A journey to find God

Born and raised in the Southern Baptist Church to parents who met in a Baptist seminary while living in East Tennesee, the heart of the Bible-belt, and attending a Baptist school left me with a bit of a “Baptisty” brain. The world I knew growing up was one where God watched my every move, devils were always out to get me, the Bible was a rock to keep me in line, the world was dead, worship was a concert and preaching was a guilt trip. Diversity and growth were stifled, and everyone was always wrong- including other Baptists but especially other “Christians.”

The world I was raised in quickly fell apart when I became an adult and within a year of leaving the Baptist school, I left the Baptist church in my heart. Within the following year, I left it completely. What I found and I fell in love with was a whole new world filled with ancient spirituality, wholistic worship, true scholarship, contemplation, and a religious experience that allowed me to be myself and grow with God on my own journey rather than bend to someone else’s persuasion. That journey began in an Anglican way of experiencing the Christian God and is why my family joined the Episcopal Church, where God loves everyone and is big enough to be all things for all people. It is a church of the new and the old, of contemplation and service, truly catholic and truly evangelical, traditional and progressive, charismatic and orthodox.

For those who find the God they know to be tame, angry or dead… my hope is my own journey can help others find a God that is loving, living and larger than their deepest imaginations.