I'm going to credit Nick T. with this post as he revealed a basic outline to me a couple weeks ago that I've been pondering. We were talking about our journey through life, in faith and how it wasn't what we thought it would be. For some reason, probably human nature combined with miscommunicated teaching, I had expected life to be more linear like a chart or graph that was consistently moving (upward and onward, right?) What I've experienced is more like what Bruce Wilkinson describes as loops. It's more of the "three steps forward, two steps back" or even "TWO steps forward and THREE steps back" feeling. And many of the loops seem to repeat on the same themes. For me, they seem to be about false identity issues. Things that I thought were part of me and took pride in which are being pulled from me. Each new round seems to go a little deeper and while I appreciate the love of God to discipline me, it still hurts because well- it's me. Or at least that's what I thought. So most of the pain is the re-calibrating my sense of 'me' without the issue that is leaving.
Here's a progression that Nick left with me the other day. The spiritual journey starts in the "chaotic/antisocial" phase. Truth is relative and Self is all. A crisis usually causes movement out of this into "formal/institutional" where Religion thrives. Again a crisis of some sort moves a person into "skeptic/individual" which can easily be interpreted as abandonment of faith, but if the formal/institutional is deconstructed in a healthy way, it can lead to the final phase of "mystic/communal" where the wonder and awe of God and His ways begin dawning in fascinating ways- and with others. I remember beginning the skeptic/individual phase and being scared of what I was thinking and processing, some of which is in earlier blogs. In fact, I think I started blogging during this phase as I begin to deconstruct some of the external or extraneous elements of what I thought was faith. It helps me tremendously to know what to expect AND that someone else has 'been there, done that'.
So what IS next? Here's what I expect: more mystery, more community, more pruning, more refining fires, more communion, more peace, more centeredness, more pain, more of Christ in me, more awareness of what God is up to, more perspective on life, more awe at the simple things, more adoration of my Lord, more appreciation of people- each of them a masterpiece in some stage of 'rough', more love, more grace, more mercy, less of the false me. I'm ready.
