and our head is out of the way enough to let God in. How you got to where is no where near as important than knowing that you are now in a good and comfortable relationship with that power that is far greater than any of us.
BBE is a bit of an atheist or agnostic, I think, not sure to tell you the truth, but he is also a good friend who has my back as I try to have his. We work together on common interests, usually social and political issues, and we have become even closer trying to get the message out on the torture mess and other places where we see the liberal agenda that was promised during the campaign fall victim to trying to be all things to all people.
We share other common interests and one of them is getting OS posts more visibility outside of OS. We both work hard on Digg, and he does some similar work on Reddit, to build an OS community of Digg members who can then digg posts by OSers and try to get them on the front page where they will be read by literally thousands more people. We are having some success and happy that we can do that together. Thanks much for your comments.
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My initial impetus was reading the Bible and listening to an honest preacher at the age of 15 and knowing that I wanted some of what he had. He became my mentor and got me interested in some basic books about the faith even as we did one on one Bible study together. He introduced me to Augustine and I found in his "Confessions" a line that has never left me and that I love to this day for the truth of it: "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” For the next thirty five years my heart was thus restless.
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Thanks, VG, I can use all the kind thoughts I can get as I battle this damnable disease. I know many who have gone through a period like that, called aptly by St. John of the Cross "the dark night of the soul." I am so happy that your dark night lasted only two years. And yes, it is first and always wise to give thanks to the grace of God for the gift of faith, otherwise we might wrongly think that our faith comes from something we have done. But faith comes not from works but from grace.
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Hello, again, Faith. The answer to your first question as best I can say it is the same as my answer to Boanerges, two replies above this one. I know it sounds odd that a single line could send me on that quest, but it did. I was determined to find faith, and if you knew how stubborn I am that would not shock you. I knew that I would not rest until I found it, and, oddly enough, God found me instead.
I don't remember that particular phrase of Lewis" but do not doubt it for a minute. And that sounds to me very much like another way to convey the same idea. For me there was a huge difference between "thinking" that I might have faith, or must have it by now, and actually "feeling" that I had it, knowing that what I believed was "true" in the sense that beauty is true and real and felt, not thought. I have never looked at a beautiful sunset such as the one above this post and thought about it. I have always felt it; known it was beautiful. felt that it was beautiful. Once I had faith it became part of me, part of my sense of love and truth and beauty, a soul sense. And there was no thought required to know that I had it. It was just there.
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AJ I am happy that you have found some closure between my approach to faith and your own. Whatever and however you have come to faith reflects your own journey. The key thing is that you are taking it and that it has gotten you to where you need to be at this point in your life. I remember fondly your joy at that chapel in the woods where you sense a closeness to the maker and a sense of thanksgiving for the beauty of nature that you can be part of if only for a few minutes or hours at a time. God bless you, AJ We are becoming good friends, which I much appreciate.
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Hello, James. Again you bring the mystery to the table. What took me ages to figure out is that the mystery is good, that it is arrogant to think that we can reach into it and dissolve the enigma within. Never. One thing all my readings taught me was that every great prophet, teacher, theologian that I ever read could be caught in some error, some fallacy, often some arrogance that I could have allowed to keep me from trying to distill for myself the idea that they were birthing and were unwilling, or perhaps unable, to describe in a way that would satisfy an ordinarily bright reader. The turgidity of their writing was always a dead giveaway and equally unjustifiable.
So I don't so much want to take those writers on, as would some fat film critic and find fault in them. Who has no faults? But rather I wanted to glean what I could and move on.
So I guess at this point in my ever seeking quest to find the good that St. Paul said he could not do, and to stop doing the ill that he said he could not stop, it is enough for me to realize that he is right. His answer is mine: we can't help it. We are still part of that Human Condition that Hannah Arendt understood so well. What we can do is lean into God and let him solve the puzzle of the sinful human condition. And, lo and behold, God has. Who knew? Well, we all did, but still chose not to believe either that he was the one who could, or that he would get the chance to solve it, him being hung dead on that tree and all. To believe that he was the one we had to believe that there was a purpose, an intention of salvation for the sinful world, and that he would overcome that death on that tree.
Now I believe that God did just that, and all of those shoulders of giants that I stood on long enough to get a glimpse of where I am now are to be congratulated.
So for now, my friend, I choose to uncomplicate the complicated and to give the glory to the one who can't be contained in the numinous, or found in an Omega point, or even given existential reality of the finding of my own faith I choose to not credit my journey but to give thanks for the gift of faith that God placed in my path. That for now is good enough.
