The Geography of the Journey

Often times we hear the phrases being uttered like "Wow! That was a mountain top experience." It is interesting how many times, we as humans relate our spiritual experience to creation and vice versa; from mountains to valleys, fruit to trees, roaring seas to calm waters. We tell others about the exhilarating feeling of navigating rapids or hiking mountains to be "Spiritual". And then somehow, there is this feeling that we get when it is a dark rainy day, and not just one day, but several in a row. We get this feeling of a dark cloud being over our souls and keeping us from achieving shalom with God. Is our spirituality deeply rooted to creation in some way?

It seems Jesus knew this. He spoke in parables that often dealt with vines, mustard seeds, moving mountains, sowing seeds, etc. Maybe this was because the culture in his day was agrarian. But was this the only reason he used organic matter to show our connection with Him? I think we miss it sometimes because while we are trying to figure out the deep theological and philosophical issues we lose sight of the Jesus that taught us to pray to our God as a child who cries out for Daddy or to remain in Jesus as a branch to a vine.

I love what Bud McCord said concerning the way we think in the West. He said that often, when a person comes to us and asks to be discipled, we take them to the Christian bookstore and lead them down aisles and aisles of books where we instruct them to read this book or that. But what happens when there is no bookstore and the person who asks to be discipled can't read? Can that person learn? Are we ready to take them to the vineyard to teach them about remaining in the Spirit?

Peter Rollins addresses this problem in Christianity. He says that for too long we have viewed Christianity as something to be studied, divorced from meaning in our lives instead of a life lived embracing Christianity.

So I feel like for awhile now, we have been trying to navigate this journey without color. As if, we are stuck looking at the map instead of seeing what is around us and being able to see the beauty of the journey. I would like to explore this a little more in detail in the next few blogs.