The first time the word "church" is used is when Jesus said, "... I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out."[MSG] Sunday morning in church I sometimes get bored. Recently, more often than not.
Oh, there are bright points, but also moments of being bored. How ever did I get into this position? I've been a Christian for a long time, and my assurance grows every year that this is the Truth - this is not a question of doubt, yet on occasions I'm finding church boring. The church I attend is vibrant, full of young people, a diverse racial demographic, competent music, orthodox (if overly verbose) teaching, proactively engaged in the community through health and legal clinics, tackling the pains caused by gentrification, and so much more. What else could one possibly expect from a community of Christians? So why do I get bored? I know many will say "Examine yourself, for how could the topic of an infinite God engaged with a fragile human ever be boring?" Good question, but its not boredom with God. Of course my moments of boredom is my responsibility. Point taken, critique accepted. Maybe I should be more engaged, and with enough will and effort I can escape the moments. However, personal responsibilities do not negate the value of examining factors that are independent of my internal inadequacies. There is much to be learned about how to address personal responsibilities by exploring the external context. What really strikes me as a key trigger is this: when I'm bored by church it is often because the voice of the church never advances beyond the simplistic. Bear with me as I try and explain that. I am occasionally reminded of CS Lewis' comment about church songs, which he "... considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music." However, over time he came to see the conceit of that view and realized that "... as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit." Of course this didn't change the fact that it was still "fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music" ... it was more a realization that this didn't really matter, and one is humbled from one's arrogance. OK, so there's a lesson to be internalized. However, I think there is another side to the issue; its about the boredom of never progressing beyond the obvious. Imagine a marriage where the relationship forever stayed at the stage of superficial chit-chat on a first date. While in a zone of security there is no risk, but there's no growth either. God is not just a known quantity to be boxed, he's an infinity of dangerous depth. Here's an idea I've been playing with, a metaphor if you like: Really simple things are only seemingly simple, and the more simple they seem the less likely they are to be merely simple. Like gravity: really simple things are often the most difficult things to understand. Not far from where I live there are a group of massive granite boulders on the shore. I first encountered these as a young teenager and was quickly enchanted; they were the size of houses, butting against each other, shaping a weird landscape, and I was amazed. But quickly, with visit after visit, they became simply big boulders, and as I grew older I would find myself instead exploring the surrounding landscape (which included a nudist beach ... strong competition for just big boulders!) One day a friend taught me that if I searched hard enough, I could find the occasional garnet in the boulders - a gemstone. And so my fascination was renewed and before long I was examining each boulder wherever I could reach. In time the garnets lost their shine. Then, when I was studying I did a geology course and discovered details about the composition of granite, about the feldspar, biotite, muscovite, and once again my attention refocused on the boulders. But that too became familiar ... once you've identified feldspar, then its, well, just more feldspar. Until I was reminded about the tectonic history of the boulders, and how they were once magma that forced itself through the earths crust with tremendous heat and pressure, creating strange zones of interaction with the pre-existing rock, distorting and shaping all that it touched. And again I saw the boulders anew; the same old big round simple rock, but now with much deeper understanding. Its an obvious metaphor, but each renewal of fascination was not merely through acquiring facts, but by how a new understanding shaped a poetry of image and meaning that ignited my intellect, emotion, and imagination. Simple things have deep poetry waiting to be discovered. Of course church is not this metaphorical boulder, church is merely a place where together we explore the boulder, sharing the poetry of the boulder. So when I'm bored by church, what's missing? It's the "poetry of boulders". What I seem to hear in many churches is language like "look at the big boulders, isn't it a nice boulder, look how large it is, isn't the boulder grand". Now of course there's strong value in repeating the obvious, because we can be quick to forget. But again and again the music goes thump thump with regular monotony, the cymbals crash with each and every beat, the guitar strums a three chord rhythm, the piano plays 10 fingers all the time, the backing harmonies are more than backing, the lyrics repeat "I love how big this boulder is, this boulder is so big", and the sermon follows in the same vein with an intellectual level that target those already entering through the doors. I'm sorry, but that can get boring: "God is a creative God, and he created us to be creative" So what do I mean when I say we're missing the poetry of meeting together? I mean that we're falling short in the creativity of our gatherings because we expend most of our efforts on serving the spiritually young. As a result our creativity is contained, and our equipping for engagement with complex contexts outside the church is undermined. The poetry of a moment, be it perceived by any of our five senses, reveals a music inside the simple, condenses the verbose to the essence, stir the emotions, engages the intellect, and enables our intuition to leap to deeper meaning. A boulder is poetic when, with our senses attuned and our intellect trained, we see new depths to simplicity and stand amazed. The embedded garnets sparkle, the rock crystals create a visual feast and excite the touch, and the story of power and influence on the environment is apparent. That which was once simply seen as a large mass now evokes a richness of detail and depth that gives meaning beyond being. And such is my frustration with Church. Yes, Christ is rightly conveyed, but day after day in the same way with little effort to explore the next depth of simplicity. I long to wrestle with what Jesus means in my context; to explore with others and understand how he intrudes into this relativistic society of fluid sexuality, into a me-driven culture of egotistical self-serving politics. Just as granite was once a hot magma forcing its way through the crust of the earth, changing the surrounding rock, metamorphosing new minerals, how does Jesus become the force in a conversation with a post-Christian vegan atheist, or with an angry agnostic, or redirect the mutiny of disillusioned Christians (to pick up only some of my experiences)? To live in this context requires us to experience the poetry of Christ that illuminates our life and stimulates our creative capacity. Yet too often the church refrain is only a nursery rhyme. There are many possible forms of expression that capture the poetry of Christ. When I read Chesterton, I see a music of the mind. When I listen to songs such as Saturn my eyes and ears light up with a yearning for the depth of God. Likewise there are churches that are the exception to the rule (which of course, only serves to highlight the fact that there is a "rule"). When I hear a sermon that has layers of meaning, each attuned to the many stages of maturity among the audience, I am moved and emboldened. These examples and so many more touch the depths of the simple. Please, lets find the poetry in our services once again. Let the drummer learn that the beat left out is the loudest of all, the guitarist that there is a slow development to a song so much slower than the beat, and the lyricist learn the power of language, that repetition is not the only way to impact, how simple words in creative combinations can reach into all generations. Let our preachers build skills of layered meaning, of metaphors and pictures to paint an image that may be grasped in an instant yet mulled over for a day. May our teachers gain understanding of basic pedagogy, that sometimes "less is more" so that those listening can internalize the seed for more desire. I will, of course, continue to engage. I will rejoice when someone sees the boulder for the first time, but I will lament if many years later those same people can only say like a child "its such a nice big boulder". Lets learn to be poets once again. Poets of prose, vision, music, motion, and action.
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Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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