I had hope that I would, somehow, deepen a faith I was raised in and nurtured myself for many years.  After a period of searching other faith traditions, a deep disillusionment with Christianity, I returned again about 8 or 9 years ago, this time with a different openness and far less literalist interpretation of the traditional teachings.  I was never a literalist or a fundamentalist (except as a child raised in the Roman Catholic Church).  Over the past 8 or 9 years, I struggled mightily to find a way to believe.  

In a recently shut down thread, there was an exchange like the following...