Open Path

When the Ice Breaks- Response

By: Deshna

Adrian, thank you for your comments!  These are exactly the kind of questions I love asking.  I think for so many people it really is a matter of changing perspective.  Its very hard to think that maybe God- and therefore all the love, compassion, and wisdom- is within when for their whole life they have been told that it is outside themselves.  Jesus went inside, Buddha went there, all of our greatest teachers and prophets have spent days, months, years going within.  Yet, we were told for too long that not only is it all outside of ourselves- but that we need someone else- someone long dead- to find it.  That is a major perspective shift and very frightening.  Means someone else is responsible for all the good and all the bad that happens in our lives.  What can we do with that?  Where is the room for growth?

And in response to the last comment- we don't have to throw it out!  We can incorporate the wisdom of Jesus and all others- including the everyday teachers we come into contact with into our awareness and our path.  Everyone will always have different words, but the basics are usually the same.  Go deeper and deeper within, see no difference between you and anyone else, and do what you can to bring love and light into the universe.

When does the ice break?

By: Adrian Gibb

Hi everyone! Wonderful to be on board as a blogger and looking forward to posting all my ramblings which, hopefully, strike an accord with readers.

The first question I would like to ask on this blog stems from a discussion I had with an Anglican Rector a few years ago. We were talking about Bishop Spong, and his views on the Resurrection. This Rector suggested that Spong was on thin ice already, questioning centuries of doctrine and dogma, and he was concerned at which point the ice would break! At which point, in essence, should he cease being described as a Christian? So I thought I would conduct a bit of a Geoffey Robertson Hypothetical here, and ask you readers to imagine the following:

1) You reach the conclusion, through your searching, that you do not believe that Jesus was born of a Virgin birth.

2) You also decide that the miracles and healings described in the NT are probably not literal realities.

3) You are disinclined to believe that Jesus was God incarnate when he walked this earth.

4) You accept that there may have been a spiritual resurrection of Jesus in the minds and hearts of the disciples, but do not believe in a bodily resurrection of Christ.

5) You reject the notion of the NT being literal in any way, and see it as rather a collection of accounts and epistles by fellow followers of Christ's message.

6) You reach the final conclusion that Jesus was simply a man, engaged in a relationship with God that we can all achieve, who had a message of peace, love and social justice that resonates with you.

7) You thus decide that Jesus should have no more power or religious credence than Buddha or many of the Vedic sages.

Okay, now, has the ice broken for you? Have any of these things made it impossible for you to call yourself a Christian? If so, why? If not, why not?

Am looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Adrian Gibb

An Epic Change

By Fred Plumer

Have you noticed what an amazing time in history we are all living? I think we are a very lucky group of people to be witnessing and even participating in such incredible changes in our country and in the world. I am not referring here just to the fact that we elected our first non-Caucasian individual to the office of Presidency, although I do think that is a reflection of the shift. (Personally I am more excited about this man's character than I am about his mixed ethnic roots.) No, I am referring here to what I believe is a seismic change of epic proportions. I hope that I will be around long enough to be able to a have conversation with my grandchildren about this shift.

I think it is time to admit that this country has been on a drunken orgy of greed and consumption, fueled by sophisticated marketing, easy credit and assumption of privilege, for decades. I would like to blame it on the current administration, investment bankers, the lending institutions, the stock brokers, and the culture of entire financial institution. But in the quiet of the night, I realize that there is plenty of culpability to go around.

I think we have known for a long time that something was wrong, but as long as we could continue to buy our flat screen TVs, our SUVs, our 3,000 sq ft houses and designer jeans, few of us wanted to rock the boat. Even though it did not seem right, few of us said much as long as the "appraised value" of our over priced homes continued to go up. I am afraid that far too many of us were addicted to a cheap drug - consumerism. Too many of us were "getting high" on our "things." But we have discovered, like a lot of other addictive drugs, that we do not derive any long term happiness or contentment from our possessions. Consumerism is a lie.

