Becoming: A Spiritual Journey

By Rev. Dr. Pamela Feeser

Many people who the church calls lost actually ask significant questions that people in the pews sometimes dont ask. Just because someone might not go to church doesnt mean that he or she is not spiritual and yearning for a deeper relationship with the Lord. While seeking such a connection can be scary, the rewards are too significant to ignore.

In this inspiring book, author Pamela Feeser, a United Methodist pastor, draws on her personal experiences to help you bring spirituality to life. Youll find activities to personalize the process as you discover how to

relate spirituality to daily living and religion;
be honest with yourself as you develop a relationship with God;
develop morality and a moral stance;
continue incorporating spirituality in your daily life.

Discover the great gifts of religion, spirituality, and developing a relationship with God. Join Rev. Dr. Feeser on a personal and spiritual journey, and discover the divine as you start Becoming.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462035908

Rev. Dr. Pamela Feeser

Rev. Dr. Pamela Feeser grew up in the Pennsylvania Dutch community of Hanover, Pennsylvania. She was ordained by the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church and is the director of community health ministries for the Pastoral Care Department of Baptist Health South Florida. She currently lives in the Florida Keys.

Book preview

Becoming:

A Spiritual Journey

The Rev. Dr. Pamela Feeser

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Becoming …

Copyright © 2011 by The Rev. Dr. Pamela Feeser

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

All Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The painting on the front cover, Childhood’s End by Cynthia Ré Robbins, is used by permission of the artist.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-3589-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-3591-5 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-3590-8 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011911216

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 07/13/2011

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter ONE

Beginnings

Chapter TWO

Spiritual living, Spirituality

Chapter THREE

Introspection

Chapter FOUR

Reaching Out

Chapter FIVE

Intentional Living

Chapter SIX

Relational Expansion of Worldview

Chapter Seven

Moral Maturation

Chapter EIGHT

Personal Relating with a Higher Power

Chapter NINE

Continuing the process

Glossary

Bibliography

About the Author

For Duffy

* * *

God wishes to be known; and it pleases him that we should rest in him; for everything which is beneath him is not sufficient for us.

Julian of Norwich

Showings

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to C. E. Ré Robbins of Tavernier, Florida, for not only creating the stunning painting on the cover but also for allowing me to use it on the cover of my book. The painting’s title is Childhood’s End.

I first saw the painting at a fund-raiser in the Upper Keys of Florida. From my first glance, it has had a breathtaking effect on me with its amazing expression of the dynamic and continual relationship between the Triune God and humanity. I see the brilliant circular light as the Light of God, the birth canal as the Creator, the flames as the Holy Spirit, the children and woman as humanity, and the movement of the painting through and around the spiral of life and life-giving divinity as the ongoing relationship between humanity and the divine. I see spirituality.

Ré Robbins was touched by my interpretation of her painting and gave me permission to use it as my book cover. Her work can be found at www.art4spirit.com.

I don’t know what I would have done without the support, encouragement, advice, and patience of my loving husband, Delbert Carter Jr., and my colleague, Dr. Teddy Tarr. Thank you for your words, time, suggestions, and mostly love while helping me to finish my book. I love you both. May you always know God’s blessings through all things.

Pam

Preface

Becoming is a book about spirituality to help encourage you as you develop your own spiritualism. In that spirituality is deeply personal and relational, this book uses my personal experiences to bring spirituality to life. At the end of each chapter, I’ve included activities to invite you to personalize this process. Spiritual living is characterized by creative chaos. Now, you might be very familiar with chaos, and there are times we all feel that chaos reigns. Comprehending creative chaos might be a stretch for you. With creative chaos there are numerous things going on at the same time; however, these things are not being destructive but rather are bringing growth and life. As creative chaos develops, you will experience what I like to call aha moments. Moments when the light finally dawns and things finally start making sense and connecting. A Montessori classroom can be a beautiful example of creative chaos. Your journey may or may not follow the order of this book, and that’s okay. You might discover additional components of spirituality that are important to your process. Each discovery is a wonderful celebration of God’s incredible gift of life. Claim it as you can, question it where you need to; breathe, struggle, challenge, live.

The introduction provides a brief opening to the idea of spirituality and how it relates to daily living as well as religion. The first chapter starts with the beginning of my spiritual life and explores beginnings. Your beginning will not be the same as mine. However, it will be or was just as special and unique. From there I take a look at how I worked through those beginnings into chapter two. In this chapter I invite you, the reader, to join me on a spiritual journey from a common foundation, each of us claiming our brokenness and moving forward from that place. We begin from where we are, and that’s okay. If we start from where we aren’t, if we pretend we are more whole than we are, our relationship will not be true. Something will be missing until we are honest with, at least, ourselves. Chapter three invites introspection, encouraging you, once again, to be honest with yourself. You will be invited to laugh with me over my flaws and celebrate the amazing joy of self-discovery and healing that takes place when we share grace with ourselves. Chapter four will encourage you to reach out to others, the world, and creation, delighting in the miraculous gifts to your living in the process. Chapter five invites you to rummage through the many lessons I’ve learned as I’ve searched myself, gaining the courage and strength to represent who I truly am through my living. In other words, the fidelity of moral maturation is explored through true-life successes and struggles. Chapter six is my way of expressing that wonderful African adage: when the toe is stubbed, the eye cries. Chapter seven addresses morality. How do we develop our morality? How do develop our moral stance? Chapter eight delves into our relating with a higher power. My higher power is often referred to by others as the Triune God. If I had to choose one way of referring to the one who loved me into being perhaps I would use Creator. This is simply because the place where my life and this One seem to resonate the most beautifully is concerning creativity, creation, humor, life, expression. Finally, chapter nine is a springboard into continuing the process.

