faithasawayoflife

vanguard of the participatory church

every now and again i take a dive into the online version of the liquid church, aka the emerging church, and it flips me out. these people are seriously trying to create a revolution from nowhere--if one might describe cyberspace as nowhere. who am i talking about and what are they saying? take for instance, tony jones, who is a part of both our faith as a way of life project's 'reflection pool' and a leader of the emerging church movement (not the bass player for nina simone!). he is taking ancient devotional practices like ignatian prayer to evangelical youth using the latest technology. actually, he pointed me to this one, and you can try it, too. also check out his cool book, soul shaper.

but to take it to the next level, look at the genx church, the church of the apostles, started by karen ward in seattle. she is a very interesting person, very smart, avant garde, and doing somethings that ought to really make the traditional church think about how it breaks itself open to connect to the people living their lives without a second thought about being part of church.

and karen blogs. check out her's here. i picked up a link on her blog to a really provacative think-piece by tim bednar titled 'we are smarter than our pastors' that really makes the case for what blogs mean for the participatory nature of spiritual reflection that is emerging on the net, and increasingly, in these highly interactive genx churches that tend to be micro, rather than the megachurch versions of the boomer generation.

it is a bit intoxicating to think about the implications of what is going on just now, but mainly outside of traditional congregational life.

anon, and +peace

shield your joyous ones

can one be happy and be a christian? or, better, can one understand anything at all about the scale of global tragedy and suffering and be happy? maybe not. or maybe just such suffering and tragedy is the reason that so many americans are drawn to spectacles that divert and entertain. these are supposed to make us happy. or maybe such suffering and tragedy is why we so easily fall for corporate entreties to buy our way to bliss. my favorite version of this is the malls in atlanta that claim to offer "nirvana-like shopping."

how do i know this? i've tried to escape feelings of being overwhelmed, or as david ford puts it in his lovely book, the shape of living, series of overwhelmings. i've tried to escape through spectacles and shopping bliss. i'm american through and through and those demons of our nation also live in and through me.

so in response to this i've found provocative the little fragment from a prayer attributed to augustine of hippo (354-430): "shield your joyous ones." why might those who are joyous need shielding from our lord? ah, because it is so lovely, so rich, so profound to truly experience joy. for me, happiness is straw and joy is gold. i connect joy to jesus' admonition in john 10:10 "i came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." does this mean we have a biblical excuse for being the most obese people the world has ever seen? not at all. the joy and true pleasure of life in christ is the subject of a very interesting new book by j. christian wilson called jesus and the pleasures.

last night, after biking home from work, i put on my suit and flopped into our kiddy pool with isaiah, grace, and micah, isaiah's friend from next door. happiness? no, joy.

shield your joyous ones, lord. that we may be renewed for the work of your kingdom.

by the way, here is the whole prayer, which i love very much.

Watch, dear Lord, with those who wake or watch or weep tonight, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend your sick ones, O Lord Jesus Christ, rest your weary ones, bless your dying ones, soothe your suffering ones, shield your joyous ones, and all for your love’s sake.

anon, and +peace

practicing gratitude

why give thanks to god before we eat or before we sleep or when we rise? why do it out loud, with others?

i just returned from a week in southwest montana, the land of my childhood.
(this is a thumbnail so click on the photo for a larger version. it is hyalite reservoir and the hyalite peaks in the gallatin range of the rocky mountians)

i suppose that the sheer beauty of the place evoked these reflections on grace and gratitude, but not only that. it was also the fact of being with family, some of whom no longer go to church nor have the habit or expectation of 'saying grace' before meals. naturally vacation jolts routines and so i'm not sure how much our kids noticed that we didn't pray together at meals.

yet because we didn't, i got to thinking about the simplicity of the interplay between belief and practice in this case. believing that god has made all things, created not out of necessity but out of divine self-giving and love, we give thanks, and that very practice of giving thanks, day in and day out, makes of us people who are grateful. people who are grateful in this way seem to me to have certain other virtues including some humility and kindness towards others grounded in a profound sense of how much one has received that one cannot account for out of one's own merit. it is not that one can simply draw a divide between the grateful who believe and pray, and the ungrateful who do not. i know it is not so simple. yet when one does not kneel or bow or raise one's hands while speaking words of thanksgiving for that which we have received, which 'miraculously' is here before us (for how may of us know from whence cometh our food, exactly?), other thoughts dominate. not necessarily bad thoughts, but simply not these.

our neighbors here in new haven, who are lovely people and becoming friends, are british and like most of their generation of brits, do not go to church or confess any religious belief. yet here in the usa they have met a few people whom they like and respect, people who reflective about living and yet are active in churches (their assumption: religious people believe because of habit or lack of critical thought). so, one of them asked me if we could talk about this. what does it mean for us to live as believers, to seek to shape our lives according to what we know of God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? and it occurs to me that somewhere near the core is this: the practice of living gratitude. the practice of giving thanks, it turns out, has daily implications and gains its sense from biblical and sacramental theology ('giving thanks, he took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them').

odd, then, that the books i most turn to on practices that shape a christian life, practicing our faith and way to live, both edited by dorothy bass, don't take up the practice of giving thanks. of course, the books are meant to be suggestive, not comprehensive. but it raises the issue of how we might gain by some considered reflection on gratitude as a practice. in doing so, we might both understand better how it matters that faith becomes a way of life, and how to make such a life manifest to those who don't understand or live it.

anon, and +peace