Inner Knowing

From my earliest years I have been aware of God in some sense. I was bought up in an amazing, evangelical Christian home where my parents continued to explore, change and grow in their faith as well as very much live it. My brother, sister and I had a very ecumenical upbringing, tasting many varieties of church – there was a period of a couple of years sometime between 11 and my mid-teens when we wouldn't know which church we were going to until the Saturday evening or Sunday morning – it could be the Anglican, Pentecostal, Brethren, Methodist, United Reformed, the local “house church”, Baptist… I guess as I consequence I kinda learnt to get something out of whatever presentation or persuasion – or maybe I just learnt to be with God wherever. We also went to summer camps where we learnt about and encountered the Holy Spirit – a new area that my parents wanted to be open minded about and explore, but they cautioned us to think about it and decide for ourselves. When I look back I'm grateful for that wisdom and gift, coupled with the core belief or knowing of God that I had, it served to protect me and give me space to constantly question even if only in my most private moments. My inner knowing or core belief in God mixed in to greater or lesser extent with whatever teaching, thinking or feelings in Christianity and church culture I was involved with.

 

In  my  late  teens,  my  attendance  at  church was somewhat erratic, although I did settle for a while at an Anglican Church in a neighbouring village, where I was able to express and explore my faith independently of family. At college I attended what I suppose you'd call, a charismatic house-church – this was separated into six smaller congregations that met in local schools, and once a month we'd all get together. The congregation I went to was probably the most alternative of the six, with a real mix of personalities, professions and backgrounds.  It was a growing, community spirited type of place, quite special and definitely human. Then suddenly the leadership decided that God wanted to bring us all back together and the smaller communities were scrapped in favour of one BIG meeting. A number of us expressed our concerns about this really being the “will of God” and it was the beginning of the end for quite a few of us who gradually drifted away to other churches, to form alternative groups or from church and faith altogether. Throughout all this I kept asking questions of God and my faith – I can only describe it as an ongoing monologue, although I didn't feel my questions were simply disappearing into an empty and unresponsive void: I'd tell God when life was crap; when it was good; talk about not being sure I believed at all; say that I didn't know or understand how faith worked; that I didn't know if He was male, what about mother God, did He have a gender at all? talk about decisions I was making that “weren't right”, and query christians' attitudes and church teaching around all sorts of things, often pondering the differences between myself, and my attitudes to other people which didn't seem to fit with what I was taught “scripture said” or “Christians should/shouldn't do”.

 

I watched a number of friends and acquaintances who had been “converted” as teenagers become increasingly angry and disillusioned with church and faith. They felt betrayed and deceived when they began to realise that what they'd been sold in church and the realities of their lives just didn't stack up. Add to this a complete lack of understanding and support from the church (or even a more informal gathering that had evolved) concerning everything from mental illness, to disillusionment, to homosexuality, to….. and their rejection of church and faith was perfectly reasonable and sensible.

 

Church became less and less relevant -  I didn't relate to it at all, none of it: the worship; prayer; structure; premises; biblical interpretation; the neatness of it all….. I stopped going to church. Occasionally I'd wonder if I should try and find another church to go to but I didn't want to. My faith remained quiet and rooted deep within me; I don't know how to explain it – I think it might be akin to hibernation. There was a slow, dull beat resonating from within of which I was barely conscious, and my knowledge of it grew, through nothing more spiritually pro-active than living. Being apart from Christian culture my faith grew - there's something about getting back to basics, removing all the rubbish and realising that your core belief/inner knowing is very much intact and alive – it validates it and brings it to life.

 

Armed with this vulnerable, growing awareness of inner knowing/faith, life went and got pretty shit – I got divorced, and became clinically depressed. To anyone who hasn't been there take it from me depression is definitely real, unbelievably painful, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy; words fail me. It is extremely scary not to be able to cope with even the simplest tasks of life like getting out of bed, going to the supermarket, driving to your parents/friends– the energy required to put one foot in front of the other is quite literally superhuman, and you honestly don't think it'll be possible for you to do it. During this time, somehow, my inner knowing stayed with me (albeit still in hibernation phase), I didn't get angry at God – my shitty life wasn't God's fault – I wasn't amazingly aware of God's support or love or presence, but in the counselling, in the continued frank monologues I used to throw God's way, in the engagement with the pain and brokenness I grew and my belief in that inner knowing grew – and in the midst of shit, God.

 

So now what? Well I haven't regularly attended church for over 12 years, and I have no desire to do so, although I'm happy and comfortable to attend with friends and family from time to time, and I occasionally hanker after going to mass and the space that liturgy provides. Whatever my faith does and will look like it, and however it expresses itself, it has grown from a traditional, evangelical Christian context, and although that can be a handicap it is a great gift too. I enjoy engaging with others at Spirited Exchanges and hearing and seeing the different journeys that people are on – there is so much to be gleaned, so many gems to discover. I'm still learning, growing, and engaging with life, faith, and my spirituality and I'm learning to trust that knowing more and more. I believe in integrity and being true to self and getting to know myself better is part of the journey of knowing God more, it's a journey that my spiritual director is accompanying me on for the moment and her companionship is immensely precious and quite literally priceless.

 

I can't say I get it (belief/God/spirituality/faith); I like and relate to what Mike Riddell says in his book Sacred Journey.

 

“Other people might argue whether God exists or not; I've never been allowed that luxury. Somehow I've always had an awareness of Someone looking over my shoulder. ….. From time to time I curse God or demand explanations. All I am saying is that I can't imagine that I'm shouting my questions into an empty and unresponsive void. My experience of living prevents me from either atheism or agnosticism, as attractive as they might seem at times.”

 

Is it possible I'm deceiving myself – yeah sure – but I suspect that's not the truth of it. I increasingly trust the knowing within me, that feeling in my guts  - I trust the journey, myself, God, and the process, life. The mystical, the ying and yang, paradox, the unknowable and yet just tangible – it captures my imagination, energises and enthuses me – it is the stuff of living, the adventure I have been made for.                                                                                                     

                                                                                               Anon

 

[The author is a woman in her late thirties who loves Latin music and dancing, is learning to sail, is a bit of an adrenaline sport junkie and is unlikely to decline fine wine or good food! For a living she masquerades as a scientist involved in medical research.]