Ongoing Process

Well, I’ve been job hunting for three months now and I’ve found pretty much squat.  I’ve only found three openings that even enticed me to send a resume, and none of them were really what I wanted to do.  My official “giving up” date has come for that position at the Tanenbaum Center and I’ve not heard anything from them, so I suppose they don’t want me.  Bleh.

There is one item of potential interest.  The idea has arisen of perhaps attempting to start an interfaith center somewhere.  I talked to my friend Heather (who knows the nonprofit world well) and she indicated that it was quite plausible to get some grants to start such an organization.  I don’t know if I’m really interested in trying to build a whole nonprofit from the ground up, but it is an interesting notion.  I’ll let it percolate and see how it goes.

Recently, I’ve found myself thinking about Jesus. I’ve been at odds with his followers for most of my life, but I’ve always had respect for Jesus himself. Lately I’ve been realizing that most of my understanding of Jesus is second-hand, that I’ve never read any of the New Testament myself. So I’ve been thinking about buying a bible. I have thought about this before, but I always got stumped when trying to pick a translation. It seems they’ve got one for every day of the year. But just today I discovered that there are a few inclusive language versions out there. I spent a good while researching them, but it’s really hard to wade through the endless river of you’re-going-to-burn-in-hell-for-suggesting-that-God-has-no-gender pages out there. In the end, I settled on The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version by Oxford University Press. It seems to be the most reputable edition that de-genders God and I found a “like new” copy on Half.com for $0.99. So, we’ll see how this whole Jesus thing works out.

The message I posted resulted in several replies. Most of the suggestions didn’t fit all three criteria, but one wound up floating to the top: Quakers. I’ve been eyeing the Quakers for a while now, but the silent worship thing has put me off. I both really like words and the notion of just sitting with God for an hour is quite unsettling (which probably means it’s something I really ought to do). I did a spot of research and I was struck how neatly my three requirements lines up with three of the four Quaker Testimonies, which are Equality, Peace, Integrity, and Simplicity. The closest meeting house is an hour away, so I’ll have to wait until I get where I’m going to really try to get involved.

I really want to have a community both for sharing my own spirituality and to have a supportive home for the work I want to do. So I’m excited to see if maybe I can finally find a home.

I just posted this on craigslist. I thought it was a particularly good question, so I’m putting it here, too.

Completely Progressive Religious Sect? < Chris_1974CE > 07/10 21:17:37

I’m wondering if there is any part of any organized religion that holds the following beliefs as official positions:

1) Absolute equality of every human being in every way (i.e. women & non-heterosexuals in membership, worship, ordination, etc)

2) Commitment to nonviolence (i.e. violence is never acceptable under any circumstance)

3) Holds all religions to be equally valid as each is just one human-created way of approaching the divine (i.e. “God is too big for one religion”)

Does anyone know? If such a thing exists, I just might sign up.

Thanks.

Chris

I’ve really been getting back in touch with my spirituality and I’ve made a decision: my career field is faith-based peace work. While this means I’m probably back to looking at a big city job instead of a nice house in a nice town, it’s what I really want to do. Everything in my life has been leading me in this direction and preparing me to do this. Helping people to use their faith to bring the world together is perhaps the most rewarding thing I can imagine doing. And it’s certainly something that needs doing about now.

So, forces of the universe, lead me to gainful employment in faithful peacemaking!