*
You are bullying me, Elf said. The father looked at her.
All right then. I'll go. Stood up. Shook some leaves.
She spoke without really thinking. Always.
No no. Father. Daddy. Sir. Reverend. Oh *you* oh *you*. Please don't go.
*
Monday, January 31, 2005
Friday, January 28, 2005
Elf (Part 3)
*
When the phone rang again, she had finally taken on again the habit of answering it -- you can fall out of this habit or fall back in -- and said hello in her tentative voice as if for the first time ever. And a man's voice, not unlike Dave's and certainly not unfamiliar, greeted her like an old friend. You are a friend of Elise's and I am so sorry I missed you when you came to town.
Father Sam. Actually -- actually we may have met -- but on the other hand, perhaps not.
Elise says that you are interested in the church. Tentatively.
Oh I got past that, Father. I'm just a really good pagan, it runs in my blood. I have to go to work now, Father, must hang up, don't think me rude.
And as she came out of the workplace, carrying her little kit bag, there he was. Let's just talk a little bit. It might help me to talk.
Don't want to, she said. Don't want to. And he said, okay, I never press. For me, faith is totally a matter of persuasion, there is no force involved -- except the force whistling through one's own bones, sort of privately, silently, but only you can know anything about that.
No one can describe any of this to you. It's there, you take note of it, or it isn't and you don't.
By this time the two of them sat on a cold stone bench under late transitioning leaves, cracking and falling, poor corpses, circling the dusting of pollen, totally inappropriate, totally out of season, that lay on the shoulder like an unsteady hand -- an the hand and the shoulder both shook a little bit, from cold, from the general lateness of things, from thoughts of some inner chlliness that was refusing to relax and get warm.
Faith is an addiction, Sam said. Not so completely different from, you know, alcoholism or gambling or a man's inability to take his eyes off a naked body -- or even a person's urge to make more money or build a bigger house. I mean, faith is more like that than the professionally faithful seem to realize.
So if you have any weakness or brokenness of that nature, you have not been completely shut out from -- this other possibility you know.
*
When the phone rang again, she had finally taken on again the habit of answering it -- you can fall out of this habit or fall back in -- and said hello in her tentative voice as if for the first time ever. And a man's voice, not unlike Dave's and certainly not unfamiliar, greeted her like an old friend. You are a friend of Elise's and I am so sorry I missed you when you came to town.
Father Sam. Actually -- actually we may have met -- but on the other hand, perhaps not.
Elise says that you are interested in the church. Tentatively.
Oh I got past that, Father. I'm just a really good pagan, it runs in my blood. I have to go to work now, Father, must hang up, don't think me rude.
And as she came out of the workplace, carrying her little kit bag, there he was. Let's just talk a little bit. It might help me to talk.
Don't want to, she said. Don't want to. And he said, okay, I never press. For me, faith is totally a matter of persuasion, there is no force involved -- except the force whistling through one's own bones, sort of privately, silently, but only you can know anything about that.
No one can describe any of this to you. It's there, you take note of it, or it isn't and you don't.
By this time the two of them sat on a cold stone bench under late transitioning leaves, cracking and falling, poor corpses, circling the dusting of pollen, totally inappropriate, totally out of season, that lay on the shoulder like an unsteady hand -- an the hand and the shoulder both shook a little bit, from cold, from the general lateness of things, from thoughts of some inner chlliness that was refusing to relax and get warm.
Faith is an addiction, Sam said. Not so completely different from, you know, alcoholism or gambling or a man's inability to take his eyes off a naked body -- or even a person's urge to make more money or build a bigger house. I mean, faith is more like that than the professionally faithful seem to realize.
So if you have any weakness or brokenness of that nature, you have not been completely shut out from -- this other possibility you know.
*
Elf (Part 2)
*
In the little hotel room the phone kept ringing. The man at the desk said that a very sophisticated woman had kept calling. No messages, I want the real thing. I want to talk to that girl. Elf shuddered every time the phone rang. It was surely the devil calling. More on that later.
She couldn't stay in her room. She went to the church office and asked to see the father. Who might you be? asked the stiff lady. I took him home last night, Elf said, from where I found him to be. The place your assistant gave me.
I think you'll know that he's in no shape for idle chat, said the stiff lady.
Are you one of those who thinks the Lord wants us all to be hollow and perfect? Are you one of those who has a big thing for the concept of sin but won't allow any of us to be a sinner? Not even a fashion plate who models the power of forgiveness?
