Your faith timeline.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

0-1ish: Mom is Catholic, Dad is Protestant but non-practicing and was an atheist for most of the time I'd known him.  He agreed to baptizing any children they have in the Catholic Church in exchange for being married in the church, but the priest that married them (whom they both suspected was closeted) basically told my parents to do what they thought was right.  My mom originally intended on having me baptized in the Catholic Church, but she did not like the priest in town, and ended up baptizing me herself, with my grandfather directing her over the phone.  I was eventually christened in the UCC, but we never went to church because she didn't like the pastor there either.

1-15: Raised Catholic (by my mom) in all but name, but I still never attended church.  Like my mom, my beliefs on social teachings were always on the liberal side.  I started seriously evaluating my belief on affirmation of 'queer' people with Christianity around 2012, researched the "clobber passages", and became more interested in Scripture and liberation theology.  I read the Bible in its entirety during my sophomore and junior years of high school.

15-20: Researched a variety of churches and traditions including Lutheranism and Methodism.  Briefly identified with the ELCA Lutherans and BRTD-ite evangelicalism.  By the time I was 17 I decided I wanted to be a minister.  After my dad got sick and was clinically dead for six hours during heart surgery, he started believing in God for the first time.  Went back to the UCC church I'd been christened in after my dad died in a household accident and was an active member until I left for college.

20-21: I moved to NC to attend my UCC-affiliated college on a full scholarship with the intent of becoming a minister.  Began looking into Anglicanism, specifically Ango-Catholicism, and identified more with their traditions.  The lack of emphasis on the Sacraments within the UCC moved me toward the Episcopal Church, though before I left college I still wasn't sure whether leaving the UCC was the right move for me.

At this time, I realized that capitalism was fundamentally incompatible with the Christian worldview, though I was and am still reluctant to embrace socialism wholesale.  My views on sin were shaped from reading Walter Rauschenbusch, the father of the Social Gospel movement who criticized the church for focusing on repentance for personal sins but not social sins.

21-24: After I left college to care for my mother, I became a victim of stalking and had my identity, along with almost everything we ever owned, stolen.  As a result, I became jaded and decided that the ordination tract probably wasn't for me, but I still wanted to be involved in the theology field.  Attended my first Episcopal service with my mom in 2018 and decided I was a full-fledged Anglican, but eventually parted ways with the church for reasons I'd rather not get into.

I also started getting heavily into Albert Camus and absurdism, which on its face is incompatible with Christianity (Camus was, after all, an atheist) but is also IMO the best and most logical way to approach the 'wrongness' inherent to the world and to human nature.  It's no coincidence that I started embracing absurdism when I started to develop suicidal ideations and really question the value of living at all.  Given the choice between suicide and a cup of coffee, I picked the latter (though I did attempt suicide for the first time mid-last year).

24-25: As of late, I've been inactive in the church community due to poverty and legal problems.  I devote my spiritual activity to private worship, specifically meditation, novenas, Centering Prayer, the Rosary, and occasional online services which really are no substitute for public worship.  Considering attending an online school when I'm in a better living situation to finish my theology degree - possibly Saint Leo University.  But I'm in a very precarious and transitional stage of my life right now, so I'm delaying involvement in any church for now.  Hoping that changes once my mom and I are relocated in a more livable apartment and we're in better financial standing.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

So as of now, I'm looking into online colleges to get my Bachelor's. I've decided to get a degree in psychology, because then I would have more flexibility, but I still want to eventually earn an M.Div at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver - which I've wanted to attend ever since I started exploring the ordination tract.

I don't know if I have what it takes to be a priest. I'm not a very good Christian. I'm foul-mouthed, I use cannabis to self-medicate, I say things that wouldn't be appropriate in some circles. I don't want to become the male Nadia Bolz-Weber or the next John Shelby Spong. In fact, if I were a priest I would want to push the Episcopal Church in a more traditional direction and stop the bleeding of people leaving the church.

One thing I'm proud of is that people say I'm approachable and empathetic, and I think that's essential for anyone involved in psychology or spiritual counseling. So even if I decide against the ordination tract, I'll still have more options to explore with a psychology degree.

At the same time, I am applying for disability while I continue attending weekly therapy myself to recover from... certain events. Personal growth is my priority now, and once I'm healthier and in better financial standing, I want to counsel to other people who've been through trauma. And when the pandemic finally ends I fully intend on becoming more involved with the Church.

I consider myself a small-c catholic, but I wouldn't become a Roman Catholic for many of the same reasons I wouldn't become a Southern Baptist. The Sacraments are essential to me, but I also have a litmus test on womens' ordination, same-sex marriage, and the use of contraceptives. I'm not going to change my views to align with any church, and I'm not going to pretend to believe that Roman Catholic and Baptist or Calvinist views on gender roles are correct. All people are one in Christ.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

As I said in Discord, just knowing the fact that I played any role in a person's spiritual growth and development makes me very, very happy and more inclined to pursue the ordination tract. The Holy Spirit gets the real credit, of course.