January 2008

On the Hori­zon was launched on Jan­u­ary 13, 2007, so I cel­e­brated my “blo­giver­sary” a cou­ple of days ago.

It was a good time to stop and con­sider my blog­ging adven­tures of the past year, as well as my goals for the next, and the quote selected by Lori this week pro­vided a excel­lent foun­da­tion for my deliberations.

My blo­giver­sary also marked another anniver­sary: One year has elapsed since my lib­er­a­tion from the shack­les of mem­ber­ship in the insti­tu­tional, patri­ar­chal church. It has been the best year of my spir­i­tual life.

So many things demand our atten­tion dur­ing the day: Work, our children’s edu­ca­tional, ath­letic and social pur­suits, tend­ing to our home envi­ron­ment, our hob­bies and inter­ests. Every­where we turn we are invited to focus on some­thing other than being grate­ful for our many bless­ings. We are dared to be faith­less and dis­obe­di­ent to the Word. And nowhere did I find that to be more true than inside the walls of orga­nized religion.

The church on earth is sup­posed to be a fam­ily, the mem­bers of which, i.e., believ­ers, come together each week to wor­ship. Iron­i­cally, after a life­time of church mem­ber­ship and activ­i­ties, I have expe­ri­enced the fullest, freest and more mean­ing­ful wor­ship expe­ri­ences of my life dur­ing the past twelve months that I have not set foot inside a church building.

The rea­sons are read­ily evi­dent in the quote.

“In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spin­dle with her fin­gers. She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. When it snows, she has no fear for her house­hold; for all of them are clothed in scar­let.” ~Proverbs 31: 19 — 21~ “For­get it. I’ll par­tic­i­pâté next […]