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One of those disconnected lightning bolts in the middle of the night.  Something outrageous – but so beautifully formed …

Of these the greatest is love

Just when I thought my journey was coming to an end … my steps taking me ever further away from the bible and church … those well-worn steps of a (dis)believer becoming a non-attached-neither-this-nor-that-does-any-of-it-matter “believer” …

Back comes that “fragment” of so many weddings …

Of these the greatest is love.

Because I have already stepped away from needing the bible to be true.  A bible I now view as stuff written sometime(s) by someone(s) somewhere(s) with an agenda(s).  BUT … a bible that is actually packed full of great “stuff”.

But best digested free of “the needs of religion” and all the baggage that brings.

The baggage of religious bogeymen – those “false teachers” who go bump in the night.  The baggage of religious need to be “pure and godlike”.  Free of the religious need to be “biblically correct” (or – to put it another way – “to be compliant”).

But once I reached that waypoint, I felt isolated and set-free, both at the same time.

No longer compliant enough to be comfortable teaching in church.  And now free to step away.  And with that stepping away – freed of all the fences of faith and dogma directing my steps.   And the more I journeyed from those fences the more they were fences that had been fencing me in.

And then – in a flash last night – an odd thing happened … Those fences of faith became stepping stones to freedom.

Rather than boundaries keeping me in – they morphed into great big stepping steps.  A stairway to heaven.   A stairway enabling my freedom.  No more fences that curtailed my faith.  Because the difference between the two is simply my perception.

But a perception taught as reality.

Because with that came the inescapable realisation that “church” is an institution of “kindergarten”.   An institution incapable (unwilling?) of inviting me to step away.  An institution needing bums on seats to even exist.  And an institution which teaches “the greatest of these is love” only within the confines of its own definitions – its own fences of faith.  So it is love taught always as “conditional”.

And therein are its Fences of Faith – tying the faithful always to this kindergarten.

But as stepping-stones away from all of “that” …  As stepping-stones (that may even be a stairway to heaven) … ?

That changes everything … 

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Imagine a world without sin (yesterday) was – even for me – a step of faith.

A step so high that even as I wrote the words I believed I would fall.  That the “top of the ladder” was below and I had just over-stepped myself into the vacuum of disbelief.

>>> but this morning find again that “walking in faith” is just that.  It is stepping beyond what is safe, known and expected .  Walking in faith cannot know – or it is not faith at all.

There is no “top of the ladder” – there is no “coming to an end” of this journey.  There is just arriving – again – at a place of Being called Love.

The greatest of these.

And this morning that phrase (plus a middle-of-the-night moment) is now just another step – and the opening of a(nother) secret door I never knew existed.

A door that (perhaps) is “the small door” – and that is a stairway to heaven.

But a heaven I have not seen written.

A heaven so much better.  A heaven of this moment and the next right now as I live and breathe.  A heaven devoid of all the binding “biblical worship stuff”.  A heaven without the formality of taught “gratitude” – “servitude” – “hierarchy”.

A heaven that is free of sin – just not the way I was taught.  Because – in my journey …

… sin never existed at all.

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So rather than laying down my pen, my posts, and this blog … I awake this morning filled with wonder.  Filled with curiosity and feeling ever closer to “God”.  Ever closer to those who still see fences rather than stepping-stones.  Ever closer to those who already rejected kindergarten.  Ever closer to all who call themselves living human beings.  Who live by love (whatever its name to them).

A journey that (REALLY) does not exclude and (REALLY) does include all.

Of these the greatest is love.

And now, perhaps, I am.

Ready to explore love again.

(without any conditions)

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