Last night, once I knew we were only hours away from his transition, a liminal space was created in my vigil for him. Though far away in distance, the part of him that is in me really seemed to give me some clear perspective as only moments like these can. In a final period of quiet reading before bed, I picked Eugene Peterson's "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" off my shelf as I had been diverted from reading this series some time ago. This paragraph in particular struck me in relation to the spiritual but not religious crowd and the role of churches:
Because of this spiritual poverty all around, this lack of interest in dealing with what matters most to us--a lack in our schools, our jobs and vocations, and our places of worship alike--'spirituality,' to use the generic term for it, has escaped institutional structures and is now more or less free-floating. Spirituality is 'in the air.' The good thing in all this is that the deepest and most characteristic aspects of life are now common concerns: hunger and thirst for what is lasting and eternal is widely acknowledged and openly expressed; refusal to be reduced to our job descriptions and test results is pervasive and determined. The difficulty, though, is that everyone is more or less invited to make up a spirituality that suits herself or himself. Out of the grab bag of celebrity anecdotes, media gurus, fragments of ecstasy, and personal fantasies, far too many of us, with the best intentions in the world, because we have been left to do it 'on our own,' assemble spiritual identities and ways of life that are conspicuously prone to addictions, broken relationships, isolation, and violence.
I think a lot of the concern lately among churches (even those within the emergent stream) is how to get the genie back in the bottle so to speak. It just doesn't go that way. That is not necessarily a bad thing. With cooperation, this situation could actually become Joachim di Fiori's "Age of the Holy Spirit".
That is not to say that we don't need to undertake the work that Rev. Peterson is setting out to discuss. We do need to clear the decks and get at the heart of our traditions to inspire each other towards becoming the child of God that we already are.
Given that spirituality is not going to be reinstitutionalized, what is the contribution of institutions? This is where the image in the title of the post came to me. With a very different baseline in the surrounding society, Christians become the countercultural minority our best self often shows.
With no societal pressure to be a part of churches, the people of those communities become like monastics keeping a rule of life (the Baptismal Covent for Episcopalians) in an environment of attentive listening (i.e. obedience) to each other and the ordered clerics that serve to coach them in their call to ministry. Even without a practice of the daily office, the discipline of Sunday services when society is free to sleep in is a witness to a way of connecting to God.
These communities allow for gradual belonging as a permeable set centered on Christ. They connect with their neighbors in a variety of ways. They are places of hospitality for those seeking a connection with God in keeping the liturgy, the work of the people, going so that it is available as a bridge to the divine. The radical ethics of Jesus inform the choices made in the daily living of the lives of God's people.
As the leaven in the loaf of the world, we let our prayers and compassion reach to God, soak into us, and reach out through us to change the whole. One of my Benedictine brothers describes monasteries as grace factories. May our churches of whatever variety, however large, and however numerous be that light for the world.
Mentoring Christians towards that type of engagement is a vocation to which I would happily give the rest of my life.
I thank my father, deacon and elder of the Presbyterian Church, lover of God, Neighbor, and Self, for clearing away my mental and emotional clutter on his way out of this life and into the next. He does not leave this world unchanged. Many blessings upon his soul: freed now from physical struggle and in the Peace of God. Amen.
