Raised Christian in a deeply religious family and community, I learned from an early age to reject those things that were not like me. Remember the Sesame Street bit "One of these things is not like the others"? I saw one perspective of God and all the other perspectives were dismissed as "Wrong."I think people may get the idea that I am angry with all Christians or that I need to bad-mouth them out of some revenge for wrongs against me, and while I have been hurt many many times by Christians in my life, I do not blame that choice on their religion. They are simply human beings, making poor choices, probably out of pain. My pastor used to say "Hurt people hurt people" and that rings true for me.
Personally, I feel that I have witnessed too many Christians (myself included) using Christianity, being "right", "God's Will" and the "great commission" as an excuse to feel validated and purposeful in their existence. At its worst, we Christians have used these things to gain power, prestige, and to rule over other people and take away their freedoms. While we are not the only people in the world who are hurting others in an effort to ease our own insecurity, I feel that we, as Christians, need to take responsibility for the failure to give love, grace and acceptance to the people around us. The Christian faith is not about judgment, it is about Grace. It is not about hatred, or separation or discrimination, it is about Love. I am not the first one to say this, but it bears repeating.
That being said, I tend to believe that the path to God is not so narrow as anyone would have us believe. If God created us for relationship, and desires us to know him and see him, I wonder that he would make it so difficult and tedious to reach him.
I also have begun to feel over the years that, although my context of God is different than others, perhaps it is possible that I am not seeing the whole picture. Maybe I'm just seeing a little piece, and there is another piece that someone else sees, and another that a third person sees.
It made me wonder, how their perspective of God changed who they are - because my perspective of God definitely changed me, but what if I had seen their perspective? Would it have made me a different person than I am now? I began to plan my journey to see other perspectives of God and one night in the planninng process, I went to bed and had a dream that brought it all together for me:
I’m sitting in a completely empty room, thinking and contemplating about my life. I actually think that this room is my mind, so I'm sitting in my own mind. I’m remembering the past three years. Not the literal past three years, more the past three portions of my life:
I am remembering the first year, which I spent searching for God in church. I went to Christian churches and I followed my traditions, and I searched for him. I had the feeling that I found a part of him there, but it was an incomplete picture.
The second year, I searched for him all over the world, in temples of other religions. I was looking for him in faces and places of worship everywhere else in the world, and I found a part of him there, but again, an incomplete picture.
The last year, I was alone with myself. I remember thinking this was the most uncomfortable time for me – being alone with my thoughts, with myself, with my past. I found him there too, in a personal accessible way.
As I pulled out of the room of my mind, thinking about the things I had seen, and the places I had gone to search for God, I looked back on the room that was my mind. I saw myself sitting in the floor, surrounded by a circle. The circle was like a flow-chart circle with three different sections, but all connected. And I saw year one, year two and year three like a cycle. And the thing is, in each section, I did not find a complete picture of God, but together, I saw a circle and a complete picture of myself and God, and what it was supposed to be for ME.
Today, as an American woman, I find myself in a paradigm of existence. The "traditional woman" - the stay at home, "Christian" wife and mother - vs. the "empowered woman" who is apparently put into another box - the box that says, to be empowered and successful, you must have a high-powered career, beat men, have degree(s), have a family with well-balanced children, and be an amazing wife, lover, friend, as well as take over the world. neither of these sit with me.
I am a proponent of dreams.
Of seeking truth.
Of believing in destiny.
And it is my hope that through this project, I (and maybe someone else) will see more of God, and perhaps more of themself as a woman.
So inspiring. This is go great places. I just know it.
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