For Once I Feel Like Posting
Only been what, 3 years almost?
After a pretty crazy couple of months at work I finally decided to take a week off. It's good work, and really, I love my job, but damn I sure need this vacation. And I'm not talking the "dream vacation getaway" to some exotic spot -- too much work. I'm talking the sit-around-at-home-with-loads-of-unscheduled-time "staycation". A week is just about the right amount of time to make it utterly relaxing without getting boring. And since M is currently on the job hunt, I've got company too!
So let's see, since last entry, we got married (it was a perfectly awesome wedding), I now have a second middle name, we had our honeymoon in St John (gorgeous and relaxing), and we celebrated our first anniversary with a concert of the Tufts and Brown choruses (we met in the former, she's sung in both). I still work in the same place on basically the same stuff. We recently joined in a surprise costume 60th birthday party for her mom, hence my latest Facebook pic. Aside from that and occasional periods of working a lot, life has pretty much settled into a comfortable routine. We don't get out a whole lot, but we're cool with that.
We do spend a decent amount of time at church; most of what amounts to "getting out" involves church somehow. I'll add here for uninformed readers my usual spiel: no really, it's not _that_ kind of church, it's the liberal everybody's-cool kind. It gets really old having to explain that to the "all religious people are scary, stupid, intolerant haters" crowd, and there's a lot of that around here. Thank you Media and thank you Religious Right for blackening the popular image of "Christian" beyond recognition. End rant.
Anyway, where was I? Yeah we spend a good amount of time at church. We like spending time with our friends. Unfortunately things have been rather going downhill. The choir is down to 5 people: 2 seminary students who are gonna be gone come summer, one longtimer guy, and us two. Sunday morning unfortunately fails to inspire in just about any way. The congregation as a whole is burned out and uninvolved. M and I do our best, but we're just not the charismatic types they need to turn things around. I show up for meetings of various kinds where the pastor reminds us how bad things are and how little anyone seems to be willing to do about it. She's absolutely right. Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything she or any of us can do about it at this point. Better to let go. We're going to start visiting other places this summer. There are definitely things we'll miss, especially our friends, but many of them have already stopped coming. And of course I'll have to disentangle myself from all the responsibilities I've accumulated (it's enough that a lot of visitors seem to think I'm on staff), which are rewarding at times, but frankly, we have to move on.
I'm in a funny place these days when it comes to religion, a long ways from where I was as a kid. But I'm not giving it up. For years now I've gone to church pretty much every week without being particularly certain about what I believed when it got down to details. I'm OK with that. I guess to a certain extent being involved in church is a part of who I am, and the particular beliefs have become secondary. But I do still believe in God.
I've been reading a book recently by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, who in his effort to reconcile with modern thinking has declared that the "theistic" God is dead -- there is no "personal" God, no God that has a conscious being that we can communicate with or relate to. Instead he goes with a "love is God" concept which I can't understand well enough to explain. His arguments against the existence of a personal God are mostly to the effect that it's pretty easy to explain the appeal of a personal God in evolutionary and historical terms, so it's plausible that it's all made up. I wouldn't argue with that -- of course it's plausible that it's all made up. But a proper cynic (one cynical enough to be cynical about ones own beliefs too) knows that there is always cynical explanation for everything (for example, that person is just nice because they want to get something out of you), but that doesn't mean the cynical explanation is true. It's the easy answer, but often not the right answer. Most of the time we just can't know the answer for sure.
My response to Spong is to basically go utilitarian. Really, what good is a concept of God as abstract as "love is God" to the average person? Does a God that has no being have meaning to anyone other than intellectuals? I doubt it. In my experience, most people who come to church know that they need a God they can communicate with in some way, a God who cares about them -- loves them, as only a conscious being can, independent from the more fickle love of other people. God doesn't have to be _only_ that; after all, God is infinite and beyond our ability to define or contain with words. But a God that loves, not just a God that is love, is something a lot of people need. And in the absence of any way to prove much of anything about God or a lack thereof, I'll go with a concept of God that meets people in their need. To claim that Christianity needs to "grow up" and get beyond that concept is to ignore that need and leave the vast majority in the cold.
Basically, I'd rather live in a universe where there is a loving, personal God than a universe where humans are the lone highest form of consciousness. To me, the belief that God is real and loves all humanity challenges me to love others as well. Without God in the picture, life looks a lot more dog-eat-dog Darwinian, and I'd argue that encourages us to selfish competitiveness. Now of course, a belief in God is absolutely not required to be a loving person, and I know there are many wonderful and loving atheists and agnostics, but belief in God is what works for me, so I'm sticking with it. I fail daily to model the same level of love that I believe God shows, but at least it pushes me in the right direction.
And that's really what I'll be looking for when we start visiting churches this summer -- a place and an experience that pushes me in the right direction, that inspires and challenges me to be more Christian (in the best sense of the word), more loving, and more fully human. I need a church that nurtures that sense of spiritual meaning and purpose. I hope we find it.
