preparing for halifax

It’s the day before I leave for Halifax to participate in the conference Christianity: The Story Evolves. I’m working on my speech.  On Sundays, I speak without notes so writing a speech out is something I find challenging.  I never know if I’m going to be able to be as intimately connected with my audience as I like to be, something that is made more possible when I’m talking directly to them. My hope is that this speech will kick off a new discussion within the larger community, one that takes us past the rhetoric of congregational survival and theological evolution to the heart of what ails us as a species.  Because, just like I once decided that I couldn’t do church the way I’d always done it and headed off in this “progressive” direction, I’m getting to the point where I can’t do life the way I’ve always done it either.  And, just like my departure from the well-trod path of the church, I have no idea where this shift is going to take me, only that there are important things that need to be attended to and it’s time to do that work.  So I’m guessing that in the larger scheme of things, while this may be on a smaller more personal scale, it’s going to be the more challenging of the two shifts. I’ll keep you posted.  For now, here’s a snippet from the speech … “Don’t get me wrong. I love liturgy, ritual, the sound of music lifting harmonies on high.  I love the sensual nature of community drawn together to explore, to reflect, to tease truth out of the crevices of our hearts.  I love that we can use almost anything to create those moments that rivet us and command the whole of our attention but that again and again, we come back to a few simple basics – water, rocks, sticks, shells, ribbons.  Not much you can’t do with those five things. But I lament that what we do in church is too often so tragically one-sided, so oriented toward ourselves. In fact, because it is so insular and so self-serving, I now think of it primarily as masturbation.”