I know that I have waaaaaaaaay too much to do when I get the urge to redo this journal. I’ll redo it when I get back from California after the wedding.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday, the president of our seminary talked about his faith. I’m not going to go into it here because I’m not sure Dr. Ramseth would be OK with it. (Let’s just say that it was really interesting.) It made me think a lot about my own faith and how I express it. Since I’ve finished the narrative part of my call experience (yes… there is a story within that story just as Lutherans have a canon within a canon), I thought I’d go into how I view my faith and how it impacts my life.<\/p>\n
Like Leenie, I am a very liturgical person. I can survive almost anywhere but liturgy, especially the liturgy of the Episcopal church, centers me. I am not sure why it centers me this way — perhaps it is the fact that it is a fairly orderly way of doing worship and the J in me loves it. Perhaps it is the fact that I identify it with home because my home church throughout college was an Episcopal church. Perhaps it is my conditioning because daily chapel is *always* liturgical without many exceptions.<\/p>\n
My prayer life is varied and I never know how many times a day I will pray. Part of it is that there is always the question of what counts as prayer. Does Liturgical Choir practice count as prayer? Does Worship Team practice count as prayer? Does this journal count as prayer? Does the communal prayer done in Chapel count as part of my personal time? I’ve liked the idea that all we do should be a prayer and that our actions should all glorify God. I believe that praying by my bed at night is just as important as running through a field of wildflowers and drinking in God’s beauty and rejoicing. I believe that a cathedral ring in a redwood forest is just as beautiful and reverent as a place of worship as a quiet stone church in Ireland and both have wonderful opportunities for prayer — one for the majesty of God’s creation and the other for the inspiration given to the hands that hewed the stones and cast the glass in the church.<\/p>\n
How do I view God? I view God as my Heavenly Father. I do not think that the Father aspect of God is necessarily supreme above the other Persons of the Trinity but I do pray to a Heavenly Father. Heavenly Mother doesn’t cut it for me because Jesus never used it to address God while He was on earth and I’m all about following His example. I have a loving relationship with my Abba (not the Swedish rock band — the Hebrew diminutive for “Father” which is like saying “Daddy”) and my resting place is in His arms.<\/p>\n
The Eucharist is high on my list of things. Tonight at the midweek service, Pastor Tom asked me to be one of the people distributing the bread. I was going to take the cup and let him do the bread since he was the pastor but he let me do the bread instead. It really brought home the fact that the bread *is* the Body of Christ given for us because God loves us so very much. It also felt like he was affirming my call to ministry. It just still amazes me that God loved us so much that He gave His only begotten Son so that those who believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I know that I have waaaaaaaaay too much to do when I get the urge to redo this journal. I’ll redo it when I get back from California after the wedding. Last Thursday, the president of our seminary talked about … Continue reading