What comes next?

Things I miss about going to church every week:

• Developing deep relationships with people from many different walks of life
• Singing the sacrament hymn, focusing on the love of Christ together with a group of people
• Having an easy outlet for my expertise at working with children
• Watching people change from toddlers to children to teenagers to adults, and going on to have their own families. Even though I moved a lot as a kid, that feeling of change vs. continuation over time (and generations) was pretty strong at church
• Being presented with issues and principles to think deeply about, with the goal of becoming a better person – especially when the talks and lessons made it clear that there was more than one right way to be, and discussed the tension between two good principles
• The times that unity and diversity were valued together, that felt so affirming and filled me with love and belonging
• The clear sense of purpose about my life’s path*
• Regularly hearing the deep truths about other people’s spiritual journeys
• Being promoted every week to dig deeply into beautiful sacred texts
• The constant reminders that the divine interacts with us, but often in very human, imperfect ways
• Giving talks and planning lessons, listening to the spirit as I spoke, and hearing that what I prepared meant something to someone else

Things I don’t miss about going to church every week:

• Fighting with myself every week about how I justify supporting a church that excludes innocent children from full participation
• The talks and lessons about modesty, obedience above conscience, and how evil the world is
• Worship of The Family more often than Jesus, and without caring about or supporting actual people that make up actual families
• The recycled lessons and by-the-book comments
• Being frustrated about the disconnect between my leadership skills and the opportunities I was offered
• Having an implied need for permission about extending my spirituality or connection to God outside the bounds set by the church’s rules
• So much cognitive dissonance

What I’m looking for now:

I guess it’s pretty clear that what I need is a spiritual community of some kind, but I also miss having mentors. Not because of the hierarchy – I never wanted to have someone else be in charge of my spirituality – but because they had been in a similar place to me, and come through it. Their suggestions were helpful, but the fact that they were living proof that someone survived what I was struggling through was invaluable.

I need to be responsible myself for regularly reading scripture and sacred texts, which is probably going to take some time and trial and error to figure out. I didn’t like that it felt so quick, moving through one book of scripture each year, but it did tie the lessons together, and I don’t feel as drawn to something spontaneous and disjointed. Maybe I need to come to peace with the idea of following my impulses, or maybe I need to find or create a structured curriculum.

I know that I am the one who’s ultimately responsible for my journey, but I don’t want to make it alone.

For those of you who are here, or who have been here, what’s helped you build a connection with God? How or where have you found the reciprocity, unity and diversity of a good ward? Where do you turn (besides The Exponent, of course) when lessons at Church feel rote?

*which I understood to be “become as much like God as possible”, rather than “get married and have several babies”, and still want to do, I’m just not as sure anymore what that God looks like, and how I should practice