Space for Worship

Many times over 40 years, I have wanted to give up or give in thinking I will never find the right Space for Worship that is perfect. There is no perfect. There is a desire for peace and a perseverance that rewards the seeker. There is nothing wrong with reformatting, revisiting, and redesigning ones personal interior space for worship. Good roots have helped me keep my foundation stable.

There is great diversity in Mankind’s search for the divine.

I continue to leave and go back because having been raised in the Episcopal Church it still represents for me comfort and familiarity. I end up there over and over again. But most important, the Anglicans allow for the doubt and study and give permission to search and question. They tend to honor the mind and its capacity to indulge God better than any other faith I can find.

 Space for Worship is found within, and without.

 I have realized that the Awareness of God in an ocean of Space for Worship. The accessibility to prayer is found in all places in every way. We may feel haunted by the fear we will one day be alone but we are never alone. I imagine myself in a dingy floating in an ocean of God. His immense presence has taught me it is usually enough to know I am loved. Yes there are islands of people and things to do there on land and I have to row in from time to time to rest and check out what is changing. Leaving the island and all its solid and wonderful familiarity is freedom.  I would love to know how to offer others what I have found out at sea floating.

Everyone invents their own practice.

I have found out that everyone is correct for themselves.  There is plenty of inclusion and connective tissue in every faith practice with Space for Worship; all you have to do is shed your individual tradition for a while to join them.  

What a surprise!  Icon painting found me, the practice is from the Orthodox faith, I am not Orthodox. I am a woman painting outside the tradition with no authority from them so my icons are not considered sacred. Scared or not, I know the work has been done with a sincere love of God.  I resist definitions about who is in or out?

After two years in the Lutheran church  I was asked me to be a member, I said “yes”, the pastor said will have to know where your previous membership was to send them a letter renouncing any future involvement, I said “no” I will always be an Episcopalian and a catholic too. The Catholics had said to receive Eucharist anywhere outside the Catholic Church did not count,  all of this seems to me like”?” Nonsense!

I never feel like I have been away from God, the doors to church are always open. The prodigal son story is all about coming home and being loved, the Father always has plenty of Space for Worship in all the houses.