Seems Like God…

About Reflections on Life and Faith

I’m not a great believer in “labels.” Is Life and Faith liberal, or progressive, or spiritual, or inclusive, or …. ? In some sense, it’s all of those things. My faith background is “mainline” Christian. Life and Faith, therefore, is Christian as well. 

You can find a Directory of my other sites, which all focus on mutuality in various aspects of life, here.

I respect the traditional expressions of Christianity that empowered and sustained millions over millennia, inspiring them with the courage to champion social change and the fortitude to “seek justice and resist evil.” I admire as well those who have struck out to reformulate Christianity in new and exciting ways, or to create entirely new spiritualities, drawing on their own experience of the Divine to express, in new words, the eternal message.

However, I believe that most of us aren’t so much interested in a “new” message as we are in hearing the ancient one that lies at the heart of our history and our spirit.

Not the message of doctrine, that claims we must “believe” certain things; but the message of faith, that challenges us to do certain things.

The message that says Whatever you do for the least of these, you have done for me;
the message that recognizes that our “neighbor” is the whole world;
the message that calls us to embrace the world in all its wondrous diversity.

I hope that Life and Faith may, in some small way, lift up that message.

If anything here has meaning for you, Life and Faith will have served its purpose.

In that case, I hope that you’ll pass it on to a friend, or take a moment to add a comment.

Thank you

A Little History

Life and Faith has existed, in one form or another, for over twenty years.

Debuting in 1988, it originally ran on a “BBS” (“bulletin board system”), utilizing FidoNet software. Even then, using what now seems incredibly clumsy technology (users had to make long distance calls from as far away as Australia), people of faith who wanted to explore their beliefs without the “baggage” that accompanied traditional religion were finding each other all over the world.

Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to be associated with an incredibly diverse range of people who helped me to explore the depth and breadth of a faith that refuses to be bound by dogma or doctrine. Before online education became an everyday occurrence, these scholars and theologians were hosting workshops and forums through Life and Faith that opened windows for participants from across North America and around the world.

Indeed, the Statement of Affirmation for People of Faith and the Golden Rule Resolution are just two results of the collaboration of people from across the globe who came together to create common statements of what it means to be one with Creation.

The world is fast becoming one very big small community.

What the future holds for sites like this is unknowable.

But it’s bound to be interesting.