Memoirs of Faith

This Lenten season part of my spiritual discipline has been to read memoirs of faith. There is something both comforting and challenging about reading the the stories of others who struggle in their relationship with the Divine. In journeying with Anne Lamott, Nora Gallagher, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Sue Monk Kidd during these past few weeks, I have not only travelled through their individual spiritual sojourns, but I have also witnessed strands of my own story, woven in the truth they speak.

Reading through their lives I was deeply relieved to find that I was not the only one who had sometimes doubted the power of grace to break through the despair, who had contemplated a life beyond the Church, or who had wondered about the limits of Christianity for women, who at times had felt overwhelmed by the Christian vocation or who had struggled with feelings of hate toward our current political situation. I took great comfort in the stories of these women as they worked through what it meant to live a life of faith with honesty and integrity.

In sharing our stories, whether in text or in the telling, we find that we are not so alone after all. While our individual narratives differ in contour, shade, color and texture, there is, I believe, a common thread which weaves its way through the fabric of our lives, knitting us and holding us together, even in the midst of insecurities, doubts, and fears.

May we learn to share fully with one another our journeys with the Divine this Lenten season and always.