Effects of Community

It's been an interesting few days. On Saturday, I met with a group instigated by one of the previous clergy of my church. A few other people from my church, a colleague of said clergy member, and a member of another church were also there as we met to talk about “liberal fundamentalism.” We explored questions like why we're hesitant to proclaim openly that we believe the Bible supports socially liberal points of view (gay marriage, creation care, peacemaking, universal health care, etc), why we have trouble talking about our personal experience of God even with other Christians, how we can honor the faith of people of different beliefs and the caution of those who have none without denying our belief that Christianity is really real and that Jesus truly is the way to God, how we can believe in the seriousness of sin and in some idea of hell without believing that God is out to punish people. Lots of really great discussion. (And I apologize to others who were there if my summary seems off-target – this is what I got out of it; your mileage may vary).

And then I got a bunch of comments on yesterday's post. Of course it's very gratifying to write stuff and have people read what I write. But I hope that's not all it is to me. What it feels like to me is that this blog gives me a space to explore my faith within a community made up of whoever's interested enough to read and comment. But having a community gives me a way to test my ideas. (We talked about this some also in the group on Saturday). I often find support and new insights in the comments. I hope that if I came up with something completely off-base, people would tell me that too - “you're totally wrong and a heretic because x, y, and z – but I'll take communion with you on Sunday!”

And then I had another conversation yesterday evening with a good friend, talking about the group that met Saturday and continuing that discussion with a new person. I got some of the best and most straightforward advice about sin I'd heard in a long time: “Try not to sin. Know you're still going to. When that happens, ask for and accept forgiveness and move on.” This is a useful counterbalance to my struggles with exactly how morally culpable I am (or anyone is) with our indeterminate amount of free will – we definitely have some; we definitely don't have all of it. I'm realizing that some of that focus on moral culpability is really a way of asking how guilty I'm supposed to feel, but feelings of guilt maybe really aren't the point. It's almost like since I know there are areas (most of them) where I commit the same types of sin over and over or where I continue to be complicit in evil, and since I seem to be unable and/or unwilling to change, it seems like the least I could do is feel bad, as if that somehow helps balance things, even though there's no way it helps anyone, and in fact feeling bad makes me more likely to make other people feel bad and less likely to be helpful, generous, etc. I think maybe there's a feeling that I should feel bad that has some validity because that's often a sign that one needs to repent, ask for forgiveness, think about how to do better – but that's probably all it's good for.

Anyway, one effect of all this community is that I actually felt like praying last night before I went to sleep, and prayed the way I was taught as a kid for the first time in ages (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication – with the order shuffled around for me each time because who knows when I'll fall asleep). And had a sense of communion with God, and found myself also hungering for the daily office liturgy from the prayer book. When I'm not trying to force myself into a consistent pattern that doesn't work, I find the language in the Book of Common Prayer really powerful. I'm been told that the icons used in Eastern Orthodox worship are intended to be a sort of “window” into the divine and that in some sense their beauty is part of that. And it's like that for me with the liturgy and the written prayers – no, beautiful language is not more holy or more real or more acceptable to God – but to me those prayers are like verbal icons that help remind me of the wonder of God. So I'll have to try and find my BCP.

I think having a community and having a place to talk about God makes a big difference in my personal spirituality. On the most basic level, there's the sense of knowing that it's not just my individual delusion, that taking my faith seriously and really wanting to belong to God doesn't make me crazy. And then there's also sort of a sense that I need a lot of reminders to keep myself spiritually awake. It's all too easy to get caught up in work, chores, socializing, etc and find myself pushing away my awareness of God – sometimes because I feel like I'm too busy, but also sometimes because I feel like I shouldn't bother God with this – this being the mundane me, the me who's frazzled, or laughing, or was just rude to someone because my mind was elsewhere, or who less than a minute ago was thinking quite uncharitably about another human being that Christ also died for. Somehow, having a community helps tie it all together.