So you're saying I can't see him, Elf said and went back to her terrible hotel room. And the phone rang and rang.
So she gave up and went back to Elise's town, now her town too -- she huddled back in the square clean burrow of her SRO on the edge of town, and waited for the phone to ring. She spent Thanksgiving alone, walking around the closed up town, enjoying the feeling of having a city, walking by the church, passing it, rounding the block, walking by, passing. I can't go in there. People go in there but the people who go in there are not me. The person walking into the sanctuary can't be me because... I don't go to church, for one thing. It's not in my repertory. Walking around the block, walking around the town, getting a bit cold. Seeing Elise come out with her friends. Hiding. There is something in there I perhaps need. But I can't go in.
So after these strange evasions, which she herself could neither explain nor simply leave to hang unexplained, she finally went back to her room, heated a lean cuisine turkey dinner in her little microwave and stared at the phone on the verge of ringing, then it rang.
She picked it up. It was her mother Duessa. Darling, I've found you at last.
*
In the little hotel room the phone kept ringing. The man at the desk said that a very sophisticated woman had kept calling. No messages, I want the real thing. I want to talk to that girl. Elf shuddered every time the phone rang. It was surely the devil calling. More on that later.
She couldn't stay in her room. She went to the church office and asked to see the father. Who might you be? asked the stiff lady. I took him home last night, Elf said, from where I found him to be. The place your assistant gave me.
I think you'll know that he's in no shape for idle chat, said the stiff lady.
Are you one of those who thinks the Lord wants us all to be hollow and perfect? Are you one of those who has a big thing for the concept of sin but won't allow any of us to be a sinner? Not even a fashion plate who models the power of forgiveness?
So you're saying I can't see him, Elf said and went back to her terrible hotel room. And the phone rang and rang.
So she gave up and went back to Elise's town, now her town too -- she huddled back in the square clean burrow of her SRO on the edge of town, and waited for the phone to ring. She spent Thanksgiving alone, walking around the closed up town, enjoying the feeling of having a city, walking by the church, passing it, rounding the block, walking by, passing. I can't go in there. People go in there but the people who go in there are not me. The person walking into the sanctuary can't be me because... I don't go to church, for one thing. It's not in my repertory. Walking around the block, walking around the town, getting a bit cold. Seeing Elise come out with her friends. Hiding. There is something in there I perhaps need. But I can't go in.
So after these strange evasions, which she herself could neither explain nor simply leave to hang unexplained, she finally went back to her room, heated a lean cuisine turkey dinner in her little microwave and stared at the phone on the verge of ringing, then it rang.
She picked it up. It was her mother Duessa. Darling, I've found you at last.
*
The story of an elf (Part 1 of many)
*
It is time to tell Elf's story, we can no longer put if off.
*
In the last dregs of 2004 Elf had fallen in love with the man called Dave, the missing man, the "ridiculous knight", had swallowed the love quietly and "offered it up", a common story -- but love was not the source of her troubles. After all, she had been in unrequited love with many different people at many different times -- love for a human was one of those things you just had to give to God and try to ignore. Love was almost never *returned*, just held close to and somehow dealt with. Love was not her problem.
It was the world's problem, not hers. Because the same way that the world had more explanations than there were things to explain, and had more causes than there were effects to be caused, so, in just the same way, it was that the world contained more love than there were people available to receive love and accept it with gratitude or even to give it away carefully. Love overpowered all the lovers, there weren't enough places in the world for all the hearts that looked to be placed. That was the basic structure of our sorrow. So love -- in or of this damaged world -- was like an acute pain that you might find a way to alleviate or might have to live with for the rest of your life, and there was nothing to say, that was love, that was its nature, on the human level, without God's intervention, and Elf's problem was not love per se, that is human love.
Elf had learned to live with all of that, it hardly even hurt anymore. Her troubles were something else.
*
Start the story with the moment she visited Father Sam in his distant parish. We don't have an active priest here at the moment, Elise said, so honey if you want that kind of priestly advice, here is where you need to go. So Elf travelled to the boondocks, places almost without names, in one of which he'd been re-assigned. But then it happened that he was drunk when she found him, Sam was off the wagon again. This was her introduction to institutionalized Christianity. Not as terrible as it might sound. You will learn that spirituality of a kind had followed her all her life.
