What does “the path of faith” mean, anyhow? How do we find and get on it? How do we grow in faith to become people who shine with courage and compassion?
In this sermon I acknowledge my own story from my strict beginnings in a Fundamentalist home and church. (I can pretty much promise there will be some laughing.)
I acknowledge that what pulled me forward into my life weren’t other people’s answers, but my questions.
“So the question became – and still is – how does one find one’s path between religious mandates - and the messages around us about following our dreams and building our bliss?
“Be spiritual. Be passionate. Join our cause, fight this fight, wear this but not that. Eat this but not that.” There is strictness to even modern liberal spiritual life. We still work hard to pay attention to what it is we think we ought to do.
What and where is a “discipline” that can help us find a path between the “oughts” of faith and the “oughts of modern secular life??
I think the answer isn’t an answer – but a question. Or more accurately, one question after another for as long as we live.
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Questions are the open and seeing eyes in a conversation, in a family or community.
Questions are where we say no, I’m neither mindlessly obeying nor mindlessly running away from this moment.
Questions are where we ask, “What’s going on here?”
Questions are how we continue to discover our own character and desires and fears.
Questions are where we truly see each other.
Asking questions is how we build peace, love, and respect.”