I've been running across lots of blogs that make me think of what we're trying to do with CnC Adult: offer a safe place for people to explore their faith and ask the questions they've been afraid to ask. I think there's a lot more need for this kind of safety and exploration than we think--especially for the people in our churches who are not "spiritual" in a way that fits our typical models: the Bible study-prayer group-sacramental type that (from my observation) makes up most of our clergy and that many of us clergy think is The Way Spirituality Is Supposed To Be (TM).
I say this as a priest, mind you. It is often hard for me to get in the mindset of a person for whom church is not all that important but who loves God and wants to be faithful. So I was glad to see all of these postings that evoked for me the wide range of ways in which God is active in people's lives and people are able to worship God.
First was a review of a book called Sacred Pathways. "Gary Thomas’ book Sacred Pathways is a breath of fresh air to those who are suffocating in poorly fitting spiritual disciplines," writes the reviewer. "The quiet time/Bible study route is a sacred pathway and is very helpful to some people. But for those of us who feel the need for something different, who were perhaps made a little differently, Thomas outlines nine Christian practices of personal worship." He doesn't reveal the nine practices, but says, "First and most important, it gave me permission to be different, to have different gifts, different needs, and a different way to relate to God." This may be a good book to share with members of your CnC Adult class as they think about what spiritual practices they want to try. (If any of you do this or know the book, I'd love to hear what you think.)
Second is an entry by a man exploring his experience learning to ask questions about his faith, and more importantly about his faith leaders. "While I once believed that the most spiritual thing you can do was to accept everything you were told without question, I have learned that sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is to ask questions about what you are told." This is not a comfortable thing for leaders, but it is really important for people attempting to grow spiritually. How many people do we have in our churches who still believe it is wrong to ask questions?
Finally, I loved this entry by a man writing about his high school youth group's reunion and seeing what different paths its members have taken in life. Though he worried about whether he would be judged after leaving his Baptist roots to become a progressive Episcopalian, what he found was that
Getting in touch with our own Gospel-story reminds what it was that made us Christian in the first place. Touching again the time when our faith was new can recall for us how much God has done for us, and while we might smile at our youthful idealism, we will also discover how God’s Spirit transformed at key moments in our living.
Recalling our Gospel-story helps us interpret where we’ve been and gives us hints as to where we are going—both what we want to continue and what we seek to change. Instead of just being a phase or a distant past, we can begin to see the times when we have walked near to God and far from God both in terms of our own choices and responses to circumstances, but also see in new, perhaps unimagined ways, how God has walked with us in all we’ve done.
Perhaps the most important way we can make use of our story is to say it out loud. Hearing ourselves tell the story of our walk with Christ, hearing the words we use, the images we have, and even hearing the gaps in the story will do two things: it will feed and encourage others who are On The Way, and it will help us learn, reflect and deepen our faith. We may find that what we thought was a dormant or routine spiritual life is in fact The Holy Spirit going before us, doing remarkable things, preparing the way for something new
That's what I hope CnC Adult does for the people who are part of it. As people explore their past, they find something exciting and new. It's amazing what life that gives.