Lexie Carroll’s Reviews > Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith > Status Update

Handle your old ways with gentleness and compassion. Even among the ancient paths, there is more room to wander than you were told. There are so many beautiful, complicated, twisty, weird old ways to love God and love people. It might look differently than it did, and it might be a bit outside the lines, but it’s an old path and you belong on it, too.

As we rummage through what we believe over time, we may throw out beliefs, practices and opinions that don’t serve us anymore. It turns out that some things we once scored are actually precious to us; we may be surprised to be re-enchanted by their beauty from a new vantage point. We aren’t required to toss everything we were taught as “worthless” or “toxic”. It’s okay to bring some things with you.

If we’ve been privileged, centered & empowered, we’ve also been told that our way of reading scripture, doing church & moving through the world is the right one. And that isn’t always true. We still belong- don’t mistake me- we’re still beloved & capable & invited. But we must remember that privilege & power are rarely the best tools for discerning the truth.

Discernment of good fruit is essential in the wilderness, especially when we’ve spent a lifetime denying our own inner knowing in service of someone else’s idea of the greater good. Many of us have spent too long being told rotten fruit we’re eating is actually good. Our discerners are a little messed up, aren’t they? For too long we’ve been expected to toe the party line of our church without question.

“More & more, I crave being part of a congregation, a group with whom I can gather to reflect & contemplate, to hear how others have solved this puzzling problem of existence. Most of all, I want them to hold me to account, to keep on track, to urge me towards doing good. Holding spiritual beliefs on my own is lonely. I want to be part of a group that makes me return to ideas that bewilder & challenge me.” K. May

We often have a real yearning to idealize the early Church, but most of Paul’s letters (and so much of our NT) exists because of all the ways the church was not living up to its ideals. The one consistent thing in the Church through the ages is messy people. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Church nowadays continues to balance precariously between our ideals and our realities.

Repentance isn’t just cognitive or emotional, done right it is an embodied atonement. “Repentance is not a one-time event involving expressions of apology and forgiveness. It is the gateway to moral repair and to new life, that is, the gateway to conversion.” (Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes)
Repentance is answering the call to reconciliation (reparation) and transformation.

Repentance is actually a beautiful, life-giving reorientation toward God’s good path of flourishing with ourselves, our neighbors, and our world. Metanoia is the changing of a mind that leads to the changing of a life. This generous view of repentance reminds us that sin, at the core, is a turning away from Love. Repentance is turning back toward that path of Love- continual reorientation to Love.

When we say “I don’t know yet,” it can feel like an admission of weakness or ignorance at first. It’s actually wisdom. You’re learning to let things settle, to let some answers emerge over time and other questions fade away. Maybe what you really need is to practice loving-kindness and the gift of time. This is the slower path, and there are no shortcuts, no rewards for being done first [or knowing it all].

Allowing yourself to finally ask the questions you’ve denied your own soul is an act of love. There is uncelebrated humility in admitting that we don’t know. Steer into that which leaves you asking questions instead of memorizing answers. See the hand of God beckoning in the invitation of your life. Don’t give in to pressure to domesticate the wild, unknowable possibilities of God, this world & your own soul.