It was a long and interesting week that thankfully reached its end on a bright note. All is well in the world again, or so it looks from up here on this cloud (number nine that is). :) It's good to be back.

*dusts off a little patch and plops down with a bowl of strawberries*

I feel contemplative today. That's an interesting word, I'm not sure if it's supposed to be pronounced "CON-tem-plate-ive" or "con-TEM-pluh-tive". Personally I choose the latter. Dictionary.com lists both possibilities, but it does list mine first. If that means anything. :D

So today I am contemplating the age-old religion question. As usual. :) I'm still confused. I'm not sure if it's me, or what. I got a couple of books in the mail from my friend Laurie, Beliefs of a United Methodist Christian and Why I am a United Methodist. I started reading the second one because Laurie said she really liked that one, but I don't think it's really what I'm looking for. There's a little of the history of the church at the beginning (I'm not even through chapter 1 yet) but I think most of the book is about why the author is United Methodist. (Um, duh.) I mean that's cool and all but I think I should have picked up the other one. I think the beliefs of the church are the important thing to me now, not the sentimental stuff. I played into the sentimental stuff all my life and it didn't get me far. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm saying that for ME, PERSONALLY, the sentimental "grace experience" stuff just never was there.

I remember going to Walk to Emmaus retreats all my life (well, the closing part) with my parents. For those that don't know, those are spiritual retreat weekends, lots of singing and clapping and rejoicing in the Lord, but also talks and sharing and praying and facing tough stuff. At the Closing, all the candidates (people who have been sponsored to attend the retreat) stand up and talk about their experiences with God over the weekend. For some people it is a really life-changing event. They come away filled with the Holy Spirit and eager to further their newfound relationship with God and spread their happiness and love. This is REALLY REALLY COOL. I know God is working with and through Protestants, United Methodists, whatever they are. I have seen it and heard it.

There is a similar retreat for teens called Chrysalis. I went on it when I was sixteen. Part of the experience was spoiled for me I think because I already knew all the surprises before I got there, but I was still prepared to have a good time and to grow in my experience of God. I'd seen so many people emerge from this kind of weekend with a new light in their lives. I wanted that. Trouble was, I didn't know where to find it. I thought I'd find it on the retreat. I looked. I listened to the talks. I heard how people found God when their lives couldn't have sunk any lower, and He brought them out of the depths. But I'd heard that before. My life wasn't at a low point. I already had God, at least a little bit. So that didn't send any sparks. I saw people at the other tables laughing and yelling and having a great time. Those were the tables where the changes were going on. My table was quiet and tame. The leaders were very nice and the other girls were okay, but nothing profound happened to us. I came away from the weekend a little disappointed. It had been fun, but not what I was looking for.

That stuff, that life-changing experience of grace that is really at the heart of United Methodism, is the sentimental stuff. It is AWESOME for the people who have it and find it, but I was never one of them. Maybe I tried too hard, looked too much in the wrong places. I don't know. In the first chapter of Why I am a United Methodist the author describes John Wesley's life and ministry, at the heart of which is the "Aldersgate experience", when Wesley felt his heart "strangely warmed" by God and for the first time understood that Jesus had died to take away his sins. The author mentions Scripture, tradition, and reason as three means for determining Christian belief, and how Wesley added a fourth one: experience. People had to experience the grace of God in order to become fully Christian. But at the same time, this grace is a gift that God gives to someone. So you can't work to obtain it. You can't get it by looking. He gives it on His own terms, in His own time. I think I was looking for this "experience of grace" and somehow I just couldn't ever find it. I'm sure I didn't put in all the right effort and so on. I just expected it to happen. I guess according to Wesley that's how it comes, it just happens, not because you went looking for it. I don't know, it's hard to explain what I'm thinking and feeling about it. I know that in high school I wanted something I couldn't find. I think I got discouraged and maybe that had something to do with why I turned my back on it for a while. I still believed in God. If I didn't I knew all was lost. But I questioned everything.

The experience of grace, the life-changing moment, is the "sentimental stuff" I was talking about before. I think a lot of Protestants are church-goers because of that. And that's GREAT. But it's not me. It's not what I have. I never had a "moment" where I just knew something. I decided to go back to church because it was the right thing to do. God has blessed me with a lot of gifts and he deserves my thanks and my worship. When I went back the first time in March, on Ash Wednesday, I think I secretly hoped for that moment again. I wanted going back to church to be life-changing, to have a millisecond while I was there that I knew without a doubt God was with me and loved me. I wanted to feel my heart "strangely warmed" by His presence. I wanted an epiphany. I didn't get one. But I was still glad I went.

Being back at church, as I mentioned in a previous post, along with dating Joe started my questioning again. Why am I United Methodist? What do I believe in and why? Why do I do what I do?

I'm a romantic in some ways but I'm also a scientific thinker. I like to make informed decisions. I like to know everything there is to know about something. I'm logical. I reason. I need logical arguments for things.

There is no logical proof of the existence of God; that is, I can't prove to you that He exists. Nobody proved it to me except God himself. Belief in God, belief in Christ, belief that the events that took place in the Bible really DID occur, that's all faith stuff. "Faith is the evidence of things unseen." (I like that quote.) I know there is a God. I just know it.

But why am I a United Methodist? Because I was born one. And that's cool. That's why the guy in the book is United Methodist. He was born into it. It is a gift to him. "We are who we are only partly because of personal achievement." And that's true. And my church, my church family, is a gift to me. It's something that I didn't choose, yet I cherish. But why why why? Why should I attend a UMC when I'm not at home? What is it about the religion that should convince me to stay, other than the fact that I was born into it? That's the question I've been struggling to answer, that led me to research and endless reading and ultimate decision.

Overall it was the arguments of the Catholic Church that won me over, I think. They make a lot of sense. They've put a lot of thought into it. Well, yeah -- they've been thinking about it all for 2000 years!

Protestants are sentimental. And THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. But it didn't work for me. I have had many small experiences of God's grace, little blessings in my life and sometimes even big ones but never that one moment of all-revealing grace, that true feeling of being "born again" that I've seen in so many others.

Does that mean I should leave the UMC and become a Catholic? No, it doesn't. It really doesn't mean anything at all. Except that maybe it does. Maybe if I'd had that "heart strangely warmed" I'd be content as a United Methodist and happy doing United Methodist things and living out my life as one of those lucky, saved, blessed, born-again people. They ARE happy, and they love God and love serving Him and are very blessed by Him. I have a lot of respect for that. But I think faith might be a little more of a technical thing for me, if that's possible. It's not that I don't FEEL it, because I do! I know God is there and I know He works in my life. But something, somewhere, something's missing. I need the why. I need the how. The Catholic Church has that for me.

This is absolutely impossible to explain and I probably shouldn't have tried, and I should probably wait until I've read the whole book before I write any more on it. :P So if it made no sense then just disregard it. Today I am writing for me.