"Happy Endings"

Friday, March 28, 2008

Rite of Passage

It feels an awful lot like that organizational spirituality has entered twilight hour and for the large part entered it without the solar power of the sun to bring a guaranteed dawn. This limbo or no man’s land has forced many people to the ground of their spiritual understanding, both the ones on a journey to God and the ones with God, suffocating from the loss of dawn’s light cresting the countryside and confused at what they should or shouldn’t believe. And it has even sent some wandering into the loneliness known as the dark night with no flash light or cute incandescent glow-stick to guide them. Where does that leave us?

One of the hallmarks of a church that I was privileged to serve in was this phrase “what about church for the rest of us?” At first it seems an awful lot like a cute glib designed to be the contemporary answer for critiquing the way others do the business of church but this group simply entitled “the rest of us” seems to be growing exponentially.

I have become powerfully aware that there exists this threshold that spirituality must mature beyond and that the group of people aware of this change is eternally large. Coincidentally something about the timing of this shift in spirituality sparked a memory to an article I read about “Hitting the 500-year wall”. And, yes, we have left the blood smear of our insides all over another wall. Here’s the original article . The first question is what will the other side of the wall look like for us, the second is will we be willing to accept what we see and thirdly, who will be those among that will be the roid taking, Bic head shaven, muscle monster army veteran yelling obscenities at us to climb over that wall when we don’t like what we see?

Here’s a look at the timeline.


Notes:


* AM
(Anno Mundi – in the year of the world – counting from Biblical creation of the world)

* BCE
(Before the Common, Christian or Current era)



So… its been 500 years? What will be become of our precious little Sunday circuses’, our prayerful manipulation of the prophetic voice and laying on of hands, the merchandised Christian Jesus action-figure, the false promises we made from the pulpit, the emotional and spiritual abuse we caused, the failure to hand-out the grace we so easily accepted, and our deep pockets filled with everyone else’s money?

What’s over our wall? Or are you too afraid to sneak a peak?

*heart*

DSW