My Return to the Church

[Era Might]

16 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

Super interesting.   

I've dulled the point of my Surprise crayon.  From your oft mystical musings to atheism.   Keep in mind my irreligiousity, why are you still reading the Gospels and considering Confession?  Not judging, am just asking. 

Well, I read the Gospels because I consider them my main spiritual path, the way a Buddhist would read Buddhism texts. But I am widely interested in the mystics...I don't believe one has to believe in God literally in order to appreciate the path of the mystics...man still has an inner life, even if it is not a "soul" in a Christian sense. Also I don't like the term "atheism" because it seems to deny the inner life of man and the mystery of living. I am interested broadly in mystics...Buddhist, Taoist, Christian. I believe man is necessarily religious, even if his religion is crude rationalism...but I find nothing beautiful in that. I consider it our poverty as modern men that we have no spiritual foundation. One thing I love about the Gospels, though, isthat they are stories, and I'm a literary person, so they suit me.

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

yeah thats amesome, to deny ones interior life is to deny your very being and risk only ever being a human doing which is terribly hard work, we need to chillax and breathe deep the very core of our being and the mystery of life. 

But than perhaps the old saying has some truth in it that there is 'no rest for the wicked.' I so dearly don't want to be wicked and have no rest,i want to have much rest and sit by those still waters and know love and not just consume every little thing that comes my way and poop it out. We need to experience life and i believe to experience true life we need to learn to just be often, to let go, to experience being alive. We are so addicted to doing because of the "do as thou wilt" slogan of the entertainment industry that has been subliminally inserted into our sub conscience, we begin to only have the desire to be doing and loose the art of being.

I personally think that regularily we just need to 'stop!' and search the recesses of our heart and mind to truly discover who we are or we are just a product of the exterior world and not really knowing the truth about our self at all.

[Guest]

[marigold]

Era, I don't really have anything to add except that I recognise from my own experiences a bit of what you've been writing about. Faith doesn't come easily to me. One of my best friends teases me that I'm still secretly an atheist...

I don't really know what life is about, except that is has something to do with telling stories. God knows this, quite possibly created life this way or is at least working with what we ended up with, and everything we call salvation history is the story of him and us. In this sense, the faith is amazingly self-evident and gives one the sense of being the fish finally back in water, and maybe this is why reading the Gospels is okay, but the rest is just 'too much'. For me, Christ in the Gospels just walks off the page. He's so vibrant. I occasionally catch a glimpse of him like this in other writings, the Fathers etc., but not often. So I've got this undeniable Living God of the Gospels, but then to turn around and ask if I 'believe in' God... I almost come up stumped because it's like asking the wrong question.

CS Lewis talks about reading the Gospels during his conversion experience and realising, 'I've spent my whole life studying fiction, and this is not fiction.'

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, marigold said:

Era, I don't really have anything to add except that I recognise from my own experiences a bit of what you've been writing about. Faith doesn't come easily to me. One of my best friends teases me that I'm still secretly an atheist...

I don't really know what life is about, except that is has something to do with telling stories. God knows this, quite possibly created life this way or is at least working with what we ended up with, and everything we call salvation history is the story of him and us. In this sense, the faith is amazingly self-evident and gives one the sense of being the fish finally back in water, and maybe this is why reading the Gospels is okay, but the rest is just 'too much'. For me, Christ in the Gospels just walks off the page. He's so vibrant. I occasionally catch a glimpse of him like this in other writings, the Fathers etc., but not often. So I've got this undeniable Living God of the Gospels, but then to turn around and ask if I 'believe in' God... I almost come up stumped because it's like asking the wrong question.

CS Lewis talks about reading the Gospels during his conversion experience and realising, 'I've spent my whole life studying fiction, and this is not fiction.'

Loving this post. Powerful. I feel the same way how Jesus walks off the page.

[MarysLittleFlower]

Perhaps I find it difficult to relate because for me faith and religion are not negative things at all, but very good things, but I love them because they come from Jesus and I love Jesus. I value things like trust and just believing what the Church teaches even if my mind is too little to understand some things. In my mind i want to understand and get confused or frustrated when i dont, but in the end, it brings more peace to my soul to say just "Jesus I trust in You".

Maybe you are more into the intellectual approach. I would only say, if Christ is who you want to follow, seek His Will and His mind. Are the materialist philosophers really conformed to His mind? If you read the Gospels do they lead more to the Church or the philosophers? What is Christ Himself showing us? I am pretty certain after examining different religions and philosophies that He shows the Church and the Church shows Him. We can't separate Him from the Church. The Church is Christ mystically present in the world. He shows Himself through it and speaks through it. So the more we look at Christ, the more we see the Church... But I don't mean the human failings of people in the Church.

Edited December 10, 2015 by MarysLittleFlower

[IgnatiusofLoyola]

On 12/9/2015, 6:23:15, marigold said:

 

CS Lewis talks about reading the Gospels during his conversion experience and realising, 'I've spent my whole life studying fiction, and this is not fiction.'

Marigold, I'm sure you already know this, but in case others don't realize it, C.S. Lewis was not a Roman Catholic. His conversion was from atheism to Christianity.

That said, C.S. Lewis WAS what I would call an "Anglo-Catholic" or what might have been called a Tractarian several decades earlier. For example, he believed in transubstantiation (as do I), but not all Anglicans do. Many of his beliefs were in line with Roman Catholic beliefs, although he never converted.

I'm always very pleased when I see C.S. Lewis quoted in Roman Catholic articles, because (I hope) the author realizes that C.S. Lewis was not Roman Catholic, but was, nonetheless, a brilliant writer of both fiction and nonfiction, and perhaps just as importantly, extremely wise, and his writings are relevant to both Roman Catholics and non-Catholics.

[marigold]

54 minutes ago, IgnatiusofLoyola said:

Marigold, I'm sure you already know this, but in case others don't realize it, C.S. Lewis was not a Roman Catholic. His conversion was from atheism to Christianity.

That said, C.S. Lewis WAS what I would call an "Anglo-Catholic" or what might have been called a Tractarian several decades earlier. For example, he believed in transubstantiation (as do I), but not all Anglicans do. Many of his beliefs were in line with Roman Catholic beliefs, although he never converted.

I'm always very pleased when I see C.S. Lewis quoted in Roman Catholic articles, because (I hope) the author realizes that C.S. Lewis was not Roman Catholic, but was, nonetheless, a brilliant writer of both fiction and nonfiction, and perhaps just as importantly, extremely wise, and his writings are relevant to both Roman Catholics and non-Catholics.

As someone said to me, 'Everyone claims him.'