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The Slow Church
Near the front of our main building sit two rather mysterious slabs of concrete with pink and green paint on the top. They are benches dropped off some 5 years ago by a woman who thought they might make a nice addition to the church. We talked about it at our next elders’ meeting. Not everyone was convinced we needed benches, though we all allowed they might be nice. One person wasn’t crazy about the colored paint. Others didn’t mind it. The general consensus was that someone should probably figure out how to put the benches together and do it. A year or so later, it was brought up again. There wasn’t much energy for the project, but again we agreed that someone should probably go ahead and put those benches together. Another year went by. The concrete blocks sank softly into the earth, the way things do when they sit in one place for long time....READ THE REST at HighCallingBlogs.com
Exegesis
So here’s what you do. You take a phrase or a word or a short teaching out of the Bible. Something like “The book of life,” or “The Son of Man,” or “The Light of the World,” or “No one comes to the Father but by me.” These phrases could mean anything. They meant something in their day, surely, but the deepest and most scholarly study in the world cannot unravel exactly what they meant.
But you. You somehow know the truth. You take these phrases with no study at all, and you fill them with your theology, like someone filling helium balloons at a carnival. Then you hang a little basket below your balloons and float away, so delighted in the complex theological construct that you’ve put together. And from your elevated position you lay burdens on people that you could never keep yourself. Lightning bolts thrown down from
Mouse turd on the communion table
Well, what would you have titled this?
Because there is really one one fitting title for this piece about the little present I found recently at the communion table. And turd is the only word that works in that title. Because turd is a great word. When you drop turd into a sentence, it shouts its presence with a coarse, rolling resonance that sounds like a springy sound effect in some cheap comedy.
Boi-oi-oi-oing.
My wife and I joined two friends recently in leading a retreat at a lovely retreat center on the Frio River in the Hill Country of Texas. The retreat ended, and we four presided over a communion table to celebrate our final time of worship with the group. I was setting up the communion elements while people were filing into the room for the service. That’s when I noticed a mouse turd sitting right in the middle of the table.
At this point in the story, I’m afraid it’s going to become quite clear that I’m not a normal sort of person. Your average person would have hurriedly disposed of the turd, following this with a thorough cleaning of the table. I, on the other hand, ran to get my camera. I began snapping shots of the turd. Close, far, with the macro function, without, turning the camera this way and that.
“Okay, mouse turd, work the camera. Yes. Beautiful. Give me some attitude. Sweet!”
“Why, why, why?” you ask me, shaking your head in disbelief. “Why would you take a picture of a mouse turd on a communion table?”
A Love Letter for Redeemed Pagans and Lost Christians
There is only one righteous way for you to be saved if you’ve spent too much time in the Church. You must lay your religion down. Lay it down hard. Drop it. Leave it on the trail and walk away from it. And you have to mean it. You can’t fake this. You have to renounce religion and leave it for good. As far as you know, you’ll never pick it up again.
After that you can walk freely in the wild places where faith can still be found. As you walk, stretch out your arms and touch the foliage on either side of the trail, because these trees are the borders of your faith and this earth your true home. And every leaf jutting into your path is itself a fossil, laid down before the ages, suddenly exposed and within hand’s reach along the cut-edges of the trail.
Who laid bare these leafy walls? Who cut this covenant trail and left these leaves exposed to my eyes and my hands and my mind?
If fear has seized your heart, and you want to look back at what you left behind, hear this: There are no religions of The Word. Because if there is a Word our frail ears can’t hear it. What we have are religions that clamor after The Word and talk about The Word and market The Word and brand themselves as keepers of The Word. It’s all best guesses and hearsay, and if you can’t own up to that and still keep faith with your brothers and sisters, you’re just fooling yourself and maybe that’s okay with you. That’s all some people want - to be nicely and gently and comfortably fooled.
