…Still thinking…

My last blog seemed kind of…heavy. I was thinking a lot about my life, likely not an uncommon thing for a person of my age. And I was thinking primarily of my work life. Another time, I will share with you my feelings about my day-to-day life with the people I care about.

When one is a clergyman, minister or priest, so much of life is lived within the shadow of church – the spiritual shadow more than the physical one – that lines get blurred between what is work and what is not. I think that in the years I worked in hospitals made it a bit easier for me, because I could leave the institution in others hands when I went home. Someone was always on call, but often it was not me. And when I was on call, my head and heart were always there, even if I wasn’t called in too often.

My theological and spiritual life has not been enmeshed primarily with congregation and church building, but rather with people, pain, and attempts to understand and alleviate that pain. “Religion” has not been my central focus, but the spirit lives of the people in front of me – spirit and psyche life.

Recently I read a new book by Diana Butler-Bass, entitled Christianity After Religion: the end of the Church and the Birth on a New Spiritual Awakening. I found the book both interesting and helpful to me in understanding myself a bit more. She analyzes the statistical findings that reveal how many folk in North America identify themselves religiously, not with a Church, but with the “Spiritual but not Religious” category. While this can be framed negatively, as describing people who are too lazy or indifferent to participate in any church’s life, Butler-Bass lays it out in a much more positive light. Many of these people, she argues, have deep spiritual feelings, longings and beliefs. However, they no longer can identify with any institution that holds or nourishes these feelings and beliefs. They are being honest when they own the spiritual nature of their interior life, their longings, feeling, doubts, etc. and they are being honest when they admit that no church organization or structure represents those things that occupy their interior life. In a sense, over the last decade or so, many people have moved in the direction of “spirituality and only spirituality.” In many ways, the Churches have not moved in the same way. She says more, but let me leave her for a bit.

In some ways, this describes my own situation. I care a lot about “the church” – a gathered community of people around a common belief, trying to live out their faith and serve their God. It’s just that, so often, these matters don’t relate to the doctrinal or governance or organizational issues of the churches I know. Churches try to “catch up” by building flashy structures, importing bands that express a particular genre of music, or by simplifying their language and their requirements to make access easier for contemporary young people. Success or failure is measured by numbers gained, or numbers lost. Too often, little attention is given to the quality of the lives of the people involved, or the quality of the life of the gathered “ecclesia” – church.

I find myself concerned abut how to engage people in learning the faith they say they want to live, in practicing the beliefs they insist are central to them. God knows, I don’t emulate these things perfectly myself, but in my own mind, I attempt to guide people in those ways. I’m not remotely interested in congregational organization, or doctrinal purity. I’d love to connect with a community of people who are drawn to similar interests and concerns that I am. In giving leadership in congregations – part-time and in various different places at this point in my life – I sometimes feel at a loss regarding connection to people relatively new in my life, puzzled as to how to open ways of access for them…or for myself, for that matter.

I still find worship and preaching very meaningful, study and discussion nourishing. Committees…? If I’m never on another one, I’ll be happy. Too many, over too many decades. In some ways I feel like a lonely pilgrim, or perhaps a pilgrim in the dark. I travel, I know that there are other people walking the same way that I am, but I can’t see them, or find them most of the time.

Enough for part two of this “long ponder.” More another day.