I suspect that we are now going to have to go through a painful period of "withdrawal." I know of few social commentators, few economists, who believe that things are going to go back to the way they were. What we had was not real, and we discovered that the "king had no clothes," and never had clothes.

Investment banks are a thing of the past; our million dollar houses are being sold on the auction block, and cars are stacking up on the docks with no place to go. CEOs are turning down their outrageous bonuses and managing partners of hedge funds are watching trillions of dollars evaporate. The "new economy" that was being hoisted upon us by MBA grad schools for the last twenty years, is finally dead.

Please understand my family has not escaped the pain brought on by this economic collapse. I am a volunteer, living in part on a small fixed income from investments that have lost value. My wife and I have watched our meager assets diminish to a point that we know that we will have to make some significant adjustments in the future. More importantly, I am the primary caretaker for my parents, both in their mid 90's. They are living in an assisted living home since they require daily medical care. Their small trust has been reduced by 30% and we will soon have to find another way to care for them.

Sadly, as always, it will be those on the lower end of the economic ladder who will suffer the most in this economic tsunami. For some it will be tragic and we must do everything in our power to minimize their suffering.

I find it a fascinating irony that this "catastrophe" is happening during the holiday season - the time when we honor the birth of Jesus. I have wondered what Jesus would think of our typical Christmas season that represents as much as 70% annual retail sales for many of our largest retailers. I have often wondered how Jesus would have interpreted our frantic shopping during Christmas season, in the new "temples" of our society - the shopping malls. Although no one from the first century could have possibly understood our wealthy culture and social system, but it seems clear that the teachings of Jesus warn us about getting lost in our acquisitions and hoarding of our possessions and never discovering the true things of value - relationships, community, trust in the Spirit and love, for example.

But being the eternal optimist that I am, I see a silver lining in all of this. And it is not just a theoretical lining, but one based on my observations. I have heard more and more people talking about what is really important in their lives and coming to some very different conclusions than they might have a year ago. I have listened to more than one family talk about how they are going to find creative ways to do Christmas differently. They are excited about planning experiences rather than buying gifts. I recently sat with a group of friends while one of the men shared openly about the likelihood that he was going to lose his job, his pension and severance pay. It was a unique experience to hear a man be so open and candid about his situation. There was a measurable growth in the depth of the relationships of the group.

Some people are talking about getting smaller homes and simplifying their lives. Individuals in churches are working together to find ways to help those who may be the most destitute in this economic chaos. And many people are reexamining their lives and openly trying to sort out what is truly important. Somehow all of this chaos got our attention. It woke us up, in a sense, and it appears it will continue to wake us up for some time to come.

Hard as this all may be, we are bound to see changes. I believe a lot of them are going to be good. Maybe we have broken our "drug addiction" and we will have more time to meet our neighbors and find out how they are doing. Maybe we will be more sensitive to the plight of others and we will begin to take action, both politically as well as personally. Maybe we will become more compassionate and discover when we reach out to others with love, we will feel, as in the famous Leonardo DaVinci mural, that we are touching the "finger of God." We may even begin to discover God incarnate in the eyes and hearts of so many others that we missed before.

And just maybe this Christmas we will find that the real purpose of Christmas is not shopping or getting things. It is not about loud parties and street decorations. And it is not about crowded malls and Christmas bonuses. Just maybe we will discover that the real purpose of Christmas is birthing the Christ that is always within us. Maybe we will take this an opportunity to manifest the true spirit of Christ on this day and forever.