I know the Bible, for I have spent half a lifetime looking there, but it cannot give you The Word. And if you treat those words as if they were The Word, then the Bible will be dead to you. The stories will turn their faces away from you, fold their robes over their shoulders, and go to sleep.
So you won’t have the Bible to cling to. I’m sorry.
The way of things
The way governments and businesses treat people. The way people unload their anger on the innocent. The way slick talkers get ahead and the way good people lose in the end.
The way those who believe in God can be so angry. The way people use religion to leverage power. The way spiritual things dry up and become hard and ruined. The way our best intentions still bring pain.
The way bad people take pleasure in the suffering of others. The way good people run out of energy and are consumed by apathy. The way we lose hope because everything is so big. The way innocence leaves the young and cynicism seizes the elderly.
The way the earth bleeds when you cut it. The way mothers protect their children and the way fathers respect that power. The way weeds hold the land when nothing else can. The way tender seedlings shatter concrete and water wears away stone.
The way you can follow beauty to the molecular level and still not find its source. The way all things young are tender and beloved. The way an artist pulls on your heartstrings and the way saints can make you believe again. The way the human face conveys a thousand nuanced emotions.
The way a clean baby smells and the way her feet feel. The way we laugh at everything, even the sad things. The way women cry so easily. The way men try to be strong then burst into tears. The way children trust everyone until we teach them not to.
The way everything big and small, everything physical and emotional, everything that really matters is always falling toward a center of gravity.
And the way that terrible falling to the center tickles your stomach and makes you grieve but also laugh and be so glad that you were a part of it all.
rlp
A one size fits all parable
I can’t believe it.
You wanted to know the truth.
Yeah, but...
That’s why I warned you. But you had to know.
I still can’t believe it.
“I want to know the truth. About God, Jesus, who shot JFK, life, Darwin, all of it.” That’s what you said; that’s what you told me.
But I just. I don’t want to know this. I don’t know what to do now. How to act or be.
You’ll find a way to deal with it. Everyone does. It’s all part of the journey.
So that guy was right?
What guy?
That one guy. Who was always saying that stuff about, you know, all that stuff we talked about. I hate that guy. He was right?
Yep.
See, that’s the part that really gets me. I mean it’s all shocking, but that guy was right? THAT GUY?
Well, technically he was wrong too, but he was more right than you were. Technically. Of course, it depends on how you look at it.
What do you mean?
Well, if he was here - if your positions were reversed - I’d be telling him that you were right. Or more right than he was anyway.
What? You mean everyone’s right?
I wouldn’t say that. No.
Everyone’s wrong?
More or less. If you feel like you have to say something, I guess that’s the best way to say it. Yeah, everyone’s wrong.
Oh my God. Wait. Should I say that now? Now that...
No one cares if you say that or don’t.
Okay. Oh my God. My life. What was I living for? What were we all living for? Think about how much time I...all the arguments, the hours I spent talking like I knew something, thinking I really did know something.
Stop.
What? What did I do?
Nothing. Just stop. Right now, how you feel. Bewildered, lost, unsure, humble, insignificant.
Yeah.
Spam & Grey Poupon
Once I ate a piece of fried Spam with Grey Poupon on it. I was fully aware of the irony of this. Indeed, I took great pleasure contemplating it during the meal. And I thought it was delicious.
Whatever that says about me is true.
I like cake icing a lot. The more the better. The only thing that stops me from fighting children for the corner piece of cake at birthday parties is knowing I would look ridiculous. I will, however, try to position myself in line so that I might be given the corner piece. If handed the corner piece of cake, I will likely protest briefly, saying "that's way too much icing, but okay if you insist."
Whatever that says about me is true.
I have loved Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Crackers for a quarter of a century. I only eat the Parmesan cheese version. Unfortunately, Pepperidge Farm has a problem with product consistency. Some Goldfish are salted less than others, and some are puffier with a powdery texture that I don’t like. I learn the batch numbers and look through the packages on the shelves for good batches. Currently you should stay away from anything beginning with a D or a W. The RU series is pretty good.