Don't tell Elise you found me like this, Sam said. Then, putting him in a taxi Elf found herself -- oh no, dear God -- falling in love with him too, just a little bit. He was a bit heavy and ethnic, and despite his condition hadn't laid a hand on her. He was gentle getting out of the car. He was sick and lovable, although love was not the subject here.
Why am I so helpless around men? she asked herself. But even this helplessness was not the source of her troubles, not even close.
*
It is time to tell Elf's story, we can no longer put if off.
*
In the last dregs of 2004 Elf had fallen in love with the man called Dave, the missing man, the "ridiculous knight", had swallowed the love quietly and "offered it up", a common story -- but love was not the source of her troubles. After all, she had been in unrequited love with many different people at many different times -- love for a human was one of those things you just had to give to God and try to ignore. Love was almost never *returned*, just held close to and somehow dealt with. Love was not her problem.
It was the world's problem, not hers. Because the same way that the world had more explanations than there were things to explain, and had more causes than there were effects to be caused, so, in just the same way, it was that the world contained more love than there were people available to receive love and accept it with gratitude or even to give it away carefully. Love overpowered all the lovers, there weren't enough places in the world for all the hearts that looked to be placed. That was the basic structure of our sorrow. So love -- in or of this damaged world -- was like an acute pain that you might find a way to alleviate or might have to live with for the rest of your life, and there was nothing to say, that was love, that was its nature, on the human level, without God's intervention, and Elf's problem was not love per se, that is human love.
Elf had learned to live with all of that, it hardly even hurt anymore. Her troubles were something else.
*
Start the story with the moment she visited Father Sam in his distant parish. We don't have an active priest here at the moment, Elise said, so honey if you want that kind of priestly advice, here is where you need to go. So Elf travelled to the boondocks, places almost without names, in one of which he'd been re-assigned. But then it happened that he was drunk when she found him, Sam was off the wagon again. This was her introduction to institutionalized Christianity. Not as terrible as it might sound. You will learn that spirituality of a kind had followed her all her life.
Don't tell Elise you found me like this, Sam said. Then, putting him in a taxi Elf found herself -- oh no, dear God -- falling in love with him too, just a little bit. He was a bit heavy and ethnic, and despite his condition hadn't laid a hand on her. He was gentle getting out of the car. He was sick and lovable, although love was not the subject here.
Why am I so helpless around men? she asked herself. But even this helplessness was not the source of her troubles, not even close.
*
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Conduct? Not overnight
*
It is a long journey to the correct action. You can't just do it. Your whole life needs to do it -- or to learn how.
A martyr's final moment culminates everything before -- or *is* everything before.
Imagine if hands and feet spoke the Apostle's creed, not just lips.
Is there an exercise course for *that*? I'll sign up!
*
It is a long journey to the correct action. You can't just do it. Your whole life needs to do it -- or to learn how.
A martyr's final moment culminates everything before -- or *is* everything before.
Imagine if hands and feet spoke the Apostle's creed, not just lips.
Is there an exercise course for *that*? I'll sign up!
*
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Conduct: the space behind the glass
*
If conduct is our truest way of worship, why does this leave me so scared? What is going on?
(Aside from my own evaluation that my own conduct is consisently appalling and fake -- it would turn God's stomach if God were the giant body that most people visualize.)
((And gets worse when I try to repair it.))
(((So that "faith not works" becomes this hasty bandage that I apply to my own ghoulishness.)))
*
The fear. Is it that I don't know what conduct is? In other words, don't know what to do? Moment by moment the question recurs: what right now? what step will do the least damage?
*
There is a barrier like glass (metaphor of Francis P Sullivan SJ). Something gets through -- but touch does not. Can't touch. Light goes through, also something else. The gap is not empty but feels like a sprouting vacuum.
This is the point where omnipotent God has stopped -- willingly. God knows why. Out of love perhaps? giving the creature the freedom to move of its own volition? An infinitesimal space, too small to measure or of course see: the creature's separation from God. That infinitesimal space is conduct. I don't know what to do with it. Use it? How? Widen it? Make it smaller if I can? Give it up? Give it away?
Talk about it like an idiot?
What to do with this gift? Will God eventually take it back? Is my existence inside it? What to *do* with it???
One listens for an answer -- but that too, the listening, occurs within this infinitesimal space.
*
If conduct is our truest way of worship, why does this leave me so scared? What is going on?
