By Laurie Collister, writer of A Completely different Type of Vow: Rewriting My Fortunately After

My non secular journey started once I was ten years outdated.  Each Sunday, my dad and mom dropped off my brother, Peter, and me at an austere, white-steepled church on the banks of the Chagrin River, in our hometown of Gates Mills, Ohio.  Mother and Dad believed that youngsters must be uncovered to faith, even when they themselves didn’t subscribe to it.  In Sunday faculty, held within the church’s chilly basement, I received a roll of Lifesavers for appropriately reciting the chapters of the New Testomony.  However once I painted Jesus pea inexperienced on a church banner, my instructor reprimanded me. “Jesus isn’t inexperienced,” she defined, making an attempt to cover her anger.

Peter, an altar boy on the 11 a.m. service, informed me what the pastor wore beneath his ministerial robes.  After every service, the reverend yanked his robe over his head to disclose vivid white tennis shorts and polo shirt.  Contemplating the minister’s pedestrian sermon and perfunctory handshakes with parishioners, Peter and I agreed that his afternoon tennis match, on the nation membership throughout the road, served as the true spotlight of his Sunday.

My non secular journey had gotten off to a sluggish begin, to make sure.  The primary leg revealed extra of the comical than the transcendent aspect of church.  It gave no clue about methods to join with God.

In my twenties, I started experimenting with a unique denomination each Sunday.  One week, a fairly blonde charismatic led a congregation so giant, she hosted Sunday morning companies at a conference corridor in downtown San Diego.  The corridor marquis learn: Make a Landing for God.  True to the signal, her sermon seemed like a locker-room pep discuss previous to an NFL sport.  The choir sang, “Smile, smile, smile,” whereas a slideshow featured smiling faces.  On the finish of the service, all of us held palms and wished our seat companions, “the very best week of your life.”  Video cameras whirled on all sides, capturing the sermon in case you wished to purchase a VHS tape within the foyer after the service.

After I hit thirty, I made a decision a Zen temple may swimsuit me higher.  In a quieter venue, I stood a greater probability of wanting inside.  My girlfriend, Suzanne, and I arrived simply because the Zen grasp hit the gong signaling the beginning of a two-hour meditation.  We wore matching over-the-knee boots that needed to be left on the door.  As Suzanne loudly unzipped her proper boot, I pressed my index finger to my lips.  “Shh, Suzanne, come on!” But it surely was too late.  The zipping echoed by means of the silent lobby.  We fell to the ground in gales of giggles.  The Zen grasp appeared, shoved us out the again door and, for good measure, threw our boots after us. We retrieved our boots scattered on the garden and headed to our automobile in silence.  We’d failed as Buddhist devotees earlier than we’d even entered the temple chambers.

A extra conventional denomination, like Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I figured, is likely to be extra welcoming.  However after the service, 5 ushers in black fits surrounded me and escorted me to the again workplace.  “Who are you?” they demanded.  I used to be clearly not a member of the fold.  I suspected I needed to be born into the church.  I couldn’t simply present up as a hopeful stranger.

After a number of extra years of experimentation and a transfer to Los Angeles, I lastly discovered the right place to worship.  The church held its Sunday companies in a tiny chapel on the banks of a stream.  The worldwide Hindu group didn’t simply discuss about God, as many denominations did, it taught its members methods to immediately expertise the calm and ecstasy of God’s presence, by means of such methods as Kriya yoga.

However a brand new job on the group’s headquarters took my non secular improvement to a complete new degree.  As a author within the public affairs division, rubbing elbows each day with Hindu nuns, I felt as if I’d fallen into this secret, privileged membership.  The monastics spent a substantial time “on the opposite aspect,” experiencing the love of God.  In consequence, their firm felt like a contact excessive.  I might breathe of their divine communion all day lengthy.  After work, I’d return dwelling in an altered state, experiencing a centeredness, depth and calm ebullience I’d by no means felt earlier than.  For as soon as, faith delivered what I’d all the time hoped it could – a visceral transcendence, which allowed me to like and be liked with out obstacle.

A little bit identified tenet of Hinduism is its view of journaling as a robust software for sadhana (non secular apply).  Distinguished Hindu lecturers, akin to Swami Sivanando and Paramahamsa Yogananda, extremely suggest protecting a diary.  They view a journal as “a silent grasp” that can be utilized to document non secular insights, right errors and speed up non secular development.

Certainly, journaling grew to become a big factor of my non secular path.  Particularly useful was rereading previous journals to search out “aha” moments and customary themes.  Via this “excavation,” I used to be in a position to make clear what the medical intuitive Carolyn Myss describes as one’s “sacred contract,” the rationale I used to be born.  Figuring out and following God’s will grew to become the following logical step in my non secular journey.  This “vow” – how I discovered it and the way I’ve pursued it – is the topic of my memoir, A Completely different Type of Vow, to be revealed by She Writes Press, on April 7, 2026.  I hope it should serve for instance for others who may want to determine and observe their very own vow and non secular journey!

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Laurie Collister is a counselor, journalist, and debut memoirist.  After graduating from Kenyon Faculty, she labored as a litigation paralegal, market analyst, investigative journalist, and, most lately, as a counselor on LA’s skid row.  On this checkerboard of professions, she discovered methods to harvest the hidden – key to penning A Completely different Type of Vow: Rewriting My Fortunately After, due out in April 2026, in addition to The Final Residence on the Left, about her fourteen years engaged on skid row, to be revealed in Could 2027.  Laurie lives together with her prolonged household and canine Bella on a cul-de-sac in Los Angeles.