10-15-2010, 06:23 PM
(10-15-2010, 05:42 PM)Questioner Wrote: People who meet together in person regularly, in order to share the spiritual journey.
To be quietly humble, together, before the Mystery of life... whatever they call it.
To share songs together, happy, joyous, wondering, amazed, pensive, downcast, the whole journey of emotions through faith. There's a reason the Psalms are still popular.
To listen together to one person who provides an opinion about what stories of holy words and deeds from the past might mean to people today; and to share, together, an attentive attitude about how spirit can inform everyday life.
To pray together with hands and arms linked, together inviting Heaven's help.
To know of each other's sorrows and joys, and care about them.
If there was something like this church that included the Ra books, Baghavad Gita, Buddha's sermons, the Tao, I Ching, Tarot and humanistic philosophy alongside the Bible, it would be pretty much ideal for me.
Plus a rockin' band with worshipful songs about inviting the infinite divine light to heal our chakras.
I couldn't have put it into words back then, but I can now. This was all about feeling and moving, together with other people, towards aspiration for union with divine love.
Beautiful, lovely sentiments Questioner. Thank you for posting these heartfelt words.
I have been involved in church my entire life, and that is what I love about it, everything that you have written. It brings a to mind a song I used to sing in high school, "We are One in the bonds of love".
When I was a child, church for me represented my connection to Spirit, and my quickly fading remembrance of the love that I came from. My family life felt so negative and unwelcoming, and the community of my youth groups lifted me up, and really saved me from spiraling far downward into depression and despair, for missing so much something that I barely remembered, but Church reminded me of.
It is a deep, pure, true, fully embracing, and fully accepting love the love of God , divine love.
Finally now at the age of 43 I know that I can find that love in myself, and I don't have to look outside of me anymore to find it.
But this is something to be shared, and community ie. common -unity, is still vital. And now that I am finding it harder than ever before to "fit into" my church community, it's an interesting different perspective than what I had as a child.
My church's mission statement is stated thus, "To love fearlessly, God and others" I really resonate to this mission statement, and yet I still find it a struggle to "love fearlessly" To be not afraid of being fully and completely myself.
I I have found myself, as I have been on this path of awakening, pulling away from the Church, finding it difficult to be authentic. And then feeling bad, that I find it so difficult to love "fearlessly"
In the other thread about religion, Monica posted a bunch of questions that got me right to the core of this difficulty that I am having. Whoa! I have been meaning to look at that again and think about it.
Thanks Questioner, much food for thought for me today
