As a younger member of the Christian church I have denomination hopped for awhile. I have been seeking a community to be a part of, a tradition that offers meaning to my life and existence and to which I can offer today’s interpretations of that tradition. After many years I have landed in the Anglican/Episcopalian tradition and while it is a long way from where I started, it also makes a great deal of sense. Growing up I was on the surface of religion, and although I walked a way for awhile, as I started to really question the role of religion in my life and the direction of my life in general, it only made sense to come back to it. As I was unhappy with the tradition I was brought up (gender roles, scriptural interpretation, intolerance, etc), it only makes sense after reading “The Depths of Existence” that I would continue to dig for further depth, which would bring me away from one tradition through several others and into the one that I am now until I started to find what I was looking for: the community, the traditions, and the ability to not be defined along previous lines.
This struggle for depth is not something unique to me or to the church. It is prevalent in many areas of society, especially grassroots and social justice areas where people are struggling to understand why things are the way that they are. I would also venture to say that it is also prevalent in my generation, a generation that is endlessly seeking a place in the world. We are often sent away from our earliest communities and are seeking a new community. Although we have training and degrees we struggle to find work, and although we live in cities of people we have few means of meaningful encountering our neighbours. As a result of this, it is of little surprise to me that we continue to seek communities and traditions, or ‘depth for existence’, when we no longer fit into our inherited ones.