Kaila's Birth

By: Deshna

There was never a question in my mind that I wanted to do a home birth and that I wanted to do it naturally.  Not only did I always intuitively feel that it was the best thing for both my child and I, but I had also read so much on the benefits of a natural home birth and the risks and negatives of a hospital birth.  I envisioned myself going through the pain and the waves of labor in the safety and calmness of my home environment, my husband holding my naked body supporting me.  I could picture the intense pushing, the moaning, the agony even, of birthing my baby vaginally, her head crowning, being able to feel every ounce of pain and joy, being able to reach down and touch her head as she began her journey into the outside world.  I imagined pulling her out with my own hands, and bringing her slimy warm body onto my naked chest.  I was so excited to see her open and aware eyes for the first time, within those first seconds of life, to bond with her as she slowly discovered her new environment- one without bright fluorescent hospital lights, one without strangers poking her and prodding her and plopping her down on some cold sterile metal table.  It would be her new home, warm, with fresh air, blankets, and naked bodies- just like her own, with the smells of mom and dad, with special music playing.  She would not leave my body, except to the warmth and security of her Daddy’s naked chest to smell him and hear his voice and heart beat.  I knew she would want to finish her tough journey to the breast where she would be rewarded with the familiar smell of her mother, the sweet taste of my milk, and the sound of my heart.  She would have some sense of accomplishment to have done her part in the birthing experience and she would feel tired but not a drugged grogginess.  She would be clear headed and awake, until she comfortably fell asleep in the safety of my arms, knowing she was in exactly the place she should be.    I knew that the labor would be long and hard, but that I would be strong and capable.  I had no doubt that I would bring her into this world naturally no matter how hard I had to work at it. 

I even wrote a 12 page letter to my insurance company explaining to them why they should cover part, if not all, of the costs of my home birth.  In it I explained that, “my research has shown that home-births are just as safe as hospital births.  Indeed, the well-known Cochrane Database, after reviewing the published literature, concluded that ‘no empirical evidence supports the claim that hospital births are a safer option than planned homebirth.’ [i]  Study after study also shows that midwife-attended births result in better outcomes than those attended by doctors, such as the Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law which concluded that ‘low- to moderate-risk home births attended by direct-entry midwives are at least as safe as hospital births attended by either physicians or midwives.’” [ii]  I also argued that, “as a low risk pregnancy it is safer and healthier to have a home birth because a hospital birth can lead to unwanted and unnecessary interventions that can slow down or even halt the birthing process, leading to necessary interventions…”  I included research that supported the safety of homebirths and the positives of using midwives.  I also included the statement made by the former governor of California in 2000 in the California State Legislative Senate Bill 1439, “Every woman should have the right to choose her birth setting from a full range of safe options available in her community.”[iii]  I supported this data with extensive scientific research, such as the statement from the American Journal of Public Health, “home births attended by lay midwives can be accomplished as safely as, and with less intervention than, physician-attended hospital deliveries.”[iv]

This was the first time in my life that I had really taken the time to try to change the system, to go out of my way to research and write in order to try to change something that I knew was well built into our society.  People think that doctors know everything, are never wrong,  and that we need them to birth our children.  The power has been taken away from women who really should be able to birth their children however they feel is best.  Not surprisingly, I was denied support from my insurance company, but that didn’t faze me.  In my mind, using midwives during my pregnancy and birth was well worth the cost out of pocket.  I received excellent care from them during my pregnancy- far superior to the care I received from my local, insurance-covered OBGYN doctors, who saw me 3 times for a total of 15 minutes each during the nine months, and never asked my about my birth plan, my nutrition, my emotions, my family history, what kind of support I was receiving, or how I was taking care of my body.  All they did was pressure me to take tests!  I opted out of many of them, like the diabetes test, because I didn’t feel it was necessary.  I did do the ultrasound, but I spent 15 minutes in the bathroom talking to my unborn child, warning her that she would hear a loud noise, apologizing for the intrusion, and explaining that I was doing this because I wanted to make sure she was doing okay in there.

I stayed clear of any medications during my pregnancy for headaches or nausea, ate mostly organic fresh foods, didn’t drink coffee or alcohol except for a glass of wine a couple of times, exercised, meditated, did yoga, took my vitamins, drank tons of water, and limited the simple carbohydrates and sugars from my diet.  Both my husband and I sang and talked to our baby and developed a strong bond with her while she was in the womb.  I felt great about my pregnancy, in spite of its challenges.

