Faith Pickle (a little less than a crisis)

I know that I'm a seeker rather than a guru...someone who sails a lot more than drops anchor. As my friend Erica pointed out, it's more surprising that I am settled on something than I question and seek. So spiritual crisis isn't really where I'm at. It's a spiritual state of being related to a crisis, but a lot less serious and disastrous. A spiritual pickle, I think. And I do like a pickle. Anything pickled, really. Preserved in salty sourness, with a hint of sweetness...you could do a lot worse.

As I do my work in multifaith chaplaincy, I come into contact with many aspects of God. A lot of these are not aspects that have been real to me, or at least weren't real to me until I met someone who believed in them. In my respect for the traditions of others, I find that I'm losing a sense of my own faith and traditions. It's complicated by my rejection of a childhood faith that didn't work for me. So I feel rootless because I cannot draw back on some of my own roots (though I might explore the concept of a taproot that I could stil lmaintain), and I am not yet sure I want to graft myself onto another community's root system. I think it's also complicated by the fact that my sense of God and faith isn't as apparent here as it is in other places. God is more traditional here. God is not found in the middle of a redwood grove, or in multiplicity. God is found within black and white Scriptures, in (often exclusive) specificity. I lose track of my spiritual task, my own slice of the spiritual life, because I'm getting next to a lot of other aspects of others' spiritual lives.
I think this is partly connected by my lack of declaration of my own faith--what is true for me. I've gotten next to a lot of other people in how they're seeking to honor God, and I've lost a sense of my own way of honoring God.

This is what I'm thinking is true for me: Redwood groves, questions and mystery, witnessing, connecting, trying to be. Mindfulness, food, physicality. Transformative relationships, theology and thinking, God is everywhere and nowhere. Co-creation, mutuality, seeking warmth in a cold and senseless world. Not wrestling with external demons but with internal knots.