Steering Wheel Slamming Good

Monday, I listened to a sermon and read an article that were both Slamming Hands on the Steering Wheel good.

I was literally slapping the steering wheel and hollering, YES! while listening to the sermon, which I'll write about later. You will be happy to know that I was not reading the article while driving. (But if I had been, I would have been slapping something in agreement.)

The article was Rev. Christine's Imagineers of the Soul, taken from her Berry Street lecture last summer. How did I not read that? Oh. Hospital. I might have read it. June 08, I also might have met Barack Obama. Not much in the way of memories. Just cupcakes and chemo. But I digress.

In any case, it was all new to me, and boy did it resonate. I asked about this a couple of months ago, in Can You Talk About God in Your Church?. And more recently, I had a paper due for my Pastoral Care class. We had to write a paper titled The Call of God On My Life. You had to answer questions about when you got your call, what the call was, what your mission/vision statement is, how you are preparing for implementing your call .... lots of stuff, all on that theme.

Is it difficult? The Husband asked. He was referring to the fact that I was writing about something very personal, for a professor who is a conservative Christian.

Not at all, I replied. I explained that it was, in point of fact, kind of liberating. Because I could say "God," and that was that. I didn't have to explain what I meant or didn't mean by "God," I didn't have to hasten to explain that no, I didn't really hallucinate a literal voice talking to me ... I could just say, "God spoke to me."

Now, granted, the flip side of this is that the professor quite possibly fills in the definition of "God" with his own meaning, perhaps reads something very different in my paper than what I wrote.

BUT ... I don't worry that he will read my paper and find me spiritually childish, intellectually incurious, or stupid.

As Rev. Robinson writes, "Very few people are willing to talk about their spiritual lives if they think they will be ridiculed or misunderstood."

Read the article. It's much better than reading me talking about the article.