Things I’ve Been Chewing On Since Pentecost

Mentoring as Cure of Souls

 Down deep, men and women began/begin to feel a yearning to be connected with others in a way that didn’t rely on a cable, keyboard, or cell tower.

MentoringThe September 2005 special edition of Newsweek’s “Spirituality in America” sums up our spiritual hunger very well: “Today, then, the real spiritual quest is not to put another conservative on the Supreme Court, or to get creation science into the schools. If you experience God directly, your faith is not going to hinge on whether natural selection could have produced the flagellum of a bacterium. If you feel God within you, then the important question is settled; the rest is details.” Again…  David Stoddard.

A Christianity which is not basically mystical must become either a political ideology or a mindless fundamentalism. Watts, Alan W.. Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion.

This is exactly the situation in the second decade of the 21th Century. On the left the Church is political ideology and the right is brain dead fundamentalism. Betwixt and between these camps of true believers lies the company of the beleaguered.

Many do not know that before he was a Buddhist  Master,  Alan was Father Watts, Episcopal chaplain at Northwestern University,  Evanston, Ill.  The following long quote is from Behold the Spirit, a work that I consider a classic.  His critique of the present condition of the Christian Church in America was made in 1947.  The man was a prophet. Perhaps if anyone had listened he might well remained a Christian.

AlanWattsFr. Watts continues,  “Naturally, institutional Christianity will, in its present form, continue to supply the demand which remains for a monarchical religion. But a considerable number of ministers and even congregations—not to mention millions of reasonably intelligent young people—realize that churches must “put up or shut up,” and that the chief business of religious facilities and assemblies is to provide a social milieu for religious experience. This is no mere matter of changing the externals—of having rock bands instead of organs and Kyrie eleison set to jazz, nor even of turning churches into social service centers with the idea that t*his would be practicing Christianity seven days a week instead of just talking it on Sundays. Continue reading

A Place for My Life to Happen…

The Holy One spoke to me through a TV commercial  a couple of days ago.  It caught my attention such that I searched for it on the internet. You can find it posted just before this one.  The pitch was for an online house search outfit.  I won’t give away the story but what caught my attention was the punch line: “You are not looking for a house — you are looking for a place for your life to happen.”

Durham Cathedral, County Durham, Great Britain

Durham Cathedral, County Durham, Great Britain

Commercials always have a “hook” that catches us in deep places.  That industry works hard finding ways to arouse the two motivations of all human affairs:  fear and desire.  Once the commercial has us then we are offered a way to safety or satiation.  The quality of the offer is everything from the sublime to the sinister.  For whatever is for sale a market can be found and precisely targeted.  Greater care is taken in the sale of toilet paper than is considered for the spreading of the Gospel!   The words of Jesus come to mind, “The children of this world in this their generation are wiser than the children of light.”

Now back to my basic notion.  Looking for a house is about shelter, while looking for a place for your life to happen is about soul. I am no good as a realtor but matters of the soul are my work.  What I know from soul work is that there is a certain loneliness that just goes with being a human being.  We are solitary in a body.  Regardless of how much we might hope for we can never get closer to anyone than body to body.  We long for relationship that is permanent, dependable and rich. But deep commitment does not guarantee we will not finally be alone.  Many relationships founder because they are not designed to carry the weight and intensity  of our deepest needs.  We need from each other what can only to found in God.  A collect from the Prayer Book resonates:

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.(1)

What I seek is  the place where  my life can happen in  the company of  Christians who seek the same.  We call it the Body of Christ.  

I will explore these notions in the weeks ahead.

(1) The Collect for Proper 20 of Year C.  – September 21, 2013