Needless to say, when the day my labor began, I was extremely excited, a little nervous, but feeling strong and confident in my decisions.  I began latent labor at 7am on a Sunday morning.  I rested, drank water and tried to eat some healthy carbohydrates for energy.  I walked around, making breakfast and getting the house ready.  At 3pm the midwife stopped by, checked my dilation, the heart rates, and the position of the baby.  At that point we thought that she was angled slightly in a diagonal position, but we were pretty sure that she would turn when the labor began.  The midwife said to call her when active labor began.   She said I would know because I wouldn’t be laughing and talking anymore.  I said, “hey maybe this is just going to be the way I am during labor” and she just smiled and said, “Call me.” 

Active labor began at 4pm and I knew right away…I got up off the couch and headed to my bed, where I laid down and closed my eyes, breathing and moaning.  I could smell the fresh vegetable soup that my dad had made in my kitchen, I could sense the presence of other people as the midwives showed up and my parents walked around, I could feel my husbands hands on my face and body, massaging and speaking comforting words, but I was not really there anymore- I was in some other world where just my baby and I existed.  I remember walking in the hallway past my mom and she said, “hey, baby, are we losing you?”  And I opened my eyes slightly, and nodded, yes…I was gone, into the sacred world of birthing where only goddesses exist, time has no meaning, and even the pain seemed distant although very present.  It is an experience that no one can imagine or explain until you are there yourself.  It is similar to floating on the ocean waves except the incredible strength of the waves go through you instead of under you and you can feel them ripping through your body.  You really have no control over when they come or how you respond, you just feel it and try to go with it rather than fight it, using its strength to push you forward, to move you to the next wave.  I remember my voice wanted to be high and whiney because of the intense pain and the midwife said, “Deshna you are wasting all your energy by letting it come upward out of you, take that same energy and push it down, moan, low and deep into yourself.”  Once I started doing that it got easier in a way and more natural, like the animal in me was taking over.  Later, my neighbors told me that it sounded like a wild animal giving birth. 

I squatted and walked and did yoga poses to open my pelvis.  I got in the birth tub when the pain came into my back, my husband in there with me, holding me as the pain rippled through me.  I started pushing around 8pm and by midnight I was almost 10 centimeters dilated.  I thought I was coming to the end.  The only problem was that Kaila’s head was still at a diagonal, so that the longest part of her head- from front to back-was trying to come out my narrow opening.  From the pressure, my cervix lip got swollen, and that didn’t make things any easier.  The midwife tried everything she could, putting her hand inside me with every contraction to turn the head.  As a team, we tried everything imaginable—special tea, massaging with oils, squatting, yanking my leg behind me, herbs, walking, sitting on the birthing stool, the birth tub, kneeling.  You name it, we tried it…and still she was stuck.  I pushed from 8 pm until 3 am at home- 7 hours!  Finally, as I was near fainting from exhaustion, we decided that I needed to go to the hospital.  I had three contractions just getting to the car and a number of them on the way there and in the waiting room.  Once I finally got to my room it was 4 am.  At that point, the nurse suggested an epidural.  She said, you need to rest, otherwise you won’t have the strength to keep trying.  I believed her and I still do.  My strength was gone, all I wanted to do was go to sleep and never wake up- not a good thought in the middle of a birth.  I decided to take their advice which the midwives also recommended.

