This blog's purpose will be to share aspects of my spiritual journey of the past thirty seven years. It will consist primarily of short essays I write and personal *dream reflections. I have attempted to be more aware of my dreams during these same years and have recorded and reflected on many of them.
Some of the earlier essays are my responses to a conservative Bible Scholar and friend who's email essays I think reflect accurately the conservative standpoint of Historical Christianity. My respected friend Edward Fudge gave me this permission. Portions of his essays will be included with any such posts I make. Edward passed away November 25, 2017.
During these same years I have moved from a very conservative view of the Bible and Christian tradition informed by my non-instrumental Church of Christ background(A heritage I'm very grateful for) to a point of seeing a need for major re-visioning of parts of mainline Historic Christianity's usual interpretation of scripture and tradition. After a sad break with the Church of my heritage, in time I became a licensed minister in the United Church of Christ and Presbyterian Church(USA) where I served three rural churches for twenty years. I was ordained in the United Church of Christ in 2007 through its 'multiple paths to ordination' pronouncement. Until the Covid 19 pandemic I had been a part time hospital/hospice chaplain. I am a member of a local United Church of Christ congregation.
Dreams are far more presented as avenues of the 'voice of God' in the Biblical and other Sacred narrative than most any Christian denomination values them in our day. I am of the view they are a kind of 'royal road to the unconscious' and thus serve what in Biblical and ancient times was considered a 'voice of the Sacred.' I believe this personal avenue of Spiritual discipline is open to all persons regardless of interest or affiliation with organized religion. Essays I continue to write express my concerns, insights and beliefs about important areas of Biblical/Spiritual/Psychological ideas and realities. At the risk of any reader not having before them the sequence in my 'changes ' of perception in these areas I plan to begin with recent essays and dreams rather than starting in the far past. For one thing this will keep it more interesting and challenging to me for I will be sharing present inner concerns. Then if a reader has questions or comments I may draw from my archives of personal writings something that may fit the particular area of interest.
I realize I will be inviting friends to this blog who knew me and worked with me before these significant changes outwardly began to take shape. I think I can assure them they would find anything good they experienced then in my character and attitude is still in tact. They would likely observe they were speaking with the 'same old Jim Hibbett.' I'm glad for that. Other readers may have known me since much of this change has taken place but they also may find that I have more, than they are aware of, concern with some typical interpretations and doctrines regarding the Christ story, along with hope of how it could be re-visioned.
Whoever an interested reader my be I welcome your thought and feedback. Most of what I will share here has been quite personal and private except for my efforts to share some of it the last twenty years I was preaching and a few editorial pieces in local news papers.
I do not offer this blog as a place of argument but where a person is invited to disagree with me and to ask for explanation or clarification of what I express. I'm blogging to fulfill some sense of responsibility to make some of my inner journey more public. Perhaps my experience can be of some encouragement to others who are still finding their way through the vicissitudes of life including the various teachings/traditions of the Christian Church and their applications to daily life and culture; people who may have similar questions as I have. I feel the questions and doubts that arise for some of us and the tentative answers we find can have a major impact on the quality of our lives and indirectly on the spiritual/psychological/religious needs that face our culture and the world.
Respectfully, Jim Hibbett
*The reader may wish to read the post entitled 'Dreams 101' before reading other Dream Reflections: http://jhibbett.blogspot.com/2011/07/dreams-101.html
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