I don’t believe in a Golden Age. Stories about how great the world once was always strike me as fantasy and I think about my friend’s grandmother who once looked at me from the side of her eye saying, “The Good old days? There were no good old days.” But that doesn’t mean things haven’t been lost.

In a similar way, those of us seeking our spiritual calling also find ourselves adrift in the world today. The decline in attendance at religious institutions in no way indicates a decline in desire for a sacred relationship. Many are just seeking a response for this desire elsewhere with many of us turning to the private chambers of our hearts having decided the institutions no longer serve us … or worse. And while there was never a Golden Age of God, something has been lost in this world of build your own religion, where we abscond into our climate controlled rooms, isolated from the discomfort, but isolated nevertheless.