Matthew 18:20 "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” -Jesus
I'm Jill and I'm a christian outside of the church. I left regular church-going a few years back. When I say church, I mean the church as an institution, all that brick and mortary stuff. My family packed it in after many years of being faithful churchgoers, giving up on finding a church in our community where we fit. I had most recently enjoyed Episcopal worship, they are typically progressive and I always felt at home there. Still, after a few 5 years of positive, but sporadic attendance with Episcopal brethren, I find myself, pretty much out of regular fellowship with traditional church.
Overall, Holy Week is a new tradition for me, I was greatly thrilled by it when I first started Episcopal services in 2009. The concept of Holy Week had been completely ignored by the churches I was brought up in and attended. It was all about Easter. No Lent, no Palm Sunday, no Good Friday or any of the other services. I was fascinated the first year by the observances and was greatly enriched by them. The last few years my enthusiasm for the church version of Holy Week (with all it's pageantry) has waned. In many ways the Episcopal church saved me from falling away from my faith, but now I don't feel as if I even need that safety net anymore.
I am currently a christian who is free-styling through life's journey, allowing myself to be of use where the Spirit leads me, learning to go with the flow. I have no walls to work within these days. Holy Week is observed now in my heart. I may get out and go to Easter this year, I might not. Either way, I'm good with whatever I decide. My faith and faith practices are always evolving, that is for certain and my needs change as the evolution continues day by day, year by year. One thing however remains consistent, and that is my connection to Christ, the abiding Divine Presence in my Spirit. In church or away from church,I'm never separated from that Love that dwells within.
This Holy Week and Easter, I will be reflecting on that Love whether in my computer chair or on a church pew.
Lord Christ, this Holy Week, let us reflect on your Divine Love, which abides with us all at all times and all places. Thank you for enlightening our hearts and minds that we may love as you loved us. So be it.
Good for you. And bless you in your courage to forge your own way with the guidance of the Spirit of God within you. I think there will come a time when all of humanity with have to make the same choice. I do believe that the future of spirituality is not in the hands of people in the pews, but people of the Spirit. We have come to the place where compassion and not specific dogma or Christians "branding" will be the mark of believers of Christian tradition or any faith tradition. -Dennis K.
ReplyDeleteI truly believe that people who stride into their future without the safety net of a established religious institution to follow the Spirit of God that speaks in their hearts and has resided there since before their birth are truly courageous trailblazers. I believe that human spirituality as a shared communal understanding is evolving to an age when former religious traditions and "brands" and sitting in pews of churches will no longer be the paradigm...if it even is at this stage in human experience. We certainly see that it is on the wane. Consciousness of the eternal and everlasting is becoming permeable and pervasive. Old paradigms and symbols cannot hold ultimate meaning any longer and new broader more encompassing and compassionate symbols and rituals are waiting to be encountered, discovered, created and experienced. The journey of spiritual sojourning is evolving and ever changing as it has ever been.
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