Hindsight

Yesterday I had the opportunity to do a little time travelling. I met with an old friend, someone I’ve known since the 7^th grade and who has shared many of life’s major pathways and transitions. We awakened sleeping memories, laughing, crying, and pondering how we have shifted our perspectives through 35 years.

My friend and I experienced a religious conversion, an awakening to the message of Jesus while both in the 9^th grade. My friend came from a Protestant background, from the Church of the Nazarene, and I came from the Roman Catholic Church. Culturally the atmosphere was sparkling with spirituality, the Jesus Movement was in full swing, George Harrison’s song “My Sweet Lord” was constantly playing on the radio waves, along with songs from Jesus Christ Superstar, and Godspell. The war in Vietnam, the political clash between the hawks and doves, and the cultural clash between mainstream and the counter culture was ripe, adding to the anxious apocalyptic expectation that all was soon to come crashing down, and the end of the world was at hand.

When we first opened our spiritual eyes to the message of Jesus, we were thoroughly excited, our mission was inclusive maybe even dangerously naïve. We were empowered by the message of love, and peace, and how these themes were good news seemingly resonating with the whole culture of young people. Looking back we recounted how by the 11^th grade we had been co-opted by established institutional evangelicalism, and our age of innocence was over. What started in mystique, ended in politique, and we began a dark descent into the valley of rigid fundamentalism. It was a slow gradual boil, not a quick descent, such that one could hardly recognize what was happening until it was too late. Fundamentalism made wormwood of our minds, with twisted doctrines, deception, and hypocrisy. When we began questioning and doubting what we were being fed, we did not have any ledge to hold us up, we were not aware of any orthodox source that gave support to our reservations, and by the time we were in college we eventually spit out the whole mess.

What tied my friend and I together spiritually was interest in an alternative tradition. I know what I’m about to say sounds strange, but it is exactly what happened … Buddhism saved my Christian Faith. By the word ‘faith’ here I’m not just referring to belief in doctrines, or propositional statements, but I’m referring to a way of being, and to quote James Fowler, “faith is an active ‘mode-of-being-in-relation to another or others in which we invest commitment, belief, love, risk and hope’ (Fowler & Keen, 1985:17).” Buddhism preserved the mystical passion that was about to go out with the bath water upon my disillusionment with evangelical Christianity. And it is the passion for the mystical that is calling me back to my spiritual roots, and finding new life there.

Looking back from where you've come, gives a different perspective to where you are, and to where you are headed.