So I too am with Augustine when he was young enough to realize "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
Time for us, you and I, to stop thinking so much, stop shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic, and start a new day on our knees in thanksgiving.
God bless you, Jim.
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Thank you, CB. Your words are much appreciated and I will do the best to keep sharing what gifts I can with the community. They were given to me to pass on to others as best I can.
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Hello, Emma, wonderful to have you join here in the conversation. If one can learn to live life more fully as you are doing now then you have learned a great lesson. Would that I could have back all the days lost to anger or hurt or bitterness, to laziness and sloth, frustration and self pity, way too much self pity. It would scare me to death to honestly count them. Life is meant to be lived, fully, completely, abundantly. We have no idea of the beauty that is laid out before us. We have only to reach out and touch it.
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Thank you for coming by, Frank. Nice to see you reading here. You know that I believe that each of us walks our own path and nobody else can walk it for us. If you have found a certain peace that gives you comfort and a sense of well being then I am very happy for you. I have no problem with you intending to comment on why you see religion as a net negative. You have a blog on which to write at least a post a day on that subject. When on other blogs and reading and commenting on posts on those blogs a bit more care needs be exercised. When a post is on one subject it is unkind to hijack it to talk about something other than the subject of the post. I thank you for not doing that here. Here we are talking about coming to faith and I appreciate that you have not seen it necessary to go in that direction. But we are not talking about religion in the abstract and its impact on humanity, civilization, etc. That is another matter altogether and perhaps something that you would write on your own blog and invite me and others to join you in discussion.
I have found that in reading your posts and comments on other posts you and I mostly agree on things other than religion. And we are both old enough to know that gap is likely to close short of a serious case of divine intervention or one of us getting dementia, whichever comes first.
I would like to get to know your better and if we can just refrain from taking pot shots at our most cherished positions on religion or the lack thereof we might be like Ric and Louie. Who knows?
Thanks for coming by.
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Thanks everybody! Good comments all.
Monte
I do wish they could find the cause of your problem so you could have some relief from the pain. It seems the more that we know, the more we have to learn. Seems that medicine and Faith have a similarity in that respect.
Glad the clinic went well, you old ideopath w/ ideograms busting open all over...I was reading your comment this morning with some trepidation, because I knew that, although I believe the Spirit was goosing my ass a bit yesterday, I was afraid I might have gotten goofy. I reread my comments and yes, my fears were confirmed. But...then...I read Monte on laughin' gas w/ an amphetamine kicker....."him hangin on that tree & all....!!!"
Hm. Distillation of turgidity is not an easy task, but I have taken it on. Obscurantism seems to be the preferred complaint when we are unwiling,or unable, to understand the geniuses of the past: but with our new "historicist", "literary theorist" minds we can appreciate that....well, the times were different. You are right: these faulted heroes of ours were a'birthin something, and we are not so much the midwives (that, thankfully, has been done by our 'literalist' friends in the postmodern 20th century....libraries are full of secondary sources) as we are
the proud parents. These are our children, these ideas, concepts, ideograms, whatever. Now we must follow our 6th grade teacher's advice & "put em in yr own words!!"
"uncomplicated complicated stuff" in 21st century post-existentialist, pre-Kingdom lingo. Glory & credit where due. Check. And: no more intellectual checkmates, all you wise writers of bloated prose. Remember: God can send a cold north wind to blow your chessboard to the ground.
I felt bad about dissing Otto Rank all night. I swear to God, I did. That's where my head is at....so I went to my Blake & felt better...
"Shall Albion arise? I know that he shall arise on the Last Day!
I know that in my flesh I shall see God:
but Emanations are weak.
They know not whence they are,
nor whither tend.
Jesus replied: "I am the Resurrection & the Life.
I Die and pass the limits of possibility,
as it appears to individual perception...
I will prepare a way for my banish-ones to return
Come now with me into the villages,
walk through all the cities...
Tho Vala's cloud hide thee
& Luvah's fires follow thee,
Only believe & trust in me, Lo.
I am always with thee"
So spoke the Lamb of God while Luvah's (the Heart's) Cloud reddening above burst forth in streams of blood
upon the heavens
and dark night...."
Lo! Love, yr fellow ideopath Jim
changin all the time?
fer gods sake choose one
& stick with it...like this one....soothing blue... jim again in a huff
Thanks for this post. It gives me hope that it's never too late to find faith.
