This is more a reaction than a report or review:
When I was 13 and studying for my baptism with my minister (American Baptist), I asked if our church believed in a literal virgin birth, or was it spiritual, or even just parable. My minister, who had been our minister since we joined that church when I was about six, replied that there were still people studying that question. He said that, as I studied throughout my life, I should pay attention to those feelings and beliefs that resonated with my soul, and that is what I should believe.
Wow! He started me on a lifetime of study and seeking that will never end. However, there was one thing I already knew. It was not an answer to that question, but it was a part of it: I knew that when I sang, my soul sang with me. And, wherever I sang--in church or in the woods or on the stage or in my bedroom, I felt the same. So my soul could rejoice anywhere--anywhere could be my church. I've never been blessed with visions of God or with hearing the physical voice of God. But I can sing and I know, for me, music is connected to the voice of God.
The Gnostics believed in knowledge of self--that we are created in the image of God, so to know ourselves is to know God. Over the years, I have found many other things that make my soul sing--birdsong, the wind in the trees (and in my hair), a beautiful story, laughter--mine and that of others, and many more things. I have come to a knowledge that what brings me close to God may not be the same things that bring others there and that that doesn't matter. For one of the things that makes my soul sing is watching others seek out that which makes their souls sing. Perhaps I have always been a Gnostic at heart. Perhaps we all have...
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