The mind is an amazing thing ...

A few posts ago you mentioned the "emerging church"...

[Andy Wrote] The practitioners within this movement, sensing some of the same disconnect we have experienced, have sought to renew the move of faith and worship in that holistic sense, even within the gathering together. Many have mined the ancient practices of the early church in order to renew these things. Pulling together a number of elements that focus on multiple senses and experiences, worship and gathering together can become an interactive, integrated time instead of a lecture.

You told me to let you know if I wanted to hear more. Well you have peaked my curiosity so please, do tell more. Now this may seem completely random but I would like to share a story with you. It may seem unrelated at first but it actually has a lot to do with the topics at hand. (note: names have been changed to protect the innocent, guilty and all involved) The topics of "My Religious Journey", "Truth" and "My Perfect Church".

I found myself, due to tragic circumstances, living here in Lake City a few years back. Having given up my career as an aerospace engineer to follow my husband here, I found myself in an interesting place in life. What was I going to do with myself? My whole life all I ever wanted to be was an aerospace engineer (and then an astronaut if the opportunity ever arose). There's not much of a market for that job here in LC. So I had to look deep inside and ask myself, who am I outside of that label? What else am I passionate enough about to take on as a career? (i'll try to shorten this up a bit otherwise it could turn into a novel) Long story short, I love yoga. Ever since I took my very first yoga class back in 1998 I have been in love with it. (there are so many reasons I would like to share here but alas, we are not discussing yoga) So I went to a weekend-long teacher training workshop. Part of my yoga teacher training required me to teach 8 hours of yoga for free in the community. I thought "what a great idea". A few weeks later I was introduced to Marsha who runs a facility in the area. Marsha expressed interest in me teaching a class for her until I told her what I wanted to teach was .... drum roll please .... y-o-g-a. She politely told me that there would be no yoga at her gym "because of the whole eastern way of thought". I was honestly speechless. Well I ended up teaching math and science at the high school here in LC (yes, i said the high school). I asked around in the teachers lounge one morning about how I could go about setting up free yoga classes either before or after school to get the hours I needed. Well let's just say that idea got shot down very quickly. I was told that I may be able to get away with it if I didn't use the "y word" ... I couldn't call it "yoga". This was also the same teachers lounge where I found myself in the middle of about six women talking bad about the Catholic church and discovered just how negatively Baptists feel about the Catholic church. The funny part was when I announced to the group that I "grew up Catholic" and got up and walked out. I was also later told that Marsha is "just very religious". (and they actually thought they were explaining things!) Something else to note, this high school had "motivational" religion-based assemblies. Now i'm not saying this is a bad thing, i'm just saying I was very surprised to find that allowed in a public high school in a day and time where parents fight to keep the word "God" out of the Pledge of Allegience. And I wasn't allowed to teach yoga.

Yoga is/can be a very spiritual practice to help you get in tune with your body and mind. Our body is the temple God gave us and I think we should take great care of it. Yoga is one way in which I try to do this. Yoga is not a religion and does not conflict with any main-stream religion that I know of. (are there any religions that tell you not to take care of your body and mind?) Is this making any sense yet? Your words on the holistic expression of faith and your "emerging church" along with your request for me to share my religious journey brought up these thoughts and memories.

Now on "My Truth" ... The bottom line for me is that God is why we are here. (Sometimes I feel like maybe we are all just one big science experiment in a fish bowl.) In explaining the "hows" and "whys" I believe there is both a scientific and a faith based explanation for everything and that instead of contradicting each other they actually go hand-in-hand. Some people need to have blind faith while others, like myself, want some sort of scientific evidence. Not to contradict Jesus or religion but to give us something to wrap our scientific mind around because that is how we think. Because that is how God wants us to think. Questions and discussions lead to an opening of the mind, a broadening of the horizons. I don't think God wants to keep us dumb. I think he wants to see how much we can figure out. He wants us to evolve. I think we need to open our minds a great deal more to be able to fully grasp the concept of "being". We are so small yet so significant in the grand scheme of things. And we only use what percent of our brain? (i can't remember but i know it's a small number) Maybe one day we will unlock the true power God has given us and be able to wrap our heads around this amazing thing he has created. Maybe he knows we just aren't ready for that yet. And as a side note on the topic of evolution, I truly think evolution and creationism go hand-in-hand, just different ways of looking at it.

Well this has gotten pretty heavy and it is very late. My brain needs to rest. I'm looking forward to hearing more on the "emerging church". I will share my religious journey soon, in two parts. The first being my history of church attendance and the second being my personal spiritual journey. What about yours?

~Celena