Both/And
I am very angsty about our little group, ThPM. I really really like the people in ThPM, and I really really like having everyone over each week. (I wrote something a few weeks back that caused someone to think otherwise….so I want to be very clear about this….I LIKE Y’ALL.) I doubt anyone else is this angsty, so probably I should just chill out. But I can’t. I’ve felt stuck for a long time and in the past month it’s really come to a head.
You see, half of ThPM really likes just hanging out. They like coming for dinner and talking about this or that and then rolling home when they feel like it. The other half likes the hanging out and dinner part, but they are also looking for something more intentionally spiritual. They’d like something that is distinctly worshipful, or explicitly soul-crafty.
None of us wants to live compartmentalized lives—to draw a line around one set of activities and call it “spiritual” and a line around another and call it “regular life.” I think we’d all like all of this stuff to be regular life. It’s just some of us need a little more order, a more regular rhythm to feel secure. Sort of “Life in ordinary time—with intention.”
And me? Which end of this spectrum do I fall on? That’s exactly the problem. I can easily land in either group on any given day. Some days I say things like, “All I care about is how people are doing with God and how people are doing with folks in the Real World. (We’ll call these “Jim Days” because the last time I talked to him I was in this space.) On other days I say things like, “I just want the house to be open and people to swing by and the fridge to be full of beer.” (We’ll call these “Josh Days, because he pointed out to me that is what he always hears me saying I care about.) But I can’t seem to find away to let the Jim Days and the Josh Days live together. So there’s quandary number one.
Quandary number two has to do with two worlds, namely the Christian Bubble and the Real World. I don’t want to slip back into the Christian Bubble. I’d like my explicitly spiritual life to be well-blended into my everyday life. I’d like my circle of friends to included people of all “flavors” of faith. I’m pretty much a universalist in that I find it very hard to imagine anyone truly rejecting God if they had a clear view of him/her. All I really care about is that people recognize the Godward hunger that I think is in all of us – and that we help each other feed that. That circuitous journey towards God can look a lot of different ways; have a lot of different flavors. My job isn’t to convert anyone to my flavor, to my ways, but just to follow the ways that speak to me as best as I’m able. This to me is what the incarnate Christ is all about. But at the same time, I don’t want to practice my practices alone. So what do we do? Do we make decision about ThPM that make it more Christian-y (like openly and regularly practicing the practices) and risk slipping into the Christian Bubble? Or do we just leave it very laisez-faire and open, and hope that eventually Real People will come hang with us? Can we practice the practices with really expansive language for God? But what about the people who aren’t into any sort of regular God-directed activities? If we make it more Christian-y I’m hanging out with all Christians again. If we leave it lassiez-faire, my soul tends to get lonely. Quandary number two.
Actually, I just re-read that and it’s the same quandary in different words.
As much as I love the people in the ThPM crew, there’s always something missing there for me. Sometimes I miss what I guess you would call worshipping together (thus my ga-ga-ness over our Lenten and Advent projects.) Often I miss the people commonly referred to as the “missing.” I get sad that we only see our non-Bubble pals at parties and not at our regular weekly rhythm of dinner together on Thursday nights. I wish we could all get together together together. I think the happier we’d be.
Oh how, how, how can both of those things play together well?
Or is this whole concept of a non-compartmentalized life just a dream?
Godward hunger: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
And *wow* I am identifying with everything I read of you today.
We work hard to make our home a place that’s open to all; we celebrate my Jewish festivals and my husband’s Christian festivals, both; our Passover seder table usually includes a bunch of Jews, and a neo-Pagan or two, and a handful of Christians (last year the Episcopal minister in town came); and I love that, I love trying to practice radical hospitality. Some days just having the doors open and the fridge full of beer feels like a holy duty, and I love that too.
But there are other days when I want a more focused religious practice; when I wish the people around me were into that and would do it with me. And then I worry that if I focus too much on the exclusively Jewish stuff, I’ll alienate the non-Jews who celebrate with us and I would never want to do that. And then I worry that if I focus too much on being open to everyone and everything, I’ll lose out on my own particular needs.
And then I hopefully manage to remind myself that having too many options, too many ways of being happy and holy in the world, is really the best problem imaginable and I should stop worrying and let God sort it out. *g*
Anyway. What you said resonates for me, and I wish you the blessing of reconciling two different but important paths.
I think that has always been my greatest quandary in ministry… I have framed it as formal/informal, ritual/hangtime. I remember one time when I was working with high school youth, I wanted to create a relevant spiritual study for them, but they so desperately needed a decompression space that I threw the study plans out the window and most of the time we went for ice cream!
I am still learning about your community, but I wonder if you might institute a once a month ritual, similar to how some churches celebrate Communion once a month. Perhaps you might designate the third Thursday (alliteration!!) as a ritual night, and you formalize the space after the dinner is cleared. And (again, I am not entirely familiar with your community) you need not “Christian-ize” it necessarily — perhaps embark on a series of spiritual texts for meditation. I’m just “thinking out loud.”
Your dream is so familiar to me… glad to have found you.
Not sure if this helps, but I read somewhere, I think on Derekh Sofrut (http://soferet.blogspot.com), about one aspect of holiness being separation; I think she means it as something–an act, a ritual, a picture, a deed, a place, all of the above and more–set aside from one’s ordinary life so that it is counted holy in a conscious way. She’s involved as the first woman Sofer, or Torah Scribe, in creating a Torah copy for a Seattle congregation, so her having sacred space to work in makes a lot of sense to me.
I see what you’re saying about seamlessly integrating the holy and the ordinary, for want of a better way of putting it–it reminds me of the monastic notion of constant prayer even if that isn’t necessarily what you meant. In my experience, the separation is to some degree necessary until and unless one reaches a certain stage of enlightenment, which, given my ADD “monkey mind” and age (56), is unlikely for me, but not a bad thing to reach for.
So I have sacred spaces (some of them right here at home, others away), sacred times of personal prayer, and the catch-as-catch-can moments that are also known as blessings because Someone Else did the setting aside. And then there is the life of getting my wife and daughter their meals, walking the dog, cleaning house, making cold calls and writing the stories. Somewhere, the Holy breathes in all this, but sometimes I need things set apart to truly appreciate the Presence.
What you call The Bubble may be such a sacred space that is somehow necessary to you. Just a thought.
And your two-groups-in-one may need to articulate their needs and meet accordingly. Again, just a thought.
God’s Grace