I have, for a long time, felt better keeping my distance from religious holidays. Christmas often seems more like a farce than a legitimate celebration of Christ's incarnation. Easter is better, but still - how much of the darkness and pain and confusion of "good Friday" do we really feel as we're making colored eggs and thawing the ham on Saturday?
I think part of it may also stem from a slight over-saturation of church services as a child. I don't suppose that it affects everyone in the same way, and it's clearly not the desired effect, but there were times when conferences were on and it seemed like entire weekends were just swallowed up in an endless stream of dry, drawn-out messages. Unfortunately, it seems to have had a bit of an immunizing effect.
But that doesn't change the fact that yesterday was Easter, and today is Monday. I don't work on Mondays - I spend them with my little chick - so this Monday is, in that sense, no different than any other for me. And it makes me wonder - how different should it be?
I want be heated to a bright white glow, all day, every day. I want my passion about who my Father is to be a defining characteristic of who I am. I want to to be a spiritual Olympian: faster, higher, stronger. I want it to be meaningless to take a day out of the calendar year to focus on what it meant for God to die because he loved me, because it's a focus of every day of my life.
But I'm not sure that I can do it. Even when I try, my mind wanders, my attention shifts, and my focus softens a little. I may slow down. I may get lost. I may stop entirely.
So maybe I need to accept that the fact that not every day can be Easter for me. Maybe I need the ebb and flow, the reminder to come not because I should never waver, but because that's just how I am made. - I need to be brought back, regularly, from the everyday to the eternal. And so as I look at a day after Easter, or two days, or a week, I will look for those reminders that can be little Easters in my life - a word from a friend, a song, a story that I tell my daughter - to bring me back to where I want to be. I may not be able to maintain that white-hot glow, but I can be sure that I never get too far from the fire.
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3 comments:
ooh, you stole my line: "faster higher, stronger"
I think we need the church holidays and seasons of Lent and Advent because we are indeed human - we get so absorbed in what's going on every day that we really can't maintain that intensity all the time.
I also find that my need for church is very diverse. I was raised pretty bland evangelical, nothing historic in what we were doing at all, except for good Biblical scholarship and preaching and an emphasis on sharing burdens.
Then I discovered orthodox Catholicism and church history and the Reformation... wow. I loved the symbolism, structure, depth and the discipline. It gave reason and purpose to my practice instead of just doing stuff to do it.
Then I got so burned out in a legalistic, snotty Anglican church in Canada that this passionate elder's kid didn't want to go to church at all anymore. It was awful. So for three months I anonymously attended a huge Baptist church to hear my professor preach, he'd hug me at the door, and I'd run for my car to escape. Sometimes when I knew every word of a good hymn, I'd weep because it reminded me that even though I felt beat up by church, I was still a child of the church and I belonged in it.
Later I went to Brasil and found Baptists with good theology, simple practice, an all-out love for Jesus, serious acknowledgement of the presence and work of the Spirit, singing like mad, and a refreshing relationality and joy. I was addicted to church at that point. I couldn't wait to see what God would do next, and love was always at the door waiting for me.
So now I go to the bland church I was raised in (which thankfully isn't so bland anymore), pick up a major church holiday or evening prayer at my favorite Catholic church (where they love Jesus intensely and the church is open 24 hours a day for prayer), and as of yesterday: the occasional Sunday night service with the local Brazilian Baptists. Call me schizo - I just can't bear to sacrifice any aspect of all the diverse gifts of the Body of Christ, and together they keep me balanced and out of burnout.
Honestly, I think that's a really healthy way to do it. I've long thought that denominational lines tend to be drawn more for personality, needs (perceived or real) to be met, and style of worship than for any real theological differences. I don't think that's bad, but I think it's a problem when we can't recognize it as the truth, and start to become more and more exclusive.
I have spent some time on a bulletin board for theological discussion... interesting place, but I saw the tendency there to get more and more extreme. People were actually saying that if you didn't accept the 5-point "TULIP" calvinist view, you were guilty of accepting (or worse - preaching) the "gospel other than the one you believed" that Paul talked about. There is a very real danger there.
I didn't realize you'd answered this one... got on tonight to forward "Hat Guy" to my honorary little sister who's having a bad day. Honestly, Hat Guy was the best thing that happened to me all day today. And I enjoyed reading all about him yet again tonight after suffering through an awful lecturer in my first week's class...on an empty stomach. Not good. Note to self: never go to geography of cultures on an empty stomach again. Ever.
On a more positive note, before that I met up with one of the nuclear treaty negotiators for the U.S. He's a Christian and a really neat person. He'll be guiding some of my independent reading before I go to Geneva... and he and his wife used to attend Crossroads when they were living there.
So. Personally I can't stand online theological discussion groups, especially Reformed ones (even though I consider myself mostly Reformed in a theological but not cultural sense). It's mostly guys whose personality types get so heady/overly philosophical and silly that they get completely out of touch with reality. It's useless, annoying, and all about ego. By now you've figured out that I'm fairly serious about my theology, but it's got to be applied and understandable and useful across cultures and circumstances, or it ain't good enough. Period.
I fully agree with you about the roots of denominations and their sick exclusivity. I've said the same thing for years, and I would add in "culture and place" too. For example, there's a whole lot more charismatic Baptist churches in Brasil than, say, Canada. Partly due to culture, partly due to the locational fact that there's a whole lot more overt demonic activity down there that they deal with. Trust me, your hands tend to shoot into the air to declare God's sovereignty a whole lot quicker when somebody's screaming on the floor ten feet away, just like you read about Jesus dealing with. Try telling THAT to my old Presbyterian church in San Francisco... I told one pastor and he freaked out.
Just this morning I had an "aha" moment about worship and style and stuff. I realized the underlying but probably only subconscious reason why so many conservative hymn singers couldn't stand the fluffy new praise songs that were all about human feelings. It's because a song that isn't declaring truth as a fact is less likely to have much power in it to move our hearts or effect any response, human or spiritual. Thinker personalities don't like to sing something they don't mean - but they can handle declaring truth even on all but the worst day. That's because, like I said a while back with "fake it til you make it", when we align ourselves verbally with truth, we're agreeing with God and somehow there's a lot of power in that.
But getting legalistic about theology and church order only quenches that power, and doing endless rote with no desire at all won't cut it either. Doing required daily rote prayer as a political performance during Lent at the crabby Anglican church in Vancouver was part of what sent me reeling away from any desire for church. The law kills, but the Spirit gives life.
So: they may not realize it, but at the bottom of things, a good charismatic and a good traditional hymn type both want the same thing. Power in what they sing...worship in spirit and in truth. Now, why did it take me 32 years to figure that out?
Gads, I should put that on a theological chat board or something. ;-)
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