Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 December 2007 12:49:35
It's been a year since I was on Iona and a year since I came back from Iona thinking this . During my time on the island I was particularly impacted by wandering back and forth through sheep droppings to see one of the most beautiful views on earth that I've ever experienced, (North Beach).
I came back with a bunch of good intentions about how my "spiritual life" was going to move on and I was going to start living it more authentically. However, stuff hasn't really worked out like that. Yet looking back a year I can see that God has carefully guided me through the dung and for a moment atleast I'm back on the beach - metophorically speaking. I know that I can't live on the beach forever and will have to negotiate my way back through the dung again before resting a while and then returning but at the moment I am enjoying "the beach" I'm currently on.
Before I start getting accused of being strung out on the sort of stuff I don't take let me explain.
This year has been a year where church has been difficult. In May I resigned my membership whilst deciding to stay within the church, as regular readers will be aware. The implications of the decision and the reasons behind it and a general uneasiness I have with alot of "evangelical" practice and public belief have meant that church has, at times, been like a field of dung this year. Yet now at Christmas I have truly found myself on the beach in terms of church. The view and experience at the moment is something I cannot adequately sum up but I know it is not something I have experienced before. For the first time in my life in church I truly feel unconditionally accepted on an equal basis as myself and that my progressive / on the way to being post evangelical beliefs are actually ok in that type of environment. There is a level of community going on and a range of outward thinking initiatives which truly reflect the beauty of God. On a personal level and on a corporate level Gods hand can be seen in the beauty of relationship and worship.
That is not to say, however, that everything is perfect. On Iona the seaweed comes sweeping up onto North Shore and turns the beautiful beach into a less perfect scene for a while. So the landscape of church will have natural and man made debris to be manouvered and dealt with, yet the essential beauty of the handiwork of God remains within it.
All that probably sounds a bit flowery and I have no doubt I am likely to crash back to earth with a huge bump soon, but as somebody who spends enough time moaning about the problems with the insitution when it's not working I wanted to share the blessing when it's beautiful.