Often, the same community that presses its members up against the boundaries of the eternal may also teach them about favoritism, judgment, and pettiness. These are dynamics that kill spirituality. They must be discerned and removed. But then I come full circle. I cannot both take ownership of my spiritual health, and then blame my faith community for anything which stultifies spirituality.
Accountability ends blaming and judgment of others.
If I am free from asking my church s permission to embrace a new spiritual insight, I am also free from blaming it if that permission is not freely granted. And the implied social contract between myself and the church, often formed in my youth, can always be reviewed, recast. Spirituality feels like a perpetual thrust into new territory. There is less that is familiar about the journey than I often wish. So I have come to enjoy those people, those experiences, those aspects of my own religious heritage, which understand my sometimes bewildered gaze.