Christianity/Religion/Spirituality

NEXT Community

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Do you remember a radio show CFRN (Edmonton, Alberta) used to have on Sunday nights called Ask the Pastor? Many years ago I used to listen to it. I have no idea if it still airs, but I got to wondering…

I wonder if one of the hurtles that a Pastor faces, perhaps daily, is the "expectation of answers." Not that a Pastor shouldn’t be hell-bent (ahem) to discover and uncover truth where ever she is lead, and then have the articulation to offer a hard-won answer where appropriate.

No, that’s right and proper. What I’m talking about, that is, the understanding I was reared into, is that a Pastor’s endowment was theological certainty and ensuant practical acuity. In other words, part of the package of being a Pastor was having the antennae for clear signals from above that translated immediately to pious life and the rightful dispensing of answers for others.

Mercifully, we’ve moved away from here, but there is still more than a ghost of this thinking around. And pity the pastor. Because it’s not the pastor’s fault. Historically we "believers" have demanded answers for things for which there are only nuances. Or more questions. And Pastor’s in turn have given us either regurgitated Dallas-theology or faked it, hoping "it" would finally arrive. Or, having had to live masking a sort of surreal confusion brought on by the pressure of "having the answers", sometimes pastors have the experience of John Updike’s Pastor, ("In the Beauty of the Lillies") who woke up one morning to find himself "utterly without belief."

Well, this brings me to make a shameless plug for NEXT. (You may have already noticed their link on Grow Mercy.) A place, a church community, that is lead by people (pastors) who have opened themselves up to re-engaging the big questions (and small ones too). Questions from just how it is we are "saved" to same-sex issues, to inerrancy, to faith and certainty. They have pushed themselves off the reef (the one we were all told was real ground) and are trying out their sea-anchors. And on this Jesus-centered existential exploration they are inviting others along.

Next-Header

Check them out, check out their "Statement of Intention" and certainly check out their team-blog, and see what I mean.

Tags: , , , ,

Beauty/Peace/Spirituality

Enjoy Your Shower

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

A big pleasure in a world of forgotten pleasures is the morning shower.

The hot water pelting my head pulls me free from a night of shark-thoughts that swam large and purple and threatening in a slurry of chum, and I approach something close to sanity.

The water and steam thicken and soften and my body awakens and centers me as best it can, and I step out mostly human. After drying, and stretching while drying, I feel as close to a person as I’m going to feel that day.

I overlook the morning shower and its gift of warm simple pleasure. It’s an ablution. It’s a morning baptism. As all water is holy and mysterious, and full of stories…sadly, forgotten.

We forget. We forget our place, this moment, this child, this tree, this mother, this stone, this stream. We forget how our story began. So where from here?

On some Cape Breton beach
Cape Breton rock

We’ve forgotten enjoyment. We’ve traded away our pleasures for faux desires.

Our desires need a shower. Need baptism. Need release from rivalry. Need the touch of a child.

We need to live like Annie Dillard’s weasel. Tenaciously obedient to what we are and who we’re to become, and to where we’re called.

Where would this obedience take us? At least to back to pleasure. Back to running through sprinklers. And no time fight.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Atonement/Christianity/Peace/Religion/Violence

Whither Humanity?

Posted on by stephen t berg / 3 Comments

Wondering how I was coping with today’s stories in this world of ours–from N. Korea to the Amish tragedy–a friend asked, "What has happened to humanity that we can go as far as we do to destroy the image of God in each other?"

It’s the right question. But how do you answer it? Is it possible?

It’s a religious question: If there wasn’t something "divine" about us, I suppose there would be no use asking, well, no ability to ask in the first place.

It’s also a question that sees human culture moving toward disintegration and asks about its moment of truth.

The question also recognizes that our "god-image" is mutually destroyed in each other in the reciprocity of violence.

We read the "stories" or have the anchor read them to us, and what?

Where is our Philip to help us interpret what we see and hear. Will we remain as thick as the eunuch before the interpretation or will we be able to apply a hermeneutic of the cross? Because, if the central feature of the gospel sheds no light on 9/11, Iraq, Kim Jong Il, and Charles Carl Roberts IV, then what use is Christianity? No, let me restate that, what use is the gospel? I restate because, thankfully, Christianity does not own the Gospel. A good thing.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,