Tuesday, June 07, 2005

A disciple of Jesus

I no longer call myself a Catholic. That was not as hard as I thought it would be.

I have little trouble referring to myself as an Episcopalian. But the thing is that that really is not my "culture". I am not tied to the Episcopal Church... although I have a found a comfortable home at one of its churches. It is the particular Episcopal community to which I belong that makes sense to me. So I'll say I'm Episcopalian, but it doesn't mean all that much to me.

I don't come from the tradition of calling myself a Christian. Catholics tend to call themselves "Catholic", not so much "Christian". Also I'm not so big on the whole Christology stuff, and there's just so much associated with being a Christian to which I do not subscribe.

If you truly want to know what I call myself, I guess "a disciple of Jesus" would do the trick nicely.

1 comment:

Dymphna said...

Nicely put, Camel. We are all wanderers in a strange place, as Paul says. Pilgrims.

My journey is similar to yours. I'm a "Catholic lite" for various reasons, though my Irish Catholic mother is no doubt rolling over in her grave. Actually, her resting place is in our Episcopal church's graveyard...I like to remind her, when I visit, that it wasn't planned that way, just another example of God's little jokes.

A friend of mine has a quote on his blog: "how come if I don't believe in God, I keep finding his fingerprints all over my stuff?" I love what that expresses...

I'm an Episcopalian because I would miss the sacraments too much if I went anywhere else...but I still use a rosary on occasion (it started back up during chemotherapy and I found it a soothing method of focus and letting go at the same time)and some of the other baggage I've carried over to my new house. Relatively new.

Come visit at Neighborhood of God sometime...