The Church With Heart

The Poor Lazarus at the Rich Man's Door,
James Tissot, Wikimedia Commons

The Church With Heart has a heart full of love for not only its members, but for the people outside its doors. Because this is what Unitarian Universalism is all about -- it's about having faith that love is infinite, undying, and there's plenty to go around for all of us, so we need to love one another within the church, and then take that love outside the church because Lazarus is right outside our gate, starving for our crumbs, and even our crumbs are valuable because the Lazaruses outside our gate are starving for acceptance, for nourishing food for their minds and souls, for a listening ear, for relationship, for purpose.

Yes, purpose. Another word for that is mission. And here's the thing - a church doesn't have a mission. Do you hear me? A church does not have a mission, a mission has a church. The Church With Heart is willing to go out and track that mission down so that they can attach themselves to it and be claimed by it. It's scary stuff, mission, because once that mission has adopted you, once you both have realized you are the church for it, and it is the mission for you, it begins guiding you in all sorts of directions, maybe even strange and dark alleys. Mission takes you on adventure, and adventure is wild and joyous and thrilling, but the one thing adventure is not is "comfortable." Mission shoves us out of our comfort zone because there's something bigger, another place we need to get to, and Mission understands that life will be better for all of us once we get there, so just hang on to your hat and enjoy the ride.

Time is precious, and fleeting, and running out, right now. Don't be a church content with maintaining a community of like-minded people where everyone gets along, because there is a fierce urgency that comes with our call, our commission, to experience and create that holy and wholeness-filled Beloved Community, right now.

Lazarus is waiting.

Comments

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to...

Beloved Community: The Now and Not Yet

Rev. Christine Robinson has a great little post up about the phrase "beloved community" and why it's problematic to use that to describe a church. Like her mom, I can get cranky about the whole thing, but my crankiness lies in the misuse of what is, to me, such a breathtaking and profound concept. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone whose words I study in great detail, is the one we often think of as originating the term, but he learned about it through the writings of Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (right) with close friend William James. Royce was a philosopher, studying Kant, Hegel. I imagine he would have enjoyed Koestler's theory of the holon , because he saw humanity as being both individuals and part of a greater "organism" that was community. As King's belief about Beloved Community would be rooted in agape , Royce's philosophy stemmed from what he called loyalty, and by that he meant, "the practically devoted love of an individual f...

CMFTMs 2: "I Want to Schtup Santa Claus."

You are not coming to a CMFTM for originality, or if you are, you'll be pretty disappointed. They're making these babies on the fly, baby, Time is Money, so who has time for originality? As such, most CMFTMs fall into certain oft-used-and-abused genres. Someone even made a handy bingo scorecard of Christmas movie tropes. Today's genre is "I Want to Schtup Santa Claus." This is an interesting genre of holiday movies that seems targeted to Gen X – Boomer females. Why does this appeal to us? I conjecture it’s because of the stop action animation special, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” in which a scarily thin Jessica-the-Teacher meets Kris Kringle, he gives her a doll, they get married by the Winter Miser and then she’s allowed to get nice and fat, and he still sits next to her, seemingly still in love, and eternally celebrating Christmas, but without bills or family members, or any of those other pesky things that make Christmas, ...

Boots and Blessings

Search This Blog