Sue asks some questions - we'd like your responses

Henry writes: Sue from North Yorkshire, commenting on my story, raises some interesting questions. It would be good to read how others respond to them.
 
“I’ve read all the stories with great interest. I don’t know whether I’m feral or not ( it seems such a strong word, wild almost) but I do know that I don’t fit in the institutional church any more.”    

• So where do we ‘fit in’?  Maybe nowhere?  This website hopes to offer a place to fit in, but where also might there be?  Some of you have found the Quakers a safe place to belong, but have you discovered other safe places?  Or is loneliness the default position? 
  

 
“Reading Karen Armstrong’s latest book Sacred Nature: ‘A religious ritual should be a transformative event - it can never be a matter of simply going through the motions, however piously’. Church services for me feel like ‘going through the motions..’. Where is the beauty, the mystery, the silent wondering….”

• Are religious rituals always transformative?  
  
• Are all transformative events potentially spiritual if not overtly religious?  What’s your experience?    
  
• And where do you find beauty, mystery & silent wondering?
  

 
“I feel bogged down in a mass of words. There is another way of communicating that doesn’t involve talking!”

• I agree with that, but what other ways are there?

 
“Your sense of being free when you left stipendiary ministry resonates very strongly with my sense of feeling free when I came out of the monastery. Though I believed it was of God I continue to wonder if it was just me wanting to ‘do my own thing’.”

• How can we tell the difference?  Do they have to be different?

Please let us know your responses to the bulleted points by adding a comment.