A Spiritual Stretch – A New Blog
By Laine
Morgan
Nothing
feels better to my physical body than a really long, slow stretch. I can feel a wave of energy move through the
muscles, followed by a softening and relaxing.
I am no expert of the physiology of stretching, I only know it just
feels so good!
I
have been keeping a personal journal since 1985 and lately I have been reading
those journals, looking for insights and patterns, evidence of my growth. In doing so, I can see that for the past 14
years, I have also been stretching spiritually.
As I have stretched spiritually, I have also experienced those waves of
energy, softening and relaxing my heart and soul – very similar to the physical
sensation of the stretch.
My
intention for this blog is to capture some of those spiritual stretches to
share with you. I am deeply aware that
my journey is not special, that I have been learning universal lessons,
exploring circumstances and situations that are familiar to others. By writing about them, I know that I will
grow even more and my hope is that you will be encouraged and uplifted on your
own spiritual journey.
Recently
I became aware that I have always been influenced by God and religion, starting
even before I was born. To give you some
history, my parents lived near Salt Lake City, Utah for many months surrounding
my birth, and since they were not Mormon, I can only imagine the conversations
about God and religion that were washing over me prenatally and throughout my
infancy. My very first relocation,
before I was even 2, was motivated by religious beliefs and when I look back
over my life, several more major moves and life decisions were also spurred on
for reasons related to God.
Early
in my childhood, I adored Sunday school and would go to any church with any
friend who invited me. I sang “Jesus
Loves Me” with all my heart! It wasn’t
until I was 8 that my own family began to attend church ourselves, and just
like he did everything else, my father flung us headlong into the entire
experience. His own upbringing was in “fire
and brimstone” Pentecostal churches, so he took us to worship the familiar,
judgmental, angry God of his youth. I
often joke that “Even God was mean in my house.” I fled that religion when I moved away for
college at age 18 – the first moment I was free to do so. I tiptoed around my Baptist affiliated college,
trying very hard not to step into the quicksand of religion during those 4
years. I wasn’t entirely successful, but
I did learn about another faith there. Once
I got to be fully into adulthood, religion and God moved firmly into the
shadows of my life where I left them for many, many years. Those spiritual muscles stiffened and
hardened into cynicism and doubt.
I
didn’t learn the difference between Spirituality and Religion until I was 37
years old, but once I had that new perspective, I realized that I had a lot of
stretching to do. So many of my beliefs
about myself, about God and about a vast number of words and concepts were
steeped in fundamental Christian religiosity.
I needed to excavate each of them, dust the shame off of them, remove
the fear from them, shine the bright light of love on them, and allow them to
stretch. These are the things I will
share in this blog.
Come
along on this journey with me! Together,
we will have some regular nice, long spiritual stretches.
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