How I got here is a very long story. It includes reading, music, movies, walking, talking with those who came to be so helpful and significant. It includes tears, many tears, and pain in the heart that took so long to fade. It has been a journey not travelled very often in broad daylight, but often in shadows and mist and sometimes in darkness so thick you could touch it. And (don’t panic!) it includes Brexit… just a little.
At my feet is a pile of rubble – bricks, stones, concrete, pieces of wood – that made up what I was led to believe was a rock solid, immovable, non-negotiable, inflexible set of beliefs. Doctrine, rules, regulations, responsibilities and expectations, built on the conviction that the interpretation of the Bible was the only logical one and, therefore, the right one, defended at all costs. As though the God of the Christian faith needs defending and sticking up for!
And there was no room for interpretation, for views, or more importantly, the uniqueness of each one’s story and journey. It is all about straight lines and boxes, cages and prisons. The God of religious inflexibility apparently can’t cope with uniqueness and diversity. Which is where Brexit comes in. I have seen, very sharply, that a refusal to move from some ideological position, in any sphere of life, is both naive and, potentially dangerous. The result, eventually, is chaos.
On reflection I was dying, drifting into a spiritual and emotional coma. Until The Dark Path, that moved into Plants Repotted and now into The Great Adventure. It has taken me into places of thought that I never expected to even consider; ideas and beliefs that once seemed outrageous but now have broken shackles and knocked down walls.
The God I now love so much more than I thought I could is the same God. What has changed is my view of the God I now call, sometimes, Papa and sometimes Mama. They are the God who is Love, who is only interested in relationship and interaction and co-operation and dialogue. They (Father, Son and Spirit) are The Ultimate Family, and all they are and do is for the purpose of growing family. To Love this God, to love myself, and then to love the next one is where this is taking me. I’m not much good at it, but I am learning and I am being changed by the greatest force in all of the universes – the ferocious, outrageous, endless substance of the love of my Papa.
Today I am more free than I was yesterday, and infinitely more free than I was twelve years when I was thrust into this journey into The Great Adventure. I am free to be known and loved, to know and to love; free to be myself without fear or anxiety; free to participate in The Divine Dance and play my part in The Ultimate Family.
The Papa Journey 