Some of us go through a very severe shift in who we are in life. Usually that shift has to do with all areas of life but sometimes it starts in a particular area, such as relationships not working at all, or breakdowns in the relationship repeating, and sometimes this shift has to do with our spirituality. 

Regarding how our friends can be with us in this often very painful and deep shift;

~ some people don't get it and they resist it for whatever reason.
~Some people don't get it but they stick with you and are with you in it even in their not understanding.
~And then there are people who understand it because they are there or have been through it.

It's interesting that all of life really is and has to be a certain fluidity to it to live it well.

That fluidity is what some people fear. Ironically especially if they are Christians and believe in the powerful goodness of God. They don't seem to trust the human spirit to take care of its self, and they don't seen to trust the hand of God in their life.

That may not be too surprising because many times people's personal dysfunction has become intermingled with the dysfunctions of religious systems and beliefs. So when they start the healing process of the spirit that process may understandable shift how they relate to religion.

What often happens is that the person shifts to a deeper and more intimate relationship with God thus emphasizing spirituality. 

Emerging Church conference quotes

Phyllis Tickle:* The central question that arises each time the church goes through one of these 500 year rummage sales is “Where now is our authority?” * Another important question: What does it mean to be a human being? Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” no longer cuts it * Sola Scriptura: Luther took a flesh & blood Pope and replaced it with a paper one. Protestantism’s great gift to the world was universal literacy. It’s other gift was divisiveness * Jerusalem is good, but the energy is in Antioch. We are here to serve the Kingdom of God, not the old or the new.

Brian McLaren:* What you focus on determines what you miss * Our traditional understanding of Jesus may not have been wrong, but partial * We must learn to see Jesus through the sight lines of his ancestors rather than his descendants only * Jesus went to Galilee. It meant something. If he came today would he go to Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ninth Ward… where?

Richard Rohr:* With dualistic thinking, someone always has to be blamed. The system caves in on itself * The sun rises on the just and unjust. You can’t form a system of exclusion on that! * Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about humanity. He came to change humanity’s mind about God * We have fly-paper minds… everything that gets close sticks. Don’t call that ‘thinking’. It is narcissistic, egocentric, needy, and fragile * “I have no doubt that the Spirit was in the works of the Reformation.” But you can’t have the need to prove the other wrong (adversarial thinking) and be the contemplative mind * We don’t want to be contemplative because we have to give up control * Belonging/belief systems have come to replace transformation. We must turn from a belief system to an inner experience. Know them, don’t believe them * Recognize that I am living inside a mind bigger than my own. Someone is loving through me, and all I am is the conduit. * Francis didn’t run off and join the Franciscans – He just did it.

Alexi Torres-Fleming:* God doesn’t call the qualified but surely qualifies the called. * Am I a fan or a follower of Jesus? * When we pray for God to ‘fix’ a problem, maybe Jesus kneels and prays for us to go out and be the solution * Maybe we’re given a little piece of God’s heart. We couldn’t deal with the entirety of God’s sadness for His children. (Note: Maybe this is what it means to be “made in the image of God”) * If we are free, and God’s poor are not free, then we are not free. * We cannot talk about church and theology without talking about justice. * We like our poor to look a certain way. The poor come to us in many different packages, and some may not be palatable. Some are angry. We must learn to see them as Christ sees them. (Note: Otherwise it’s just about us) * We must model incarnation: You cannot redeem what you will not assume.

Shane Claiborne:* Stop explaining/complaining about the church we have experienced and work at becoming the church we dream of. * We need to be relevant to the big questions of the day while retaining our cultural peculiarity * Fascinate the world with grace! * The church needs discontent. Don’t leave the church but submit to the authority of the larger Body of Christ * You can have all the right answers and still be mean. And if you’re mean, no one will listen to you.

Conversations from an egotistical, self-righteous malcontent.

