Monday’s post followed along a path I’ve seen before, one where I’ve been convinced that there’s a specific “normal” path to follow, just to be reminded that it’s okay for me to be me.

A few years ago, I first started to actively reconnect with my own Sprituality, but bucked hard at the idea of Christianity, because I felt like in order to consider it, I had to lose myself. One Sunday afternoon in May, 2003, this is what came into my head from “seemingly” nowhere:

You have stayed away from Me and run away from Me because you were afraid that I would make you change into someone different. You think you know who that would be, and you see her as boring, drab, and deprived of life, interest, and excitement.

I haven’t come to change you into anyone other than who you are. I have come to peel away the layers that you have surrounded yourself with, and to remove the veils that encircle you one at a time, until you stand before me naked, exposed, and utterly gorgeous. And utterly you. I didn’t create you, Allison, to be a shy, drab church mouse. Why would I create your sparkling personality just to then tell you to be something other than who you are? I don’t work that way. I had great things in mind when I created you, and if you will just let Me, I’ll blow your mind with how different your relationship with Me will be than you’ve ever imagined.

Like I wrote the other day, I was made to dance. If I’d just remember that (and stop trying to run), I’d be a much more relaxed human being, don’tcha think? My feelings about Christianity are still rather ambivalent, but that doesn’t change the message. Whether words like these come from God, from The Great Spirit, or merely from my higher self, they’re just as meaningful.

God
Please watch over the patients in the hospital
and let them
live
another day,

even if they hoped that they would never awake from

Maria shares a prayer, and reminds me yet again why I can imagine becoming a psychologist, but not a psychiatrist.

Without even trying, she also expresses how I often feel about God: questioning, angry, but still looking and hopeful that he/she/it is out there.

I (heart) 9 Chickweed Lane. From today’s strip:

Guilt is the tragic delusion of culpability without the comic relief of sin.

Face it, we all need a little comic relief.

At the Happy Feminist, worth reading: On Being Created in God’s Own Image

Beautiful. I need to remind myself of this often, in both my dealings with myself and with others.

First:
Via the Progressive Blogger Network, I found The Mindful Mission. I haven’t had time to delve into much of his writing just yet, but if his bio and reading list are a hint, I will soon add him to the daily reading list.

Next:
From Mindful Mission, I found this post. Wow…just, wow.

“christians” taught me…

to fear what is different
to attack what you fear
to validate deeply held cultural values while critiquing surface “values”
to live with the hypocrisy of it
to deny the hypocrisy of it
to have an allergy to honesty
to resent this list because the shoe fits
to label as “liberal” anything contrary or critical of Christians, especially when it’s deserved
to downplay any and all legitimate criticism
to wrap our cookies in barbed wire and then excuse it by saying “the Gospel is offensive”

That’s only the beginning. Man, it reminds me of church from while I was growing up. Take a look at the rest.

From today’s NYTimes:

Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock

A few tidbits:

Before the last presidential election, [Pastor Boyd] preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”

…

“More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right,” Mr. McLaren said. “You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.

“Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’ ”

…

“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” [Boyd] said. “America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.

Worth reading. Go take a look.

Since my last post, I’ve spent a little time browsing around some of the religion-oriented blogs I frequent, plus a few I don’t.

I (heart) this by NinjaNun (from comments on one of the StupidChurchPeople blogs):

One can be sincere, and still be sincerely stupid.

Preach it.