(Aside from my own evaluation that my own conduct is consisently appalling and fake -- it would turn God's stomach if God were the giant body that most people visualize.)
((And gets worse when I try to repair it.))
(((So that "faith not works" becomes this hasty bandage that I apply to my own ghoulishness.)))
*
The fear. Is it that I don't know what conduct is? In other words, don't know what to do? Moment by moment the question recurs: what right now? what step will do the least damage?
*
There is a barrier like glass (metaphor of Francis P Sullivan SJ). Something gets through -- but touch does not. Can't touch. Light goes through, also something else. The gap is not empty but feels like a sprouting vacuum.
This is the point where omnipotent God has stopped -- willingly. God knows why. Out of love perhaps? giving the creature the freedom to move of its own volition? An infinitesimal space, too small to measure or of course see: the creature's separation from God. That infinitesimal space is conduct. I don't know what to do with it. Use it? How? Widen it? Make it smaller if I can? Give it up? Give it away?
Talk about it like an idiot?
What to do with this gift? Will God eventually take it back? Is my existence inside it? What to *do* with it???
One listens for an answer -- but that too, the listening, occurs within this infinitesimal space.
*
Friday, January 21, 2005
Broken space
*
You can't enter Prayerspace unless you are first broken (Luke 18:14).
What the president is doing looks like prayer but is something else.
*
And what is at stake here is not the country or some political party but faith itself.
If pseudo faith is exalted and praised, what happens to the true variety?
*
The place that is truth abides. Is anyone standing inside it?
*
You can't enter Prayerspace unless you are first broken (Luke 18:14).
What the president is doing looks like prayer but is something else.
*
And what is at stake here is not the country or some political party but faith itself.
If pseudo faith is exalted and praised, what happens to the true variety?
*
The place that is truth abides. Is anyone standing inside it?
*
Prayerspace
*
Touch upon Prayerspace
(the place where prayer becomes possible).
*
Not congruent with truth -- with the sacred space truth occupies?
I don't dare to say they are congruent.
I can't *know* that.
Prayerspace is where you *try* to enter the sacred space. You ask, you knock, you request. It's possible that the request is turned down.
*
If no request was made, no prayer occurred. No uncertainty, no request.
No request, no prayer.
*
Prayer must be an action, not a passive sitting with eyes closed (unless that too is an action). Prayer is a plea for change. I don't believe true prayer can ever leave the pray-er unchanged.
That is why I am offended at the president's pseudo prayer. Where is the change? How can prayer calcify the beliefs of the pray-er?
Where is Prayerspace?
*
I think it involves the undermining of certainty. Oh well -- the pitiful thing that humans mistake for certainty.
But if we tell the truth (if we stand within the place of truth) what we desperately seek is God's certainty not our own.
Awesome thing to ask for. Some are too wise to ask.
*
God has a vision politics knows nothing about.
*
Touch upon Prayerspace
(the place where prayer becomes possible).
*
Not congruent with truth -- with the sacred space truth occupies?
I don't dare to say they are congruent.
I can't *know* that.
Prayerspace is where you *try* to enter the sacred space. You ask, you knock, you request. It's possible that the request is turned down.
*
If no request was made, no prayer occurred. No uncertainty, no request.
No request, no prayer.
*
Prayer must be an action, not a passive sitting with eyes closed (unless that too is an action). Prayer is a plea for change. I don't believe true prayer can ever leave the pray-er unchanged.
That is why I am offended at the president's pseudo prayer. Where is the change? How can prayer calcify the beliefs of the pray-er?
Where is Prayerspace?
*
I think it involves the undermining of certainty. Oh well -- the pitiful thing that humans mistake for certainty.
But if we tell the truth (if we stand within the place of truth) what we desperately seek is God's certainty not our own.
Awesome thing to ask for. Some are too wise to ask.
*
God has a vision politics knows nothing about.
*
The places
*
So....
if truth is a place --
and faith is a place --
-- is it the same place?
*
How could it not be the same place? If to be faithful is to align oneself with truth, and if to sustain the truth requires faithfulness.
*
So....
if truth is a place --
and faith is a place --
-- is it the same place?
*
How could it not be the same place? If to be faithful is to align oneself with truth, and if to sustain the truth requires faithfulness.
*
Truth as a place
*
Honesty too -- that, like faith, is a place more than a state of mind to be willed. You don't will it, you enter it (it exists without you).
Lies maybe float in the head. The truth is beyond it (or is not true).
