Edgework

It has now been nearly a year since I have posted articles regularly on mySteinbach. When I signed off last November, a number of factors had converged that influenced my decision to take some time away from an active writing life. I had just finished a lengthy series of essays on the Atonement, and in many ways it felt like I had reached a milestone on my theological journey. Atonement thinking affects virtually every other area of faith and life. Having crisscrossed the theological landscape many times in more than a decade of intensive spiritual questing, you might say I was somewhat exhausted. It was time for a break in order to re-orient myself for any further writing I might do.

A related factor was the fact that it had become increasingly apparent that the faith community Ruth and I were a part of could not, in good conscience, affirm the journey we were on. So we had decided, already in early summer of last year, to take a “sabbatical” time away to experience faith and life in different ways and other places. And so it happened, in what seemed to be providential circumstances, that I had a breakfast meeting with one of my favorite writers, Brad Jersak, who then led me to the Seeds Community Church in Altona where he was doing a conference on his latest book, “A More-Christlike God; A More Beautiful Gospel.” In the coming months, a prayer team at the Seeds Church helped me find significant healing from childhood trauma related to the notion of hell as conscious, eternal torment. It seemed that I was heading into new territory that needed some processing before writing about it.

A third factor affecting my writing hiatus was the fact that I needed to undergo another ablation procedure to deal with heart fibrillation issues. I knew this was going to be a drain on my energy levels, so I thought it best to stop writing for a while.

The long and short of the matter is that we decided to make the Seeds Church in Altona our home base during our sabbatical time. We ended up driving to Altona from Steinbach twice a week and we must say it was always “worth the trip.” With the help of a counselor, we made the big decision in January of this year that we needed to embark on a new chapter of our lives in Altona, Manitoba with the Seeds Church being our primary faith community. This was very quickly followed by the purchase of a house in Altona and the selling of our home in Steinbach. On April 8th we were on the road, with our family helping us make the move.

We have now been in Altona for six months and have spent the summer getting settled. And we have become increasingly involved in the Seeds faith community which has welcomed us warmly. We are being nurtured spiritually in ways that are consistent with where our faith journey has taken us. We hold no grudges against people of faith in Steinbach but with our move to Altona we have begun a new chapter in our lives involving many new people.

In many ways, it feels like we are youngsters again in the process of learning to speak a new language. In retrospect, it is becoming clearer to me how deeply the “spiritual” language we employed in our former faith community was pervaded with fundamental-evangelical lingo. We knew all the “passwords” needed to stay connected to the community, but our trajectory of growth had made us ever more uncomfortable using them. In our new community of faith we are not expected to use these familiar “passwords.” Instead we are picking up on what sometimes seems like a new language that is significantly different from the spiritual language we have used most of our lives. We had been introduced to this language in our long spiritual odyssey but now it seems we are on a steep learning curve in actually using it regularly.

I know something about the complications involved in learning a new language. Studying Spanish for nine months seemed at times to be a tedious process, but in the end we became quite comfortable engaging in Spanish conversation. So it seems that we are still in the learning process, although conversations in this new language are becoming increasingly easier and indeed very satisfying.

One of our teachers of this new language is Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Friar who runs the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico. For more than a year now, Ruth and I have been reading Rohr’s daily meditation which we pluck from the computer just before breakfast every morning. Again and again, we keep saying that Rohr is giving words to our experience. Oh, we say to each other, that is how you can talk about faith and life in a way that makes sense! And every time we go to church, hear a sermon or connect with our small group we are practicing this new language. In many ways this is not a “foreign” language. It is a language that resonates with our hearts and so there is a lot of incentive to become more conversant in it.

It seems to me that now is the right time to begin reflecting more publicly on this new language we are learning. I have done a lot of theological gymnastics in my writings of the past. Now it seems to be time to share openly about what the spiritual language in our new space sounds like and what implications it has for faith and life.

So, with this introductory essay, I am launching a new chapter of my writings on line. It may not always seem coherent to my readers, but it will be a series of random reflections on the new journey we are on in a new place speaking a new language.