When the epidural kicked in, I was in heaven for a short time.  My pain was gone, I felt happy, giddy even. I was telling jokes, doing yoga on the table…I remember thinking, “Wow!  Why didn’t I do this earlier?  This is great!”  However, my elation only briefly lasted…I had to get back to work.  Unfortunately, because I had taken the epidural, my contractions had slowed down, so they had to give me Pitocin to get them back up to a stronger level.  My arguments to the insurance company were accurate!  One intervention did lead to another.  Then they asked if I still wanted to try to birth my daughter vaginally.  I stoically said, “of course!  I have come this far, I am not giving up now.”  Then I looked at my midwife and asked her if she thought it was still possible.  She nodded yes, but I could see the worry in her eyes.  I felt as if she knew something that I didn’t.  In fact, that was what I felt the whole time in the hospital, that they all knew something that they weren’t telling me.  Here I am, the one giving birth, the one doing all the work, the one feeling all the pain, and I am in the dark about what is going on with my body.  And then I realized why…I couldn’t feel my body!  When they asked me to push, I pushed so hard that I was literally scared that my eyes were going to pop out of my head.  I pushed so hard that I broke blood vessels in my neck and face.  But I couldn’t feel my lower body.  I had no idea where I was pushing.  It was horrible!  I wasn’t in control anymore, I was barely even present.  The drugs, doctors and machines had taken over. The machine now told me when I was having a contraction.  The nurse now told me when to push, not my body.  The drugs told me that I was fine, that this was easy, when I wasn’t.  Labor is hard for a reason, your body needs to feel the pain to know when and how hard to push.  As a woman, we need to know that we are strong, that we can handle anything- labor teaches us that.  But what lesson do you learn if you don’t make it through labor?  What lesson did I learn?

After pushing for three more hours, now a total of 12 hours, my doctor recommended I get a C-section.  My heart dropped.  It was exactly what I didn’t want to happen!  All that I had imagined was obliterated in that moment.   All I could think about was my baby and how I had failed her.  She wasn’t going to get to finish her journey the natural way.   Would it affect the rest of her life, her psychology even, as some people believed?  Would it alter the process of our bonding?  My guilt was already present in regards to the epidural, now I was faced with this decision.  Unfortunately, I didn’t really have much of a choice.  Neither one of us would have made it much longer if we didn’t get her out and

I felt that I had already done everything I could possibly do.  So I had the C-section.  15 minutes later, my daughter was born.  Amazing that I could work so hard for hours and 15 minutes was all it took for them to cut me open and pull her out.  I remember the feeling of suction as they pulled her out, one minute I was full of her body, every inch taken up, then the next minute, I was empty, open and alone.  It was so tragic to me while at the same time, so glorious to know she was alive and well.  I was extremely grateful to be alive and too see her beautiful eyes when I first got to kiss her. I know that it is in large part because of modern medicine that I am alive to tell my story.  However, I have a  feeling of being blocked at my womb chakra, as if I was not done with my process and the energy could not move through.  I wondered if she felt the same way, like she didn’t finish her journey.  I was lucky, she breastfed a half an hour later and seemed clear headed and present, in spite of the drugs.  I made every effort in the next few days and weeks to reverse whatever damage I had done by not having a natural birth.  She slept on me, naked body next to naked body the whole time, breastfeeding when ever she wanted to.  Although she was a happy baby, there was a pained look in her eyes those first couple of weeks and I knew that she too had to grieve the loss. 

In reality, everything happened that I didn’t want to happen in my birth.  So, I believe that life was trying to tell me something.  Sometimes lessons are presented in pieces throughout your life and then, at a certain point, they all come together to form the entire message.  It came to me one night when I was staring into my daughter’s gorgeous blue eyes, which have a depth to them that is unbelievable.  It was as if she was trying to communicate the lesson to me through her intense look.  “Let it go, mama, let it go.  Let go of the expectations, let go of your false sense of control, let go of your fears, let go of your judgments, let go of your certainties, let go of your plans…just let it go.”  It was a message that had been constantly presented to me along my journey, but one that I had not yet really learned.   I had completely expected to have a natural birth at home.  I said to my friends, “I am NOT going to the hospital, I would never have an epidural!”  The lesson for me is that when I have expectations and make plans for the future, I am not living my life, I am spending my energy and wasting my moments on something that is not real.  The only thing that is real is the moment that I am in now.  As I look into my daughter’s eyes I realize that nothing I could have planned or expected could compare to what I have.  The reality is so much better!  I would go through a hundred C-sections to have my daughter.  That is not to say that it isn’t important to put an intention out there in regards to your future, especially something as important as a birth.  But to spend time and energy that is so precious focusing on something that is not real and not going to happen (because nothing is ever as you imagine it) is really wasted time.  Not only that but I realized the main reason I plan so much and think about the future is because of my fear of not being in control.  A fear that when you really meditate on it, you realize is so ridiculous.  We are never in control.  The only thing we have control over is the way we respond to the reality that occurs in each moment.  Looking back, I think that my birth happened exactly as it was supposed to, each moment I did whatever it took to bring my baby into this world.  Now, maybe I can finally let go.  Maybe it took such an intense, life-changing experience to learn such a challenging lesson.  Let go of the fear…just let it go.

