Though some may challenge the label as it applies to me, I am a spiritual man. Unlike the North Star, my faith and spirituality have not been constant, rather, have evolved over seven decades. This is my credo…
My Credo
I believe there is a Creator that set the universe in motion.
I believe Jesus to be his human incarnation.
I believe Jesus was the Creator incarnate for a single purpose: to be an example to human beings on how to live life in harmony with all of creation.
I believe I am called to emulate Jesus, not to venerate Jesus.
That is what I believe. It has taken me a lifetime to evolve spiritually to recognize this credo.
I read the Bible as a child because I had to, inspired more by Cecil B. DeMille than by catechism class. I still read daily scripture, but over the decades, I learned that there have been thousands of men and women who have written inspired words. Early, I read The Last Temptation of Christ, Siddhartha, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull, each divinely inspired. The desert led me to Richard Rohr, Thomas Merton, Anthony de Mello, Joan Chittister, Caryll Houselander, and many others.
After reading millions of words and contemplating them for hours without end and continuing to meditate upon them to this moment in time with no intention of abandoning my search, I am at peace with my Credo.
“We Cannot Help but End Up at the Same Place”
We are like snowflakes. No human’s thoughts are identical to another’s. Our journeys are different, one to another, but truth is universal. As Indian spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran so eloquently writes,
“However varied the paths, when we actually make this journey, we cannot help but end up at the same place.
“I’m often reminded of the nineteenth-century explorers’ search for the highest mountain in the world. Tibetans pointed to Chomolungma, Nepalis to Sagarmatha, Chinese to Shengmu Feng. In Darjeeling, Westerners looking for ‘Peak XV’ were directed to Deodungha. All, of course, turned out to be talking about the same peak, best known today as Mt. Everest.”
Mitakuye Oyasin
You are a Baha’i.
Perhaps, and you, most certainly a Christian by my definition as one who strives to live his life like Jesus. Whether or not that is intentional does not matter. You are a Baha’i and most certainly a man who lives his life like Jesus. Namaste.