conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

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Today we live in a culture of brokenness and fragmentation. Images of individualism and autonomy are far more compelling to us than visions of unity, and the fabric of relatedness seems dangerously threadbare and frayed.

- Parker Palmer, WEAVINGS, Vol. III, # 4, p. 2

Megan rightly pointed out that my previous entry was "fragmented." And I just want you all to know that this entry will likely be just as fragmented if not more so. I'm just giving you fair warning. There's a lot running through my mind.

The Young Fogey offers this from Fr. Methodius:

When presented with a choice between doing good and feeling good, the west almost always chooses the latter because it costs less. (more)

Yeah. Sometimes I think that what these guys say is true about us. Some days I don't. Today I'm just sort of lolling around in my sense of the church on the margins. Once again the idea of what is relevant is popping around in my mind. Individualism, what is relevant, choosing what feels good over what is good. Somehow these things can all slide together from time to time. They don't have to. One does not necessarily breed the next, but the connections are real somehow. Those thoughts are rambling through the clutter in my head...along side the experience of our prayer this evening.

Yes, we prayed tonight. I put together a brief liturgy...a way to begin understanding sharing our burdens. There were candles and prayers and singing. It was a nice service. I could tweak it in about seventeen different ways, but overall it went well. But my head is spinning somehow. It's spinning about multiple things, but not critically, not negatively.

I was the only male attendee. What would Mary Douglas have to say about that? There were only seven of us. It lasted thirty minutes. People offered up lots of various burdens. There were a couple moments of silent contemplation. I need to read John Climacus.

Here's something from Mary Douglas (from Purity and Danger):

It follows that when purity is not a symbol but something lived, it must be poor and barren. It is part of our condition that the purity for which we strive and sacrifice so much turns out to be hard and dead as a stone when we get it. It is all very well for the poet to praise winter.... It is another thing to try and make over our existence into an unchanging lapidary form. Purity is the enemy of change, of ambiguity and compromise. Most of us indeed would feel safer if our experience could be hard-set and fixed in form.

And that takes us all the way back to innovation. Which is the purer form of human community? The community in constant flux? The community in stasis? Is one to be preferred over another?

Posted by tripp at April 8, 2008 08:36 PM