Our sacred space is true. Other things too but always that. Lies are noplace. Truth is a place.
So if I choose to be true or will truth, it isn't *really* my will or my choice. Not if you measure the disparity between my pitiful self and the truth (which is: the One who founds it and intends it and holds it upright).
*
Without prayer, no truth.
So.....
*
Honesty too -- that, like faith, is a place more than a state of mind to be willed. You don't will it, you enter it (it exists without you).
Lies maybe float in the head. The truth is beyond it (or is not true).
Our sacred space is true. Other things too but always that. Lies are noplace. Truth is a place.
So if I choose to be true or will truth, it isn't *really* my will or my choice. Not if you measure the disparity between my pitiful self and the truth (which is: the One who founds it and intends it and holds it upright).
*
Without prayer, no truth.
So.....
*
Thursday, January 20, 2005
No "team" prayer
*
Prayer my darling, where to find you? Rules...
Avoid "my team vs yours". (Check Lincoln 2nd inaugural.) Do not demonize. Do not demonize. "As we forgive those who trespass." Do it!
Jeremiah to Israelites: stop demonizing Gentile peoples. Take that energy, turn it to God. (Team spirit as a nation's idolatry? Is this our fate?) The prophet's audience didn't listen, but turned faith into a sporting challenge and lost the challenge.
God doesn't give a damn about our competition.
Flee the triumph, avoid the prayer of GW Bush. Christianity as Caesarist triumphalism beyond Constantine's wildest urging -- was there ever such a danger to faith? When evangelicals grow so corrupted, who is left?
America as "my team", other people as the hub of evil. No way. We are in quicksand without a prophet to pull us out. Help us God. Please. Help our enemies too. Bush too.
Politics is a foxhole now.
*
Prayer my darling, where to find you? Rules...
Avoid "my team vs yours". (Check Lincoln 2nd inaugural.) Do not demonize. Do not demonize. "As we forgive those who trespass." Do it!
Jeremiah to Israelites: stop demonizing Gentile peoples. Take that energy, turn it to God. (Team spirit as a nation's idolatry? Is this our fate?) The prophet's audience didn't listen, but turned faith into a sporting challenge and lost the challenge.
God doesn't give a damn about our competition.
Flee the triumph, avoid the prayer of GW Bush. Christianity as Caesarist triumphalism beyond Constantine's wildest urging -- was there ever such a danger to faith? When evangelicals grow so corrupted, who is left?
America as "my team", other people as the hub of evil. No way. We are in quicksand without a prophet to pull us out. Help us God. Please. Help our enemies too. Bush too.
Politics is a foxhole now.
*
The foxhole
*
The best place to meet God -- a foxhole?
*
Where on earth is not a foxhole really...
*
The best place to meet God -- a foxhole?
*
Where on earth is not a foxhole really...
*
Monday, January 17, 2005
The place called faith
*
Urgent urgent need, to find the place called faith -- the right place to consider God and be with God. A place, not a state of mind. The place you stand shapes your conclusions. Who sets the fighting arena wins the battle.
*
The place is not a debating hall. The "god" of that place is Debate. Stripped-down rationality, hopeless.
*
The place is not a market place. That "god" is sales -- watch out. Most to be feared when most apparently your friend.
Pretends to have your best interests at heart. Couldn't be farther away from the place of need.
*
The sidewalk, no home. The horror of the diaspora: not having a "place". Or not having *the* place.
*
Place where I may be with my God and speak freely without a single lie! "All my fresh springs in thee."
The ark! We heard it was in Los Angeles. Then Sri Lanka. But it's not physical travel, a change of heart.
Place of safety, place of refuge. A church? The so-called sanctuary? Sometimes the dove alights, sometimes flies away. A place more of acquaintance than habitation? You touch it, the experience is fleeting and ephemral but what is fleeting is not the place but yourself. Your conduct is like a holding action but all you have.
*
In John 6, Jesus, disciples and followers occupy a mountain area with superfluities of grass and comfort enough to seat 5000. This *is* the place but neither mountain nor grass make it what it is.
*
Urgent urgent need, to find the place called faith -- the right place to consider God and be with God. A place, not a state of mind. The place you stand shapes your conclusions. Who sets the fighting arena wins the battle.
*
The place is not a debating hall. The "god" of that place is Debate. Stripped-down rationality, hopeless.
