c. 2005 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ After two days in Manhattan _ visiting my older sons, conducting some business, rediscovering a magical city _ I leave for the Pocono Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania.

There I will lead a weekend retreat at a rural retreat center and a Lenten retreat for Episcopal clergy. Both assignments were booked many months ago, when religious life seemed simpler to me. Since then, much has changed in my consciousness, thanks to hearing people’s questions, more reading, grappling with the Old Testament in my daily writings, and our culture’s intensifying religious-political warfare.

A safe retreat would tap into ancient rhythms and envelop retreatants in the magic of the land. Life seems too short for safety, however, and the times too pregnant with danger and opportunity. Like the serpent sidling up to Eve, the darkness dares us to remember who we are.

I have spent the past 18 months just listening to the questions that people would ask of God. If resources allow, I plan to intensify that encounter in a four-month “Listening Tour,” starting in July. I am convinced that listening, not talking, is the way forward for progressive Christianity. Church leaders need to stop their orations, public bickering, clever preaching and press releases, and instead listen to their people and to the world around them.

Not only would listening ground us in actuality, rather than safe theory, pat answers and pointless dispute, but taking people’s questions seriously would ally us with the prophetic and disruptive core of God’s call. It is the serpent, you see, who says, Don’t worry, be clever, seize power, assert your control. It is God who says, Listen to me. It is Jesus who said, Stay in their homes, hear their needs, and serve.

Here is what we learn when we take our faith questions seriously:

People matter more than institutions, and human needs more than institutional imperatives.

Human yearnings and insights reveal God more profoundly than do doctrines and definitions. God is discovered, not distributed. God is known in the here and now, not restricted to a far-off realm that a few gatekeepers control. All have equal access to God, not just those who obey the rules.

When people are treated with dignity and respect, they are less easily dominated by systems that serve the few at the expense of the many. When people are encouraged to think for themselves, to plumb the depths for their actual yearnings, and to approach God from the authenticity of discovered faith, not imposed, they are less easily diverted by empty crusades, such as the current sexuality wars.

I am convinced that if we Christians _ joining hands with God-seekers who walk different paths toward the same God _ took our own questions seriously, we would find God eager to be known and to respond, our lives would be more whole and less fragmented, and we would feel that personal potency that overbearing systems want us to doubt.

We would make a difference, not as rock-throwers in some mob being formed to attack the vulnerable and thereby to keep us diverted and dependent while the few grab power and wealth, but as children of a just God who is not the least amused by self-serving predators and not at all dependent on their grand institutions.

What I want to say to retreatants is, Listen to your heart, listen to the questions you are asking, listen to each other, and don’t stop listening when the few tell you to stop being impertinent and heretical.

That is a dangerous path to walk. Institutions fight back. Trillions of dollars are at stake. When faith replaces religion, and yearning ignores obedience, watch out.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. His forthcoming book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” will be published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

MO/JL END RNS