What to call myself?

I had lunch today with a friend of mine who is a Reformed Church in Amer­ica clergy. He told me if his denom­i­na­tion knew what he was say­ing he would have to face a heresy trial. I am glad I am ordained in the United Church of Christ where we are free to believe accord­ing to our own con­science. There is no creed or dogma. That can be both a help and a hindrance.

We dis­cussed how it is very pos­si­ble that there was no his­tor­i­cal per­son that we know as Jesus Christ. We know lit­tle or noth­ing about him since most of what we read in the New Tes­ta­ment is based on Old Tes­ta­ment writ­ings and Greek, Egypt­ian and other hero myths.

We also dis­cussed ortho­dox and gnos­tic Chris­t­ian beliefs and how I can’t fully agree with either. To add to the con­fu­sion, I also have a mix of Hindu, Bud­dhist, Taoist, Sufi and other beliefs. There­fore, it’s hard for me to know what to call or label myself. Eclec­tic is per­haps the best term. Yet, I am a unique per­son with unique beliefs that are not so much beliefs as con­clu­sions reached after a life­time of seek­ing, study, prac­tice and self real­iza­tion. Per­haps I am in the devo­tional, mys­ti­cal, wis­dom tra­di­tion. Per­haps I am a Zen Chris­t­ian. I am. I am myself as fully and totally as I can be at this moment. I am con­stantly grow­ing, evolv­ing, chang­ing. I am an instru­ment of God, a vehi­cle for God to work through. I am pure spirit soul. I am embod­ied. I am. May you be also.

ShalOm,

Steve

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2003 at 11:53 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.