I'm thinking about having been called a self-righteous, egotistical malcontent because of my involvement in a committee (Veritas) given the mandate to consider how vital a church we are. (Just for the record, this is not new feedback and is something about myself I'm committed to noticing and stopping).
An interesting point to consider here is that for anyone to even be willing to air an opinion, (even if it's wrong) they must have some strength of ego and the committee would De facto be a waste of time if the mandate included being happy with what was going on now.
The tension here is that even if I am all of the above, I still sincerely believe that something more is possible for our church and that to have that "new something" it's entirely possible that the old has to be interrupted.
The irony is that a major concern of mine with our church is our inability to communicate well. To illustrate the point, I indirectly found out that someone had the above candid opinion of me and others in the committee.

In having a lot of communication with others, two people have had a fair amount of energy in those conversations with me about "triangulation" (using a third party to communicate something to another) such that I'm making up that possibly those two people have been talking about my supposed inclination to "triangulate" which I find amusing. And frankly I'm aware that writing this blog may actually be a indirect way of communicating because in some settings here it feels like moving through very thick molasses to communicate clearly directly tho I am doing better at that.
I think the first rule to remember in anything we do is to not "take ourselves to damn seriously". Usually that posture of heart shows an insecurity that we probably don't want to own up to.
I just came out of a church meeting that really was momentous and really tragic. After over 200 years of being in the meeting house on the common, (pictured above) we, the congregation, voted to do what we said we would do and leave when our lease is up in April.
In essence we were forced to leave because of a group in town using the power of another national group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, wanted the selectmen to dictate what our policies were.
What was good about the meeting was that there was more honest questions and considerations than I think in any previous meeting. This made it a unusually uncomfortable meeting for me because in my family of origin nothing was talked about openly and honestly and I'm still learning that direct, clear, challenging, investigative discussions are not "bad".
I attribute some of the new ability to state opinions and voice concerns being a result of the meetings of the Veritas committee and a new feeling of empowerment to speak honestly about what is really so. Thus probably the not surprising assessment that people are being self righteous and egotistical. I probably have been that way in this.
I don't think I was the only one uncomfortable with the strength of conversation because others voiced the opinion that what was going on was "discouraging and lacked a sense of hope". Others apparently felt like the Devil was involved and others may have thought God wasn't paying good attention to what was going on because they thought we needed to stop and pray. Or maybe that was their way of cautioning people to remember God was watching.
Any of the above may certainly have been true but personally I think we are a powerful group of followers of God and that we can have honest, forthright, even disagreeing conversations and that those might actually be a sign of a vital, growing church.

Boiling frogs and church life

One of that reasons that I find working with the ministry of ACCD (http://accd.org) so satisfying is their focus on current reality. So much mischief happens in life when I want to avoid what is really happening with me.

Now why would I want to avoid what is really going on? It might have to do with the propensity we humans have to;
1. being right,
2. feeling good,
3. looking good, and
4. being in control.

Thus staying out of touch with reality, at least in my illusion, seems to allow me all four of the above mentioned. The problem is that to support this illusion I have to work harder and harder to ignore signs in the physical universe around me. Thus the gratitude surprisingly that many of us have felt about reaching "bottom" (as 12 step groups put it) and hopefully recovering to some degree.

"Bottom" for those of you who either have lived charmed lives or are still blissfully ignorant of reality is what it's called when our or others blindness, dysfunction, propensity to humanness and evil takes us to a place where consequences finally strip away illusion. Often we're talking really painful consequences that not only do us damage but severely hurt those around
us.

So sociologists have a belief that organizations can exhibit personality much like a human being. So all this to introduce some thoughts about my church, Greenfield Congregational Covenant Church. I am currently serving on a committee that is conversing about the vitality of our church.

I'm wondering if the proverbial frog immersed in the slowly warming up pot of water can really get much of a philosophical, existential grip on his
reality. If there were two frogs in this potential stew and they were contentedly assessing their reality, the whole point of the proverb is the difficulty of noticing where they really are. And even if two frogs should suddenly, inexplicably start to have concerns about the warmth of their environment, could they communicate this perhaps vague concern to a third frog in the pot?

Stand by for more musings from the pot.