Boxing Day Musings

White Christmas!  Be careful what you wish for...

Don't know about the rest of you, but I have been digging out churches and the Rectory all morning following a heavy Christmas Day snow storm that blanketed most of the East.  I know there were probably some nasty events during the storm, and I pray they were resolved safely, but I really love these things.

Haven't had much time to write since I began this blog a couple of days ago.  Christmas is a busy time for those of us in the biz.  I spent nearly 30 years as a disc-jockey in Syracuse, Seattle, and Anchorage, among other places, before I went to seminary, and I can tell you, there's not much difference in being a priest or a jock: you're trying to talk to people, entertain them, inform and guide them...and you go NUTS at Christmas!

My doctoral thesis (in progress) is on effecting change in the church specifically, but more broadly, it's about how Christianity has its head up its ass in so many ways.  In its attempt to bring the message of the Gospel to the world, the Institutional Church has, predictably, fallen prey to its human shortcomings and driven people from the very message of hope it thinks it conveys.  So many people in this post-modern/post-Christian era are so turned off by the so-called "Christian" church that they will have nothing to do with it.  And yet most people are hungry for something, anything, spiritual, and they spend a lot of time as Seekers, trying this or that, looking for that "something" which will feed them, give them hope and a reason to live in this hurting world.

My brother The Preacher  has already written about "Christian" attitudes and I agree with him wholeheartedly.  The Institutional Church is responsible for creating the arrogance which goes hand in hand with Christianity, not just today, but down through the centuries.  It could get away with it in the past because for a long time it was, or thought it was, the only game in town.  No more.  A second Reformation, more powerful, I think, than the first, is upon us.  The Institutional Church needs to wake up to the fact that it no longer has the power it used to wield and never should have had, and start meeting the people it purports to serve.  I believe there's another church out there, not of the institutional variety, that really is the true church that Christ hoped we would become.  It's just so damned scared to stand up and be noticed for fear of being crushed under the weight of religious doctrine, denominationalism, and legalism, that it has moved underground and has stuck its light under the proverbial basket.

I am a Christian by choice and by faith.  My faith has, from time to time, been shaken to its foundations. I left the Church for a number of years. I  shout "Fuck you!" at God nearly as often as I whisper "I love you."  Yet, here I am and here I will stay.  But I also know in my heart of hearts, that, while Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life for me, it ain't that way for everybody.  Nor do I believe it has to be.  Jesus himself recognized this (John 6:44).  God calls each of us to him in unique and special ways and it is up to us, as individuals, to discern that calling and understand what to do with it.  The Church should be about celebrating each of us as Seekers, and offering tools to help clarify that still, small, voice that we all hear in the midst of the storm raging about us.  Once in awhile, it does.  Most of the time it tries to squeeze us into a box and tosses away anyone who doesn't fit.  The time has come to say, "No more," and begin to make the church that which it is supposed to be.  It won't be easy, and I'm not stupid enough to think I'll do it here, or in my thesis, or in my congregations all by myself.  But in our hearts, each one of us has a way.  Let us be brave enough to try it out.

Fr. Bo

1:53:00 PM
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