---

[i] The Cochrane Library, Issue 4, 2003.

Chichester,UK

: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

[ii] Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law. 19(4):813-35, 1994 Winter.

[iii] Governor Davis signed into Law, September 2000, Senate Bill 1479.  Section 4

[iv] American Journal of Public Health. 82(3):450-3, 1992 Mar.

 

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Recovering Christians

Engaging the Recovering Christians

By Fred Plumer

It was sometime in 1987, I think, when I got a very strange phone call. I actually thought it was a prank. At the time, I was a very progressive Christian pastor in a very conservative area in Southern California. I had been interviewed in the newspaper a few weeks before and had already received a few crank calls and some pretty nasty mail from some outraged conservative Christians. But this young man sounded very sincere. He wanted to know if we would consider hosting a Fundamentalist Anonymous chapter in our church. I had never heard of the national group and figured no one in the church had heard of it either, so I asked if it would be possible for me to meet with him. I wasn't certain how anonymous this had to be. I assured him that whatever we discussed would remain confidential.

The next day, the young engineer who worked at a nearby aerospace office, stopped by the office. He was nervous at first but seemed to relax as he told a little bit of his story. His family had been "missionaries" in the U.S. for a fundamentalist Christian church. His father was a very domineering man who basically disowned his son when he went to a "liberal" university instead of the Bible College supported by their small denomination. The young man had a hard time socially in the university because he did not seem to fit. He had a very difficult time with a "western civilization" class he took his freshman year. His discomfort changed to curiosity, however, with the encouragement of a couple of his friends. He then took every class on religion and philosophy he could fit into his required course work and somewhere along the way he said, "I suddenly felt like I had been lied to all of those years."

For the next ten years he went through periods of anger, distrust of people, "cold sweat" fear and periods when he would go back to the church of his youth and end up feeling terrible. And then he was introduced to an FA chapter where he lived in the Midwest and found it very helpful. When he took a job in Orange County, CA he began to have anxiety attacks and realized he still needed a support group. That was when he agreed to help start a FA chapter at the UCC church where I was the pastor.

The group only stayed there for a few months. He explained that too many of the potential participants were uncomfortable meeting in a church, even our ultra liberal one that had been the target of the conservative Christians since its founding. I was sorry they did not stay. I would have liked to have stayed in touch with this young man. It was the first time that I knowingly came across the terrible pain and damage that ultra-conservative religion can cause in individuals. It would not be the last.

For the next two decades I counseled uncountable numbers of people who shared their stories of psychological, emotional and even physical abuse in the name of religion. These folks of all ages shared stories of growing up believing that they were impure, were incapable, were worthless, were dirty, and sinful. It was only through their clinging to the belief that through the sacrifice of Jesus, they could avoid more suffering both here and in the hereafter. Sadly the vast majority of people who shared their stories were either women or gay men.

Anitra L. Freeman has published a paper on fundamentalism and writes about traits that fundamentalists use to maintain psychological control over members.

• They insist on a rigid hierarchy of authority. The more extreme the group, the more authority is concentrated in one central figure.
• The group, and the authority figure(s) within the group, withhold or bestow love to control behavior. Misbehaving members are cut off from communication.
• They magnify current social and individual evils and dwell on the "innate wickedness of man."
• Sexual "immorality" is often their central cause.
• They promote a Truth which is superior to all other truths because it is absolute and unchanging.
• They promote distrust of one's personal judgment, being subject instead to the given truths of the group, the judgment of the church as a body, or the proclamations of a central authority figure.
• They are apocalyptic, foretelling an imminent and horrifying future which only the faithful will survive. Any disaster in the news is magnified as "a sign of the apocalypse." (http://www.anitra.net/activism/fundamentalism/psychology.html)

The emotional and psychic damage that occurs when some one becomes involved in these kinds of communities can be extreme. Reading first person stories of people who have gone through these experiences can be very hard. It is clear that the damage is often deep and great and frequently the damaged person has no place to go. There are no rehab centers for recovering fundamentalists.

