Coracle Trust E-Reflections

Faith transitions: Secure and strange

Thursday 12 January 2012

People need a life of practical romance;
the combination of something that is strange
with something that is secure.
Orthodoxy: the romance of faith, G.K. Chesterton

Photo: Monarch butterfly chrysalis, Ettore Balocchi
Audio: The journey by David Whyte read by Gus McLeod

We now pick up our pre-Advent theme of faith transitions: comings and goings and the in-between places.

What are we supposed to feel: secure or strange?

Sometimes we are caught, neither here not there, just frustrated or unused to our current surroundings, confused or intrigued about our inner thoughts and feelings.  Where is God?  Should we always know what’s going on? 

Exile and home

Two of the Bible’s stronger metaphors are exile and home.  We have desert wanderings and tent dwelling.  At one stage King David is scrambling among rocks and caves, hiding with those loyal to him, on another David sits comfortably on his throne.  Ezekiel joins the captives trail to Babylon and embeds himself in his new foreign world. 

The chrysalis is the intermediate stage - neither caterpillar nor butterfly.  Neither one thing not the other yet both at the same time; secure and strange; yielding something different yet also the same.  ‘One organism, with identical DNA, existing in different forms, transforming throughout its life’, much like a developing faith.

Andrew Hook

* Chrysalis, Alan Jamieson