I have returned to St. George's Episcopalian church these past two Sundays, and I like it more each time. Maybe like isn't the right word, exactly...I feel more each time, more in tune with myself, and in tune with something outside myself as well. I think I am growing more comfortable with the idea of God. I've really enjoyed the sermons, and I appreciate the type of Christian the priest seems to be instructing his congregation to be. For example, this past Sunday's sermon focused around the idea of the story of Abraham's aborted sacrifice of Issac as being not about demanding violence, but about stopping it. I can get behind that.
The problem is Jesus. While I can conceptualize God in a non-human form, in a very general way, I have the hardest time getting myself to even entertain the thought of everything from virgin birth through resurrection. It just seems...unlikely. And I've been told that it's OK to think of those stories as homilies, or as metaphorical, but I don't know if that's really true, given that Jesus the Savior is a pretty essential element to Christianity. So that's where I'm hung up right now.
And then again, it may be that the fact that I'm still insisting on considering all of this logically at all, rather than taking in on faith (there's that word again...) speaks to how little distance I've actually travelled. I dunno. Regardless, St. George's feels more and more comfortable to me, and I really do believe I am getting something out of the time I'm spending there, even if I'm not yet wholly sure what it is.