Wow! \u00a02018 went by fast! \u00a0It was a busy year with lots of traveling. \u00a0We experienced weddings, funerals, dealing with unexpected death, and births. \u00a0I started this post and then never came back. \u00a0Now 2019 is past and we are well into 2020. \u00a0When people say time flies, I am understanding it now. \u00a0I finished my sabbatical and jumped back gingerly into the life of the congregation and am now feeling more connected and useful than before. \u00a0It is different but so am I. \u00a0It was somewhat unnerving to make such a shift in thinking about church. \u00a0I have long been a person who feels that God is with us always and is an active participant in every aspect of our lives, if we open ourselves to that. Up until recently that included the church community as an absolute necessity. \u00a0Now, I am realizing that there are aspects of “church” that just don’t work for me. \u00a0It is also true that these things are human additions to the truth of God’s message \u00a0for us. \u00a0Now more than ever I am aware that following Jesus is so much more that what the organized institution of church, (church brought to the US by\u00a0colonization), offers. \u00a0In some instances the church has distorted what the Way of Christ really is. \u00a0Unlocking this for myself has been life-giving. \u00a0It has opened my eyes to the wonder and glory of life in the spirit. \u00a0 More later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wow! \u00a02018 went by fast! \u00a0It was a busy year with lots of traveling. \u00a0We experienced weddings, funerals, dealing with unexpected death, and births. \u00a0I started this post and then never came back. \u00a0Now 2019 is past and we are well into 2020. \u00a0When people say time flies, I am understanding it now. \u00a0I finished […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[158,81,161,159,154,160],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-change","tag-church","tag-life-in-the-spirit","tag-post-colonial","tag-sabbatical","tag-way-of-christ"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3d89p-4I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spiritualdirectioninwg.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}