The Franciscan Way
The starting point of the Christianity I grew up in was humanity's sinfulness . It is the foundation for all beliefs and interpretation and behaviour towards others and the entire cosmos that follow. It has been and continues to be a path of destructiveness that I have been unlearning for decades. It is not the path that I taught my children. Instead, in the Franciscan tradition, suffering is the foundation for understanding the nature of reality. But also holds a position of all of creation being made good, a process that is continuous. From this beginning point, the presence of the Christ is a manifestation of the Divine suffering with us not for us. From the former position, the interaction between the Divine (through Jesus) and humanity, is transactional (the entirety of the cosmos does not figure into this framework only people which is one of the causes of the degradation of life on this earth). Transactional interactions become the norm for all...