LEAVING HOME

I’m off!
I must leave the political and ethical compromises that have corrupted the
faith of my Jesus.
I must leave the stifling theology, the patriarchal structures.
I must leave the enduring prejudices based on our God-given humanity, the
colour of my skin, my gender or how my sexual orientation is practiced.
I must leave the mentality that encourages anyone to think that our
doctrines are unchangeable.
I must leave the belief of those who insist that our sacred texts are
without error.
I must leave the God of miracle and magic.
I must leave the promises of certainty, the illusion of possessing the true
faith.
I must leave behind the claims of being the recipient of an unchallengeable
revelation.
I must leave the neurotic religious desire to know that I am right, and to
play at being God.
I must leave the claim that every other pathway to God is second-rate, that
fellow Hindu
searchers in India, Buddhists in China and Tibet, Muslims in the Middle
East and the
Jews of Israel are inadequate.
I must leave the pathway that tells me that all other directions will get me
lost.
I must leave the certain claim that my Jesus is the only way to God for
everyone.
I must leave the ultimate act of human folly that says it is.
I must leave the Church, my home.
I must leave behind my familiar creeds and faith-symbols.
I can no longer stay in an unliveable place.
I must move to a place where I can once again sing the Lord’s song.
I must move to where my faith-tradition can be revived and live on.
I must move to a place where children don’t tell me what I believe is
unbelievable but tell
me they can believe what I believe.
I must move to a place where they are not playing at moving the deck chairs
on the decks
of an ecclesiastical Titanic.
I can never leave the God experience.
I can never walk away from the doorway into the divine that I believe I have
found in the one
I call the Christ and acknowledge as “my Lord.”
I must move to dangerous and religiously threatening places.
I must move to where there is no theism, but still God.
I’m off! But to where, God only knows.

David Keighley, An English Anglican Priest