I know what I know

It is the day after Christmas and I am enjoying it by myself. A bit of picking up around the house this morning, a couple of chapters of New Seeds of Contemplation this afternoon, maybe a movie this evening if the DVD player will work (it has a ghost defect that has it working or not with no apparent cause one way or the other).

My previous post, The Christmas Gift, has opened up a wonderful mish-mash of thoughts over the past few days that have quite unexpectedly led me to some enlightening, and interesting and, occasionally, troubling insights into myself.

I have come to a, hence unknown, understanding that I am full of experiences that have lost little of their impact or immediacy as my life has moved along it's path. For all of my smartness, or intelligence, for all of the gifts of understanding that being well-read has brought, I do not think of myself as being much of a thinker.

Hmmm, I'm saying this poorly. What informs my interactions with the world is not what I know in the sense of what I have read or heard, but what I know in the sense of what I have experienced.

There is that lovely line in the Gospel of Luke: "And Mary kept all of these things, reflecting on them in her heart." (NAB)

I seems to me that my development as a spiritual person has been forged in the crucible of experience rather than through the accumulation of knowledge. Whether those experiences are rock my world events like the births of my kids and the deaths of my parents and of my girl's mom, or moments in contemplative prayer, or the day to day happenings that take me out of time as I am touched by others, the result is the same. The experiences become a part of me and I keep them, and increasingly reflect on them in, my heart.

The Education for Ministry program at St. George, has brought this knowledge of self into full flower. After four years of taking the program and half a year of mentoring and all that I have learned in that time, I believe less of our creeds than I would have thought possible while remaining a Christian, yet my faith is greater than it has ever been.

Most of the touchstones of my earlier faith have become quite insignificant.

Was Jesus God? did he do miracles? did he rise from the dead? do you need to be a Christian to be saved? is there life after death? are heaven or hell places?

To all of these and more I am inclined to say no, or at best, it doesn't matter.

Yet for that, I know that my Christian tradition has led me to experiences where I can say..I believe in one God, creator and steward of heaven and earth, most clearly revealed to me through Jesus and existent on earth through this glorious Spirit that invades our hearts and enables our actions.

It seems that in today's world right belief is required to be based on proofs. Whether those proofs are scientific or apologetic or charismatic is not important as long as you can shore up your beliefs with something that can be dressed up as a proof.

I guess that I am out of step. I know what I know to be true. It is a funny world...