General: Something happens in the lives of many people which gets them out of the “static” understanding of their faith into something more “dynamic.” It is often when we have “hit the wall” – when life as we know it has fallen apart and our assumptions about it are sorely tested – that God suddenly seems to speak to us, and we find ourselves moving from taking our faith for granted to becoming engaged in a relationship with the Living God. God’s “voice” is most often very surprising – and quite different from the self-talk we typically engage in; we often experience an insight – an “aha!” – into an opaque situation that we could not manage to see through; we often experience a sense of deep relief, as if a heavy burden has been removed – whether it is a grief, a loss, a tragedy, or a feeling of being trapped in negative judgments; the moment comes as “gift” – unmerited, unexpected, unplanned and unexplainable; the incident reverberates in our lives for a long time and brings about a lingering sense of freedom; often the incident effects permanent changes in the way we see things – the way we see others, the way we see God, the way we see life, as if we had been given some of the “fruits of the Spirit,” which Paul talks about in Galatians (Gal 5…). This has often been spoken of as a “moment of awakening.” And so we begin a journey…