Personal Thank You

I just wanted to say

For the very positive responses, comments and feedback from my recent blog about ‘1000 days since leaving Church‘ which I published just over a week ago.

I did not quite realise, though had I thought about it, I may have also realised it, quite how common my experience has been.

Thank you for reading, sharing and commenting on it, thank you.

Its been very apparent in the comments, both public and private to me, from youth workers, pioneer folks, leaders in churches and denominations, for how many folks, they had to leave church, to re-find God, and find a faith.

I guess I wasn’t brave enough to do it all those years ago.

I guess I still wanted something about what ‘organised church’ could offer, anyway..

So, thank you.

Thank you for reaching out, thank you for encouraging me on the same journey.

And that’s just it, its a journey. Cliche alert.

I haven’t ‘made it’ , neither have I the answers, and any certainty expressed sometimes comes back as vulnerability or a lesson to be learned.

But something feels more coherent.

I found home in myself, in a way that I was trying to find home elsewhere.

There was a hole in my life and heart – it wasn’t God shaped, it was because of childhood abuse, because of neglect. That God was an external being to surrender to and lose myself to – despite an internal ache that never went away.

Haemin Sunim says this:

We must cultivate all three intelligences for our overall health

Critical intelligence, emotional intelligence and Spiritual intelligence

If one falls to the wayside, it slows the growth of the other two

Haemin Sunim, Things you can only see when we slow down.

If I were to do a 3 way audit of these three intelligences at different times in my life – what would I have found – how might this pie chart look like?

Something like this, probably

And that’s 5% emotional intelligence and awareness on a good day.

In fact I was scared of those weird things like emotions, best to stay disconnected from them, dissociate, and stay in my head. That was the safe place. Critical intelligence to the absolute full. God is to be understood and not felt.

But without all three, no growth. No heart. Or peace. Or Joy. Or love.

What I had been looking for, was closer than I realised. Everything I needed was within, and I have just had to be given permission, and the tools to see it. I just Am. (as are you)

I like this from John O’Donohue too, on coming home to yourself:

May all the is unforgiven in you

Be Released,

May all your fears yield

Their deepest tranquilities.

May all that is unloved in you

Blossom into a future

Graced with love.

So…..Thank you , I am very grateful and appreciative, I really am.

James