Pat

Hi folks, I'm one of the newbies to this group. I'm a 63 year old grandmother living in Ohio.

My religious (church) path has been quite diverse, beginning in the Dutch Reformed church and moving into the Presbyterian church when my family made that switch. I married a Catholic, and our compromise was the Episcopalian Church, which pleased absolutely nobody on either side of the famiy! After a time I became Catholic myself, and taught junior high science in the local Catholic school. My sons, all three of them, had to run the gauntlet of mother as teacher, and we all survived, more or less. For a couple of years I drank at the well of charismatic prayer group within the Catholic church, and that was a deep, deep drink of water. After a time my spiritual path took me away from the Catholic church and into what most people would call the wilderness. While there, I made the acquaintance of a metaphysical shaman who surprisingly, in challenging my assumptions and beliefs, brought me closer to the deep foundation wisdom, which is Love. Yes, the Love of the song…God is Love, and he who abides in Love, abides in God, and God in him. Her, in my case. Next on the path an ecumenical Franciscan offered to be my spiritual mentor and guide, and he has taken me on a wonderful journey into the minds and hearts of academic progressive Christians such as Bishop John Spong, Walter Wink, John Dominic Crossan, and Dorothee Soelle. Holy Toledo, batman! My Franciscan guide helped me to see that wherever I thought my path was going, I wasn't leaving Christianity at all.
I'm still working on that one.

Well, that's enough for now. I suppose if I have to pick a color, well, maybe just write each sentence in a different color? I'm glad to be here, adding my voice to the chorus.