First let me say I'm glad that things are stabilizing health wise. Second that my least favorite medical term is "ideopathic." It makes me want to scream.
I guess I am a lucky one. I was adopted by a mother with great faith and somehow she passed that onto me from the beginning, without being dogmatic, and with an acceptance of everyone's faith or not. I wouldn't know what it was like to be without faith and am puzzled by people who live without it from any source.
I don't mean to say that I don't struggle, but it's usually a struggle to get closer to God after experiencing something I feel has been unjust or cruel in the world (a friend's child dies, a friend kills himself, another friend's 35 year old husband drops dead, torture, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, my cousin's cancer).
I too love CS Lewis, and books by religious authors or written about religious persons, particularly Catholic Saints, line my bookshelves. They are my good friends.
d
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Mike, I can always rely on you and thank you for that. I swear that the longer I live it and watch it about 90% of life itself is idiopathic. Figuring out my med issues is simply a big puzzle and a WTF. About the pain: I have much better control of it after the doc there and I messed and messed with the right combo of amitriptyline and gabapentin. The pain is pretty tolerable now as long as I don't push too hard. Worst time is the couple of hours immediately after getting up when I am getting the overnight flare under control. So for that I am very grateful.
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Thanks, again, Jim, good to see we are close to the same wavelength again.
About the avatar changes. I am just messing with perception here. I am not much of one for putting my own mug on this blog. I think that is too narcissistic for me right now. I want to show the one thing in my life that is most important, but the stark black cross is to my thinking too "in your face." So I have messed and messed in my Irfanview photo shopping program with various crosses and colors, and special effects ways to show the cross to represent who I am in a more subtle and less demanding way.
I guess I am trying to use it to represent how I feel: passionate about my faith yet open to new things and ideas and never wanting or trying to push my faith on anyone else. That soothing blue with green overtones has a coolness and completeness about it, and, if you look closely at the big one on the top left of my blog or post it has a 3D effect I added which shows that it has depth to it. So mostly I am looking for an avatar that comes close to where I think I am as a person. I don't expect anyone else to notice or care about what I do with my avatar because what I am trying to achieve is really a subliminal effect. Finally, I always love Blake.
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Thank you, Dusty. I think that it is incredibly hard for anyone to articulate their beliefs. If it isn't the chances are that they have been taught to memorize a bunch of propositions and they then recite them back to others. But if you dig in to your faith at all you will find it very hard to express. I still have that problem and just so you know that I do these religious posts are by far the hardest thing I ever write here on OS. They literally take me hours to get them to the point where I think that I am conveying at least a portion of what I feel. The other posts tend to roll off my fingers, need a spot of editing here and there and I am done. Not so when I talk about faith or theology in general. Your having a hard time articulating your spiritual thoughts/beliefs is, in fact, a good thing.
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Hello, denese, always good to see that you have come back to read and comment on another post of mine. As I read your comment it is clear to me that as far as your faith is concerned you are now in a pretty good place. I share with you that problem of getting closer to God again after some event that you see, or hear about, or worse, happens to one you love. I am forever getting angry with God for allowing those things and screaming some pretty nasty prayers at him. But for me that only proves the truth of my faith, because my frustration is always aimed back at God. If I had no faith I would turn away from him and move on. But I don't. You and I always turn back to him and try to get back into that closer presence of the Lord. I used to think that was a sign of weakness. Now I think it was just proof that I am human and am not meant to know the why of everything, but have to trust the One who does.
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God bless all of you. I am so lucky to have found OS and all of you wonderful people who fill my heart and my life with love, knowledge, beauty, empathy, feeling and often joy.
Monte
I adore you Monte and respect your work, writing and passion. I rarely comment on the religious posts because I am certainly not equipped to argue or agree about these matters. But this post was as fascinating as you are and I'm so glad I read it. This taught me more about just how special a human being you are.
I hope all went well at the Cleveland Clinic. Hugs to you. Rated.
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Cartouche, dear one, there is no reason not to comment if you want to, and no reason to comment if you don't. We are all learners here and students struggling to find our way. There are no silly questions and no wrong answers as long as they come from the heart.
I have known a long time that you are not an orthodox believer, but there is a light that shines in you that I know will guide you to a special relationship with God when you are ready. I do not doubt for one second that you are a spiritual person.
I have always been grateful for our relationship and anything that we do to allow us to become better acquainted with one another only strengthens that relationship.
