Is our church culture too expert-driven and so focused on what we know and what we’ve been taught that it separates us from the learning opportunities (and confusion and frustration) that come with real practice?
In many cases early emotional or physical abuse leaves a kind of coating on our hearts, a potent kind of ‘sun block’ that filters out the radiation of God’s tenderness. That’s why it is important to speak about conversion in the Church–the conversion of those who have thought along Christian lines for years and have worked hard for God—but have not yet experienced the transformation of their inner alienation into actual openness to God’s tenderness and love.
Amid the ashes and the rubble, one icon of Mount Calvary remains standing, a silent symbol of salvation and triumph: the wrought-iron cross that was
I first visited there on a Saturday in June, perhaps in 1995 or 1996, for a Quiet Day in honor of Evelyn Underhill. We met in the book-lined library, with its black chairs and red cushions, worn but homey rugs, and those high casement windows, facing out on the “garth” at the center of the place, and the thick stone walls that turn out to be soaked with prayers.
The idea of a penitential season before Christmas doesn’t play too well with ordinary civilians. Thanks to centuries of bad p.r., the whole idea tends to sound to the average person experiencing loss like a church plan to kick a person who’s already down while everybody else is out whooping it up with Christmas sales and eggnog.
The summer I was 16, my rector and his wife (my godmother) invited their same age niece Mary and me on a European spiritual adventure. The purpose of their trip was to visit the surviving cathedrals he had grown to love during WWII. He had been an Army-Air Force pilot and on one terrible mission high in the clouds over Germany had a spiritual conversion that led to his ordination in the Episcopal Church after the war.
Our baptismal covenant teaches us that Christians need community. Still, finding healthy, supportive Christian community is hard work. Timothy C. Geoffrion reflects on the obstacles to Christian community and the joys of living within it.
From a blog at the intersection of anthropology and economics:
Does the church ‘mean business’? Do we accept that our main business today is with meaning, the struggle to find meaning, and the mission to help people discover the gift of meaning through the good news that has Christ at its heart? Are we still in the business of being saved and saving others? I wonder sometimes because of the negativity or indifference with which many Episcopalians react to the very concept of being saved.
From nostalgia touring we went to the Island of Iona, home of Columba and Celtic Christianity. More smashing of icons of the mind as we learned that Columba banished all the women to the Isle of Women – nearby but off “his” island. So much for inclusion in that branch of Christianity!