there is room for me …

A beautiful note from a reader of A Generous Orthodoxy … (after the jump)

Dear Brian,
I know that you wrote A Generous Orthodoxy over five years ago, but I just finished it this morning. I … never took the opportunity to read any of your work. I am not any sort of biblical scholar or of any noteworthy status, but … [our] book group recently selected A Generous Orthodoxy as the next reading selection…
I feel like I have been on a “wild ride” of a spiritual journey in my short … life. I have gone from a traditional, protestant, rigid, absolute personal faith to a place of questioning, doubting and growing. I just want to say thank-you because reading your book has made me feel like I still have a place in God’s kingdom-even though many would deem my questioning, searching and challenging myself as a lack of faith and my straying from God and my faith. I deeply identified with your chapter, Why I Am Emergent, which I read just this morning. I do not dismiss the journey I have been on spiritually, but see it all as part of getting me to where I am at right now (like you said, the rings of a tree). It’s a gift to have this perspective today. Numerous times I have asked God to bear with me as I sift through all these thoughts and changes in perspectives and I have also felt guilty as if I am betraying Christianity by having such broad thoughts about God’s Kingdom. Thank you for helping me see that there is room for me and my kind of faith journey and I look forward to reading more of your work soon.

More and more people are stumbling into this wild ride … more every day.