NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

’ Faith is as powerful a force as science...but far more dangerous’ - I was struck by the above comment as I was reading ‘Voyager’, one of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. It was slide so innocuously into the text, that you could very easily let your eyes slide right over it. I had done exactly that and had to reread what I had just read in order to see it REALLY said what I thought it had! Claire who had travelled in time   from the 1960s in Boston to a homestead in North Carolina just prior to the American Revolution, was commenting on the variety of faiths she found there and the dissension caused between them: Anglicans, Catholics, Puritans and Dissenters. It was a time of strong religious beliefs and loyalties, a time when what you believed was more important than life itself and when belonging to the wrong Protestant sect was almost as bad as being a papist in the early colonies. She was, of course, comparing this faith in her own mind with the power of science al

The fact is "in the beginning" is no more precise than "once upon a time".  Nancy Ellen Abrams Over the last number of years I have become more and more firmly convinced that our concept of God is a human construct. It is the result of people over the ages from many different culture’s trying to explain their spiritual experiences with only the words and understanding   that were currently at their disposal to help them. The last few months I have found myself deleting unread most of the computer mailings that come from progressive Christianity sites as being uninteresting or not speaking to me. They no longer talk about my concept of God. Instead they talk about a concept that while it was once more less mine, is no longer. I realize that this is a sign of change. Not change within the blogs which I am sure are still sending out the same type of material but rather of a change within myself.  I can no longer read articles that talk about God as a be

‘By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Genesis 3:19 Most scholars agree that the texts found in Genesis began to be written down sometime in the 10th century BCE and were based on oral and written traditions. It is this verse that is referenced in the Book of Alternative Services during the Ash Wednesday service, ‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return’. A few years ago now we attended an Ash Wednesday Service where the words had morphed to ‘Remember that you are stardust and to stardust you shall return’ moving into the cosmology of the 21st century, connecting our bodies with the whole universe. These express the beliefs of a different world view. They both call us to remember that life on this earth is impermanent and fleeting. They call us to pause and to ponder our lives. Which one resonates with you doesn’t matter. What does matter is that

“Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation” Exodus 34.7 NRSV I have always found this one of the more disturbing verses from the Bible! Growing up it didn’t seem fair to me that I should be somehow still responsible for the sins of past generations.   As I grew older and my outlook matured somewhat I began to see it as being the dictates of a vengeful god, a god who refused to let any sin disappear but instead took it out on those in the future who were not responsible for whatever had happened. Perhaps this was to discourage parents from sinning, I didn’t really know, but knew that a god who would do this was not a nice god. And perhaps this was the real beginning of my life’s journey. I’m sure there isn’t one person reading this who hasn’t heard of Global Warming. Whether they believe it to be true or ‘false news