Welcome to Faith Dance, a website about mid-life crisis and its potential to change faith. Walk with me through the journey, step by step, and discover why restlessness at mid-life may cause profound dissatisfaction with the religious teachings and faith that were once dear to your heart and part of the very fabric of your life.

I developed this website because I believe there are many people out there like me, who have begun to see the limitations within our faith systems but don’t know where to go with the feelings and doubts that arise. Some have rejected everything, believing God and the church are no longer real. Others make the journey smoothly and discover a deeper faith which makes their church experience more meaningful. For some, however, the journey is more prolonged. They live one foot in the church and one foot out, not sure of what comes next.

This journey to something new happened over time and affected every layer of my life: the spiritual, psychological, mental and emotional. Entering my fifties, I thought I had major life transitions behind me, but I learned that there is potential in mid-life for the deepest transformation of all within the human journey. It’s also the most difficult. Everything that gives us a sense of identity and place in this world is called into question. Life invites us forward by asking us to let go.

This experience—this journey—brought unexpected insights about faith and life that were deeply troubling to me. Things that once anchored my life became meaningless and I wasn’t entirely certain what mattered anymore. This was true of my relationships, my vocation and my faith. As I became aware of the many human thoughts and structures that surround our faith traditions, I began to wonder if God might also be a product of human thought.

Much like the caterpillar that needs to spend time in the darkness of a cocoon in order to grow wings and emerged transformed, I had many times of darkness. During those times, all I knew was that everything about me seemed to be falling apart, and I had no idea if it would ever come together again. I felt like a ‘fish out of water’, not certain anymore about my faith or my place in this world.

I chose 'Faith Dance' because it speaks of the creative, ongoing movement of life, of God’s leading and our responses to those leadings, of God’s grace and our surrender to that grace. I believe we’re basically spiritual beings whose wholeness requires a healthy interweaving of the psychological (mental and emotional), physical and spiritual. This integration is part of the dance and can’t be ignored.

As my journey unfolded, I began to realize how much my faith system had been formed by human thought. While God was at the center, much of what we say we believe about God and this life is human construction—it’s the result of human thoughts and perceptions as we try to understand God and God’s activity in our lives and world. As I began to see this, it felt as though everything I believed in was proving to be false. But the journey continued until I slowly came to realize that because I had changed, my understanding of God and faith needed to change also. And God would continue to guide my journey. I didn’t need to be afraid.

The challenge in mid-life transformation is to separate what is truth from what is human thought, and God gets mixed up in all of that. It’s easy to believe that God is also a product of human construction and therefore, not real.

One thing I learned over and over. It wasn’t God who was changing; it was my perception of God that was undergoing transformation. I’ve learned if we have the courage to face the many ways we humans construct our own reality—including our faith—and then open our hands to receive something deeper and truer, we find the God who has been with us all along.

This is the story of such a time of transition for me, a parish pastor who came to the ministry in my mid-forties and who, in my late fifties, experienced a profound time of transformation that threatened to turn my world upside-down. I tell you this story primarily through journal entries that span approximately ten years.

I developed this website to share my journey and to encourage you not to give up on God. In going deeper and deeper into our souls, there is only ‘more’ God, which is the greatest blessing we can be given in this life.