Tonight I’m attempting to explain how several recent experiences have converged around a few central connected themes now occupying most of my thought. The glory of weblogs is that I can write it once and save myself the mental turmoil of trying get it correct verbally fifty times.
The recent process began on May 4 in watching Philip Gröning’s Into Great Silence. I was drawn to this movie in an attempt to relate more deeply to a friend’s recent dream containing a vision of monastic journey to which he recognizes he is being called. Philip’s film attempts to create a cinematic experience which draws the viewer into the Grande Chartreuse, shaping three hours of their lives to that of this order of Chartreusian monks in the French Alps. For the most part, it was successful – I came out of the movie with a greater understanding and respect of the life rhythms and passions of these men, without really being told the details or documented facts of their practice. I also left with, as expected, a welcome and immediate peace about me, and a decent amount of evening energy given the length, silence, and repition of the film. And that was it.
The following night, a group of friends had committed to going to Taizé worship at the Mercy Center with Derek and Julia, something many of us had wanted to do for a while. Immediately, things began to change.
As soon as I entered the sanctuary and took my place, a complete patience overtook me. I thought of the monks in the film and how they had dedicated their complete purpose to the worship and pursuit of Christ in a radically uncompromising way. Though not directly, the words of the eldest monk paced through my head reminding me the raw truth that I was made for worshipping God, and nothing else. The rhythms and silence of the room began to fall in step with those of the monastary and I realized that my body had been longing for hours what it had seen the day before. I fell into prayer, recitation, and silence with hundreds of people I didn’t know but loved, and for one of the few times in my life I didn’t care how long the worship would last.
What has followed might be explained best as a simple listening to of noises that have been surrounding me for nearly exactly the last year. Unwittingly I started piecing together and devouring musings ranging from the definition of faith truths and authority, to the value of intentional community and its vows. The weaving of threads between these themes starts with an understanding of the emergent church movement and its imact and embrace of community.
For me this concept is most easily conceptualized from its origins to its purpose by comparing it to Web 2.0, and related positive trends in globalization. The church, during most of my lifetime and those of anyone I’ve ever met, has been dominated by congregations seeking a palatable or sufficient interpretation of spiritual truth, subscribing to that with minor though often “understandably naive” doubts, and perhaps convincing others to do the same to the end of knowing Christ and his will for their life. The emergent church attempts to give name to the evolving rabble of Christians who, being faced daily with knowledge of new injustices, incongrencies, beauties and needs, look at the faith they have grown up with (or around or against) and find it insufficent to cope with the challenges they are now burdened. It recognizes that the modern church (though its manifestation as a relative handful of subtly different organized denominations) represents a collage of many imperfect and incomplete understandings of God, and while many might not be any less correct that what might be attained before the rapture, they aren’t any worse that what might be the products of new and collaborative discourse on theology, ministry, worship, service, and biblical life in general amongst both intentional and global communities – much in the same way that Wikipedia does not stray much farther from the truth than Encyclopedia Brintannica. What is required is a constructive question of the traditional authority, earnest and prayerful passion for the truth, and in the recent words of Tom Wright an “intellectual humility” that admits “I know I’ve got one third of it wrong, but I don’t know which third it is.” The emergent church believes that through communities of believers we come to a more complete understanding of Christ and what his death and resurrection means for us, that we have the facilities to do this on a global scale, and that the impact of this collective creative church in action may very well be a healing of the world that brings about the “kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven” that most of us pray for every Sunday.
So aside from the specific label, the “emergent church” isn’t anything new to anyone who has been reading the papers, listening to public radio, or perhaps watching Oprah. What is especially interesting to me however, is how this connects to monastic lifestyles – like those I’ve experienced in the past week and those that friends have committed to in a modern urban interpretation.
The monastic life, in its simpliest and most traditional interpretation, is that characterized by a community committed to a common set of religious vows often living in a common or collective space. We typically think of celibate and solitary individuals in a remote castle of some sort. The Chartreuse monks live a life even more austere than most, taking a vow of nearly lifelong silence and rigid ritual. Today their practices seem hardly relevant to those outside themselves, but those orders were established hundreds of years ago during the Dark Ages for very deliberate and successful goals of preserving the holy word and propogating it according to the Great Commission. Today we might imagine a different sort of principles by which we form a monastic community. They may be vows of service, prayer, or other ritual but we choose them based on a goals we want to accomplish for both one’s life as a seeker of truth and a servant to a dying earth. In the urban jungle, this might mean living in the same 5 block square or even a set of connected houses. The commitments are those that bring the committed to greater communion with Christ, leverage the dynamics of community to reveal to one another deeper truth about Christ, and enable them to better serve the community in which they live. In the sprit of the emergent chruch, it creates an environment where the truth is discovered and discussed, not preached (or at the least, not only so), and a community that is empowered to serve in a way more impacting than the sum of its parts. As this cohort (to use a deliberate label) connects with the larger global community, the vision of the Church 2.0 becomes realized.
The monastic life is most likely not intended for everyone. Certainly one can live life apart from such deliberate commitment with others and still carry out a radical faith that has worldwide impact. I doubt anyone would disagree that Paul lived such a life. But, there is a more general concept – intentional community – which is crucial for anyone in the pursuit of a life with understanding, beauty, and truth. The simple point is that our lives are defined heavily by those from whom we receive widsom and affirmation, and we must form our closest relationships with those holding the same values and assumptions nagging at our hearts. Mark explains this well in answering the first of three questions about his ministry – while we certainly are blessed from interacting with and befriending all types of people, our capacity to form deep relationships (and regular rhythms) with others is limited and one should be cautious not to compromise such opportunity with breadth or carelessness. Through these deliberate relationships we join one another in search of the deepest truths and to the greatest ends – as was with the Trandentalists, the Abolishonists, or the creators of Narnia and Middle Earth. The core Mozilla community is an excellent such modern day example, and as the chruch of today we should seek such communities so as to accomplish the work set out for us by the truth of the resurrection.
So I’ve made an attempt to both make personal sense of recent influences, and relate them together coherently, and looking back over my words, I feel that I might barely have succeeded. But more important that bringing these thoughts under a single umbrella of thinking is how they relate to my present situation. In explaining that I realize that the process began much earlier than the start of the month.
Without going into much detail, I must stop short and simply say that the larger process started when I moved to the Mission over a year ago with the specific goal of setting roots in San Francisco. I had no idea at the time why (other than circumstance) I settled on a specific area, but it is clear now that this neighborhood is my community and, with each passing day, my ministry. This new outlook and response also extends beyond my recent surroundings to the global and Internet community, and manifests itself, yes through this blog but also, through powerful ideas like Standpoint and Kiva. The learning is just beginning, but the connections are forming quickly. For many of you this may be recycled air, but this is what the world around me sounds like now that I am able to listen. Let the dialog begin.
Jesus, with Thy Church abide,
Be her Savior, Lord, and Guide,
While on earth her faith is tried:
We beseech Thee, hear us.
Keep her life and doctrine pure,
Help her, patient, to endure,
Trusting in Thy promise sure:
We beseech Thee, hear us.
May she guide the poor and blind,
Seek the lost until she find,
And the broken hearted bind:
We beseech Thee, hear us.
(Thomas Pollock, 1871)