*
The place is not a market place. That "god" is sales -- watch out. Most to be feared when most apparently your friend.
Pretends to have your best interests at heart. Couldn't be farther away from the place of need.
*
The sidewalk, no home. The horror of the diaspora: not having a "place". Or not having *the* place.
*
Place where I may be with my God and speak freely without a single lie! "All my fresh springs in thee."
The ark! We heard it was in Los Angeles. Then Sri Lanka. But it's not physical travel, a change of heart.
Place of safety, place of refuge. A church? The so-called sanctuary? Sometimes the dove alights, sometimes flies away. A place more of acquaintance than habitation? You touch it, the experience is fleeting and ephemral but what is fleeting is not the place but yourself. Your conduct is like a holding action but all you have.
*
In John 6, Jesus, disciples and followers occupy a mountain area with superfluities of grass and comfort enough to seat 5000. This *is* the place but neither mountain nor grass make it what it is.
*
Simulations
*
There are plenty of simulations of Christians walking around.
*
When I play the Goodness Game and try to fool people, who is most fooled?
*
There are plenty of simulations of Christians walking around.
*
When I play the Goodness Game and try to fool people, who is most fooled?
*
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Why Conduct is the Heart
*
Why conduct, so taken for granted, is the heart of faith, just as James says.
I can't explain, any more than Tristan could. Here is a stab... I believe that we as a species live in a world of doubt but the doubt is secular, not religious. There is probably much *less* religious doubt than people think -- even if the faith is heterodox and scattered and probably doesn't do as much good to the believer as it could -- but a much wider secular doubt than people would admit to having. By secular doubt I just mean confusion as to what you are supposed to be *doing*, both at this particular second and with your life as a whole. I suffer from huge amounts of secular doubt but no religious doubt at all. However, the secular doubt seems to be enough to kill me by itself.
When the father in Mark says, I believe -- please heal my unbelief, he really has a foot in the two different kinds of belief and unbelief. Not does God exist, but what impact does he have. Or what impact can I have upon him.
*
My need from church is not lovely music and a well-spun sermon. I don't even need Jonny Baker's worship tricks. What I need is help getting from Monday through Saturday as a Christian. People affirm their belief on Sunday but when they need counseling on Monday, they don't seem to mind going to a complete agnostic for practical help. I feel sure that the church should be engaged in practice, that practice is its deepest worship -- if prayer is really a form of action and a cry for change.
*
If conduct is one's heart, the expression of one's heart, then certainly my heart needs a drop of lubrication from a tin man. Please offer me a sermon that is not just a ride in an amusement park, letting me off at the exact point where I got on. I want to change! I am not the only one.
I can barely help other people when my own soul is damaged.
*
Why conduct, so taken for granted, is the heart of faith, just as James says.
I can't explain, any more than Tristan could. Here is a stab... I believe that we as a species live in a world of doubt but the doubt is secular, not religious. There is probably much *less* religious doubt than people think -- even if the faith is heterodox and scattered and probably doesn't do as much good to the believer as it could -- but a much wider secular doubt than people would admit to having. By secular doubt I just mean confusion as to what you are supposed to be *doing*, both at this particular second and with your life as a whole. I suffer from huge amounts of secular doubt but no religious doubt at all. However, the secular doubt seems to be enough to kill me by itself.
When the father in Mark says, I believe -- please heal my unbelief, he really has a foot in the two different kinds of belief and unbelief. Not does God exist, but what impact does he have. Or what impact can I have upon him.
*
My need from church is not lovely music and a well-spun sermon. I don't even need Jonny Baker's worship tricks. What I need is help getting from Monday through Saturday as a Christian. People affirm their belief on Sunday but when they need counseling on Monday, they don't seem to mind going to a complete agnostic for practical help. I feel sure that the church should be engaged in practice, that practice is its deepest worship -- if prayer is really a form of action and a cry for change.
*
If conduct is one's heart, the expression of one's heart, then certainly my heart needs a drop of lubrication from a tin man. Please offer me a sermon that is not just a ride in an amusement park, letting me off at the exact point where I got on. I want to change! I am not the only one.
I can barely help other people when my own soul is damaged.
*
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
From the Garden of Orthodoxy to the Garden of Conduct
*
When you put flesh onto preaching, blood, bones and twitching muscles, you get literature. Maybe bad literature but in any case.
God likes our stories because they move -- they have conduct, they don't just talke.
