And something else

And there's something else I've been having a hard time not thinking about.

Yesterday I ran across a blog where a guy who lives in the neighborhood was recently wandering past our seminary and wrote about it.

An interesting thing after I've been so careful not to name where I am to retain some anonymity to run across someone talking about the neighborhood and what one of our buildings looks like, etc. He seems to have some deep questions about faith/religion, death, and also there seemed to be a tone of seeking, searching for "something."

I can't shake that in his questions to himself about a dead bird on the sidewalk, a little further on something written in the cement, and other ponderings that there are echoes of some of my own questions and where I was almost 9 years ago.

From the end of April until September 1997, I sat there watching my step-dad waste away to cancer. Watching my mom become a cancer widow for the 2nd time. I had had questions and anxiety about death and what happens when we die for years, so on top of the grief and pain of losing him, this was facing and living with my worst fear day in and day out.

And then... the slow shift.

After my step-dad died I sat looking at him as we waited for hospice to come get his body. I had the distinct impression that the essence of who he had been wasn't in there any more. That I was just looking at a shell.

Digging out my Bible to look up the Lord's Prayer for his memorial, because we were trying to remember it from memory and didn't know if we had it right.

Deciding that what had me so freaked out about death was the "unknown." Rationalizing that if I figured out what I believed, then there would no longer be an "unknown" to cause me anxiety. Note: this wasn't a constant anxiety, this was something that would just kind of pop up or get triggered from time to time. My step-dad's illness, however, had caused it to get stirred up more often. That had not been fun or comfortable, so I decided I wanted to do something to lessen the chance I'd have that experience again.

Running across some TV program where a guy was talking about a book he'd written about God, and not long afterward while in a bookstore looking for a birthday gift for my Mom, just happening to run across that same book. I bought it. It was unconventional, but it got me thinking. I honestly don't know if I would have been receptive to a more conventional book about faith or God at that point.

My ex-fiance and I had been ping-ponging back and forth trying to decide if we wanted to be together, trying to make things work but so much had changed since I'd moved out and gone home to be with my family. When we finally called it quits my Bible was still floating around my stack of books, untouched, from months before. For some reason I opened it to the marked page. I didn't read far when I ran across something that seemed to fit my situation. I found it comforting.

Finally I was ready to try and face the whole God and church thing, what role if any would Christianity and God play in what I believed generally, and more specifically what I believed happens to us at death. I poked around the internet and discovered that one of the denominations that seemed like it might be most in-line with what I thought my belifs were was the one my grandparents had taken me to. I'm not sure why, but that surprised me.

I found a church. I attended a couple classes. I started attending services. A friend of mine still finds it funny that here I am in seminary when I had said that I didn't know if I would ever be one of those "every Sunday" kind of people. I did some reading. I asked the priest a lot of questions. I got a new Bible and started reading... my theory was I'm not going to trust anyone else to tell me what is in there, I need to read for myself and make my own assessment.

Along the way I started praying to God to help me. Basically, if you are there I'm open to it, but you need to help me because I don't understand. I won't go into details, I have some of them written in my journals, but the "coincidences" started. It seemed that once I was willing to go there, God started popping up all over the place. Originally I wanted to have all my questions answered before I would say for sure I believed, had faith, whatever you want to call it. But at a certain point I just couldn't ignore or deny things anymore and I had to be okay with the fact that I still had some unanswered questions. I still do. Maybe some of them will get answered here, if not, I'm hoping that they will be answered in heaven - you know the whole, now you see through a glass darkly thing.

Anyway, harkening back to some of those coincidences and some chance meetings I had in my spiritual journey and how beneficial they were... here I am preparing for the priesthood and just "happen" to somehow randomly stumble across his blog. Someone reflecting about our campus, someone with a similar tone to his musings and questions as I once had. It had me wondering, what are the odds? Am I supposed to do something about this? Try to reach out, try to listen, or ??? I really don't know, and it's too late and I'm too tired to figure it out right now. So enough musing about things this person's postings dredged up.

Maybe it's something I can pray about as I fall asleep, or maybe in the morning as I hit the snooze alarm. :)