Spiritual Entropy
I wrote a long response to Tabs and Wademan's post and reply. It would not post. It kept asking me for "verification" and I would type the letters out and no...nothing. Just another slash of slanted letters to type in over and over.
This is not unusual as of late. Entropy (collapse and decline) seem to be focused on all my systems.
I spend all day yesterday trying to get my internet and phone systems to work. I tried many different solutions, each one of them shrewd and deliberate. In the end I had 7 new programs on two computers, none of which worked correctly. Yahoo suddenly had funds of mine but I had no service...then you cannot find their customer service number unless you search for disgruntled customers. When you call you are placed through a phalanx of messages and choices that take about 30 minutes to get you to an actual person.
Then he tells you your phone reception is bad and he cannot understand your rantings. The phone goes dead and dark. You pull up your Webby Nominated web site but it won't load...YET until some wind shifts at Comcast and it decides it will. When it does, all your feature photos are missing and the photo section is down.
It’s okay…just thousands of folk want to evaluate your site.
So you go and buy a Blackberry cell phone. It doesn't work because the sim chip won’t fit and the clip breaks off. It looks back at you with colorful contempt.
It's a continual mess. I just tried to post this draft…it timed out.
Just like the Church..but it is all we have unless you wish to go back to carrier pigeons.
I assume most of them were eaten on the way.
__________________
Wade's point about an organism rather than organization would parallel the idea of Christianity and Christendom (that Kierkegaard so battled).
The Church as Body is so very different than the organization. It functions in the Holy Spirit who decides what callings and gifts we have as gift-love for each other.
I was emailing a friend (who is part of this little band) about how lopsided our friendship is. She does far more for me and is far more attentive than I am. But the Body is not a democracy..it is a living thing. And so it is true that some people I befriend and serve are not in a position or place to reciprocate. It is lopsided. In turn, I mostly abuse my best friends. I ignore them, miss important functions and drink and swear too much when they come by for a visit (which is usually on their dime). Yet we are connected and those connections are different but real.
I do not do well in organized "Church" unless I can be subversive...and I mean that in the truest sense..."sub-VERSES" the Bible is the alternative text or verse. It is living Word in some strange way.
God is not so ungracious as to insist that churches really love Him. He is the ultimate Hosea and we are Gomer (or as I once said in a poem "Ameri-Gomer"). Thus even in the shut-down churches there are always pockets of Gospel.
I recently went to church for the first time in a year. I went and sat with my friend and we were both a bit bored and untouched. It was, I think the passivity and the show which seemed tired however faithful.
Later we walked for lunch and discussed. I'm not sure we had any answers and it wasn't hyper-critical (I agree with Wade that we need more compassion for the Church). But as we sat and talked and wolfed down our lox, capers (for him) and an amazing omelette (me) ...the waitress came by and flirted a bit and he looked spiff in his priest's collar it all kind of warmed up. Maybe it's as simple as two or more gathering who love one another. I know I love this man and he draws Christ out from within me as we explore.
The Church is a mystical Body...and it is alive. I wrote a poem that I will attempt (unsuccessfully) to post here in a bit called "Not Speaking to the Dead" and what it really means is to speak to the places of LIFE.
We are most the Church when Christ is loved and SEEN, where we, as Tabs suggests, engage in nitty-gritty love regardless of belief systems and where groups of folk ask themselves what their own callings are and engage in them.
It's pretty simple, even if we are not.
Well all connections are failing. Entropy. I have to reboot all systems in hopes I may be able to transmit. Maybe God feels a lot that way with us as Gomer. I suspect the Spirit most so…wishing to exalt Christ and finding an unwilling and spoiled Bride. Or worse, one who just fails to show at the alter because she had to have her nails done.
What's the answer to spiritual entropy?
Grace, and the faith, hope, and love which eminate from the gracious heart of God.
We are taught that Christ alone holds all things together and is the source of all these things for it pleases God for it to be so.
Romans 8 is the answer to all Entropy.
~Mac out
posted by Obi-Mac BakDon @ 8:07 AM
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