I am trying to write a story about the girl who grows up in the Garden of Orthodoxy (see last entry in December 2004) but is booted out with her brother -- not for some transgression but simply because this is part of growing up -- at least for many. She tried to get back in whilst her brother gives up.
Eventually a man of God (Father Sam or someone like him) steers her to the Garden of Conduct, in the midst of which the Garden of Orthodoxy lies hidden. Where is it? This is not easy to say? So she asks: Where then is the Garden of Conduct? And he answers: Everywhere you go.
This mysterious paradigm or parable at least slightly shades in the deeper mystery of the importance of conduct to faith. Faith is not a set of rules or dietary laws, but that doesn't mean you can be a person of faith and do absolutely anything you want. There is a sort of side effect to everything you do. As a sort of subsidiary motion embedded in your actions, there is a second deeper action, which is: your conduct leads you closer to God. Or your conduct leads you away.
John Bunyan captured this perfectly, beautifully. *His* work of fiction is an actual piece of conduct, a good deed in itself. I wish I could say the same of myself.
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When you put flesh onto preaching, blood, bones and twitching muscles, you get literature. Maybe bad literature but in any case.
God likes our stories because they move -- they have conduct, they don't just talke.
I am trying to write a story about the girl who grows up in the Garden of Orthodoxy (see last entry in December 2004) but is booted out with her brother -- not for some transgression but simply because this is part of growing up -- at least for many. She tried to get back in whilst her brother gives up.
Eventually a man of God (Father Sam or someone like him) steers her to the Garden of Conduct, in the midst of which the Garden of Orthodoxy lies hidden. Where is it? This is not easy to say? So she asks: Where then is the Garden of Conduct? And he answers: Everywhere you go.
This mysterious paradigm or parable at least slightly shades in the deeper mystery of the importance of conduct to faith. Faith is not a set of rules or dietary laws, but that doesn't mean you can be a person of faith and do absolutely anything you want. There is a sort of side effect to everything you do. As a sort of subsidiary motion embedded in your actions, there is a second deeper action, which is: your conduct leads you closer to God. Or your conduct leads you away.
John Bunyan captured this perfectly, beautifully. *His* work of fiction is an actual piece of conduct, a good deed in itself. I wish I could say the same of myself.
*
Conduct: Prayer as a form of action. Prayer as change.
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Prayer as change, so that the best proof prayer has occurred is a change in the heart, a change in the world, a new behavior? The idea that praying, e.g., to help someone whom you could help practically but do not help would be not prayer but a form of sin? Placeholder for now. This topic burns my hands. I am upset that the President holds prayer meetings but comes out affirming exactly the same things he affirmed when he entered the meeting, as though prayer were a formality and not a deep action. Of course God might just be confirming a person's pre-held beliefs but is that likely?
Pray before you write this incendiary stuff.
*
Prayer as change, so that the best proof prayer has occurred is a change in the heart, a change in the world, a new behavior? The idea that praying, e.g., to help someone whom you could help practically but do not help would be not prayer but a form of sin? Placeholder for now. This topic burns my hands. I am upset that the President holds prayer meetings but comes out affirming exactly the same things he affirmed when he entered the meeting, as though prayer were a formality and not a deep action. Of course God might just be confirming a person's pre-held beliefs but is that likely?
Pray before you write this incendiary stuff.
*
The mystery of conduct - 3
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Paul warns about "speaking in tongues" because it makes for a private and unmeasurable spiritual experience, one that doesn't "edify" the person outside it. Such is the cunning of the devil that the eucharistic liturgy, arising from Paul's own words, evolved into a form of speaking in tongues.
That is, people sit in front of the liturgy and listen (with wandering attention or none) but rarely feel its words hooking into their own will. It must have been really bad in the old days with the Catholic priest intoning Latin and turning his back on the congregation. But the modern liturgy still feels like a form of private speech. If it was talking to the parish wouldn't the parish be talking back?
Then there is the sermon. Does the sermon alter the listeners' conduct? Does it invade the will like a loving virus? Not a rhetorical question, my love, but not an exam question either. The most important questions are answered after the exam when all the textbooks are closed. Or else... the real exam is on the sidewalk waiting in line.
*
Paul warns about "speaking in tongues" because it makes for a private and unmeasurable spiritual experience, one that doesn't "edify" the person outside it. Such is the cunning of the devil that the eucharistic liturgy, arising from Paul's own words, evolved into a form of speaking in tongues.
