A Spiritual Journey – adapted from a mailing list post written 10 February 2003
I have generally seen my spiritual path as the most important part of my life, more than career or even interacting with other people. I can retain hope for the future because, despite what life throws at me and despite times when I feel like I’m walking through treacle, I know that the real purpose of life is not dependent on being well or happy. I look towards the destination, knowing that I’ll get there, even if it turns out to be a rough ride.
As with my career, I mainly drifted but with the general idea of wanting to follow God as closely as I could. I’ve always been aware of God, even when I was very young, but apart from knowing that He was benevolent, I knew nothing about Him at all. This despite the fact that my parents were believing Christians. I was also intuitively aware from an early age that if there was meaning in life at all, then it could only be found in the spiritual aspect. Everything else was clearly transient.
It was when I went to university and met some Christians that my first major growth point happened. What impressed me about them was that what they called “real life” was something beyond the immediate and beyond the next glass of beer or the next girl to pull. It was good to meet people who thought a bit like I did – I hadn’t really come across that before. Then when they told me the Christian message that God accepts everyone who wants to follow Him, irrespective of previous failure or weakness that things fell into place. Up until that point I thought that, to get to Heaven, I would have to meet certain requirements, like getting a pass mark in an exam. It was a relief to know that I was loved by God unconditionally and that it was Him who was going to take me there. All I had to do was ask Him.
Another big influence on me was the Charismatic Renewal which was gaining popularity at the time. Receiving what is called the “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” led to a relationship with God which was much deeper and much less cerebral than the Evangelicalism of the students I had met but which did not clash with its doctrine.
Although these were big steps forward, they led me into a quite simplistic and “black and white” expression of Christianity, which didn’t stand up to experience and what I saw around me. At about this time, some friends were losing the faith they had because of what they saw as the unreality of the Fundamentalist Christian viewpoint, but although I agreed with them in a sense, I knew that the path for me was not to back away from this viewpoint but to go through it and out the other side to something closer to the truth and closer to God.
With the help of more contemplative Christians, I came to see that getting to know God was much less about what I did as being available to Him to do what He wanted in me. Prayer for me became less of a speaking of words to God and more of a being with Him in loving attentiveness. Everything else would follow from that. It’s not been an easy path to follow but I’m as certain as I can be that it’s the right one for me. Through this, I was attracted to monastic practices although I had no intention of becoming a monk. However I did look into joining the Franciscan Third Order which follows the monastic rhythm but is a distributed community.
In December 2002, I went on a kind of pilgrimage to Mount Sinai. For me the week contained some profound spiritual experiences – I’ll tell you about them if you want me to – but the bottom line is that I’m more certain than ever that I’m on the path God wants me to be on even though I don’t know where that path is going to take me. In a sense that doesn’t matter to me because it’s God’s problem, not mine. I just have to be available to Him and see what happens next.
As for the future, I don’t know. I’m a seeker and always will be, but I’m confident that I will find, or be found, as I go forward. And I am not satisfied with simplistic answers but rather, I will continue to ask the awkward questions, often much to the disquiet of various philosophers and church leaders: