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 traditional religion and send you searching for something new.

I developed this website because I believe there are many people out there who, like me, feel they no longer fit into an established religion. Some have discovered a deeper faith that goes beyond institutional dogma, but others are floundering, not sure of what comes next.

I’ve gone back and forth between floundering and discovering what comes next.

This journey to something new—something other than life as I’ve always known it—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 prop up 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.

While I struggled to find answers, a question I kept trying to push away finally looked me squarely in the face in a way I couldn’t ignore: can Christianity and the established church meet my changing spiritual needs?