duck.jpgGRAPHIC: http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/934/
©Jon Birch

Coming out of the Christian Closet

By Becky Garrison

As part of my ongoing pilgrimage to chat up the
themes I raise in my book Jesus Died for This?
, I’ve begun to connect with an increasing number
of folks who seem to be searching for a connection outside of themselves though
they often wouldn’t call themselves emergent, misisonal, organic, holy hipster,
or even Christian.

 Thanks
to my conversations with Karen Ward (www.episcopalvillage.org), Kurt Neilson (
www.seekhere.org) and other like-minded souls, I’ve been exploring
my connection to Celtic Christianity and Anglicanism. On his blog, The Website
of the Unknowing
, Carl McColman reflects how I have begun to
describe myself as an ‘Apophatic Anglican’. The
following excerpt from that piece helps to explain what I mean by this:
 

“During a panel discussion at Journey Imperfect Faith Community , a
number of us were asked to explore the faith label we use to classify ourselves.
I said I was an Apophatic Anglican, which I described as follows: “The more I continue to enter the cloud of the unknowing, the more I realize
just much I cannot know a God that is outside the time/space continuum But
something happens when two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus.
And the Anglican part is because I enter into the mysteries through the
Anglican ritual. And Anglicanism is one of those traditions, where I can
actually leave my brain intact. I don’t have to park my brain at the door when
I come in to partake of the mysteries. I was asked to further describe
“apophatic” as the tradition of negative theology by which you define God by
what you do not know. (And BTW-and it’s not apathetic but apophatic. 🙂



“The more I continue to enter the cloud of the unknowing, the more I realize
just much I cannot know a God that is outside the time/space continuum But
something happens when two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus.
And the Anglican part is because I enter into the mysteries through the
Anglican ritual. And Anglicanism is one of those traditions, where I can
actually leave my brain intact. I don’t have to park my brain at the door when
I come in to partake of the mysteries. I was asked to further describe
“apophatic” as the tradition of negative theology by which you define God by
what you do not know. (And BTW-and it’s not apathetic but apophatic. 🙂

cloud-of-unknowing.jpg

 

GRAPHIC: http://www.nakedpastor.com/2008/11/13/cartoon-inclement-weather/ ©Naked Pastor

 

So what do you think? “What does
it mean to live out a faith where we live out the teachings of Christ while
walking in the cloud of the unknowing?”

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