-MJDR
After a pretty crazy couple of months at work I finally decided to take a week off. It's good work, and really, I love my job, but damn I sure need this vacation. And I'm not talking the "dream vacation getaway" to some exotic spot -- too much work. I'm talking the sit-around-at-home-with-loads-of-unscheduled-time "staycation". A week is just about the right amount of time to make it utterly relaxing without getting boring. And since M is currently on the job hunt, I've got company too!
So let's see, since last entry, we got married (it was a perfectly awesome wedding), I now have a second middle name, we had our honeymoon in St John (gorgeous and relaxing), and we celebrated our first anniversary with a concert of the Tufts and Brown choruses (we met in the former, she's sung in both). I still work in the same place on basically the same stuff. We recently joined in a surprise costume 60th birthday party for her mom, hence my latest Facebook pic. Aside from that and occasional periods of working a lot, life has pretty much settled into a comfortable routine. We don't get out a whole lot, but we're cool with that.
We do spend a decent amount of time at church; most of what amounts to "getting out" involves church somehow. I'll add here for uninformed readers my usual spiel: no really, it's not _that_ kind of church, it's the liberal everybody's-cool kind. It gets really old having to explain that to the "all religious people are scary, stupid, intolerant haters" crowd, and there's a lot of that around here. Thank you Media and thank you Religious Right for blackening the popular image of "Christian" beyond recognition. End rant.
Anyway, where was I? Yeah we spend a good amount of time at church. We like spending time with our friends. Unfortunately things have been rather going downhill. The choir is down to 5 people: 2 seminary students who are gonna be gone come summer, one longtimer guy, and us two. Sunday morning unfortunately fails to inspire in just about any way. The congregation as a whole is burned out and uninvolved. M and I do our best, but we're just not the charismatic types they need to turn things around. I show up for meetings of various kinds where the pastor reminds us how bad things are and how little anyone seems to be willing to do about it. She's absolutely right. Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything she or any of us can do about it at this point. Better to let go. We're going to start visiting other places this summer. There are definitely things we'll miss, especially our friends, but many of them have already stopped coming. And of course I'll have to disentangle myself from all the responsibilities I've accumulated (it's enough that a lot of visitors seem to think I'm on staff), which are rewarding at times, but frankly, we have to move on.
I'm in a funny place these days when it comes to religion, a long ways from where I was as a kid. But I'm not giving it up. For years now I've gone to church pretty much every week without being particularly certain about what I believed when it got down to details. I'm OK with that. I guess to a certain extent being involved in church is a part of who I am, and the particular beliefs have become secondary. But I do still believe in God.
I've been reading a book recently by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, who in his effort to reconcile with modern thinking has declared that the "theistic" God is dead -- there is no "personal" God, no God that has a conscious being that we can communicate with or relate to. Instead he goes with a "love is God" concept which I can't understand well enough to explain. His arguments against the existence of a personal God are mostly to the effect that it's pretty easy to explain the appeal of a personal God in evolutionary and historical terms, so it's plausible that it's all made up. I wouldn't argue with that -- of course it's plausible that it's all made up. But a proper cynic (one cynical enough to be cynical about ones own beliefs too) knows that there is always cynical explanation for everything (for example, that person is just nice because they want to get something out of you), but that doesn't mean the cynical explanation is true. It's the easy answer, but often not the right answer. Most of the time we just can't know the answer for sure.
My response to Spong is to basically go utilitarian. Really, what good is a concept of God as abstract as "love is God" to the average person? Does a God that has no being have meaning to anyone other than intellectuals? I doubt it. In my experience, most people who come to church know that they need a God they can communicate with in some way, a God who cares about them -- loves them, as only a conscious being can, independent from the more fickle love of other people. God doesn't have to be _only_ that; after all, God is infinite and beyond our ability to define or contain with words. But a God that loves, not just a God that is love, is something a lot of people need. And in the absence of any way to prove much of anything about God or a lack thereof, I'll go with a concept of God that meets people in their need. To claim that Christianity needs to "grow up" and get beyond that concept is to ignore that need and leave the vast majority in the cold.
Basically, I'd rather live in a universe where there is a loving, personal God than a universe where humans are the lone highest form of consciousness. To me, the belief that God is real and loves all humanity challenges me to love others as well. Without God in the picture, life looks a lot more dog-eat-dog Darwinian, and I'd argue that encourages us to selfish competitiveness. Now of course, a belief in God is absolutely not required to be a loving person, and I know there are many wonderful and loving atheists and agnostics, but belief in God is what works for me, so I'm sticking with it. I fail daily to model the same level of love that I believe God shows, but at least it pushes me in the right direction.
And that's really what I'll be looking for when we start visiting churches this summer -- a place and an experience that pushes me in the right direction, that inspires and challenges me to be more Christian (in the best sense of the word), more loving, and more fully human. I need a church that nurtures that sense of spiritual meaning and purpose. I hope we find it.
-MJDR