Spirituality grows out of personal experience, not someone else’s theological interpretation. It’s a lifelong journey. Being Called is not the same as being the only Chosen. Spirituality is not a Religious Country Club or a Get Out Hell Free Card. No person or group has all the truth and nothing but the truth. We are imperfect and unfinished and we need each other, particularly those different from ourselves. We are all pieces of the puzzle we call God.

Okay.  Here’s where I probably alienate some or most of my few readers.  I listened to a “chat” with Jamal Rahman on a site called Charter of Compassion.org. He wrote a book called Sacred Laughter of the Sufis.  And to be honest, it described my spiritual journey and what is real for me in many ways.  My journey started, continues, and will end with Jesus Christ as the Love of God fleshed out for all of us. But I figured out quite a long time ago that God is not limited by any group or to any person.  We humans have done the limiting, not God or Jesus.  And each branch of Christianity or any other religion goes from the Love of God that the original person tried to share through their experience to a religious country club with people interpreting someone else’s experience of God and turning it into theology and laws because we want so very much to control God and life and death.  The journey begins with a person who tries to share their experience. But almost immediately the next generation tries to lock everything into law and theology and set it in stone, literally.  The reason I’m sharing this “chat” is that it describes Grace and a spirituality of Love that isn’t limited to any person or group or nationality or ethnicity or religion.  Please think about how many billions of people have lived on this planet that God created…both the planet and all the people.  Would only a relative handful be chosen to survive it?  What kind of love is that?  It’s a human kind of love that wants to feel good about itself by feeling better than others, to be the “Chosen.”  That ain’t it, guys.  Would you do that with your children?  Life is mostly mystery and we do not understand it enough to think we have a monopoly or control of it or God. HUBRIS!  By listening to others we sometimes get a glimpse of the truth that is the essence of all our different attempts to make sense of life and to become more loving.  This doesn’t threaten belief in God or his expressions of his Love like Jesus.  Just don’t make a God of anybody’s Scriptures or any group’s limited understanding.  The Christian Scriptures have come alive for me and when faced with either decisions or suffering or challenges they help me.  But, listening to God includes listening to everything around us with a heightened awareness and then looking for confirmation, because we are really good at hearing only what we want!  Cheer up if this is scary.  You are surrounded by the love of God. God is FOR you.  God wants you to know inside out that you are loved, so you can feel safe enough to grow free to love even your enemies.  To realize they aren’t playing with a full deck either and they are doing the best they can with the hand they were dealt, but they need your compassion to open their hearts to trusting what you know from the hand you were dealt.  They need the gifts they have to be valued and used in balance with the gifts you have when and where EACH is needed.  Unless we feel valued/loved for who we are, we cannot value those who are not only different, particularly if they think they are better than us.  I so hope this make sense.  Praying it will do no harm, but will open all our eyes to God’s love for his whole motley crew. We need each other because our own gifts are good, but limited.

Since Julian died, I have been beating myself up in retrospect for how hard my particular personality was for someone like my husband to love those sixty years.  As he used to say in our talks on Marriage Preparation Weekends, “I don’t understand her. Haven’t got a clue! But I accept her as she is.”  Sadly, I wanted to be valued for the things about me that I valued. I realize now that he allowed me to change some basic prejudices he had from his acceptance of how things were in the world in his growing up. But, in the hindsight of old age, I cringe over how he had to live with so many everyday things that had to be totally irritating to him.  His trouble expressing verbal appreciation for me was hard on me, but the many normal things as a wife and mother that I didn’t give a shit about had to drive him crazy!  I did realize today in listening to this blog post chat, that God actually used all our differences for Grace.  Often Grace for the change needed for the journey comes in the hard stuff.  Watch for it! Remember the beautiful Monarch butterflies I saw on the ripe pile of cow dung getting what they needed to grow. I sometimes have shared another experience where God physically showed me that Jesus was with me sharing my moment of feeling crippled, abandoned, and rejected. He has been there, done that, and has the scars to prove it, so we can know we are not alone in those awful moments. Love you guys. Sorry for my limits in sharing the beauty, tenderness, and presence of God even in life’s manure!