Whatever that says about me is true.
More Than Words
Christianity has a heavy presence in the United States. You can feel the weight of it like a quilted cloak draped over the people, bending their heads forward and pressing on their shoulders. The air is thick with Christian words. Bible phrases fill our literature and are baptized into our culture, peppering our speech with feeble reminders of a lost faith.
- She’s the salt of the earth.
- He has the patience of Job.
- It’s only a drop in the bucket.
The Christian Church in America is so symbiotically enmeshed with our culture that their hearts beat as one, and some people hardly know the difference between the two. The words of faith and religion have burrowed deep into the flesh of our language. They rise to the surface like shards of glass from a festering wound, reborn as oaths, obscenities, and vulgar expressions.
- Jesus Christ!
- God damn it!
- Oh my God!
Are the people who say these things praying?
When your holy names are born again into the rarified order of words used to express rage and anger, you know you’re deep into the culture. Down in the cultural unconscious, right on the edge of the place where myths are born. And these quasi-religious phrases may well outlast the American Church. Words and phrases are notoriously long-lived, surviving for generations after all remembrance of their original meaning is gone.
If Only
When a person dies, there is a sudden collapse of all that they knew. The complex and fragile framework of their worldview, which is a unique thing in all the universe, drops to the ground like the contents of a pricked water balloon. The depth of that loss is incomprehensible.
What is left after death are ghost-like shreds of your personality that live in the memories of those who knew you. Some warped version of you exists in the stories and the sorrow. And then those stories fade. The last to go are the memories of the one who loved you the most. Those memories are twisted and contorted into comforting shapes that he or she clings to for comfort. And then your beloved dies, and you are lost along with everything else that disappears in that terrible event.
After that is only what the children remember. It’s not much when compared to the fullness of a life. And when those children die, there is only a name or maybe a faint memory on someone’s family tree.
On a day and in a moment that no one knows, the last memory of you winks out of existence with the death of the last person who knew your name. And then it is as if you never lived. You join the ranks of the billions of humans who have walked this planet, living and loving and dying. Some were saints who lived and loved and died well. Others not so much. Some were scoundrels. All are forgotten.
It seems to me that the whole world would collapse if I were to die. How could things go on? How could the world continue without my worldview propping it up, explaining it, and giving it a purpose?
Grit and Gravel
An angel came to me while I was laboring at prayer. Yes, laboring. That is likely a problem itself, but we’ll leave that for another day. I was in the woods near the church, fingering my way through my rosary. Ten beads for the Shema, ten for people in our church, ten for this, ten for that. My mind was filled with the numerous categories of language. People placed into one group or another. Actions lumped together and called by a single name. Everything classified not only by type, but also called sacred or secular, good or bad. Joy, pleasure, pain, heaven, hell, things done and things left undone. All of these were in my mind.
While I worked my way from bead to bead I noticed, with a start, that an angel was sitting across from me. It looked at me with a pleasant smile. I stood up, respectfully.
“Greetings,” the angel said.
What exactly do you say to angel? Is there a protocol for this? Not knowing what to say, I said nothing at all.
“Mortal, scoop up a handful of what covers that path.”
I reached to the earth, eyes still on the angel, and grabbed at whatever lay at my feet.
“Now open your palm and blow on it.”
I did, and an assortment of leaves and bits of plant floated away.
“What would you call what is left in your hand?”
“Grit maybe? Gravel?”
“Grit and gravel?” the angel said indignantly. “Each particle in your hand has a unique history, and all of their histories are older than the oldest memories of humankind. Each one has a name. Did you know that?”
I brought my palm close to my eyes to look at what lay there. Wanting to say something in keeping with the angel’s attitude toward my handful of gravel, I said, “The pinkish one is nice.”
“Sit down mortal, and I will tell you a truth.”
I sat on the ground and looked up at the angel.
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