Childhood sense of wonder starts spiritual journey with many twists and turns
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Local writer and activist Ruth Dunster remembers her childhood self responding with a “sense of wonder and awe” – of divine presence almost – to the beauties of nature.
There were wonderful things about the West Church which her family attended, but not always this sense of Wonder.
She vividly remembers a picture of children gathered around Jesus. Instinctively she knew she was the child at the back, apparently out of Jesus’s sightline.
Ruth attributes both this sense of exclusion and her attunement to Wonder to the autism which wasn’t diagnosed until much later.
READ MORE FROM JOHN DEMPSTER'S SERIES
Aged 13, influenced by a theology which she feels had an unhealthy emphasis on human sinfulness, she made a positive choice to become a Christian. “I need someone to save me,” she thought. Teenage Ruth was zealous, keen “to buttonhole everyone and tell them they had to be born again”.
Later, married, and with a religious studies degree, she taught religious education until, in her 30s in Glasgow, she walked away from church, faith, marriage, everything.
'When she considered atheism as the way ahead, “the universe went black and empty”. She thought: “I don’t know what I am, but I know I’m not an atheist.”'
The reasons were many. The mental wounds she bore as a result of traumatic childhood events. The mismatch between what she’d been taught about Christian experience and her own reality. The tension between the many ways to God she taught through the week, and the one way preached on Sundays.
The misdirection of a Church which pointed her towards teaching rather than a theology degree, thus denying her deepest intuitions.
When she considered atheism as the way ahead, “the universe went black and empty”. She thought: “I don’t know what I am, but I know I’m not an atheist.”
Things which helped Ruth’s recovery included taking Masters and PhD degrees in literature and theology, and grasping that spirituality, theology and art belong together. (Her PhD was published as The Autism of Gxd.)
Realising it was OK to think for herself, OK to question orthodoxy, also helped. Most helpful of all: the realisation that “at the heart of it, there’s divine love”, that the Spirit of Jesus is constantly poured out across the world.
After 40 years away, this deep-thinking, profoundly intelligent and gently gracious woman returned to live in Inverness. She used to think there would be an end-point to her spiritual journey. Either a complete “Yes!” or “No!” to the certainty of divine presence. But no. Still there are days when doubt is the stronger hue in the palette of faith. Other days, having some sense of encounter, she will cry “Yeah! You are there! I see You!”
Perhaps more of us than care to admit it are sustained by similar moments.
