I have a thing on my Internet page that gives a daily quote. I love quotes. You can tell them to people and feel super smart or pretencions, you can take them out of context and use them to justify you actions OR you can read them, think about who said them, ask what it means, meditate on how or if it translates to your culture or society. You can also still share them. I will copy paste good ones I read and email them to a friend once in a while to inspire them. It most likely annoys them more than anything I shouldn't wonder.
Well today's was particularly poignant and talkative to me. Some context into my current life...
I have been obsessed lately with the Body of Christ (The catholic church, catholic as in worldwide) and how things work internally and externally with it. The balance is always teetering, always tiptoeing on the knife blade and needs constant attention.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Now to some, this may seem kind of like a "duh" statement but I ask you how much do we practice this? We humans are quite incredible. We can run long distances, fight great battles both mentally and physically, invent amazing feats of technology, delve deep into the mysteries of science and though but we are awful team players. Now I speak from a context of living in America. A country that is constantly screaming of it's independent spirit and demanding that every person make it on their own. Yawn. Do not believe these lies. Every person needs people. The idea of self reliance and independent spirit was made up by the powers that were and be to keep us separated. (yes I love and believe conspiracy theories. In this day and age nothing is unrealistic.) The bigger we get as a culture, the more "connected" through social media we become, the farther away from real interpersonal interactions we get.
Now back to the Church. We are created in God's image. God has no body. God is presented as masculine but God is not male. (read C.S. Lewis' novel "Perelandria" to see a more well developed thought on this.) So image is not what we look like. It is WHO we are. It is how we as the only animals in this world are the only ones who are relational more than anything else. Dogs can be buddies but they do not set up towns and villages or get married. Homo Sapien must interact with others to be Homo Sapien. In the book "Into the Wild" the main character dreams on total separation from human society and everything he does is leading towards him finding his own Alaskan "Walden Pond" but when he finally does, he has an epiphany that life without others is no life at all. He tragically dies very soon after this. The point is that we need others.
In the Church, we hold fast to the scriptures showing us as The Body of Christ. We, like a body, are many different parts that make up a structure that thinks, moves, acts and hurts. Going to Sunday or Saturday services, taking the Eucharist, giving offering, listening to the sermon, those are all vital things but they are not the only things. We struggle to bring Sundays out with us to the rest of the week. The constant sharpening of each other cannot just happen if we meet and greet once a week. This is becoming very real to my Life Group. We have started to realize the importance of honest truth bombs, pain sharing, forgiveness, love through actions and words and the daily meditations required to live a a member in The Body. We cannot be who we could be in Christ, without the people around us. Stuffing our pain down deep inside ourselves, not sharing praises/griefs/struggles with our brothers and sisters, living without communal and meaningful prayer will keep us in a state of arrested development.
My generation loves to crap on The Church. We like to say it is vanilla and bland. That it is not relevant and living. We talk of its ineffectiveness in social justice.
I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.
This phrase goes the other way was well. Others cannot be what they ought to be without me being what I ought to be. When we complain about the state of The Church, we witness against ourselves. If you call yourself a follower of Jesus than you are The Church and the sickness that you say has hold of it lives in you. We cannot go it alone. We cannot allow other go it alone. This will look very differently to many people, as well it should as we are so diverse. The theme is the same though.
Well today's was particularly poignant and talkative to me. Some context into my current life...
I have been obsessed lately with the Body of Christ (The catholic church, catholic as in worldwide) and how things work internally and externally with it. The balance is always teetering, always tiptoeing on the knife blade and needs constant attention.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Now to some, this may seem kind of like a "duh" statement but I ask you how much do we practice this? We humans are quite incredible. We can run long distances, fight great battles both mentally and physically, invent amazing feats of technology, delve deep into the mysteries of science and though but we are awful team players. Now I speak from a context of living in America. A country that is constantly screaming of it's independent spirit and demanding that every person make it on their own. Yawn. Do not believe these lies. Every person needs people. The idea of self reliance and independent spirit was made up by the powers that were and be to keep us separated. (yes I love and believe conspiracy theories. In this day and age nothing is unrealistic.) The bigger we get as a culture, the more "connected" through social media we become, the farther away from real interpersonal interactions we get.
Now back to the Church. We are created in God's image. God has no body. God is presented as masculine but God is not male. (read C.S. Lewis' novel "Perelandria" to see a more well developed thought on this.) So image is not what we look like. It is WHO we are. It is how we as the only animals in this world are the only ones who are relational more than anything else. Dogs can be buddies but they do not set up towns and villages or get married. Homo Sapien must interact with others to be Homo Sapien. In the book "Into the Wild" the main character dreams on total separation from human society and everything he does is leading towards him finding his own Alaskan "Walden Pond" but when he finally does, he has an epiphany that life without others is no life at all. He tragically dies very soon after this. The point is that we need others.
In the Church, we hold fast to the scriptures showing us as The Body of Christ. We, like a body, are many different parts that make up a structure that thinks, moves, acts and hurts. Going to Sunday or Saturday services, taking the Eucharist, giving offering, listening to the sermon, those are all vital things but they are not the only things. We struggle to bring Sundays out with us to the rest of the week. The constant sharpening of each other cannot just happen if we meet and greet once a week. This is becoming very real to my Life Group. We have started to realize the importance of honest truth bombs, pain sharing, forgiveness, love through actions and words and the daily meditations required to live a a member in The Body. We cannot be who we could be in Christ, without the people around us. Stuffing our pain down deep inside ourselves, not sharing praises/griefs/struggles with our brothers and sisters, living without communal and meaningful prayer will keep us in a state of arrested development.
My generation loves to crap on The Church. We like to say it is vanilla and bland. That it is not relevant and living. We talk of its ineffectiveness in social justice.
I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.
This phrase goes the other way was well. Others cannot be what they ought to be without me being what I ought to be. When we complain about the state of The Church, we witness against ourselves. If you call yourself a follower of Jesus than you are The Church and the sickness that you say has hold of it lives in you. We cannot go it alone. We cannot allow other go it alone. This will look very differently to many people, as well it should as we are so diverse. The theme is the same though.
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