Is beauty enough? Does all beauty necessarily contain goodness and truth? Does all truth across as beautiful and good? Is all goodness true and beautiful? Or is God found at the intersection of all three?
The Orthodox liturgy, as well as the Catholic liturgy *as I remember it* (from Poland, where there hadn't been as many post-Vatican 2 changes implemented), and the Eastern Rite Catholic liturgies all feel about the same to me from an aesthetic point of view: beautiful and inspiring. Since I do not fixate any longer on isolating the literal truth of any one given dogmatic teaching, that argument is completely besides the point for me on my quest.
In my personal spirituality, I tend to veer towards scrupulosity, and so this is a concern for me. I feel safety in anchoring my faith on a pre-existing organized religion, where I can have freedom within established boundaries. Of course, the problem is that my freedom of thought actually crosses these boundaries, but nonetheless I long for them. It's as if I went to have them to fight against.
There are churches (denominations/religions) where those boundaries are a lot more flexible, and so you'd think I would be much more comfortable there, but their worship experience simply does not compare to the ancient liturgical style I grew up with and long for.
And so the story of my (spiritual) life is a catch-22. I simply cannot belong to a religion fully with my heart and mind. Either one will be lacking or the other. There isn't a way for me to feel completely whole within the bounds of religion, nor outside of it.
I'm reminded of my time in the Army when my chaplain gave me the Myers Briggs assessment and told me that I was equally happy within the structures of military life as I was unhappy with the lack of flexible freedom.
This should come as no surprise to me. In other areas of my life, like in homeschooling, after researching the various different philosophies, I am definitely attracted mainly to Charlotte Mason, but I simply cannot commit to being a purist. So in the end, I am eclectic, which works in the home, but not so much when I'm trying to plug into homeschooling groups.
Perhaps the whole problem is my fixation with external validation.
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