tired to call or least beep the Lord, but didnt have a touch-tone

Pops: *lays hand on my shoulder* (of which I look at him in confusion) He says, "I'm planting a seed.
Me: "A seed for what?"
Pops: "For your return back to church"

I feel there is a need of some back story with this entry. I grew up in the chruch. The Southern Baptist Church for clarification. And in addition, I live in what is so affectionately labeled as "The Bible Belt". Additionally, it is important to know that my paternal family is like one of the top families in the church i grew up in. So i wasn't just a church goer, I was president of Sunday school, in the youth choir, a junior usher, and well you get the picture.

Now throughout my childhood years, certain aspects of my religious upbringing created questions in my heart. But I was raised in the era where children did not question their parents, and too it was all that i knew. So i just ran with it and and pushed those thoughts aside.

Let me pause again, I feel that I haven't adequately explained what this post is about. Well for a lack of a better way to describe it, I'm not Christian, anymore. Now that doesn't mean that I am anti-Christ or Atheist. Now I do respect people who hold such religious ideologies, but i still believe in The Almighty and I still do believe in The Christ. Just not how most Christians seem to believe.

Now where was I. Yes, the change in my religious thought pattern. I must be honest, up until I was 18 I still believed myself to be an advent follower of Christ. However, by that time, I was no longer Baptist, but Non-denominational (which is just semantics if you ask me). Actually, my spiritual shift did not occur until much more recently, like within the last couple of years. My heart feels, no knows, that there is soo much more to spirituality than one set man-ordained formalized religion. Such a stance has caused some very heated conversations between me and those who still are advent church going people (which I also respect).

But in order to truly explain where i find myself in the area of spirituality I do believe that I will have to honor it with more than one blog entry. Many things have contributed to my change and each is important and complex. I must say, that when I started this entry, I had a particular path in which i wanted to take for this topic. But I do feel, dear reader, that before I could even tackle it, I had to first give both of us some ground work of which to work from. Just so you have some idea of where I'm coming from and to help me keep thoughts in order. And I know that topics on religion can really rile up people, but I truly hope that you will be as respectable to my beliefs as I am to yours. Hopefully my Geminish tendencies wont get the best of me and I will be able to stick to the topic until I have given it a satisfactorily completion. Keep your fingers crossed (now I must say that statement had some irony too it. With this post being about spirituality and all)