Variety

When I was young, there were a handful of church denominations from which to select. There were Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Brethren. Christian, A.M.E. and several other denominations. But nowadays there are many new churches. You can tell them by their non-traditional names.

Each of the new churches seem to have their own particular slant on what is Biblical teaching and what is the truth or untruth. Sometimes their differences are tiny and sometimes huge. I suppose that each has a visionary founder that sincerely thinks they have found the true and correct understanding of Jesus and the whole Bible story.

As I often say in workshops as I lead them to do this very thing in small groups - there is another way to look at  ---------; there is another way to look at _______; there is another way to look at _______; etc. We do well to stretch our minds by doing this simple exercise on some neutral object, say a chair or doorknob. Great insights come from this. If you never have seen this chair before, what might it be? Then keep going a half a dozen or more times, there is another way to look at this chair. In workshops people come up the most creative and sometimes humorous looks at an object that once was only one thing. Try it for yourself.

With the explosion of church varieties, we could do the same exercise. The trouble is that so many groups think and teach they have the whole truth, period. This of course makes God little, definable and no longer infinite. How can I know Infinite? Kind of silly when I think about it.

Another way to look at this dismaying array of "denominations" is to say to oneself - there is another way to look at such and such belief, etc. In that way we could expand ourselves into a larger knowing and deeper walk. But most just want to memorize "the right way to believe" as defined by whatever group has formed and declared they KNOW what no other group knows.

I suppose I would urge a more paradoxical approach to religion and a mystical way into relationship and experience of The One. But I know each person must find their own way and may not be ready for such a leap just yet.

I bless each journey. I celebrate each person who cares enough to walk any spiritual path that leads to Love, Forgiveness, Service, Kindness, Congruence, and an attempt to live awake to the knowledge that each day all we do and say is in the Presence.

God bless us all.