Camping Inside the House

From Barbara Brown Taylor's "Leaving Church",
"I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well. Like campers who have bonded over cook fires far from home, we remain grateful for the provisions that we have brought with us from those cupboards, but we also find them more delicious when we share them with one another under the stars.
This wilderness experience sets up a real dilemma for some of us, since we know how much we owe to the traditions that shaped us. We would not be who we are without them, and we continue to draw real sustenance from them, but insofar as those same traditions discourage us from being with one another, we cannot go home again. In one way or another, every one of us has gotten the message that God made us different that we might know one another, and that how we treat one another is the best expression of our beliefs."
Well said! As I struggle with some of those same issues, I often feel like I'm a "camper" while still in the center of my faith community! Ever raise your tent in the middle of your own room? And that is the great blessing I've found at Glenwood; my "campiness" is accepted, and even embraced, at a level that allows me some peace with the situation, even as I continually search out fellow "campers", often near the edges of the community, as they are in the process of easing into or out of the household.