Been reading Scot McKnight’s posts on emerging adults with a bit of fascination. I was drawn to his conclusion: there’s much more continuity between a teenager’s faith and an emerging adult’s faith than you might expect. The religious commitments of the teenage years, and one might say the intensity and genuineness and depth of those commitments, are what shapes what happens in the emerging adult years. All of which reminded me of my musings about being “spiritual teenagers” and whether or not I’d truly outgrown some of those tendencies. But I don’t think that describes where I am in my spiritual walk. [read: this may be one of those windy sort of blogs that eventually gets to a point.]
Right now we’re half-heartedly church shopping. Come to find out we’re in a group of a dozen or so folks who are just sort of up in the air about where to land in a church. Some of us are simply tired of waiting for missional communities to actually do something rather than talk about doing something. Some of us are burned out on the whole “investing in church” idea. For some, church had become an unsafe place, a place that caused more hurts than reconciliation.
I know that we’ve contented ourselves with being back row church goers: we slip in, get our praise on, and slip out. Anonymous worship with no pressure to be someone or do something, which has helped us heal from the sense of burnout from our previous experience. Sermon exhaustion aside, it’s been a time to find contentment in just sitting for a while and being ministered to.
But that’s only part of where we are because we don’t want to forsake the idea of communal worship. (Ultimately we’d like to find a place with a relational pastor, a decent kid’s program, one of my wife’s concerns, and that’s racially balanced, one of mine.) While we’d want a place to be missional, both in mindset and deed, we aren’t waiting for that place. Our lives can be missional.
And we still have a community of relationships, both from our previous church community as well as our network of friends. I think that’s another reason why we haven’t dived into a new church. We don’t have time enough to be with all of the friends we have now. It’s kind of tough to then try to cultivate a new community’s worth of relationships or rather, make room in our lives for more people we won’t be able to hang out much with nor develop deep relationships with.
You know what I feel like? One of those journeyman ball players. The ones who stay on a team for a couple years to fill a role and then gets traded. But we’re not worried, we know we’ll end up exactly where God wants us. But I’ve been asked a few times what I look for in a church. I think I’ll write about that next week. [read: lots of deadlines this week.]
We did that for a few years. In the end, I found Christianity and its god to be entirely wrong for me. I've come to believe we each find the path to the All that we are meant to walk. Good luck on your church hunt.
Nice honest comment there, Angelia. But – we'd better hope Maurice finds his ideal church – because without his religion, where would he be?? And from the standpoint of my personal analysis I really don't think that Maurice would make a particularly good pagan – nor that it would be good/the right thing for him! (Now Buddhism maybe – but that would likely drive Sally up the wall!) I think Maurice needs his sacrificial God-Man. (Let's face it, unlike Baldur, at least *he* managed the resurrection thing – and wasn't dependent on universal popularity to pull it off!) Speaking of that other side – don't worry, Mo, Loki doesn't want you, he's got me! Anyway; you're too lunar to worship a fire god. You are! If you were born on a Sunday I might change my mind – but you'd have to read 8 days of Luke. If you were born on a Monday forget that. I'm not going to tell you to worship Woden if born on a Wednesday, because I think he'd bring out your dictator complex. Again, to know that you'd have to read something specific
namely an essay on the god by CG Jung, published in the wake of WW II! So: if anyone thinks pagans are out to indiscriminately proseletyse, think again! What *we* like to do, is just to tell people selectively about bits of our faith, and guard the rest! We're a "closed-door" bunch! Well – you can get in but you have to do a lot of study first – it's worse than that monastery on the old tv show Kung Fu! Which must make at least some of us, quite annoying! (But that's the LAST thing for a good Lokean to be worrying about!)
Yeah – and talking of "vagabonds" – come to think of it, old Odin/Woden/Wotan was *well known* for more than a spot of vagabondry of his own!! 'Tis true: he was half a king and half a bum! If ever I write a "gods in modern dress" type novel, one place I'm surely gonna put him is in the drunk tank! But all you have to do to get the picture is watch some of Wagner's "Ring" operas – you ever get into opera? Try a couple of 20-min sections from YouTube. Wotan spends some of the time lording it: the rest of the time wandering around discontentedly in disguise, making trouble for everybody else! (No wonder so many heathens historically preferred the more straightforward Thor!) Loki I prefer for his *honest* thief-tricksterhood! I think that Wagner presents a worthwhile, pared-down if accurate Loki(from MY point of view) in the character of Loge. (He even gets his "theme tune" right for me: presenting his essence as a *warm* personality. Beguiling and enchanting, of course. Whereas the big O/W is cold and imposing.)
When he's not being Yoda-like or just plain weird. (Another thing I on the whole commend Wagner for on balance is for leaving all the Baldur stuff out though: it wouldn't have helped his concept and anyway I expect he suspected much if not most of it is Christian-inspired. So maybe he got much closer to the "original" (older/est) pagan concepts?! But he's also very modern in concept – one reason why Tolkien didn't like his stuff – but C S Lewis did! Well worth a look.) Anyway: Wotan. A great guy really – only kidding! No but if you read the Jung essay you'll see he's what they call a "Dionysian" type of personality: more passionate, intense than warm. He'd be really into sex, drink, drugs. I'm serious here: the sagas definitely state he's into the first two at least! Also very Nietzschean: Will to Power and all that. *Very* bad god for personality types such as your own, Maurice:tho I can see a past incarnation of yours worshipping him! My powers say 4u to stay away from him religion-wise! Stick 2whatu know!