I’ve been doing reading lately that has included a bunch of names used to define different movements in 21st century Christianity. I have to admit, I’m always curious to find out where I fit in  by “conventional” standards. It’s easier said than done.

It should be a relatively easy thing to determine: I’m a white, privileged, educated, middle-class, middle-aged mother of an African-American gifted child, and I am a Presbyterian Pastor. I’m a musician, educator, composer, author, and I like to garden and cross-stitch (which I have precious little time to do with a 14-year-old daughter). I am partnered with a loving, brilliant, woman who is both companion and healer. For both of us, life is a calling.

But that’s as far as the “easy” part goes.

Fish gotta swim is not only an homage to my musical heritage, but is a reference to my underlying relationship with Jay, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. I may be a Christian, but I haven’t always been sure that there was room for me in the pond, so to speak. And guess what . . .  I, too, have to swim.

I know that I choose to be part of the Reformed Tradition because it recognizes that “God alone is Lord of the conscience” and therefore nobody can tell me what to believe or how to interpret my relationship with God except for God. Nor am I ever to be in a position to tell others what to believe. That’s between them and Spirit, too.

But, alas,  I also have many other aspects of my spirituality: the New Agey, 1st century Christian part who embraces a holographic understanding of the universe, who questions everything, who believes being a Child of the Light is as palpable as a good hot fudge sundae, and who thinks that Truth is found in the Many as well as the One.

Whether talking “vibrational resonance” or “Holy Spirit,” I am equally at ease with the reality that there is more than what we think we take in and that the holy, the divine, the sacred is found NOT in its description, but in its Mystery.

It is through those filters (or lenses) that I view and experience my world, sacred writings, people, nature, and myself.

I intend  this blog (as long as it exists) to be my periodic reflections on anything from soup to nuts, from the arts to science, from scripture to ethics, and/or whatever else comes my way. I invite your responses and wherever the currents of transformation take us on our journey together.

Feel free to share YOUR reactions to what I write and I will do the same. I love it when discussions are thought-full and challenging as well as affirming and gentle. It is my hope that this might become a meeting place for ideas, visions and creative takes on the world(s) we find ourselves in.

Please check out the first posting (“Hello World”) so you know the basic guidelines for contributing to this site. And remember this: we don’t have to believe anything special, or anything at all, but figuring OUT what we do or don’t believe is a good thing for the whole world. After all, fish DO “gotta swim” and it’s easier when we’re all in schools together.

Blessings and peace to all who enter here,

Deb

P.S. So next time I’ll put up some of the things I’ve been reading for us to talk about (or not) in terms of labels, etc.  Until then:
What do you think so far?????