Curiosity was the primary motivation for the life Helder lived, and his life evidenced that. He was known as an Artist, a Mapmaker, a Carpenter, an Architect, a Builder, and a hospice chaplain at different times. He and Claire were ordained and educated in theology and behavioral science. They had spent a lifetime studying to understand human behavior and spirituality. He had no need for titles.

He self-described himself as a religious Mutt. No thing in particular. A child of the spiritually aware who had gone before through what they wrote and what had been written about them. He was a product of the ‘Perennial Wisdom Tradition’ beginning at the great incarnation—the birthing of all that is—when the Great Spirit introduced Herself through all things, ongoing in the wisdom traditions of every indigenous people through the centuries, alive and well among the mystics and prophets of our day, and evolving still, drawing us into the future.

• • •

Passerby,
I greatly appreciate Marcus Borg’s breakdown of the classification of modern Christianity in his book Convictions: Conservative Conventional, Uncertainty, Former, and Progressive. I very much enjoyed the discussion. Based on my own experience, I would like to suggest a sixth, which may have evolved since he offered Convictions over ten years ago: Ancient-Future.

I’m sure we might come up with something far more clever if we thought about it, but the words originated with Robert Weber, who wrote extensively on the topic. I heard him speak on the subject 20 years ago at a seminary graduation. Knowing the church was failing in many directions all at once, he proposed the way forward and out of its current malaise was to return to the beginning, to its roots as the Jesus movement.

As you are aware, I too, advocate for a return to the place where the human-kind took the original wrong turn and begin again.