Passing faith on to our children
Intellectually I may not have felt I was a "wretch" who needed to be saved, but "Amazing Grace" never failed to fill me with a sense of longing I couldn't quite name.
I also knew my children would eventually look to me for answers to the deep questions of life. When they asked me, "What happens when we die?" or "Who is God?" or "Why does God let bad things happen?" I wanted to be able to give them answers I really believed.
The right fit is out there
My spiritual needs were far from unique. People everywhere are searching for a way to make sense of their lives and believe in something bigger than themselves. Church is an obvious place to explore all this.
This desire often occurs in midlife, when we become more aware of our own mortality and want to help our kids build their spiritual muscles to draw on for strength in the future. Many of us begin to experience a longing for religious ritual and a need to feel connected within a larger community. Some circle back to the place of worship they bolted from as teenagers. Others discover something altogether different than the doctrine of their youth.
The closest match to my liberal sensibilities I could find was the United Church. Attending this church was a positive experience, but the congregation we were part of had few children, and I still longed for a community that reflected our multicultural, multifaith world.
My childhood church taught that there was only one true path to God. What about the Jews, the Muslims, the Buddhists? I was more interested in the common threads of sacred truth that bind us all, such as the grace in loving our neighbour as ourselves, doing good in the world, living up to our highest ideals, looking for beauty among the ruins.
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