Forgive my tardy post. I've been down with a sinus infectionfor several days and, frankly, didn't feel like doing anything more than curling up in a fetal position and trying to stay warm. As a result, I'm long overdue in keeping a promise to tell you about a friend's blog, Through a Dark Glass.

Philip uses his blog to take an outsider's look at the Catholic church. That is, he is a non-Catholic working for a Catholic publishing company. While your initial response to that might be the predictably glib "I've heard all that before," his take can be truly enlightening and thought provoking. Part of his writing is intended to highlight some of the books produced by Liguori as well. So, if you're interested in spiritual writing, Through a Dark Glass might be a good blog to visit.

My own religious history is pretty convoluted, but continues to be an on-going story. I guess I've always been spiritual in some way. I had a sense of knowing God through nature even as a boy. During my summer vacations, I read extensively through history, philosophy, and religion books (that was before Playstation, boys and girls). I remember reading an overview of the world's major religions the summer I was thirteen and wondering which of them was the best fit for my nascent spirituality.

My family was nominally Baptist. My paternal grandfather had been a Baptist pastor through much of the Depression. Mom and Dad were C & E people though. That is, they attended on Christmas and Easter only. They sent my brother and I to weekly services to give us some religious foundation, I suppose. Since we lived in a small house, you can guess that our spiritual instruction allowed benefits to our parents as well.

Despite that, I somehow caught the religion bug and attended Baptist church once during the week and twice on Sunday while in my early teens. I'm not sure what I was looking for, but soon became adverse to the doom, gloom, guilt, and damnation that my experience always held. It didn't matter how good I could be, I still was human, flawed, and doomed to hell.

I guess that's when my more adult, detached way of thinking about religion began to blossom. I reasoned that if God is all-knowing and all-loving, then he would know my mind and heart's intention. Further, he wouldn't require the public, many times insincere declarations of the Sunday morning Pharisees. Rather, God would prefer that I approach a relationship with Him/Her in an honest way. As with any relationship, there would be a certain ebb and flow to it as well. Hence, my prayers became less a laundry list of what I want and more a conversation about the state of my life, my hopes, and my fears.

On several levels, I'm sure that much has got me on a speedboat across the River Styx to hell. What I say is: Prove to me I'm wrong.

There are several other chapters to my religion story, but we'll save those for another day.

Note: The opening line of John Lennon's God is "God is a concept by which we measure our pain..." One of the things that makes John my favorite Beatle is his unflinching bravery in looking at himself and laying out his personal truth, warts and all.