“So come to this table, you who have much faith and you who would like to have more; you who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time, or not at all… you who have tried to follow Jesus, and you who have fallen short…..”     

(Prayer from the Iona tradition)

I began this blog in 2011. My intention was to create a space where faith in Jesus Christ embraces the fullness of being human, including all of our passion, complexity and creativity; our inner realm of thoughts, feelings, dreams, fantasies; and our bodies, including our sensory experience, sexuality, illness, injury, and ultimate death. I return here after a long break, fueled with this same intention: to create space for the fullness of human embodied life in Christian faith.

Much in my life has changed in these intervening years. My husband, Bret, and I moved to a small town in the Pacific Northwest, where there are more trees than people. This is an enormous change, after nearly 40 years in New York City! Our children, Matthew and Mark, have grown; each one is married and they are doing their best to balance busy lives with children and careers. 

For many years in New York, Bret and I experienced what I call “the best of church.” We made life-long friendships, shared and prayed through the joys and sorrows of life, including the birth children, successes and failure in work, grief of losing parents and loved ones, and the cataclysmic horror of 9/11. We lived daily life in the continual unfolding of Christian prayer, communal worship, and service, with plenty of doubts, struggles, disappointments, and tears and laughter.

AND, I know only too well that the reality of the Christian community often falls dreadfully short of this exalted vision. Divine inspiration notwithstanding, church life is often full of power struggles, pettiness, jealousy, resentment, procrastination, and avoidance, dominated by mediocrity and stagnation, infected with narrow-mindedness, and wrapped in a culture of exclusivity that ignores the fullness of the human experience.

The cost is enormous, for it means that certain aspects of Christian teaching force us to sacrifice the very gift of being human: thinking for ourselves, free to make conscious choices about belief and faith, including the values we choose to live by. This suffering underlies the enormous (often unspoken) gap between Christian teaching and the yearnings of people in the pews. To put it bluntly, church may not be a great place to find Jesus Christ!

My first experience of hypocrisy that affects so much of Christianity was in high school. A friend invited me to a local church youth group where I found a fun loving gang of restless, angry, depressed teenagers who were a lot like me! I enjoyed the experience of belonging and something magnetically drew me to worship services, singing in the choir, community service projects, and a weekly 7am Bible study group. 

My questions about scripture and faith exploded. Why did Jesus die “for our sins”? What does that mean? After Jesus died, where did his body go? What does ‘resurrection’ mean? Deeper questions loomed: Who are you, God, and what do You want of me? What if I fail? Will You leave me? Can I trust you? How will I know?

As months turned into years, I became increasingly uncomfortable in the youth group. Members of the group tried to answer my questions with words like, “Jesus loves you, He died for you, just have faith…” but I couldn’t connect my experience with their words, which only fueled my frustration. “What are you talking about?” I kept asking.

The clergy tired of my questions, especially since I had not “pledged”, meaning that I had not made a financial commitment to the parish, nor was I ready to enter a formal process of “confirmation”. The scent of hypocrisy was overwhelming. Frustrated and deeply disappointed, I decided that if this was church, I wanted out. I left, vowing never to return and told God that if He wanted me as his servant, He was going to find some alternative to church! The year was 1972. 

This was my first of many lessons in painful truths about institutional Christianity: well-meaning people can cause great harm under the guise of “Christian teaching.” All too often, people in the “Body of Christ” speak eloquent words that have little to do with connecting people to deeper truths about their lives. Many years later, I returned to church (another story for another time) and while I’ve experienced much of the positive transforming power of church life, worship, and community, the problems are very real and ripple through Christianity, across denominations.

Perhaps, like me, you are captivated by the vision of Christianity, yet profoundly disappointed. Perhaps you’ve struggled to stay in church on Sundays, haunted by thoughts like: “Why am I sitting here? The service no longer has any meaning…”; or, “The priest says I’m welcome, but it’s not true…”; or, “So much talk about Jesus’ suffering and death, but there’s no room to mourn human loss, my losses!” Perhaps you remain in church, fearing there is no other way to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Or, you may conclude, “I believe in God, but I can’t go to church anymore!” Whether you remain in church or leave, you intuitively know, “There’s got to be a better way!”

In hindsight, I realize that one of my earliest childhood memories has fueled my journey of faith through the joys and frustrations. The memory is this: I am about four years old, sitting next to my mother in a church pew, holding her pearl rosary beads, watching her as she gazes at the altar. Though I am too young to have words for this experience, I sense a kind of exchange between my mother and a Loving Presence pouring out from the altar. A sense of peace is palpable. This is no mere recitation of words but an energetic, bodily experience of a connection between my mother and Jesus. I witness the connection through my mother and feel it in my body. For me, Jesus’ words point to this experience: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14:20) 

I have chased this bodily connection with Jesus Christ ever since, inside and outside of Christianity. Today, at age 68, the core of my faith is a relationship with Jesus Christ, and His central teaching: “Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.” I hold this relationship in the arms of Christianity, but the relationship transcends the boundaries of the church. Today I go through times of active membership in a church community and times away from church, re-discovering that the Love that birthed the church is same Love that fuels the vastness of Creation. Nowhere do I experience that Truth more directly than being a grandmother. 

In his Christmas message, Bishop Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, said:

“The older I get, the more I am convinced that God came into this world in the person of Jesus for one reason:… to show us how to live, reconciled with God, and with each other, and He taught us that the way to do it is God’s way of love. For God’s way of love is God’s way of life. It’s our hope for our families, our communities, our societies. Indeed, it is our hope for the whole world.” (https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/presiding-bishop-michael-currys-christmas-message-2022-love-always/?mc_cid=f79713fd34&mc_eid=a0f823687e)

This blog is an invitation to take part in this re-discovery of the life of love that Bishop Curry describes. This power of Love that is the essence of Jesus Christ who continually offers guidance, strength, comfort and healing, individually and collectively, to a suffering world. My goal here is to help Christians awaken to the vibrancy of the Living Christ as a transforming, life affirming experience. 

In postings that follow, I will explore new directions in science and how the language of trauma can help lead us back to the heart of Christianity: profound wisdom and presence of Jesus Christ. I will share more of my story, including my practices with Christian contemplative prayer and Buddhist meditation, that help me grow in my relationship with Jesus Christ and navigate my journey with the church.

These words from Thomas Merton remain a refuge: 

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness that is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.” (From Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)