Thanks much, and God bless,
Monte
I haven't been around as much so I actually have a few posts of yours to go back and read. (I had oral surgery yesterday for some impacted wisdom teeth, and have been on pain medicine for about a week due to an infection in one of them. The fluff blog posts are fine to read in an oxycodone induced haze, but I like to be a little more alert for posts relating to politics, science, religion, or anything requiring more conscious thought. ;) )
I still have a long way to go, I'm sure. I question the purposes of other religions, other paths, and the faith and sublime peace seen on the face of the greatest monks - be they Buddhist or Christian or otherwise.
You wrote:
"So I told God exactly that. I told him that I had journeyed long and tried hard to find faith, but I needed a rewiring, a change of attitude, a way to get beyond my mind and out of the books long enough to be receptive to the moving of the Holy Spirit.
I told him that he was the God that I wanted to love and honor; and I also spoke my need directly to Jesus, this God made flesh that I wanted to believe and follow. For two years my prayers were sent out or up or where ever they go. And nothing happened."
I thought about that a long time. I think it might eventually become my own path because I'm all for "when all else fails, try prayer" - even being as spiritually adrift as I am. ;)
The problem I have with it is... I know that the mind can convince the mind of anything. If I woke up every day and prayed to believe, for example, that Buddha was the one, true spiritual leader and to find faith in that religion... isn't it possible that after 2 years of that mental exercise, of "prepping" my brain with a request, that I would one day wake up and simply have the faith in Buddha that I had been asking for, for 2 years?
Ask and you shall receive...? I don't know. I'm afraid I'm the type of person who can easily convince myself of things, only to toss them and re-question later.
Rated. I love your writing. Makes me think. ;)
I'm a bit heart broken in this moment. I wrote you a response to this wonderful piece, at length, more than I should have perhaps, but so much from my core belief system and it was lost somehow. Just disappeared after I pushed post and was gone. I am leaving now to rejoin my husband in paradise, a gift from God I must not ignore. I will be back or privately to share some of what I wrote about my response to faith and it's foundation in my life.
At birth it was there, for the taking. More later...
i am still here with faith of some sort...but faith in what? the full flow of my being,
which is grounnded
in God...
ja
tillich james, with a poke at monty
cuz i love him....
Hey, Incandescent. Good comments. I do believe that the mind can convince the mind of anything. But I am not so sure that the mind can convince the heart of anything. My mind tried to convince my heart that I had faith for decades. How, I thought, can I not have faith when I have read so much and gone to church all the time and was involved with so many good church activities? My mind was convinced. Deep in my heart I knew that I did not FEEL like I had it.
As to the idea that one could pray for faith within another religion and come to the idea that religion was the one that you have faith in, yes, I think that is possible. But you would have to be pretty deeply immersed in what that religion taught, what its followers believed, etc. So it is possible. But it is also possible that the prayers might yield the result that you wake up some morning and decide that religion is not for you.
In general I think that I would be happier if someone came to faith in a known and established religion than to come to no faith at all or to get hooked up with some cult, including Christian cults.
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Cathy, I know how damned frustrating it can feel to have written a long thoughtful comment and have it disappear in this crazy OS system. It has happened to me more than once, which is why for longer comments I try to write them in my word processor and transfer them into the comment box. I hope that vacation in paradise is going well for you and that you are now long over your frustration.
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James, you are like a beautiful butterfly that is flittering around my head. Sometimes it makes me dizzy to watch that butterfly but I do it anyway. It is worth the vertigo.
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Thanks again.
Monte
Recent events have brought this very issue, in an entirely different way, much more to the forefront for me, as you know. I felt compelled to visit your blog and scrolled through and (though I shouldn't be surprised) found this post--which really resonated with me.
For me, what really touched me about this post was not your struggle to put faith first and then understanding because faith has always come easily to me but it was the end, when you talk about opening yourself up to this great love. And this brought me to tears and I was so grateful that you had shared this however long ago you did and that it was here, for me to read, now. Because that is my own struggle, though I could not understand it or express it like you did here. But when I read those words, I felt it and knew that it was true.
Monte
Isn't it true that all that we think we need or the world tells us, comes at us in loud voices, while what we really needed and desired comes to us in just the faintest whisper. Just how powerful and gentle is our God that he gives us just what we need in the right portion. Change us Lord from Glory to Glory, increase our portion. How weak we are that we even need help learning how receive the Love that is there and give it in the same measure.
Monte