Conversion: Giving Form To Liminal Space

Dear Reverend,
  
Thank you for your kind response, and for taking some moments to assist me with this. I don't know if you can help me, though. I've spoken with a number of clergy members in the past and "I always came out through the door that I went in". But I appreciate any time and effort gambled on me. My religious identity has become a question of great difficulty, partly because I am complicated, and partly because I am stubborn; I insist on over-thinking matters which transcend thought.

The baptism would be for me.  My family attended Protestant services sporadically when I was a child. I imagine I was probably baptized, but I'll have to check. In either case, I might be interested in the preparatory lessons, and possibly the baptismal ritual, and almost certainly Confirmation, if I choose to go forward in this path.

I've been exploring the Christian tradition independently for years, but in a largely haphazard and esoteric fashion. In some ways, I am already deeply initiated, while in other ways, I have yet to observe the most preliminary respects. The most "obvious" symbols and creeds of the Church are obscure to me; I never get beyond first principles, and they never lose their mystery.

While I desire, more than anything, to concretize my faith, and to honor the specific forms of Epsicopal doctrine, I find in myself an irrepressible tendency to lose sight of the forms. Categories and definitions blend and bleed into one another and appear to be profoundly interrelated. I have a sincere respect for the specific ritual forms used not only to symbolize but also to manifest our investment. I see that they are, and the Church is, a kind of Incarnation. But, too rapidly, I fly beyond the forms, in order to embrace something altogether interior and abstract. I want to embrace the forms, and the world.

I feel very drawn to the Liturgy, to the Divine Mother, and to other aspects of the faith, but I wish to embrace them without dissimulation, and, in all honesty, I fear there is something in me which undermines them and grasps too readily at the invisible. For a time, I thought I was a Quaker, and I enjoyed their services, and silences. I felt a kinship with the members of "the invisible church"; mystics who identified themselves only ostensibly as Christians, but whose approach was so "pure" as to largely do away with Christianity. Of course, one could argue that the purpose of the Church is to do away with itself; to make the loftiest mystical states accessible without recourse to itself. Even Christ did not come in his own name; he knew that, when we have received the sense and substance of a word, then the Word may be forgotten. Perhaps I am only confessing my spiritual immaturity, in clinging to the outer garments; to Mary, and to Jesus; as Sri Ramakrishna, when he clung to his own image of the Divine Mother:

"Mother, don't make me unconscious through the Knowledge of Brahman. Don't give me Brahmajnana, Mother. Am I not Your child, and naturally timid? I must have my Mother. A million salutations to the Knowledge of Brahman! Give it to those who want it. O Mother let me remain in contact with men! Don't make me a dried-up ascetic. I want to enjoy Your sport in the world."

I am naturally timid. I want to enjoy God's sport in the world, and in the Church. But I struggle with the deeper "Knowledge of Brahman", with the knowledge of the mystics, who have encountered the unknown God; the God without form and name. From this fog of unknowing, I look upon Jesus, and invent the strangest doctrines. I say things like:

"Even if he is a character of fiction, he is still the clearest incarnation of God. Just look how he has taken hold of men's minds and of human history! Does it matter if he was/is "merely" an idea? Perhaps an idea can be holy, and possess a more formidable substance than matter itself. Is this not what it means to read the spirit, not the letter? Somehow, this idea, this image, errupted into history, and from where could it have come, if not from God?"

And, I know, this is very Gnostic of me, but I seem to recognize similar, if subtler, utterances among the saints. Still, my faith seeks the material, and I am inclined to believe the most conventional things. That he was a man, and was, at the same time, the one true Son of God, is something I can almost believe unreservedly. I used to think calling him "the one true God" was insensitive to other faiths, or only permissible in the sense that one might give one's father a "World's Best Dad" t-shirt, without seeing it as a (friendly or unfriendly) provocation to other fathers. On the contrary, it is endearing, and nobody would fault a loving son for idealizing his own father in this way. But, as diplomatic and reasonable as this explaination sounds, I am beginning to see it another way.

Nietzsche understood genius as a result of incredible social and historical forces. Whenever a civilization develops, it creates paradigms and blindspots; norms and more marginal areas of relative unconsciousness. Great pressure is built-up in maintaining these norms, and in repressing other matters into the cultural unconscious. At some point, these hidden matters errupt upon the stage of history, in the form of a person of unique genius. I believe Jesus of Nazareth is the greatest genius the world has known or may ever know; the erruption into history of universal love and wisdom; the first fruit of the Truth. I do not know if his identity came as a revelation to him or not, but I believe he accurately identified himself as the Christ, the Messiah, the Way, the Truth, the Son of God, and God. And while this claim is valid and justified in a hidden or subversive sense, I believe it is also unambiguously true, and may just as profitably be taken at face value. I believe he came to witness and to prove that the spirit has power over the flesh, and I believe he succeeded on both counts. Hence, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is, for me, the easiest of all things to receive. I am unclear, though, as to how well my other ideas agree with the established doctrines of the Church.

I recognize a need for guidance and a more systematic approach, but my nature is introverted and independent to the point of eccentricity. I've never met a teacher nor an institution I could submit to, and perhaps that is my own fault, but I want to submit to Christ, and I try to find his intermediary in the Church. I'm just not sure what degree of involvement I am suited to have with the Church. Taking direction, as well as finding my place within a community, is not easy, and I'm not even sure it is possible for me. I stay on the outside because whenever I try to assert myself, I alienate people with my intensity and social naivette. Perhaps my place is on the outside.

In Christ,
Stephen