MY OWN WALKING - Journal May 2024

I have moments when I ponder - am I consciously researching how to get on board with Christianity now? As I've said before, I flirt with this idea, to see how it feels and how I react. Something might emerge to form a bridge between it, and who I am now. In-between is the fifteen year old I was, when I parted company with the Christianity of my upbringing, and put myself in the agnostic holding pen. 

I imagine there is always the need for 'a significant experience'. A magic event that blows away any cobwebs of reservations, the locks on the doors, the resistance of resistance. Where it all instantly makes perfect emotional sense. Yet, as I step toward any potential bridge, I sense the seismic nature and unsteadiness of the ground beneath me, and say to myself - Gosh this is a bit rickety. a bit unsafe - and cautiously reverse back off. But exploration can be like that, getting familiar with the territory, how far you feel prepared to go, the nature of one's reservations.

Being on the look out for 'the significant experience' is not unfamiliar. It was present in my ordained life as a Buddhist  too. Its the sort of thing I imagine bedevils most religious practice, theist or otherwise. So its reappearance was not entirely unexpected. These obstacles of desire, can arise for many reasons; out of doubt; out of disbelief; out of a weakened confidence in the existence of anything beyond terra firma. All you want is a 'peak experience', perhaps a little on the cheap, without putting in much spiritual effort. Not a lot to ask.  Now just give us the bloody sign master!

Dogen talked of a spiritual practitioner needing to - 'throw your whole life into the house of the Buddha.'  And that wholehearted embodied action of complete surrender is exactly what none of us feels able to do, because none of us know how to do it. And even if we did know, would we really be willing to do it?  And so we make what we believe are doable commitments to a faith, we study it intensely, become a regular loyal practitioner, and wait to see what will come of these small acts of moderation.

However, to throw your whole self into anything requires quite a bit more than scriptural knowledge, loyalty or commitment can give you. A strong volition. Some heightened faith. A willingness to be truly open to whatever. To climb to the top of a hundred foot poll and then step off. It's not feel the fear and do it anyway, either. One could easily confuse recklessness with transcending ones self. In truth there is a lot of letting go to progress with before you hurl yourself anywhere.

All that tentative mind chatter, the second guessing, self chastising, arises from my own unwillingness to cross any bridge, resists jumping off into the cavernous unknown. What is required is a much bolder effort than self analysis. Getting to know better who I am has had its uses and benefits, but that will not, of itself, propel me into the streets and houses of the sacred. What is ineffable remains forever out of anyone's ability to control,or understand in advance. At some point I have to go beyond taking my reservations and critical analysis quite so seriously. All that strenuous effort to make rational sense of myself, of this or that religion and of the vagaries of the real world. For goodness sake, start by letting all that be.