Sunday Soliloquy

It's a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I've been thinking about all the people I've known in my life. Facebook and Twitter, of course, stimulate the process, but social networking only scratches the surface of recalling the myriad of human beings that have contributed in one way or another to my collective experience since being born. I've often made reference to James Burke's work, The Day the Universe Changed, and since my retirement it has been in that context that I have begun to ponder those days that my life changed. Still paramount is the moment of birth, the miraculous introduction to life! It's only equal will be the moment of death, but the period between is marked by occasions which have significantly altered the future course.

An example of such profound change is how I now experience Sunday in contrast to my observance of the Sabbath until a decade ago. My church attendance was not perfect, but relatively near so. Sunday and church were virtually synonymous for the first half-century of my life, but the stark opposite has been true since my estrangement from organized religion.

In a strict orthodoxy this would constitute my loss of faith as grounds for excommunication, with the accompanying rejection of ordination obvious. To the contrary, however, I have discovered in such great changes a prevailing continuity, an aspect of eternal quality which creates a past, present and future from infinity. I have not lost my conviction that the nature of our relationship to that from which the infinite emerges affects the quality of life we experience, both individually and collectively.

I give thanks for the opportunity at hand to contemplate the days on which my life changed completely and yet continued. This to me is the revelation of the Christ upon human consciousness that transcends dogmatic creed and catechism. My life has changed; my faith remains.