Introduction

Life is the most complex and challenging thing you will ever do. Some people choose to skate along the surface, while others choose to live. Each person has his or her own reasons for making choices about how to deal with life. Fear, arrogance, faith, personal identity… there are numerous things that influence who you are and who you choose to be. I remember struggling with the age-old question of nurture versus nature when I was in high school psychology class. Life was so seemingly simple back then. However, even then my belief was that it is both nature and nurture. My belief was based on the fact that while my four brothers and I each have our own unique personality, we also share certain characteristics. Duffy was born one year ahead of me. Then I have three younger brothers who are seven, ten, and thirteen years younger. We grew up in the same household with the same parents but in two separate groups as a result of our age differences and a terrible accident that took my older brother’s life before the three younger ones were born. As the years continued, I gained more experience, knowledge, and influence of all sorts. Now I am absolutely convinced that life is all inclusive. I believe that there are certain characteristics that seem to be a part of us from the time we are born. I believe this is most evident in twins. At the same time, life does not discriminate. Everything the individual is subjected to, whether it is experienced willingly or unwillingly, is taken in by that person’s life, by their being.

How we deal with, process, and utilize life experiences is a matter of our spirituality. In the twenty-first century, many people are becoming more and more interested in spirituality. At the same time, there are many who feel threatened by it. Spirituality is actually as natural to us as breathing. Unfortunately, humanity has pushed spirituality aside for hundreds if not thousands of years in interest of structured beliefs. Additionally, systematic ways of living have been prescribed based on those beliefs. Yes, I’m talking about organized religion. Organized religion and spirituality are not intended to be mutually exclusive. However, in the interest of religious fidelity, spirituality has often been pushed aside as being too harshly judged and regulated. The balance between the two has become drastically out of balance. Religion is intended to give guidance to our spiritual lives, among other things. It is not intended to dictate our beliefs or stop us from thinking for ourselves. Spirituality is intended to be the way we grow in our relationship with that which is greater than ourselves. It is not intended to replace religion.

As a United Methodist pastor, I have discovered an incredible wealth of spirituality among those the Church so often labels the lost. Rather than finding people outside the traditional church to be spiritless, lost, and empty, I’ve found many of them to be asking wonderfully deep, significant questions while seeking relationship with the divine grace. Unfortunately, these are questions that I often do not hear people in the pews asking. Religion, just like spirituality, has its dangers and its great gifts.

Throughout my life, I’ve had many experiences, and when it comes down to it, my spirituality is what has literally kept me alive. Spirituality is a living, life-giving, divine gift. Again, I stress that my church, my religion, has been an important source of structure, guidance, and fellowship in my life of faith. It’s not a question of either/or; rather, for me, it needs to be both/and.

I pray that this book may be inspirational to you in your living. I pray that you might come to truly love yourself even more and more purely as you come to love and relate with the whole of being. I pray for blessings on you and yours.

Lover of my very being, you have so enriched and blessed and nurtured and held and consoled and challenged and embraced every cell of my brokenness. You have led me to wholeness and love and grace and blessedness and yes, always to you. And now you call me to this which I offer back to you for even more blessings that these stories and thoughts might stir others and me to know you and be known by you more deeply and more completely than ever before. You know that I’ve done the very best I can. May your graciousness take this offering and give it light and life.

Shalom

Pam

Chapter ONE

Beginnings

O God, you are my God,

I seek you, my soul thirsts for you;

my flesh faints for you,

as in a dry

Reviews for Becoming

[dubiousdisciple · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I struggled in deciding on a rating for this one. For myself, I’d give it three stars; I just didn’t relate well. It’s a short little book, and even at that, it seems to lose a bit of focus toward the end and perhaps could have been even shorter. But for others, who have shared more of the pain that Pamela has (both physical and emotional), the book will prove inspirational and comforting, worthy of a five-star ranking. I settled on a compromise of four stars.Rev. Feeser is opinionated but gentle as she shares the wisdom of a life still Becoming. This is a book for the heart, not so much for the head … a bit different from the sort of book I usually review. Yet it was a pleasant break, sometimes even delightful … and sometimes disturbing. Like Job in the Bible, Pamela endured a lot under God’s watchful eye. Like Job, she simply could never give up on Him. While her understanding and picture of God evolved over time, her love for the One Who Loved Her Into Being grew only stronger … overcoming periods of darkness which found her railing in anger at Him. In her love-hate relationship with the Creator, love won by a landslide, and this shared love is clearly her comfort and strength today.“Bottom line, God, it’s you and me. I know we can do it.”Spiritual living is characterized by creative chaos, insists Rev. Feeser. Yet within that chaos, her escape was music and poetic verse. Music appears to have grounded her, given her stability in a world of chaos. Over and over she found God hiding in the notes and the controlled breathing of playing wind instruments (Spirit = breath of God). I mention this because for all the writing I do about God, I know so very little about Him, and I think that for one person at least … God is music. I’m glad Pamela found Him there; we should all be so lucky.