future of hope
The latest Church Newsletter gets distributed today. After a week of bad dreams (Oh my gosh - I can’t remember if I proof read the third article on page 2 or not! Did I ever get around to tidying up that mess of a first paragraph?? Oh my- that giant mutant spider is about to tear my lungs out with its tentacles!!) it turns out that the thing holds together pretty well.
“Pretty well” is one of those wonderfully relative phrases (“well doctor, one of his lungs appears to have been ripped out by a giant tentacle, but all things considered I think he’s doing pretty well"), which is why I‘m clinging to it. One part of me can’t help but notice the huge inconsistencies and imbalances in layout, the pictures which are too dark, slightly pixelated, poorly cropped. There are ideas that end too abruptly, and awkwardly fused paragraphs, melded for the sake of page space. But the other part of me, thankfully, remains positive. I remind myself that considering the manpower available and the time constraints imposed on us by the printer, we’ve probably pulled together one of the slickest (relatively speaking) publications known to man.
And then what makes me most proud - an achievement of mine that I’m just waking up to - is that I‘ve influenced the publication to turn almost 180 in the past year. From advertising (lame, clipart-ridden advertising at that), to social engagement, political musing, invitational prose. A church in the most reactionary, conservative diocese in the country just proclaimed, via 10,000 hand-delivered A3 sheets of paper, a spiritual (and consequently, human) paradigm that its Archbishop tacitly denies.
I’m learning, as I grow older that the revolution I’ve sought all my life is not so much a craving for something radically different or new, but for the present day system to simply acknowledge its own shakiness and allow God to change us, just a little bit, today. When Jesus of Nazareth urged us to set our foundations upon the Rock, he wasn’t alluding to a platform of believe extrapolated from a holy text. He wanted us to dig into the living rock - one which breathes and flows as the universe germinates within its hand - a mysterious, invisible, living rock. The church doesn’t need to do an about face, it simply needs to acknowledge its cloudy vision, shaky feet. If only we had the sensitivity to daily fall down in utter reliance upon God, and to let that experience inform the task of trying to do his good work.
Anyway, I’m filled with hope and zeal. If you can exert influence over something as stubborn as the Church, then relatively speaking, changing the world’s gunna be a piece of cake!
“Pretty well” is one of those wonderfully relative phrases (“well doctor, one of his lungs appears to have been ripped out by a giant tentacle, but all things considered I think he’s doing pretty well"), which is why I‘m clinging to it. One part of me can’t help but notice the huge inconsistencies and imbalances in layout, the pictures which are too dark, slightly pixelated, poorly cropped. There are ideas that end too abruptly, and awkwardly fused paragraphs, melded for the sake of page space. But the other part of me, thankfully, remains positive. I remind myself that considering the manpower available and the time constraints imposed on us by the printer, we’ve probably pulled together one of the slickest (relatively speaking) publications known to man.
And then what makes me most proud - an achievement of mine that I’m just waking up to - is that I‘ve influenced the publication to turn almost 180 in the past year. From advertising (lame, clipart-ridden advertising at that), to social engagement, political musing, invitational prose. A church in the most reactionary, conservative diocese in the country just proclaimed, via 10,000 hand-delivered A3 sheets of paper, a spiritual (and consequently, human) paradigm that its Archbishop tacitly denies.
I’m learning, as I grow older that the revolution I’ve sought all my life is not so much a craving for something radically different or new, but for the present day system to simply acknowledge its own shakiness and allow God to change us, just a little bit, today. When Jesus of Nazareth urged us to set our foundations upon the Rock, he wasn’t alluding to a platform of believe extrapolated from a holy text. He wanted us to dig into the living rock - one which breathes and flows as the universe germinates within its hand - a mysterious, invisible, living rock. The church doesn’t need to do an about face, it simply needs to acknowledge its cloudy vision, shaky feet. If only we had the sensitivity to daily fall down in utter reliance upon God, and to let that experience inform the task of trying to do his good work.
Anyway, I’m filled with hope and zeal. If you can exert influence over something as stubborn as the Church, then relatively speaking, changing the world’s gunna be a piece of cake!