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Showing posts with the label future

Sunday Morning Church Rant

I didn't go to church today because I couldn't face another stripped-down summer liturgy. Bleh.  Recycled sermons, vacationing preachers, substitute organists, empty pews, last moment lectors, absent acolytes, no choir, no coffee hour. The church on vacation isn't pretty.  But that's not our only problem. We have a problem of relevance. We are trying WAY too hard to find it. When church leaders chase the latest opinion polls, and change their main Sunday liturgies to meet the "market," those who have been shaped by the liturgical traditions of the past are left to embrace the change or leave. What seems to have been left out of the rush to seek the seeker is that the Church was never more embracing or growth-filled as when it was the keeper of mystery, ritual, prayer and sacrament and served the community. (1st - 3rd Century CE) It will be a sad, sad day when a generation hence American mainline churches are empty (like Europe) and leadership wishes we had h

You Gotta Have Hope

It's true that all we have is the now. Every moment, lived now, is how we put together a life. Living our mental time too much in the past, or too far into the future, is a sure fire recipe for suffering. In a previous post I wrote about a few important aspects of changing our body experience in the present: focusing on actions we can take to change our inner world: good nutrition, daily exercise, quieting the mind through prayer, ritual, or meditation, and focusing our time on mutual, healthy relationships. Here I'd like to talk about the mental attitude of hopefulness, a necessary ingredient to creating a more positive outcome to our efforts toward change. Have you ever noticed that while you are in that awful process of really being sick with an infection or injury, trying to decide whether to make an appointment or get to an urgent care center, the anxiety about your situation amplifies your suffering? In the same way, I wonder if you have noticed that once yo

Advent Early On

Every year after Thanksgiving I'm surprised when the church calendar says it's a new year. Advent marks the beginning of the church's annual liturgical review of the great stories of the faith. Traditionally it starts with the prophets, who warn that God is among us and will show her/his self even more clearly in the days to come. Get ready! they shout. I'm always puzzled at this exhortation. How can a human being get ready for God? It's this great human gift and problem of looking into the future. As far as we know, other mammals aren't able to imagine the future in the same way we do. They live their lives much more in the "now" than in the "then." But humans are so in love with the future, we think anything is possible there. The allure of a future we can imagine makes us all less attached to the present, I fear. We put off anything we can. The present? Well, we're just passing through. The answer for me is the spiritual skill of