Matthew 7:7

A little over a week ago, I was asked by a coworker why I attend church each Sunday. Implicit in this question were several others regarding the nature of my spirituality. These are the questions I am often asked by those that know or are getting to know me: "How could you be a Christian; isn't it illogical?" "How can you justify support of organized religion?" "...especially now, when we are quickly becoming a theocracy, crushing freedom under the foot of the religious right?!?"
In response, allow me to tell my (hopefully brief) story and then relate some other insights.
I grew up attending church at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Jamestown, New York because my maternal grandfather was the minister there. I loved the ritual, the huge stone cathedral, the community and the sight of my grandfather delivering sermons in his purple and green robes in a cloud of incense. By the time I was in Junior High, we had moved to Cincinnati and we attended Indian Hill Episcopal-Presbyterian Church and my grandfather had passed away. An insatiable need to learn the truth led me to Taoist thought at fourteen and it seemed that my experience of God had found expression in the philosophy of Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi. Having been confirmed twice in the Episcopalian church was not enough to hold on to any allegiance I may have once had to Christian doctrine. I stayed active in the church during high school, though, as it was the meeting center for one of the communities to which I belonged (if only superficially.)
Flash forward to November of 2002, nearly 19 years since my enlightenment in Tao. I was employed at the local university medical center, in a middle-management position, drowning in bureaucracy. My mother had passed away, my father had remarried and I was married and had a son.
I hated my job. I was expected to do the work of six people and supervise fourteen employees that were once my peers, making that role all the more difficult. I was miserable and bringing it home. My taoist beliefs, confirmed and strengthened by empirical understanding, had failed to insulate and comfort as it had so many times before. I was heading to a very dark place; a place I'd been before and never wanted to see again. Out of desperation one evening, I fell to my knees and prayed. My relationship with God has always been deeply personal, but for too many years, it was also adversarial. I asked God to give me a sign that there was reprieve from my misery and hopefully see it within God's gracious nature to bestow such a mercy upon my wretched soul. I specifically asked for a sign that was big, bold and hard to miss because I am a clueless idiot. If such an obvious sign was not the way it worked, I requested that God teach me to see the subtle, everyday signs. Well, in January of 2003, after a subtle change in my general outlook had taken place, I received not just one of those gifts, but both. God blessed me with the employment that I now enjoy, changing my life immeasurably. But I was also blessed with the ability to see the small signs (I refer to them as lessons, now) as well.
Now, I am well aware of my part in getting this job, but "God helps those who help themselves" right? Besides, who's to say that EVERYTHING I do, say and think isn't guided or directly controlled by God....but that's for a "theology of the tortoise" post.
So, in the context of my new relationship with God, I decided to make the church that we had been attending since Laura was "born again" my new community in Christ. Unfortunately, this all occured just months before our church became national news for having split wide open due to the ordination of an openly gay bishop in the Northeast. So, we took about a year away to heal and just recently returned.
Anyhow, since I drafted this post on Monday and I am just now editing it for posting, I am going to stop here and continue with related topics at another time.