Faith Evolving: A Patchwork Journey                                   

Trish McBride 2005

 

Introduced by Adrienne Thompson

 

This book is exactly what it calls itself – a patchwork. Like everyone Trish has a bag-full of memories and experiences – in her case collected over 60 odd years of living. In this book she has pulled them out of the bag, spread them out, sorted and selected and arranged, then stitched them together in a colourful, meaningful pattern.

 

Trish says in her preface that the idea for this book arose from a comment that there are few  longitudinal studies of spiritual development. Having been writing over most of her adult life she realised that the stories and articles she had produced through the years of living and working her faith gave the ‘inside story' of one woman's growing, changing faith.

 

So the first section of the book entitled ‘Clothes-line Theology' offers reflections from a time of life when Trish was mother of a large young family, fully involved in her Catholic Parish and Charismatic prayer group, encountering God as Father and Redeemer and Life-giving Spirit and responding to him with love and devotion.

 

The second section of the book is called simply ‘After That'. Following the sudden death of her husband Trish had to care for her family as a solo parent. She worked as an industrial chaplain, she did some formal study of theology and ministry and she wrestled with the silence and absence of God. So the pieces from this period ask questions, challenge assumptions. In particular Trish began to experience God beyond the male images offered by a patriarchal church.

 

The third and final section is named Turangawaewae. After the anguish of the middle years – not only widowhood, but abuse by a clergyman to whom she went for support; and leaving the church which had been her home, Trish has come through to a place of integration and wholeness. She doesn't label herself as either Christian or non Christian. She joyfully experiences God as female, and male, and non-human. And she shares not only her experience but disciplined thinking about her experience integrated with theology – her own and that of other theologians.

 

The book is a patchwork of kinds of writing: poems, articles, personal experience. Many of the poems are also prayers, love-songs to God, love-words from God. There are a few stories and parables. There are articles written for a particular time and place which yet have resonance for today. A few random examples: a poem about the painful reality of not grieving for her husband's death; a powerful recounting of how a woman (Trish) finds the courage to confront her abuser; some measured and careful articles about aspects of Christian (specifically Catholic) theology and practice from contraception to sexual abuse by clergy. I think I personally most appreciate the reflections that come out of an experience: healing at a retreat for example.

 

Because it's a patchwork different people will enjoy and appreciate different ‘patches' more than others; or enjoy them in different moods and at different times. Anyone interested in Fowler's Stages of Faith will certainly find them exemplified here. People complacent about church will find here stories written in sadness and anger exposing institutionalised violence and abuse. People struggling with church and faith may find new windows of hope and possibility.

 

Thanks, Trish, for the skill and creativity with which you share your patchwork journey.