“Too often we try to give leaders a bag of tricks to bring out eagerly at the first sign of trouble. And when the labor lasts too long, or the tricks are ineffective, we teach them to turn away, shrug their shoulders and move on to the next one.

Meanwhile, an entire population of drop-outs is created. The ones whose labor lasted too long and the baby died, or they didn’t know what to do with the tricks they were given, or they figured they did something wrong because they couldn’t access the abundant life everyone was talking about.

Sigh.

What if we looked at things differently, and looked at our role as helpers differently? What if we saw ourselves as doulas and midwives instead of expert repair persons, motivational speakers, or corporate managers? What kind of impact would we have if we slowed down, became present, bore one another’s burdens, and trusted the Holy Spirit?

What if we gave up our illusions about the Christian life?

It might be the end of church as we know it.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

I can’t blog today. I musn’t. I musn’t! I absolutely MUST write my article for Mutuality or all (deadlines) will be lost!

Ah, but I feel like a Victorian heroine!

Thankfully, Phyllis wrote today and she summed up a everly-so-large portion of what I do with my life. I have given up the illusion of Christian life, I have seen the end of church as we know it, I live with (and am) one of the drop outs. I did this because my bag of tricks was never sufficient and the labors were too often too long and I had to find another way to travel. So I became Dorothy instead of CEO and we started off to OZ, the real OZ, not the one lead by the man behind the curtain. And see, Phyllis put it all in a word package for me. How loverly. How loverly.