This morning I wrote this to my friend Brian:
[Experience] has changed me over the years since I became a Quaker. But I didn't realize how much until I wrote this. I am amazed now by what I wrote. I woke with a start this morning, feeling the echo of being in the clutch of witch-finders. As the pagan I was years ago, I would have condemned this lifting beyond reason as part of what enabled the Church to identify and destroy witches, Jews, gays, anyone different and especially spinsters like me. My experience has changed me, but O, there is still the pagan inside who wants to speak. And she will, I wouldn't want to suppress that truth just as I couldn't suppress this one. But in this last hour she has been questioning me up and down or touching what could be a blessing but has often been the spark for horror. Do I make sense to you? I will pray about this today.
Brian responded: you do [make sense] ...a faith based on feeling is a scary thing to me, it lacks substance...and can def be manipulated and twisted...it can also be un-genuine and exclusive...i try to steer clear of it...and am oft skeptical of it...there is no denying the lift...at times i question the authenticity though
I'll be back with more thoughts.
2 comments:
smiles. so further thoughts?
i will add a further thought, though it may be far from the seed that started this...one of the things i have been thinking on is how we make our gads in our image as opposed to the other way around...there is safety and comfort in a god that looks like us and have the same social values as we do, as opposed to one that wrecks our own world view and causes us to change...like we interpret god through our lens...no different than the first prophets i am sure....but when we lay our hands on god are we not just supporting our own agenda as opposed to HErs....
Yikes, this is a big one. But what is the image we use? What we think we look like? or more the sum of our actions? If I imagine God "looks like" this entire creation, and touching any piece of it is like being the proverbial Blind Men with the elephant, do I see myself as in touch with the entire creation? Do I see gods like pagan cultures? a God like the Judaic-Christian tradition? a possibility of Nirvana? I talk about God with pronouns (thanks for the "hers"), and eyes and a whole bunch of anthropomorphic attributes and often hear God in those terms, but experience is larger than thos brain constructs. I look around and see all is God. That as often makes me feel anger and despair as hope and love. It as often obscures as illuminates my path. But I have trust--occasionally confirmed by community--that my leadings are of God as are the uses of my hands, sensations, words, time. And I am grateful when I can remember or reteach myself that God comes to us through each and all of the Creation including you, others, children, trees, etc. I don't think there is a faith or philosophy of this, just personal experience. And I have chosen not to constrain my vocabulary to Jesus Christ, though "he" is most often my guide.
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