My Faith Journey

I have never known when I didn’t believe in God, even as a child. One of my earliest memories is that I would look up into the sky and watch the puffy clouds move, as they were pushed by the breeze. I was filled with wonder, wondering what they hid beyond.

Time isn’t measured by what was, is now, or in the future. There is no time, but the present moment, as it happens. It is kairos, the Greek word, as the “right time” or “opportune moment.” Another way to understainding kairos is to take every moment in time a an everypresent time. It has a profound effect on how one lives life without regrets for the past or anxiety for the future. The evangelist Luke quotes Jesus, “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Luke 12:25-26. 

The Buddha refers to this as “mindfulness,” where the mind focuses on the moment, without clinging to the past nor worrying about the future.

After 74 years, I can articulate these truths which define my faith more than when I was young. Then, they were intuitions. Now I know.

My parents gave me the foundations of faith. God is love who accepts me without judgement. I am to pass this love to others and have empathy and compassion for others without boundaries- unlimited and grace unbound, extravagant grace.

Later, I discovered what was the foundation of their faith as they past it on to me and my brother, David. 

“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;…  
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:26-27

This text simply means that all humanmkind is made in God’s image, as all of us are made from God. In modern, scientific terms, we are part of the stardust of the “big bang.” We are all made out of the same stuff, so why all the division and hate, of power over others, etc?

Sunday school taught me the stories in the Bible. I like to hear about the young David who defeated Goliath, the giant. That story defined by inate choosing of the underdog, confronting the bully. Today, it defines my motivation towards social justice and speaking truth to power.

My faith reached a crisis point as a 19 year old, when I was in Neuquen, Argentina in mission trip in 1967. This is where I met and fell in love with Trudy, my future wife. The crisis centered around my choice of vocation for the rest of my life. On the last night of the mission, Trudy and I with other couples slipped out of town to the hills behind the city, here the gentlewind and the lights of the city flikered in the distance. We had a special moment together, both realizing that our friendship was more than that.

Early next morning we returned, met by the angry missionary concerned that townpeople assumed that we had committed sin, and it would affect his reputation and his work in the new church. A he haranged and shamed us, I felt that I was sinking into an abyss. I called out, “God catch me!” I felt as if a hand caught me.” I felt peace surround me. I realized what my vocation was to be. I felt “called” by God to be a minister to the Gospel and to serve Him by reaching people for Jesus Christ.

The experience was not that suddenly I was “saved.” I knew that Jesus loved me and had always accepted me, since I was born. It wasn’t that I “had accepted Jesus as my personal Savior,” saving me from going to hell.” “In fact, I have never believed that there is a hell.

Shortly thereafter, I entered into another crisis of faith. I couldn’t find any Christian spirituality in any of the churches I was going to where I was attending Emory college in Atlanta. I met a young man and fellow student, Charles Haines who was a follower of Meher Baba (compassionte father) an Indian Perfect Master, or Avatar, a messiah of this age, who claimed that he was the reincarnation of all the religious leaders accross the centuries, including Jesus.

Another powerful influence in my faith journey is the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. I have written about this experience in one of the earlier blogs in my Storyworth. 

Charles Haines and I decided to attend the public memorial service of Dr. King aMoorehoue College, in mid-April, 1968. As I witnessed his casket and family pass by, I quietly committed my life as a Christian activist directing my life to confront the Goliaths of this world for the sake of Christ.

I left the group after about a year, but I gained some insights from that experience. Onpee of them is that all major religions have a common root - belief in one God, who creates and loves humankind. That God created humankind into essential goodness, even if humankind chooses to sin, or rebel against God. There is an essential ethic of doing good and rejecting evil. and that humandkind to act with empathy and compassion to others and creation.

All these essentials are found in the teachings of Jesus in his parables and the Sermons of the Mount and the Plain. Also, we are to model Him in the way he treated people with kindness and understanding. In other words, Orthopraxy, right action, is more important than Orthodoxy, right belief.

Right after I left the Baba group, a fellow student invited me to attend worship at an innercity church, Trinity United Methodist Cburch in downtown Atlanta. I could write volumns about this experience, since I went through junior and senior years at the college plus the three years at Candler School of Theology at Emory.

There, I learned the practice of the Way of Jesus (I prefer to name Christinity). I was exposed to the inner city poor, especially in the black community; youth violence, addiction, and injustice. And yet I met wonderful people, mostly victims of a system that relegated them to second class citizens or were caught up in making poor choices in their lives.

Trinity was my incubator for ministry where the work was messy and often failed to meet my expectations for success. I consider the time at Trinity as the foundation in ministry, a proving ground to all that followed. Trinity has influenced my whole ministry. Trinity defined by orthopraxy

I was able to focus on how I would dedicate ministry as one who confronted bullies in solidarity to the undeserved as to tilt windmills as Don Quixote, fighting the good fight of faith in the face of impossible challenges, almost always going down in defeat.

After I married Trudy, I felt as if dark clouds surrounded. After years of uncertainty, anger, and rage. I was distressed and confused. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I had my first extended depressive episode in 1983. I was diagnosed in 1992 and began taking medications, and later began therapy address maladative behaviors due to compisating the bi-polar bad habits. The combinations of medications and therapy helped to clar my brain and live a more normal life.

Through all those terrible years I never felt that God has abandoned me, nor judged me for my condition and behavior. I felt loved and embraced by God, who felt my pain and nurtured me through it all.

I began the Five Day Academy for Spiritual Formation in 2001 and am now present at the 2023 Academy. I attended the 2 Year Academy in 2011 - 2012, which was 8, 5 Days in two years. That is, I have attended about 20 academies.

The academies guided me into the practice of spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditations in the Christian traditions. Prior to the bi-polar being stabilized, I wouldn’t have been able to absorb the teaching nor the practice of spiritual formation, nor to be able to meditate.

The 5 Days and the disciplines that I began to practice have been a game changer in my mental health.

Now living into my “fourth stage” of life, I found a new faith expression. Three years ago, I joined an insight meditation mindfulness group. It is based on the Buddhist teaching in a secular fashion. I have discovered that the Buddihst and Jesus teachings converge. The Buddha lived 500 years before Christ. Who knews if Jesus’s teachings were influenced by the Buddha. I realize that Jesus is more an eastern sage rather than just focused on the West.

In summary, I have discovered that if one is to have a growing faith, one must have an open heart to learn and receive new experiences, and leave behind old ones that no longer work, or have meaning. The other is that faith involves mystery and not certainty, for if you only relay on certainty, then there is no faith. If there is no mystery, then there is no opportunity for God to reveal what God has in store for you. If one refuses to doubt, there one closes the opportunity to guide you into a new field of faith.

So, I come full circle on my faith journey, and I leave this blog as a open book, because faith development never ends while I live on this side of the veil, until it is fulfilled on the other side, waiting for new surprises to behold.