It doesn't happen very often, but every now and then I get a useful and salutary -- I hope -- reminder of the kind of Total Desolation that used to envelop every experience of worship, a grim mixture of grief and rage. Didja ever have one of those Sundays when you just want to put your head down and BAWL? (too cold still, despite much moderation of temperature today, to go out and dig WORMS, you understand)
It's been an extra - ecclesiological sort of a day, wrapping up with the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service this evening (anybody else HATE Sunday evening obligations?) at which a number of persons spoke. Some of them knew how, and some of them told truth. So that was restorative.
And then I indulged myself in at stop at the supermarket for Favourite Things for a very late supper here at home.
Re-thinking the local and current assumptions about ecumenism, however; and the (I'm sorry) prevailing cant about "unity," and "diversity" and so forth.
More and more, I think that we speak -- in the patterns of our habitual and "received" discourse -- perhaps not with forked tongue, but rather out of both sides of our mouths at once. And the left side knoweth not what the right side uttereth, worse luck.
More and more -- at least part of the time -- what is bandied about as churchspeak sounds to me like a rough draft of 1984; we have a list of nouns that are "double plus good" and a list of nouns that are "double plus un good"; and we fling them at each other like rocks; and everybody goes "YAY" and "BOO" right on Pavlovian cue, without ever examining what is actually being said.
Three more sleeps, however, TBTG, and I am within hailing distance of the end of the PRE-DO list. I can see that nice little bit of after-deck in my mind's eye, believe me.
My only worry is how they will ever be able to get the POINTY END of the boat sufficiently down into the water so they can cast off...what with all the Rev Gals falling on each other's necks back at the BROAD END.
Never doubt that you make a difference, y'all (or is it "all y'all"?).
2 comments:
I would be interested to hear more specific thoughts or concerns or reactions to ecumenical services, esp since you have participated in such dialogues. Could you be persuaded to share?
Hi!
they're not in any sense worked-out thoughts, maida -- and I'm not sure that I have or will ever have the philosophical underpinnings to bring my qualms to that level of communicability.
They're more in terms of images... and to me the ecumenical readings of John 17 in support of "oneness" are misleadingly...Cyclopean, perhaps? And if so that they both distort the Trinity (which distortion is an ancient and honourable tradition too)and set the bar too unimaginatively low for ecclesiology.
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