Consider les Future

Are we willing to consider the idea that our Sunday morning buffets of spirituality (see Sunday mass, Sunday gathering, Sunday worship etc.) are over? That for the most part they have lost their intrinsic spiritual prowess or perhaps more truthful that they never had a one-up on any other day of the week in the first place… and all the people under 35 said “let alone before noon…”
Is it possible that globally the absence of humanity from what we call God’s house on Sunday mornings has more to it than people are simply resisting, rebelling, ignoring God? Is it evidence that 1700 years of doing the business of God for Him on one special day of the week has benefited the few that Jesus didn’t seem to spend time with? I do not have a grudge out for our weekly special on Sundays but I feel as if I have matured (clarification needed – matured to place on my own journey) into the realm of possibility wherein I am in fact open to, well, simply, other possibilities… that we as humans are pregnant with the possibilities of journeying to God and with Him… and the fragrance of that type of exploration is more intoxicating than ever. The not knowing, the figuring out-ness, the waking up to that kind of pregnancy, that kind of change, that kind of newness and smelling again a reason to wake up, to stay up late, to be around people despite our folly, is a much more rich fully life changing faith. More life altering, challenging and painful – but damn well worth it – than anything I’ve experienced in the last decade trying to figure out why I was sitting in that pew again Sunday after Sunday.

I guess this makes me one of them then eh?
God help me I’m a heathen… and for the first time in my life I have really really embraced that, again I repeat God help me.

All too many tears,
DSW

The Facade of Visionary Dreaming

I recently been considering the task of present day religious leadership and much of the vocabulary specifically adjectives by which they represent themselves. Visionary leadership or the lead visioneer are one type of characteristic comes to mind. This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about that nonsene...

"God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

"Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but a thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily. And is now what has been given us enough: brothers [and sisters], who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day?..."

I guess this type of reasoning or thought that Bonhoeffer presents is the kind of faith that scares the hell out of leaders who want servants and slaves. I hope at least one person can be set free from this quote from a better man than I.

Hugs and kisses,
DSW