That is, people sit in front of the liturgy and listen (with wandering attention or none) but rarely feel its words hooking into their own will. It must have been really bad in the old days with the Catholic priest intoning Latin and turning his back on the congregation. But the modern liturgy still feels like a form of private speech. If it was talking to the parish wouldn't the parish be talking back?
Then there is the sermon. Does the sermon alter the listeners' conduct? Does it invade the will like a loving virus? Not a rhetorical question, my love, but not an exam question either. The most important questions are answered after the exam when all the textbooks are closed. Or else... the real exam is on the sidewalk waiting in line.
*
The mystery of conduct - 2
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In my church (Episcopal) I used to be flabbergasted at how many people would volunteer to do something and not do it. Alas, I started doing it myself. It was as though a Christian promise was somehow less -- less in need of being accomplished -- than a promise at work. At work if you don't do what you promise to do, you're fired. But I guess God was considered in comparision to be a softie or even a patsy.
In a volunteer environment, you never actually know whether something will be done or not.
In my more judgmental state, I used to assume that the problem was the paradox of too much forgiveness. If someone felt automatically forgiven for a transgression, what's to stop them from transgressing?
Paul, I think, faces the same problem in his Epistles. I think his response is that the authentic Christian doesn't do good from obligation but as a sort of emanation from his or her faith -- a natural outgrowth of it. So then if someone declares faith but goes on to behave badly... there must be a bad connection somewhere in their faith?
Many of the Episcopalians that I know profess their faith and, I am sure, feel that faith, but its expression in conduct is hard to see, hard to measure (not that it's my business to measure anyone but my own pitiful self -- of course!).
More on this later.
*
The prayer about conduct -- "Lead us not into temptation" -- became changed to an inscrutable concept: "Save us from the time of trial". Well, I know what temptation is, but the time of trial, not really. So the cutting edge of conduct somehow got dulled. At least in that prayer as it was reworded.
*
And we go to church as if to the theatre.
*
In my church (Episcopal) I used to be flabbergasted at how many people would volunteer to do something and not do it. Alas, I started doing it myself. It was as though a Christian promise was somehow less -- less in need of being accomplished -- than a promise at work. At work if you don't do what you promise to do, you're fired. But I guess God was considered in comparision to be a softie or even a patsy.
In a volunteer environment, you never actually know whether something will be done or not.
In my more judgmental state, I used to assume that the problem was the paradox of too much forgiveness. If someone felt automatically forgiven for a transgression, what's to stop them from transgressing?
Paul, I think, faces the same problem in his Epistles. I think his response is that the authentic Christian doesn't do good from obligation but as a sort of emanation from his or her faith -- a natural outgrowth of it. So then if someone declares faith but goes on to behave badly... there must be a bad connection somewhere in their faith?
Many of the Episcopalians that I know profess their faith and, I am sure, feel that faith, but its expression in conduct is hard to see, hard to measure (not that it's my business to measure anyone but my own pitiful self -- of course!).
*
The prayer about conduct -- "Lead us not into temptation" -- became changed to an inscrutable concept: "Save us from the time of trial". Well, I know what temptation is, but the time of trial, not really. So the cutting edge of conduct somehow got dulled. At least in that prayer as it was reworded.
*
And we go to church as if to the theatre.
*
The mystery of conduct - 1
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In the time of New Year's resolutions, an opportunity to measure the concept of conduct. What *is* conduct for a Christian? Anyone can measure professions, the words that more or less fall out of the mouth. But what about the body's own form of Christianity? What about behavior? What should *that* be?
Our conduct as Christians is the bottom for sure.
I am always so amazed that people treat George Bush as a Christian because he says he's one. What if the emperor Tiberius had called himself a Christian? It's what you do, not what you say, or not only that.
Do I sound like I'm talking about the Jewish law? I am not talking about the law.
*
In the time of New Year's resolutions, an opportunity to measure the concept of conduct. What *is* conduct for a Christian? Anyone can measure professions, the words that more or less fall out of the mouth. But what about the body's own form of Christianity? What about behavior? What should *that* be?
Our conduct as Christians is the bottom for sure.
I am always so amazed that people treat George Bush as a Christian because he says he's one. What if the emperor Tiberius had called himself a Christian? It's what you do, not what you say, or not only that.
Do I sound like I'm talking about the Jewish law? I am not talking about the law.
*
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