Not everyone treads the same path of faith

Sue Westwind, Prairie Goddess Ministry, Jefferson County:

“Spirituality” doesn’t count my induction into Catholicism at birth, fear and loathing in parochial school, then a blind agnosticism through the slow dwindling of ’60s idealism at large.

Spirituality came later one night under a full moon in the Flint Hills. I was nearly 30 years old when I apprehended the Goddess as the Earth alive, a force of mother-love that clarified the sacred interconnectedness of all things. This set me on fire.

With spirituality in full swing, the closest label I could embrace was Wiccan. A witch, I learned from history, was a wise woman or man who once served their community with herbal healing and midwifery, a Native European shaman in touch with the nature spirits.

Now, more than 20 years later, no label fits.

Generic pagan, I suppose, a Goddess-woman with Buddhist leanings – bulky to say, hard to explain. I’m no shaman, though still on fire about the Divine Feminine – even as metaphor she is a powerful image for healing this planet.

But I’ve grown tired of the New Age Me-fest, egos that mistake their rabid desires for a spiritual path. I still love sacred dance under a bright moon but can be just as moved sitting in meditation.

So I surrender more. And pray. For things small and profound. For patience with my kids, clarity with my spouse. For the self-love to exercise and eat right. For peace and justice, and preservation of the wild. My greatest longing is to be mindful of the sacred in the daily, ordinary things. It’s difficult.

But I so look forward to considering this question again, another 20 years down the road!

– Send e-mail to Sue Westwind at suewestwind@yahoo.com.

Longer life means more life experiences

Doug Heacock, contemporary worship leader, Lawrence Free Methodist Church, 3001 Lawrence Ave.:

If there is an upside to growing older (besides the senior discounts that are just around the corner for me), it is probably this: The longer I have lived, the more hard times and difficulties I have experienced in life, and each of those experiences has been an opportunity for God to demonstrate to me that he can be trusted.

I believe that God wants us to trust him, perhaps above all else. The Scripture says that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and the only time in the Gospel stories where we see Jesus really impressed by someone – the only time when he seems to be saying, Wow! Would you look at that!” – it is because of the faith of a Roman centurion (see Matthew 8:5-13).

The rough places in our journey through life are opportunities for the testing, exercising and stretching of our faith in God. The apostle James advises us to greet hard times and trials with joy, because the testing of our faith develops perseverance, which is a mark of maturity (see James 1:2-4). I confess that I haven’t arrived at the place where I instinctively think that every trouble that comes my way is an occasion for joy, but I’ve been around long enough to see God turn things that looked really bad at the time into something really good. If I’m paying attention when those things happen, I am reminded again: God can be trusted.

– Send e-mail to Doug Heacock at doug.heacock@gmail.com.