Going through a box of old papers is always fascinating. Memories, feelings, and people are attached to many of the papers. Some are stark reminders of how my life and my thoughts have changed. One particular paper I found was 22 pages long, typed on erasable bond paper. Are you old enough to remember erasable bond? It was paper that allowed you to erase errors with a pencil eraser. It was revolutionary. Of course, the paper quality sucked, but it was worth it. But I digress.

IMG_2317The paper was “PERSONAL DOCUMENT: An Autobiographical Religious Pilgrimage.” This assignment from my Psychology of Religion and Personality class came early in my first semester of seminary. The assignment to the class was to write about our spiritual journey to that point in our lives, and to provide some kind of statement of faith and belief. I described my family and church experience growing up, as well as many pages of global statements of what I believed about God, Jesus, the church, and the Christian life. It was great—for a 22 year-old who had never wandered more than one or two steps off the Baptist path, mentally or behaviorally.

“Yep, that was me,” was my reaction as I reread it for the first time in more than 40 years. Well-written, sounded good, made good Baptist sense, something I was proud of at that time.

Richard Rohr has said that spirituality is more about unlearning than it is about learning.Wow, that paper reminded me how much unlearning I have done. Fortunately, life and marriage and kids and friends and brothers and setbacks all unwittingly conspired to help me unlearn a lot. More about that later this week.

By the way, I got a B+ on my Personal Document. I’m not at all clear about the basis of the grade. Only one red mark on the paper: Bilblical was circled as misspelled. I’m not sure if the grade was based on writing style, lack of worldly experience, or marginal promise as a religious educator. Whatever the criteria, that B+ paper revealed more to me yesterday than it did in 1971.