Messiness Matters

Read the following in a review on www.hollywoodjesus.com yesterday:

"Crises of faith will make us either bitter or better: they either break us and cause us to abandon God or break us down and draw us nearer to Him. They are messy and there are no pat steps on how to get through them. All you can do is hold on to the tether of your faith until things hurt less.”

I think I’m now in the hurting less phase of things. That feels pretty darn good, I’ll tell you. What amuses me is what it’s taken to get there.

Atheists and agnostics have accompanied me on the journey. Gays and straights. Preachers and near pagans. And then there was . . .

Alcohol. Abstinence (not always by choice mind you).
Bitterness. Bastards.
Celtic thought. Caring.
Dirty jokes. Daring.
Exercise. Enthusiasm . . . mine and others.
Fevers, fainting.
Goofs, gratitude.
Hurt . . . mine and others.
Inklings that there was light at the end of the tunnel and there really was a tunnel.
Joy, indescribable, irrational, irrefutable, joy.
Kiss, one particular one that I'll never forget if I'm lucky. Kindness . . . mine and others.
Laughter, God thank you, thank you for the laughter.
Mom, who continues to amaze me, opening up to all that's
New . . . adventures, challenges, people.
Opinions . . . mine and others.
Pragmatic optimism . . . even in the midst of the darkness there was that "light at the end . . ." thing happening. Powerwalking.
Queers, queens(?) . . . don't usually use these words but they do.
Release of rules, regulations and religiosity.
Silence, sensations I didn't know were possible.
Truth . . . mine and others.
Unique-ness . . . mine and others.
Verdad. Vistas. Views I never thought I'd see.
Weariness. And words, glorious words.
And I'm not going to go with the last two because they would just sound silly. But I do feel exonerated and while it' s not an "X" word, thinking of x made me go there.

Would any preacher you know embrace the idea that it was by letting go of all the law that I became truly free to believe? I could name three who would go there, but otherwise . . . well, I kinda doubt it.