Brian D. McLaren

A moment for me occurred somewhere between 12 and 14 years of age. I must have asked the  question when in Sunday school class about evolution because I remember that my teacher (who wasn't super well-educated, but he was a sincere guy). Anybody who volunteers to be a Sunday school teacher for middle-school kids must have some nice bones in their body. I remember him saying, "You have to make a choice. You can either believe in God or in evolution." I remember thinking, “OK…I’m out of here in four, five, six years. I have to go along with this, but when I'm older I'm going to have a  different future.” Back then I would have expected that I’d become an anti-religious person. 

Not too long after that—I was 14, turning 15—some of my neighbours invited me on a youth retreat. My religious background did not offer anything like that, so I went on it and had a transformative spiritual experience. Something happened to me that set me on a different course. On the Saturday afternoon of the retreat the counselors set us all off on our own for a few hours and said, "Find a place and talk to God." 

I sort of knew about saying prayers like a prayer before a meal, or saying a prayer before going to bed at night, or the kind of prayers that were said at church. But the idea of just going somewhere alone and talking to God—that certainly wasn't a part of my life. I climbed up in a tree but it wasn't an especially spiritual feeling because there were ants crawling all over me; mosquitos, too. But I remember very sincerely saying, "What do I really want in life?" And then I prayed, "I hope that I will experience the most beautiful sights and sounds. I hope I will experience the most beautiful feelings.” I think the word ‘beautiful’ was the word for me that afternoon! "If I could experience that, I’d be satisfied." I basically said, "I hope God, if you're there, that that's something that I could experience." And there wasn't anything very profound that happened, but it was very sincere. I think in some ways it was my first prayer where I was asking about what's really down inside of me; asking what do I really want? 

Later that night there was a program and when it ended, we all went back to our cabins. A few friends of mine and I had arranged to sneak out of our cabins and meet up. We weren't planning any mischief, we just wanted to hang out. Four or five of us went out onto a hillside and I, for some reason, pulled away from the others. I remember lying back in the grass, looking up and seeing the stars. It was a beautiful clear night. I had the sense that whatever God was, God was in the beauty of the stars, and in the awesome vastness of space. And I had the feeling that I was loved, and that whatever God was, God was love and that I was loved.  I felt that every star, every blade of grass, the trees, and cows in a field on the other side of some barbed wire, were loved. And I remember feeling every single thing was loved. And I was  part of that thing. That I was, that I am loved. I started to cry. I actually was a little bit afraid. I thought, “Am I having a mental breakdown?” It wasn't stress or anything bad. It was wonderful. But it was a feeling so big I thought I might explode. I prayed, "Whatever is happening, I can't take much more of it." 

Feeling the immensity of love, and beauty, and wonder, and death, and life...I stood  up. I had been by myself for 20 minutes before I rejoined my friends. Because all of us  were in high school at the time, we were thinking about leaving school to go on with our lives. But when I went back to sit with them, they were saying things that we’d never said to each other. We were just  a couple of guys, a couple of girls who were saying, "I love you guys. I love you." At that moment, tears came back. I couldn't talk to them because I felt the beauty of what was happening. And I felt that after what I’d prayed earlier in the afternoon, I thought I might  die now because everything I asked for I’d already experienced.

Something changed. This sounds very simple to say, but of course, being brought up fundamentalist, I believed that I was supposed to be good. But I had this feeling: "I'm supposed to be good. I really wish I didn't have to. I don't really want to." After that night at camp, something flipped and I wanted to be a loving person. I probably wouldn't have said “a spiritual person,” but I wanted to be a person of depth, a person of compassion. All of those things felt like what I wanted. It was like the conflicted parts of me became  aligned.