OUR AMAZING JOURNEY -- 20

+ OK, sisters and brothers, the time has come for us to have a topic to focus on and that topic is FAITH. 

You may remember that I once called my idea for an emerging community of faith THE NEW CHURCH FOR THE NEW AGE. That was my guiding idea as I worked on Abundancetrek.com and on forums and blogs during the first decade of this new millennium. I forget exactly when I decided to move away from NEW CHURCH to NEW FAITH and from NEW AGE to NEW EARTH. The reason for the change is that I became committed to promoting and sharing InterSpiritual wisdom and practice which meant that the very friendly but too narrow confines of CHURCH no longer was what I wanted to focus on. You can still see what I said about THE NEW CHURCH FOR THE NEW AGE on the Abundancetrek.com home page. You don’t have to scroll down very far. I wrote:

THE NEW CHURCH FOR THE NEW AGE is:
non-hierarchical, free, open, loving, caring, compassionate, healing, energizing, inclusive, humble, non-judgmental, fun, creative, yours, mine.

Christ never meant for the church to be a closed, hierarchical, authoritarian, nationalistic and denomination-alistic institution.

I still believe that but I now apply it to other Communities of Faith so it now reads:

THE NEW FAITH FOR THE NEW EARTH is:

non-hierarchical, free, open, loving, caring, compassionate, healing, energizing, inclusive, humble, non-judgmental, fun, creative, yours, mine.

Christ never meant for the church to be a closed, hierarchical, authoritarian, nationalistic and denomination-alistic institution. Same for the Faith Communities following The Buddha, Muhammad, Moses, Lao-Tse, and other Great Spiritual Teachers.

The book I associate most with this change in my thinking is The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox. But other books have also been significant including Credo by William Sloane Coffin, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith  by Marcus Borg, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience by Sharon Salzberg and Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics by Diarmuid O’Murchu.

Let me try to whet your appetite for this discussion. How about reading excerpts from those five books. You can easily find the S&P  review by clicking on the title of the book. There you will find an excerpt link.

I would love to know how you define Faith and what teachers or teachings have influenced you the most.

Here are some quotes from my collection of quotes on Faith:

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

. . . faith is not belief; faith is courageous trust in life.  — Brother David Steindl-Rast

Questioning means longing to know the truth deeply, and insisting that we can. — Sharon Salzberg

Faith is, above all, openness: an act of trust in the unknown. -- Alan Watts

Faith his not being sure where you're going but going anyway. -- Frederick Buechner

Hope is hearing the melody of the future; faith is dancing to it today. -- Rubem Alves

Faith is the courageous confidence that trusts in the Source of all gifts. -- David Steindl-Rast