This week we explore what happens in a time of spiritual wandering, disconnection from a church community, or wrestling with the ideas of practices of faith. Some call this time faith deconstruction but it sure feels like a kind of wilderness. It's a place no one wants to be, but if we find ourselves here, there are ways we can use a wilderness time well.
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Thanks as always to my friend, Peter Vaughan-Vail, for providing the beautiful harp music you hear in this and every episode.
Here are some resources I hope will help you to engage with this week's topic in a deeper way for yourself:
1. Deep Water: Raised Catholic episode 12 transcript with link to listen
2. Reflection by Kerry Campbell: Trust: My Life as a House
3. Reflection by Kerry Campbell: Anchor
4. Article: What does it mean to have a wilderness experience, by Got Questions
5. Book: Learning to Walk in the Dark - Because Sometimes God Shows Up At Night, by Barbara Brown Taylor
6. Music Video: Drawn to You, by Audrey Assad - please watch this one.
7. Song: Find You Here, by Ellie Holcomb
8. Video Teaching Series: Memorial in the Middle, by Beth Moore
9. Song: Hosea, by the Monks of Weston Priory
10. A Blessing on The Business of Hope-Making, by Kate Bowler:
Dear One, may you have the gift of holy sight,
the vision of what might yet be.
Yes, the emptiness is there.
It could have been different, but this is what it is
and there is just a little moment here - a half a breath
where something new might be made, might be seen.
Just give it a little room to be.
There is nothing mechanical about living.
There is no step-by-step process by which good things can be found.
There is no paint-by-number on this one.
All we have is the strange truth that somewhere in us,
because we are made good
is the ability to make.
All we need to do is just give it a minute to be born.
