Roots - Where are my faith roots and who are the people who populate my journey?

 A very lengthly title, but perhaps descriptive in its own way. It is useful to look
back at one's life to see how one becomes a self, to contemplate on those whose
tug has journeyed you forward into something outside of the self you perceive and
often do not fully know. It is this question that brings about this post. I want to
acknowledge some of those people that have helped or quietly assisted my journey.
Of course there are many - so I will concentrate on only a few, apologies to those
not named in advance.

How did I become  a person on a journey of faith?  I must look at early influences
and also those that pushed me aside. A faith journey must include both or there
can be no steps forward or backward.

I remember sitting next to my Mom. While others were mumbling their prayer
responses, Mom had  clarion, well enunciated responses. It made me both proud
and also attentive to the words. Earlier she had been a Sunday school teacher and
assistant in the formation process of young people's learning experience about their
faith. Dad was quiet, present and that is all I remember. He had come from a family
with various folks who had position in the church. His great uncle was an educator
and was headmaster for a boys' prep school before and during the Civil War near
Hagerstown Maryland, then on to Trinity College in Hartford as president and then
after only a year was called to be the first Bishop of the newly formed Diocese of
Western Pennsylvania, Dad's great grandfather has been an Episcopal priest in Ohio.
And the were a few others called to be clergy.

Mom's family had a few circuit preachers, also in Pennsylvania, in the Methodist tradition.
So church was important in my predessors' lives. Mom's Dad was a reader and studier
of faith, always trying to find the faith tradition that spoke to him. He died a Unitarian.
His wife remained unchurched at her death. My Dad's family was relentlessly Episcopalian.
So here I am - a cradle Episcopalian. I had a long desert time from college years until
I came to Gloucester in 1980. Friends and needs drew me back to try to find a place in
some faith tradition. The Episcopal church had changed a great deal and I felt at home
in a good way when I first traversed the great red doors and here I am today. I am and will
always be working on the whys, hows, and impossibilities of our faith. And I know that that
is OK and just part of the journey.

These are but words that lead me to try to state what I do believe at this moment in
time. A few years back I wrote a Credo as an exercise for a seminar group I was involved
with and I feel it is still valid as to what I believe just now:

A Credo

 

I believe in God, creator of all that is, seen and unseen,

known and not yet known, perceived and not yet

perceived.

 

I believe that a man named Jesus lived in this good

creation. He was a revolutionary in his time and called

all into an accounting. Because of his truth and action,

he was perceived as a revelation of God in human

life. His life presence was so strong that death could

not separate him from the remembrance of his

followers.

 

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the unseen working of God

in creation. Like God, the Spirit is always creating and present in human time, engaging and acting in,

with and through us.

 

I believe that God revealed to us through Jesus, the

Christ, our human potential to fully love, forgive and

redeem humanity through relationship and community.

 

Thus in death, we see life; in birth, we see hope and possibility; in relationship, we see love as transformer

and creator.

 

Amen.

                                                                                              R O Britton