Hi!

 

I'm Eirene and I'm on a journey... 

 

 

                                                                                                               Perhaps you are too?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If, like me you have felt on the fringes of faith, looking in with more questions than answers, I hope you find something here. I have been journeying for years, and am now discovering a different God.

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And that is mostly what this blog is about. 

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It's about the difficulties I've had with my early fundamentalist Christian background. It's about the impossibility I felt of ever having a relationship with God. It's about always feeling as though I was never off the starting blocks, never mind about running the race.

 

My new God is a God of love and humility and joy. She looks a lot like St Francis, but I don’t think she minds. These writings are for others also on the borderlands, looking in, needing to find a home.

 

‘I am all the ages I have ever been,’ says my faithful writing mentor, Anne Lamott.

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That's so true.

 

I am eleven years old, standing outside my new grammar school, drowning in my oversize blue blazer. I am a newly widowed young mother with two tiny infants. I am a single parent. I am a second wife with a blended family of six children and seven grandchildren.

 

I am a novice in the Third Order of the Society of St Francis learning about community and living out a faith that feels real.

 

I am a backstreet pilgrim.

 

 

What I write

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I write articles on aspects of Christian faith, particularly the struggles many experience with their negative, damaging and painful images of God.

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Through years of wandering I am now encountering a  God who I experience as loving and kind and who wants the very best for me.  A lifetime of knocking around all sorts of churches has taught me one thing – that many people base their images of God on untruths.

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My writing, stemming from over five years of regular conversations with a priest consists of personal reflections on this dichotomy I experience between the messages of God I was fed as a child and the realities of loving mystery I am discovering as an adult.

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I also write about Franciscanism and about the Daily Principles which we base our life of faith around. You can't fall out with them really. They make sense.

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Why I write

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I write both for myself to exorcise the fundamentalist demons of my childhood, and for others to offer an alternative perspective, hope maybe, for all those alienated by a damaging theology of certainty.

 

My mantra is ‘Religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell, spirituality is for those who have already been there’. (Deloria Jnr)

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What I am discovering

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I am discovering another God. An expansive God. A God who throws her head back and laughs.

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A reliable God.

 

One who will put her arms around me and give me a big hug, just when I need it.

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