Putting the Money where the Mouth is
21 July 2008 - 19 תמוז 5768 by Huw
ODAY’S Readings in my RSS are filled with an odd counterpoint: on the one hand there are the Lambeth Bishops. The officially scoured and spun blog from 815-land. There are on-going Episcopal contributions such as Bp Alan and there are newbies to the fold such as Bp Porter.
And there is news of Emergent PoMo leader, Brian McLaren speaking to the Bishops.
At the same time, I read about Tribal Church, which seems to be growing by leaps and bounds, just as liberal as everyone’s worst nightmares in ECUSA, and I hear of many other missional and PoMo churches rising up, in and out side of traditional denominations.
And I wonder where, in all this chaos, church is going.
If - as I believe - the church needs to move beyond her denominational and Constantinian attitudes of Christendom and privilege, then why do I sit around wasting time working on the Stewardship campaign for Trinity Buffalo? What is the meaning of church if it’s to be found beyond lockstep obedience to some ancient ideas that have no relevance on the street?
To be certain, these were the same questions that pester me when I was in college, looking at ministry in ECUSA or conversion to Orthodoxy. I’ve pretty much repeated the cycle of my spiritual journey from 1987 - 2001: going from Christian to generic to Christian to Jewish to WHAT? all in the last year and a half.
I’m feeling very spent.
I want to open a book reading group of The Roots of Christian Mysticism. Can we invite the founder of Revolution Church to come share his insights on the book? Imagine everyone hanging out at Spot Coffee (along with Cam and the folks from Trinity) discussing what it means to hear St Ignatius. Not what it means to *obey* St Ignatius - but rather to enter into conversation with him. Or St John Chrysostom, or St Basil or St Gregory of Nyssa… It’s not about starting a new church, it’s about Being Church.
Other times, I want to just run away, bake bread, cuddle with Brodie and do Zazen (I’ve been enjoying the ideas of Dogen).
The troublesome part is I can do the former & the latter: but if I pick the latter first, I exclude the former.
May your search find its answer. May your heart fill with joy. May friends overflow in your life. May everything to which you put your hand find success. May you catch a glimpse of eternity and the Eternal One. And, may the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your heart and your mind in the knowledge and love of God and of Jesus Christ his only Son.
The solution is to stop worrying so much about churchy matters. Who cares about the latest post modern, emergent post Christendom emerging Brian McLaren fads? Absolutely stop pouring over theology and churchy issues. Just go to Trinity, Buffalo, and be a regular church goer, nothing more, nothing less.
I sympathise sooo much with you-like you, I converted to Orthodoxy, bounced around for a while, and dealt with some issues rather opposite to traditional Christian teaching on sex and gender.
But after a point, you have to stop trying to heal all of Christendom’s wounds in your head, and stop worrying about…I hate to say it, so much stuff that a layperson should not have to be dealing with. It reminds me of those zealous Orthodox converts who had theological libraries that would put most cradle Orthodox to shame…
I really don’t mean to come across as mean spirited, but I’ve been where you’re going through, and sometimes you just need to dial down the religious intensity, and recharge your spiritual batteries with a bit of latitudinarism before trying to decide where to convert to next week.
You don’t sound mean-spirited at all, Michael.
Please expand on that last sentence: “recharge your spiritual batteries with a bit of latitudinarism before trying to decide where to convert to next week.”
Oh, Michael… one LOL bit: Trinity is al the latest in postmodernism… just to be upfront about that.
I guess what I mean, is just go to church week after week, do what you need to do, but no more-try not to let your life, whether physical or intellectual, get bogged down by religion. Which has nothing to do with parables of Christ spitting out lukewarm types or whatever, its just that (and I most certainly know this from personal experience) that intelligent laypeople+ lots and lots of interest in religious stuff (however you want to define “religious”-I’ll leave it pretty broad) can lead to burn out. Stop worrying about every division and controversy in Christendom, and most importantly stop thinking about them!
I’ve seen this with zealous Orthodox converts especially, the types who probably read the Pedalion while taking a crap, who I think have waaay to much interest in theology as lay people.
All of which hopefully doesn’t come across as anti-intellectual, or anti-any specific church/denomination/whatever. In fact, I’m pretty sure I muddled up the water a bit, not having much of a theological education or being an Official Internet Expert on Religion.
No. Not at all.
For me this all came to a head this afternoon (which was 12 hours or so after I wrote the post) with one phrase: only connect. Community.
I’m aware that most all of this is mental masturbation. That’s why I mentioned, above, a book reading group: community. I’m not there yet. I’ve not been there - apart from when I was a pagan - since I left St Gregory Nyssa in SF. On topics I greatly enjoy to Geek, I feel isolated - dumbed down at Trinity, silenced at work and in the boarding house. The only thing I can do is pester my readership.
You’re right about converts reading the fathers in the bathroom, although I think the *really* pious argued about how it was inappropriate to read such books in such a dirty place. But that’s not what I mean: in fact, I mean exactly the reverse. At least for a decade when I was a Pagan and for a few years at SGN I was in community where my interests were valued - and held in a healthy check by others.
In a sense, I need a few more people like you.
“I’m feeling very spent.”
Welcome to the club, Hew. We post-moderns have many choices to make. This is both a blessing and a curse. Ah, to be born in a medieval village where all of my choices were made for me and I had no way or means of getting out of them…on second thought, I’d rather be a spent post-modernist, but one who makes a choice carefully and sticks with it. God only knows where all of this will end up for all of us…
one who makes a choice carefully and sticks with it
I think that’s not very postmodern either… situations change, thus priorities change, thus, “they must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of truth”
How do you define post-modernism?
MOdernism is the one with the black/white choices that have to be made and stuck with.
PoMo is nearly Pre-Modern in its vagueries. The prayer “everywhere present and filling all things” could have been written pre-Mo and Po-Mo. Only the Modernists got terribly hung up on “Where is” and “where not”. (I think the Roman debate over “when the change happens” may be one of the first marks of Modernism out there.)
PoMo finds a multiplicity of valued and valuable choices and sticks with many of them rather than devalue any of them.
Ken Wilbur’s idea of Integration moves beyond that - beyond either the black and white thinking of the Modern and the all-grey thinking of the PoMo. I’m not there yet. WOrking at it - integral.