Living Divided

I am a Beloved Daughter of the Most High God.

But I rarely feel like I am.

I attribute this in large part to the fact that my experience of Christianity is so muddled up with the pressure to perform. While scripture says that God calls me ‘very good’ and ‘masterpiece,’ I so often come away from church feeling very much the opposite. Overwhelmed by a long list of rules to keep and an exhausting checklist I can never seem to finish, my experience of church leaves me feeling trapped, anxious, and unsafe. And increasingly hopeless that anything will ever change there.

But I recently felt a spark of hope ignited in me as I read the end of Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach. Palmer gave words to my frustration: I am living a divided life. Complicit in a system I believe to be wrong. And it is killing my heart.

This past weekend, I attended a retreat through Courage and Renewal, an organization started by Parker Palmer to support people in their journey toward wholeness. I was blessed with 48 hours among others intentionally seeking a quiet, gentle wellness of their souls. There, among them, I found a definitive answer to the spiritual question that has been nagging me all of my life: Is this high-pressure, soul-deforming spirituality (if you can even call it spirituality) really all there is?

The answer turns out to be No.

Most assuredly not.