Out of Sorts: Making Sense of an Evolving Faith

by Sarah Bessey

remember crying out to God once while in the midst of what I called my wilderness, what Ricoeur calls the critical distance, because I was longing to “go back.” It was somehow easier when life and faith and God were an exercise in rule making and literalism, in black-and-white cause and effect.

Whether it’s in our relationship with God or with our own families, at some point we find that it is time to sort. It’s time to figure out what we need to keep, what we need to toss, and what we need to reclaim. And we need to tell our stories in order to move forward. Every ending is also a new beginning.