8/27/20

“So, what is being offered to you is not merely a choice among new states of consciousness…but above all else, a larger and intenser life, a career, a total consecration to the interest of the Real.” Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism

“Think of our life in nature,--daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rock, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?” Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods

Phyllis Tickle said that every five hundred years the Church needs a gigantic yard sale. Well, here we are. We are in the time of letting go. We may be kicking and screaming, but our stuff is being emptied out whether we like it or not. And, yes there’s a loss. I miss having my grandkids in the same room and physically going to church, and going to the movies and teaching Sunday School and being in person with churches in Virginia since I am now a Visiting Bishop of Virginia.

Yes, yes, yes.
But there’s the flip side as well. Every house is now invited to be a monastery or, like Thoreau, a cabin in the woods of Walden or the forests of Maine. We have a number of choices before us. We can entertain ourselves—or we can focus on what is real. We can divert our attention with our hundreds of channels on cable or we can remember who we are and what we long to do with our lives.

During this time I have realized what I miss and don’t miss about Church. I miss being inspired by being in holy communion with the people sitting next to me. I miss the collective conversation that happens at the key moments of the service—like the congregation admitting our sins, being absolved and together proclaiming the peace that passes all understanding.

I miss the collective astonishment at good preaching (although now I can shout “Preach it” in my kitchen). I miss the ways children bring us into physical reality because they are in their bodies---squirming and squiggling and being fully alive.

I miss the music incarnated—seeing the singers face to face. I miss kneeling with my brothers and sisters for the Bread of Heaven. And I miss humanity. The physicality of all of it.

But what I have come to realize is that the issue isn’t the loss of Sunday as I used to know. The issue is my limited sight. Like Thoreau, I need to leave comfortable Walden and enter into the dense woods of Maine—or maybe I need to admit that we as a people have moved into the dense woods of Maine. And if I can’t get out of it, I’d better get into it because this is the only day I have to be alive.

I need to remember these words every day: “What is being offered to you is not merely a choice among new states of consciousness…but above all else, a larger and intenser life, a career, a total consecration to the interest of the Real.”
Porter Taylor