The Prodigal

The parable of the prodigal son was always told to me this way:

Dad has two sons. They are all happy, healthy, wealthy. One day, one of the sons says, "Screw it! I want my inheritance and I'm out of here!" He galivants off to spend his days drinking booze and shmoozing women. He eventually runs out of money, eats with the pigs, and decides it would be better to go be a servant for his dad.  He heads home, expecting a very cold welcome, but his dad runs out with open arms and throws a party for him. 

The way it was applied was that God still loves us, even when we stray from our church, from the truth, from our faith. As long as we come back, it's all good. And, if you happened to be like the brother that stuck around the whole time, you shouldn't be mad when God re-accepts someone who has strayed. 

This past summer I went for a walk every morning. I spent that time listening to podcasts, listening to music, or listening to my shoes slap the pavement. One morning, I was listening to a podcast and they referenced that parable, and I had a lightbulb moment.

Let me give a little backstory and context here:

I grew up in a conservative, non-denominational Christian home. Church twice on Sundays, Sunday school, youth group, Bible college, church music ministry, Bible studies, prayer groups, loads of books on Christianity. 

Then...things started to shift. 

Slowly, all the things I had believed for decades were called out. Not a single theological stone was left unturned. Sin? Yep. Hell? You betcha. Salvation and Heaven? Oh yeah. The Bible? Definitely (that was a boulder). After several years, I ended up on the other side with a completely different set of beliefs. The transition has been both painful and unequivocally liberating. I stopped relying on my religion to help me find God. I started paying attention to my emotions instead of sweeping them aside using prayer. I took an honest look at how we got the Bible in our hands. And biggest of all, I discovered that all our beliefs are optional. What had been taught to me as objective and absolute truth that revealed the real state of things, I realized are a mixture of bias, tradition, myths, collective decision and personal experience.

If you've gone through this, you know exactly what I'm talking about. This faith deconstruction is nothing short of life-altering for the person who has been in that type of faith culture their entire life. If you haven't gone through this, I get that my statements above are shocking at best, and infuriating or offensive at worst. I was terrified to tell people what I didn't believe, unsure of what I did believe, and exhausted by trying to figure it out. 

And then...it didn't matter. I accepted that I couldn't figure it out. I wouldn't have the answers. I wouldn't ever be settled again in the faith traditions of my childhood and young adulthood. I had seen too much, understood too much, changed too much to be comfortable in that cocoon again. I started to learn from other faiths, other ways of viewing the world, other religions, other practices, other PEOPLE. People who had completely different childhoods, religious experiences, family dynamics, belief systems, and ways of making their way in the world. I saw the beauty and camaraderie we all shared in admitting that none of us knows what the hell we're doing. 

Back to the prodigal son.

My light bulb moment came when I played with an alternate application of the story. I was the prodigal son, but the timeline and setting were different than what I was traditionally taught. 

I started out in child-like wonder and faith, like we all do. I didn't have it figured out, and that was okay and normal. I was in touch with my body, unhindered by the cares of the world. Then I grew a little and left the safety of that God-knowing in search of something (cue the son leaving). That something that I found out in the world was religion. But it didn't fill me up. It didn't satisfy. It left me hungry for the true relationship, the love I felt as a kid from God that could barely fit in my imagination. I wanted the God who loved play, curiosity, pleasure, wonder, questions (so many questions). The God who laughed at my humanness, turned the light on in my soul, filled me with creativity and possiblity. The God who felt like home. The God who was pure love who didn't need a thing from me, even my belief. 

So I left religion and went back to God. And she welcomed me with open arms. Things were different than they were before because of what I had learned out in the world of religion. It was a coming home, but to a deeper truth, one that was outside of time, space, man-made rules, fear-based constructs. 

There are still a lot of questions, but instead of being terrified of what will happen if I don't figure them out, there is great curiosity that fuels exploration. I will never have it figured out, and what an amazing realization and freedom. I have gone deeper into myself, deeper into my intuition, my understanding, my sanctuary, my soul-home than ever before. It has made me so aware that this life is truly a gift and a game. A great delightful experiment where we hypothesize, theorize, try things, fail, laugh, try again, learn, fail, laugh some more. 

We suffer when we forget we don't have to suffer. Grieve? Yes. Suffer? No. I understand now, the yoke is easy, the burden is light. Peace and rest. Breathe in: I Breathe out: Am. The beauty in the present moment, knowing that now is all we have. The past belongs to our desperately flawed memory, and the future to our imagination. We get to choose how present we are, letting the feelings settle and shift and sway and embracing it all because that is the beauty of this human experience. 

If you're going through a faith transition yourself, there is a light ahead. It won't feel so heavy forever. You will change and grow if you allow yourself to sit in your uncomfortable, unfamiliar, uneasy feelings, and you will come home to yourself in a way that you didn't know was possible. You are light and love, and all that's happening is peeling back the layers of what you're not to reveal who you really are--a beautiful, holy being. Whole. Loved. Here.