There is truth I continue to grow to know at Creator. My life is centered around God and Jesus far more profoundly and far differently than I previously recognized.

In the last entry I was exploring the memories the green LBW hymnal had for me. The hymnal began to be used at a time when I began to search for God outside community worship.

Creator reconnected me to community worship. My journey was tied to others in a powerful, mysterious way.

For many years I desired a mystical experience of God and, I suppose, in my mind there were expectations of what that experience would be like. Worship at Creator has given me new eyes over time to recognize transitory God-filled moments and give them the importance they deserve.

Each is different. I remember a story my dad told me when there was difficulty with my birth. He was afraid I would die and began to pray for my life to God. Dad made a promise in that prayer that if I lived he would insure my life was devoted to God. Afterwards he would muse "I don't know why it didn't occur to me that I should have promised to devote my life to God." I have always felt there was something binding about that prayer. I thought about going to seminary for a time but I felt unsure of what I believed at that time and let that dictate my decision.

At Creator I learned that different God-filled moments point to different aspects of God and my relationship to the Trinity.

For example, there was a moment struck with ecstasy during the worship centered around my son's baptism. I knew affirmation and connection I had never experienced before.

There was a moment struck with drama when then Vicar Amanda carried a bowl of fire around the congregation during a Pentecost worship. It tied to something ancient and true.

A moment filled with the recognition of missing God's purpose occurred when Pastor Dayle laid prostrate during the Lent worship service when the Iraq War started. I understood the cultural complicity I shared in the events that were unfolding.

Most recently I felt this during the RIC service at Central. This was a moment struck with mission. Read the blog entry for what this moment was like last January.

All of these moments are extremely personal and subjective. Simultaneously I know them to be a community experience at the same time.

This understanding of God's presence seems to come and go in our lives. From reality to dream and back again. I was reading Marcus Borg's new book Jesus and he described America as being simultaneously Christ haunted and Christ forgetting.

It seems true personally as well as culturally.