*** ADVENTURES OF A MINISTER-IN-TRAINING ***

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

I think I'm a REVEREND AGNOSTIC!

The ministerial student's experience includes times of internal transformation. These times have been affectionally referred to as THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM. It's what helps to define us and our ministry, and perhaps we on the path of spiritual exploration all go through it. It's more of a concentrated event in school as we unpack, examine, throw out, replace, repack our Selves and meet ourselves again for the first time...and maybe a second and third time too.

My major piece of unpacking & examining is around my belief in God. I think I've released the last vestiges of God being anything other than myself (and you too) and haven't decided what, if anything, to replace it with. There's both an empty-grief feeling and completeness all at the same time.

I just finished reading (listening actually) A YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY by A.J.Jacobs. Jewish by birth, agnostic by choice, he lived the laws of the bible for one year-literally lived them; the obvious easy ones (not killing) to the inexplicable (not wearing clothes with mixed fibers). I highly reccomend it...the book, not the mixed fibers thing-that would put a serious dent in anyone's wardrobe. At the end of the year, he didn't believe there was a God, but that there was something sacred and neccesary about religion and spirituality and custom. He called himself a REVEREND AGNOSTIC.

I liked the idea, but not the terminology. It seemed minister & agnostic didn't go hand in hand. Yet that is where I am-not able to prove or disprove God's existence yet still believing. In what? Maybe nothing. Maybe it's just faith in our inherent divinity contrary to all earthly appearances. Perhaps Divine Nature is the God I can believe in now, but where is that divinity is those who commit the acts of unspeakable horror? Buried so deep that it's never seen the light of day? Perhaps the balance between divine inspiration and human psyche shifted too far over on the spectrum. But I digress...that's another rant for another day.

REVEREND AGNOSTIC...I'll try it on for a while see if it fits.
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