Over the last three years I have received somewhere between three to eight books a month from publishers that want us to write positive reviews to help market their books. I have been surprised by the number of these books that have been written by people who have gone or are going through a difficult transition from an ultraconservative upbringing to a more open understanding of their religion or an outright rejection of it. They write about the challenges of discovering what they thought was the infallible truth that is no longer true for them. Often they believe that they are "progressive" because they no longer believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but they retain some very orthodox beliefs. Others reject religion all together.  Some are angry and some are not. It appears that the level of rejection and anger has more to do with how long and at what stage they had held their religious convictions before something changed their perspective.

In the late 1980s and early 90s, mainline church growth experts were suggesting that the growing ultra conservative, mega church phenomenon might be a good thing for the dying mainline churches. They assumed that these new Christians that were flocking to the mega churches would matured in their faith, using James Fowler's hierarchy of "Stages of Faith." As some point they would ultimately become disenchanted with their religious perspective, would leave the mega church and find a local main-line church to continue growing in their stages of faith. The hope was that this would result in a natural growth in our older churches. This has not proven to be the case.

Yes, mega churches tend to have big back doors and suffer even greater losses, on a percentage basis, than most of our mainline churches in our transient society. However, studies have found that only a small percentage of these ex-mega-church-Christians show up in our mainline churches. The vast majority simply stop going to church. They often become part of that growing segment of our society that self-identifies as "spiritual but not religious," now one of the fastest growing groups in our country. Some researchers are wondering if progressive Christianity is going to be skipped by others who now identify as "spiritual but not religious." Philosopher Ken Wilbur and Father Keating have a discussion on this topic in their new DVD which can be ordered through the TCPC website.

So how do we progressive Christians share our perspective so recovering Christians can hear us and actually get excited about the progressive path of Jesus and what our churches have to offer?

The first thing we will have to do is learn how to create more joyful, interactive, and spiritual Sunday celebrations. It will mean making changes that many long term church members will not want to make. But ultimately, we have to ask ourselves how long can we hang on to the past. We have a lot to learn from these conservative churches about telling our story and for the most part we are not getting it. We have to discover and implement more effective ways to communicate the progressive message in different ways and through different media that fit our contemporary society, particularly if we want to attract young adults.

We will also have to learn to share our powerful message with more clarity and substance. Do we really believe that following the teachings of Jesus will really change a life? Has it changed yours? Can we explain why our progressive faith has so compelling and important to us that we think it could be for someone else? Until we know what we represent, we represent nothing.

Are we willing to be patient with recovering Christians who are still struggling with guilt and holding on to beliefs that you may feel are archaic? This is where unconditional love and compassion must enter into our practice. Are we more concerned about winning a debate than we are about sharing our positive story? Can we build up someone who does not think like we think or believe what we believe?

Are we willing to take the time to educate ourselves about our faith so that when we are asked to have a conversation, we actually know what we are talking about? In other words, do we always have to say, "You need to talk to my pastor."

We are sharing a message of love with people who have been taught a message of fear. We are trying to communicate about a great mystery with people who believed only in absolutes and dogmas. We are telling a story of inclusion to people who have been taught only about righteous exclusion. We are trying to demonstrate boundary-less life to some who have believed in the security of separation. We do not have an easy task. But there are a whole lot of searching people these days, who may be ready to let go of the life raft they have been hanging on to for a long time but are uncertain about where they can go. It would be nice if we could at least provide a search light that might illuminate another way for them to navigate "the sea of infinite mystery." *

*Karl Rahmer