On the direct flight on our way home from San Diego visiting friends. We have a lot of history with them at this juncture, friends since 2003. We’ve probably traveled more with them in the last fifteen years than anyone else besides our kids. We’ve logged a lot of miles and they greatly expanded my view and experience in the world. I’m grateful.
I just read an Atlantic piece on exorcisms.
We talked a lot about spirituality and our Christian faith while down there. We all met at church and spent over ten years together in the same spiritual growth group. It was a unique group and time. We were focused more on living life together than other groups, a reflection more due to the individuals that were in our group at the time.
We focused on hiking and traveling together, eating together and celebrating milestones, both happy and difficult, such as birthdays and weddings as well as struggling through a year of cancer and relatives dying.
We truly were a little community. We resisted the church’s mandate to expand our group and grow. We were supposed to be raising up a co-leader that would be trained and then take on a new group as our group grew and expanded. That was the mantra for all groups.
Somehow along the way though, we became a family of sorts. New people came and went, but ultimately there was a core group of people that were there for each other. We weren’t going to give up that experience easily.
I also had young kids at the time who had bonded with many of the families. They were their second family and were having a profound, positive effect on both of them.
This ultimately spoke to something deeper in my heart I had long suspected about life and living, that much goodness goes beyond theology and beliefs to the heart of how humans need to live.
I was struggling to merge my beliefs of loving others when it seemed directed primarily at people who were “unsaved.” It seemed much of how humans need to live was ignored by the church aside from this creation of small groups.
Groups were formed as a means to have human needs met instead of needs met by programs which is how churches often function. Women’s ministries. Men’s ministries. Young adults, etc. Groups replaced all that with the idea that the group, not the federal church, would meet the needs of people in that community. If you weren’t in a group, you were SOL.
The breakdown occurred when groups didn’t really want to multiply. People developed ties and new groups struggled to form. The model broke down on several levels and we were leading the charge.
About this time, I began to struggle as well w/ other theological inconsistencies in my faith and with the young, all-male leaders who preached sermons and led the church. As I developed in maturity as a young woman, mother and professional, I felt my voice, instincts and wisdom distinctly missing. I felt the male-focus was heavily reflected in all the teaching, and I became weary of the overall setting as well as lack of deeper resources for daily living.
Five years ago, we left that church yet continued to meet as a small group. Some core members remained, others moved on to other churches or left the area completely. Some of the same energy remained, but much had changed. A year ago, we disbanded all together and reformed with a different focus and spiritual vision.
We continue to try and meet each other’s needs for spiritual processing, support and healing as best as humans can. We are all in some form of deconstruction and reconstruction of our faith and spirtuality. All of us are recovering from some form of spiritual or life trauma. We are an oasis for each other and for now, that’s enough. Food and drink are liberally involved in our times together as well as laughter, shared life and stories and support.
As I talked with former members of our older group, we discussed what had been key to us growing and changing in that setting. We ate together, we were honest and transparent. We spent time outside. We all traveled to some degree. We read other literature and enjoyed art. We saw God reflected in other places and in other traditions. We had rituals and traditions we tried to employ to gain a greater closeness to God, each other and ourselves. We believed that love and understanding the stories of God reflected in the Bible as well as our own lives, our own Bibles if you will, were redemptive ways to live an alternative reality in a secular world that we loved much of, but resisted heavily as well.
One of our friends mentioned that it was remarkable we hadn’t had a scandal or any affairs during the ten years they’d been in the group. What a sad state of life if that’s the bar. I’m glad we exceeded that and then some.
The other friend mentioned the key to all of it was relationship. We were focused on building relationships with each other and God. We weren’t denying ourselves and enjoyed life together. We didn’t live in shame and “shoulds.”
Our friends haven’t found anything similar to that in their new home town. They have planted there and plan to be there until their daughter graduates from high school in eight more years. They aren’t sure what they will find in terms of a community during that time. They express feeling somewhat desperate, having experienced closeness with people who were invested in them once before.
I’m heading home to a house that isn’t on the ocean and needs a lot of work. It’s cold and drafty inside and out. I have significant responsibilities that aren’t necessarily overwhelming, but I struggle to find meaning in much of my life right now as I chart a new course after a solid thirty years of parenting and business growth has consumed me. That’s intimidating to look at, terrifying to consider if my mind doesn’t hold up under what I’d like to attempt.
We do have this community though that’s developed out of the ashes of our old group. “Transcend and include” seems particularly apt as I look back on all I gained during those years with so many that came and went through our home as we did others. I don’t know how long this group will last or what form it will have taken, say, five years from now. For now though, I’m grateful there are people eager to meet with me this week and hear about how I’m doing.
As for my faith, I ready to claim that I still see a Jesus path as being good news for the world. Not in a way that means I tell that those who don’t believe are going to hell. I believe many people live in hell already, today. People in slavery, sexual addiction, poverty, endless abuse and discrimination, physical maladies and torments, mental pain. All of these and a thousand other things can make life on this planet unendurable.
My life took on a different dimension when I took love seriously. I took love seriously because I studied the stories of Jesus and later, the stories of the OT through the lens of a journalist. Why did he touch that person? Why that flood? Why that king? Why that woman? I saw how events and systems were altered when new ways of thinking and living were shaped around the value of love, respect, dignity and awe. I found that compelling and still do.
If that makes me an evangelist, then I guess I am. I’m an evangelist for resisting the base and elevating our best possible nature. I resist cynicism but embrace intelligence. I embrace loving the other and resist hating myself.
I worry still sometimes about my mental state. I still feel somewhat flat. I laugh and have fun on occasion. I wonder if I’ve just gone too long in this state to reconnect to my old self.
It seems that doing art again would be an excellent thing to do. I put that on hold for far too long. The photography is a good place to start.
I’m laughing more.
I’m trying not to be so resentful of Jay.
I’m trying to accept my reality and not resist.
I swam three out of four days this time in San Diego. I enjoyed getting a new suit and goggles then swimming in the pool my friends swim in as well as their daughter. She’s on a swim team and really enjoys it. She’s quite a swimmer. I think more consistent, regular physical activity almost everyday would go a very long ways in all this as well. I was an athlete for a very long time and then that slowly disappeared in high school and later college as my anxiety attacks began and I started to lose all confidence in myself, my identity, my body. It seems that would go along way to helping me reconnect as well to my body.
These all seem like good things and I’m excited as I type this to feel that small strides are being made.
PS Direct flights are awesome :)