February 14, 2006 >> 10:05 AM
a few ecclesiastical matters

1. I recently wrote and rewrote the first part of the Vine & Branches Rule of Life. Part one is the introduction "letter" and descriptions (definitions) of who we are as a community, how entrance into the community functions and what it means at different levels. This past week I finished weaving several parts of this together and published it on our community blog, The Vine - go and read.
   
   I am, in a dull, undercurrent way, excited about this because I believe it to be a significant evolutionary step in the life of our community. I really see it as a time when we're actually becoming what we were always intended to be. The Holy Spirit is clarifying things - clearing the air. Time to move forward. Hopefully, too, this may be in some way helpful to some of you out there who are thinking and dreaming about such things yourself.
   
   
2. I read things here and there, mostly in the blogosphere, about the emerging church this and the emerging church that - how terrible it is, what a "threat" it is to whatever various people feel it (IT) threatens. I read also a lot of defense of "it" - about how great IT is and I have probably been saying some of that, at least I was a while back. Honestly a good lot of what I read and hear concerns Emergent and not really "the emerging church" in general. Really - if you want to know - I think most of the time people outside "it" talk about "it" they don't know what the hell they're talking about. Many of those inside don't really know either. They/we try to define it and write books about it and have conferences to introduce people to it. Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!
   
   It's becoming something a bit distasteful to me. As is the attempted corporate-like organization of it. All the back and forth talk - the energy spent with all that - AND this work of making a company out of a spiritually organic phenomenon, is all a bit much for me. I both am and am certainly NOT associated with all that. I guess implicitly I can be saying all kinds of things here and so be it I suppose, but I am not explicitly trying to denounce anyone really. I'm not trying to resign from the so-called movement.
   
   I guess there is a point and I think I just figured it out. I want to say this: if you're wanting to move into a more relational, (buzzword alert) organic and less corporate (as in business oriented) way of being the church, you most definitely don't need to get involved with all the hairy mess going on around all this stuff. You can find friends who will help you figure things out, listen to you, help you navigate the change and walk the journey with you. You don't need to join a thing or be a sign totin' protester. No need to join the "young postmodernist society" and lay down all objective Truth. You don't have to sign a document which makes you promise to throw away the ancient catholic faith - OR - one that promises you have to use candles and ambient music in dark rooms. OK, let me stop talking about that now.
   
   
3. The Catholic thing. I said in number 2 there something about the ancient catholic faith. There is a difference between the big C Catholic and the little c catholic - as least when I'm talking about it. Little c - I mean the faith and Truth and ways that have pretty much always been accepted by pretty much the whole church throughout the ages. Big C is RC and the Roman Church is most definitely a part of the Church catholic. Perhaps it has held within it's big old hands so much more of the ancient faith than many protestants even know about, it's a little crazy. But, the "thing" is this. There seems to be a thing about the Catholic Church for many of us. We are drawn to it. I was drawn to Christ through it. I was born into the Kingdom in it and nurtured in it's arms. I have proverbially flown out of that nest at this point, but there is a deep root of something very good in me because of my having been born and partially raised in that household of faith.
   
   Among many of the people who have become involved and drawn into some of the so-called "emerging churches" (see, it's all connected) there seems to be, at least in one wing of the deal, a real and substantive drawing to things Catholic - and not just "things" (trappings) but the theology behind the trappings. It's deeper than simply an outward pull toward sensual worship elements. Those things are great. I love that stuff. It can be very helpful in our worship. But it can also be very helpful for our deep transformation if we get hold of it at a level deeper than the spiritual epidermis. And it's connected to the Roman Catholic Church as well, not just the things that they've carried down to us. There is a deep wisdom there. There's a way of thinking about things there that resonates with what we desire in relation to being the church and being the person and people we were created to be.
   
   I suppose when you live with that deep wisdom and Tradition for a long time, some really right things happen. Now, to be fair, some goofy things get carried through as well - there are people involved in this thing and people are stupid, always remember that. But yeah, some very right things. And even though I'm not "officially" living in the ecclesiastical Roman borders any more, I certain do believe I am still very much connected to them/it, even if some of them might not consider me quite as connected. Even though I am where I am and am doing what I am doing, I cannot say that the Church in Rome has nothing to say to me. It does. I must hear and accept that as I must hear and accept any real wise and helpful substance that comes from any other place in the Church catholic. How about let's grab hold of and declare a new and radical catholicism. I'm bucking now to big Father Benedict XVI for a delegate seat at the next Ecumenical Council of the Church - Vatican 3??
   

Labels: catholic, emerging church, monasticism

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