Returning: Contemplating why or why not


To decide to do something or to decide to do nothing is still a decision to be owned. I previously mentioned that back on the Feast of Pentecost in 2019, I made the conscious decision to step away from a lifetime of having gone to regular mass and participation in my local Catholic parish. While most all of the reasons comprise the earlier blog posts, the main reason was to gain clarity and perspective by stepping away from it all for an unspecified season. Since that time, I've learned that such decisions are an essential and life-determining reality that can be understood through the "heroes journey." Joseph Campbell delineated this circular path from a multitude of world cultural and religious traditions that formed the synthesis that all human beings must enter into and depart during their lifetimes in order to live authentically to who we were created to be. To be specific, this for me was my "Crossing the Threshold" moment. 

I'm unsure that I've gone through all the subsequent stages that lead to "returning home" as the circle path indicates, but I can attest that I've expended a great deal of mental energy when contemplating my choices. I've found sympathetic fellow travelers while also watching some take leave of my company. What I've found to be most important is that I keep reckoning with the reasons that impelled me to take this unexpected journey. The deep questions that linger are, "what needs to happen for you to return? Do I even want to return? How would returning prove beneficial for me at this stage of my spiritual journey into Divine Love?

Though I differ substantially from the expressed way of being holy that is flowing from the bishop and his cadre of supporters, I'm getting past the need for them to change as a condition of any possible return. Part of me does desire to see myself reconditioned weekly through the shower of the mass and yet the thought of it feels like acquiescing to some parental inner voice that bids me to step back in line, settle down and to stop insisting on change. 

This may sound harsh but over the past few years, I've come to see an immense wideness in the Christ and in how the Spirit flows wildly through all things. To reenter the parochial tunnel as a weekly way of accessing and attempting to experience this wideness and wildness seems constricting at present. Until I can shed this notion of seeing what I left as more of some spiritual prophylactic instead of a pathway forward into my own unfolding into Divine Love, then I suppose I'll remain in the woods each Sunday morning.  

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