Some of you may have noticed I haven’t been writing much lately. The truth is that I have been spending an intentional time clarifying my thoughts and experiences. More than that, I have been sorting through what is important and what isn’t. While that’s an ongoing project for all of us, I have come to some conclusions. One of those is that I am ready to start writing again, though perhaps in a new way.

If you’ve read any theology at all, one of the things you may notice is that theologians are essentially salespeople for their view of the Divine. For me, there is an inherent dishonesty in this. Suppose, for example, that a Presbyterian theologian got a telephone call from God one day in which God informed the theologian that God is, in fact, a Methodist. The first thing that theologian, being a theologian and not a mystic, would likely do is to declare that mystical experience is extremely unreliable. The second thing would be to decide never to reveal that God is a Methodist because when God appears through mystical experience (the only way God ever appears, by the way) God is not to be trusted. It’s the same thing I would do if God called me to say that God is a Chicago Bears fan. The difference is that I would be right to distrust God in that case while the theologian is responding to save his own position as theologian.

I will be exploring, in shorter posts for the most part, the truth that God* reveals Godself and then we set about interpreting that revelation by trying to explain it – and we cannot not interpret – and what we are left with, to varying degrees is always less than accurate. Talking about God is, in many ways, an exercise in missing the point. Spiritual practice, which leads us to experiencing God, is precisely the point. Until, that is, we start talking about it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about God, but I am saying we should do so knowing that we are engaging in a very imprecise enterprise, indeed.

Therefore, my writing for the next interval will be primarily to inspire us to examine those beliefs we have perhaps help for a very long time but never really examined. We will give ourselves permission to pick those beliefs up, spin them around, and look at the with fresh eyes. My hope is that our journeys will be enriched by this process.

*You can always feel free to substitute your favorite name for God, who is of course nameless. That guarantees that all of our names are wrong, but your wrong name is as good as my wrong name. Debating all of that nonsense just keeps us from our path.