EVERYONE'S PATCHWORK QUILT SPIRITUALITY MUST BE UNIQUE

I have been collecting quotes for sometime that point to the fact that each of us need to develop our own, one-of-a-kind spirituality. Some of the best follow:


"Asking important questions is far more important than answering them, and of course no one can ask your questions for you, far less answer them."

[from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in his book, Jewish With Feeling, (c) 2005]

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"Only you can decide for you. That doesn't mean that you don't listen to others input or advice, but it's really up to oneself after all, isn't it?"

[from Lama Surya Das in his book Make Me One with Everything  (c)2015]

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"Quakers may have been the most faithful to the wisdom of Jesus. Believing that everyone has the ability to experience the love and leadership of God and that no ecclesiastical authority has to mediate or direct that experience..."

[from Robin R. Myers in Saving Jesus from the Church (c) 2009]

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After reading William James book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, the great basketball coach Phil Jackson realized "that mystical experience didn't have to be a big production...and he experienced a quiet feeling of inner peace...(he) no longer felt compelled to run from my (Pentecostal) past or cling to it out of fear. I could take from it what worked for me and let the rest go. I could also explore other traditions more fully without feeling as if I was committing a major sacrilege against God and family."

[from Phil Jackson in his autobiography, Sacred Hoops. This is one of the best descriptions of how a person develops their own patchworkquilt spirituality.]

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"The ultimate authority of my life is not the Bible;

it is not confined between the covers of a book.

It is not something written by men and frozen in time.

It is not from a source outside myself.

My ultimate authority is the divine voice in my own soul.  Period.

[from Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd]

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And finally, a description of what it feels like to live with your own version of a patchwork quilt spirituality from How to Pray When You're Pissed at God by Ian Punnett (c) 2013:

"I carry my faith and my desire to understand the mysteries of life with me everywhere I go...

Like anybody, I struggle and succeed in equal spurts.

Mine is a tattered faith...

I wear my faith like an old corduroy jacket that has patches on the elbows and scars all over it from my haphazard mending...

I often use my faith as a blanket when I'm lounging under a tree...

My faith-jacket has coffee stains, is hopelessly wrinkled...

Even so, after all these years it keeps me warm and protected.

                                                           ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And so the process of developing a patchwork quilt spirituality continues...

PRAYER, QUESTIONS AND MISSING GOD

I need to share some gems from my readings earlier today:

                                                                  PRAYER_


[from a sermon by Nancy Petty at Pullen Memorial Church on May 29, 2016, entitled:
"A Contest of the Gods" (I Kings 18): ]

"Prayer is our most inner and outer longing, desires, hopes and hurts reaching out to that something that is within us and beyond us for understanding and comfort and peace."

{Ty thought: so my patchwork quilt spirituality is a prayer...}


                                                               QUESTIONS

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...
Live the questions now."
                                                            -- Rainer Maria Rilke



                                                            MISSING GOD

[from a post by "Melody" of her poem "Missing God"on Tarrin Nicole McDonald's website mysoulcoaching.com:]

                                         I don't remember
                                         Her voice
                                         but sometimes
                                         in the mountains
                                         I think I hear
                                         an echo
                                         of the flute
                                         She played.
                                          

QUILTER'S POEM: LOVE IS A QUILT--A QUILT IS LOVE

Love is a quilt--a quilt is love...

   Both love and a quilt should be:

      Soft enough to comfort you,

         Bright enough to cheer you,

             Generous enough to enfold you,

             Light enough to let you move freely,

        Strong enough to withstand adversity,

    Durable enough to last a lifetime,

And given gladly, from the heart.    

                                       --Author unknown

CAFETERIA CHRISTIANITY

     This morning's edition (6/02/16) of Baptist News Global had a link to an article by Kate Blanchard from Religious Dispatches (May/June 2016) entitled "Cafeteria Christianity in the Age of Social Media." The title caught my attention because I enjoy a cafeteria where I can see all the selections and decide for myself what I want--and its obvious connection to patchwork quilt spirituality.

     The article references a Baylor study that found young people exposed to social media are more likely to agree that it is "OK for someone of your religion to also practice other religions." Professor Blanchard concluded that "despite the best efforts of those who would make their traditions an all-or-nothing proposition, human beings have gone on picking and choosing, if perhaps never quite as unabashedly as young Americans in the 21st century."

     I can't remember when I first heard the warning that you can't "cherry-pick" what you believe.
Maybe it was the fundamentalist church of my childhood where we were indoctrinated with the idea that if the Bible contained any error, then it was all false. Or maybe it was in seminary where we were taught that theology had to be "systematic."

     All I know is that over the years, I have "cherry-picked' what made sense and worked for me...and in my experience in sharing with others, I have found that many do the same. The problem is that most organized religion prohibits (or at least discourages) doing that.

     Part of my purpose in this blog is to promote the fact that we are free to "cherry-pick" what we believe from the religious "cafeteria." And we need to exercise that freedom and choose for ourselves
what we actually believe. As Lama Surya Das advises in his delightful book, Make Me One With Everything: [follow] "your own conscience, because only you can decide for you."

PS: This freedom to pick and choose is a process. As the Apostle Paul wrote, "When I was a child,

I thought as a child; but when I became an adult, I put away childish things."