#exploring faith

[hewhobe]

hello. I know now many people follow this blog but I wanted to update nonetheless.

I always seem to find myself back to Christ. It’s strange, really. Always in time of great stress (school) do I find myself back exploring. I feel something deep within me always calling me. Always telling me to read the Bible. I’m never sure what to make with it.

but regardless, if you’re a blog posting Christian content I’d love to follow and potentially talk and explore things together. Lots of love xoxo

[xpressobn]

I think I've often been enticed by having some web space I can call by own. I've tried blogs before to help me over come anxiety, to share my love for mobile casual games, to share what happens when I make pinterest recipes, to share my various hobbies of cross stitch, crochet and hanjiee puzzle and to share my shelved decopatch creations business. None of these have had a real hold on me and kept me wanting to write them so they never took off. Today at the zoom church service for my local church I got an overwhelming urge to atart a blog about faith and my thoughts and feelings about being a Christian so this is it.

Having done a quick search round there doesn't seem to be anything like this on tumblr at the moment. I hope I do at least reach out to someone as then I will know that I am following my purpose, but essentially it is in God's hands.

I will expand on this and so much more later but my daughter has just been scratched by our cat so I need to check all is ok.

[judasbeloved]

Stitches

I feel like my faith is a stitched together sweater. It’s stretched and frayed in some places, new and sturdy in others; patches cover holes on the elbows, and there’s a tear at the neck. It’s a Frankenstein’s Monster of sweaters, bolts and stitches and plates holding everything in place.

I’ve been taught my whole life that one’s faith is built on a list of beliefs that define them, their church, and how they treat others. My church has a list of beliefs too. I used to follow them blindly--because doubt is a sin, questioning is a sin, don’t ask questions, don’t ask why--

I can’t follow blindly anymore. I don’t know if I have a List of Beliefs. If I do, they won’t be approved by the elders of my church. Some Sundays I can’t take the thought of another service catered to the same old, same old; to the upper class, to the privileged, the straight and cisgender.

So I did the unthinkable. I stopped going to church. I put down my Bible. I stopped thinking about a faith that encourages hate and conformity.

Now here I am, trying again with my stitched up faith. I do believe in my God. I do believe that He, She, Ze, They-- I believe that my God heals, my God saves.

I don’t believe my church is infallible. I don’t believe The Church as it is--lead and influenced by man--is infallible. I don’t believe all sin is destructive in the same way others do. I don’t believe Hell is eternal.

I can’t take a church sermon every single week. I can’t spend half an hour in prayer every day. I can’t be a Good Little Christian. Sometimes I can’t call myself a Christian. (Sometimes I can’t call myself by my name.) I can’t always take care of myself, and when I’m at my worst the last thing I want to do is ask God to do it for me.

I want to get close to God again. I want to pray. I want to read Their Word. I want to be in community with Their people. But I can’t do that someone else’s way.

So I take up my thread. I’ll find a new church that isn’t quite so monotonous. I’ll put my thoughts to paper to bring me back to my roots. I’ll open myself raw. I’ll offer myself to God in my own way, in my own time. It’s not the perfect plan. I’ll mess up (a lot). But it is my own and the only way I know how.

Lord, watch over me. Please be patient with me and my stitched up faith.

[kululumoya-blog]

The Call to Love our Enemies Exposes our Hearts

The Call to Love our Enemies Exposes our Hearts

You may be familiar with the story of the ‘Good Samaritan’, the one about the good guy who helps his enemy by rescuing his beaten up and bloodied body out of the gutter and paying for his recovery. Do you know the backstory to this story, the brackets before and after, and the reason why Jesus told it in the first place?

See there was this ‘Expert in Religious Law’ asking Jesus what he must do to…

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[brachot-and-boobies]

Shoutout to my parents for raising my vegetarian and inadvertently letting my choose a faith without having to worry about dietary restrictions

[godotsblackcoffee2]

Exploring Faith (continued)

So it's been a while since I've written anything serious and elaborate on this blog, so here goes...

Regarding faith. It's rather confusing for me now. I wouldn't say I'm Catholic, but I'm definitely a Christian of sorts. I believe there's some greater being out there, hoping for the best for us. I want to say I'm leaning towards the chance that this greater being might be God, but who knows. I definitely don't believe in the doctrines set up by Catholicism, such as stringent pro-life stances and anti-homosexuality sentiments. I do appreciate Christianity in the fact that it does promote the good points of humanity, in doing good for each other. I also just believe in the spiritual world, that there is something going on beyond this reality that is taking care of us through motivation and encouragement.

So why the shift? Honestly, I'm pretty sure I've found my motivation to pursue happiness in life.

At the beginning of the past school year, I was kind of lost on a purpose, a typical existential crisis where I wanted to mope and wallow and absorb the experience of sadness and purposelessness. We were all going to die anyways, so why make any sad attempt to improve our lives when they get erased eventually?

But now, that motivation has come back. Part of it has been because of my faith. I realize I'm admitting weakness here, but I missed having something to just have slight counsel in, whether or not it was myself or God I was talking to. An unnecessary splint of sorts, and although I'll probably be slightly conflicted with this, in the end it's making me happier as a person.

I'm sure that friends of mine would slightly frown at this reversal I'm going through, that I should live life off of empirical facts and knowledge, that pursuing knowledge is obsolete when you have rules behind your mind that may cancel it out. But no. I still love pursuing knowledge, and I know that there are a fuckton of things that probably debunk any theory of a spiritual world, but there has always been faith, right? I lost that component for a while, in which I just thought things could only be proven with solid facts. But I missed believing in something unbelievable. That faith component, I was trying to find this past month or so again, and it was troubling that I couldn't just get myself to believe that there was some greater being out there. But yeah. I've become more comfortable about it.

As how this is going to affect my daily life, I'm just not quite sure yet. I know I'm eventually going to leave the Catholic church, maybe at a point that won't end up with me being "exiled" instead of just leaving. I might join a regular non-denominational Christian church. Being shelled in this Catholic church, I didn't realize that non-denominational churches were more tolerant of sexuality issues and such, so I would definitely feel more comfortable then.

Anyways, that's the update on that situation. If you actually read through all that I congratulate you.

[kkatyrose]

"...It's so beautiful! It's like I'm watching a conversation between her and Jesus. They're so in love with each other, except she doesn't know it just yet! But I think she's getting there!... *Sigh* God is so amazing. And they are JUST SO CUTE together!!!

 - a Wellesley student, about a friend that she's doing a GIG** with.

(**Group Investigating God - having conversations that look at the Bible and explore Jesus).

I love my job. Stories like this make me smile. :)