Thank you as always! I needed to hear this wisdom as I struggle with Christmas approaching, not so much with what I’m feeling or seeing differently or believing but with the feelings, beliefs and understandings of others, in my family and my church. My brother thinks the earth is 6000 years old and that the Bible is everything you have said it isn’t- written for us, essentially dictated by God to a variety of people who wrote it all down verbatim.
I had questions long before I found your Substack writings shortly after you started. You have helped me feel validated and not alone. The writings of Richard Rohr were the first teachings that helped me understand and start to articulate what was unsettled deep within me.
I gently tried to introduce my different ways of understanding to my sweet brother but I finally realized a couple of days ago that that wasn’t mine to do. He is happy in his faith. I used to be in mine but because of my own deconstruction, I’m floundering and searching for my path forward, unsure of what I believe and don’t believe anymore. I’m not unhappy - just trying to find my own faith, not borrowing or adopting the faith experience of others - the wonderful and well intended teachers I had growing up, the people I’ve been worshipping with for 45 years, and not even Richard Rohr’s or Joe Boyd’s faith.
I started telling a friend of mine things I now “believe “, then realized I was telling her what you believe - what Rohr and others believe. I’m still pondering, listening, and learning and trying to discern what I do, in fact, actually believe.
I do believe, I think, that most if not all of the things you’ve written are truth. There are some things I’m still working through and there are, I’m sure, many more to come. I am trying to be comfortable in my uncertainty - the “liminal space”.
I know my deconstruction path is completely my own. And I’m ok with the struggle. But I don’t want to mess with someone else’s faith journey, just because it is no longer my path, and then convincing myself that I’m somehow superior or more advanced than they are and that I am doing them some great service by enlightening them. If they are not wrestling with inconsistencies or questioning things they’ve been taught to believe then I need to let it be. They’re happy where they are.
I do still believe in a God that I can have a relationship with, and in a living spirit of Love that fills and inhabits all life, and in an amazing, remarkable, beautiful and real flesh and blood person from several thousand years ago named Jesus who helps me to see and understand God differently and gives me hope that oneness with God is possible for we mortal beings. I hope there is a real and vibrant existence or spiritual life beyond or existing simultaneously with this one that is and will be a “heaven” I’ll be part of when this body dies and I’m released to fly. That’s where I am. My journey continues. This is really long way to say thank you for doing the heavy lifting on the background and research and sharing your deep understanding from a journey far more difficult than mine. You are a blessing!
I think HA2 is more akin to the young Jesus in the Temple. He’s away from home experiencing the world, even encountering Satan in a cameo at one point. The Sticky Bandits might be a metaphor for those who would trick him.
Consider also Jesus’ age in the story. He’d probably have been preparing for his bar mitzvah where the discussions with the priests being analogous to a public examination to begin ones life’s work.
So true about how the back-stories of the gods shared similarities in the stories of Jesus. A thread running through the gospels is “Jesus is God, and Caesar is not.” So, of course there is a story about Octavian (Caesar Augustus) at 12 giving the funeral address (eulogy) for his grandmother, Julia. Octavian may have spoken before the senate, but Luke takes it further and has Jesus debating the religious leadership in the Temple AND claiming it was his Father’s house and his Father’s business.🫶🏻
That’s a very beautiful point you make about the place you started not being able to see you through till the end. I really need to hear that today.
“Deconstruction isn’t a rejection of faith” Oh how I needed to hear that today! Many blessings to you in your writing…
Was also kinda thinking at this point in my life I’d be arguing with Jesus in the Temple
Thank you as always! I needed to hear this wisdom as I struggle with Christmas approaching, not so much with what I’m feeling or seeing differently or believing but with the feelings, beliefs and understandings of others, in my family and my church. My brother thinks the earth is 6000 years old and that the Bible is everything you have said it isn’t- written for us, essentially dictated by God to a variety of people who wrote it all down verbatim.
I had questions long before I found your Substack writings shortly after you started. You have helped me feel validated and not alone. The writings of Richard Rohr were the first teachings that helped me understand and start to articulate what was unsettled deep within me.
I gently tried to introduce my different ways of understanding to my sweet brother but I finally realized a couple of days ago that that wasn’t mine to do. He is happy in his faith. I used to be in mine but because of my own deconstruction, I’m floundering and searching for my path forward, unsure of what I believe and don’t believe anymore. I’m not unhappy - just trying to find my own faith, not borrowing or adopting the faith experience of others - the wonderful and well intended teachers I had growing up, the people I’ve been worshipping with for 45 years, and not even Richard Rohr’s or Joe Boyd’s faith.
I started telling a friend of mine things I now “believe “, then realized I was telling her what you believe - what Rohr and others believe. I’m still pondering, listening, and learning and trying to discern what I do, in fact, actually believe.
I do believe, I think, that most if not all of the things you’ve written are truth. There are some things I’m still working through and there are, I’m sure, many more to come. I am trying to be comfortable in my uncertainty - the “liminal space”.
I know my deconstruction path is completely my own. And I’m ok with the struggle. But I don’t want to mess with someone else’s faith journey, just because it is no longer my path, and then convincing myself that I’m somehow superior or more advanced than they are and that I am doing them some great service by enlightening them. If they are not wrestling with inconsistencies or questioning things they’ve been taught to believe then I need to let it be. They’re happy where they are.
I do still believe in a God that I can have a relationship with, and in a living spirit of Love that fills and inhabits all life, and in an amazing, remarkable, beautiful and real flesh and blood person from several thousand years ago named Jesus who helps me to see and understand God differently and gives me hope that oneness with God is possible for we mortal beings. I hope there is a real and vibrant existence or spiritual life beyond or existing simultaneously with this one that is and will be a “heaven” I’ll be part of when this body dies and I’m released to fly. That’s where I am. My journey continues. This is really long way to say thank you for doing the heavy lifting on the background and research and sharing your deep understanding from a journey far more difficult than mine. You are a blessing!
I think HA2 is more akin to the young Jesus in the Temple. He’s away from home experiencing the world, even encountering Satan in a cameo at one point. The Sticky Bandits might be a metaphor for those who would trick him.
Consider also Jesus’ age in the story. He’d probably have been preparing for his bar mitzvah where the discussions with the priests being analogous to a public examination to begin ones life’s work.
So true about how the back-stories of the gods shared similarities in the stories of Jesus. A thread running through the gospels is “Jesus is God, and Caesar is not.” So, of course there is a story about Octavian (Caesar Augustus) at 12 giving the funeral address (eulogy) for his grandmother, Julia. Octavian may have spoken before the senate, but Luke takes it further and has Jesus debating the religious leadership in the Temple AND claiming it was his Father’s house and his Father’s business.🫶🏻