In the church forgiven

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Why is it that I need the institutional church, the institution and not just a prayer book?

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Well look, Elf said, sometimes I feel ready to explode. I feel so full of God's love I'm ready to explode. And then what? What follows?

What do I do when I feel this love?

Commit a crime in the name of Jesus? No, I don't think so!

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When I take off all my blotters and my masks, when I feel God's power or some sliver of it, what keeps me from imploding with my joy and terror?

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I need the church to hold me in and keep me human. In solidarity with other humans. Let's say that their own imploding tendency pulls me out of my own dangerous place. Okay. No prophet, thank you, no cult figure, no indeed. I don't want no human blocking my access to God. Let the institution -- laws not men -- sustain my walking into these arms I have.

Tradition keeps me honest. It holds me close. I hunger for orthodoxy as a place to walk and explore.

If you find a truth and then you want to sustain it and want it to *persist*, well, then you too want those walls. Why expect another broken person to sustain your brokenness.

You too are going to institutionalize, to walk inside. You too. Then maybe you will have to wait for your own Luther to free you from what you have done. But first, do it.

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The van full of disciples became raucous with prayer. An upright rational onlooker would have been deeply offended, scandalized. The Zen warrior sat humbled in prayer, the queer sat with his eyes closed. The dancer stood arrested in mid step. The van slowed down, it stopped. The people lay down and feel asleep, ragged scripture clutched to their breast. Let be not be so haughty that I ever pretend not to need this. As for myself, I really don't know a thing.

Less each day.

Praise, thanksgiving, seal me off from my own silly penchant to wander in despair.

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The devil knew they were there and longed to kill them off -- "one well placed bomb, really" -- but the wakeful ones wouldn't stop singing hymns -- those corny antiquated hymns. Duessa heard the hymns and her stomach turned. Commonplace thoughts, voices out of tune! Somehow she lost heart to pursue them and teach them new sorrows. She became depressed, disconsolate. And the people were all suddenly and provisionally free. They sat in a circle in the garden of prayer -- the place where a eucharist could happen for them and within them. A protected space -- at least for now.

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