I'm thinking about what it would be like to be Jonathan Hibbs.

Hibbs is a distant relative of mine, like 17th Century distant relative. Since I don't have the family history in front of me I will have to go off my recollection in this...Hibbs was a Welsh Quaker who was beheaded by King James in England for refusing to worship at the Church of England and apparently was quite vocal about it.

From my recollection my family, at least on my father's side, were Quakers. Yes, they had membership in various Presbyterian congregations over the years, but from what I read of my family history, they were still Quakers in their heart. From what I also understand, this tradition died off in the early 20th Century.

My father was never religious growing up. He began attending Presbyterian Church (where he spent a little time his formative years) in the early 2000's, after a detached aorta nearly took his life. He is of the very liberal Christian variety devouring books on Biblical Criticism.

But more important to my story is that his detached aorta resulted in his researching our family background. There he discovered the extent of our families experience in the Friends.

That brings me to...well me.

I did not have any real presence of spirituality in my life until 7th Grade when my mother, stepfather, sister, stepbrother and myself began to attend a Methodist Church. While I will not comment on that side of the family so much, they not wanting their names on a blog, I will say that looking back, something began to awaken in me. I began to feel that I was indeed a spiritual person.

The search for Authentic Christianity took us to some different avenues within that faith. Private school run by Pentecostals and church with Baptists at the same time. Presbyterianism. Calvinism. etc.

Yet all of these different avenues could not help my feeling of oppression in Christianity. I will probably talk more about that later.

I finally gave up Christianity all together in 2008. For some reason I can't explain, I decided to start attending a Unitarian Universalist Church. I was very attracted to the idea that they were not creed-centered but covenant centered. And this place encouraged its membership to experiment with different spiritual ideas.

On Thursday's Buddhist Night. While the service was going on, Quakers would meet in the high school room. Sunday schools invited people from denominations such as Christian Science and Mormonism to share their faith and ideas with us.

Yet for all this, I could not help feeling pulled to the room where the Quakers held court. One morning in February 2010, I decided to attend a service.


The thing that should be understood about this particular Quaker service is that there is nothing. No music. No scripture. No singing. No sermon. No preacher. There were only four of us. Seated in the round. Waiting in silence. The idea is that the Quaker waits for God, nature, of whatever you call it to speak to them.

That morning something spoke to me. "The true religious life is to love one another. The rest is just details." And there was my problem with religion throughout the years. I wanted to know everything about everything in order to prove my worthiness to whatever it was I was worshiping. But as for the true religious life-love- I didn't have any of that.

I went back yesterday. No revelations but it was still refreshing to come to the quiet and get out of this world of constant media bombardment. I am going to explore this strand of spirituality more. And I will try to document my experiences and pass a little of what I learn from this road.

Given my families past experience, I suppose you can call this a diary of me going back to where it all began. Bringing it all back home as the American Philosopher Dylan said.