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December 09, 2005
> 10:12 AM
toward a monastic parish model > 1 For so many years these two notions about Christian "church life" have been kept separate. It was either one or the other. In some circles it was seen as a vocation (a call) to either the "active" or the "contemplative" life. And the call to the monastic and contemplative was indeed special and for but a few and would involve some sort of "ordination" (not necessarily talking about priestly or ministerial ordination). There is this so-called normal life where one lived one's life in the world and attended church when one could, or for the minister, where they were focused on the people of a specific parish (locale or group of people) and the daily life thereof. So nothing gets very deep in the parish life and nothing's very normal in the monastic life. One is considered mundane and the other super-spiritual. Now, perhaps these are stereotypes of both settings. Perhaps there is "need" for both settings to some degree, although I am not convinced it is to the degree that we have seen it. I think this separation is somewhat unfortunate, along with the ideas that go along with both as to what they involve and how we should or do live within them. OK, nobody came and asked me to write a critique on the current state of monastic and parish life in the Catholic church or otherwise. I wanted to say those things as an introduction to some thoughts about something in the catholic church, about something that I am presently doing and which I want to do more of in the future - about that which some of my friends are doing, etc. So, don't take this as some nosy critical look at anything please. It really isn't that. Our thoughts about even what we consider "new things" must necessarily come from "old things" after all, so there will always be dicsussion of both in an exercise like this. As much as I have talked and done and thought about church, it's rethinking, repackaging, reunderstanding, etc., and as much as I have talked about monastic theology and ecclesiology, I don't think I have ever said or straight-up thought about what we're doing as a merging of monastic and parish models of church before yesterday - at least acutely. That's what I'd like to talk about. That's what I think many of us have been doing, or trying to do, over the last several years. This is what has emerged for me in that time. I have come from seeing the lack in the merely parish model and the closely akin model of the protestant local church as we have known it. I have come from a place of being enamoured of the monastic model of being church and of the deep rich theology that has flowed from it's side. I have also come to see the lack in a purely separate and contemplative way of being monastic. It seems what I have been coming to all these years is a wedding. I was on my way to the wedding of parish and monastic models of being a Christian faith community. I think the wedding may have already happened and what I'm in now is the experience of the first year or so of marriage. It's both amazing and beautiful as well as very difficult and painfully disillusioning. Getting through that is huge. And we haven't had tons of proverbial "marriage counselling" on the matter. I believe, actually, the Holy Spirit is doing that in and among us as we go along. If we can see it, there is much to be learned in the actual history of the church as a whole. There is a great deal to be gleaned from the ground of both these traditions. There is, as I alluded to above, a deep well of wisdom and counsel to be found in one another. Don't act as if you're alone. We must live as catholics, as members of the universal church to which we all belong, as saints among the great Communion of Saints - those past, those present with us now, and those to come. If I expect to hear Christ speaking only in myself, to myself, I am a desperately deceived individual. I will hear something. It may not be Christ. Beware. But if I hear Him in me, in the midst of all my siblings and parents, then I may well be hearing HIM. ...more later... pax vobiscum. Labels: catholic, monasticism 0 Comments:| permalink | e-mail me | 
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